Marketing Plan Assignments: STP and the 7Ps Without the Waffle

Marketing plan assignments are generous with marks and easy to lose them on. The structure is usually given to you — situation analysis, STP, marketing mix, budget, control. The differentiator is whether each section constrains the next, or whether they read as five unrelated essays stapled together.

Segmentation That Says Something

Demographic segmentation alone ("females 25–40, ABC1") is rarely sufficient at postgraduate level. Combine bases:

• Behavioural — usage rate, occasion, loyalty status, benefit sought. Usually the most commercially useful.
• Psychographic — values, attitudes, lifestyle.
• Needs-based — the job the customer is hiring the product to do.
• Firmographic — for B2B: sector, size, procurement maturity, decision unit.

Then evaluate each segment against explicit criteria: measurable, substantial, accessible, differentiable, actionable. A segment you cannot reach through any channel is not a target, however attractive.

Targeting Requires a Decision

Choose, and say why the others were rejected. Size the chosen segment in currency, not adjectives — even a rough calculation from population, penetration and average spend is far stronger than "a large and growing market".

Positioning Must Commit

A positioning statement that could describe three competitors is not positioning. Use the classic form and force specificity:

For [target segment] who [need], [brand] is the [category] that [key benefit], because [reason to believe]. Unlike [main alternative], we [key differentiator].

Support it with a perceptual map on two axes that genuinely matter to the customer — price and quality is usually the least interesting pair available.

The 7Ps, Applied Rather Than Listed

• Product — core, actual and augmented layers; what specifically changes.
• Price — the mechanism (penetration, skimming, value-based) and the number, with a margin implication.
• Place — channel structure and why, including channel conflict if you sell direct and via partners.
• Promotion — mapped to the customer journey, not a list of media.
• People — recruitment, training and service standards for anyone customer-facing.
• Process — the steps the customer experiences; where friction is removed.
• Physical evidence — the tangible cues that make an intangible service credible.

The last three Ps are where service-based plans earn marks, and where most students write two thin sentences.

Budget and Control: The Sections Everyone Rushes

Allocate the budget across activities with a rationale, even if figures are indicative. Then define control: what will be measured, at what frequency, against what target, and what happens if the target is missed. Include both output metrics (revenue, share, CPA) and intermediate metrics (awareness, consideration, conversion rate). A plan without a review mechanism is a wish list.

Structuring the Submission

1. Situation analysis — brief, with the environmental analysis feeding directly into the SWOT.
2. Objectives — SMART, and consistent with the situation analysis.
3. Segmentation, targeting, positioning.
4. Marketing mix, each element justified against the positioning.
5. Budget and phased timeline.
6. Control, metrics and contingency.