 Welcome to the Unit 8 review for MBA 602 Marketing Management. And I hope that you've enjoyed the reviews of the first seven units. And as you'll see in this current unit, that all of the material builds on the units before. So I would encourage you certainly to review all of the other units and to review them in order, because again, they do build on each other. So today, we are going to talk about the marketing plan. And the objectives for this unit include analyzing the alignment of a marketing plan with the company's mission and vision and their objectives within their organizational strategic plans. We'll talk about how to create specific action plans so that a company can execute on the various objectives that they have set for themselves. And also how to determine the effectiveness of a marketing plan and marketing strategy, given the stated objectives of the plan and how often to conduct that measurement. And in last week's session, I had answered some questions from a student about marketing metrics. And so this is where that's going to come into play, you know, when you're when you're putting a plan together. So again, I each week I like to emphasize why learning objectives are important. And this is because they tie back directly to the course material and the content, they tied directly to the assessments, and they also help you with with test preparation. And as I mentioned last week, the next two weeks will be focused on the exam itself, where I will review some of the some of the questions and some of the concepts that will be in that exam. So I encourage you to, if you can participate live, to please look at the recordings of those as well. And those will be the following two weeks. So if you have any questions, please make sure that you that you pass them along, and I will be sure to get back to you with the answers to those questions going forward. So in unit eight, we will certainly talk about the marketing plan, as I mentioned, we will look at benchmarking, we'll look at some businesses, best practices, what the business climate looks like and how a marketing plan can help a company identify the different factors that are going on in the climate. We'll look at smart marketing, which is an acronym, and we will look at that in detail. We'll talk about brand positioning, which we have covered a bit, promotional mix, which you've also covered and unique selling proposition and how all of these factors work together. So the first thing is we're going to analyze the alignment of a marketing plan with the mission and vision of the company as it relates to their objectives as part of their strategic plan. And we'll look first at the purpose of a marketing plan. And we'll look at the various elements of the marketing plan and how those different factors help the company develop their effective strategies. So the first thing is what is the purpose of a marketing plan? So a marketing plan is basically a roadmap for an organization to say this is where we are right now, this is where we want to be, and the marketing plan is the guideline for how you get from where you are to where you want to be. And it helps a company communicate specifically, what is the purpose of our organization? Why do we exist? What is our reason for being? A marketing plan will help identify customer needs, but also even before that, to identify your customers. A marketing plan is going to identify your target market so that you can then identify what is that target market need. A marketing plan is going to have a mission statement, talk about goals, talk about what's being provided and who the customers are. A marketing plan is also going to have a vision statement and include everything that's going on in the marketplace, competition, what is the overall industry look like? What trends have been going on? And all of those factors will help a company to better identify their marketing goals so that they can then create marketing activities that are going to be specific to helping the company achieve those goals. And if you think about what we discussed in earlier units about pricing and promotion, the marketing plan is going to guide all of those things. You're going to figure out all of those things and once you have all of the information in your marketing plan, it will guide you into setting up those factors. So how does a marketing plan help a company develop these strategies? Again, the first thing I talked about is the corporate mission. What is the purpose of the company? What do you have to offer? Who are you offering to? And again, what is your reason for being? And the next step would be a situation analysis. A situation analysis is going to look at internal factors, external factors, and in the past we've talked about a SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And that's going to play a very big part in your marketing plan of really looking at what internal strengths do you have? What are you bringing to the marketplace that's a benefit to your organization that has you stand out from the competition? What makes you better than somebody else? It's also important to discuss weaknesses and to evaluate weaknesses. For companies, this is very hard to do sometimes because companies don't like to acknowledge what they're not doing well, but for a company to improve, it's essential to really look at your weaknesses and see how they can be turned into strengths. External factors include opportunities and threats that exist out there. Are there new target markets that you can take advantage of? Are there new geographic areas that where you can expand? Is there new technology out there that you can leverage for your company and turn those opportunities into strengths for the organization? What threats exist? The first threat that's most prominent for an organization is your competition. Who else is out there? What else are they doing? How are they drawing customers that could potentially be your customers? The economy is certainly a factor. Other things that are going on. And