About
There was a time not too many years ago when marketing planning was a full-time job in some companies. One operation I was a marketing director in with sales of $400 Million needed four planners and a dedicated mid-range computer just to keep pace with the campaigns. The increased power of PCs and Excel’s continual improvement changed that. I think MarPRO could reduce that 4 person function to a 1/2 person and a PC.
MarPRO started as an Excel program called Profit Smart. I developed it to support my work as a consultant to help companies improve direct marketing and profits. Over the years, I consulted for countless companies from startups to large companies with the software. The learning I gained from those engagements now is applied to MarPRO.
MarPRO combines two functions in one spreadsheet template. The first function is a concise marketing plan with exact advertising spending and forecast results. The second is a traditional Income Statement, or P&L. The structure of costs and expenses is how an ecommerce company should track and manage expenses whether it is for one order or the entire enterprise. In other words, the MarPRO expense categories are the key performance factors that need managing to be profitable. In essence, every order single expense component in making, shipping and getting paid needs to be counted on a per order basis and the entire enterprise.
Because the advertising expense, response, sales and cost key drivers can be estimated in advance, the Multi template sheets can be used to build monthly, quarterly or annual business plans. Separate sheets need to detail the G&A expenses, but those are a function of how much sales is being generated and shipped.
Our website Guidance Tab sections are built to help you maximize the power you will get from MarPRO. We will continue to expand them as we go along.
The sections are
- Software How-To
- Plan P&L Management
- Facts and Knowledge
We urge you see “The Secret to Advertising Profit Control” in Plan P&L Management and “Rare Advertising to Sales Data” in Facts and Knowledge. Both these pieces will reward you from close reading.
Steve Stuart
