--- title: "A Brief Discussion on Annual Marketing Planning for Small and Medium Enterprises" description: "This article discusses the importance of annual marketing planning for SMEs, outlining key components such as target setting, organizational structure, resource allocation, strategies, and incentive mechanisms. It emphasizes the need for systematic planning over opportunistic actions to achieve sustainable growth." author: "高杰" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2017-09-21" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/a-brief-discussion-on-annual-marketing-planning-for-small-and-medium-ent-12faf54a/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/a-brief-discussion-on-annual-marketing-planning-for-small-and-medium-ent-12faf54a.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/u46YWEIvuOO3LHcEKygmqw" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E6%B5%85%E8%B0%88%E4%B8%AD%E5%B0%8F%E4%BC%81%E4%B8%9A%E7%9A%84%E5%B9%B4%E5%BA%A6%E8%90%A5%E9%94%80%E8%A7%84%E5%88%92-12faf54a.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/a-brief-discussion-on-annual-marketing-planning-for-small-and-medium-ent-12faf54a/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # A Brief Discussion on Annual Marketing Planning for Small and Medium Enterprises > This article discusses the importance of annual marketing planning for SMEs, outlining key components such as target setting, organizational structure, resource allocation, strategies, and incentive mechanisms. It emphasizes the need for systematic planning over opportunistic actions to achieve sustainable growth. Over the past year, I have interacted with various enterprises and discussed business operations with bosses from different industries. I have heard stories, but I have not seen legends. Why? Because we "win" through luck and speculation rather than through sound business management. What exactly is business management? It is "the process of focusing on one goal, developing two types of customers, planning two paths, establishing two systems, and continuously improving and motivating customers to achieve or exceed goals." - Gao Jie Under conditions of surplus economy, marketing, as a key link in business operations, has always been the focus of entrepreneurs at the end of the year. Setting goals, discussing plans, and formulating policies... everyone is busy, but few truly understand and clarify this work. A complete marketing plan that can guide a company's operations must have clear strategy, clear positioning, clear goals, matched resources, focused capabilities, and appropriate tactics. Only then can we ensure the economic efficiency of operations. However, not many enterprises can achieve this at present. Due to these factors, many enterprises place their hopes for development and growth on capable individuals or market manipulators. **Today, I will briefly discuss how to formulate an annual marketing plan based on the current operational realities of enterprises, hoping it will be helpful to everyone.** **Overview: What does an annual marketing plan include?** I believe it includes the following aspects: **Annual Marketing Plan Part 1: Target System** How to set targets? First, we need to identify the factors affecting target setting: internal and external factors. **External factors: regulatory environment, market capacity, competitive landscape, etc.** **Internal factors: people, products, prices, promotions, services, and other responses** Understanding external factors to identify positioning and opportunities, and matching resources and capabilities based on internal factors, is an important step in marketing target planning. However, in many conventional enterprises, when setting targets, they either overemphasize external factors and set overly conservative targets, or ignore external factors and set inflated targets out of blind confidence. Some even take risks by violating regulations and falsifying data to achieve extraordinary growth. All three tendencies in target setting are undesirable. **Conventional methods for setting marketing targets:** **Benchmarking method:** Use enterprises in the same industry, same region, similar size, similar products, similar capabilities, and exemplary development as benchmarks to set your own annual sales targets. **Growth rate weighting method:** Industry growth rate weighting, enterprise growth rate weighting, and industry-enterprise weighted average method. **Market capacity share:** Overall share of the target market... **Target customer contribution rate:** Contribution rate of target customers (including potential customers) in the target market. **Product contribution rate:** Contribution rate and proportion of different products to the overall sales target, or the proportion of different products in different regions and target customers. **The target system includes not only the main target:** performance target, but also sub-targets that support the achievement of the performance target, typically including staffing targets, expense budget targets, promotion targets, production supply targets, after-sales service targets, product development targets, etc. In summary, targets should be scientific, sub-targets serve the main target, and the main target is achieved through the promotion of sub-targets. Therefore, marketing targets are not a single performance indicator but a sub-target system based on performance-oriented goals. **Annual Marketing Plan Part 2: Organizational System** Once marketing targets are set, how to organize and implement them becomes crucial. Generally, for small and medium enterprises, centralization is suitable, with top management holding decision-making authority. This is determined by the characteristics of SMEs. First, the professional quality of marketing personnel in SMEs is insufficient, and their level of professionalism is not high, making it difficult for them to bear the responsibility of market decisions. Second, in terms of market coverage, most SMEs operate in regional markets with relatively simple market structures. To quickly adapt to market competition, rapid decision-making also prompts enterprises to choose centralized high-level decision-making. Finally, the relatively simple product structure and single form of market promotion in SMEs determine that high-level decision-making and centralization are suitable. **Successful marketing organizational system design should consider the following factors:** 1. Ensure smooth information flow Compared with large enterprises, the biggest advantage of SMEs is flexible and accurate strategies, so when designing marketing organizational systems, SMEs should first ensure smooth information flow. 2. Simple coordination and flexible operation Facing a changing environment, the marketing department, as the bridgehead, must operate flexibly. Rigid organizational structures lead to bureaucracy, endless discussions, inter-departmental buck-passing, and coordination difficulties, wasting opportunities. Short, small, lean, and capable is the most effective standard for SME organizational structure design. 