Is Your Marketing Plan Designed for Business Growth

by James on January 7, 2010

An effective marketing plan is focused on factors that will have a meaningful impact on business growth. I had a client once who was kind enough to share his detailed marketing plan with me. The plan showed that they intended to spends several hundred million dollars on advertising to acquire new customers.

“Great,” I said. “How much market share do you think you can get?”

“None,” he replied.

What? Why wasn’t there and business growth for all the money. Hidden at the back of the plan, in the section nobody reads, was the fact that attrition was projected to cancel the acquisition goal.

“Why not spend more on keeping them and less on getting them?” I asked naively.

“Because it’s easier to convince Management/Finance to spend several hundred million dollars on advertising, they know what it is and have always spent this money, than it is to get 10 million dollars for a loyalty program.”

Be sure your marketing plan focuses on the factors that will have a real impact on your business growth.

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Sonia Simone January 12, 2010 at 7:23 pm

One of these days we’ll have to write the Lewis Carroll guide to big corporate marketing. It couldn’t be any more absurd than the real thing.
Sonia Simone´s last blog ..What Makes Marketing Hard? My ComLuv Profile

James January 13, 2010 at 6:18 am

@sonia I’ve seen some strange things. And it seems that higher education is inversely related to common sense.

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