Q&A - What are the advantages and drawbacks of marketing planning

The main benefits and problems of marketing planning can be summarised as follows:

Benefits:

- Provides clear sense of direction for marketing management
- Marketing options are evaluated and prioritised
- Allocates scarce resources more effectively
- Encourages coordination with other functional areas (finance, ops & HR)
- Provides a basis for assessing actual results
- Makes marketing dept responsible

Drawbacks

- Can be time-consuming
- Constant change in the market makes assumptions difficult
- Danger of either being too simplistic or too complicated
- The plan can be ignored as circumstances take over