Update executive summary, implementation plan, marketing org, and Contingency plan. See attached documents . Areas are highlighted in yellow

Business Activities

Our main product line is calendars, desktop and wall calendars. We also produce business cards as well as post cards. We have started to make promotional products for companies such as baseball caps, lanyards and picture magnets.

New Product and its Need

Our new product we want to introduce is an advanced electronic calendar that updates with customer’s google accounts. Basically when a customer writes on their calendar that sits at home or the office on the wall or desk; it will automatically get added to their google accounts. Therefore they are not worrying about having to put in both spots and thus ending the problem with over scheduling things or missing appointments. I feel like this is a good product to market to the working parent. For me I am always forgetting about appointments I have made unless I stare at the calendar. I am also constantly over booking my days and scheduling appointments at the same time.

Goals of this Marketing Plan

The goal of this marketing plan is to ensure that I am marketing my product to the best customers for my product. I can ensure that the data for this product is going to support the industry my business is in and achieve a 50 percent increase of sales of our specialty calendars. It will allow my business to clearly visualize both where we are going and what we need to accomplish to get there. The marketing plan details the very important steps required to get the product into a market that is not only wanting, but also needing such a product. Without this plan I could be moving too fast in the wrong direction or moving too slow in the right direction.

Target Market

My target market is the working parent. Parents live very busy lives today with after school programs, business meetings, dinner dates, fundraisers and volunteering. There are so many things to remember throughout the day and most often we are too busy to remember these things without writing everything down. Even when it is wrote down there is still a chance of forgetting things or over booking yourself. This easily done because most often the working parent is not always around there calendar to write things down and reference with appointments made already. The written calendar is a must in a home so everyone in the household knows what is planned for the week to come.

Demographics and Geographic’s

Working parents, business professionals and small businesses are all types of customers I would like to target for this product. Any one whom lives a busy life would benefit from this product because it helps keep you organized. Customers that are text savvy who want to blend their smart phone capabilities and their paper calendars a home or the office are the key customers in my demographics.

I would market this product in the United States and Canada to start because of the costs to export the product. I would want to see how the product sells before trying to expand it to other parts of the world. If the product became a popular item, I think I could market this product anywhere in the world because it fits for any individual that needs to be more organized.

Market Needs

Currently there is no way to synchronize your google calendar with the more traditional calendar that is sits in your home or office. With this product customers will finally be able to do just that, and never schedule two appointments at the same time. This also allows individuals to give a real-time answer when needing to set appointments instead of having to push it off to verify their schedules.

Market Trends and Market Growth

Individuals today always have to have the latest and greatest in the technology sector of products. Even with this want of the latest technology devices customers still like the traditional way of doing certain things too. This product allows for the customers to still keep a schedule at home while having it synchronize to their smart phones or devices for when they are away from their paper calendars.

There is always growth in the market of technology, new things become “old” within months of coming out. The market of organizational technology such as planners, digital calendars and Microsoft Outlook have been progressively advancing. This technology has reached a point in which a larger technological movement is needed to blend software calendars with more traditional calendars.

SWOT Analysis

Competitive Review

As of right now we do not have any competitors as this is a new product. There is potential competitors if any of our competitors advance with our new technology. Companies such as Calendar USA, The Calendar Company and Vista are all capable of running off of our design once it is up and running. We are the number one seller but each company has been catching up to us with our photo calendars and magnets.

Product Review

Our new product the advanced electronic calendar that updates with customer’s google accounts is going to be focused towards the busy parent or busy over worked individual. Basically when a customer writes on their calendar that sits at home or the office on the wall or desk; it will automatically get added to their google accounts. Therefore they are not worrying about having to put in both spots and thus ending the problem with over scheduling things or missing appointments. You will be able to buy the system that copies your handwriting into your google account and just buy new paper calendars every year.

Marketing Strategy

Positioning Strategy

There are thousands of businesses that any business is competing with in some way. How you differentiate yourself from this competition is part of positioning strategy. Positioning refers to how you communicate the essential benefits of your small business to potential customers. Where you sell your product, how you make it, where you make it and your price is all parts of positioning. Our product is completely new to the market so that is how we differentiate our product.

Mann Industries plans on using the Customer benefits as a positioning strategy. This strategy mainly focuses on the characteristics of the product or customer benefits. We are creating a product that is based off our paper calendars that will allow our customers to sync their home and office calendars together with Google. The Psychographic segmentation of our market is to reach our target customers that are the working parents, business professionals and small businesses. Ultimately, anyone who lives a busy life and is constantly making appointments would benefit from our product (Boundless, n.d).

The Value proposition is the one thing that determines whether people will bother reading more about your product or look away, it is the promise of value to be delivered. The less anyone knows about the company the better value proposition you will need (Laja, 2015). Our Value Proposition is the busy working customer will now be able to synchronize their google calendar with the most traditional calendar that sits in their home or office. This will, in turn, allow the customer to make appointments at a moment’s notice without having to check with their schedules. This system will currently only be available through Mann Industries.

