Marketing Plan sample essay
The modern marketing environment keeps everybody in motion to succeed. Marketers strive to achieve their objectives using specific tools, such as research and marketing plans. This paper aims to observe different types of research designs and essentials of marketing planning.
A research design resembles a roadmap that gives a direction in one’s journey, whereby a person should set certain objectives in order to arrive at the right destination. Findings indicate that it is a well-developed plan of actions that identifies how the researcher will find answers to the research question and check hypotheses (Silver, Stevens, Wrenn, & Loudon, 2013). It determines the research purpose and finds decisional criteria and decision alternatives that can solve the management problem (Silver et al., 2013). Therefore, there are three types of research designs used in marketing: exploratory, descriptive, and casual. Firstly, the former focuses on the discovery of new ideas of collecting statistical data. As a rule, it is used at the beginning of research because it helps define company’s goals, courses of action, and areas of statistical research and potential growth. For example, open-ended questions are usually used in online surveys to provide exploratory research (Mora, 2015).
Secondly, descriptive research is considered to be quantitative in nature because it allows marketers to collect statistical demographic data. According to Mora (2015), this type of marketing research requires analyzing the public opinion, behavior, and attitude to a subject in question. Although it does not give a unique evaluation of the issue as in case of the previous type, it offers an opportunity to measure the needs of the overall population and possible changes in people’s behaviors, attitudes, and opinions in the future.
Thirdly, the casual research type, which is also quantitative in nature, tends to explain whether the relationships between variables are casual. Moreover, it determines which of them are causes and effects. For instance, when a yogurt producer wants to identify the effectiveness of a new package design, he or she should sell yogurt in two different stores in various packages and then compare where it is sold better.
Every marketer realizes that a marketing plan is vital in any business. Therefore, it is important to develop it in order to keep and attract customers. As a rule, it includes facts, numbers, and objectives. The literature reveals that a good marketing plan reflects marketer’s actions to achieve the best sales using certain tactics and tools (Baker, 2014). Admittedly, it is written in the bullet style and focuses on the issue directly. According to the research by Westwood (2016), the main steps of the marketing plan include analyzing the company’s current situation, determining the target audience, setting marketing goals, developing communications strategies and tactics, and evaluating the budget. Thus, the first stage consists in defining the company and its services or products. The second step should be determining prospective customers in terms of sex, age, family status, geographic location and earnings. Furthermore, the third phase requires marketers to identify their goals, for example, what they want to achieve.
The core of the marketing plan is the fourth step, which involves determining tactics and strategies of achieving identified goals. It is important to find ways of reaching and accomplishing company’s objectives. For example, a marketer must identify how he or she will involve customers in the marketing mix. Finally, the last step requires developing the marketing budget based on projected gross sales.
Thus, in order to succeed in their businesses, marketers should be always in motion. Research designs and marketing plans are important tools used in the modern marketing environment. They help to collect data and identify strategies for successful marketing.
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