The Importance of Marketing Plan in Telecommunications Industry
Telecommunications industry is one of the major industries, whose competition is so intensive due to the dynamic changes in the technology. New technologies are introduced day-to-day so as to win the competitive advantage.
Local and long distance telephone services, fibre optics, satellite, Internet and wireless communications are few of many technology related business sectors which are continuing to advance rapidly; result to quickly customer preferences. In case of Pivotech Company LTD, the technology applied is GSM and CDMA operations applied on mobile phones.They save clients such as tiGO to provide service on a particular powering the BSS and BTS Stations by using generators and servicing them too. In order for the company to be a successful competitor in the market, as service provider should focus on creating innovative new value-added services to fulfill customer’s want or need, and promoting them using marketing techniques. These techniques cannot be applied without marketing plan. Marketing techniques are the tools used to identify the most appropriate ways to employ in order to make profits.
These techniques can be public relations, trade and consumer promotions, point-of-sale materials, editorial, publicity and sales depending on the nature of services that organization provides. Marketing as defined by the American Marketing Association in Kotler (2009) is a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers, clients, partners and society at large. Marketing also is aiming at managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its shareholders.The whole idea is played by one party who thinks to achieve the responses desired by the other party. As for managerial definition, Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas ,goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives.
A marketing plan is a written document that summarizes the market place. It indicates how the firm plans to reach its marketing objectives and helps direct and coordinate the marketing effort (Kotler, 2009).The purpose of the Marketing Plan is to translate the Positioning Statement into recognized and preferred brands. To do so, It is recommended that the Marketing Plan must consist of areas of marketing which can be grouped depending on the company, as following. The Product or Service Plan, that sets up the objectives of the various marketing components through the use of a “what if” revenue model.
It also addresses pricing strategy, depth of line (number of sizes, shapes, models, policies, etc. ), packaging and marketing budget.The Marketing Communications Plan, which includes advertising, sales promotion, direct mail, merchandising and public relations. The Sales Plan, which covers the sales team, whether they are the company’s employees, distributors, commission representatives or manufacturers’ agents. It includes sales goals, sales training and sales literature.
The Customer Service Plan, which includes the activities of all employees who interact with the customer, directly or indirectly, and who are not covered in the Sales Plan.Examples are technical support, NOC operators, nurses, drivers, waiters and airline stewardesses. When people in some companies talk about their marketing plans, they are referring to just their Marketing Communications Plan. In these cases, the sales personnel do not Converse with marketing communications people and visa versa; marketing managers usually just concentrate on technical issues; research people are tied up analyzing surveys; and customer service personnel are not even considering marketing people.This situation doesn’t make much sense, considering that all groups have a common denominator and that is to translate the Positioning Statement consistently and effectively in order to sell more of something.
A company will never excel in marketing until it gets all five groups—and now the Internet makes six– talking together, working together, and promoting the brand together. Every developed plan should contain objectives, strategies and tactics; an objective as the what, the strategy the how, and the tactic the execution. Objectives state what the goals to accomplish are.They should be measurable so as to know whether or not they were achieved by the end of the plan year. Therefore, each objective should have a goal, a control, and a completion date. A strategy states how the objectives are going to be achieved.
For example, it could relate to an objective pertaining to exhibiting at a particular trade show, developing a dynamic personality for the business or introducing a new service. A tactic is the execution of the strategy. If a strategy calls for exhibiting at a trade show, the tactic provides the details, such as who will book the space and who will build the exhibit.The first and most overreaching of your plans is the Strategic Plan and there appears to be a lot of confusion about its purpose. It is deciding “what are the right things to do.
” By that it is meant by selecting the right markets to be, basing on the profit potential of a market and whether the business has, or can acquire, the business strengths needed to be competitive. Many companies skip this step and start immediately to plan on what to do with what they have. The problem with this is, what they have may not be right.In the strategic planning, to envies the parameters of markets and field of operations three to ten years into the future, should base on the analysis of the data in Fact Book. Based on this foresight, Strategic Plan can be developed, stating what should start and where should be the ending in the future. It includes subjects such as which markets can be pushed and which can be phased out.
For instance what if any, new technology is needed; how many employees will be needed; and what type of new brands can be developed. This should also address the status on the Internet.If it is Web site, is it working? If not, what should be done? The Strategic Plan is long term, involves all parts of the business, and is the only plan in which “what are the right things to do” can be decided. All other plans, such as the Business Plan, are concerned with “doing things right. ” That is, given the direction of the Strategic Plan, what should be done in rightful ways, in short term to get there. Market is a collection of telecommunication industry as sellers and customers as buyers, doing the transaction of the product.
Market implementation is the process that turns marketing plans into actions and executes the stated objectives (Kotler, 2000) In order for the marketing plan to operate, there are some stages through which marketing practice might pass following the P&G Model: Entrepreneurial marketing as a way of gaining the attention from every customers by visualizing the opportunity individually. This needs a lot of innovation, thinking and observing what exactly are necessary demand of the customers and put it into a real value that can be acceptable at large.Actually it needs a lot of research and development to understand customer’s interests. Formulated marketing: Through achieving success, it is quite inevitable to move forward in more formulated market. For instance the telecommunication company started with the use of landline mobiles, then wireless mobiles, Free 100 SMS charging with low cost from one SMS cost, applications of wireless network like accessing internet, all that are formulated when one of the previous became more successfully than expected.Moreover it is encouraging to forecast more when one is actively implemented and supported by the customers.
Interpreneurial marketing: This happened when there is a failure on marketing formulation. This is caused by lacking of the creativities and passion. The marketing managers would need to visualize new ways to add value to their customer. Apart from that, marketing mix, marketing segment, marketing concept and so forth are the important things to note when implementing the marketing plan. This study helps to understand all aspects that Pivotech considered before the implementation took place.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Kotler, Philip; Kevin Lane Keller (2009). “1”. A Framework for Marketing Management (4th ed. ). Pearson Prentice Hall.
ISBN 0136026605. 2. Etzel, Michael J. (2004). Marketing, 13th Edition.
Published by McGraw-Hill/Irwin.. 3. http://www. morningstarmultimedia. com/importance-of-marketing-plan/(accessed: 10 November, 2011) 4.
http://ivythesis. typepad. com/term_paper_topics/2009/12/a-marketing-plan-for-bahrain-telecommunications-company. html#ixzz1eFnBc2Vr (accessed on 02 November, 2011)
