Marketing 300

Mary Celsi

 A marketing plan includes everything from

understanding your target market and your competitive
position in that market, to your tactics to reach your
market and differentiate yourself from your competition
to make a sale.

The Marketing Plan

 For a large company, the marketing plan may be long

A small business may have a plan as short as 10 or so
pages
Marketing plans are crossfunctional: you cant do a
marketing plan without involving all the relevant players
across the company, e.g. manufacturing, accounting,
finance, etc.

Marketing Planning

 Focus: A plan gives employees something to rally behind

Planning for success
Its a blueprint for success for the year
Even if events during the year require some flexibility,
without any kind of a plan, there is little or no direction

Big Picture thinking: In the busy workday world, its

easy to lose track of the big picture if there is no periodic
reflection

Benefits of the Plan

 The plan should be revised and updated yearly

The plan from the previous year should be reviewed to
assess where goals were reached and not reached
[One section of the plan may include a longer-term
horizon such as 2-4 years I didnt include this in your
mini-plan, but it makes sense to look ahead]

Each Year

 Is a mini-plan
Not a fully realized plan, but boiled down to the essential
ideas and also without some of the more challenging
items (e.g. financial forecasting and costing) as youre
just starting to learn this process
Should pull together what youve learned in this class

Your Assignment

Lets start with the mini-plan form.

The Assignment

 Who benefits from buying the product?

Think of the segmentation methods we talked about in class. Are
one or more of them relevant? For example, how would you
describe your target market segment(s) demographically?
How do they benefit? What are the benefits for the consumer of
doing business with your campus QSR?
Who decides to make the purchase?
In some cases, someone in the household makes a decision for the
entire household, or a parent makes decisions for children. Here,
consumers buy for themselves.

Consumer/Target Market
Analysis

 What will be your point or points of differentiation?

Why should customers eat here rather than elsewhere? Why
should customers eat here rather than bring their own
lunch?

Differentiation

Consumer Social Factors

Economic Factors
Technological Factors
Competitive Factors
Legal/Regulatory Factors

Environmental Factors

 What social or psychological will affect potential consumers

decisions to patronize your QSR?
You are looking broadly at consumer and social trends in the environment
you may be thinking about consumer and social trends that affect
college students or eating out generally
Examples:
Students and workers often have limited time to plan to eat while at school and
work
Students and workers like to eat with others
Young people and others desire to eat healthy if they can afford it. (if you
are offering something healthy.)

Think of whatever consumer trends out there that are applicable to the
specific benefits and differentiating factors offered by your QSR

Consumer/Social Factors

 What is going on generally in the economy that affects

CSULB students and staff that could impact eating at
your QSR?
Unemployment rate??
Increasing expenses?? (e.g. gas, tuition)
Again, these are just examples. You want to really think about
what is going on broadly in the economy that could affect
your business and your business strategies (e.g. pricing)

Economic Factors

 Any impacts of technology on the food business or on

your particular marketplace?
Examples:
--[Food preparation technology]
--Service innovation technology.hmmmm

Technology

 What other choices do students and staff have for eating

on campus? How does the available competition affect
your marketing plan?

Competitive Factors

 Legal and regulatory challenges that affect the food

business e.g. food safety regulations
Also, alcohol regulations [if you intend to serve alcohol]
Your name for your business does it need to be
trademarked? Any concern the name will already be
registered?
Anything else?

Legal/Regulatory
Challenges

 Secondary research
QSR trends
College student/younger generation food preferences
Changing food preferences generally

Primary research
Focus groups, surveys, experiments to see what your market
wants
What kind of research would you do to help you make
marketplace decisions?

Research

 Remember the three-level model

What would be your core product(s)? [Remember, this goes
back to benefits]
Tangibles? (Store design, employee dress, menu
appearance, packaging, etc.)
Augmented product? [Anything that is ancillary to the
core product but may differentiate your product from
competition]

Products and Services

 Generally, how will you price?

Will you price higher than the market, at the market,
below the market, or perhaps use price lining? [These
choices should depend on other choices you have made in
the marketing plan]

Pricing

 Advertising?
Hmmm, how about indoor advertising?
But seriously, what media and vehicles might be appropriate
to your audience and message?
Media newspapers, magazines, flyers, posters, social media?

Promotion

 Hmmm.

Coupons
Samples
Contests
Buy one, get one free
Frequent buyer cards
Anything you can think of..

Sales Promotions

 What free coverage can you get for the opening of your
business?

Public Relations

 The traditional paid salesman is not relevant to your

business
Butare there other people in your business that might
engage in some elements of personal selling? Explain
how that might work.

Personal Selling

 You are place constrained since this QSR is next to the

CBA building
But, is there any other way that you might distribute your
product or service?
You dont have to distribute your product in any other way,
but I want you to think about if you want to do this or not,
and why.

Place/Distribution
Strategy

 This is the $$ just for marketing your product, not for the
entire business start-up (e.g. for sampling, advertising,
promotions.)
Guestimate your possible revenue for the first year
Rule of thumb: Spend 6-15% of your first years revenue
on marketing expenses (some businesses argue for 1.5
times 15% for the first year Im not convinced you
would need to spend this for this particular business, but
its something to think about)

Marketing Budget

 For a larger business, there may be several parties who

are responsible
For this business, its likely going to be the owner you!

Who is Responsible for

Executing this Plan?

 Now, its your turn to come up with a plan.

Try to relax, be engaged, but have a good time as well.
This is worth 10 points, so I suggest you give it more
time and effort than the other in-class group assignments

OK, Your turn!