Assignment: Submit Marketing Plan Template Part 1

During this course, you will learn to develop all the essential elements of a Marketing Plan. The purpose of this assignment is to make sure you are familiar with this course’s Marketing Plan Template. It is a well-designed tool for learning and a reference about what a Marketing Plan includes and how to create one.

Student Instructions:

1. Download the Marketing Plan Template atthis link(Links to an external site.): Open it in MS Word or Google Docs, your choice.


2. Take a moment to look over the Marketing Plan Template and notice the different pieces of information it includes.


3. Add your name to the header or another easily identifiable location in the Marketing Plan Template.


4. Save the template with a new name using this convention: first initial. lastname_MKT Plan_v1.
   
   
   1. Example: J.Workman_MKT Plan_v1.doc
   
   
   
   


5. Submit this document as an assignment.

CHAPTER 2: MARKETING FUNCTION WHY IT MATTERS: MARKETING FUNCTION Why learn about the marketing function? It’s springtime. You’ve just graduated from college, and the Instagram photos of you wearing your cap, gown, and huge smile are still fresh. But your mind has quickly turned to other things, or rather, to one major thing: a job. You have a newly minted degree and a new skill set you’re fired up to use (and possibly a few unpaid loans on your back). Now you just need to get an employer to notice you, pick you out of the crowd, and invite you onto the team. In other words, you need to market yourself. What does that mean? You Are the Product What is the unique combination of skills and capabilities you provide to prospective employers? What can you offer that’s different and better than other candidates? It might be a language you speak, a depth of prior experience you bring, a course of training you completed, a familiarity with the industry, great communication skills, or some combination of characteristics that make you an attractive employee. Who Is Your Customer? Who do you want to work for? What type of work do you want to do? Prospective employers are the customers you want to appeal to. Get to know them by researching who they are, who’s hiring, what hiring process they use and what they look for, how they get information about job candidates, and what makes them take a closer look. How Do You Reach These Customers? How can you connect with employers? Reaching prospective employers usually involves packaging and promoting yourself through a common set of job-search tools and activities—like job fairs, résumés, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles, networking lunches, meet-ups and other ways to get an “in.” As you find pathways to an employer, how do you make a strong positive impression? Packaging and presentation are essential. You show you’re a good fit by dressing for success, sharing sample work products, showcasing your expertise, and demonstrating interpersonal skills. What’s Your Price? When it comes to salary and benefits, what is your negotiating strategy? When discussions get serious—when you get a job offer, say—you’ll want to get as much compensation as you can without pricing yourself out of the opportunity. After all, you’re probably not the only candidate they are considering. Marketing: A Life Skill Marketing happens virtually everywhere. Job candidates like yourself have to figure out how to market themselves to employers. Companies market their products and services to customers. Nonprofit organizations market their altruistic missions and impacts to donors. Government agencies market their policies and programs to the general public. Candidates market their ideas to voters. Parents market vegetables to their finicky youngsters. As you gain a greater understanding of marketing and its primary activities, you will see it at work all around you. You will become more adept at knowing how marketing works, and why. You will learn about marketing tools and techniques you can apply to your advantage personally and professionally. You’ll appreciate the value of good marketing principles in helping you get ahead. Of course you want to develop a skill that’s so important in modern life!Licensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Original · Why It Matters: Marketing Function. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previously · graduation-3010.jpg. Authored by: Penn State Beaver. Located at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pennstatebeaver/8705574019/. License: CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives INTRODUCTION TO THE IMPORTANCE OF CUSTOMERS What you’ll learn to do: explain why the customer is the cornerstone of marketing As we dive into the mechanics of marketing, we begin by locking our focus on the customer. “Customers” are the people or organizations with needs or wants that a business aspires to address. The act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something of value in return is called the exchange process. Businesses live, thrive, or die based on their ability to offer value to customers through the exchange process. In other words, the customer is the primary reason for a business to exist. All marketing centers on creating, delivering, and communicating value to the customer.Licensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Original · Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution WHY CUSTOMERS MATTER Learning Objective · Explain why the customer is the cornerstone of marketing Who Are Customers, and Why Do They Matter? Marketing exists to help organizations understand, reach, and deliver value to their customers. For this reason, the customer is considered the cornerstone of marketing. With this in mind, what is likely to happen when an organization doesn’t understand or pay attention to what its customers want? What if an organization doesn’t even really understand who its customers are? One of the world’s best-known brands, Coca-Cola, provides a high-profile example of misunderstanding customer “wants.” In the following video, Roberto Goizueta—in his only on-camera interview on this topic—recounts the disastrous launch of New Coke in 1985 and describes the lessons the company learned. Goizueta was chairman, director, and chief executive officer of the Coca-Cola Company from August 1980 until his death in October 1997. Watch this video online: https://youtu.be/BmQs8g9ytRA Focus