interesting online jobs went up in 2011 by 30%s

interesting online jobs went up in 2011 by 30%s

THE MARKETING PLAN

For an entrepreneur to understand the process of creating a marketing plan, he or she must first understand the concept of marketing. The concept of marketing is commonly known as the marketing concept or the marketing orientation.

The concept of marketing is the process of matching the consumers’ or customers’ needs with what that specific business offers. This way, the business makes the money and the consumer or the customers’ needs are gratified.

As an entrepreneur, it is important to understand the marketing concept which is mainly referred to as the marketing orientation, or the marketing mix made of the 4 Ps.

For an entrepreneur to get the full benefits of the marketing concept there is a need to develop the marketing plan. First some assessment needs to be done. Like the strategic plan we discussed earlier, the marketing plan starts with the assessment by analyzing the business abilities.

To assess the business abilities, a key question of what can the business do and not do and why need to be the start point. The business ability is the business core competencies. Popularly known as the marketing audit, like the financial audit, the marketing audit looks at all aspects of the market.

Some of the elements assessed at the marketing audit include the market share, the industry attractiveness and the competition analysis.
Ignoring the business core competencies leads to business disasters that makes the business lose money, time and may even lead to the death of a business.

The marketing assessment starts with the entrepreneur defining the competitors; however the word competitors narrow and lead to only assessing businesses offering similar products or offers. For me the word competitive set is a more holistic term.

Let’s look the two terms, the competitors and competitive set if applies as a basis of an airline. For example an airline’s competitors are other airlines, while if the same analysis was based on the competitive set, it would include video and teleconference facilities, the internet charts, emails and brands like Skype.

Besides the assessing the competitive set, the marketing plan also need to assess the operating environment, which include the economy, the political elements, technological changes and the legal elements.

For a marketing plan to be of a great advantage to a business, three key elements must be taken into consideration, these three elements are, the business core competencies, the consumers’ or the customers’ needs and the business operating environment.

It is important for the entrepreneur to know that a marketing plan helps in identifying the business competitive advantage and thus making the business focus on what its best at, giving it the competitive advantage.
The entrepreneur should not look at the marketing plan as a waste of time and money, but as an investment. A marketing plan will create a detailed process, detailing different activities and how to achieve the set objectives.

Without a marketing plan a business will not be able to take advantage of the marketing opportunities, face the challenges and optimize the profits.