Developing and Implementing a Marketing Plan

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Step 8: Conduct a Segmenting and Targeting of the US Market and Product Positioning (STP)

The next step in developing your strategic analysis report involves  segmenting, targeting, and positioning (STP).

Take Note

· Segmenting refers to breaking the market down into homogenous groups.

· Targeting refers to selecting the customer group or groups that you will focus your marketing efforts on. The appropriate segmentation variable is dependent on the needs and wants of customers.

· These decisions are directly tied to your   value proposition  and require extensive marketing research on the customers. Once the segmentation variable is determined and the target markets selected, you need to develop a positioning strategy, which refers to the way you want the customer to view the product or service relative to the competition.

Describe the market research you would conduct to analyze and segment the US market. Explain how you would select your target markets and explain the process of positioning the company's products or services relative to the competition.

Deliverable: By the end of Week 9 detail your STP in a six-page document. This will ultimately form part of your strategic analysis report. Submit your document to your team’s study group.

Your overall STP is important, because it will create a foundation for the refinements you will make in the next step, where you will compete and submit your strategic analysis report.

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Step 7: Develop Marketing Objectives

The next component of the marketing plan your team needs to tackle is the strategic analysis report.

As a marketing team, you need to decide on the marketing objectives for your target market before you develop your company’s marketing strategy. Marketing objectives translate the company's mission and business into long- and short-term goals. Marketing objectives are usually quantitative and include sales (both in units or dollars), market share, and profitability. They may also include qualitative factors such as quality, customer satisfaction, and social responsibility (Kerin & Hartley, 2017). Knowing exactly where you want to go is essential in deciding how to get there. The objectives have to be measurable, specific, and have a set time limit.

Marketing objectives should be challenging but achievable. They are mainly quantitative (with some qualitative ones), and they should be precise and focused.

Using figures from your own market research, please include your projected annual...

1. growth percentage

2. market share percentage

3. sales (in both units and dollars)

4. average unit price

5. profitability percentage

6. customer satisfaction

7. CSR outcomes

8. employee satisfaction rate

Be sure to include a time frame. Also, presenting the figures in a table in the end would look professional.

Deliverable: By the end of Week 9 prepare a one-page document outlining your marketing objectives. This will ultimately form part of your strategic analysis report. Submit your document to your team’s study group.

You will continue your work on a strategic analysis report in the next step, where you will begin to examine your market and determine how the company can meet the marketing objectives you identified.

References

Kerin, R. & Hartley, S. (2017).  Marketing (13th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

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Step 3: Understand the Components of a Marketing Plan and Research Guidelines

The team's marketing knowledge and data acquisition skills are crucial to the success of this project. Your team will collect and analyze the information necessary to develop a  marketing plan for expanding the company's operations within the United States.

Your final marketing plan will ultimately include a situation analysis, analyses of the client's market, strategy, and financing, and an outline describing the measures to implement the plan. Use this  marketing plan template to help you create your marketing plan.

Take Note

To carry out this assignment, your marketing team needs to understand the client's customers, how to acquire market knowledge (through primary and secondary research), and how to turn that knowledge into offerings that are needed and wanted by a group of customers. You must also be able to invent market offerings that not only create value for the customer, but also create profitability for the client in a socially responsible and ethical way.

As you will recall from the previous projects, there are two types of market research:  primary and secondary research. Both types of research are necessary when creating a marketing plan. As you conduct research for your marketing plan, use the UMGC Library's Research Guides, specifically (1) Business and Management and (2) Marketing. Consult these two research guides and find articles that will help you complete your assignments. It is easier if you conduct a separate search for each section of your marketing plan. Also, use databases, such as Hoover's and ABI/INFORM to research the client company and its industry.

