Strategic Marketing Management: Planning, SWOT, and ROI

Managing the Marketing Effort

The Planning Process

• Analysis: Assessing environmental opportunities and threats, alongside corporate strengths and weaknesses.
• Planning: Deciding on marketing strategies that help the company attain its overall strategic objectives.
• Implementation: Turning strategic plans into actions that achieve company objectives.
• Control: Measuring and evaluating the results of plans and activities, and taking corrective action to ensure objectives are achieved.

SWOT Analysis

A model to analyze the external and internal environment of an organization:

Opportunities

External factors that the company may be able to exploit to its advantage:

• Economic climate
• Demographic changes
• Market trends
• Technology

Threats

Current and emerging external factors that may challenge the company’s performance:

• Competitive activity
• Channel pressure
• Demographic changes
• Political factors

3 & 4. Strengths and Weaknesses

• Strengths: Internal capabilities that help a company reach its objectives.
• Weaknesses: Internal limitations that may interfere with a company’s ability to achieve its objectives.

Note: These are critical success factors and are relative, not absolute.

Marketing Implementation

Implementing is the process that turns marketing plans into marketing actions to accomplish strategic marketing objectives.

Successful implementation depends on how well the company blends its people, organizational structure, decision and reward systems, and company culture into a cohesive action plan that supports its strategies.

Marketing Control

Marketing Control is the process of measuring and evaluating the results of marketing strategies and plans, and taking corrective action to ensure that objectives are achieved. This includes:

• Operating control
• Strategic control

Measuring and Managing Return on Marketing Investment

Return on Marketing Investment (Marketing ROI) is the net return from a marketing investment divided by the costs of the marketing investment. Marketing ROI provides a measurement of the profits generated by investments in marketing activities.