Marketing Assignment

MRKT 5301 – Marketing Plan Outline for MRKT 5301 Section 12

Overview:

Students will work in groups of 4-6 students to write and present a Marketing Plan for a new product or service here at CBU.

Students may make assumptions required to develop this marketing plan, including necessary resources to deliver the new product or service, and a sufficient customer base (for example, instead of using CBU’s student population of just over 5,000, you may assume a much larger market such as 50,000 students enrolled at CBU).

Use the Marketing Plan framework from section 16.2 of Chapter 16 in your TopHat text to make sure you cover the key deliverables of a Marketing Plan:

Cover Page:

Include a cover page that identifies the name of your New Product, your group members and their student IDs, the course name and the course section, and submission date.

I. Executive Summary

While the executive summary is presented at the beginning of the Marketing Plan, it is actually the last part of the Plan to be written. It is typically one page or less, designed to capture the attention and alignment of busy senior management.

The Executive Summary “sells” the marketing plan to readers through its clarity and brevity. The summary should present a description of the product/service, its target market, and its need within the market. The summary should also provide an overview of the main points of the plan and should emphasize an action orientation.

II. The Business Challenge:

This section of the plan should be written as if the reader of the plan is not familiar with either you or your business idea. Clearly describe your product/service. Include details such as location, owner/key management, target market and the overall mission for the business.

III. The Market:

This section is essentially a ‘situation analysis’ – this section presents information concerning the environment in which your new business will be operating. It is critical for organizations to understand what forces exist in the business environment and develop a marketing strategy that considers these forces.

Part (a): Customers and Target Market and Positioning

This section provides an overview of all customers in this market, not simply your chosen target market(s). In this section you should begin by describing the various needs in this market, outlining the distinct segments that are apparent from your analysis of the market and competitive offerings.

Clearly identify your chosen target market, by utilizing the segmentation and targeting concepts discussed in chapter 5 and in the lecture “Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning”. How are the needs of your target market not being met by competitor offerings? Be sure to define your target market carefully, in terms of both their needs and their characteristics (the latter of which will be useful for developing all elements of the marketing mix, not simply the offering creation). You should use multiple segmentation variables from multiple segmentation bases, as illustrated in our chapter 5 discussion.

Finally, identify your brand’s positioning. You should use the Positioning Statement Formula discussed in class: “To (target segment & need) (our brand) is (a concept) that (point of difference)”. (See the positioning example in the chapter 5 PowerPoint notes).

Part (b): Company strengths and weaknesses

As noted in the outline above, your company’s strengths and weaknesses must be discussed relative to the Market above and your planned offering. In this section, you may make assumptions regarding your resources to support your capabilities for pursuing the target you have chosen.

Part (c): Collaborators

Again, you will likely need to make some assumptions regarding potential suppliers and/or retailers, depending on the market opportunity you are pursuing.

Part (d): Competitors

This is a critical section, since the feasibility of your plan depends in large part on identifying and taking advantage of competitor weaknesses, while avoiding colliding ‘head on’ with your competitors’ strengths. Summarizing competitors and their strengths/weaknesses in a tabular format using point form may be useful, particularly for identifying their marketing mixes. The following framework may be useful:

Analysis of the Competition

Business	Product features & benefits	Pricing	Communication	Delivering
Your business
Competitor A
Competitor B

After preparing a summary such as the one above, be sure to provide a summary of your competitive position.

Part (e): Business Climate

This section is essentially the Environmental Influences discussed in chapter 3. Although these influences are largely uncontrollable, they nevertheless can have an important impact on an organization. Managers must be constantly monitoring the external environment to see what impact factors in this environment have on their business, and accordingly make any adjustments to their Marketing Planning.

Factors which should be analyzed include Demographic, Economic, Physical Environment (or ‘Natural’), Technological, Political and Social. Specifically, how might some of these factors pose specific threats and opportunities for your business? With regard to the Physical or Natural environment, what might be the impact of COVID-19, and how can your marketing plan accommodate this risk – or does it pose an opportunity as well?

Please note that only those influences or factors that are relevant to your Market should be discussed in this section – it is not necessary to mention factors that are unlikely to impact your opportunity.

· IV. The Strategy

This Strategy section is all about your Marketing Strategy - Target Market(s) and the Marketing Mix:

Part (a) The Strategy:

This section gives an overview of how your Marketing Mix will deliver against the target market needs.

Part (b) The Offering:

In sections (b) through (d), it is not enough to simple describe the marketing mix elements, you also need to explain why and how your marketing mix efforts will leverage both the target market needs, and their characteristics, to effectively achieve your desired results. Please note that in this section, you need to discuss not only the offering, but also the pricing and your exchange facilitation efforts.

Describe your pricing strategy, and how you will ‘facilitate the exchange relationship’. What internal factors were considered? (marketing objectives, costs, etc.) What external factors were considered? (nature of market and demand, competition, etc.). Will you incorporate any of the following pricing principles: Discount and allowance pricing; Segmented pricing; Psychological pricing; Promotional pricing. Be sure to explain why these pricing elements make sense for your business and customers.

Part (c) The Communication Plan

Describe your message and media strategies – which will you use, and why? (always link your recommendations back to the needs and characteristics of the target market). Describe the digital marketing elements of your marketing plan and explain why these elements are appropriate given your target market and product or service characteristics. Will a website be part of your marketing plan? Explain and support.

Since you will likely utilize more than one type of media, indicate and explain the priority investment in your media mix. Be sure to explain how or why Public Relations may (or may not) be effective for you. Will Personal Selling or any Sales Promotion techniques be part of your marketing plan? Describe them and explain why.

Part (d) Delivery or Distribution:

How will you distribute your product or service? What type of retail stores and/or online distribution will you utilize? Explain why. If your product or service includes a retail operation, be sure to incorporate key retailing concepts covered by the text and class notes. Support and explain your retail decisions.

· V. Budget

All the marketing mix decisions covered in the marketing program have both revenue and expense effects. In this section of the marketing plan, you will highlight what you think your sales and expenses will be for a period of time. For the purpose of this plan, you will just need to provide your projected Income and Expense Statement for the first year.

Note: It is essential that you are able to defend your sales projections based on research and calculations.

· VI. Contingency Plans

While your text identifies section VI as “Conclusion”, this is already effectively covered by your Executive Summary. So instead of a “Conclusion” section, this section will be entitled “Contingency Plans”.

All plans have risks. Identify any key risks in your Marketing Plan and provide a brief contingency plan for each key risk.

Marketing Plan Project Evaluation

The Marketing Plan is worth 30% of your course grade. It must be at least 10 pages using 12-point font. The final written report is due at the beginning of class on November 26th.

20% - Written Report

Your written report grade will be based largely upon your application of marketing concepts learned in this course (so be sure to use marketing terminology and concepts in your writing).

Your report will also be affected by how well your marketing plan is written and formatted. A marketing plan should be easy to follow, using appropriate headings and subheadings, spelling/grammar, and format. Use single spacing within paragraphs, and double spacing to separate paragraphs (refer to the structure of this document).

10% - Recorded Presentation & In-class Q&A

Groups will record a video presentation of their Marketing Plans as part of their final Marketing Plan assignment (each group member must present for at least 3 minutes in the video presentation, as well as be prepared to respond to questions during the in-class presentation).

All group members must participate in developing, writing and presenting the marketing plan. Peer evaluations will be conducted and will impact individual final project grades.