3. Effectively meet customer needs With oversupply and a buyer's market, enterprises must focus all management activities on how to quickly meet customer needs in the most economical way. To meet customer needs, in addition to designing products that meet customer needs, establishing a sound sales channel, and designing appropriate promotion strategies to guide customer consumption, it is also necessary to strengthen customer loyalty to the enterprise and products through a comprehensive after-sales service system. From the above links, we can see that meeting customer needs requires not only the internal coordination of the marketing organizational system (marketing department, sales department) but also good coordination with other departments of the enterprise, so as to achieve consistent pace and synchronized action. 4. Meet the strategic needs of different development stages Regardless of the organizational system, it must serve the corporate strategy. From this perspective, the marketing organizational system is an interpretation of the marketing strategy. The market is changing, strategies are adjusting, customer needs are upgrading, and "change" in customer needs is the eternal driving force for organizational change. Currently, the most typical marketing organizational system consists of a marketing department and a sales department. The marketing department addresses whether customers are willing to "buy," while the sales department, facing distributors and channels, addresses whether they are willing to "sell." Solving only "buy" and "sell" does not make a winner. The real winner is how to provide customers with the ability to continue consuming and choosing beyond "buy" and "sell" through organizational change. Therefore, organizational change should always be on the way in achieving organizational strategy, and its importance is self-evident. **Annual Marketing Plan Part 3: Resource Matching** Through the construction of the organizational system, a order and possibility for meeting and realizing customer needs is established. To turn this possibility into reality, resources must be matched to realize and meet customer needs. These resources include the following aspects: **Human resource matching: people in the right positions, capabilities in the right places.** What kind of people to select, what qualities they should have, what abilities they need, do they identify with the culture? Can they serve the enterprise continuously? If these conditions are met, how much salary to pay, how to evaluate their performance, where is their development direction? Which region are they specifically responsible for? **Equal rights and responsibilities.** What responsibilities they bear, what resources and authority they can mobilize, and how to evaluate and reward achievement or non-achievement, generally including: financial budget, personnel decisions, performance evaluation, etc. **Time and space resource matching.** When, in which region, market capacity, what is the target? Target market, target customers, potential customers, who is responsible, etc. **Annual Marketing Plan Part 4: Strategies and Paths** **1. Market positioning strategy** Effective market segmentation is the basis of market positioning strategy. Select the enterprise's target market from the segmented markets. The key here is to have a clear understanding of the enterprise's resource status, and more importantly, to suppress the impulse of product extension in market penetration and expansion strategies. When formulating marketing plans, market professionals should provide decision-makers with convincing data support. **2. Product strategy** To achieve the match between products and target markets, determine corresponding product types to meet the different needs of target consumers. This can be distinguished by packaging, specifications, brands, etc. The key is to determine the length and width of the product line based on market positioning, establish leading products, form series product features, and reasonably control the number of product types and specifications. The most common is to distinguish by high, medium, and low grades. **3. Price strategy** Price positioning is attached to market positioning and product positioning, and is the core idea of the entire price strategy and the guiding principle for formulating price policies. The most critical factor here is to consider the price positioning of competitive brands as an important adjustment standard. Common pricing strategies include: competitive pricing, cost-plus pricing, skimming pricing, restrictive pricing, loss leader pricing, market-oriented pricing, penetration pricing, price discrimination pricing, etc. To meet the needs of customers in different regional markets and respond to different competitive situations, we can distinguish by product type, specification, packaging, brand, etc., to meet different customer needs while also facilitating regional price control. **4. Channel strategy** Analyze the enterprise's channel construction focus from the combination, hierarchy, and coverage of the distribution network system, and consider the cost and efficiency of distribution network construction. The length of the channel, whether it is one-level distribution or three-level distribution; whether the dealer's business model and capabilities can support and serve our target customers; how