WHAT FEATURES OF YOUR PRODUCT ARE ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT TO POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS?

11 May WHAT FEATURES OF YOUR PRODUCT ARE ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT TO POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS?

Step 06: Going Global

Does your marketing plan involve reaching global customers outside the United States? If the answer is no, read no further and do not include a global element in your plan. If the answer is yes, try to identify the following:

1. What features of your product are especially important to potential customers?

2. In which countries do these potential customers live?

3. What special marketing issues are involved in trying to reach them?

Answers to these questions will help in developing more detailed marketing mix strategies described in later chapters.

Special issues for students to consider if marketing a product to another country include:

1. Regulations dealing with imports, including tariffs and quotas.

2. Assistance programs from the World Trade Organization, U.S. government, or state trade office.

3. Whether a website will be developed in the language of the targeted country.

4. An assessment of the country’s values, customs, and symbols when developing the marketing mix.

5. An assessment of any relevant economic (income, inflation, currency exchange rate, etc.) and infrastructure issues (communication, transportation, energy, distribution, etc.).

6. Political stability.

7. Market-entry strategy to be used.

8. Whether the product will need to be adapted.

Step 07: Resource Prioritization
BUILDING YOUR eMARKETING PLAN

Step 07: Resource Prioritization

To help you collect the most useful data for your marketing plan, develop a three-column table:

1. In column 1, list the information you would ideally like to have to fill holes in your marketing plan.

Answers: Data sources were also touched on briefly in the Chapter 1: Building Your Marketing Plan when students were selecting a marketing plan topic. Without some available data on the proposed plan, a different product, service, or organization should have been selected. Some of these information needs may consist of market size, market share, or target market characteristics (demographics, usage, media, etc.).

2. In column 2, identify the source for each bit of information in column 1, such as an Internet search, talking to prospective customers, looking at internal data, and so forth.

Answers: Some of these sources could include Census data, sales reports, mail survey of prospective customers, interviews with owners or managers, etc.

3. In column 3, set a priority on information you will have time to spend collecting by rating them: 1 = most important; 2 = next most important; and so forth. [Note: This is a 3-pt. scale.]

Answers: This three-column table never appears in the marketing plan itself. But if done well, the tool can generate sufficient data upon which the marketing mix strategies are based. Suppose a student team is developing a marketing plan an existing small, family-owned florist shop. A portion of this three-column table might look as follows:

NEEDED INFORMATION

INFORMATION SOURCE

PRIORITY

• Present target market customers (households and institutions)

• Internal company records

3

• Satisfaction and wants of present customers

• Simple, 7-question survey

3

• Potential target market customers (households and institutions)

• Map and observation of potential customers in local retail trading area

2

• Competitors

• Yellow-pages; map of 15-mile radius retail trading area

2

• Suppliers of flowers, other supplies

• Yellow-pages; interview with owners

1

• Cost of advertising media

• Pricing of Yellow Pages ad, direct mail, local newspaper ad

3

• Break-even data (rent, utilities, average selling price, etc.)

• Interview with owners

3

This prioritizes the data collection tasks. Inform students that some secondary data collection is necessary before a survey can be developed since the students need to have some understanding of the market and its environment. Also, if students plan on collecting primary data, they need to allow for sufficient time to design the instrument, collect the data, analyze the data, and the develop marketing actions.

Helping with Common Student Problems

Students writing marketing plans often have the classic problem of procrastinators—trying to collect and interpret the data the day before the plan is to be submitted to the instructor. This needed data analysis step is intended to force students to anticipate the information required and to obtain it before the last minute.

Step 08: Market Size & Segmentation
BUILDING YOUR eMARKETING PLAN

Step 08: Market Size & Segmentation

Your marketing plan (a) needs a market-product grid to focus your marketing efforts and also (b) leads to a forecast of sales for the company. Use these steps:

1. Define the market segments (the rows in your grid) using the bases of segmentation used to segment consumer and organizational markets.

2. Define the groupings of related products (the columns in your grid).

3. Form your grid and estimate the size of market in each market-product cell.

4. Select the target market segments on which to focus your efforts with your marketing program.

5. Use the information and the lost-horse forecasting technique to make a sales forecast (company forecast).

6. Draft your positioning statement.