Incorporate the concepts you have learned throughout the course to create a formal marketing plan. The marketing plan will consist of a 20-35 slide PowerPoint deck on a selected product or service. The Marketing Plan should be targeted to an executive audience or a potential investor. Use each week's study of principles and concepts to begin drafting your marketing plan as you progress through the course.
Step 1: Select a product or service and submit your choice by the end of week 2
Select a product or service that you can obtain sufficient marketing information on, or if you are interested in starting your own business, you may elect to present a product or service that you intend to personally market.
If you decide to use a nationally recognized product/service, you may incorporate their existing marketing campaigns into your plan; however, you must add your own marketing communications ideas as well. If you work for a small organization that does not have a formal marketing plan, you may use this opportunity to develop one.
Step 2: Conduct a situational analysis
Research and apply the weekly concepts to your chosen product or service to complete a situational analysis and begin developing your marketing plan. Analyze the company's website, social media outlets, and other external sources for information. You may want to interview a company representative. Marketing plans based solely on information found on the company's website will be incomplete and unsatisfactory.
Marketing Plan Slides
Use the following outline to build your Marketing Plan.
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Executive Summary
o Create a high-level summary of the plan's content and purpose.
Description of Product/Service
o What is it, what does it do?
o Who owns it?
o What Product Life Cycle stage is it in?
Value Proposition
o Why would a customer buy it?
o What is the value that it delivers?
o Create a 2-3 sentence value proposition statement encompassing information above.
This statement is used for marketing messaging campaigns.
Features and Benefits
o Create a list of features and benefit to customer.
o What markets are currently targeted? What is recommended? (Support with research) o What approach is being taken (undifferentiated, differentiated, concentrated, or micromarketing)?
Competitive Analysis
o Who are major competitors - pricing, features, benefits, differentiators, target markets?
o Compare your product/service to major competitors.
o Suggestion: create a table with comparative competitive information (include your product at the top); on the next slide, provide overview bullet points analyzing what the comparative information shows.
SWOT Analysis
o Refer to the SWOT analysis instructions in your textbook.
Marketing Objectives
o What are the current marketing objectives, or what are your suggested objectives? (e.g. build brand awareness, increase market share, capture a new target market, increase revenues, etc.)
Measure
o How will your objectives be measured?
Pricing Strategy
o Identify the price for your product/service.
o Explain why the price better supports the marketing objectives.
Target Markets
o What are the target markets? Explain.
o Should current target markets be expanded? Explain.
Distribution Strategy
o Do you recommend direct channel, indirect channel, or multiple channels? o Do you recommend intensive, selective, or exclusive distribution and why?
Marketing Promotion (try to use a combination of traditional and contemporary tools) o List promotion ideas that support marketing objective(s).
o Which tools will be used to deliver promotion initiatives?
o Align promotion initiatives to appropriate target markets.
o Which initiatives should be included in each stage of the Product Life Cycle?
Budget
o Estimate the cost of the marketing campaign.
o Create a marketing budget. Allocate the appropriate cost to each initiative.