Marketing Plan

Entrepreneurial Marketing Plan

Instructor: Dr. Hernan Riquelme

Course Code: MRKT401

Submitted By:……………………….

Date: …………..

1.0 Introduction (here you will provide a description of your business). Explain what type of business you will implement in the marketing plan (e.g. a [café, restaurant, etc] located in [area, city]….., in what industry or sector (e.g. restaurant and catering; construction; transportation; retailing; accommodation; education; arts, entertainment and recreation; etc.)

2.0 The Marketing Opportunity (in this section you will explain briefly, providing arguments to support why your business constitute a business opportunity. See the example I explained in the document Summary of FrontalLobe).

After carefully presenting the marketing situation, you will use this section to spell out

your marketing opportunity. If the preceding analysis has been well thought out, the

marketing opportunity should be self-evident to everyone who reads the plan. Still, do

not take this for granted and state your case explicitly. This means defining the nature

and scope of the opportunity—“the sweet spot” for your venture. For example, you may

have discovered an underserved market segment in a large growing market that is

dissatisfied with existing alternatives but inclined very favorably, based on your user

research, to purchase your product or service.

3.0 Marketing Objectives

In this section of the marketing plan, you articulate your marketing objectives. The

most common marketing objectives include sales, stated in terms of units sold or

dollars, and market share. Other, more specific objectives are also defined at the

marketing mix level. For example, you might spell out objectives such as brand

awareness levels to achieve through advertising, numbers of channel members carrying

the product, and exact pricing compared to competitors. And remember, these

objectives must be specific and measurable, as well as cover a specified time period.

4.0 Marketing Strategy

4.1 Market Segments

The market segment section provides details on all the customers (major groups or

segments) in the market. You must provide a good description of at least two segments (you may give them a name to each), so it makes sense to talk about targeting in the next section.

See for example the description of two (out of seven segments) in the smartphone market (SOURCE: https://www.marketingcharts.com/industries/media-and-entertainment-39977)

Prodigies (5%)

Some 57% of these smartphone owners say they need to be connected to the internet all day, and 72% access the internet more from their mobile devices than from their computers. Interestingly, these super-connected smartphone owners are 52% more likely than the average to use a non-Android, iOS or Blackberry operating system.

Prodigies’ smartphone use doesn’t drop off overnight nearly as much as the other segments, per Experian. Perhaps they really want to be connected all day – and all night?

Prodigies are almost 10 times more likely than the smartphone owner to be interested in receiving ads on their smartphones and close to 6 times more likely to buy products they see advertised on social media.

· Tribals (13%)

These individuals are “hyperconnected and device agnostic,” and tend to prefer all sorts of media platforms, over-indexing the average smartphone owner in 9 of 10 platforms measured (with newspapers being the sole exception). They’re 51% more likely than the average smartphone user to own an iPhone.

Tribals primarily differ from the other groups in their heavy use of social media (see above chart); despite accounting for 13% of the smartphone population, they represent 20% of those who use Facebook, Foursquare and Pinterest apps.

More than 6 in 10 follow their favorite companies on social media and a comparable amount see social as a platform for recommending products and companies. As for shopping, this group is the most likely to engage in showrooming, but with their affinity for visual social platforms, can be marketed to on the basis of products rather than just pricing.

4.2 Target Market

Here you provide greater detail regarding your target market in terms of who the customers are and why you are targeting them. Again, you need to pinpoint the needs of this target market and how you intend to meet those needs. You should quantify the number of customers you are pursuing, share of market sought, and rationale for the market penetration estimates. For example, if you are targeting eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old women attending college in Boston, you need to spell out the total size of this target market and the percentage of this target market you intend to capture. The market value of the target market should also be spelled out (e.g., annual dollar purchase) and how much of that total market value you intend to obtain.

4.3 Positioning

Also remember from Chapter 5 that positioning can be considered your “value

proposition” or “marketing promise” to the customer. It is critical to link the needs of

your target market to your positioning strategy. Importantly, your positioning must

distinguish you from your competitors, and it must be valuable and meaningful to your

target market. For example, Wal-Mart positions itself as the low-price leader, Volvo

positions itself as the safest automobile, and Diet Coke is positioned as the best-tasting

diet cola on the market. Finally, it is also critical that your entire marketing effort

(including all elements of the marketing mix—discussed in the next section) be built to

support the chosen positioning.

