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Marketing Plan 8

Marketing Strategy

While it is not possible to separate marketing and advertising and both elements are used interchangeably (Mulhern, 2013) the current approaches will try to look at each concept in detail and the way they will be incorporated in the overall marketing and advertising plan. With increased competitive practices, business is compelled to position themselves in the market strategically. This includes setting up value addition structures, marketing and advertisement campaigns that will introduce their products to the market and convince them that their offering supersedes that of their peers. Eloquent Bikes 3D is determined to be the world’s leading producer of 3D printed, carbon fiber bikes. With a mission to produce bikes of competitive quality for the best value, the company strives to enhance the experiences of the biking community. This marketing strategy and plan highlights the approaches that Eloquent Bikes 3D will use to appeal and increase their sales in the market. Comment by Ilene Ringler: A great introduction with a good source supporting your thoughts

Marketing/Advertisement Plan

Advertising describes the paid, non-personal distribution of persuasive messages with the intention of product promotion to the current and potential clients (Bakshi and Gupta, 2013). Further, marketing is a process that includes taking goods and services from the conceptual stage to the points where the market can access the products and services from a brand or an individual business. The adverting messages should focus on the words that are not entirely personal. Marketing highlights the approaches that brands would take in communicating to their markets in ways that are more personal beyond just attempts to products and services. Comment by Ilene Ringler: I researched this source and did not find this content there. I did find it on this website, where it is almost word for word cut and paste https://medium.com/inkbot-design/marketing-and-advertising-strategies-45242269f5ee Advertising is defined as the paid, non-personal distribution of a persuasive message with the purpose of promoting products or services to current or potential customers. Comment by Ilene Ringler: This seems to come from the same website Advertising focuses on a particular message that’s not all that personal in nature.

Marketing involves the four Ps (promotion, product, place, and price), the development and execution of strategy and ongoing communication that sustains the engagement of the audience. The advertisement is a feature of the marketing process and is arguably one of the dominant marketing related expenses that the current bossiness will have to incur after public relations which often takes the largest share of the marketing budget (Hanssens and Pauwels, 2016). As with marketing, the advertisement strategy will also encompass the creation of brand awareness; although its core objective is to influence the purchasing behaviors. With advertising, it is crucial to initially find the right media mix with tactical approaches that comprise different methods of both social and mainstream media advertising.

Pointedly, the advertisement strategy will establish the right frequencies to advertisements to minimize the risk of spreading the allotted advertisements budgets too thin. This step will be followed by choice of the right media mix. The selected media platform should be able to target the primary audience and consumer groups. Beyond that, it should be able to continuously hit the targeted demographics to maintain the visibility of the featured products and services. Comment by Ilene Ringler: • Determining the right frequency to ads to avoid spreading the allotted ad budget too thin • Selecting the right media mix • Using media that targets the primary audience/consumer group • Hitting target demographics repeatedly to keep the featured products/services visible

Advertisement/Marketing strategy

Why: what are the goals and objectives of the marketing strategy?

Who: who is the target customer/market?

How: how is the campaign meant to change the customer relationship and how will the impact be measured?

What: what applications, technologies, and approaches should be applied?

Measuring the results of your plan

Impact measurement is a significant step in any investment (Kumar, 2015). The marketing strategy and policy will be noted as a success when the difference between the costs of production and marketing and sales revenue is positive, further, the sales should be more than the initial recorded sales.

Calculating the return on investment

Accordingly, the most basic approach of calculating the return on investment of a marketing campaign is to incorporate it to the final business line of control (Ramsaran-Fowdar and Fowdar, 2013). This involves taking the sales growth from the product line or that business, less the expenses incurred in the marketing process and then dividing them by the marketing costs.

(Sales Growth - Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost = Return on Investment

For example, if the sales note growth of $2000 and the cost of the marketing campaign is $200, then the basic return on investment is:

(($2000-$200)/$200)=900%

900% is a satisfactory return on investment although it was picked more from round numbers as opposed to realism.

