I have attached the question as a file. The Marketing plan background is the question to the marketing plan essay topic. The plan table shows how the plan should be like, it has to contain all the contents of the marketing plan. The starting a website file, is the paper i started and do not know if its right but all the contents in my paper need to be in the marketing plan.
eide_marketing_plan_background….docx
mktg_311__mktg_plan_table_of_contents.docx
starting_a_website_2.docx
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Marketing Plan Background
Anne Eide is a retired business coach/consultant. She has extensive travel experience—both domestic
and international and also many experiences/stories that she would like to share, not only about travel
but about life in general/reflections when working with people from different cultures/backgrounds.
She has requested a marketing plan with three objectives in mind:
1. The best alternative for ‘telling her story’ and
2. The best way to get paid for ‘telling her story’
3. The best story to tell (i.e., travel experiences, or ‘life in general/reflections’—which would
include some travel related reflections.
for achieving the aforementioned objectives she chose a website:
1. Starting a website
• How? Requirements?
Currently, Ms. Eide has $5,000.00 available to invest in her new business. Your marketing plan should
prioritize activities using this budget. If you find that the $5,000 amount is not enough, make
recommendations for what needs to be done to get her business off the ground and the cost associated
with doing so.
Table of Contents
(page #)
1. Executive Summary………………………………………………………………………………………….
2. Situation Analysis …………………………………………………………………………………………….
2.1. Market Needs ……………………………………………………………………………………………
2.2. The Market ……………………………………………………………………………………………….
2.2.1. Market Demographics ………………………………………………………………………….
2.2.2. Market Trends …………………………………………………………………………………….
2.2.3. Market Growth ……………………………………………………………………………………
2.2.4. Macroenvironment ………………………………………………………………………………
2.3. The Company ……………………………………………………………………………………………
2.3.1. Mission………………………………………………………………………………………………
2.3.2. Product Offering …………………………………………………………………………………
2.3.3. Positioning …………………………………………………………………………………………
2.3.4. SWOT Summary…………………………………………………………………………………
2.3.4.1. Strengths ……………………………………………………………………………………..
2.3.4.2. Weaknesses ………………………………………………………………………………….
2.3.4.3. Opportunities ……………………………………………………………………………….
2.3.4.4. Threats ………………………………………………………………………………………..
2.4. Competition ………………………………………………………………………………………………
2.4.1. Direct Competition………………………………………………………………………………
2.4.2. Indirect Competition ……………………………………………………………………………
3. Marketing Strategy…………………………………………………………………………………………..
3.1. Value Proposition ………………………………………………………………………………………
3.2. Critical Issues ……………………………………………………………………………………………
3.3. Financial Objectives …………………………………………………………………………………..
3.4. Marketing Objectives …………………………………………………………………………………
3.5. Target Market Strategy……………………………………………………………………………….
3.6. Messaging…………………………………………………………………………………………………
3.7. Strategy Pyramids ……………………………………………………………………………………..
4. Marketing Mix ………………………………………………………………………………………………..
4.1. Product Marketing ……………………………………………………………………………………..
4.2. Pricing ……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
4.3. Promotion …………………………………………………………………………………………………
4.3.1. Advertising …………………………………………………………………………………………
4.3.2. Public Relations ………………………………………………………………………………….
4.3.3. Direct Marketing …………………………………………………………………………………
4.4. Service ……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
4.5. Implementation Schedule ……………………………………………………………………………
5. Financials ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
5.1. Break-even Analysis ………………………………………………………………………………….
5.2. Sales Forecast ……………………………………………………………………………………………
5.3. Expense Forecast ……………………………………………………………………………………….
5.4. Linking Expenses to Strategy and Tactics …………………………………………………….
5.5. Contribution Margin …………………………………………………………………………………..
6.
Controls ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
6.1. Implementation………………………………………………………………………………………….
6.2. Keys to Success …………………………………………………………………………………………
6.3. Market Research ………………………………………………………………………………………..
6.4. Contingency Planning ………………………………………………………………………………..
Starting a Website
Ms Eide is a well travelled woman who has been to many parts of the world to learn about their culture
and way of life. She has decided that she would like to share her knowledge and experiences with
pepole and at the same time get paid for doing it.
I have decided that starting a website would be a good option for Ms to tell her story, best way to get
paid for telling her story and the best story to tell. Since Ms Eide currently has $5000 to invest in the
business, starting a website would be suited for her.
Starting a website involves understanding how E-commers works, it also involves knowing if your target
market would be interested in reading her books online.
