3.05 Employ Marketing information to develop a Marketing Plan
3.05 Employ Marketing
information to develop a
Marketing Plan
Researching the Industry• Trends and patterns of change
• Industry forces that affect your business – understanding competitive forces can
help a business plan a strategy to succeed
• ◦ Barriers to entry
• ▪ barriers to entry – conditions or circumstances that make it difficult or costly for
outside firms to enter a market to compete with the established firm or firms
• ▪ economics of sale – situations where the cost of producing one unit of a good or
service decreases as the volume of production increases
• ▪ brand loyalty – loyalty to or the tendency to buy a particular brand of a product
• ◦ threats from substitute products
• ◦ sources of supply
• ◦ buyers' ability to bargain
• ◦ technology
Researching the Industry (con’t)
Industry demographics – includes the number of companies, annual revenues, and average size of the companies by number of employees
• The competition
• ◦ market share – a portion of the total sales generated by all competing companies in a given market
• ◦ niche – a small, specialized segment of the market
• ◦ market positioning – the act of identifying a specific market niche for a product
• ◦ competitive advantage – a feature that makes a product more desirable than its competitors' products
Researching the Industry (con’t)
Competitive Intelligence – Competitive advantage – studying the competition is critical to finding your company's competitive advantage. The following list ways that are helpful to understanding your competition:
• ◦ visit competitors' outlet
• ◦ buy your competitors' products• ◦ search the internet and your competitors' web sites•
Researching the target customer
• ◦ creating a customer profile – a complete picture of a venture's prospective customers
• ◦ evaluating customers' needs
• ▪ customer needs analysis – pinpoints the features and benefits of your goods and
services that customers value
• ◦ forecasting demand – three ways to forecast a demand figure:
• ▪ one, to use historical analogy products
• ▪ two, to interview prospective customers and intermediaries
• ▪ three, to go into limited production to test the market
• Issues in entrepreneurship
Mass Marketing
Mass Marketing is trying to reach all customers with a single marketing plan
Competitive Analysis – section of a business plan that should demonstrate the proposed advantage of the business over its competitors. You can gather information on competitors the following ways:
• ◦ viewing their web site
• ◦ talking to their customers, vendors, suppliers, or
• employees
• ◦ attending trade shows◦
• ◦ searching newspaper and magazine databases
Adjusting to sales environment changes
• ◦ SWOT analysis – a strategic planning technique that analyzes a company's
internal strengths and weaknesses, and studies opportunities and threats in the
external sales environment
• ▪ Internal factors may include:
• changes in spending on other parts of the company's marketing and promotional
mix
• changes in what is happening in different territories or markets
• changes in sales management practices
• changes in number of salespeople supervised by one person
• ▪ External factors may include:
• intensity of competition-based
• total market potential
• concentration of potential high-volume buyers
• geographic distribution of customers
Resources
Allen, K.A., & Meyer, E.C. (2006). Entrepreneurship and small business management (pp. 104,124-129,293 ). Woodland Hills, CA: McGraw-Hill Glencoe.