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							                                      Sample Marketing Plan
This is a sample marketing plan for a fictitious small business, Invest-4-U, an investment advisory business based
in Brisbane, with six staff members (including three financial advisors, two salespeople and a receptionist) and an
annual turnover of seven million dollars. The business specialises in investment advisory services for high nett
worth individuals and charitable foundations. It is introducing a new service, Generation I, geared toward recent
university graduates and tradespeople who have just entered the workforce.

All products, people and costs are fictitious and any similarities with existing small businesses are unintentional.


Summary of our market and marketing research results

Description of target market
Our target market for Generation I consists of men and women who:

       range in age from early 20s to early 30s (with most of the market in the younger end of this age range)
       have just completed a university degree or a trade certificate
       have started a full-time job within the past six months
       live in or around major Australian metropolitan areas
       make purchasing decisions based on price, trendiness and convenience
       are motivated by pleasurable pursuits, money and also a desire to save the environment and to contribute
        to those less fortunate than themselves
       find information to make purchasing decisions online, through newspaper and television advertisements
        and through what their friends tell them.

Why there is a demand for Generation I
A demand exists for Generation I because most investment services just don’t appeal to the mentality of young
people entering the workforce. They see investing as something one does when they get older; something their
parents do. It just doesn’t have a hip enough flavour for most recent university graduates or young trades people –
even when someone shows them the benefits.

However, every a young person has a need for financial security as they grow older. What most investment
services businesses don’t show them is how it can benefit them now and how the steps they take now will
influence the lifestyle they enjoy in as little as ten years’ time.

For example, we hope to show our target market how, with the proper financial advice and decisions, they can
own their own homes in ten years. As such, they can enjoy a jet-setting lifestyle for the remainder of their working
days while their non-investing peers work to pay off their homes for twenty or more additional years. In addition,
they have the option to use their extra disposable income to help those less fortunate than themselves.

As far as we know (based on recent market research), there is existing competition for this product in our
marketplace. However, the competition has thus far failed to adopt the angle we plan to adopt to attract market
share.

Present market position
Generation I is a new product. We have not yet marketed or begun to sell it. It is unique because it’s the only one
of its kind that is designed to make investing look like a hip and trendy activity to young people.

In addition, we plan to reduce our advisory fees for people who begin this service within one year of finishing their
university degree or trade certificate. An age limit will not apply.

One of our salespeople helped come up with the idea for this service, based on market research and her own
observations. According to the research, only 3% of people in our target market begin investing before they turn




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25. The reason, according to the research, has everything to do with it not seeming cool as well as with people in
this market not being interested in the future.

Our other markets (for other services) perceive our services to be high quality, of similar price and on par with
financial returns compared to our competitors. Our market perceives our competitors’ products to be of a similar
quality, price and financial returns as our products.

We currently promote and market our business through advertisements in state and national newspapers, through
the occasional television advertisement, cold calling in person and direct mail. All of these promotional methods
work for us, but we’ve never tried to target this market before. We have found direct mail to be an inexpensive and
efficient way to source leads.

Our existing customer base resides primarily in Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne.

We have a loyal, hardworking and creative workforce consisting of the owner (Innis Vest) as well as three full-time
financial advisors, two full-time salespeople and a full-time receptionist. Alice, one of our salespeople who is 23
years old, is the one who came up with the Generation I idea.

We have no suppliers or distributors since we are a service provider.

Our competitors are many. Most of them have offices in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Our competitors promote and market their businesses through direct mail, newspaper advertisements in statewide
and national newspapers, radio and television advertisements and through cold calling by phone and in person.
We don’t know which of these promotional methods works best for them.

We have approximately $70 000 available for marketing activities.

Our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are as follows:

       strengths: unique product with no existing competition; salesperson (Alice) who is well aware of the
        needs of our target market
       weaknesses: no prior experience offering or marketing this service
       opportunities: to gather as much market share as quickly as possible before other competing
        businesses copy our approach
       threats: competitors will likely develop their own version of Generation I once we begin our marketing
        campaign

Our competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are as follows:

       strengths: current market share and presence in metropolitan areas, some are much larger businesses
       weaknesses: no product resembling Generation I, maybe no salespeople as savvy as ours
       opportunities: to develop a similar product as Generation I and market it in a similar way as we will
       threats: Generation I (though, this product should not impact on their current market share for their
        existing products)

Impact of current or anticipated marketing conditions
We predict that our competitors will develop their own version of Generation I soon after we begin our marketing
campaign. However, we hope to win loyal customers by emphasising how hip we are and, implicitly, how not hip
our competitors are. We hope to create a strong customer base in this market for the duration of this marketing
campaign (nine months). We realise that we may have to address certain competitor developments during this
campaign.

