Week 3 Project

Budgeting, Scheduling, Team Building, and Evaluation

© 2016 South University

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Marketing Management

©2016 South University

2 Budgeting, Scheduling, Team Building, and Evaluation

Week 5 Lecture 3

Budgeting, Scheduling, and Team Building

Budgeting

The next aspect of successful planning is to develop a budget for the implementation of the plan. Without an adequate budget, especially for advertising, the plan will be unlikely to succeed. Again, this is where it is important to involve in the planning process those individuals who will implement the plan. This is because they are the ones most likely to have an accurate idea of the resources, especially the financial resources, which will be needed to implement the plan. They will also be the best qualified to determine what is possible within a limited budget.

Scheduling

Together with the budget, an implementation schedule needs to be developed. An implementation schedule should detail when the various stages of the plan will be implemented. It should list the time frames for the different media campaigns and specify by when different milestones toward the organization’s goal are to be accomplished. Finally, it should also list who will be responsible for which of the events and when progress reports are due for the marketing plan.

Team Building

Finally, it’s very important for the marketing manager to make sure the individuals implementing the plan see themselves as a team. A team works together on a common goal. Because all of the members of the team understand their individual roles and the roles of the other team members, they are able to coordinate effectively with each other. This is why many organizations start

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Marketing Management

©2016 South University

3 Budgeting, Scheduling, Team Building, and Evaluation

Week 5 Lecture 3

the marketing planning process by engaging in team-building exercises to facilitate team members being able to work together to successfully implement the plan.

Once the implementation of the marketing plan begins, it is important to monitor its progress to make certain the execution of the plan is going well and the plan is achieving its milestones. Like the implementation strategy, the strategy to monitor the execution of a plan also needs to be built in at the planning stage itself by creating measurable progress indicators.

Goals

The goals for the plan should be specific—a stated percent increase in sales or revenues or a specific increase in the number of units sold. Often, an increase in market share is also used as a performance goal.

Milestones

Once the goals are selected, a timetable needs to be developed specifying the progress toward those goals. Often, this includes a monthly schedule of events associated with the plan. Each of these time periods should have specific milestones associated with them. These milestones should be clearly stated so it is easy to measure the progress in the implementation of the plan

A marketing dashboard is a new technique marketing managers can use to measure the progress of a marketing plan quickly and easily.

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Marketing Management

©2016 South University

4 Budgeting, Scheduling, Team Building, and Evaluation

Week 5 Lecture 3

Marketing Dashboard

A marketing dashboard works much like the dashboard on your car.

A marketing dashboard is a new technique marketing managers can use to measure the progress of a marketing plan quickly and easily.

A marketing dashboard is always created by the organization for its unique needs, and its purpose is to reflect a specific marketing plan. As with the marketing plan, the individuals who will be using the marketing dashboard should be involved in its design. This will ensure the dashboard provides the information they need to make decisions on the implementation of the marketing plan. It will also make sure they understand how the readings on the marketing dashboard are generated; thus, they will trust them for their decision making.

A marketing dashboard displays the variables selected to measure the progress of the plan in the form of gauges and graphs. For example, a gauge may show the average sales per week or the current market share.

Or, a graph may show actual monthly sales along with the goals for those months. The actual variables selected will be linked directly to the plan and to the organization’s performance goals, such as the organization’s return on investment for that brand.

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Marketing Management

©2016 South University

5 Budgeting, Scheduling, Team Building, and Evaluation

Week 5 Lecture 3

If a plan goes wrong, it is the people who developed it who will be able to bring it back on course, since they are the ones who best understand its underlying assumptions and decisions. This is yet another reason to include in the development of the plan those individuals who will implement it.