Marketing Plan
Incorporate the concepts you have learned throughout the course to create a formal marketing plan. The marketing plan will consist of a 20-35 slide PowerPoint deck on a selected product or service. The Marketing Plan should be targeted to an executive audience or a potential investor. Use each week's study of principles and concepts to begin drafting your Marketing Plan as you progress through the course.
Step 1: Select a product or service and submit your choice by the end of week 2
Select a product or service that you can obtain sufficient marketing information on or if you are interested in starting your own business you may elect to present a product or service that you intend to personally market. If you decide to use a nationally recognized product/service, you may incorporate their existing marketing campaigns into your plan, however, you must add your own marketing communications ideas as well. Or if you work for a small organization that does not have a formal marketing plan, you may use this opportunity to develop one.
Step 2: Conduct a situational analysis
Research and apply the weekly concepts to your chosen product or service to complete a situational analysis and begin developing your Marketing Plan. Analyze the company's website, social media outlets, and review other external sources for information. You may want to interview a company representative. Marketing plans based solely on information found on the company's website will be incomplete and unsatisfactory.
Marketing Plan Slides
• Use the following outline to build your Marketing Plan.
o Title Page
o Table of Contents
o Executive Summary
High level summary of the plan's content and purpose
Description of Product/Service
What is it, what does it do
o Who owns it?
o What Product Life Cycle stage is it in?
• Value Proposition
o Why would a customer buy it?
o What is the value that it delivers?
o Create a 2-3 sentence Value Proposition statement encompassing information above. This statement is used for marketing messaging
campaigns.
• Features and Benefits
o List of features and benefit to customer
• Target Markets
o What markets are currently targeted? What is recommended?
o What approach is being taken (undifferentiated, differentiated, concentrated, or micromarketing)?
• Competitive Analysis
o Who are major competitors - pricing, features, benefits, differentiators, target markets
o Compare your product/service to major competitors
o Suggestion: Create a table with comparative competitive information (include your product at the top); next slide provide overview bullet points analysis of what the comparative information shows.
• SWOT Analysis
o Refer to the SWOT analysis instructions in your textbook
• Marketing Objectives
o What are the current marketing objectives or what are your suggested objectives (e.g. build brand awareness, increase market share, capture a new target market, increase revenues, etc.)
• Measure
o How will your objectives be measured?
• Pricing Strategy
o Identify the price for your product/service
o Explain why the price better supports the marketing objectives
• Target Markets
o What are the target markets? Explain.
o Should current target markets be expanded? Explain.
• Distribution Strategy
o Do you recommend direct channel, indirect channel, or multiple channels?
o Do you recommend intensive, selective, or exclusive distribution and why?
• Marketing Promotion (try to use a combination of traditional and contemporary tools)
o List promotion ideas that support marketing objective(s)
o Which tools will be used t deliver promotion initiatives?
o Align promotion initiatives to appropriate target markets
o Which initiatives should be included in each stage of the Product Life Cycle?
• Budget
o Estimate the cost of the marketing campaign
o Create a marketing budget. Allocate the appropriate cost to each initiative.
• Reference Page
• Remember to use the speaker' notes to present your slides to the viewers.
• Your slides need to be organized, clear, engaging and informative
• Use common fonts such as Times and Ariel. They may not be the coolest fonts but they will certainly be the most compatible on most computers.
• Keep the wording on the slides to a minimum, so that the slide merely provides the direction and you provide the information.
• Use of images can be a powerful addition to a slide to emphasize a point. Use them wisely, as an image can distract from the point you are trying to make. Keep them relevant to the topic.
• As with images, use animations and transitions wisely, custom animations and transitions can either be an asset or a distraction. Again, use them wisely! If the effect does not enhance the flow of the presentation perhaps it is better unused.
• Include detail presentation materials in your speaker notes. Use speaker notes to elaborate on the points on the slide. Good notes can help you keep your audience engaged and prevent text overload on the slide.
• Make sure the information in your presentation are well written, fully developed, grammatically correct, free of spelling errors and in APA format.
• Include a title slide and reference slide with your presentation.
• Narrate the materials in your slides by using your speaker's notes. You are "presenting" your marketing plan to me so make your that you elaborate, explain, clarify and add detail in your speaker's notes. Without information in your speaker's notes its just a bunch of slides and not a presentation.