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E. Marketing Plan

In this section, you need to develop an integrated marketing program and describe how you plan to market your business to your target customers.

1. Overall Strategy

• Identify potential customers and describe why they buy the product or service in general.
• How can you convince customers to purchase your product or service? In other words, describe how your product or service differs from competition. Finish this sentence: Customers should buy our product or service because …

  Example:
  You should buy our bicycle pump product because it is light and attachable to your bicycle therefore easy to carry.

• How will you get your customers to keep coming back?

  Example:
  Frequent flyer program rewards loyal customers.

2. Pricing

• What will be the pricing policy?

  If you plan to charge higher price than competition, explain why customers will buy from you.

  Example:
  Because our bicycle pump product is easy to carry, it is so convenient that you can use it anywhere. Customers should be willing to pay a higher price because of the convenience factor.
  If you plan to charge lower price than competition, you need to justify with lower cost structure. Otherwise, it will not be a viable long-term business strategy.

  Example:
  Our bicycle pump is very compact and requires less amount of less expensive material, therefore our product has a lower cost structure than competitors.

• What are terms and conditions of sale? Will you offer credit terms? How?

3. Advertising & Promotion

• How do you convince customers to buy your product and service? Translate that into a simple message.

  Example:
  Take our bicycle pump with you anywhere you go.

• What type of advertisement do you plan to use? And how?

  Examples:
  Word of mouth, direct mail, local newspapers, radio, TV, specialty advertising, yellow pages, or a specific promotion campaign.

• Will personal selling be utilized? How will it be done and by whom?
• Do you plan to use sales promotion?
• Do you plan to have any public relations type of activities?

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