Digital Marketing Plan D
Marketing Plan
Professor:
September 17, 2022
Executive Summary
MSH is introducing a new product line in its production and sales. The gap between pet owners' demands and supply is notable globally. The company intends to fill the gap through research and development. The process is meant to find a solid solution to the issue facing pet owners. By doing this, the company will increase its customer base and loyal consumers. This will help accomplish the company's corporate objective to increase its market share and become the industry leader globally.
Business Context
The name of the new product by the company is MSH Natural, while its brand name is MSH Brand. It is a product meant for pets, especially dogs and cats. The food product aims to improve the overall health of pets. In other words, the product will offer a balanced supply of vital animal nutrients, thereby enhancing the growth and development of pets and stabilizing their general health. The product's features are meant for the premium category due to its quality content. It brings happiness to both the pets and the pet owners. The primary reason for the company to introduce the new product line follows the gap that emerged after the increase in pet keeping. The Company intended to fill the gap by introducing a solution to pet owners. The corporate objective for introducing the product line was to increase its profit earning through increased sales, widening its market share by creating customers. In general, the corporate objective of MSH is to use the new product line to its competitive advantage to win a larger share in the pet food market.
Situation Analysis
SWOT Analysis
Strengths: most notably, MSH is a well-recognized brand, especially in the developed markets where most people have developed an interest in keeping pets. Besides, the company currently has a stable market share in the regions of its operations. It looks forward to using the new product to boost its market share. Moreover, the company has talented and skilled individuals capable of conducting effective research and development programs. Such talented individuals will play a vital role in improving its visibility and credibility by offering quality products to consumers.
Weaknesses: one of the company's limitations is its absence in many parts of the globe. Recently, the company's presence is based in the United States and relatively in Canada but lacks in potential markets such as those of the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia. It needs consideration of investing in such markets to increase its global market share of pet food products.
Opportunities: Currently, the interest in keeping pets in homes has increased in developed countries leading to the chance of market availability of the company's products and services. Pet owners are faced with the challenge of keeping their pets healthy, increasing the demand for the company's new product line. Also, the industry is forcing industry marketers to be more creative to curb the needs of the vulnerable types of pet breeds. The company already has talented and highly skilled personnel to offer a solid solution to the pet owners' demands.
Threats: market risks is a potential threat the company may face. Many parts of the world, including the developed nations, are facing economic pitfalls like recessions following numerous factors such as the recent covid-19 pandemic and regional wars that destabilize global finance. Therefore, the company risks failing to reach its target sales as the spending power of consumers declines.
PESTEL Analysis
The principal targeted market for the company includes developed nations, specifically pet owners. This includes individuals interested in keeping their pets in good health shape. The number of people interested in keeping pets, primarily dogs and cats, in their homes has increased over the decades. Currently, the availability of the global market for the company's new product is anonymous, thereby strengthening the company's product portfolio.
Political factor also plays a crucial role in the company's new product line. As the company expands its operations in other foreign nations, they are more likely to encounter political factors such as licensing, political stability and corruption levels in such countries. Also, the company may face social factors whereby specific demography might oppose the new product due to conflict in cultural norms (Saura, Palos-Sanchez & Correia, 2019). Technology, on the other hand, will favor the company's operations provided it has one of the most talented and skilled groups of research and development teams. Moreover, as an interest in keeping pets continues to spread across the globe, more new entries are entering the market, causing significant competition. Currently, the major players in the pet food industry include Nestle Purina PetCare, Hill's Pet Nutrition, J.M. Smucker and General Mills. The company is considering specific strategic plans to become a leader in the list.
