Making Your Marketing Plan Effective- by Implementation or Strategy?

Should we prioritize cost or quality? Do we want to stick with smaller, more upmarket merchants or expand our market with giant discount chains? Will our suggested new product detract from sales of our current line? Marketers stress questions like these, which are strategy-related.

But what happens when we have decided upon a strategy? Will marketers be able to translate their concept into commercial reality successfully? Too often, when a seemingly effective plan fails to deliver on its promises, marketing professionals instantly blame the strategy. I believe that implementation is the most common cause of failure. Organizational and structural issues and a lack of personal abilities can contribute to implementation issues.

There is plenty of research and analysis in the marketing literature to assist managers in developing market-specific marketing strategies. However, when putting those principles into practice, the literature is mute, and self-help books are empty. We do not need new answers to strategic questions. We need more attention to marketing practice, to the signposts of excellent marketing management that guide creative strategies toward great marketplace results.

It's always easier to develop brilliant marketing tactics than it is to make them work under the constraints of the firm, rival, and customer.

Consider a pipe company that created a new type of triangle pipe that was 180 percent more efficient than the previous pipe and required just two-thirds of the material. The new marketing vice president intended to price the new pipe high based on user value. However, he was concerned that he would hamper his strategy by the absence of support from other top executives, the company's marketing infrastructure, and the sales force.

This vice president understands the marketing strategy: price according to value, stimulate cannibalization of existing pipes, and profit. The difficulty is figuring out how to carry out the strategy—marketing implementation.

This family-owned business used to build pipe in enormous volumes and sell it at poor margins in a non-growing market. Every year, the company starts with good margins. Still, competitive pressure and the necessity to keep its operations running at total capacity slashed costs throughout the selling season. The sales team considered lowering list pricing to boost orders and assure commissions.

As this example illustrates, we can divide marketing difficulties into structural and human. The structural one contains the firm's marketing functions, such as pricing and selling, and any programs based on these activities, control systems, and policy directives. The second element is the people themselves, specifically the managers in charge of marketing.

Marketing strategy and execution are intertwined. While strategy influences actions, performance also affects marketing strategy, especially over time. Despite the blurry line between strategy and execution, diagnosing marketing implementation issues and distinguishing them from strategy flaws is not tricky. Is the problem with sales force management or the system shift? We can answer the question.

When a plan is sound, but the execution is lacking, or vice versa, diagnosis becomes difficult. Because implementation flaws obscure even solid strategies, poor marketing execution may persuade management to mistrust those strategies. Bad performance impedes validation of the strategy's correctness and can induce unnecessary change.

When the strategy is terrible, but the execution is excellent, management usually has time to detect and correct its strategic errors. For example, good branch office managers have been known to change potentially disastrous headquarters directions.

The insight that emerges from this is that managers should look to marketing practices (lousy execution or inadequate approach) before making strategy improvements when unsure about the causes of poor marketing performance.