Marketing plan

Treat your final plan as if you are submitting it to, or in, your real company…everything counts:

• Layout
• Spelling
• Clear sentences
• Original thinking
• Correct citations if needed.

For your Final Marketing Plan, use these exact headers, and write the answers below it.

Headers

• Company Name
• Marketing Management Plan Purpose
• Company Vision (Customer Pain Point)
• Brand Story
• Marketing Values
• Customer Segments
• Target Market
• Product/Service Position
• Marketing Messaging
• Marketing Media
• Marketing Mix
• Key Marketing Decisions
• Marketing Metrics
• Customer Needs Recognition
• Market Analysis
• Customer Marketing Assumptions
• Product Lifecycle
• Market Disruption (Crossing the Chasm)
• Integrated Marketing Campaign
• Marketing Services
• Global Marketing

Detailed Description 

COMPANY NAME

Write down the name of your company.

MARKETING MANAGEMENT PLAN PURPOSE 

Describe who your Marketing Management Plan is for, and what they will know that they didn’t know before reading your Marketing Management Plan.

We will create a final template, and you will fill out a new part of the plan each week. At the end, you will submit the final copy of your complete plan.

COMPANY VISION 

For this class, your vision in your customer pain point. We will talk about you when you define your brand, but for now, stick to customer pain identification.

Write down a first draft of your company vision. Your vision should be a short sentence or two that describes how the world will be different because your company exists. In other words, the impact on the world that you want to have with your company.

Vision = After You – Before You = Impact

Marketing: Company Brand Story

Write down your company brand story. Make it short and sweet…specifically:

• What you do
• Who you do it for
• What makes you different

MARKETING: VALUES

Write down at least three values that your team should use as decision making tools.

What is most important to you in making decisions and in what order?

Imagine that you are writing down instructions for achieving the three top priorities of for your company. Now imagine that after writing your values, that you leave for three months. Will your employees do the right things to achieve your top values?

MARKET SEGMENTATION: CRITERIA

WRITE DOWN AT LEAST THREE CONSUMER GROUPS THAT YOU BELIEVE WILL BUY YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE AND SORT THEM IN GROUPS (SEGMENTS) BY ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING:

• Where they are (location)
• Who they are (demographics)
• What they like (psychographics)
• How they behave (Behavior)

You will prove one answer for each group. The answer will be based on one or more criteria.

MARKET SEGMENTATION: TARGETING

WRITE DOWN THE SEGMENT, THAT YOU WILL FOCUS ON FIRST (TARGET) AND WHY SUCH AS:

• They will spend more money
• They are easer to reach
• You already have a media channel to them
• They already show the biggest input
• They are more likely to tell others
• Other

MARKETING BRAND POSITIONING: MARKET POSITION

WRITE DOWN WHAT YOUR BRAND POSITION IS RELATIVE TO YOUR COMPETITION. EX.

• Easier
• Faster
• Cheaper
• More reliable
• Last Longer

Ex: We keep track of your customer and business interactions like the SAP Enterprise Resource Planning System, only without the high staff overhead to run and maintain it.

MARKETING: MESSAGE

Write down at least three most important messages to your target market. Remember that your target market is motivated by”

• Fear
• Guilt
• Greed
• Exclusivity
• Social acceptance (“everyone in this group is doing it”)

You can create your USP (Unique Selling Position) with this template:

• Narrowly defined positioning.
• Meaningful specifics.
• Guarantee

Examples:

• § “Fresh Hot Pizza Delivered in 30 Minutes or Less” – Domino’s Pizza

“Where it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight” – FedEx.

“We’re number two. We try harder.” Avis

“The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand.” – M&M

“A diamond is forever.” – De Beer’s

• § benefit that is a promise with meaningful specifics – with a guarantee. If you define your USP narrowly, it will give you a stronger appeal. Meaningful specifics mean that you specify the benefit. Look at Domino’s example: They are not going to deliver your pizza “sometime” but within 30 minutes. It has a specific timeframe. They are taking two benefits that are what clients hate about delivered pizza. They hate it when it’s cold, and they hate it when it’s late.

You need to have meaningful specifics in your USP.  The meaning will be a benefit to your ideal customer, client or patient.

The last part is a guarantee. If you can guarantee an outcome that your ideal prospect will love, use that in your USP.

MARKETING: MEDIA

Write down at least three media channels that are most important to your target market and why. Examples include:

• Blogs
• Social Media (which social media specifically)
• Trade Shows
• Email
• Magazines
• TV Shows
• Public Relations (getting others to talk about you…who and where)
• Email
• Search Engine Marketing
• Search Networks (Pay per Click)
• Display Networks (Banner Ads)
• Speaking Opportunities
• Awards & Recognition
• Sponsorships
• Direct Mail
• Content Marketing (video, articles, YouTube channels…)

Specify whether your choices are Owned Media, Paid Media, or Earned Media

MARKETING: MARKETING MIX

Write down what is most important to your target market about your marketing mix:

• Product (Features, benefits, design…)
• Price 
• Place (where and how they buy)
• Promotion
• increase awareness
• create interest
• generate sales
• create brand loyalty (separate yourselves from others)

Planning: Marketing Decisions

For one of your marketing objectives write down three decisions that as a manager you will have to make.

