Marketing mix and marketing plan: turn the mix into fundable hypotheses.
Answer:
This page does not replace a complete marketing plan. It addresses only its interface with the marketing mix: turning product, price, distribution and communication choices into fundable, revisable hypotheses. A complete plan adds objectives, capabilities, timing, responsibilities, dependencies and governance. Each initiative originating in the mix must still state the intended behaviour, expected economic effect, available evidence and stop rule.
Decision:
Pass to the plan only mix initiatives whose economic objective, expected contribution, evidence level and stop rule are documented.
Principles:
An awareness, traffic or lead objective remains intermediate: the plan must show its effect on volume, net price, retention, service cost or risk. “Increase visibility” is not falsifiable; “an additional 12 points of reach raises aided consideration by 3 points and creates at least 1,800 incremental sales” states a mechanism, magnitude and period. A budget is not irrevocable: every initiative has an initial tranche, reading date, continuation threshold and reallocation option.
Method:
Start from the economic account: break the goal into customers, frequency, net price, variable margin and incremental cost, without counting the same sales twice. Write the causal chain from lever to exposure, behaviour, business outcome and contribution; identify its first observable break. For each initiative, calculate expected value as probability of success × contribution on success + probability of failure × contribution on failure − cost, plus the maximum exposure when assumptions are correlated. Before launch, set the measurement window, owner, admissible data and the decisions to extend, correct, maintain to learn or stop.
Worked example:
A company must create €900k of additional contribution. It assesses an offer redesign, a price test, a video campaign and a CRM programme. Contributions on success are respectively €520k, €260k, €430k and €180k, with probabilities of 55%, 70%, 45% and 80%; costs are €180k, €70k, €250k and €120k. Net expected values are €106k, €112k, −€56.5k and €24k. The unsequenced plan is worth €185.5k. Turning video into a €60k pilot before a €190k extension caps the initial loss and values information at €168.5k, giving a sequenced-plan value of €354k.
Conclusion:
The plan does not mechanically promise €900k. It funds offer, price and CRM first, and conditions video on interim evidence. The remaining gap becomes an explicit capacity or ambition decision, not an assumption hidden in the budget.
Checks and limits:
Each initiative needs a non-duplicated economic objective, published expected value, maximum exposure and opportunity cost, an initial tranche and stop rule, and a named owner for the review decision. Success probabilities can be politically inflated; interactions can make summed expected values optimistic; brand and capacity effects can require a horizon longer than an annual plan.