Know-How Exchange : Strategy

You should develop a marketing plan for each product line.

It is essential to develop a primary focus, strategy, plan, etc for each product since each will have different needs. This way you can really concentrate on what is best for each product rather than trying to develop one big plan with a million "exceptions" that don't apply to certain products - it would be a nightmare to read, let alone follow!

Another way to think about it is ...the very fact they ARE different products. If they were variations of the same (i.e. differnt colors of pen caps), you would not call them "different product lines" in the first place. Therefore, this implies and demands a separate plan for each product.

Thank You and Good Luck!

When you say "Each product line satisfies a different set of marketing requirements", do you mean each line satisfies different customer needs?

Are the customers the same, and the needs different, or both needs and customers different?

Whichever, it's hard to see how you could survive with a single plan treating the different lines homogeneously.

Yes, of course you need a unified marketing plan which addresses corporate and brand. But then you need discrete marketing strategies to reach the different segments, or, if the segments are the same for every line, to address the different needs.

So maybe only the MarComms will vary in their delivery and tactics. But you may even need different channel models, pricing policies, perhaps some lines might be direct whereas others might be through distributors only...

Hope this helps.

ChrisB

The answer to your question is political as much as it is practical. If you work for Jett , then you do a separate plan for each product. If you work for Bill Moore, than you do one integrated plan with subsections for each product. If you work for me, and as a manager I have to deal with both Jett and Bill Moore, then you create a series of documents which could be integrated into a single document for Bill, but could be printed as individual plans for Jett.

Being a P&G alumnus, I'm partial to the "brand is king" philosophy. Consumers buy brands. They don't buy companies.

That said, I also served as VP-Marketing at Playtex, and the company name was so powerful in certain categories that we'd have been idiots to not use it and build it and play it for all it's worth. In fact, most of our brands had the Playtex name integrated with the brand name (like Playtex Living Gloves, Playtex Deodorant Tampons, Playtex Cross-Your-Heart Bra, Playtex Infant Feeding Systems, etc., etc.).

What we determined is that when there's a common-thread benefit that is at the heart of the company's reason-for-being, you sell the company. When there are either different markets or different benefits, you sell the brand.

It's obviously not a black-and-white decision, but somewhere in the shades of gray. I'd look at the market differences across product lines, and the positioning benefit promises, to decide which way to go in the planning process.

hi there

i have the same question as asked by ChirsB. would you pls answer that? again, you have not mentioned how the different product lines are sold and promoted in market. are they sold under a parent brand name or under different brand??

if you have parent brand like GE and all your product lines have name with the parent name i.e. GE x and GE y then, i tend to agree with mgoodman, that you need to have a overall marketing plan of the entire category of products and based on that plan develop individual product line marketing plans. the Overall Marketing Plan will basically give general marketing directions while the individual product marketing plans will deliver ways/paths to achieve the objective set by the Overall Marketing Plan.

if your individual product lines have distinctive names and no parent or overlapping names (like P&G products) then there is NO need for a Overall Marketing Plan. just develop individual product line marketing plans and that will do.

hope that helps. btw, abhishek has given the entire format for writing a marketing plan, in case you need that ;-)

cheers!!