5.0 Marketing Mix

With your target market and positioning clearly mapped out, you must now detail your

marketing mix. If you have a product-based venture, your mix will consist of 5.1 product,

5.2 price, 5.3 promotion, 5.4 place, and 5.5 people. If you have a service-based venture, your mix will include product, price, promotion, place, people, 5.6 physical evidence, 5.7 process, and 5.8 productivity. You must clearly outline the exact configuration of each marketing mix element. For example, for “product,” you will outline the product features, brand name, packaging elements, service, warranty, and other components that make up the product. For “promotion,” you will outline your promotional mix (advertising, public

relations, sales promotion, personal selling, and direct marketing) in very specific

detail. You will do the same for all other marketing mix elements. Your goal is to put

together a cohesive mix with all elements mutually reinforcing one another.

6.0 Marketing Budget/Financials

In the marketing budget/financials section of your marketing plan, you must spell out

sales, expenses, and profit levels that can be expected as a result of your marketing

efforts. Specifically, you outline your sales forecast, or a series of sales forecasts,

indicating what you expect to sell under specified conditions for the marketing mix (e.g.,

at what price and with what level of marketing effort) and under specified external

market factors such as competitive response to your market entry. Your budget should

also include a detailed statement of expenses, margins, and profits, at different

estimated sales levels, to account for possible changes in the marketing mix or external

market-related factors. Here you can also provide what is called your “best estimate”

forecast for your financials and one or two other sets of projections based on “what if”

scenarios. For example, to construct your financials, you might use the assumption of

achieving varying levels of market share capture (e.g., 5, 10, and 15 percent). You

would then show the sales, expenses, margins, and profits based on achieving those

various market share levels. You can also present your budgets/financials for various

periods (e.g., one to five years); furthermore, you might present the numbers annually,

by month, by quarter, and so on.

Figure 11.2 provides an example of five-year financials for a new startup gourmet

bakery. It shows just the basics, sales/revenue, costs, and operating profit, but it is

sufficient to show the financial health of the venture over this period.

However, these projections in Figure 11.2 are based on the judgment of the

entrepreneur, as are most projections for almost every other venture. And this is where

problems arise with budgets/financials. I have come to believe that there are simply too

many unknowns to accurately predict sales or profits over a five-year period. In your case, you will prepare only a three-year financial plan.

I see a general tendency to overestimate sales, underestimate expenses, and underestimate the time required to achieve the sales objectives. I also typically see the “time to first dollar” taking much longer than the entrepreneur ever anticipated and the time to break even being chronically underestimated. So, in the end, I tend to see ventures that are underfinanced and suffering cash flow problems very quickly.

Figure 11.2 Five-Year Financial Projections, Gourmet Bakery

So, the message for you is to be creative about different ways to construct your

“numbers” and to honestly map out the assumptions made when doing so. For

example, I know of one firm that uses five different approaches to develop sales

forecasts or projections when opening new outlets for its chain restaurant business. It

has found that the weighted average of the numbers produced by these methods most

accurately predicts sales, expenses, and profits. Keep this in mind when you have to

prepare your numbers and you might find you'll get closer to the “real” numbers your

venture is likely to produce.

7.0 Evaluation and Control

The final section of your plan is the evaluation and control that will be used to monitor

the process of the marketing plan. Typically, with specific marketing objectives having

been spelled out in the plan, the team responsible for the plan will compare the results

of the plan with the marketing objectives to identify any deviations, both negative and

positive. Then, the team must act on those deviations—correcting negative deviations

and exploiting positive ones. In this section you must specify what sources you will look at to evaluate and control your marketing activities. For example, if you said that one of your objectives is to get 10% market share in the first year of operation, you must indicate who, when, and what must be done or where to look to be able to determine if you have achieved the objective. You must evaluate periodically whether you are achieving the objectives and not only at the end of the period where there is no much that can be done.

Marketing Objective	Source (What) you will use evaluate and control	Who (will do the control)	When (in what period)
Sales of 1,000 units
Market share 10%

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