Developing an effective marketing plan requires integration of all of the elements of the marketing mix. 

Whenever you are thinking about changing a decision on one aspect of your marketing plan, evaluate how that change might relate to or interact with each of the other decisions.  At the beginning, it’s probably best to do this by being systematic ... so you don’t miss something.  An one way to be systematic is to work through each of the other decisions one by one.

As you do this, you will reconsider different decisions (and how the relate) from different perspectives. So, you may evaluate different alternatives before you arrive at “final” decisions.

As you evaluate alternative strategies you must think about your firm’s current resources--including the budget you have available for the next period. The budget planning form in your text and/or using the TMGPlan software to create and evaluate alternative pro formas can help you do a better job in thinking through the financial aspects of trade-offs among decisions and/or how they interrelate. A pro forma is only as accurate as your estimate of demand, so think about how each decision might impact demand as well as costs!