marketing rough draft paper

Final Report and Presentation Guidelines

Overview

Congratulations! You and your fellow marketing managers have been so successful at AllStar that you have all decided to cash in your stock options and sail down that golden road to retirement in the tropical climate of Aruba. But before you go, you must present to the Board of Directors and the new marketing management team that will be replacing you. Therefore, you must develop a Marketing Plan that will highlight your experiences as marketing managers for AllStar and provide sufficient direction for the new marketing team. You have been given the outline below to shape your presentation:

Mission Statement

Though we will not cover the creation of a mission statement, it is important to decide on one for the creation of your Marketing Plan. A mission statement should be brief (a few sentences) and broadly cover what business you are in and why. For instance AT&T is not only in the long distance business, but also the communications business. Mention stakeholders such as customers, stockholders, employees, etc.

http://www.missionstatements.com/fortune_500_mission_statements.html

Marketing Objectives

In this section, you must create marketing objectives for the new marketing team that will replace you . This portion of the final paper is forward looking. That means the objectives concern future actions and results. The time horizon for these objectives should be between 4 to 8 years after you retire. For ex: In the 16th year, brand awareness of Allright should increase from 48.1 % to 70 %. This statement indicates that after your 10th decision Allright had a brand awareness of 48.1 % and in 6th year of the new management’s tenure, the brand awareness of Allright should be 70 %. A few important guidelines concerning marketing objectives:

Objectives should be specific and clear.

You must communicate specifically what the goal is (don’t just say increase sales) and during what time period to achieve those goals.

Goals must be obtainable.

For instance:

“Increase brand awareness” is NOT an acceptable objective.

“Increase brand awareness for Alright from 60% to 80% within 2 years” is acceptable.

List your objectives in bullet form. You should have 5 – 10 objectives.

SWOT Analysis/Target Market

Your SWOT analysis will consist of listing your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. You MUST keep in mind that your Strengths and Weaknesses concern your company INTERNALLY. Your Opportunities and Threats are EXTERNAL concerns. External concerns include the economy, political/legal issues, technology, competitors, consumers, etc. List these concepts via bullets under each heading (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.)

SWOT should include trends. For example, Allstar group is heavily focused on one product, Allround. Due to lack of diversity in the product portfolio of Allstar Group, the company faces too much risk in one market. What I mean by risk is that if a competitor enters the same market and gains some market share from Allround, the company is prone to lose sales and profits comparatively more than other companies, because other companies have more diverse product portfolios. It is like putting all your eggs in one basket. Please note that this is a trend and it is hard to change in a couple of years. To diversify your product portfolio, you need to launch new products, promote, distribute, and advertise them. These steps are most likely to take at least 3-4 years.

For your target markets, each product should have a slightly different target market. Obviously, illness for each product is different. Go further. Define your target market by age, income, education, culture, etc. Try to be as specific as possible! You should make the target market analysis for all your products.

Marketing Activities

This is a forward looking section. That means activities included in this section should be concerned with the future.

Your marketing activities are the usage of the marketing mix that you will use to reach your stated marketing objectives in section II. THEREFORE, EACH MARKETING ACTIVITY SHOULD BEGIN WITH: IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE MARKETING OBJECTIVE NUMBER X, WE RECOMMEND THE FOLLOWING ACTIVITIES: Your marketing objectives should include items dealing with sales, brand awareness, customer satisfaction, etc. Your marketing activities will include the usage of your tools (the marketing mix) to achieve those goals. Be specific in this section and tell how these activities will enable the new team replacing you to reach these goals . Organize your recommendations for each objective under a bullet.

Lessons Learned

This is a backward looking section. What means you should list events that went wrong in previous periods. This is the last section of your report and should be written in paragraph form. Address each element of the marketing mix (product, price, promotion, place) and tell me what you learned throughout the simulation. What worked and what did not. A great way to approach this is to graph your stock price and notice when it dips noticeably or rises suddenly. Look over your decisions for that period and see why this occurred.

Paper:

Length: around 15 pages (including graphs), double spaced

Marketing oriented not PharmaSim oriented

Oral Presentation:

10 minutes, Power Point. Each member needs to present

Business Casual/ Formal attire

Good communication skills required. No reading from the slides.