to manage and motivate channel dealers; and the development and maintenance of channel dealers are the focus of channel construction. **5. Promotion strategy** The most critical is to determine the market expansion stage and specific goals, then determine the promotion focus of each stage, then determine the promotion theme of each stage, then select the main promotion methods under the theme, and integrate other promotion forms around it, thus forming a complete promotion plan. **Annual Marketing Plan - Incentive Mechanism** _Drucker said: Differentiation is the only standard for building a great organization. How to differentiate? This depends on the enterprise's incentive mechanism._ Sales personnel have low entry barriers, fierce competition, and high mobility; flexible working hours easily lead to laziness; work performance can be specifically reflected, but volatility is strong; coupled with our short-sighted incentive measures that focus on performance and economic incentives, ignoring employee growth needs, employees lack a sense of belonging, high turnover, and high moral hazard. **Therefore, the incentive for sales employees cannot simply be a sales commission system that only focuses on performance.** In fact, the sales commission system only adds the collection rate indicator. The advantage of this method is obvious incentives - salespeople can see at a glance how much they should be paid. **But the biggest drawback of this mechanism is that it prompts salespeople to focus on short-term interests, and the company will lose long-term competitiveness.** **Because under the pull of interests, salespeople's behavior will evolve into:** only willing to sell products with high commission rates, ignoring products with low commission rates; only willing to sell old products that have been recognized by customers in easy-to-sell markets, ignoring new products; only willing to do things related to current sales growth, insufficient investment in things related to the company's long-term competitive advantage such as customer resources and after-sales relationship maintenance; unwilling to accept the management of the sales department... Enterprises hope to open up broader markets, but building a sales management talent pipeline is also impossible; customer resources are not concentrated in the company but in individuals. Once competitors poach, the consequences are unimaginable. Generally, the effectiveness factors of sales models include **channels, personnel, and mechanisms**. Among them, channels are explicit, personnel are neutral because their behavior is changeable, and mechanisms are internal. For enterprises in a given industry, channels are mostly determined by customer purchasing characteristics, and enterprises may need to adapt more, so sales models often appear similar from the outside. **But this is not the case; each enterprise's sales incentive mechanism is different.** Since the sales incentive mechanism has a great relationship with personnel enthusiasm, the effectiveness of the sales incentive mechanism largely determines the efficiency of a company's sales model and the company's sales performance. Therefore, when establishing a company's sales incentive mechanism, we must fully consider its effectiveness, not just simple stimulation of sales growth. To measure the effectiveness of the sales incentive mechanism, at least the following factors should be considered: **First, it should reflect the traction of the company's long-term strategic goals**, such as when designing basic goals, it should emphasize the responsibility of sales personnel to promote new products. **Second, it should reflect the mechanism's support and cooperation with the company's chosen sales model.** If a company's products are sold to customers through team work, then overemphasizing individual heroism in the mechanism is inappropriate. **Third, while focusing on scale growth, attention should be paid to the internal key factors that achieve these growths**, such as sales personnel's market forecasts, collection of customer demand opinions, and maintenance of customer relationships as key behaviors to achieve sales targets. Finally, attention should be paid to the growth of sales personnel's own capabilities. A rapidly developing company, especially in the transition from the entrepreneurial stage to the growth stage, must attach importance to establishing internal mechanisms, processes, and culture oriented towards the company's long-term development. That is, when considering the effectiveness of a mechanism, it must systematically consider how to solve problems, not just focus on urgent issues like treating the head when the head hurts and the foot when the foot hurts. **Annual Marketing Plan - Plan Implementation** ** _1_** Goals of the marketing plan **(1) Goal setting:** Including the overall goals and classified goals of the marketing plan. Classified goals are actually the decomposition of overall goals, including phased goals, regional goals, product-specific goals, hard goals, soft goals, etc., which need detailed description. **(2) Goal assessment:** This is a very critical element, related to the degree of goal completion. It is necessary to assign each goal to corresponding departments and personnel, determine responsibility requirements and authority allocation, and formulate strict responsibility systems and assessment standards to ensure the smooth realization of goals. My personal suggestion is to combine results and process assessment based on the four dimensions of the balanced scorecard. ** _2_** Specific plans of the marketing plan **(1) Product part:** Formulate specific plans such as new product development, new product launch, product extension, packaging adjustment, and adding product varieties and specifications to accurately implement product strategy. **(2) Price part:** Formulate specific product price policies, when to raise or lower prices, adjust market price systems, etc., so that price policies can cooperate with market expansion. **(3) Channel part:** Formulate specific plans for market network expansion, dealer management systems, key regional market expansion, dealer promotion methods, etc., to improve channel network construction. **(4) Promotion