The first step for starting a website is to choose a platform on what the site is going to be built on.
Wordpress is one of the best platform to build a website on, as a matter of fact, over 50 % of websites
are built on the WordPress platform. The platform is easy to use, powerful in the sense that it can run
on most type of sites. WordPress is also mobile friendly, I believe that this is important because Ms
Eide’s readers don’t have to go on their computers, but turn on their phones and read her books. The
most important thing about this platform is that its free, so Ms Eide can start the step one without
paying anything.
The second step for starting a website is to get a domain name and and a web hosting. Hosting a
website costs about $5-$10 dollars every month. When choosing a domain name, it is always good to
choose a name that is easy to remember and a name that relates to the item we writing on the website,
it is also advisable to make sure someone else has not used your domain name or you might get sued for
copyright infrigement.
The last step for creating a website is to make it look professional. To make this happen, we have to first
install wordpress in our domain. Then we proceed to adding a theme to a website, this theme is
important because it will catch attention of the audience and invite them to her website. Other
important inputs to the website inculdes new pages for each chapter of the book, menu, install plug ins
and twicking the website to fit the taste of Ms Eide’s Target audience
The requirement for starting a website is not techincal, the requirements includes a domain name,
business email address from her readers, a website building software, web hosting, template design, a
logo for her company. All these requirement are needed for Ms Eide to start up her own business.
The total cost for starting up a website would cost Ms Eide about $200-$1000 yearly. If Ms Eide decides
to use the “starting a website” option would save her money to invest in her business.
www.websitebuilderexpert.com/cost-to-build-a-website/
https://websitesetup.org/
2.
The mission of Ms.Eide is to reach a wide range of readers (both domestic and international
readers) with her experience as a business coach/consultant through telling her story via a
website.
The first step we will take is to do a situation Analysis. Situation analysis examines the strengths
and weaknesses of a company in this case Ms.Eide’s Consulting business. Internal analysis is
defined as the strength and weaknesses within a company. The strength of the company should
be based on the employees for the company and customer focused. The weakness within a
company is based on how satisfied their customers are. Weaknesses could also be defined as a
disadvantage when comparing oneself to other companies.
External analysis is defined as the opportunity and Threats that exists around a company. Both
opportunities and threats are independent from the company. Opportunities are seeing new
developments and taking advantage of them. An example would be technology. Threats are
obstacles that a company faces that prevents them from reaching their mission statements.
Some of the potential challenges facing internal analysis are resources: sales, employee
capabilities and product quality.
Some of the challenges affecting external factors include technology, government, economy,
geography and cultural.
In my opinion, I believe the internal analysis has more obstacle to complete. This is because
there are so many factors within a company that needs to be evaluated. These factors are
important for a company to move forward. Those factors could include employees. Employees
are an important part of a company and a manager must deal with each employee differently.
Another internal obstacle would be organizational structure; this is important because a manager
should know where each employee fits in to perform the best job.
A manager can overcome employee challenges by knowing that every employee is different and
they should be treated differently. The best way to overcome those challenges is to learn about
each employee, their history and background.
A manager can overcome organizational structure through Employee empowerment and
Department loyalty.
Employee empowerment is when employees receive trainings and their job duties are given to
them in a clear and concise manner. This enables employees to be their own boss, finish their
tasks and can think outside the box.
Market needs shows you what features of your product will appeal to your target customer so you can
frame your marketing message to emphasize those features. Ms. Eide should see to it that what is on her
website should be appealing to her customers she should consider the product she is offering to her
customers whether it’s of high involvement or low involvement; People purchase products by taking
decisions, and this decision are the outcomes of a process. The high involvement decision, involves the
consumer to go through each step (problem recognition, information search, alternative analysis,
purchase behavior and post-purchase behavior) very diligently, spending a considerable amount of time
and energy before reaching a decision. The low involvement decision involves the consumer not to
spend a lot of energy or time in going through the different steps of the buying process, but arrive at the
decision very quickly. Putting this in mind Ms. Eide can
The Market
Market segmentation is a process of defining and subdividing an entire market into different segments.
The main purpose of market segmentation is to design a market that fits into the expectations of
consumers in that segment.
The forms of market segmentation I would recommend for my client would be demographic segmentation
and psychographic segmentation.
Demographic segmentation separates a market by demographic indicators including age, household type,
education level and income. Ms Eide would benefit from this because her book I believe would be
targeting adults between the ages of 29-45 who are degree or higher education holders, who are not
limited thinkers, rather broad thinkers. This book will be for all genders, because of the contents of the
book.
