Marketing Strategy and Planning
Marketing strategy and planning asks how an organization chooses where to compete and how to win. The PCM exam tests your ability to connect situation analysis to segmentation, targeting, positioning, objectives, and a controllable plan-not just to define frameworks.
Core rules and concepts
- Situational analysis: use the 5Cs (company, customers, competitors, collaborators, context) and convert SWOT items into implications. A strength is only strategic if it is valuable, rare, hard to imitate, and organizable (VRIO).
- STP: segment on measurable, accessible, substantial, differentiable, and actionable bases; choose targets by segment attractiveness and fit with capabilities; write a positioning statement with target, frame of reference, point of difference, and reason to believe.
- Growth options: Ansoff matrix (market penetration, market development, product development, diversification). Diversification carries the highest risk because both market and product are new.
- Plan architecture: SMART objectives, strategy, tactics, budget, and control metrics. Objectives should tie to share, sales, margin, or customer outcomes.
Worked example
A regional coffee roaster has 8% share in a mature market and strong local brand awareness. It considers three options: open accounts in a new city (market development), launch a ready-to-drink line (product development), or buy a tea brand (diversification). The exam-style reasoning: market development leverages existing product and brand but requires distribution capability; product development leverages brand but needs new manufacturing and shelf-space relationships; diversification adds a new category and new consumer, so it demands the most new capability. If the firm's constraint is distribution, market development is the lowest-risk fit only when the new city's channel economics clear a defined hurdle (e.g., contribution margin after slotting and logistics). Otherwise, fix the penetration plan first.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing a SWOT list without strategic implications.
- Setting objectives such as “increase awareness” without a metric or time frame.
- Choosing a target segment because it is large, not because the firm can serve it better than rivals.
- Confusing strategy (where to play/how to win) with tactics (promotions, channels).
- Omitting controls, budgets, and contingency assumptions from the plan.