Learning Marketing Planning

Learning marketing planning can be easy. To help you, the content on this page will teach the basics of setting objectives and thinking about ways to bridge the gap to reach the goal.

What are the Steps in Learning Marketing Planning

Like so many things in marketing, it’s important in learning marketing planning to check what is happening, compared to what you think is going on. For example, is your revenue growth based on new customer acquisition, or an annual price increase?

First, because revenue is important for all businesses, you must begin with setting that objective in three years. How big do you want to get? In his excellent book, “On Marketing Planning,” (Affiliate Link) Professor Malcolm McDonald calls this the “Must objective,” and I like that a lot.

Second, determine where your revenue will be in three years if nothing in your business changes.  This is your “Gap.” As they say in the UK, “Mind the Gap.” Ok, that’s at train stations. But it does fit, right?

Learning Marketing Planning to Grow

Next, calculate how you might fill this gap. You do this by ideating on new products, services, productivity improvements in your sales team, price increases, reduction in discounts, charging for delivery, etc.

In other words, you’re working ON your business to devise ways to grow. Meanwhile, if you’re a freebie lover, here’s a site with a bunch of free one-page marketing plan templates to get you started.

Is Learning Marketing Planning worth your time?

Doing this exercise before writing a full strategic marketing plan is smart. Above all, this exercise sets the shape of your future strategies and where you might best focus your resources.

Learning marketing planning is not a substitute for creating a strategic marketing plan. We’ll go more in-depth about doing that in a later section of this makemarketingeasy.com blog.

In conclusion

If you want to go deeper, or might use some help designing a plan to help you grow, fill out the form below to get on my newsletter list. Or send me an email at Joel@makemarketingeasy.com to set up a time to do a Zoom call or phone call.