MKT103: Opportunity Analysis - Online Class as to How to Formulate an Objective - Mix Marketing Plan Assessment Answers

Internal Code: 1IDHA

Marketing Plan Assignment

Task: Marketing Objectives Place your SMART objective here. Don’t forget to refer to guide and online class as to how to formulate an objective. If you receive feedback from your opportunity analysis to change your objective, place the new, correct objective here. Justify why was this objective chosen.

Selection of Target Market

Identify the target market chosen for this plan and justify why?

• Identify the targeting strategy adopted by your company. This will determine which market segments you will focus on (e.g., mass marketing, differentiated marketing, concentrated etc.); From here, identify the selected target market.
• Provide the profile of your target market addressing such as the following:
• Demographics (e.g., age, gender, social status, occupation, religion, ethnicity, income, social class);
• Psychographics (e.g., lifestyles, attitudes and beliefs, perceptions, personality, adopter categories such as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards).
• Consumption and use patterns (i.e., Behavioural): Buying motives, when, where and how they buy, usage rate, how often they buy, who makes the buying decision and who does the buying.
• Geographic (e.g., location, region, state, zip codes, countries, cities, urban, climate, market size etc.)
• Marketing and brand dimensions (e.g., specific responses to marketing campaigns, familiarity to the brand, do they select a product based on brand/attributes, brand loyalty, customer satisfaction etc.)

Price

Identify the cost of the product to the customer.

• Detail the new pricing structure (i.e., wholesale price, mark-up, retail price)
• Describe how the selling price will be determined (from the 3 C’s – cost, customer, competitor – see the textbook);
• Describe pricing strategy (e.g., market-skimming pricing, market penetration pricing, lowest price provider, geographic pricing, bundling of products etc.) and how it relates to the overall marketing strategy;
• Provide discount schedules;

Justify your strategy based upon the overall objective of the marketing plan.

Promotion

Overview: Your promotional strategy must reflect your positioning strategy. This means that the message you are sending to the market be relative to the positioning strategy. Develop a 3-6 word sentence that can be used to portray this strategy. For instance, Toyota use “oh what a feeling”. Also the media chosen to communicate the message must be the same media that your target market consumes. As such the message must be the same across all the media used. Remember who you have chosen as your target market and how will this enable you to achieve your objectives.

1. Advertising/Media:

• Explain choice of media in combination with ad type (e.g., print, radio, TV, outdoors, online, social media, events, Public relations/publicity)
• Explain how each medium will be used in terms of timing, sequencing and synergy. Explain and include the below table (but do so for 12 months). You may commence in any month of the year. This is essentially a smaller version of that seen in the implementation section, but this only shows promotions and how they may overlap.
• Describe any loyalty programs offered (e.g., reward programs, appreciation programs, partnership programs, rebate programs, affinity programs).

Now choose which of the following you could use for your promotional campaign and apply. There is no set number – choose only what you wish to apply in your plan.

1. Personal Selling

• Identify elements of personal selling (face-to-face) strategy if applicable;
• Identify sales force needed (i.e., number of sales persons required, type of sales people required, type of sales presentation to use).

1. Sales Promotion

• Samples
• Coupons
• Premiums
• Contests
• Refunds. Rebates
• Bonus packs
• Frequency programs,
• Event marketing
• Other?

1. Trade Promotion

• Describe elements of trade promotions with distributors and/or partners (e.g., contests, trade allowances, point-of-purchase displays, trade shows etc.)

1. Public relations/Publicity

• Press release;
• Sponsorships;
• Cause-related marketing;
• Other?

1. Customer and Service Support

• Identify key elements of customer service and support that relate to the marketing strategy;
• Customer service hours;
• Level and method of customer service/support provided (e.g., telephone, website, live chat, email etc.)
• Response time to customer inquiries;
• Other?

You can choose to insert an implementation table specifically for the promotion elements, as per this example. If you prefer, you can include this same information in the implementation Gantt chart instead. There’s no need to double up though.