ABSTRACT
A more systematic approach to marketing may reveal that marketing professionals' missing out on lucrative sales. For example, a computer software company had no system for annual marketing planning. The company learned that it had failed to measure the potential of many markets. It needed a more formal, systematized approach. It needed an approach that would allow it to maximize all of the potential marketing opportunities for its products. The marketing plan describes, in writing, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats marketing professionals' company will face, and the strategies they’ll use to achieve results through: product/service emphasis, target markets, pricing policies, distribution policies and promotion policies. Under other systems of planning, marketing plans are often simply suggestions to production/operations as to what should be produced.
