BUS330 Week 2 Assignment Marketing Plan

Marketing Plan

Student’s Name

BUS330 Principles of Marketing

Month. Day, 2019

(Your paper should be double-spaced with no extra spaces in between paragraphs. Indent the first line of each paragraph. Top level headings are centered. Second level headings go at the left margin. Your paper must be formatted and cited per APA Guidelines. Check out the Writing Center for additional resources. Your Final Marketing Plan should be at least 9 to 13 pages not including the title and reference pages. This is a minimum. There is not maximum length.)

Company Description (Introduction)

Provide a detailed description of your selected company / brand showing supporting research (at least three sentences in length).

Tell the reader about the company. What are they good at? What is special about them? What do they do that provides a competitive advantage? Consider the questions above in terms of: people, products, financial position, technical and research capabilities, partnership/supply chain relations, and others.

Why is this section so important? To answer this, you need to determine who will read your plan. Are you creating this plan to present to the CEOs of your company to convince them to launch a new product? Are you creating this plan to capture the interest of investors?

Core Products / Services Offered

(Should be one or two paragraphs in length with supporting research.) What needs does the product or service fulfill or what problem does it solve? What is the product offering? What are the features, advantages, and benefits?

Brief History

(Should be one or two paragraphs in length with supporting research) The history looks at the company’s past performance and briefly highlights how a company’s revenue market share has increased over time because of the products or services offered.

Key Current Competitors

Who are competitors? What are they doing? What is their position in the market? How do they compare? Discuss competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. Discuss competitive trends. Take a look at the strengths and weaknesses of each of these (two or three) competitors. Based upon one of these weaknesses, show how your marketing plan topic can take that weakness and create a strength for themselves and a competitive advantage over the competitors.

SWOT Analysis (At least 500 words)

Start with a full introduction paragraph (at least three sentences. Do not use textbook definitions; instead give the reader a preview of your chosen marketing plan topic and what the SWOT analysis will show.) (For each category, identify and describe a minimum of 3 examples (a minimum of 12 in total).

Strengths (Analyzing the strengths of a company’s products or services against other offerings is the first step in the process. What characteristics make its offering attractive to the marketplace? When analyzing the strengths of the company’s offerings, the organization is identifying the characteristics that make it better than the competition.)

Weaknesses (It is also important that the organization identify all of the weaknesses of their offerings. While corporate pride may make this step difficult, it is important that the organization fully understand what the competition, or its customers, may say about its product or service. Every weakness needs to be itemized in order for the company to best position its offering as part of a marketing campaign.)

Opportunities (What are all the possibilities and markets that the company is poised to capture? Perhaps the organization’s offering is less expensive, placing it within the reach of more consumers. A competitor might not have a presence in a particular area, making it easy for the organization to expand into that region. Perhaps another company’s service is not well respected, or its sales staff not liked by retailers, creating a great sales angle. Identifying the opportunities for the company and its offerings as part of this exercise is vital to planning an effective marketing strategy.)

Threats (Just as identifying the company’s weaknesses was not fun, identifying its threats can be equally demoralizing. Stepping outside the company’s public face, it is important to examine all the factors that could cause the strategy to fail. By clearly identifying each threat, the organization has the opportunity to address these areas prior to their becoming tangible.)

Marketing Plan Topic (at least 100 words)

The product or service line you want to develop a marketing plan for and an argument / rationale based upon the SWOT providing evidence for why it warrants marketing investment.

The focus of your marketing plan can be a new and unique product / service idea of your own, a product extension of a current successful product, or an existing product / service that you think deserves its own dedicated campaign or can be marketed to a new target market. Just don’t pick something that you’ve already seen being actively marketed.

Segmentation Approach (at least 75 words)

A market is divided into market segments (for instance if you were going to open a book store, there are many genres of books that you could sell and customers looking for just that genre). Discuss the market segment that you feel fits your product/service best and support your position with research.

Target Market Description (at least one full paragraph)

Who are your customers? Target markets are analyzed based upon demographics. Where do your customers live? It is important to know the country, city, state, region, urban or rural, climate, etc. Why do customers buy? Information that would be good to find out would include social class, lifestyle, attitudes, and personality factors, income level, occupation, level of education, geographic location, family life cycle, cultural background, attitudes, life style, purchasing characteristics, etc.

(Try to find some industry research statistics (look on the census website or smallbizresearch.org for other sources). Think of a similar topic magazine that is currently being published. Go to their website and look for their media package. This usually contains statistics for their target market.)

