Strategic Marketing Finance Planning

Strategic Marketing Finance Planning is a process that brings together the traditional Strategic Planning Process and Strategic Marketing Finance principles to ensure that the overall mission and objectives of the organization are accomplished. This includes creating long-term shareholder value by utilizing the ability of marketing to deliver growth strategies and the expertise of finance to evaluate and control those strategies.The process is an integrated approach involving all phases of planning, analysis and control but specifically considers the marketing strategies which in turn utilize financial methods and controls. Regarding the marketing strategies, which nearly always require an investment of resources, the process looks at their development along with the respective implementation, modification, and ongoing control. The process evaluates the reasons, both strategically and financially, for the marketing investment from an objective point of view.

It should be pointed out that Strategic Marketing Finance Planning is iterative and as such permits the marketing and finance interface to make modifications at each stage to allow the process to come up with the most appropriate strategies. The continuous flow occurs during the following phases on an ongoing basis:

Analysis—setting the mission and objectives, assessing the competitors and appraising the existing relative position of the organization within its industry

Planning—determination of the various alternative strategies and tactics available to the organization and the application of the appropriate financial evaluation methods and control processes for these alternatives

Control—evaluation of a future financial commitment and determination of the performance measures to be used to indicate success and then when implemented, the analyses of variances of the performance measures