Strategic Marketing - Wilkinson's Case

A C1.1

"Strategic marketing planning is simply a logical sequence and series of activities leading to the setting of Marketing Objectives and the formulation of plans for achieving them" Malcolm McDonald

In other words, strategic marketing plan is the way, roadmap ,plan you put to achieve your pre-set , measurable, Corporate goals and objectives; it is a long term plan from three to five years.

The strategic plan should tell you where your organization is (ranking in the market ) , where it should be & a superficial way on how to reach it; while a tactical plan gives you further details, schedules & costs on how to implement the first year of the strategic plan in order to reach those corporate objectives . the 4 P's of Marketing Mix (Price, Place, Promotion, Product) are one of the most common ways used to achieve the goals.

A marketing strategy could be for example one of the following:

1. Increasing the Company's revenue.

2. Inducing new services/products

3. Targeting New market

As for Wilkinson they had conducted a huge market research for 2 years in order to create their new marketing strategy which is Market Development; targeting a new market segment: the college students that links to the companies ' target of growth. To develop this marketing Strategy Wilkinson used Ansoff 's matrix by evaluating their options and choosing based on the risk level they could afford (Medium )and relying on their products instead of taking higher risk of new products while investing in an advertising and promotional campaign to increase the students' awareness of the Wilkinson brand.

AC1.2

To Explain the processes involved in strategic marketing we need to go through the following 10 strategic marketing planning steps in figure 1.1 to get the output "The Strategic Plan" Figure 1.3.

Figure1.2 "Malcolm MacDonald"

1. The mission statement should be clear enough for the employees to understand the objectives of the organization and benefits of new plans / changes if any; stressing on the benefits of this new change in order to get more employees enthusiastic to this new way.

2. The business main target or "where it wants to be" is a corporate objective relatively defined as PROFIT as it signifies the success of an organization , how good its resources are allocated and its location in the market.

3. A strategic marketing planning is as good as the info provided to it, Marketing audit is the way the data is gathered through all the company; it is a fair review of