Product Description

This new edition of The Successful Marketing Plan details an easy-to-follow and completely updated methodology for creating a results-focused, customer-driven marketing plan. Internet marketing issues and challenges receive much greater attention, including an entirely new chapter as well as seamless integration throughout the text.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61942 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

From the Back Cover
Step-by-step, up-to-date, proven guidelines for creating a dynamic, results-focused marketing plan

Through thirteen years and two previous editions, The Successful Marketing Plan has shown more than 40,000 business owners and marketing pros how to write marketing plans that define and fulfill the needs of their target markets. Now, in this substantially revised and expanded third edition, Roman Hiebing Jr. and Scott Cooper outline methods for developing objectives, strategies, and tactics to create a marketing plan that delivers the bottom line.

Separating the plan into ten market-proven, manageable components, The Successful Marketing Plan explains how to

• Find the data you need to develop your plan
• Conduct a comprehensive situation analysis
• Set realistic sales objectives
• Position your products through a strong branding program
• Condense your plan into a workable calendar of activities
• Arrive at a realistic budget and payback schedule
• Evaluate and test the plan's effectiveness

Updated to reflect today's rapidly changing marketplace, it now includes completely new chapters on two of today's hot-button topics--Internet media and brand positioning. A unique "Idea Starters" grid with more than 1,000 idea combinations designed to meet any challenge is included, along with new information, statistics, worksheets, and action items for every chapter.

All great marketing begins with a great marketing plan. Let The Successful Marketing Plan guide you step-by-step through everything you need to know to create a comprehensive "real-world" marketing plan that will enable your company to thrive and grow in today's cost-conscious, winner-take-all competitive arena.

About the Author

Roman G. Hiebing Jr. is CEO of The Hiebing Group, a full-service advertising, marketing, and public relations agency whose clients include or have included Nestlé, Kimberly Clark, McDonald's, Orkin, Swiss Colony, and others. Hiebing also teaches advertising and marketing at the University of Wisconsin.

Scott W. Cooper is the senior vice president of marketing and branding for Brown Shoe Company, a $1.76 billion footwear company whose divisions include the 930-store Famous Footwear chain and other leading brands such as Naturalizer, Buster Brown, Life Stride, Dr. Scholl's, and many more. Cooper is the former president of The Hiebing Group.

Customer Reviews

Marketing for the Masochist
I guess I'm really going against the masses with my 2-star review of this book since the authors claim that it was so successful it warranted a third edition, but I was sorely disappointed with my purchase and plan on returning it. The book opens up with a thorough and dry introduction about why *disciplined* marketing planning is so important. I can't say I was really sold on their main argument--which was basically that marketing can only be done well when it's totally comprehensive and systematic. Those are definitely good traits to adopt in any undertaking, but I just feel that this book is overkill.

The book touts its main benefit as reducing the complexity of coming up with a marketing plan to "just" a 10-step process. It then takes two chapters and about 75 pages just to outline only the first step of this process, called the business review, and describes in painstaking detail everything that the marketer or marketing consultant should do in order to get as thorough an understanding of the business as possible.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about doing my due diligence and developing a thorough understanding of the company I'm doing a marketing plan for, but creating a marketing plan in the manner that these authors describe would easily take over 300 hours of time.

What's more, I don't get the sense from this book that there is an overarching guiding theory into which all elements of the book can be placed in context. Rather, it seems the approach of the authors is to take every known idea from the canon of marketing and incorporate each idea into some step of the lengthy 10-step process.

In the end, I just feel like this book goes overboard with the requirements it demands of the "disciplined" and "comprehensive" marketer. I can see why they use the word disciplined to describe their approach since in my view it would be truly painful to endure it.

I was very interested to read the reviews of others on this book, and I was disappointed to find that I had the opportunity to be the first reviewer. I'll keep looking around for my dream "how to prepare a marketing plan" book, but in the meantime I've realized that the "disciplined and comprehensive approach" is not for me.

The best hands-on book available
I've been using this book since 1995. It's not the type of book you'd read cover to cover, but it's an invaluable planning resource for any marketing manager. The authors leave no stoned unturned. If you are writing a plan or launching a business, this is the best practical book out there. Other marketing books get bogged down in theoretical case studies that offer no hands-on tools. This book is a great tool.

Great Condition and On Time
I needed this book quickly and it arrived with speed. It also arrived in brand new condition for a great price!