We don’t expect that the government will introduce any new regulations that will negatively impact investing.

Assumptions
We have made the following assumptions:




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       There is an untapped market that we plan to target with Generation I.
       We can win business in this market by emphasising how hip our products are and by persuading people
        in this market to look forward only ten years.
       Some people in this market will be persuaded to part with any amount of their first real pay cheques.
       Some people in this market will be persuaded.
       Our competitors are capable of developing their own version of Generation I. They may develop a similar
        product during our marketing campaign.
       We need to keep all of our existing staff (in addition to the owner) in order to continue our business
        operations. We especially rely on Alice to provide advice to our marketing efforts.
       We expect the costs of materials and labour to remain stable in the next nine months.

Marketing research results
Our marketing research has returned the following results for the people in our target market segment:

       they prefer to spend money on things that contribute to their image or that they perceive will make their
        lives easier
       they prefer to spend money on travel, clothes, eating out and cars
       they read The Australian, The Sunday Mail, and The Age
       they watch at least one of three popular prime time television shows per week
       they make purchasing decisions based on price, trendiness and convenience
       they find information to make purchasing decisions online, through newspaper and television
        advertisements and through what their friends tell them.

Marketing objectives and measures of achievement

Marketing objectives
Our marketing objectives are as follows:

       By the end of the third quarter, create awareness of Generation I in our target market and obtain
        responses from at least 2 000 new leads
       By the end of the third quarter, obtain at least 500 Generation I customers.

Measures of achievement
Our measures of achievement include:

       a timeframe for achieving both objectives (by the end of the third quarter)
       how we’ll know when we’ve achieved success (when we’ve obtained responses from at least 2 000 new
        leads and obtained at least 500 Generation I customers.

Marketing strategy and tactics
Our marketing strategy and tactics are as follows.

Marketing strategy
Our marketing strategy is to create awareness of Generation I and attract leads and customers by using our
website, email and newspaper and television advertisements. We’ll use each of these promotional tools to show
our market how hip it is to invest now and how it will impact their lives within only ten years.

We have selected this strategy because our marketing research indicates that our target market segment reads
The Australian, The Sunday Mail and The Age and that they watch at least one of three popular prime time
television shows per week. Our marketing research also showed that they make purchasing decisions online,
through newspaper and television advertisements and through what their friends tell them. Perhaps most
importantly, they make purchasing decisions based on price, trendiness and convenience.




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Marketing tactics
                    Tactics
Pricing                 Price Generation I at 5% of customer earnings per year for people who begin this
                            service within one year of finishing their university degree or trade certificate. An age
                            limit will not apply.
                        Price Generation I at 7% of customer earnings per year for people who begin this
                            service after one year of finishing their university degree or trade certificate.

                            (By not charging any set fee, we believe we’ll attract more customers in this market.)
Product                    Product is Generation I.
                           The unique selling proposition for Generation I is that it will be marketed as a hip way to
                            plan for the near future and will be less expensive than later investments.
Place                      Sold in major metropolitan centres throughout Australia, especially Brisbane, Sydney
                            and Melbourne
                           Re-design our website to look hipper.
                           Implement a questionnaire on our website that our target market can take to predict
                            their financial future in ten years time both with and without our product.
Promotion                  Use a combination of television and newspaper advertisements that appeal to our
                            market. The television advertisements will be light-hearted, with trendy-looking young
                            people who see themselves progress in life with Generation I. These people will be
                            helping other people financially while their friends without Generation I will experience
                            less fortunate financial circumstances.
                           Use email advertisements (which will only be sent once a lead has registered details
                            requesting more information) that stress the fact that we’ll only send this one email.
                            After this time, we’ll leave the lead alone, stating that, ‘We know how annoying it is to
                            keep getting spam. However, just remember this email when you’re 30 and haven’t yet
                            scraped up enough cash to put a deposit on a house. Is that your Generation I friend,
                            who owns three rental properties and a million in investments and is off exploring the
                            world? Is she really your age – 30? Don’t you hate not being able to afford going to
                            those fancy restaurants with her? Oh, but don’t worry, just delete this email if you’re not
                            interested.’
                           Use a sales promotion, which stresses the discount for starting the product within the
                            first year of earning a degree or trade certificate.
                           Write a press release on Generation I to submit to the media and to university and
                            college communications areas.
People                     Train staff members on the features and benefits of Generation I.
                           Communicate our marketing strategy and information on discounting to staff members.
                           Run a short course on what appeals to this market.




