Marketing Plan

Over the next weeks of the course you will be developing a venture of your own. Though realistically this is not expected to be a viable venture, choose an idea that you have for a venture that you would like to develop or would like to see developed. You may use a product of service to provide for your clients.

Using the information from this week’s lectures and research, develop a marketing plan for your company.

1. Business Summary

In a marketing plan, your Business Summary is exactly what it sounds like: a summary of the organization. This includes the company name, where it’s headquartered, and its mission statement — all of which should be consistent with the business as a whole.

Your marketing plan’s Business Summary also includes a SWOT analysis, which stands for the business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Be patient with your business’s SWOT analysis; you’ll write most of it based on how you fill out the next few marketing plan elements below.

2. Target Market

Here’s where you’ll conduct some basic market research. If your company has already done a thorough market research study, this section of your marketing plan might be easier to put together.

Ultimately, this element of your marketing plan will help you describe the industry you’re selling to, an analysis of your competitors, and your buyer persona. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional description of your ideal customer, focusing on traits like age, location, job title, and personal challenges.

3. Market Strategy

Your Market Strategy uses the information included in your Target Market section to describe how your company should approach the market. What will your business offer your buyer personas that your competitors aren’t already offering them?

In a full-length marketing plan, this section can contain the “seven Ps of marketing.” These Ps are product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical evidence. (You’ll learn more about these seven sub-components inside our free marketing plan template, which you can download below.)

4. Marketing Channels

Your marketing plan will include a list of your marketing channels. While your company might promote the product itself using certain ad space, your marketing channels are where you’ll publish the content that educates your buyers, generates leads, and spreads awareness of your brand.

If you publish (or intend to publish) on social media, this is the place to talk about it. Use the Marketing Channels section of your marketing plan to lay out which social networks you want to launch a business page on, what you’ll use this social network for, and how you’ll measure your success on this network. Part of this section’s purpose is to prove to your superiors, both inside an outside Marketing, that these channels will serve to grow the business.

Businesses with extensive social media presences might even consider elaborating on their social strategy in a separate social media plan template — which you can download below.

Lastly, include the Conclusion.

This paper should have a title page, abstract (the elevator speech), body, and reference page. Points will be deducted if any of these four sections are missing.

Make sure papers are written in correct APA style.

All papers should be written in the third person (he, he, it, and they). Make every effort not to shift to second person (you, your) as in, “When starting a company you need money.” Try to avoid shifting to the first person (I, we) as well. It is distracting to the reader and bad style to shift persons in a paper—students often do it in the middle of a sentence.

The marketing plan should be between 750-1000 words (not including the Title Page and References section), double spaced, and use The Times Roman font size 12. Structure the paper along the lines advised above.

Make sure that your paper is formatted using the APA style guide.