The marketing plan should be designed to meet certain criteria. Some important characteristics that must be incorporated in an effective marketing plan are as follows:
-It should provide a strategy for accomplishing the company mission or goal
-It should be based on facts and valid assumptions. Some of the facts needed are illustrated. It must provide for the use of existing resources. Allocation of all equipment, financial resources, and human resources must be described.
-An appropriate organization must be described to implement the marketing plan.
-It should provide for continuity so that each annual marketing plan can build on it, successfully meeting longer-term goals and objectives.
-It should be simple and short. A voluminous plan will be placed in a desk and likely never used. However, the plan should not be so short that details on how to accomplish a goal are excluded.
-The success of the plan may depend on its flexibility. Changes, if necessary, should be incorporated by including what-if scenarios and appropriate responding strategies.
-It should specify performance criteria that will be monitored and controlled. For example, the entrepreneur may establish an annual performance criterion of 10 percent of market share in a designated geographic area. To attain this goal, certain expectations should be made at given time periods (e.g., at the end of three months we should have a 5 percent share of market). If not attained, then new strategy or performance standards may be established.