Week 3 Marketing Plan Opportunity – Approval
To stay on track and have a quality marketing plan completed on time, these tasks should be completed this week:
- Choose one of the opportunities from your list so that the marketing plan becomes focused. Factors to consider when making the choice include how quickly you can get to market, how big the potential market could be (Ch. 3) and how interested consumers will be in the new product, service or event (Ch. 4). Submit one paragraph describing this opportunity to me for my approval prior to continuing with your marketing plan.
- Segment the market using the concepts you learned last week (Ch. 9) and select one or more segments to target. Make sure you can articulate the needs of this market segment. (No submission necessary)
(This part is the part that needs to be done until Sunday)
You are a busy Chief Marketing Officer, but you realize that in just three weeks you will have to present your first marketing plan, so you continue to move forward. You’ve identified your opportunity and developed a marketing strategy, segmented your market, identified a profitable target market to pursue and have a good understanding of the market needs. Week three introduced you to the concepts of product and service differentiation and the process for new product introduction. In week four you should start to apply these concepts by designing the specific product and service attributes which will attract customers to your new product. Your marketing plan will be about 50% of the way to completion, once the product or service attributes are defined.
Only two weeks to go until your marketing plan is due to management (me), but since you have been working on it since week one, you know that you have nothing to worry about. There are several tasks that you should complete this week.
- Develop an initial pricing proposal.
- Decide on your marketing channels.
- Decide on your communications mix.
Be sure that all of your decisions can be defended with theory taken from Kotler & Keller or other relevant marketing references. You do not have to submit anything this week with regard to the marketing plan, but you should be moving forward in the process and should be completing these three steps this week.
This week, when thinking about your marketing plan, you should be working on your first year’s income statement. This income statement should be prepared for each quarter of the year, and should include gross revenues, cost of goods sold, gross profit, operating expenses which include marketing expenses such as selling and advertising and any development expenses that could be incurred, and finally operating profit. It is not necessary to estimate taxes or show net profit. Your income statement need only reflect the INCREMENTAL improvements in income that your marketing plan will contribute to your publicly traded firm. In other words, if your firm has an annual operating profit of $10,000,000.00 and your marketing plan will add $1,000,000 operating profit, you can show only the $1,000,000. The most important aspect of this part of your marketing plan is developing your forecast, so be sure to review the techniques for forecasting that were covered in Ch. 3.
A well written marketing plan upon which an organization can execute is the concluding project for this course. Your marketing plan will be based on a real life, publicly traded company. You will take on the role of CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER for this company. In your new “job” you will conduct a SWOT analysis based on public information, develop a list of ORIGINAL marketing recommendations, and selecting one recommendation, write an implementation plan, including follow up metrics. You may consider a marketing plan on any of the following topics
- Introduction of a new product
- Introduction of a new service
- Expanding an existing product to an entirely new buyer segment
- Expanding an existing product to an entirely new geographic market
This is NOT a research paper that documents the current marketing activities of your target firm.
The assignment is to be completed in POWERPOINT, as most organizations today use this format for marketing plan communication with management. A template and rubric have been attached as a resource.
Format – PowerPoint slides and discussion presented via Kaltura
Timing – 5 minutes
Submit electronic copy and video at the assignment link.
I recommend the following slides are included:
- 4 content slides (without cover page or ending page). Slides must include at least 3 of the following: graphs, tables, photos, video, and text.
- Company Summary and SWOT
- Market Strategy Recommendation
- One detailed element of the marketing plan (e.g., if a new market segment – which one and why, how does research support it? If a new product or service – discuss one of the 4 P’s
- Financial projection
The grade for the presentation will be included in the grade for the Marketing Plan Submission.
