You can arrive at a workable marketing plan by luck, or by trial and error-or you can jump start the process with this time-tested self-study that will show you how to turn your ideas into strategies and your plan into a success story.

The focus here is on planning. As a marketing planner, what key factors should you consider? And what should you know about analyzing information once it’s collected? The course guides you through the process, starting with the crucial links between the marketing plan and the corporation’s overall business strategy. You will learn new methods for taking stock of key environmental factors-economic trends, technological changes, competitors’ moves-and for analyzing the market with an eye toward accurate sales forecasting. This course will also help you sharpen your product and pricing strategies. It gives you a new context in which to review your sales program and distribution systems. Once you've completed the course work and reviewed the case study, your marketing plans will almost write themselves.

You'll learn how to:

• Distinguish marketing plans from business plans
• Relate corporate strategy to marketing strategy
• Overcome poor data, lack of consensus, and other planning obstacles
• Implement a six-step marketing planning process
• Get a handle on trends that affect your market
• Measure your market potential
• Apply strategies such as market segmentation and positioning
• Launch new products more effectively
• Price your product or service correctly
• Manage the promotional mix
• Improve your sales and distribution channels
• Write your plan and put it into action

Course Objective:
Gain the information and skills needed to write a marketing plan by focusing on planning, analysis of environmental and market factors, and study of sales and distribution programs.

As one course among many offered in the American Management Association’s curriculum, How to Write a Marketing Plan has been designed specifically for the practicing manager and the future manager. It provides private, self-paced, individualized study; learning and self-evaluation through in-text exercises.

H. David Hennessey, the co-author of this course, received his B.A. and B.S. from Norwich University; his M.B.A. from Clark University; and his Ph.D. from New York University. He has taught at Fairleigh Dickinson and Norwich Universities. Prior to coming to Babson, Dr. Hennessey worked in industry as a director of marketing at Interpace Corporation in New Jersey and as a marketing analyst at American Can Company. He has done consulting work with numerous companies, including AT&T, Xerox, Becton Dickinson, BBC, and Jardine Pacific. Dr. Hennessy does executive education in the United States, Europe, and Asia for ICI, Thorn, Jardine Pacific, Bausch & Lomb, IBM, and others.

Robert J. Kopp, the co-author of this course, received his M.B.A. from Columbia University (1970) and his doctorate in Business Administration from Harvard Business School (1984). He spent eight years working in various marketing management positions at Hertz Corporation, Richardson- Vicks, and Royal Business Machines. Dr. Kopp’s research interests are in the areas of advertising, sales promotion, and new product development. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Consumer Marketing, Journal of Advertising Research, and Journal of Retailing. He is a co-author of Total Quality Management (Wiley, 1996), and he has authored another AMA extension course, How to Design Successful Sales Promotions.

The publisher wishes to thank the following people for their review of the manuscript of this course: Douglas J. Dalrymple, Professor of Marketing, Indiana University School of Business, Bloomington, Indiana, and Philip M. Lowe, Professor of Marketing, Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts.