Executive summary
Briefly overview the marketing plan. The purpose of the executive summary is to outline the main features of the marketing plan that will help achieve the organisation’s objectives. The executive summary is often the only part of a report that decision makers read, so it needs to effectively communicate the key issues.
Introduction
Provide relevant background information on the organisation. This may include some details of the organisation’s history, size, locations, number of employees, revenue, profitability and so on.
Situation analysis
Political forces Examine the relevant political forces affecting or potentially affecting the organisation. Political factors requiring consideration include political stability, government policy, trade agreements, and taxation arrangements. The specific political forces most relevant to your organisation will vary and may be domestic or international in nature, or both.
Economic forces Describe the macro-environmental economic forces that influence the organisation and the market; for example, interest rates, economic growth, consumer confidence, income levels, savings levels, the availability of credit, unemployment levels and exchange rates.
Sociocultural forces Describe the sociocultural forces at work in the organisation’s market. Social and cultural forces that may influence the organisation include religion, subcultures, multiculturalism, beliefs, attitudes and population trends. Organisations operating internationally may face quite varied sociocultural forces in each of their country-specific markets.
Technological forces Consider how technology can be used to offer better value to customers. This should include an examination of how technology may support innovation across various aspects of the marketing mix. Technological change can offer significant opportunities and threats and should be examined based on available information.
Legal forces Legal and regulatory forces govern many aspects of an organisation’s operations. Legal forces include legislation in place locally such as the Trade Practices Act as well as international conventions and agreements.
Competitor analysis Examine the micro-environmental competition factors at play, including the type of competition (pure, monopolistic, oligopoly, monopoly, monopsony) and each level of competition (total budget, generic, product, brand). The competitor analysis should be broad so as to capture all relevant competition issues.
Customer/client analysis Describe the needs and wants of the organisation’s actual and potential customers/clients. This should include current needs and wants, customer preferences, possible changes to needs and wants and the extent to which the organisation can influence customer preferences.
SWOT analysis
Strengths The organisation’s favourable internal characteristics. Remember, strengths are factors that the organisation can directly influence.	Weaknesses The organisation’s unfavourable internal characteristics. Remember, weaknesses are factors that the organisation can directly influence.
Opportunities External factors that are potentially favourable to the organisation. Because opportunities are external to the organisation, they are not directly controllable.	Threats External factors that are potentially unfavourable to the organisation. Like opportunities, threats are not directly controllable by the organisation.
Objectives
List the organisation’s overall objectives or its mission statement. List the marketing objectives that are intended to help achieve the organisation’s overall objectives. Ensure the marketing objectives are:
Target market
Discuss the organisation’s target market segments, their characteristics and how the target market and market segments were selected. Be specific; for example, if the target market is urban 25–30 year old single males, then say so — do not say young single men.
Marketing mix strategy
Product Detail the product strategy and how it will offer value to the target market. Include a discussion of branding. While you might not include a total product concept analysis of the product in your marketing plan, it may be a useful exercise to inform the information that does end up in the plan.
Price Detail the pricing objectives (e.g. cash flow, positioning and market share) and the pricing method(s) used to determine prices. Competitors’ pricing should also be discussed.
Promotion Explain the promotion mix (advertising, public relations, sales promotions and personal selling). Consideration should also be given to additional marketing communication options such as guerrilla marketing, sponsorship and viral marketing if appropriate for the organisation.
Distribution (place) Detail the distribution strategy that will ensure the organisation’s products are available to customers where and when they want them. The discussion should address the use of marketing intermediaries if appropriate to the organisation’s distribution strategy.
People For services products, detail the people strategy and how it will address the specific services product characteristics of intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability. The people strategy should ensure staff are technically competent, able to deliver high standards of customer service and able to promote products through personal selling.
Process Describes the systems and procedures, particularly for services products, that will be used to create the organisation’s product offering.
Physical evidence The organisation should provide tangible cues as to the quality of service it offers. The organisation’s physical evidence strategy may address issues such as shop fittings, background music and staff uniforms.
Budget
Detail the budgetary requirements of the marketing plan and demonstrate how the plan can be implemented with the available resources.
Implementation
Explain how the marketing plan will be put into practice, including specific steps and milestones as well as control mechanisms to ensure the implementation is in accordance with the plan.
Evaluation
Detail the marketing metrics (e.g. return on investment, customer satisfaction) that will be used to evaluate the success of the marketing plan and inform further revision and refinement of the plan.
Conclusion/Future recommendations
Outline a brief summary/conclusion of the report and include recommendations for approval and/or action (for example, that the marketing plan be accepted by senior management for implementation, in order to exploit market opportunities for growth.