Product Strategy

Great identity helps shape consumer perceptions and decision-making behavior. Strong brands cast a vision and communicate the unique value of the brand in a crowded marketplace.  Mann Industries provides the working parents, business professionals and small businesses with a one of a kind electronic calendar that will make their daily lives easier. We are able to do this by combining your paper calendars from home and work with your Google account with the simple purchase of our docking station. We offer you a 100% guarantee of the ease of use of our new system.

Pricing Strategy:

We plan to use the Penetration Pricing Strategy, which is used as a loyalty building or market–entry tool (Burns-Millyard, 2015). This offers our high-quality product at a much lower price than expected. This will help us enter into the new market, building loyalty with new customers because they will be hooked with the offer. This will, in turn, make them buy the high-quality item again at a higher price because they know the value. We will remain competitive if we encounter competition by brand loyalty, coupons, and member’s savings cards.

Currently, we do not have any competitors to compare pricing with, there is a company called Teamup that allows sharing of calendar between groups for $20 a month, but that is not similar to a product (Teamup, 2016). The Boogie Board Sync looks like a tablet but allows the customer write on the screen and it converts it to a PDF to blue-tooth to your PC or Smartphone and is currently sold for $100.00 (Yuhnke, 2015). The Echo Smartpen allows you to sync audio from meetings or lectures to your handwritten, digitized notes. You do have to have special micro dotted paper like our company and sells for $200.00 (Livescribe, 2016). When comparing our product to these products, we believe we would be able to sell our product for $100 at the lowest and still gain customers.

Distribution Strategy

Mail and retail would be the more traditional methods we would use. We could have a small booth at a mall. We will also slowly merge into online sales of the product. We will start out with indirect distribution channels to get the product known to the public, eventually we would like to merge into direct distribution once the product is familiarized with our loyal customers. We do intend to use Social media to advertise our new product. We will have demonstrations booths at our current building that customers will be able to hand on learn with the product. Ads on common websites like Facebook and Twitter will be our number one source of advertising.

Market research provides relevant data to help solve marketing challenges that a business will most likely face. We will be using phone surveys and online questionnaires for our primary research. For our secondary research, we will be using public information sources like The State and Metropolitan Area Data Book, which is published by the U.S. Census Bureau. Commercial Information sources such as local newspaper and radio stations will also be of value to us as they maintain demographic profiles of their audiences (Entrepreneur, n.d).

The Action Program

The company will use an experienced team of marketing official alongside the sales officials to make sure that the findings and recommendations of the market research that was done earlier on are implemented and adhered to. Apart from that, the firm would also be involved in trade shows that will be beneficial for the marketing and consequently sale of the company products. Trade shows that involve the products of information technology, communication technology, multimedia and consumer electronics sectors will be well attended. The following table below shows a list of the trade shows that the company will attend through its representatives.

These events would be attended by the sales executive team leader and the company’s marketing manager alongside three other sales executives of the firm to be selected by the sales team leader himself. Going to these events would enlighten the sales and marketing team of the company as well as expose the company’s products. It would cost the company $12,000 dollars to sponsor our team to get to these events so as to promote our products.

Financial Projections and Budgets

Sales Revenue Forecast

Mann Industries is expecting to take the information technology sector and the whole country’s market by storm as it is the projection of the company’s financial manager that in the first year, an average of 100 company products will be sold per month, translating in to about 280,000 U.S dollars every month. This is only on average but the amount of sales every month will differ. The sales of the earlier months of the firm’s business calendar are expected to be relatively lower.

Expense Forecast

The company’s expenses would include office expenses for furniture which is valued at $35,000 dollars, distribution expenses for the demanded products like transport valued at $12500 dollars. There will also be expenses involved when the sales and marketing team will be promoting products valued at $13,500 dollars. All these plus miscellaneous expenses and salary expenses would translate to a total expenditure of $115,000 U.S dollars every month.

Break-Even Analysis

Monthly fixed cost translates to $115,000, Average cost per unit is $850 and the Price charged was at $1050 per unit.

Break even quantity = 115000 / (1450-850) = 196 units

The company will break even after selling 196 units at a price of $1450 U.S dollars.

Implementation Plan:

This section details how you will turn your plans into results. You will need to provide a list of marketing tactics/actions that must be taken immediately to ensure the overall success of your Marketing Strategies (you completed this section earlier in your plan). For each tactic, describe what has to be performed in order to carry out the tactic. Remember that you implementation tactics are operational tactics. For example, if one of your strategies includes Internet Marketing, then, one of your implementation tactics would involve setting up a website. You would also list the completion date for each tactic. (Charts work really well for Implementation Plans).

Marketing Organization:

In this section, you will provide details regarding the names, titles, and responsibilities of the people in your marketing department. This section will answer the question, "who will be handling what?"

Contingency Plan:

This section provides information detailing what you will do if things do not go according to plan. Discuss potential risks and difficulties, then, talk about how you will monitor those potential problems. Finally, define an alternative plan of action in case the "potential problems" that you've identified, actually turn into "real problems."

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