It is very important to identify and describe in great detail who is your target customer. To sell to customers, you need to know the customers and why they buy. Because you are on a limited budget with limited resources and time, you need to focus your energy on a specific primary target market and possibly a small number of secondary markets.

Positioning Statement (at least one full paragraph)

What opinions does your audience already have about this type of product? Is there a gap in the consumers' needs that this product can fill? Is there a specific application that your product fits very well? Can you base the position on the uniqueness of the product, the product quality, or the pricing strategies? Is it possible to position your product based upon opportunities you found after research? (Support your assertions with outside research.)

Marketing Mix

Start with a topic specific introduction paragraph (avoid textbook definitions). The concept is simple. Think about another common mix - a cake mix. All cakes contain eggs, milk, flour, and sugar. However, you can alter the final cake by altering the amounts of mix elements contained in it. So for a sweet cake add more sugar. Introduce this section here. (Address each “P” (product, place, price, promotion) of the marketing mix separately, explain your choices, and support them with research. This is the heart of your plan.)

Product

What is the customer looking for in a product or service? What needs does this product satisfy or What problem does it solve for the customers? What features should the product have to satisfy the consumers’ needs? How and where will the customer use it?

Place (Channels of Distribution)

Does your company sell using a single distribution channel or does your company need to use other distribution channels like wholesalers, distributors, the internet, catalogs, a sales team, a consultant, a dealer, or a sales agent. Does your company manufacture the product or do they purchase the product for resale?

Price

What value does the product/service offer the customer? Are there established price points already established in this market? What is the optimal price that will help gain market share, but yet still maintain the desired profit? How do your prices compare with your competitors?

Promotion

What is the best way to get your messages across to your target customers? What media should you use to reach your audience? What is your media plan? When is the best time or best season? What are the competitors doing for promotion?

So you have done all this planning, but if you do not have a strong message strategy, your efforts will not succeed. What benefits does your product or service offer your target market? Why would these target customers care about your company and their products and services? You could think of the message strategy as detailed recipe for all your marketing communication. Having a clearly defined message strategy will make it easier to deliver the same message across all your marketing media. Consistent marketing communication of the same message is necessary for successful marketing.

Success Metrics (at least 100 words)

Discuss at least 3 measurable metrics you might analyze to evaluate the success of your plan.

This process assists the marketing managers by guiding their marketing efforts within parameters established by the environment and internal resources. The control function should be placed on high importance, as it does not only control and evaluate activity, but it assists managers in developing their skills in order to provide sound management of this function.

International Considerations (at least 100 words)

Identify at least 3 business or sociocultural considerations in translating your marketing plan for use in a foreign market.

The same promotions set up for U.S. markets may not be as effective in other countries. Cultures, religion, and laws vary between countries. For instance, some words and colors used in marketing can be offensive in some countries. Logistics and costs of doing business outside the U.S. require specific marketing planning and cost evaluation.

Conclusion (at least 50 words)

Summarize your plan and provide evidence showing why it deserves to be funded. Your conclusion must reaffirm the importance of the success of your Marketing Plan topic.

References (at least three outside research source – more would be better)

BizStats. (2019). Free Business Statistics and Financial Ratios. Retrieved from: http://www.bizstats.com/.

Census.gov. (2019). Browse by Topic. Retrieved from: https://www.census.gov/

Delotte. (2019). Industry Outlooks. Retrieved from: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/outlooks/industry-outlooks.html

ESRI. (2019). Tapestry Segmentation: Explore Your Neighborhood. Retrieved from: https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/tapestry-segmentation/zip-lookup

Gaebler.com. (2019). Welcome Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners. Retrieved from: http://www.gaebler.com/.

GeoLytics. (2019). Zip Code Demographics. Retrieved from: https://www.geolytics.com/resources/zip-code-demographics.html

IBIS World. (2019). Industry Solutions. Retrieved from: https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-trends/

Long, V. (2019). Small Biz Resources. Retrieved from: http://vickilong.com/resources/

MarketResearch.org. (2019). Market Research Reports and Industry Analysis. Retrieved from: https://www.marketresearch.com/

Strategy&PWC.com. (2019). 2019 Industry Trends. Retrieved from: https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/industry-trends

White, S. (2019). Principles of marketing (2nd ed.). Retrieved from https://ashford.content.edu