Marketing Plan Unit 5 example essay topic

Unit 5 Learning Objectives Unit 5 is divided into two lessons: Lesson 5 A: Personal and Online Selling Lesson 5 B: The Marketing Plan Unit 5 wraps up the promotional techniques with personal and online selling, then calls on you to pull it all together for your project with a final Marketing Plan in place of a final exam. This will complete the "learning by doing" part of the course and give you a taste of what marketers do that affects our lives. Overview of Written Assignment Lesson 5 A is really a carryover of two more promotional elements from Lesson 4 B: personal selling and online selling, which could be considered as part of direct marketing, but which gets its own consideration in Chapter 21 of the text. Personal selling and sales management could be a course of their own, and we will keep that brief without a written assignment. Online selling, however, is a hot topic, even after the burst of the Internet stock bubble, with much written about it. We will try to summarize strategic choices and good practices for you, and we will give you a chance to design a Website for your product, service, or organization (on paper - you will not have to learn computer programming here).

If your organization already has a Website, we will ask you to critique it using the guidelines we give you for a good design. Lesson 5 B wraps it all up and asks you to pull together the components of the Marketing Plan you have been building, lesson by lesson, and send it in. That will be, in effect, your final exam, and hopefully something you can use in the future. Instructor's Notes Lesson 5 A: Personal and Online Selling " Cows don't give milk. You have to take it from them, twice a day". - Anonymous In 1939, when Ben Feldman entered the life insurance business, selling $1 million worth of insurance in a year got you into the industry's Hall of Fame.

In 1956, operating out of East Liverpool, Ohio, Feldman was selling $1 million a month, in 1966, $1 million a week, and in 1969, $2 million a week. In February 1992, New York Life had a special sales contest to celebrate Feldman's fiftieth year with the company. Feldman won, selling more than $15 million worth of insurance that month. At the time, he was recuperating in Florida from a brain hemorrhage (Corman). 1 How did Ben Feldman do it?

He tried phrases out on his wife, Fritzie. "Honey, listen to this. Is it 'No one ever died with enough money' or 'No one ever died with too much money'?"No one ever died with too much", Fritzie advised, and the phrase entered his sales pitch. He determined the number of calls he needed to make each day to make his goals. He did his homework on any company he planned to visit.

He listened and let customers, guided by his leading questions, arrive at the conclusion he was recommending. He bought lots of insurance on himself. His philosophy was, you come to believe you are worth it, and then you can convince other people they are. And he firmly believed that selling life insurance was a service to society. Personal selling guidelines consistently repeat the things Ben Feldman did: 1.

Polish your presentation and try it out on real people. 2. "Plan the work and work the plan". Make twenty-five phone calls or four to six personal visits a day. 3.

Target your best prospects, get referrals from satisfied customers, find out what their needs are, and be persistent. It takes an average of four calls to a prospect to close a sale. 4. Believe in yourself and your product or service. Since not everyone has the personality to be a salesperson, we have not given you a written assignment in this area. So on to the Internet!

E-Marketing: What Works on the Internet Strategy: Information or Transactions? The first decision you must make in designing a Website, or in evaluating one that already exists, is what is its purpose? Typically, they break down into two types: (1) sites that provide information only, including links to other Websites, and (2) sites that enable the viewer to process a transaction, usually to buy something, and also to register for future access, get on an e-mail list, or communicate with the site other than by e-mail. Often, an organization starts with an "information only" site and adds transaction processing later. We will concentrate primarily on those providing information on their products or services (as opposed to pure search engines) and those which consist of transactions for buying something. Information only sites should deliver content in a format that is usable and easy to understand, presented in a respectful and caring manner.

The design criteria here are to anticipate people's requests, understand what different 2 terminology they might use to seek what they want, and give them summaries so they can tell if that information is what they wanted. Rather than present a long list of categories, a search option intelligent enough to recognize key words and present the viewer with a list of choices (like search engines do) is good practice. Scholarly journals typically present an "abstract" at the beginning of each article, and that might be enough to answer the viewer's question, with the ability to display, print, or e-mail the full text provided a san option. Although you can save a "cookie" to keep track of who made the inquiry, it is good practice to ask the viewer to "opt in" for future e-mail updates on the subject. Finally, provide links to other Websites with related information. Remember, you are there to help the seeker find information.

Transaction sites have more challenges to satisfy customers. A study at the University of North Carolina and the University of Miami identified ten dimensions that consumers consider when they evaluate electronic service quality, regardless of the service or product they are purchasing (Zeithaml, 2000). The first five of these are the same things that consumers want when they shop offline: 1. Reliability 2.

Responsiveness 3. Access 4. Assurance 5. Customization / Personalization But other dimensions are unique to buying online: 1. Ease of navigation (Give them a map, like a store layout, and make every screen one click back to the home page.) 2. Flexibility 3.

