Marketing process step by step: analyse, choose, plan, execute, measure and adjust

Many marketing problems are problems of sequence. The business runs ads before it knows whom it wants to reach, or changes its offer before it has measured what the old one did. The marketing process puts the work in order: analyse, choose, plan, execute, measure and adjust, then start again with better information. Each step ends with something concrete that the next step needs.

Hawthorn Barn, a wedding and events venue run by Petra Hollis, is the example on this page. Amounts are in euros; the logic works in any currency.

What is the marketing process?

The American Marketing Association describes marketing as the activity and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers. The marketing process is the order in which you do that work. It borrows from quality management. W. Edwards Deming taught the plan-do-study-act cycle, which he learned from Walter Shewhart, and he put the weight on "study" rather than "check": the point is to learn why a result differs from what you expected. Marketing works the same way. Every cycle tests assumptions about customers, and the next one starts from what you learned.

Planning models such as PR Smith's SOSTAC (situation, objectives, strategy, tactics, actions, control) describe the same loop with different labels. Pick the one you find easiest to remember; the order matters more than the names.

The marketing process in six steps

1. 01

   Analyse

   Collect facts about customers, competitors, the market and your own results. It delivers a short list of findings that matter.

2. 02

   Choose

   Decide which customer groups you serve and how you want them to see you. It delivers target groups and a positioning.

3. 03

   Plan

   Set objectives, the marketing mix, a budget and a calendar. It delivers the marketing plan.

4. 04

   Execute

   Carry out the actions with owners and deadlines. It delivers campaigns, sales activity and data.

5. 05

   Measure

   Compare results with the objectives, per channel and per target group. It delivers a scorecard with the gaps.

6. 06

   Adjust

   Stop, keep or scale actions and update your assumptions. It delivers decisions and the input for the next analysis.

What each step of the marketing process delivers

Step 1, analyse: market research without a research budget

You need fewer facts than you think, as long as they are the right ones. Read, talk, record and analyse, in that order.

• Desk research: official statistics, trade association reports and the industry figures for your sector, plus the trends from a PESTLE analysis.
• Conversations: recent customers, people who asked for a quote and bought elsewhere, and suppliers who see the whole market.
• Competitors: their websites, prices, reviews and the promises they make.
• Own data: sales per product, customer group and channel, and where each customer came from.

More on interviews and sizing a market in market and customer analysis.

Step 2, choose: segmentation, target groups and positioning

Segmentation divides the market into groups that need different things. Target the groups you can serve better than the alternatives, and position yourself so they understand why.

Positioning rests on three things: knowing how competitors present themselves, a value proposition that answers what the target group cares about, and a message you repeat everywhere. See value proposition and jobs to be done.

Step 3, plan: objectives, mix, budget and calendar

Turn the choices into measurable objectives, set the marketing mix to fit the positioning, cost the actions and put them in a calendar with an owner each. How to build that plan, including a budget method and a one-page example, is in strategic marketing plan.

Step 4, execute: owners, rhythm and capacity

Execution fails on capacity more often than on ideas. Check before you start whether you can handle the extra enquiries, deliveries or appointments; a campaign that brings more leads than you can answer within a day damages your name. Capacity also tells you what to promote. Hawthorn Barn hosts one wedding a day, and summer Saturdays sell themselves, so Petra's promotion pushes Fridays and winter dates. Give each action one owner and a date, and record for every enquiry how the person found you. Without that question, step 5 is guesswork.

Step 5, measure: from enquiries to sales

The average wedding booking at Hawthorn Barn is €12,000 at a 35% gross margin. In the first quarter Petra spent €9,000 on marketing and recorded the source of every enquiry.

Fictitious Firmfocus example. All names and figures are invented to show the method.

Marketing costs about a quarter of the margin on each booking (€1,000 / €4,200 = 24%), which Petra finds acceptable. The average hides large differences between channels, which is why she measures per channel.

Step 6, adjust: stop, keep or scale

Measuring tells you what happened; adjusting needs a view on why. Deming's "study" applies here. Before dropping the magazine, Petra checks who reads it: mostly retired homeowners, outside her target group. She stops it and moves the €1,500 to search ads. If search keeps converting at about €1,125 per booking, €6,000 brings roughly five bookings a quarter (€6,000 / €1,125 = 5.3).

The wedding fair looks expensive, but her couples often book a year ahead and twelve of its twenty enquiries have a viewing planned. She will judge it after two quarters, not one. Referrals bring the cheapest bookings, so she offers a €150 thank-you to every caterer, photographer or past couple whose referral leads to a booking. Each decision and its reason goes into the next analysis.

Fictitious Firmfocus example, continued.

Marketing process in a small business and a larger organisation

Marketing process pitfalls

• Starting at step 4: promotion without a target group spends money on people who will never buy.
• Measuring only the total: a good average can hide a channel that brings nothing.
• Judging too early: match the review moment to how long your customers take to decide.
• Checking without studying: find out why something failed before you drop it.
• Never closing the loop: decisions from step 6 belong in next year's analysis.

For the parts of the plan itself, read strategic marketing plan; for the offer behind it, marketing for small businesses. If you are still winning your first clients, start with your first customers. All marketing topics are in Marketing, and the guides for new businesses in Start a business.