Marketing Plan Presentation

Feedback from Part A

I received both positive and constructive feedback on Part A of my marketing plan, and I plan on using this information to improve my project. My listing of the input is stated below. I am appreciative of the feedback on my project and I will embrace them, especially the constructive critiques to give my paper and plan more structure and foundation as well as improve the content. Below, I will list the feedback and explain how I will apply them to improve on my marketing Plan for Silo Automotive Firm. These include:

i. Introduction: You did not provide a pertinent introduction to your hypothetical company, or your company is not theoretical. It is not clear what your product/service is, and there is no physical location. The contents of your marketing plan were not introduced

ii. Mission Statement: This is a good mission statement, but more rationale was needed. Only four of the five questions in a mission statement were addressed. What does the mission statement convey to consumers/customers as well as internal employees and stakeholders -see the purpose of a mission statement, page 21 of the textbook.

iii. Goals: Your stated goals of revenue, profit, market share, brand awareness or customer acquisition are SMART goals: S. – Specific; M. – Measurable; A. – Assignable; R. – Realistic; T. – Time based. There were no measurements provided for your goals.

iv. Environmental Analysis: All the elements of the environmental analysis were addressed and explained. Good job being thorough and exhibiting an understanding of the environmental factors. Remember that environmental factors are outside of your direct control, but each of these factors influences your business.

v. SWOT Analysis: The SWOT and Needs Analyses are on target and show how your company will fare in the market. Your strengths and weaknesses are internal as you can control them. Your opportunities and threats are derived from the environmental analysis and, while you cannot control them, they can have a direct impact on your hypothetical business

I have learned more work needs to be done on my marketing plan to achieve more clarity, concision, and a detailed plan. I will need to be more attentive to the professional delivery of my company’s brand and use the feedback inputs to improve on how I deliver my message about the branding strategy of the latter. Although the mission statement and the introduction of my plan in the first assignment were not so satisfactory, I will focus on using support shreds of evidence to make sure that my hypothetical company’s marketing plan is as detailed as possible and make the plan more proactive in branding strategy. I am enthusiastic this would be the best marketing plan when best expounded.

Branding strategy: brand name, logo, slogan, and brand extension.

Any branding strategy is vital in ensuring a newly created or existing product/brand is established in a market and grows beside the market saturation with identical and competing products (Kotler & Keller, 2012). Similar to most automotive companies in the industry, Silo Automotive Company engages a variety of branding strategies in the bid of ensuring the company retains a significantly substantive share of the market and allows it to introduce new product lines to the same market with much ease. The branding strategy of SILO is not just to sell its products but also to promote excellent and appealing automotive manufacturing to customers with the need for incorporating technology in their driving life. The consumers, as well as the world, have grown to be environmentally conscious of the energy being used.

Brand Name

In conjunction with the company’s mission statement: “To accelerate the world’s transportation to sustainable energy,” Silo Automotive Company’s brand name comes from the team of engineers and founders. They had envisions of an electric machine identical to those in the market, but more than just creating an electric-powered vehicle that was superior, faster, and more fun to drive in comparison to gasoline cars. “SILO” automotive company is named after Trevor Scott, Ivan Chen, Matthew Long, and Mary L’Oreal. The company can leverage its market presence from its day of incorporation over other newly-established firms and build sufficient brand equity with its key customers being readily available in the market.

Logo and Slogan

Silo Automotive Company has a unique and recognizable logo that makes it easy for customers and potential clients to identify the company and the products. Under the emblem are the company slogan – “Driving your future.” This slogan sends the message that the company is an automotive company that has entirely technological advancement in design, as well as manufacturing of autos that most people believe, will be the face of the world as long as the automobile industry is a concern. The logo and slogan are attractive. Silo produces electric vehicles under the theme of acceleration, world transition, and sustainable energy that can best be defined by technology and appeals to both the primary and secondary target markets. Sporty, luxury, SUV, and other models for the potential customers are embodied in this.

Brand Extension

Silo Auto Co. will take advantage of its robust brand name to introduce a range of sustainable and technological-based luxury line in the market. In using the product extension strategy, the company plans on launching lifestyle and clothing products such as makeup, skincare, perfumes, shoes, sports gear, jewelry, and fashion. The brand extension is another way that the company can use to gain extra profit and increase their revenue. The focus on the sale of extended products will attract more consumers to increase the popularity of the firm in the market and the growing chances of its marketing plan’s success.

The primary and secondary market

The potential customers of Silo will be the mass market. According to Weinstein (2013), the mass market is a “large and undifferentiated consumer market” with highly assorted backgrounds. The strategic focus of Silo is to take a mass-market as its niche market, made of loyal, wealthy consumers with the need for environment-friendly automobiles. The primary target market comprises of segments of identical attributes with the mass markets. The reason behind such a selection for both primary and secondary market is critical to the company.

The primary market for Silo is all areas based on geographical segments, both middle-income and low income market segments (on grounds of demographic segments), undifferentiated consumers in need of environment-friendly cars (on basis of behavioral segmentation) and buyers with preference on automobiles for transportation at an reasonably priced and eco-friendly even without luxury and aesthetics fitting. The secondary target markets for Silo encompasses high-income sectors (on the grounds of demographic dissection) and potential buyers with the preference of environmental preservation identifications based on psychographic segmentation.

More precisely, with regards to geographic segmentation, the market is targeted using a geographic condition like neighborhoods, postal codes, countries, cities, regions, languages, and states. Silo Auto Co. will implement a regional tactic to segregate the worldwide electric automobile market specifically in the U.S, Western and Eastern Europe, Canada, Asia, Australia, and Africa. The company will integrate demographic information with geographic data to fit the product with the market attributes and potentialities.