Marketing Strategy
The company's choice of marketing strategy is based on its objectives of leading the pet food products and services industry. The primary aim of the entity is to create a distinction between its products and services and those of its major rivals. Moreover, it will locate its stores in regions with potential consumers; areas with many potential pet owners. It invests more in online operations to increase its customer base from all parts of the world. MSH will further base its competitive positioning on quality or prestige-based to target premium consumers. These are customers with interest in quality over price. Through differentiation strategy, it intends to target such a specific segment of the audience by offering them two types of MSH Brand, including MSH Natural for Dogs and MSH Natural for Cats. These products have unique and distinctive features from other companies' pet food items.
Marketing Tactics
Promotional Strategy
The company will base its promotion efforts on online operations. As a result of advanced technology influence, more contemporary customers have a preference for purchasing products and services via online platforms. It will design its website platform where customers can view and pay for the products and get their orders delivered to them in a reasonable time. Also, it will use social media platforms for advertising the product to the global market, thereby increasing its sales and market share.
Pricing Strategy
MSH will apply two pricing strategies in two distinct stages of product awareness creation. During the first stage, it will deploy a penetration pricing strategy. It is a strategy that aims at offering attractive prices for products and services to attract the attention of many customers (Thabit & Raewf, 2018). The approach will increase the entity's customer base to boost its sales and revenues, especially in foreign markets. Later on, the company will deploy a value-based pricing approach. It is a pricing approach that aims at offering prices that reflects the value customers obtain from a product or service. The strategy will play a significant role in customer segmentation by focusing on premium consumers.
Distribution Strategy
The company will utilize direct distribution when delivering its new product to its destined consumers. The approach focuses on delivering products and services directly to the end-user without involving intermediate. The primary purpose of using the approach is to retain the quality and value of the product as intended when reaching its destinations. Also, the company will use the method to create brand awareness by sending specific messages and receiving first-hand customer feedback. As a result, it will be able to improve the products further following customer feedback to increase its popularity and loyal customer base. Retaining such customers will guarantee the company ready market over its regions of operations.
Advertising Strategy
Most of the company's advertisements will be made through social media platforms as these are platforms with a substantial number of potential customers. Social media is the best advertising approach to create product awareness for a larger population of potential customers (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). The company will run more of the new product adverts on social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to capture as many potential customers as possible.
Effectiveness
MSH will utilize three key metrics to measure the effectiveness of the new product line. The metrics include the conduction of analysis regarding the new customers' rate, the sales volume and impression metric. Based on the analysis of new customers, the company will apply the approach of aggressive advertising and promotion to evaluate the rate of new customers visiting its stores from each location. The scale will include customers who show interest in the new pet food product. Also, the company's management will evaluate the market plan's effectiveness by measuring the workforce's anticipation. For instance, if its employees increase by about ten per cent since the plan was implemented, this will indicate its effectiveness.
The sales volumes, on the other hand, will help to measure the monthly sales. The tool will evaluate whether there will be any notable changes since the plan's implementation period. For instance, if the company's sales increase to more than 16 per cent over six months, this will prove the plan's effectiveness. The company will use the tool to measure customer responses and feedback regarding the impression metrics. The tool will help the management evaluate the feedback in terms of whether the product delivers the customer's needs and where improvement may be required.
Summary
The marketing plan of MSH will focus on increasing its global market share in the pet food products and services industry. The new production line will improve the company's product portfolio. It will maximize the company's profitability by raising sales and revenues. This is by attracting more loyal customers and increasing the global customer base from foreign markets. Following the five "Ps" of marketing, the company will categorize its products into the premium category of items due to their quality features. It will first deploy a penetration pricing approach to create awareness of the new product and then apply value-based pricing to premium consumers.
References
Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2019). Digital marketing: strategy, implementation & practice. Pearson uk.
Saura, J. R., Palos-Sanchez, P. R., & Correia, M. B. (2019). Digital marketing strategies based on the e-business model: Literature review and future directions. Organizational transformation and managing innovation in the fourth industrial revolution, 86-103.
Thabit, T., & Raewf, M. (2018). The evaluation of marketing mix elements: A case study. International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies, 4(4).
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