What are the key components of a marketing plan?

Published on November 30, 2023   7 min
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0:00
Hello and welcome to this session on the key components of a marketing plan. My name is Annemarie Hanlon and I teach marketing at Cranfield University's School of Management in the UK. Some of these themes are taken from my books, "Digital Marketing" and "The Digital Marketing Planner". Let's get started.
0:23
In this session, we look at the impact of a lack of planning, and then we explore the steps in building the marketing plan. Finally, we discover return on marketing investment.
0:36
The lack of a marketing plan can lead to confusion where no one is sure what is happening. It can also lead to working in silos where information is not shared and there is a lack of integration. You may have experienced this if you are in contact with different departments in an organisation, and one team is unaware of what the other team are doing. Without a plan, it is difficult to assess whether the organisation has the skills needed to deliver the plan. A lack of skills can remain unnoticed as different departments lack staff to carry out the work. Without a plan, it is difficult to measure effectiveness. If no plans were in place, no one will be clear if goals were achieved. Plus, in a complex and changing external environment, the wrong decisions may be taken based on a lack of information, or there may be a tendency to take short-term decisions which are based on immediate rather than long-term requirements. This can result in greater investment being required, with the need to carry out actions at the last minute which may require larger budgets.
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What are the key components of a marketing plan?

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