Strategic Marketing: Planning and Control, Third Edition

1 Annual planning: This has the purpose of evaluating the extent to which

marketing efforts, over the year, have been successful. Evaluation will

focus on analysing: sales, market share, expenses and customer per-

ception. Commonly, sales performance is a major element of this

analysis. All other factors provide explanation of any variance in sales

performance.

2 Profitability: All marketing managers are concerned with controlling

their profit levels. Examining the profitability of products, or activities,

it is possible to make decisions relating to the expansion, reduction or

elimination of product offerings. Additionally, it is common to break

distribution channels and segments down in terms of profitability.

Remember, it is important to have a systematic basis for allocating cost

and defining profit.

3 Efficiency control: Efficiency is concerned with gaining optimum value

from the marketing assets. Managers are looking to obtain value for

money in relation to marketing activity. The promotional aspects of

marketing (sales, advertising, direct marketing, etc.) are commonly

subject to such controls. Figure 14.9 displays examples.

4 Strategic control: There is a need to ensure that marketing activities are

being directed towards strategic goals and that marketing is an integral

part of the overall process of delivering value. A strategic review will

aim to assess that marketing strategy, and subsequent implementation,

is appropriate to the marketplace. A review of this nature will take the

form of a marketing audit – a comprehensive examination of all market-

ing activity to assess effectiveness and improve marketing performance.

288 Strategic Marketing: Planning and Control

Illustrative Example 14.1

British Airways – measuring marketing success

Organisations spend a great deal of time and money marketing their products, therefore they

require objective measures relating to the effectiveness of such expenditure. British Airways is

reported to evaluate marketing success through measurement of awareness, feedback on cus-

tomer satisfaction and market share data. Additionally, a more focused approach is applied to

specific promotions. These measure factors such as repeat business and level of sales.

Control
●Annual Plan ●Profitability
●Efficiency ●Strategy
Figure 14.8
Control of
marketing activities