Marketing Innovations: Product Determines Plans
Product marketing plans are very specific documents that can really impact a business’ success and efficiency. Unlike marketing strategies that only provide a general description of the business, its goals, the target consumer group, and the competition, marketing plans are more action-oriented. The strategy builds and explains the background, while the marketing plans are geared toward particular action that results in definite effects. Product marketing plans are usually very specific, narrowing the focus down to particular products in addition to being narrowly focused on the goals of the business as a whole. A marketing plan can serve as a step-by-step direction sheet for marketing personnel, depending on the accuracy and completeness of the document.
Product Marketing Plans and Development
Product marketing plans revolve around concrete actions. Exactly what will be done to increase awareness of a given product or service? How will this awareness continually be reinforced with repetition? How will these communicative efforts work to persuade the target consumer group that it needs to invest in the claims of the company and product? Even when the general marketing strategy is complete, detailed, and solid, if the specific marketing plan is poor and ineffective, the marketing schemes will likely fall and result in little success for the company.
Product marketing plans are the practical application of everything explained and described in the broad marketing strategy. Most product marketing plans are developed by people trained and experienced in marketing, advertising, and sales because they rely on unique, innovative sales tactics that can effectively appeal to the target group. Creativity and realistic treatment of the product’s effects are essential elements in marketing plans. If the sales proposition is not believable, few consumers will buy into its purported effects.
In addition to the creative method of appealing to the public at large, product marketing plans also contain more concrete data, such as pricing decisions, sales and distribution plans, and proposals for advertising and promotion. Product marketing plans will describe where the majority of the advertising will take place, if television ads will be part of the plan, if promotional events will be considered, etc. Marketing plans can be quite fun to create if one is willing to contribute energy and creativity into the process. The plan is the intersection between the abstract ideas of what is hoped to be accomplished and the specific ways of achieving those goals. Marketing plans will necessarily be affected and influenced by past marketing decisions because they can learn from the successes and failures of prior tactics and build on these to create new, innovative ideas that can appeal to the ever-changing, diverse public.
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