Marketing Planning Process Defined

A marketing planning process is a systematic approach to developing marketing goals, strategies, and implementation tactics. It may be adapted to a wide variety of situations, from the launch of a new firm or practice area to the repositioning of an existing firm — even the routine planning of new business development activities

Importance of Marketing Planning

How important is marketing planning for professional services? Some would make the case that marketing planning, and indeed any marketing, is a waste of time and resources. They would argue that professional services marketing is all based on referrals and repeat business. In this view marketing is a non-essential activity, a kind of nice to have.

This view is often held by executives with long histories in professional services, some of which may be in senior management positions. The only problem with this view is that it is not consistent with the data. In other words, it is wrong.

Benefits of the Marketing Planning Process

It’s important to take a thoughtful, step-by-step approach to your marketing plan. Done right, it can yield a number of valuable benefits that can jumpstart success:

1. It encourages you to revisit old habits and assumptions. In a changing world, you have to learn to adapt — doing things the way you’ve always done them is not a winning strategy. A good marketing plan should take you, to some degree, outside your comfort zone and question everything you’ve done to date and why you thought it would work. Just because you’ve “always done something that way” doesn’t mean it’s effective or even a good idea.
2. It reduces risk by adding new facts. The process of developing a marketing plan forces you to reexamine your marketplace, your competition, your target audience, and your value proposition to prospects. This kind of focused research reduces risk because it compels you to evaluate your business model and marketing program before you commit time and money to them. According to our studies of professional services marketing, firms that conduct systematic research into their target audiences grow faster and are more profitable.
3. It provides accountability. Marketing planning makes both your marketing and business development teams set specific targets and measure their progress toward them. Management is accountable for providing enough resources to ensure the marketing plan has a reasonable chance to succeed.
4. It is proactive rather than reactive. Planning ahead puts you in control of your marketing so you can maximize its impact. However, it’s important to be agile enough to react to changing circumstances. Having well-documented plans makes it easier to change them.
5. It can become a competitive advantage. High-growth firms use their marketing strategy as a differentiator. By giving some thought to what makes your firm unique, you should be able to develop compelling differentiators — one or more clear reasons to select your firm over an apparently similar one.