ASSIGNMENT - FINALIZING THE MARKETING PLAN
FINISHING THE BACK MATERIALS:
SUMMARY OF THE PLAN, CONCLUSIONS AND ADVICE
In these concluding paragraphs compliment the owner on the successful elements of their business, summarize your findings, and make specific suggestions for action. Explain what effect your marketing ideas should have on sales, brand equity, etc.
REFERENCES
It is required that you make a reference page at the end of the document, but before the appendix. Be sure to list the sources for anything that you quoted, paraphrased, or copied from books, articles, or the Web.
APPENDIX (Only two items are required, more is delightful)
1. Maps, samples of competitor advertising, etc.
2. Copied materials from articles and books, but not much, and not pages and pages of web stuff ... be discrete.)
3. Financial statements are not required in this course, but Sales Forecasting, Breakeven Analysis, Pro Forma documents, etc. would normally fit here.
FINISHING THE FRONT MATERIALS:
COVER LETTER
A Cover Letter is an actual letter to the person to whom you will give this. Remember, you are a consultant that is paid lots of money to do this, and you are presenting this to the owner of the business (not required for this class, but you potentially could to help your personal portfolio). Use business style, and take a personal tone. Remember to sign it! The best way for online is to scan in your signature and use it as a graphic. A cover letter works well if you are careful at the printers to insert a different letter into each plan before it is bound, then are careful the correct plan goes to the right person.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List everything in the plan and the page numbers. Indicate charts, graphs, and special illustrations as part of the list. Be very careful that you do this properly, with end leaders (dots) and page numbers lined up properly (right tabbed). If you have trouble using the tab method, try creating a table with three columns and invisible borders. Put dots in the middle column (copy and paste) and right-justify your page numbers and things will look spiffy.
FINISHING THE FINAL COPY:
Put all the parts together (assignments 1-4) and go through the document carefully, reading out loud. This uncovers final proofreading problems and inconsistencies or redundancies. Make the corrections you have been receiving along the way. Make sure it all sounds like one voice and Save the entire file in PDF format, good practice for business documents.