Marketing Plan and Implementation

It appears that excellent, well thought-out planning without proper execution leads to non-satisfactory results. The same goes to implementation efforts of an unsound marketing plan. This should not come as a surprise to industry professionals. The question, thus, is why are there companies with solid marketing plans still manage to fail at implementing said plan?

Kotler et al. (2009) identifies 5 reasons for poor implementation; isolated planning, long-term and short-term objectives trade-offs, resistance to change, lack of financial and marketing integration, and overemphasis on the document. What does all these factors have in common? Poor implementation stems from lack of effective communication between and within departments and employees. When top-level managers creates a marketing plan without learning the day-to-day issue that lower-level managers face, the marketing plan produced may end up being too broad and general in context. In addition, "new strategies requiring new company patterns and habits might be resisted" (p. 67), especially by older-generation employees. Hence, it is crucial that the benefits of new strategies be thoroughly communicated to all employees. When companies fully acknowledged and make an effort to overcome these issues, smoother and successful implementation of the strategies should naturally follow.