Now that you understand the components of a marketing plan, continue to the next step, where your team will learn more details about your c

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Step 6: Research and Analyze the Company's US Market

Now that you have completed the environmental scan, your team needs to conduct a market analysis of the company's customers in the United States. Outline how the team would conduct this analysis, while considering both current and potential customers. Your analysis should address how you would determine answers to the following questions:

· What needs are being met by the products or services that they purchase? What are the benefits to the customers? Make sure that you differentiate between features and benefits; go beyond manifest motives and consider latent motives.

· Who is involved in the purchase process? Who are influencers? Who are buyers? Who are users?

· How do customers pay? Describe payment plans, financing, banking arrangements, etc.

· Where are the products or services sold and delivered, and what are the distribution channels?

· How often are the different types of the products or services purchased? Is there seasonality to sales?

· Is there any market regulation? Is there self-regulation? Do any federal or state regulations affect the company's US operations?

· What is the size of the market (in dollars and units)? What is the growth rate of that market?

Deliverable: By the end of Week 9 present your results to the CEO in a market analysis report of five pages, excluding cover page, executive summary, the reference list, and appendices. Any tables, graphs, and figures should be included as appendices. Your report should have one-inch margins and be double spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font. The report should be organized using headings and subheadings to improve its readability.

Support your work with scholarly sources and reliable nonscholarly sources such as Reuters, Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance, Barrons.com, Morningstar.com,  Money,  Forbes,  Fortune,  Financial Times,  Wall Street Journal, and  Harvard Business Review, as well as the UMGC Library databases such as Hoover's and ABI/INFORM. All sources need to be cited using APA formatting, both within the text and in the reference list.

By the end of Week 9, submit your market analysis report to your Study group. Then proceed to the next step, where you will decide on marketing objectives for your client.

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Step 2: Review Information on Business-to-Business (B2B) Marketing

As You Get Started

Jillian Best catches you in the hallway:

"Listen, before I send you the case file on our new client, I want to make sure you have a thorough understanding of the business-to-business relationships that will be at the core of the marketing plan you will be contributing to. Look for an email from me this afternoon."

INBOX: 1 New Message

Subject:  Case Primer for Marketing Plan From:      Jillian Best, CEO, MCS To:           You As you have learned through your work with MCS clients,  marketing is one of the most important functional areas in business. As you get oriented with the realities of business-to-business (B2B) marketing, I’d like you to do some more reading on two main elements: (1) business buying behavior, and (2) strategic alliances.

Business buying behavior relates to how business customers and their suppliers explore different avenues to manage relationships and enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Fostering the right relationship with businesses is crucial for any holistic marketing plan. B2B relationships are affected by supply, complexity of supply, availability of alternatives, and supply-market dynamism.

In addition, our new client may consider forming  strategic alliances  to expand its US operations. The twenty-first century has seen an increased use of long-term global strategic alliances among both producers and distribution companies. Organizations form these alliances in an effort to secure commercial advantage and eliminate waste from their distribution channels. They can be crucial to success.

Please review the information linked above before going any further. This is a big client and a tremendous opportunity for MCS. Let me know if any questions arise as you get oriented with your team.

Best,

Jillian

Now that you have read the introduction to B2B marketing, continue to the next step, where you will learn about the components of a marketing plan.

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Step 12: Complete Skills Gap Analysis

INBOX: 1 New Message

From:    Denna Chartreuse, HR Specialist, MCS To:        You Greetings,

I’m reaching out to let you know that MCS’s Human Resources department conducts a 10-week post-project self-evaluation of your skills. Using the same skills gap analysis file that was sent to you when you began, each team member will self-evaluate their own project-related knowledge and skills accounting for their growth during their tenure within our organization.

The skills gap analysis will help you to identify the skill areas you have enhanced by completing your recent assignments and will reflect any changes in the way you see the importance of those skills to your career success. Select the Project 4 worksheet in the bottom left of the file. After completing your self-evaluation, take the time to deeply assess your progress by writing a 400- to 500-word reflection that describes two to three gaps you worked to reduce over the past 10 weeks and discusses whether and how much you improved. Also think back on the learning activities you pursued to help you develop competencies. Thank you for your attention to this request, we look forward to hearing of your forward movement.

