Use of Marketing Plans

A formal, written marketing plan is essential; in that it provides an unambiguous reference point for activities throughout the planning period. However, perhaps the most important benefit of these plans is the planning process itself. This typically offers a unique opportunity, a forum, for `information-rich’ and productively focused discussions between the various managers involved. The plan, together with the associated discussions, then provides an agreed context for their subsequent management activities, even for those not described in the plan itself.

Strategic management

Strategic management is the art, science and craft of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its objectives[1]. It is the process of specifying the organization’s mission, vision and objectives, developing policies and plans, often in terms of projects and programs, which are designed to achieve these objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the policies and plans, projects and programs. Strategic management seeks to coordinate and integrate the activities of the various functional areas of a business in order to achieve organizational objectives. A balanced scorecard is often used to evaluate the overall performance of the business and its progress towards objectives.

Strategic management is the highest level of managerial activity. Strategies are typically planned, crafted or guided by the Chief Executive Officer, approved or authorized by the Board of directors, and then implemented under the supervision of the organization’s top management team or senior executives. Strategic management provides overall direction to the enterprise and is closely related to the field of Organization Studies. In the field of business administration it is useful to talk about “strategic alignment” between the organization and its environment or “strategic consistency” According to Arieu (2007), “there is strategic consistency when the actions of an organization are consistent with the expectations of management, and these in turn are with the market and the context.”

Conclusion

I’ve spent a long time thinking about how to define the “correct model” for online Marketing comprehensively, and found it’s a deep hole I can’t travel down further than I already have at this time.  I think readers of this blog probably know which direction I am leaning on this model.  Perhaps we can do that together at a later date (feel free to leave your Comments on the correct model).  I do know what doesn’t work, though, and am surprised we keep repeating that model.For now, here’s a prediction: The first social network to:1.  Drive “vertical”, highly segmented participation, which drives context for Display Ads, and 2.  Becomes transparent to web-wide Search or uses Search really well internally to expose rich contextual spaces will be the first social network to make money

Wrong Model, Dumb Money

I am not a technophobic Marketeer, an old “resistant to change” type.  In fact, I’m just the opposite, and that’s why I can’t understand why Online continues to Repeat Past Marketing Failures.I was one of those kids that built crystal radio sets and messed around with ham radio.  My favorite place to hang out was Radio Shack, back when they were an electronic parts house.  I built all kinds of circuit board stuff with a soldering iron, mostly bugs and tel co hacks.  I was a geek when they were called nerds. In 1977 I learned the BASIC language and was writing simple programs for the mainframe at college.  In 1978, I was part of a small group of students who worked on the Syn clavier the first large scale truly digital music synthesizer.  I started working with PC’s in 1987, and had a home computer by 1991.  I was one of those people who dialed up to the CompuServe Forums at 300 baud, primarily talking about computers and music, figuring out how to rewrite .bat and .in i files to get the computer keyboard interfaces working properly. And at the same time, making lots of  ”online friends”So I have to tell you, the following is not coming from someone who is against or afraid of technology or experimentation.  What I am against is the illogical squandering of resources, and people who are inflexible in their thinking.I understand perfectly well why coders get excited about developing new ideas for new platforms, solving problems and providing new functionality.  Let’s build something for Facebook!  Get tired of that?  Let’s build something for i Phone!  Etc.  On and on, over and over.  Nothing wrong with that.Here is what I don’t understand about this “innovation” on the web.  The magic bullet for monetizing all the free platforms and applications so pervasive on the web is Advertising.  But the platforms and applications are rarely developed, it seems, with a clear vision of creating value for the Advertiser.  Surprisingly, this part of the job is not well thought out and often bolted on later The problem with this approach should be obvious – ultimately, the application fails to pay for itself, the business model collapses, and that generation of work disappears with another “lesson learned”.   Except, this lesson is often the same lesson learned in the previous generation, from an Advertising perspective.Here is something we have now learned about 20,000 times on the web:  Advertising lacking proper Context generates little value for Advertisers.  As is the case off line by the way.That’s what makes a prediction like My Space will be Tripod all over again from an Advertising perspective so easy to make.  It doesn’t matter what the platform or application is.  If it lacks the key contextual elements to support successful Advertising, it will fail from an Advertising perspective