again, it's important to recognize what's internal and what's external. A good way of measuring that or identifying that is as an internal factor is something that's within an organization's control. An external factor is outside of your control, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be aware of it because being aware of external factors that are either opportunities or threats enable you to make better decisions and to take advantage of what's going on out there. So once you have all of that information, you're able to develop corporate strategies, your objectives, your tactics. And again, your strategies and objectives from a corporate level, as well as from a marketing level, should be realistic. They should be meaningful. They should be measurable. And they should be factors that a company knows that they're able to achieve. So they all relate directly to your target market that you identify. And again, relate again, everything to the four Ps product price, place and promotion. And put all those factors together, use all of that information that you have to develop your marketing activities. But also once you implement them, very important to make sure that you have factors in place to evaluate them. And that goes back to what we looked at in the earlier unit about marketing metrics. And this is where those metrics would be coming into play. Again, at this point, if you have any questions, please make sure that you pass them along. And I will be sure to answer your questions as soon as possible in future sessions. Okay, so the next learning outcome that we will look at is to explain how to create specific action plans so that we can execute on our given strategic objectives. And we'll look at smart marketing objectives and how they impact strategy. We'll look at what a product strategy is. We'll review the purpose of brand positioning. And again, we have explored this several times, but it's important to look at it in a different context as we look at our marketing plan. And we'll look at how marketers leverage the different elements in the promotional mix to achieve their goals. And again, I remind you about some of the promotional activities that we talked about in the previous unit. So smart marketing objectives, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time based. When you develop marketing objectives, it's really important to make sure that all of these factors are addressed. It's not enough to say we want to increase sales. Okay, if you get to new sales, have you achieved your goal? Is it sufficient? Can you reach new to new sales? Is that meaningful? And in what time frame? If you get to new sales over a year, have you achieved goals? So, you know, and that's very simplified version. But think about this. You can say we would like to increase sales by 10% within the next six months. You're being very specific. That's measurable. If we looked at, if we talked about, go back to the metrics that we looked at in the last unit, you're able to measure whether or not sales have increased by 10%. Certainly a 10% increase is attainable. It can be relevant to the product or service. And it's time based so that at the end of that time period, you're able to truly look at all of the numbers and say whether or not you have achieved your goals. So it's always good. It's very simple, smart, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time based. And this really applies to any goals. It doesn't just have to be marketing goals, but any goals that a company is setting for themselves. Or even if you're setting some goals for yourself on a personal level, all of these factors should come into play because then you can put activities into action and then be able to measure whether or not you have achieved your goals. So even something as simple as getting your degree, you're specific, you can measure if you've achieved it. It's certainly relevant and attainable and you can give yourself a timeframe by which you want to earn that degree. So smart objectives can be applied to any aspect in business as well as to us in our personal lives. So let's talk about product strategy. So a product strategy takes into account user needs, it takes into account the marketplace, and it takes into account business goals for a product. And it directly relates to the value proposition, which identifies the company's promise to their customers, which states why customers should buy that product. So we can look at all of those factors. We look at the market, we look at corporate goals, we look at features and innovations, and all of those combined helped a company to develop a product strategy. And again, that vision for success and going back to what we talked about earlier about metrics. So you can look at all of these factors, put your product strategy together, and then determine whether or not you've actually achieved those goals. So let's look at brand positioning, and we've talked about this quite a bit in the past, but brand positioning is what enables your company to stand out from the competition. It provides the consumer with a reason to purchase one brand over another. It can identify how to best meet consumer needs, and it can help identify how consumers position a product of service in their own minds relative to the competition. So when you're looking at brand positioning, first thing that's most important is to identify your target market and determine what they need in your product. Why are they seeking your particular product? You want to make sure that consumers can find your brand when they're searching for alternatives. And again, as we've mentioned, identify competitors in the marketplace. Where are those competitors positioned? How is your product positioned relative to that competition? And always important to look for gaps in the marketplace. What is the competition not meeting? What is the competition not fulfilling when it comes to consumer demands or consumer needs? And how can your brand fill in that gap? How do you communicate to the customer? What