Psychographic Segmentation separates a market by lifestyle as well as values and belief. Ms Edie’s book
would suit this market because they are people with different lifestyle who are willing to learn about other
people’s lifestyle, beliefs and values. Are open to new things and are willing to learn new things.
The Company
Mission
Product Offering
Positioning
3. Marketing strategy
Technology affect a marketing firm by providing it with faster and more
efficient way to market their products. It enables companies to provide
products and broadcast messages about their product to larger audiences
in shorter periods of time. Technology goes beyond the limit of
traditional barriers to businesses and markets such as geographical
location and physical presence. Before technologies were created,
companies relied on word of mouth to market their business and on
small communities, friends and neighbors to purchase their product. But
with the introduction of technologies, it has provided a wide range of
customers for companies and given them a better platform to market
their products.
Technology will affect my client’s firm by providing my clients with the
necessary platform to be able to launch her book. It will also serve to
make her book become global instead of just domestic. The Internet is a
globally interconnected computer network that provides marketers and
marketing departments with a fast and cost-effective method of
conducting business and completing sales transactions. With the
Internet, the marketing activities of my client’s firm can be tracked and
researched, allowing my client to analyze trends and make nearly
instantaneous improvements to productivity of her book.
Through the internet and social media my client will be able to get
feedback about her book and can reach out to more customers around
the globe.
Evaluating consumer satisfaction is an important part of business, every firm
wants to know how they are treating their customers and they can only know this
through evaluating consumer satisfaction.
One of the importance of evaluating consumer satisfaction is to understand your
expectations. Knowing what a customer expects from a firm would provide
ground to satisfy them and give them services they would enjoy.
Another importance of evaluating is to find out what aspect a firm is failing. This is
an important tool because if will help a firm know where they need to improve.
Improvement could come from communication with customers, maybe the books
are not being advertised as they should. Knowing this would help a firm
understand where they need to work on.
Assessing competing firm is another way a firm can evaluate consumer
satisfaction, doing this would help a firm know what services the competing firm
are offering that makes a consumer want to patronize with them.
Evaluating customer satisfaction can also help you know whether the customer
will repurchase your product; Satisfaction of customers can influence other post
purchasing trend through use of the word of mouth or social media platform of
the customers.
Evaluating customers can also help you monitor them, Monitoring can be directed
at phone, email and chat communications. This enables you to interact with
customers and get direct feedback and makes the customers feel very important
in the end.
4. Marketing Mix
Price skimming is a product pricing strategy by which a firm charges the highest initial price that
customers will pay. As the demand of the first customer is satisfied, the firm lowers the price to attract
another, more price-sensitive segment.
Penetration pricing strategy refers to a marketing strategy used by businesses to attract customers to a
new product or service. Penetration pricing is the practice of offering a low price for a new product or
service during its initial offering to lure customers away from competitors.
I believe my client should use the price skimming because she is selling a unique product that is based
on her travel experience and working with people of different culture and background. Since there is no
competition in the market for her product, consumers would be willing to purchase her product at any
cost set by her.
Product Standardization is an agreement between industries or companies
regarding a particular good or merchandise are performed within a set guideline.
By doing this, it would ensure that consumers would be able to make up their
mind easily and create informed decisions.
Product customization is when a company distinguishes its products from other
competing products to make it unique to customers.
Since my client is producing a book, I would choose product customization
because she is talking about her life, which is different from other writers.
Another reason I would choose product customization is would help her reach
specific consumers like millennials and unpredictable shoppers, adults between
the ages of 29-45 who are degree or higher education holders, who are not
limited thinkers, rather broad thinkers. This book will be for all genders, because
of the contents of the book.
5. Financials
There are different strategies one can take when entering the international
market; There are strategies like Direct exporting, Franchising, licensing,
Partnering, joint ventures and many more.
For my client, I would recommend the direct exporting entry strategy. This is
because it is the most appropriate strategy In one market. Direct exporting
involves selling a product directly to the market a company has chosen. Direct
exporting also involves when a company makes commitment to market their
product oversees.
Using a direct export would give customers the chance to meet my client in
person and can know more about her.
One of the advantages of direct exporting is that there is a potential for greater
profit for the owner of the business because they would be eliminating
intermediaries. Using direct export also means that the owner would have a lot of
control over the all aspect of the transaction.
Sales forecast
E-Marketing is a process of m …
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