STRATEGIC PLANNING AND MARKETING PROCESS

The process of developing and maintaining a strategic fit between the organization’s goals and
capabilities and its changing marketing opportunities is called Strategic planning. Planning is
basically concerned with what are we going to do and how are we going to do it? Organizations,
which are not able to perform the effective planning, are actually planning for failures. To meet
changing conditions in their industries, companies need to be farsighted and visionary, and must
develop long-term strategies. Strategic planning involves developing a strategy to meet competition
and ensure long-term survival and growth. The marketing function plays an important role in this
process in that it provides information and other inputs to help in the preparation of the
organization’s strategic plan. Planning is performed to:
• Address changing environment and consumers
• Develop shared goals within organization
• Address competitive threat
• To anticipate the future
• Determine actions that are needed to achieve objectives
Strategic planning is mainly of three types:

(1) Strategic Planning:
Major activities in strategic planning process include developing the company's goals and plans. Typically strategic planning focus on long-term issues and emphasize the survival, growth, and overall effectiveness of the organization.

(2) Tactical Planning:
Tactical planning is concerned with translating the general goals and plans developed by strategic managers into objectives that are more specific and activities. These decisions, or tactics, involve both a shorter
III. Marketing implementation
A. Process that turns marketing plans into action assignments and ensures that such assignments are executed in a manner that accomplishes the plan’s stated objectives
B. Strategy: what and why of marketing activities; implement the who, where, when, and how
C. Skills related to effective implementation
a) Diagnostic skills
b) Identification of company level
c) Implementation skills
d) Evaluation skills
IV. Evaluation and control—types of control
A. Annual-plan control
1. Sales analysis
2. Market share analysis
3. Marketing expense-to-sales analysis
4. Financial analysis
5. Market-based scorecard analysis
B. Profitability control
1. Marketing-profitability analysis (identifying the functional expenses, assigning the functional expenses to the marketing entities, and preparing a profit-and-loss statement for each marketing entity)
2. Determining corrective action
3. Direct versus full costing (direct costs, traceable common costs, and nontraceable common costs)