on Customers: The “Marketing Orientation” The purpose of marketing is to gain a balance between creating more value for customers against making profits for the organization. To achieve this, many firms have adopted a marketing philosophy or what is generally termed a “marketing orientation.” A marketing orientation can be defined as focusing the organization on identifying and understanding the customers’ preferences in terms of needs and wants and delivering them more effectively and efficiently than their competitors. Prior to the adoption of a marketing orientation, many organizations followed what was referred to as the “production philosophy.” This approach focused on improving the efficiency of production and distribution in order to reduce costs and deliver more affordable products—both were considered the source of competitive advantage. Another philosophy that has been followed historically is the “selling concept.” This approach required organizations to aggressively focus on selling and promotion efforts as a way to stimulate demand and drive sales. A marketing-driven approach, or marketing orientation, has consistently delivered superior results over these other philosophies. Adopting a marketing orientation is now widely accepted as delivering greater levels of customer satisfaction, profitability, and sustainability. As an example, Toyota, with its strategy of manufacturing cars for different segments of populations around the world, maintains a balance between customer value and profitability. With the marketing philosophy in mind, it has replaced its original goal of 10% of the world’s market share with being “Number one in customer satisfaction,” as it believes its market share will follow the satisfaction it delivers to its customers. (Note: Kotler, P., Brown, L., Adam, S., Burton, S., Armstrong, G 2008, 'Marketing', Pearson, Australia. ) The Problem of Misplaced Focus Both historically and currently, many businesses do not follow the marketing orientation. In the past, companies such as Texas Instruments and Otis Elevator followed a production orientation, maintaining a primary focus on technology, innovation, and low production and distribution costs. Such companies assume that a technically superior or less expensive product sells itself. While this may be true in some cases, over time this approach leaves businesses particularly vulnerable to competitors who outpace them technologically or undercut their pricing. Without a sufficient focus on the customer’s needs and preferences, businesses can lose sight of what matters most in the exchange process. Other companies, such as Amway, treat sales and marketing as essentially the same thing. This sales orientation assumes that a good salesperson has the capability to generate demand and sell anything regardless of the customer’s needs and the value provided in the exchange process. Often, this focus on selling and the promotion process effectively ignores the customer or views the customer as someone to be manipulated. Organizations with this orientation become vulnerable to competitors that do a better job of understanding and catering to what customers actually want. Staying Close to the Customer Insightful businesses acknowledge the importance of production and sales but realize that the following three-step process is most effective: 1. Continuously collect information about customers’ needs and competitors’ capabilities 2. Share the information across departments, including production and sales 3. Use the information to create a competitive advantage by increasing value for customers Thanks to the Internet and other technological advances, today’s consumers have access to far more and far better information than ever before. They also have many more choices. To succeed in this environment, businesses must provide comparable levels of information to competitors, and they must deal with new competitors that are quicker, smarter, and open 24-7-365. Organizations that employ marketing correctly know that keeping customers informed is easier if they maintain constant contact with the customer. This does not necessarily mean that they write or call regularly, although it could. Rather, it means a marketing organization knows a great deal about the characteristics, values, interests, and behaviors of its customers. It monitors how these factors change over time. It provides channels of information and communication to meet customers where they are and be accessible at any moment. Although the customer-oriented marketing process is not an exact science, there is sufficient evidence that marketers who do this well tend to succeed. A prime guideline for marketing success is to establish customer satisfaction as a company’s number-one priority. This forces an organization to measure and pay attention to customers’ experiences purchasing and using its products. The drive to improve customer satisfaction typically results in improvements to products, processes, and relationship building. This approach helps organizations develop a marketing mentality that facilitates information gathering and maintains effective communication with the customers who are critical to growth, profitability, and success. TERMS · Customer: a person or organization who pays to consume a product or service; the customer has needs/ wants that the business seeks to address · Exchange process: the act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something of value in return · Marketing orientation: an approach focused on identifying and understanding the customer’s needs and wants and addressing them more effectively/efficiently than one’s competitors · Production orientation: an approach focused primarily on technology, innovation, and low production and distribution costs · Sales orientation: an approach focused on selling a product and using promotion techniques to attain the highest sales possible, regardless of what a customer wants Check Your Understanding Answer the question(s) below to see how well you understand the topics covered in this outcome. This short quiz does not count toward your grade in the class, and you can retake it an unlimited number of times. Use this quiz to check your understanding and decide whether to (1) study the previous section further or (2) move on to the next section. Visit this page in your course online to check your understanding.Licensing & Attributions CC licensed content,