Final marketing plan

Assignment: Product/Audience Match Strategy

Due at end of term as part of Final Marketing Yourself Plan

As explained in the PDF reading “Matching the Product with the Audience When Marketing

Yourself,” it’s critical to understand your product (i.e., your skills, attributes, personality, core

values, etc.) and to determine and understand your target audiences (i.e., potential employers,

colleagues, customers, career gatekeepers, etc.).

For this assignment, you’ll work to outline your potential target audiences, determine what those

audiences desire, and then decide how you’ll match your product with your target audiences. Using

either a paragraph, outline, or table format, do the following:

1. List Current Audiences. List various audiences (at least 8) to whom you currently market yourself on a daily, weekly, or other periodic basis. These might include potential

employers, current employers, friends, family, teachers, various societal segments, social

groups, customers, colleagues, employees, store personnel, vendors/suppliers, social media

audiences, etc. Don’t forget that these audiences might be face-to-face, online, over the

phone, etc. For each audience, be extremely specific as to who this audience is. Don’t just

say “store employees” when you can say “the early morning employees at the Starbucks that

I go to every weekday.” Don’t just say “my co-workers” when you can say “my co-workers

Cristina, Derek, and Victoria who work in the cubicles next to mine.”

2. Importance of Current Audiences. For each of the 8+ current audiences, provide some insights as to why each particular audience might be important to you in your marketing

yourself efforts. How can impressing each particular audience help you?

3. What Current Audiences Want From You. Finally, for each of the 8+ current audiences you listed, write down at least three characteristics (features, attributes, skills, traits, values, etc.)

that they would desire in a person such as you. Although there may be some similar traits or

characteristics across the audiences you listed, each audience likely will desire some unique

characteristics as well.

4. List Prospective Audiences. Your next step is to add at least three new “prospective” target audiences to whom you would like to market yourself in the near or distant future. Again,

they can be potential employers in a particular industry, friends, social groups, customers,

fans, readers, etc. While it’s good to be specific as to the industry, type of people, etc., you

don’t have to be as specific as you were in Step 1 because you may not know the details of

these audiences yet.

5. Importance of Prospective Audiences. As you did in Step 2 with your “current” audiences, for each of the 3+ “prospective” audiences, provide some insights as to why each particular

audience might be important to you in your future marketing yourself efforts. How can

impressing each particular audience help you?

6. What Prospective Audiences Want From You. For each of the 3+ “prospective” target audiences, write down at least three characteristics (features, attributes, skills, traits, values,

etc.) that they would desire in a person such as you. Because you may not really know these

audiences very well, you may end up estimating this section more than the other ones.

Nevertheless, consider what characteristics would be important to each audience.

7. Product/Audience Match. Now consider how well you’re matching your Product You with the desired attributes of the (at least 8) current audiences and the (at least 3) prospective

audiences that you listed. Discuss the matches as well as the discrepancies (the instances in

which you don’t match).

8. Changing Product You. Discuss what you can do to have a better match between your various target audiences and the product (set of attributes, traits, etc.) that you’re offering.

How can you change your Product You as well as your Personal/Professional Brand to

better market yourself to these various audiences? In essence, this section consists of a set

of self-improvement recommendations.

After conducting this exercise, write up your results using the following guide:

1. Cover Page: Name, Panther ID, Major, Minor, Certificate(s), Assignment Title 2. Introduction: Discuss the purpose for a Product/Audience Match. 3. Product/Audience Match Analysis: This is where you’ll put the analysis from the eight

steps above.

4. Synthesis and Summary: Discuss what you learned from this exercise. What did you learn about target marketing? What did you learn about your own audiences? What did you learn

about yourself? Synthesize your learning from the various parts of the assignment and

create a summary that you can review in the future.

At the end of the term, submit the final assignment as a Word or PDF file (PDF is strongly

preferred) with Times New Roman 12-point font, single-spaced (with spacing between sections

and/or paragraphs as desired), appropriate headings and subheadings, and page numbering.

Grading Criteria:

 Directions were followed.

 Information is presented clearly.

 All sections/steps/parts are included.

 A thoughtful set of recommendations are presented.

 If used, charts, graphs, figures, and/or bullet points are used appropriately.

 Proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation

 Proper formatting, appropriate page length to complete the assignment

 No plagiarism, copying, or cheating

 Note that “A” grades are for “outstanding” work, not for work that only meets or somewhat exceeds minimum requirements.