What is a Strategic Marketing Plan?

When we talk about "strategic planning", there are actually many different types of plans that fall under this rubric. Typically we are speaking of an organizational plan, a "strategic business plan" that is an over-arching plan that supercedes all others. In reality, there may be many strategic plans within an organization and all of them must align with one another. An Information Technology strategic plan, for example, exists to provide detail and departmental responsibility to execution of initiatives that may or may not be listed in the organization's strategic plan.

Depending on the organization, marketing related issues may comprise 78-80% of the master strategic plan. So, why have a specific strategic marketing plan when most of it is covered under the strategic business plan already?

The first reason is that many organizations do not have a strategic business plan and that a strategic marketing plan is all they can muster to complete. Certainly this is better than nothing, but it may leave out critical elements of the organization's operations that are needed to support marketing in some way or another be it manufacturing, quality management, human resources, or information technology.

A second reason for a dedicated strategic marketing plan is that there is a need for greater detail than is appropriate in a strategic business plan. A business plan does not need, for example, to have a detailed media advertising plan as a part of its contents. Rather than high-level objectives, there is a need for specific product research, competitive analysis, research and development, etc. The strategic marketing plan can focus holistically on the Five P's of Marketing: Product, Placement, Price, Promotion and People.

All Strategic Plans have some things in common. All strategic plans need some kind of Mission/Vision/Values statements to define what the purpose of the effort is, what values guide it and what it wants to achieve. Your plan may not call it "mission, vision and values", but it should have these things documented. Often these fundamental elements are assumed, to the detriment of the organization.

Objectives and Strategies: After your MVV, you need to determine your prioritized objectives (what you want to accomplish) and strategies (how you are going to accomplish them.) But before you come up with your objectives and strategies, you need to do some homework. This homework is one of the major differences between a strategic marketing plan and a strategic business plan.