The demographic segmentation is critical to the automotive industry and embodies income levels, age, gender, religion, and ethnicity that should be considered in segmenting the target market (Cleveland, Papadopoulos, & Laroche, 2011). Silo’s primary demographic variables are segmented on grounds of income levels to include low, middle and high-income segments, which dictate the luxurious electric cars target high-end earing consumers, while affordable ones to be taken to middle and low-end consumers.

The behavioral segmentation approach groups consumer on the ground of the product usage rates, attitude towards product and knowledge, and an indication of how people respond to products as well as loyalty rank and benefits hunted (Cleveland, Papadopoulos, & Laroche, 2011). Silo targets undifferentiated and affluent consumers with significant preference to environment-friendly automobiles. Lastly, psychographic market segmentation concerns itself with the interests, opinions, and consumers’ activities and lifestyles (Cleveland, Papadopoulos, & Laroche, 2011). Silo on these grounds targets consumers who are proud of environmental preservation credentials (high-end consumers).

Positioning Statement

Silo Automobile shall operate under the unequivocal market positioning statement. “SILO surpasses customers’ demands by providing automobiles that accelerates to over 80 km/h within three seconds without any fuel – zero-emission. The automobiles are designed for drivers who keep abreast with innovation, technologies, comfort, and always interested in being ahead of others in the automobile industry.” SILO offers Premium Automotive that accelerates to a top speed of 270km/h in seconds without consuming any fossil fuel. Unlike the strong competitors with quality vehicles like Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi, and Volks Wagon Among others, SILO just as Tesla is a symbol of a new era, generation and technological movement in the automobile industry with the creation of an out of the box automotive.

Figure 1 SILO Auto Positioning statement.

SILO Auto

As illustrated in the perceptual map, it is clear that Mercedes Benz, Audi, Porsche, and BMW are SILO Auto’s most significant competitors in regards to the quality of product and consumers brand loyalty. These automobile companies are leading manufacturer for sporty, luxurious, SUV, and other forms of vehicles with excellent use of automation that are well distributed across the world. These world’s well known and valuable brands hold a large portion of the market share and attract a high number of clients to their offices. Strong brand recognition as most of these companies will allow SILO in a more centralized perspective, and in respect to market segments, to attend to the primary and secondary market (Kotler & Keller, 2012).

Consumer Behavior of the Target Market

The strategy similar to that of Tesla would be to enter a high end of the market where potential customers are ready to pay a premium and venture into the low-income market to sell higher volumes at lower prices with each successive model manufactured by the company. As people assume various classes personalizing their experiences is at the epicenter of the sales and marketing team to suit the needs of the clients (Kotler & Keller, 2012). Research and Development programs by the marketing team have found that most consumers are highly interested in the eco-friendliness of electric cars such as the zero-emission and increasing awareness of fuel prices in the industry. They are most motivated to buy what is to conserve the environment and thus rely on electric vehicles as safer and cheaper means of environment protection (Sharma & Maheshwari, 2014).

Consumers at the marketplace are also attracted by electric automobile’s third-generation battery technology, which the company has worked to make efficient and long-lasting. It offers features such as autopilot systems to all drivers. These come at a price friendly cost that the average household income residents in the United States can afford making this technology accessible to all. Lastly, people are most interested in comfort and tend to judge the automobile brands by the quality of their exterior and interior, price, and comfort offered. SILO will seek to provide its customers with unique features such as comfortable seats to give the company a market advantage over other brands.

Feasibility of Brand Name, Logo, Slogan, Brand Extension, and positioning statement.

Branding strategy such as brand name, logo, and Slogan as well as Brand extension are critical for the target market and work best in improving the company competitiveness. According to Armstrong & Cunningham, (2008), robust brand name, logo, and slogan suits the audience to help the company be more efficient and sustainable. While the logo identifies the product from the competing product, the slogan speaks for itself to help marketers increase the focus on the product via social marketing, and encourage content sharing as well as recommendations in a more expressive way rather than impressive (Keller and Fay, 2012). SILO is dedicated to providing high-quality products to customers across the world at affordable costs.

The consumers of brand extension product lines will surely enjoy products of quality and modernly produced in a bid to promote their awareness of the company and appreciate their customer loyalty to the brand with favorable pricing. Research and development surveys reveal to the company that positioning statement and these brand extension contribute to the growing customer base in different regions. The positioning statement relates SILO to automobiles designed with the best innovation, technologies, comfort, and as well as social class identifier ad would work best to match the needs and demands of consumers. The statement also specifies the environment-friendliness of the vehicles, most admirable factor.

References

Armstrong, G., & Cunningham, M. H. (2008). Principles of marketing. (12th Ed.) Toronto: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Cleveland, M., Papadopoulos, N., & Laroche, M. (2011). Identity, demographics, and consumer behaviors. International Marketing Review, 28(3), 244-266. doi:10.1108/02651331111132848

Keller, E., & Fay, B. (2012). Word-of-mouth advocacy: A new key to advertising effectiveness. Journal of Advertising Research, 52(4), 459-464. doi:10.2501/JAR-52-4-459-464.

Kotler, P. & Keller, K.L. (2012) Framework for marketing management. 5th edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Sharma, R. P. & Maheshwari, N. (2014). A Study on the Customer’s Awareness and Perception Level towards Green Cars. International Journal of Technology Enhancements and Emerging Engineering Research, 2(5), 72-75.

Weinstein, A. (2013). Handbook of Market Segmentation: Strategic Targeting for Business and Technology Firms, Third Edition. London, England: Routledge.