part:** Formulate specific plans for advertising production, media placement, consumer promotion methods, overall promotion activity themes and forms, terminal promotion forms, etc., and form a separate execution text. ** _3_** Implementation steps for formulating the marketing plan (1) Determine the phased goals and requirements of market expansion, and propose the focus of the marketing plan. (2) Determine the implementation progress of each part of the marketing plan, and integrate the content of the plan into the corresponding market expansion stage according to the progress. (3) Integrate various marketing plan schemes in different market expansion stages so that they can be coordinated under unified goals and themes. (4) Finally, according to the market expansion stage, formulate the time, focus, theme, progress, evaluation, related policies, execution departments, and other aspects of the entire marketing plan implementation. ** _4_** Safeguard measures for marketing plan implementation **(1) Allocation of marketing plan execution content:** Communicate the overall marketing plan to relevant departments, make detailed provisions for the content each department should be responsible for, and submit to department heads for approval. **(2) Assessment of marketing plan execution effect:** According to the assessment basis determined in the marketing planning report, clarify regular evaluation of marketing plan execution, and coordinate with relevant departments to promptly solve various problems in the execution process and ensure the smooth progress of the marketing plan. ** _5_** Cost allocation of the marketing plan (1) Determine the total marketing expense amount and expense rate as the source of funds available for the entire marketing activity. (2) Determine the allocation ratio of various marketing project expenses, including product development, market research, media advertising, consumer promotion, channel promotion, theme promotion activities, terminal promotion activities, business expenses, transportation fees, etc. (3) Determine the expense items and ratios executed by the headquarters and by each region respectively. (4) Determine the expense allocation ratio for each stage of market expansion, and maximize resource utilization efficiency according to the focus of marketing strategy. ** _6_** Measurement and monitoring of marketing plan implementation **Common methods for measuring and monitoring marketing plan implementation include:** (1) Monthly plans, weekly plans, or calendar written or telephone feedback (2) Customer interviews or spot checks (3) Regular work reports, etc. **During the economic transition period, the only constant is change. For sustainable and healthy operations, marketing is no longer simple "winning" sales.** Sometimes it looks like a "win" up close, but from a distance it is a "loss." "Win" and "loss" can no longer be simply judged by "winning or losing." Sometimes, if an enterprise "lives" long enough, you might be the winner. **How to "live" long and "live" well cannot rely only on seizing opportunities, but also on creating opportunities. To seize and create opportunities, planning is essential. As the saying goes, "One who does not plan for the whole situation is insufficient to plan for a part; one who does not plan for the long term is insufficient to plan for the moment." This is true.** Gao Jie, researcher at Beijing Guanghua Vision Research Center, visiting professor at the Business School of Hebei Normal University, senior human resource manager, special judge of the China Professional Manager Evaluation Committee, and cooperative lecturer for dozens of training companies nationwide. He has served as Human Resources Director of large pharmaceutical enterprise Hebei Yiling Pharmaceutical Group (listed company), Human Resources Director of Ping'an Health Group, Personnel and Administration Director of Qinchuan Education Industry Group, Human Resources Department Head of Hebei Hengxin Mobile Commerce Co., Ltd. (listed company), and Regional Manager for Northwest and Southwest of Beijing Huineng Power Electronics Group (listed company). He has deep research and unique insights into job analysis, organizational structure design, job evaluation, compensation system design, performance system design, and training system design, and is known for practical expertise in organizational management. This article is compiled and edited by New Distribution. This article has been authorized for reprint by the WeChat public account Zhenmou Junlue (ID: gejunzhenygzt). If other platforms need to reprint, please contact the WeChat public account Zhenmou Junlue for authorization first. **The 3rd (CFIC) China FMCG + Internet Conference** will be held in Chongqing in November 2017. The conference will closely focus on the theme "New Forces, New Ecology," inviting **1000+ distributors, 500+ brand owners, 200+ B2B platform founders, and 100+ investment and financing institutions** to jointly explore a new chapter of cross-border integration! **Core topics of this conference:** > * **How can the FMCG industry leverage B2B to achieve new growth opportunities** > > > > > > > * **How to build the new supply chain behind new retail** > > > > > > > * **How can intra-city logistics help B2B achieve leapfrog development** > **Highlights of this conference:** > * **The industry's first "2017 China FMCG B2B Industry Competitiveness White Paper"** > > > > > * **Excellent transformation and upgrading distributor case sharing** > > > > > * **Conference + exhibition upgrade, Hall 6 Internet Technology Exhibition strengthens docking** > > > > > * **Alibaba Retail Link, Puhua Finance, Eternal Asia Supply Chain, Best Store Plus, Yijiupi, Huidi - leaders from the most well-known enterprises in various fields will give on-site speeches and express pioneering views.** > **Registration is now open. Long press the QR code below or click "Read Original" to register.** Add friend with note "Conference Registration" Click the links below to review the highlights of the first and second FMCG + Internet conferences: [2016 "FMCG + Internet" Summit Forum]() -END- --- ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL. Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671