What Is the Final Stage of Implementing a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a highly flexible type of strategy, open to a vast number of communication options, styles, tones and concentrations. Nevertheless, many marketing plans follow the same basic steps, requiring marketing managers to access market information, analyze the value offering of products, test different techniques on focus groups and manage the brand effectively. In the end, most marketing plans face the test that is similar across the spectrum of strategies: the final implementation and study of the plan's effects.


  1. The final phase of a marketing plan's implementation involves receiving feedback and data to measure effectiveness. No marketing plan should be considered finished if the company has not looked at how well the plan actually worked and whether notable changes were made. Measuring the results of the plan allows the company to directly connect the marketing plan to effective changes and make better marketing choices in the future. Tracking results is often an ongoing process that can last long after the plan has been developed.


  1. Usually the business will choose several different methods to track the success of a marketing plan. Sometimes for a simple plan the company only needs to track sales. But with multiple products and more complex marketing efforts, the company will often track the sale of individual units with ad codes. For client marketing, call logs, replies and surveys are often used to gather data. Radio tags can help track the movement of products in stores and inventory management systems can track when high volumes of products were purchased.


  1. With the data collected, the company then needs to carefully analyze it. Not all sale changes or attitude changes may be related to marketing. Customer service techniques, market forces and price changes all have their own effect on sales, so a change may not be a direct result of marketing. This is one reason why surveys are a valuable tool; they do not depend on sales. Also, marketing effects may not be immediate and the results may be cumulative, requiring more lengthy analysis to track changes.


  1. Finally, the company will use the results to identify necessary adjustments to the marketing plan. Sometimes changes in distribution, frequency of updates or message focus are enough. Other times the business will begin work on an entirely new marketing plan based on the results of the old version.