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Action plan for achieving our objectives
We have developed the following action plan for achieving our marketing objectives.

Action                                                 Person responsible                Cost           When
Write and design a newspaper and online                Alice                             $200           June 15-16
advertisement.
Run advertisements every third week in each of         Innis                             $200 x 39 =    Starting July
the three newspapers we’ve specified for the                                             $7 800         1, ending
campaign (so that every week the ad appears in                                                          March 31
one newspaper).

Hire an advertising firm to produce a television       Innis and Alice                   $5 000         May 15-19
advertisement.
Run the television advertisement once per week         Innis                             $1 000 x 16    Starting July
during the first sixteen weeks of the campaign                                           =     $16      1, ending
                                                                                         000            October 23
Call each person who requests more information         Alice and Dana                    $8 per 10-     Starting July
via our website.                                                                         minute call    1, ending
                                                                                         x 2 000 =      March 31
                                                                                         $16 000

Hold a free 20-minute session with each prospect       Lisa, David and Bobby             $17 x          Starting July
who calls or comes into the office.                                                      1 200 =        1, ending
                                                                                         $20 400        March 31
Write and design an email to send out after each       Alice                             $400           By June 20
phone call or financial advice visit that doesn’t
result in a sale.
Held a sales team meeting to discuss each              Innis                             $350           June 1
element of the draft marketing plan with sales staff
to get input.
Hold a team briefing meeting to let staff members      Innis                             $350           June 19
know about the elements of the marketing plan.

Hold a staff training session to train staff in the    Innis and Alice                   $1 000         June 19
new product’s features and benefits.
Hold a short course on what appeals to this            Alice                             $350           June 25
market.
Write a press release on Generation I.                 Innis                             $150           June 17

Marketing budget
Based on our action plan and its associated costs, we’ve allocated a total of $68 000 for our marketing activities.




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Checks that plan is working
We plan to employ the following checks to ensure that our marketing plan is working.


Monitoring progress
At the end of each month, we plan to monitor the progress of our marketing activities using our measures of
achievement. We plan to look at:

       how many responses we’ve received from new leads for that month
       how many Generation I customers we’ve obtained for that month.

One objective sets out that we need to obtain responses from at least 2 000 new leads by the end of the third
quarter. We hope to achieve a sub-goal of approximately 222 responses from new leads per month. When
monitoring progress, we plan to check to see if we’re achieving this sub-goal.

We also will be checking to see how many customers we’ve obtained each month. Our other marketing objective
specifies that we should obtain at least 500 Generation I customers by the end of the third quarter. We hope to
achieve a sub-goal of approximately 56 Generation I customers per month. When monitoring progress, we plan to
check to see if we’re achieving this sub-goal also.

We also plan on looking at the cost benefit of our marketing activities. To do this we will compare the monthly cost
of our marketing activities to the benefits received (for example, number of new leads and customers). We expect
our costs to average at $7 516 per month. It’s important to note that we don’t expect the benefits of this campaign
to be immediate. Rather, we hope that the 500 Generation I customers will remain with us for at least the next ten
years, representing, at a minimum, $10 000 in turnover each by the end of ten years. We also hope that this
customer base will contribute to bringing us more customers in the near future.

Adjusting the plan
If our monitoring shows that our marketing activities aren’t meeting our measures of achievement or our marketing
costs are exceeding our foreseeable benefits, we will adjust our plan. We will adjust any part of our plan that we
need to, including:

       strategies and tactics
       actions
       people responsible
       timeframes
       budgets.

Monitoring changes
If we make any adjustments to our plan as a result of our monitoring, we plan to monitor the changes after they’ve
been in place for one month. This means we’ll continue to monitor progress at the end of each month and
continue to make any necessary adjustments until we reach the end of our marketing campaign.

Evaluating the plan’s effectiveness

When we’ve reached the end of our marketing campaign, we plan to evaluate the plan’s effectiveness. We will
consider whether we:

       met our marketing objectives, including the measures of achievement we specified
       stayed within budget and timelines
       could have done anything better.

We will make notes regarding what worked and what didn’t so that we can use this information for future
marketing plans.




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