value are you offering that's distinctive? And again, the unique selling proposition. The unique selling proposition is, gives your customer a reason for buying your product. What makes your product different from somebody else so that they should buy yours versus somebody else's? And also for you to be able to answer the question that a customer is going to ask, which is, what's in it for me? When you can answer the question, what's in it for me, you're answering the question that the consumer is saying, why should I buy your product? We all want the benefits. Features are great, but we want to know what benefits are we going to receive as a consumer. And that's when you're putting your unique selling proposition together, helping you with your brand positioning and again, make you stand out from the other brands that are in the marketplace. Okay, so how do you communicate? And we talked about this in the earlier unit, but again, the promotional mix, which can encompass so many different elements and advertising, which could be traditional advertising, such as television, radio, print, web advertising, anything that a company is paying for specifically that identifies you as the entity that's paying for it is advertising. Personal selling is more for things that require face to face. This is when you go into, if you're still buying a car and a dealership, personal selling, if you're going into a clothing store and you're buying clothing, you're dealing with a sales person, personal selling, another very important part of the promotional mix, sales promotion, coupons, discounts, buy one, get one, anything that is designed to encourage immediate sale of a particular product or service. Public relations, getting that message out there, letting the public know what you have to offer in meaningful ways that is definitely under your control. So when you put out public relations, you are in control of that message. And then direct marketing, which is still very popular, still very effective of connecting directly with consumers. And again, we covered quite a few of the promotional mix activities in the earlier, in the earlier unit. But I think at this point, you can see how this is working as part of an important aspect within the marketing plan itself. Again, if anyone has any questions, please feel free to share them. And I will be sure to get your answers to you over the next few sessions. So for the final learning outcome for this unit, we're going to determine how to measure effectiveness of a marketing strategy, given the objectives of the marketing plan, and also how often to conduct that measurement. We're going to look at the purpose of benchmarking and performance measurement. We'll talk about the different performance measures used to evaluate product differentiation strategies. And the metrics of company would measure when conducting a digital marketing campaign. And quite a few of these things we have already covered, but they certainly are important and bear reviewing. So let's talk about benchmarking. So benchmarking is really identifies performance standards for a company that really becomes the guideline for pretty much all other players in a particular industry. So for example, if we use the Ritz Carlton Hotel, which is probably one of the highest standards by which other hotel brands measure the levels of customer service. And that's a great way to kind of look at this in more detail. So if you go to the Ritz Carlton website and you look at the different hotels that they have throughout the world, you can really see how each hotel is specific to the location in which it's located and how they seek to meet the needs of their guests who are coming to those places. And the Ritz Carlton again continues to be like the standard by which other hotels will measure their levels of customer service. It also when you benchmark it, it helps a company identify areas where improvement is needed. And especially highlighting best practices, what are other companies doing to best meet the needs and demands of their customers. So benchmarking kind of gives a guideline of what's the top performers, what areas need to be improved, and also what are the best ways in which companies can make those improvements. So let's talk about product differentiation and different measures are used to evaluate success here. So product differentiation strategy can revolve around innovation. It might focus on the number of new products that a company is putting out there. You can look at levels of customer satisfaction. You might want to look at customer complaints, product quality and defects. And all of these factors can play a very big role in how consumers will view that particular product. And I like to use the example of Heinz ketchup. So Heinz here in the U.S. is pretty much the major manufacturer of ketchup. And there aren't that many new products that you can come up with ketchup, although Heinz does come up with other types of products. But a few years ago, and this is, I think, a great example of how a company introduces new products, but then evaluates how customers will receive them. So ketchup is red. It's got the colors of tomatoes. But several years ago, Heinz came out with two different color ketchups. One of them was green and one of them was purple. And it really all came down to food coloring and other additives that they put into it, but the taste was the same. And not a surprise, customer satisfaction was very low. Customer complaints were very high. While the product quality was the same, people didn't want to eat green ketchup and they didn't want to eat purple ketchup. And so while Heinz was probably seeking to, and I'm not quite even sure why they sought to do this, because there wasn't a whole lot of competition. But I guess they felt that it was, you know, they wanted to shake things up a little bit and have some product differentiation from other other condiments that were in the marketplace. Not a surprise, the products did not last very long. So, you know, when