Chibuye/my sandbox/Developing a marketing plan

Situational analysis
In this section we will look at Conducting a situational analyses.

When developing a marketing plan, there a lot of factors that one need to take in consideration.

First, they must understand their mission

Student should understand what marketing is basically

Mission
A mission is the main purpose the organisation exists. You can only be able to develop a marketing plan if you understand the organisation's purpose.

The next thing one needs to do is to identify the goals

Goals
Goals build on the mission and are targets that the organisation needs to achieve over a specified period e.g in five years.

If one knows the goals they aim to attain, only then can they develop a good marketing plan. Sometimes these goals are called marker meaning they can help to closely monitor the organisational objectives if they are being followed.

After identifying the goals, it is important to carry out a combined analysis of internal and external factors that may have an impact on the organisation's performance. This analysis is called a SWOT analysis which stands for:
 * strength,
 * weaknesses,
 * opportunities, and


 * threats.

Strengths

Strengths are factors that an organisation is good at or has in its possession that they can use to achieve their goals eg technology, infrastructure e.t.c

weaknesses

These are the issues that the organisation may not be good at and need to work on if they are to meet their objectives

Opportunities

These are anyfactor in the environment that the organisation can take advantage of in order to achieve their objectives.

Threats Threats are factors in the external environment that may impact badly on the organisational goals.

After carrying out a good situational analysis, the organisation can then move to the next level in their development of the marketing plan.

also see objective setting