STrayer JWI 518 Assignment 4: Final Marketing Plan

Assignment 4: Final Marketing Plan

Due Week 10, Day 7 (Weight: 35%)

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. 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 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.

• Title Page

• Table of Contents

• Executive Summary

o Create a high-level summary of the plan’s content and purpose.

• Description of Product/Service

o 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 Create a 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); on the next slide, provide overview bullet points analyzing 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 to 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

Grading for this assignment will be based on the following grading criteria.