Denna

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Step 4: Prepare a Situation Analysis Report

Required Readings

Chapters 1, 3, & 14

Lancaster, G., & Massingham, L. (2018).  Essentials of marketing management (2nd ed.). Routledge

http://ezproxy.umgc.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1581263&site=eds-live&scope=site&profile=edsebook

INBOX: 1 New Message

Subject:  Company Case File & Questions to Consider From:      Jillian Best, CEO, MCS To:          Team Hi again. I wanted to provide you with the company case file and some pertinent questions for you to consider while you work on your B2B marketing plan.

As part of the preparation necessary to complete your business-to-business marketing plan, you and your team will need to do in-depth research on your client's company, including its operations, global reach, and range of offerings.

By the end of Week 8, I need you to produce a situation analysis report explaining your team's findings on the company. Be sure to include a  value proposition, essentially the promise that is made to the customer, explaining the reason a customer purchases a product or uses a service (i.e., the value that a company delivers to its customers).

Start by reading the attached case file and be sure to consider the following questions while you do additional research:

· Where is the company headquartered?

· What are the company's major products and/or services?

· What is the company's annual revenue in dollars, and what is its annual production in units?

· Does the company own its own facilities or does it subcontract manufacturing to others?

· Who are the company's major suppliers of raw materials or parts, and where are they located?

· What is the distribution of the company's workforce by country?

· How does the company differentiate its offering in its highly competitive markets?

· Does the company have exclusive marketing or distribution agreements or partnerships?

· Who are the company's major global and US customers?

· What benefits does the company offer to its customers?

· Who are the company's major global and US competitors?

When developing your situation analysis, you should also understand the importance of  vision and  mission statements and then research the company's own vision and mission statements.

Write a four-page document detailing the main findings of your research about your client, including its mission and vision statement. Submit your document to your team’s study group.

That's it for now, Jillian

Attachments:

Company Case File

In the next step, you will complete your situation analysis by conducting an environmental scan that takes a comprehensive look at the many factors that you need to consider, exploit, or defend against in your marketing plan. This situation analysis will be incorporated into your B2B marketing plan later in this project, along with deliverables from the upcoming steps.

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Step 13: Submit Your Work

By the end of Week 10, submit your final consumer buying behavior report to the Assignments folder. Take note of the recommended delivery dates and file-naming protocols in the table below:

Recommended Project Delivery

Step	Deliverable
Steps 4 & 5	Situation analysis report
Steps 6 - 9	1. Marketing analysis report 2. Marketing objectives 3. STP 4. Marketing strategy
Step 12	Final skills gap analysis

Check Your Evaluation Criteria

Before you submit your assignment, review the competencies below, which your instructor will use to evaluate your work. A good practice would be to use each competency as a self-check to confirm you have incorporated all of them. To view the complete grading rubric, click My Tools, select Assignments from the drop-down menu, and then click the project title.

· 1.3: Provide sufficient, correctly cited support that substantiates the writer's ideas.

· 2.1: Identify and clearly explain the issue, question, or problem under critical consideration.

· 2.2: Locate and access sufficient information to investigate the issue or problem.

· 3.1: Identify numerical or mathematical information that is relevant in a problem or situation.

· 4.3: Contribute to team projects, assignments, or organizational goals as an engaged member of a team.

· 4.4: Demonstrate diversity and inclusiveness in a team setting.

· 6.1: Identify the general (external) environment in which an organization operates and discuss the implications for enterprise success.

· 6.3: Analyze an organization's internal strengths and weaknesses for strategic value.

· 6.4: Develop and recommend strategies for an organization's sustainable competitive advantage.

· 10.5: Develop operating forecasts and budgets and apply managerial accounting techniques to support strategic decisions.

· 12.1: Assess market risk and opportunity.

· 12.3: Prepare marketing plan for a new product/service.

· 13.1: Identify and analyze new opportunities.

· 13.2: Create and implement new initiative or enterprise.