Unilever Marketing Strategy: A Comprehensive Plan Using SOSTAC Model

This report presents a marketing plan for Unilever, a multinational brand with a diverse product portfolio, using the SOSTAC model (Situation, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Action, Control). The situation analysis includes SWOT and PESTLE analyses, evaluating Unilever's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, as well as political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors. The plan outlines objectives to enhance the customer base and increase sales, with strategies focusing on segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Tactics are developed using the marketing mix (product, promotion, price, place), and actions involve investments in training, digital media marketing, and budget allocation. Control measures include market share and sales analysis to track performance and ensure targets are met. The report concludes that a marketing plan is essential for strategic planning, advertising, and sales growth, with digital platforms playing a crucial role.

Marketing Plan

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Marketing plan............................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES:...............................................................................................................................8
Books and Journals.....................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Marketing plan is a part of business which assist in advertisement of products. This
increase the sales of products and services in efficient manner (Chernev, 2020). This report is in
context of Unilever. It is a multinational brand which includes products like food, healthcare,
supplements, beauty products and many more. In this report, marketing plan for Unilever is
formulated. This includes situation analysis, objectives, strategies, marketing mix, various action
plans, management skills and methods to improve the operations and results within the
organisation.
MAIN BODY
Marketing plan
Marketing Plan is a framework which evaluates the targeted market to sell their products.
It includes specific details about the products and services, sales forecast, budget and programs
which creates brand image among the customers (Opresnik, 2018). Marketing plan of Unilever is
formulated with the help of SOSTAC model. This model was introduced by PR Smith in 1990s.
It includes six steps including situation, objectives and strategy, tactics, action and control. These
steps will help in achievement of prescribed targets of the Unilever. This model is used by most
of the organisations for strategic planning and decision making process. Here is the detailed
analysis of SOSTAC model in reference to Unilever:
Situation analysis
This is the first stage which states where the company stands right now. To evaluate the
current position of Unilever here is the SWOT analysis of company:
Strength Weaknesses
 Unilever has a strong brand image in
the global market and they maintain
quality of their products which acquire
the marketplace.
 Unilever is dependent on retailer for
sale of their products. They lack in
personal touch with consumers. Retails
can easily influence the perception of
customers towards other brands.
Opportunities Threats
 Unilever is adapting digital  There are many competitors of

technologies in their operations which
help in upgrading their products and
generate high revenues.
Unilever like Nestle and P&G who
produce substitute products. Customer
can switch whenever they want.
PESTLE analysis of Unilever:
It helps to know about the macro economic factors and there impact on the business organisation.
 Political: Factors related to rules, regulations and policies refer as political factors. There
is political stability in UK which is the positive factor for Unilever.
 Economic: The buying power and disposable income of the consumers are good in UK
which increase the sales of Unilever.
 Social: Unilever produce high quality products which fulfil the criteria of health
consciousness of people.
 Technological: Unilever invest in research and development which helps them to
upgrade the quality of products which maximizes their revenues.
 Legal: Unilever follow all the legal laws like patent laws, consumer right laws, product
safety laws and copyright laws which makes their operations smooth.
 Environmental: Eco-friendly practices are followed by Unilever during production and
packaging procedures.
Objectives
Objectives are the predefined goals which company wants to achieve in future
(Sumarwan, 2019). The objectives are mentioned below:
 To enhance the customer base by 5% within 6 months.
 To increase sales by 10% by 1 year.
 To use integrated social media strategy to attract customers.
Strategy
Strategy suggests how to attain the prescribed objectives effectively and efficiently.
Marketing strategy helps in decision-making which enables the operations to achieve these
objectives by Unilever. It includes segmentation, targeting and positioning which is described
below:

 Segmentation: This factor states that market is segmented into different parts according
to the product demand. It includes demographic, geographic, age and income
segmentation.
 Target marketing: Unilever target every individual person because they have diversified
portfolio which fulfil everyone's demand. This includes kids, women, men, teens and
families.
 Positioning: Unilever positioned itself as personal, healthcare and food products
distributor all over the world which produce high quality products within friendly budget.
Tactics
Tactics suggest how exactly company target its customers and formulate marketing plans
(Grabeel and et.al., 2019). Unilever create its tactics with the help of marketing mix which is as
follows:
 Products: Unilever has a wide variety of products which includes personal care, home
care, supplements, beverages and food products. They also maintain quality of their
products. Combination of these products refer as products mix.
 Promotion: Unilever includes the strategies which help in marketing like sales
promotion, direct selling, public relations, advertising, social media marketing and
personal selling. This includes YouTube, twitter, Facebook and other digital platforms.
 Price: Unilever uses market oriented strategy for pricing which help them to compete
with their competitors in market. They decide prices which justifies the quality of their
products.
 Place: It suggest where the business sell their products. Unilever maintains distribution
channel and they sell their products through retailers and stores. The company also sells
products through online stores.
Actions
Action refers to plans and procedures which focus on the improvement of functions and
operations (Olivas, 2021). Unilever invest in training and development of their existing
employees and hire new employees who are experts in digital media marketing. Unilever focus
on their marketing plan which includes digital technology and plans budget which is mentioned
below:
Particulars Amount (£)

Marketing 10000
Promotional activity 20000
Plant and machinery 120000
Digital media 7000
Total 148000
Control
Control keep track on the performance and measure the deviations so that they can
achieve targets in desired time frame. Unilever uses various technologies to control the
operations. Some of the indicators used by Unilever are as follows:
 Market share analysis: It indicates that firm in performing well as compare to their
competitors. Unilever capture the marketplace which is required to generate high
revenues.
 Sales analysis: It compares the actual sales with the predefined objectives which they
have to achieve. Unilever is achieving its sales target in effective manner.

CONCLUSION
From this report, it is concluded that every business needs marketing plan to formulate
strategic plans for its operations. Marketing plan helps organisation to advertise their products
and services which increase their sales. Use of SOSTAC model is done to achieve the desired
marketing objectives. Digital technological platforms are used to increase the sales of the
organisations.

REFERENCES:
Books and Journals
Chernev, A., 2020. The marketing plan handbook. Cerebellum Press.
Grabeel and et.al., 2019. How one library's health information center expanded its marketing
plan. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 38(3), pp.218-227.
Olivas, A., 2021. Creating a Marketing Plan for a Local Small Business.
Opresnik, M.O., 2018, July. Effective Social Media Marketing Planning–How to Develop a
Digital Marketing Plan. In International Conference on Social Computing and Social
Media (pp. 333-341). Springer, Cham.
Sumarwan, U., 2019. Pemasaran Strategik: Perspektif perilaku konsumen dan Marketing plan.
PT Penerbit IPB Press.