Tactical Marketing Plan Essay

A marketing plan is a written document that can be thought of as set of decisions about what the company wants to achieve and how it is going to achieve it. Essentially a marketing plan sets a goal that is accompanied with strategy and tactics outlining how that goal will be achieved. In general there are two different kinds of marketing plans; strategic and tactical. Strategic marketing plan is more general and is focused on long-term goals; usually for a minimum three to five- year term. It is not as detailed as a tactical marketing plan and it deals more with the external environmental influences and opportunities and less with details of the company’s marketing activities. Tactical marketing plan differs from strategic plan in both timeframe …show more content…
The main goal is to assess where the company is now; what is its current marketing situation. Mainly all of the situational analyses can be divided into two parts; external and internal. The external analysis usually includes data about the company’s business environment such as competition. The main element for the external environment is that it includes all the factors, which the company has no control over, but they still affect the company’s operations. These factors can also be defined as macro-environment, which includes for example major regional, national and global trends and other factors influencing the business. The factors are often listed under six different headings; political, economical, social, technological, legal and environmental. The idea of analysing these factors is to make the company more prepared for change as they help when analysing potential opportunities and …show more content…
The next step is therefore to set goals which translate the company’s mission into easily understood statements regarding the markets, products, sales, occupancy and marketing mix. As the marketing mix is made of the tools that a company uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the target market it is an essential part while setting the goals.
Objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and carried out within a set timetable. They can be set as strategic long-term objectives or if the objectives are smaller and set to be reached within a short timeframe they should still be integrated with the long-run company goals and strategy.
The more thoroughly the earlier situational -and SWOT-analyses have been done, the easier it is to set precise objectives. As setting objectives is an essential part of the marketing planning process and if the company fails to provide them it reflects to the managers and employees lack of clear