Marketing Plans That Work

"In cutting-edge marketing, the marketing concept has been extended to integrate concern for customer satisfaction into every corporate function."

"Marketing planning is simply a logical sequence of activities leading to the setting of marketing objectives and the formulation of plans for achieving them."

"Formalized marketing planning procedures generally result in greater profitability and stability in the long term and help to reduce friction and operational difficulties within the organization."

"Problems have to be properly defined, and the audit is a means of helping to define them."

"Unless you succeed in identifying a viable market segment for your product, you will not achieve differential advantage and will become just another company selling 'me too' products."

"A company that fails to think of its business in terms of customer benefits rather that in terms of physical products or services is in danger of losing its competitive position in the market."

"One of the most frequent mistakes made by companies that do not understand what market share really means is to assume that their company has only a small share of the market."

"A company that has set an objective knows what it expects to accomplish with its strategies and when a particular strategy has worked."

"Objectives must be specific enough to guide an organization to the action required, and they must be the yardstick with which performance is measured."

"How the company intends to achieve its objectives is strategy."

"Companies that communicate successfully with customers continually experiment with the mix of communication techniques."

"Perhaps the greatest misconception of all about advertising is that objectives for the purpose of measuring effectiveness should be set in terms of sales increases."

"Many companies lack planning and professionalism in their sales forces."

"Price is one of the clearest signals a customer has of the value of the offer that a company is making."

"The fundamental role of the distribution function of a company is to ensure that the right product is available at the right time."

"Many companies appear to be unaware of the level of service they are offering, that is, there is no customer service policy as such."

"One of the most important problems facing management today is a surplus of data and information, rather than too little."

"As companies grow and mature, they all experience a number of distinct life phases."

"Size of operations is, without doubt, the main determinant of the type of marketing planning system used."