You got to be sure the path you have chosen pays you well. Market should be moderately big, not so small nor too big as it can make it difficult to score more than 50% share that you can have in it. Plus, competitors should be reasonably less (Luther, 2011). Another factor by Guiltinan and Paul (1994) depicts that the major portion of marketing budget is absorbed in advertisements. Managers should be capable of determining that the effectiveness of advertisements is adequate enough. Advertising managers should be very skilled and objective in their respective field. But at the same time memorable advertisements not all the time increase sales of a product. The author quotes the significant example of Pepsi that how in its "chill out" campaign gained popularity but could not make its sales comparable to Coke (Guiltinan and Paul, 1994). Similarly, Paula expresses her views regarding competitive trends being something that venerate your business skills. As, discussed in Luther's work "actually it's the competition rather than customer that determines your revenue, market share and profit. IBM a computer company is an example that how many setbacks it had but on the long run a positive aspect is that, it actually prospered considerably. At another place Luther says when a big market shares becomes dangerous when competitors use the experience curve. "The experience curve reflects the fact that you can cut your unit costs the same percentage rate every time you double your output. You accomplish this cost savings by learning through the experience curve, economies of scale and by throwing your weight around." If there are not more than twenty or thirty competitors it means that one can easily understand their business philosophy. Secondly, try to notice if their behavior is aggressive or not if they are aggressive you stand a minuscule hope if they aren't likely to consider you for a long time it might...

Marketing strategies are quite dynamic and they are always requiring constant pace of work along with vigilance on the market trends.
Justin brings about a newer yet highly eminent aspect that is the Environment Monitoring System from the work of Guiltinan and Paul (1994). It describes how one should keep under constant watchfulness an organization's environment. The development process of strategies usually encounters dynamic environment. Naturally, these fluxes require adaptation within time limit. For this purpose that the crucial information will not be overlooked; systematic approach is required. Montgomery and Weinberg have purposed a theory in this regard highlighting three purposes. The first issue is named as Defensive: "the purpose of environmental monitoring is simply to determine if the implicit and explicit assumptions upon which current strategies are based will remain valid." Second reason defined is Passive: "this intelligence is used to provide benchmark data for an objective evaluation of a firm's policies." Third and the last purpose is Offensive; whose real purpose is to "identify opportunities." The whole process of Environmental Monitoring System goes step-by-step. As the reason is to eschew irrelevant data while keeping what's necessary. First, the needs and sources are established then persons concerned are kept under consideration and then work is allotted to them specifically. Technological Forecasting and Social Trends Analysis are other ways complementary to EMS (Guiltinan and Paul, 1994).

References

Baker, Michael (2008). The Strategic Marketing Plan Audit, 3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_strategy

Guiltinan and Paul (1994). Marketing Management, Strategies and Programs, fifth edition, 14-15.

Luther (2011). The Marketing Plan: How to plan and implement it.