The Barriers to Effective Marketing Planning

Building a marketing plan is not an easy task. In addition to the com- plexity of

various marketing issues, marketers need to deal with potential barriers to effective

marketing planning. There are a number of barri- ers3 to marketing planning,

including cognitive, procedural, resource, organizational, cultural, and data

availability difficulties. The fol- lowing is a summary of 10 of the main

impediments to successful planning:4

1. Confusion between tactics and strategy. Managers might focus more on short-

term tactics that help sell a product than on a strategy that aims at long-term

sustainable competitive advantage. Managers often make the mistake that

marketing planning is not required with short-term tactics. On the contrary, an

organization with a strategic focus needs the assistance of the holistic approach of

mar- keting planning to materialize the strategy.

2. Isolating the marketing function from operations. In order to overcome this

barrier, marketers need to work with staff from other depart- ments such as

research and development and engineering to develop new products, accounting

and finance to set appropriate budgets, production to deal with logistics and

channel management issues, and sales departments to overcome barriers to

effective selling and gathering relevant market intelligence. Top management plays

an important role to ensure that marketers receive all necessary support and

resources so they can perform marketing planning properly.

3. Confusion between the marketing function and the marketing concept.

Some top management confuse piecemeal marketing functions with the holistic

marketing concept. The former is concerned with separate marketing functions,

such as advertising, customer service, sales, and product management, whereas the

latter holds an inclu- sive view of marketing and integrates all marketing activities

in a marketing plan that can satisfy the needs of selected customer seg- ments in

order to achieve the objectives.

4. Organizational barriers. Depending on the organization structure, an

organization may be divided into various departments or units. Marketers face

potential barriers when departments or units other than marketing or marketing-

related areas are not interested in mar- keting planning. Other departments or units

may have their own agendas to run their sections.

5. Lack of in-depth analysis. Organizations don’t face the issue of too little

information but rather a lack of information management. The major challenge is

the capacity to provide in-depth analysis of the information available. Without in-

depth analysis, marketers won’t know where their organizations stand in the

market, and the conse- quence is a failure to provide a strategic direction.

6. Confusion between process and output. Some organizations tend to make their

marketing plans, the output, too bulky to be of any par- ticular use. This is the

outcome of focusing on the plan rather than the process. Some marketers

mistakenly believe that a bigger output reflects a better process.

7. Lack of knowledge and skills. Some marketers rarely apply market- ing

concepts and techniques in their marketing planning. Some are unable to

differentiate between corporate objectives, marketing objectives, and advertising

objectives. Adding to this confusion, communication and interpersonal skills often

need to be strength- ened or marketing plans will be ineffectively implemented.

8. Lack of a systematic approach to marketing planning. Within an

organization, there may be different strategic business units conducting marketing

planning. Consequently, each unit develops its own marketing plan. The variations

of these plans might be caused by different levels of data analysis, different

opinions on how to achieve corporate objectives, or perhaps different motivations

of participating managers. The large discrepancy in marketing plans from different

units makes corporate headquarters’ coordination work very difficult, if not

impossible.

It is essential to have a set of written procedure and a well-argued common format

for marketing planning. The purpose of such a system are:

To ensure all key issues are systematically considered.

To full together the essential elements of the strategic planning of each SBU

in consistent manner.

To help corporate management to compare diverse businesses and to

understand the overall condition of and prospects for the organization.

9. Failure to prioritize objectives. Some organizations set too many objectives.

There are too many sub objectives of sub objectives. One of the major

contributions of marketing planning is to provide a strategic focus. Marketing

planning should assist marketers to focus more on the important objectives and

take out the trivial ones.

10. Hostile corporate cultures. Since corporate cultures are difficult to change

and tend to maintain the existing power structure and the status quo, the

introduction of marketing planning might create tensions that lead to changes in

organizations. Resistance to change and office politics are often barriers to

building an effective marketing plan.

Marketing planning will not be effective without the active support and

participation of the culture leaders. But without their support, the type of marketing

planning has to be appropriate for the phase of organizational life line. This phase

should be measured before attempting to introduce marketing planning.

Marketing planning is not a straightforward task, nor can it be completed in a

linear, one-off manner. Marketers are likely to encounter various organizational,

attitudinal, process, and cognitive barriers that hinder effective planning.

Successful planning takes patience, knowledge, persuasion, and negotiation skills.

Understanding the potential barriers to marketing planning helps marketers to be

better prepared for the challenges ahead.

How to Overcome Barriers

Non-profit organizations function for the betterment of society, mostly driven by a

passion of a person or a group of people. The formation of the organization will be

based on their Mission Statement. It is important from the onset to recognize the

possible barriers and what counter active measures one should take to ensure the

smooth functioning of the organization.

The core problem for non-profit organizations is funding. They have to find people

or organizations which are willing to share the same dream. It is like selling a

product, and to do so they need to market the organization effectively. It is

therefore imperative when forming an organization to pick a directorate of upright,

honorable people. Even better if at least some of them are well known personalities

known for their honesty and integrity, because then it is much easier to establish

credibility. Any organization that wishes to fund a non-profit organization will

look for good financial management, therefore it is equally important to have a

competent financial person who is able to manage the books well.

When listing the objectives, once again be aware of the challenges that may be

faced in accomplishing the objectives. It is prudent to start in a small scale and

then expand as you go on, rather than start big and discover it is not possible to

achieve them. Break up the objectives into small components and identify the tools

required to meet the objectives. Identify risk areas which are possible for

exclusion. For example, if your mandate is to work with youth who are into drugs,

prostitution and crime and if you are aware of a particular area which is not very

conducive to your work, it is best to avoid it, rather than take unnecessary risks,

because your work can be more important to an area where they are more

receptive. To be able to have access to such knowledge, it is also better to build

relationships with organizations that are working on similar efforts and are willing

to share their experiences and knowledge, so that you would be able to learn from

their mistakes, rather than wait to make your own mistakes and learn from them.

Another great problem faced by Non Profit Organizations is, even though they may

be able to find donors to fund a project, it is not always easy to stick to the planned

budget and it would then be left to the organization to find donors who are willing

to bridge the deficit created. Therefore when presenting your planned budget to

donors either make provision for unforeseen circumstances or have an agreement

with the donors of their willingness to provide for deficits, if need be. Most

funders are unwilling to support administrative costs of the organization. For this

reason you have to find separate donors who are willing to support the

administrative costs, without which the projects cannot be implemented.

Every barrier can be overcome and if correctly planned, there will actually be no

barriers!