Must be nine to 11 double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages or slides) and formatted according to APA Style
Read
- Chapter 9 of the course text, Principles of Marketing
- Chapter 10 of the course text, Principles of Marketing
- It is recommended you review the course text and other resources read or watched throughout this course.
Throughout this course, you have explored all of the elements of a marketing plan. Now it is time to put your marketing plan together for the company you selected for your marketing manager internship.
Instructions
Part 1 – General Information and Situational Analysis
Section 1 – Company Background
- Describe your selected company or brand.
- Tell a brief history of the company.
- Summarize the core products and services the company offers.
- Identify direct current competitors.
- Explain why they direct competitors.
Section 2 – SWOT Analysis (Links to an external site.)
- Complete a SWOT analysis.
- Propose the product or service line you want to develop a marketing plan for.
- Justify your proposal with a SWOT-based argument for why it warrants marketing investment.
Section 3 – Macro- and Microenvironment
- Analyze at least two elements from each quadrant of Table 8.1 in the course text as the micro-and macro environment factors that affect the company’s overall marketing strategy.
Part 2 – The Marketing Plan
Section 1 – Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning (STP)
- Describe your segmentation approach for your proposed product/service.
- Be sure to discuss these elements of the segmentation approach: demographic, geographic, behavioral, and psychographic segmentation approaches.
- Provide a rationale for this approach.
- Describe the target audiences or markets.
- Create a positioning statement.
Section 2 – The Marketing Mix
- Formulate the 4Ps for your proposed product/service:
- Product
- Describe your core product, extended product, and product concept.
- Explain how you plan to achieve competitive differentiation through creating customer value in four areas: Branding, Packaging, Support & Quality
- Price
- Place
- Promotion with a special focus on digital media and integrated marketing communications (IMC)
Section 3 – Global and Ethical Considerations, and Conclusion
- Identify three business or sociocultural considerations in translating your marketing plan for use in a foreign market.
- Discuss at least one policy/philosophy or idea regarding the company’s
- corporate social responsibility (CSR),
- green marketing practices, and
- ethics and ethical marketing.
- Conclude with a summary of your plan and why it deserves to be funded.
Helpful Tips
- Use your Week 2 assignment and make sure you incorporated your instructor’s feedback and have improved your previously submitted work for Part 1 and Part 2, Section 2 (Product).
- Understanding the background of the company will help you complete the SWOT analysis.
- Propose a new idea to market the product or service line. Avoid writing about or proposing the current marketing strategy.
- This is your idea, so use the SWOT analysis to defend it.
- Use the information you researched and analyzed in the Week 4 video presentation to complete Part 1, Section 3.
- Analyze some micro-and macro environment factors that affect the company’s overall marketing strategy.
- You need to provide enough details to the information you included in your slides to fit well with the rest of the paper.
- Make sure you incorporated your instructor’s feedback and have improved your previously submitted work for this part.
- Use the information you researched and analyzed in the Week 4 discussion forum, Finding and Targeting Your People, to complete Part 2, Section 1.
- You need to beef up the information you discussed in that discussion forum to align it with your overall marketing plan.
- Review and refer to Section 7.3 of the course text, Principles of Marketing.
- Spend considerable time completing Part 2, the Marketing Plan; this is the essence of your plan.
- Someone should be able to understand your plan, just by reading this section only.
- At the end of your marketing plan, add an APA-formatted appendix.
- Save your marketing plan as a Word document.
