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September 2006 - Strategy Magazine
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Guest review
Marketing plan Pro provides good start
Strategy gets sent a lot of books, software and assorted schemes and step programs for making marketing easy. We often wonder what works. So we asked a marketer. Here's the verdict on a planning software entry, and just how much it actually could make life easier . . .

by Mike Welling
page 35

One relaxing day this spring I was approached by strategy to assess an off-the-shelf marketing planning tool. They wanted to get the perspective of someone who has lived through many marketing planning cycles and currently offers strategic business and marketing consulting support to assess the tool.

Objective: Review pre-packaged marketing planning software and comment on its utility and ease of use.

The Marketing Plan Pro package from Palo Alto Software claims to be the number-one-selling marketing-planning software for seven years running. It lists a quote from Accounting Today that it is "...the simplest way to create a marketing plan that will improve the profitability, awareness and long-term stability of your business."

Products like these could represent a real threat to someone who makes their living providing brand and marketing planning counsel! Undaunted, I spent some time with the product and here is a summary.

Overall, it's easy to use and provides a pretty good summary of how to not only build a marketing or business plan, but also what you need to do to execute against that plan. This type of tool can be quite useful for companies with less sophisticated business planning processes or which need to allocate more focused time to planning, and will be especially useful for anyone embarking on a new business venture and hasn't had to pull together business plans before.

It comes with software, a small manual and two books: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al and Laura Ries, and On Target: The Book on Marketing Plans by Tim Berry and Doug Wilson. Both are great (not just because they come in a large font for those aging boomers out there) but because they contain useful information. The 22 Immutable Laws provides insight into the concept of branding (which I believe is lacking in the rest of the package) while On Target provides a great reference tool with a glossary of terms and concepts.

In fact, it's a well-integrated offering which allows a user to leverage (or buy online) other Palo Alto products: Both inside the program and within the On Target book are numerous hyperlinks to more information. There is also a link to download another title by Tim Berry, Hurdle: The Book on Business Planning, that further explains some of the concepts touched on in the software. I would recommend a review of all the materials upfront before starting to develop your plan.

From the time you open the software, you appreciate the virtues of the program design. There are easy-to-use guides to walk you through all sections of a marketing plan. In each, there are coaching tips on what needs to be considered, where you can get information and a library of examples. In fact, users can access 70 marketing plans from different types of businesses which can be used as templates and relevant sections can be cut and pasted into your own marketing plan and edited as appropriate.

The program is designed to help you develop a professional-looking document that can be used as an internal marketing plan, but is also suitable for presentation to third parties, such as investors.

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