Role of Mission Statements in Guiding Marketing Planning

It is vital that a marketing plan has a mission statement that states the purpose of the marketing plan, and explaining why a person is in a business. Both personal and business goals should be included in the mission statement. Although the mission statement is usually a short paragraph, of one to three sentences long, but it is important because it focuses a company’s attention on the company’s most important goal.

The mission statement will review company’s business goals and objectives and identify marketing strategies that will achieve them. The managers and employees who do not understand their organizations goals and objectives will face a significant challenge and have a higher likelihood will not achieve it. Without a clear understanding, managers and employees might be making a decisions without the benefit of the guidance that provided by the organizations goals and objectives. Many of them will get lost along the journey and most likely will become side tracked because having no road signs to directing them down the right road. This is not their fault, they probably will not recognize the importance of their activities play in achieving the goals and objectives. When managers and employees clearly understand and agree with the organizations goals and objectives, everyone has a much higher degree of probability of achieving the results that the organizations desired. The goals and objective must be realistic, measurable, quantifiable, and attainable.

Besides that, the role of mission statements play in marketing planning is it provides an outline of how the marketing plan should look for to fulfill the mission. The outline is like a map showing the best way to the organization to carry out the marketing activities. An outline provides focus and integrated in the organization goal to ensure the marketing activity. It enables everyone in the organization to know exactly what will happen and when it happens. It will also help the business to take benefits of market opportunities to ensure the business remain good in reputation by preparing for possible problem. It helps to positioning the business in a better place to react to unexpected events and identify the right marketing mix. When a business does have an outline of the marketing plan, the business will know what are the specific thing it need to do and focus on things that important in running the business. Normally, every plan’s laid out has a specific target so that progress can be monitored well. A marketing plan usually covers the transactions for years and most likely the company still have a standing business in the years to come. It might seem like a large undertaking just to complete a full marketing plan. Nevertheless, the success of a business is depends greatly on the quality and feature of this plan. The research conducted enables company to restrict its target markets, and enables the company to set a price point for its product that will be acceptable to its market. Starting or running a business without according a good detailed and well researched marketing plan is a sure way to waste money on advertising. Lastly, a marketing plan should be followed and updated regularly. If a company understand its customers better, the company will be better suited to make decisions on how better to approach them in order to increase sales.

Besides that, the mission statement provides a mean of evaluating and screening the marketing plan and evaluates that whether marketing decisions are consistent with the mission. There are four roles in the process of evaluating the marketing planning. First is the investment justification which shows the return on investment for a program. Some marketing programs are designed to raise awareness or advance brand equity rather than directly impact sales. In these cases, it is significant to try to describe key performance indicators, or results that lead to sales, and put a value to them prior to actually performing the evaluation. If a company can objectively do this, then it can always calculate a cost versus a benefit correctly. Second, improve efficiency of program that intended on repeating. If the program of a company did not show the positive return on investment, then an adjustment is needed rather than thrown away. Third, prioritize program means select the program that are has better driving result. If all program resulting in positive return, a formula will be use to select the best result in returning. Most businesses have limited resources when it comes to marketing dollars, so this becomes even more important to pledge the best overall marketing plan is in place. Finally is public relation. If a business growth message is vital to convey to its customers or investors, nothing is more convincing that cold hard facts. Evaluation makes the company’s financial to become specific. In today’s business environment, everyone is wants to see the financial results.

In addition, mission statements provide an incentive to implement the marketing planning. To carry out the marketing plan, the action plan distributes the required finances and skilled manpower to make it happen. The first resource to distribute it is the employees that will handle each activity and their responsibility in each task. A company have to make sure that they have both enough people to complete the task and the right person for the job. For instance, a company may find it best to use sales personnel for meeting a sales-based objective. Company should budget not only its time, but also its management’s time and the time for each person on the activity. Financial budgeting will make sure that the plan is stays within the expenses the business can afford. For small enterprises that often employ family members, it is important to account and budget relatives’ time too. As the manager or an owner of the business, it is important to keep monitor over the marketing plan. A company should distribute a person to be responsible for the entire marketing plan if it is possible. Tasks should be controlled to ensure that they meet the schedule and budget. When actual implementation does not match the original plan, changes should be monitored and the plan should be revised to match those changes. If a plan falls behind, activities should be rearranged and budget should be reallocated to keep the plan moving forward successfully. A proper implementation will give a company an border that its competition will find it hard to match. Besides that, a continuous successful implementation of the marketing plan will give company a sustainable competitive advantage that cannot be exceed, not until the company falter.

To avoid business mission statements from falling into marketing myopia, it is quite important to focus on prevalent and impending market conditions, as well as evaluating the benefits and value the business will bring to both, current and potential clientele. Company should always think about long-term when composing its business mission statement. Thinking long term automatically will widens its perspective and increase business’s chances of survival. Marketing myopia meaning the mission statement is fails to address the advantages and value that the business provides to its customers and instead defines the business in the term of goods and services. Therefore, in the marketing planning, the mission statement is important to make sure that it focus on current market condition to guide the marketing planning. A market-oriented business understands the cost and revenue dynamics not only of its immediate target customers but also of all markets beyond, for demand in the immediate and “upstream” markets is derived from the demand in the original “downstream” markets. Hence, a market-driven business develops a comprehensive understanding of its customers’s business and how customers in the immediate and “downstream” markets perceive value.

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