CAPU5DS? WHO WOULD RESPONED TO THIS PERSON

Hello Professor and class,

Marketing strategy- Consulting Firm

This marketing plan aims to elucidate the marketing strategy and implementation plan for a startup consulting firm with an objective of providing consulting services to the small struggling businesses of the area of operations of the consulting firm. The initial target clients have been mentioned as the local business because of the small scale of initial applications and learning curve involved in the process. After satisfying small companies, the firm can actually aim to provide its services to bigger organization.

Marketing Mix

Product

The company aims to offer consulting to the small and medium organization’s in the areas of finance and marketing. The firm has expert professionals having professional experiences in renowned organization’s as well as business management graduates from reputed business schools. This ensures a very good mix of theoretical framework application along with the practical solutions to the problems in management. The firm also ensures end to end solution with future road map to every client and promises to provide any services required with respect to the initial requirement over a certain period of time.

Price

The prices of the services are decided based on the level of effort time and complexity estimation of the experts for a particular assignment or problems solving. This ensures that the prices are not only in line with the competitors but also are rational with respect to the requirements of the clients. Most of the services come with complementary features and assistance for old clients which makes them value for money solutions.

Place

The distribution of the services is done at the client’s premises. The consulting includes following basic steps which are applicable to almost every kind of problem. The first step is to meet the client for the requirement gathering and problem identification long with the symptoms. Then the client’s organization is visited to gather the various elements and variables which are playing roles and are important to solve the problem. After that the solution and implementation plan along with the strategic measures is advised to the client. The time period for this depends upon the magnitude of problem. The firm is responsible for the strategy implementation and the feedback processes and monitoring of the solution and hence the client is ensured of the complete solution.

Promotion

The promotion of the services will be done across channels which will comprise of following channels:

1.      Direct marketing: Emails, brochures and mail pamphlets

2.      Print Advertising: Print ads and advertorials in the business and management magazines

3.      Online marketing: The viral marketing tools will be utilized to connect to the clients on the social networking websites and user generated content websites.

4.      Billboards: This is a very important way to make its presence felt across region so as to reach maximum number of people in the target market. This will make sure the site of availability along with the top of the mind recall in the client’s mind.

Implementation Plan

Budget and forecasting: The consulting firm aims to forecast its revenue from its services for the first quarter at one million USD and according to that will have advertising expense as 3 percent of this targeted figure and thus will spend approximately thirty thousand dollars on the integrated marketing communications across channels.

Channels expenses:

·         Direct marketing: 10 thousand

·         Bill boards: 10 thousand

·         Online marketing: 5 thousand

·         Print advertisements: 5 thousand

Analysis: The return on investment will be calculated after the revenue for a particular quarter is realized. Later following measures of sales performance will be applied in order to find out the effectiveness of the various means of communications.

a)      Lead to conversion ratio: number of actual sales made with respect to the number of customers who contacted the firm for information.

b)      Sales per employee: this will measure the effectiveness of the sales force

c)      Sales per client: this will be done to know the time and effort spent as compared to the total sales made.

Forecasting for the next quarter: This will be done to ensure that the sales targets are realistic and not relaxed. The aim is to surpass the targets achieved in the previous quarter.

Monitoring: The employees and the sales figures will be monitored on weekly basis on order to review the actual numbers achieved with respect to the parameters discussed in the analysis section.

References

http://www.sba.gov/

Assael, H., Reed, P. and Patton, M. (1995) Marketing: Principles and Strategy Harcourt-Brace, Sydney.

Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., Brown, L., Chandler, S. A. (1998), Marketing, (4th edn), Prentice Hall, Sydney.