Ensure for your decision that you have widened your options as described in the decisive video in the simCEO resources folder (https://youtu.be/eY3ivHv7J7s).

Examples could include:

• What is the best marketing media channel to reach our target market?
• How do I organize my marketing team most effectively to grow our market the fastest.
• What processes should we put in place to most effectively do market analysis.

Planning: Marketing Metrics 

As a manager, you will need to create metrics to measure whether you will reach your goal.

Write down a one goal, one lag metric to achieve that goal, and at least one LEAD metric. (the LEAD/LAG Measurement video in the simCEO resources, https://youtu.be/Dwpak1IzYj8, might help).

Example include:

• Increase customer engagement
• Lag measurement: # likes on Facebook
• Lead measurement: number of company Facebook posts
• Book more appointments
• Lag measurement: #sales appointments booked
• Lead Measurement: #leads on website.
• Open new target market
• Lag measurement: # of new people on our email list
• Lead measurement: # of initial email sent to new people.

Customer Behavior: Needs Recognitions

Write down how your target market recognized that they have a challenge that needs to be solved using your product or service such as:

• online dating is how you meet people
• good parents give their children an advantage with pre-school
• eye glasses cost too much

Ex.

• They hear about the problem from a friend
• They watch a talk show on TV
• A celebrity tells them in a commercial
• Social media leader
• Hear it at school
• Go to an event
• Event happens to them
• something breaks
• Find out how hard it is to get something done when they try to deal with a problem
• Read article

Customer Behavior: Assumptions

Selling your product or service requires that you make assumptions. Write down three assumptions that you are making when you sell, or are going to sell your product or service.

Ex.

• Customers will use a mobile app
• Customers prefer buying using credit
• Customers will buy more online than in a store
• Customers will not buy without delivery included
• Customers will pay more for higher quality

Marketing Research: Market Analysis

Write down a major question that you need answered using research in order to plan your marketing, and before you make customer assumptions.

Ex.

• where does my target market live
• where does my target market get its news from
• How much will my customers pay for my product
• What or who does my customers identify with when looking for answers to problems

Product Planning: Product Life Cycle

Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B3Mu8dqXlE, and write down where in the product lifecycle, your product is.

If applicable, write down the most important thing that you need to focus on to be ready for the next step.

Product Planning: Crossing the Chasm

Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-97AXOPzJo and, if your company is launcing something that is new and innovative that requires significant change for your customers, write down whether your customer are:

• Innovators
• Early Adopters
• Early Majority
• Late Majority
• Laggards

If applicable, write down the most important thing that you will need to do to be ready for the next step.

Communications: Integrated Marketing Campaign

Marketing Managers think in terms of putting multiple pieces together in a way that has a greater impact than the individual pieces alone.

Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6WF0O1Mnvk and write down at least three components of an Integrated Marketing Campaign. Your IMC can include components such as:

• Event (ex. tradeshow, conference, meetup, sports)
• Online (ex. social media post, webinar that you could do, event that you could live stream)
• Email (ex. an email topic that you could send)
• Direct Mail (ex. flyer, postcard, letter)
• Promotion/Offer (ex. an offer that you could make)
• PR (ex. endorsement or joint venture with someone well known)
• Partner (ex. an event or campaign that you could do with another organization).

Services:

Write down a service that you could add to your portfolio. Remember that services are:

• Intangible. You cannot hold or touch a service unlike a product.
• Can’t see it, feel it, and even test it prior to purchase.
• Inseparable. Services cannot be separated from the service provid
• provided and consumed at the same time in the same location
• Perishable: Can’t be stored and sold the following day or at some other time
• Variable: The more your business relies on humans to provide services (instead of automation), the more susceptible you are to variability.

While manager focus on process improvement for product, manager focus on consistency for services.

Write down specifically what you believe that customers will expect. Wordslike quality or ease are NOT specific enough.

What specifically will you do to maintain and measure consistency of service?

Global Marketing

In taking your company global, what specific issues will you have, if any with:

• Demand
• Are there any cultural, political or regional issues that would make your product undesirable
• ex. religious rules, nationalism
• Affordability
• Can a significant part of your global market afford your product?
• Access
• Do distribution, infrastructure, legal, or staffing issues impact your product.
• Branding
• Does your brand work as is, or do you need to modify your brnd to fit multiple countries?