Marketing Minutes with Jennifer – Steps in Account Planning

When coming up with an advertising/marketing campaign (as I have mentioned before) account planning is the first step. Here are the steps to take when looking into account planning in outline form as prepared by my advanced campaign professor:

1.     Situation Analysis

a.       The company – include company performance over the last three years.  The product – provide a description of the merchandise the store/dealership carries.

b.      Retail footprint – where are the stores/dealerships located in U.S.?  Provide map

c.       The environment

a.       Industry trends

b.      Social, economic trends

d.      SWOT -  ½ to 1 page chart of what you believe the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are.

e.       The competition – list who the main competitors are and who the indirect competitors are.

2.   Target Market Research Overview:

a.       Secondary research

Provide an explanation of databases you searched for insights on the target market.

Describe what clusters the target market belongs to from Claritas, Tapestry, etc.

Simmons results, provide a detailed explanation of what you searched for and found in Simmons data base.

b.      Primary research -

a.      Methodology – who did you ask and how did you collect data?

b.      Provide summary of results from each question

3.   Key insights (from both primary and secondary)

a.      Inside the targets’ mind – who is this person?

b.      Pull direct quotes from target market interviews, relevant articles.

4.  Target market profile

a.      Primary market

b.      Secondary