Efficiency 4. Site aesthetics 5. Price knowledge (what their total charges are before they hit the "submit" but ton) Poor service quality is the reason people leave sites, therefore, once they have found your site, you want them to stay to complete their transaction. Questions for Evaluating an Organization's Internet Marketing Plan Website: 31. What is the purpose of the site?

Information only? Transactions? 2. How easy is it to get information?

To do transactions? 3. Who is their target market? Is the design of the Website appropriate for their target market? 4. Should they add transaction processing?

What should they add? Finding the Site: 5. Try different key words someone might use to find the site on different search engines. Where did it come up on each? Is there opportunity for improvement? 6.

If you misspelled the organization's name, what would happen on each of the search engines? Is there opportunity for improvement? (web is a Website for complaints about United Airlines.) Promotion of the Site: 7. Is the Website address on all promotion materials? 8.

Do other promotions drive potential customers to the Website? Written Assignment for Lesson 5 You have two options here. If your organization already has a Website, answer the evaluation questions above for the site. If it does not, or your new product or service ought to have its own site, answer the following questions: 1.

What should be the site name (URL)? The same issues apply as for the brand name assignment earlier, plus in this case it must be unique, including its suffix (. com, . net, etc. ). For the brand name, it could not have a similar name in the same product or service category. 2. What should the home page look like?

As with the magazine ad, you can do this with computer graphics. The important criteria is that it loads quickly (no movies, please) and confirms to the viewer this is where they want to be and where they will find what they are looking for. 3. Tell them how to find it easily.

Anticipating your customers' questions or desires, draw an arrangement of buttons on the home page to go to all the next logical places people would want to go. Provide a search feature if their needs are too diverse, or as an alternate means of access. 44. Draw a schematic of the next two levels of screens. For example: Home Page for this course [ [ ] ] Table of Contents Written Assignments Marketing Plan Sources of Information [Unit 1, 2, etc.

Each page should have a "Help" button and a "Contact" button to e-mail the company (or the instructor in the above example.) NOTE: Do not submit assignment until all the assignments for Unit 5 are completed. Lesson 5 B - Final Assignment The Marketing Plan It is time to pull together your final Marketing Plan. Let us check off what you should have versus Appendix A of the text. 1. Executive Summary - This is the last piece that should be written, and it summarizes the rest of the plan in one to two pages.

In the business world, this maybe all the decision-maker reads, leaving the details to others, so you need to be factual but convincing here. 2. Company Description - This would give a brief history of your organization and why you are introducing a new product or service, or whatever you are doing the Marketing Plan for. It puts the proposal in context for the reader. 3. Strategic Focus - If you have a Mission Statement, it would go here (optional).

You should have specific goals for your new product or service. If you have identified a competitive advantage for your organization, especially one you we retaking advantage of with the new product or service, it would go here (optional). 4. Situation Analysis - We didn't ask you to do the first part of a SWOT Analysis (the Internal Factors), but you should have completed an analysis of the Environmental Factors as a Written Assignment for Unit 1.

You may have decided to modify it since then. In any case, include it here. We didn't ask you to do an Industry Analysis either, but you should have identified Competitors in the Written Assignment on Price Strategy for Unit 3. Include them here. 5 We didn't ask you to do a Company Analysis, but you should have a comprehensive Customer Analysis as a result of documenting your primary and secondary market segments in Unit 2. Put those here.

5. Market-Product Focus - Target Markets have already been identified under Customer Analysis. The rest of this section is not applicable. 6.

Marketing Program - Product Strategy: Brand Name for your product or service from Unit 3, and why. Price Strategy: Also from Unit 3. Promotion Strategy: That is the Promotion Mix you developed in Unit 4. Place (Distribution) Strategy: Not applicable. 7. Financial Data and Projections - Although these would be very necessary in a full-fledged Marketing Plan, we did not ask you to develop them in this course.

8. Organization - Not applicable. 9. Implementation Plan - This and the next section are the "new news" of this assignment. You now have a promotion mix, a rough magazine ad, a rough direct mail package, and a rough Website design. How would you "roll those out" for your new product?

Put some time frame estimates and interim goals here to meet the overall goals you identified in Section 3 of the Marketing Plan. Like effective goals generally, they should be doable, but with an element of "stretch". 10. Evaluation and Control - If you were to implement this plan as you have written it, how would you measure, on an ongoing basis, whether the goals were being achieved?

As the model in the text indicates, this is the place to consider what might go wrong in the plan and how you would prepare to handle that. 11. Appendices - Include your Magazine Ad design, Direct Mail Package design, and Website design or critique as appendices. NOTE: Do not submit assignment until all the assignments for Unit 5 are completed.

Unit 5 Written Assignment - Managing the Marketing Process The assignments are mostly from the textbook or use a model provided in the textbook. Note that some of these assignments require access to the Internet. If you do not have access, please contact your instructor at the start of the course for alternate assignments. (CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE) 61. Send in the final version of the Marketing Plan you have assembled or revised for your product or service from these assignments. NOTE: Submit all the assignments for Unit 5 together in one e-mail file attachment.

Good luck and thanks for participating! 7.