Your marketing plan is your plan to bring your product or service to the market place. Marketing strategies match or transform your product or services to the needs of your customers. Good market research will uncover marketing ideas for new products or services that are not presently being met.

Marketing strategies and tactics are your plans to capture a niche or an entire market segment based on your company's capabilities and the needs of the market. Marketing strategies should include product positioning strategies, pricing, distribution, channel penetration, advertising, Internet, public relations, tradeshows, use of reps, telemarketing, direct mail, etc.

The new product development process should not be based only on technology and process capabilities (engineering driven). The new product launch that is based only on satisfying an un-met market need without taking into account company capabilities is equally bad (marketing driven). New product introductions need to be a joint venture between marketing and engineering to be effective.