Types of advertisement strategies

Different products and services can be promoted in various ways (according to the target market). Currently, traditional advertising strategies such as radios, televisions and billboard advertising with a reach of a wider audience can be significant if well planned. Advertisement strategies can further be broken down into the elements that are likely to motivate the target population to develop an interest in a particular product. This included the development of a utility strategy that is focused on the usefulness of the bikes to the consumers. For example, this consists of the affordability and appealing discount offers compared to the underlying competition.

Accordingly, the youths have a strong affiliation with trending items, and the elderly are mostly concerned with their health (Bakshi et al., 2013). In this regard, the adverting will also make use of the behavioral element in its strategies. This included the use of models (including experts and celebrities) in marketing and advertising. They are reframing the general assumptions of the market on consumption behaviors. Collectivism: creating and reforming the social norms (with slogans such as “ride to your healthy lifestyle”). The current marketing strategy will use both the inbound marketing; aligning the marketing messages with the interests of the customers through approaches such as social media postings and contents that have been optimized through search engines. These approaches target the audience that has openly shown inters in the brands and the material is hence placed right inform of them. Marketing strategy involves the listing of goals and objectives that underlie the comprehension of the target market, their needs and how their interests are aligned. Similarly, it will use the outbound form of marketing that will require the efforts of the customers that are interested in the bikes. This includes the different types of cold calls, mass emails, and postcards.

The strategic advertisement will involve differentiating elements in the different countries traded. In New York City, the strategy will use “…your solution to a healthy living…” In Rio de Janeiro, “…Explore Rio de Janeiro with efficiency…” In Amsterdam, “…Take an early lead in eco-friendly and low budget solutions…” and in Bangalore, “…Endless potential in your carriage and delivery business…”

Effective advertising strategy

The strategy will enable the development of an understanding of the particular market position of the current products and service offering. This concerns both the market share (demand) and its perception in the market. Broken down into steps, the marketing strategy will clearly define the goals and objectives of the business, highlights the necessary behavioral changes needed to achieve the set goals, point out the appropriate behavioral strategies that are likely to convince the market to buy their products and finally develop creative ideas on the basis of the selected behavioral approach.

As with marketing, the strategical plan will also involve the creation of personas of the target audience. This implies establishing the way target market behaves, the means that they use to travel, how they spend their free time, whether they use the internet, their level of income and social class, how they cycle, their color preferences and what motivates their choices and dosing. Further the plan will also focus on establishing both the primary and secondary target audiences of the bikes; the media channels that are likely to reach the target audiences; the markets that should be targeted with the different media channels and the cost implications of these efforts; the particular selling points that the advertisements should emphasize on; how well the content of the ad was tested before being released to the public and finally how effective (success rate) the campaign was after it was published in the market.

Conclusively, marketing is the bridge between the product and the market. Through promotional communications, the marketing strategy will follow a series of steps; segmenting the market (dividing the consumers according to their needs), identified the target market (choosing the best way to communicate with the selected market segment), market positioning (the definition of the image and brand of the company) and finally develop the message that will inform, persuade and remind the target market on the product and services. The advertisement strategy highlights the overall plan that the business campaign and includes strategic and tactical approaches that are structured to meet the goals and objectives of the business. Accordingly, this is determined as a feature of the process of integrating a marketing strategy. Further, the marketing strategy should be able to support the overall marketing strategy which helps the brand's final business plan.

Reference:

Bakshi, G., & Gupta, S. K. (2013). Online advertising and its impact on consumer buying

behavior. International Journal of Research in Finance and Marketing, 3(1), 21-30.

Hanssens, D. M., & Pauwels, K. H. (2016). Demonstrating the value of marketing. Journal of

Marketing, 80(6), 173-190.

Kumar, V. (2015). Evolution of marketing as a discipline: What has happened and what to look

out for. Journal of Marketing, 79(1), 1-9.

Mulhern, F. (2013). Integrated marketing communications: From media channels to digital

connectivity. In The Evolution of Integrated Marketing Communications (pp. 19-36). Routledge.

Ramsaran-Fowdar, R. R., & Fowdar, S. (2013). The implications of Facebook marketing for

organizations. Contemporary Management Research, 9(1).

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WHAT/WHERE

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