you're looking for product differentiation, it's also important to make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons and that if you're introducing new products that you really understand, you know, and this goes back to understanding your target market and understanding the marketplace and understanding, you know, what is it that you're actually doing and introducing? So while product innovation can be great, it really needs to be the right innovation. And that innovation just for the sake of innovating doesn't always work and isn't always successful. So let's talk about measuring digital marketing campaigns. And again, I did talk about this in the earlier, in the earlier unit, but there's, there's repeating. So, so reach, so reach is coupled with frequency. So reach and frequency have to do with the number of consumers that see your message and frequency is how often they, they are able to see your message. So, you know, when we talked about how campaigns are developed, and we talked about one of the, one of the factors being budget, right? If you have a very large budget, you can reach a lot of people very often. If you have a more limited budget, you have to decide whether reach or frequency is more important. So there have been, you know, and I've brought up the example of the Super Bowl, which again is very expensive to advertise. There are some companies that can, you know, buy three or four 30 second spots during the Super Bowl, you know, when it five or $6 million a pop, that's quite a big amount of money. And there, they'll continue to advertise throughout the year. But there have been situations where companies have a limited budget and decide that they're going to spend all of their marketing dollars on a 30 second commercial during the Super Bowl. And so what they're doing is it, is while they have very low frequency, because it's only running one time, their reach is, is vast. And, and, you know, millions of people, tens of millions of people watch the Super Bowl. So, you know, that would be a great way of saying, you know, if you're a company that does very little marketing, and you're doing something where you're reaching a lot of people, you want to be able to measure the success of that. You know, are people going to your website? Have sales increased? Is there, you know, more action and more activity, you know, perhaps in your digital, you know, social media in a platform? So, you know, when you measure your digital marketing campaigns, it's important to recognize where, where is your message appearing? You know, and again, talked about engagement, our customers, our visitors to your different sites and platforms, you know, connecting with you. Are they opening up your messages? Are they clicking through the links that you include? Are they clicking through to go to your website? Are they making purchases? Are they clicking like? Are they forwarding your message? You know, how many people visit your website? And so it's important to, to look at those metrics. And really it's important, particularly when you're doing these kinds of promotions that, that measurement, you know, we talk about, you know, how often and when should we be measuring these things? It should be a constant activity. There should be constant attention paid to how many people are visiting our site, how many people are clicking through, because when you're looking at those metrics, you can start looking at trends at different periods of time, connect those trends to the different marketing activities that you're doing, so that you can make immediate adjustments to anything that you're doing. So if you see that you have, you know, say an email campaign, and you're getting, you know, a lot of customer engagement, that might be the time to, to up your game and to do it more frequently. If you're seeing that you have more visits on your website, you're able to track what pages are customers going to, how much time are visitors to your site spending on a particular page, and, and see how you can maximize that to, you know, to be able to increase your activity. So, you know, when we talk about how often, you know, again, it depends on the, on the different activity, but you want to keep track of it on a regular basis have, if possible, dedicated people who are just focusing on, on the metrics for your digital campaigns. And again, to be measuring the, the factors that are relevant to be measuring the activity that's ongoing, and also to measure the activity that's, that's resulting in the great, you know, highest levels of revenue, you know, where you're getting your return on investment. And, you know, there's a thing was John Wanamaker, who was an early retailer, who said, I know that 50% of my marketing is working. I just don't know which 50%. And what that really means, if we go back to, to an earlier comment about your integrated marketing communication strategy, is that sometimes you don't know exactly where everything is coming from, but you can recognize that the combination of everything that you're putting out there is working towards generating awareness, generating greater customer loyalty, generating greater activity, increasing your brand's image, increasing the level of loyal customers and all of those factors together lead to greater company success. And that concludes the review of Unit 8. It concludes the review of all the units in the course. And as I've mentioned before, if you have any questions, feel free to put them to post them. And I will get back to you with the answers to those the following two weeks, as I mentioned, and want to remind you will be reviews for the exam where I will be going over some of the questions and talking about why the answers, you know, give the rationale for the correct answers so that you can think about how all of that, all of the material that we cover can be applied to to the cases in the exam and help you determine the correct answers. So I hope that you've enjoyed these sessions, and I look forward to seeing you on the review.