MKTG 630 Colorado Technical University Social Media Advertising vs Traditional Paper Now it is time to elaborate on the rest of the marketing plan for the

MKTG 630 Colorado Technical University Social Media Advertising vs Traditional Paper Now it is time to elaborate on the rest of the marketing plan for the new product. Be specific. Make sure that all of the pieces of your plan are consistent with each other and are designed to meet the needs and wants of your target customers.

Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 400-600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

The board members were very impressed with your presentation and how you are moving through the product development process. Michelle is ready now to start looking at the promotional part of the plan. She has been reading technical publications that laud the advantages of high-tech or digital promotional tools (i.e., Internet, social media, blogs, etc.) over traditional approaches (i.e., TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines) to reach potential customers. You catch up with her in her office before she leaves on a business trip.

‘Michelle, I want to speak to you about the e-mail you sent regarding the promotional tools we should consider for the new product,’ you say.
“I have a few minutes before I have to leave,’ she says. “Go ahead.”
“Well, I agree that digital media is the trend, but I think traditional advertising and promotion should still have a place in the plans,” you say. “I know you don’t have time now, but I would like to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of each type of promotional tool as they relate to the target segment and branding strategy. When can we get together and talk about this?”
“I really do want to talk about this,” she says. “I need to know what type of media you think would be best for MM’s new product. Can send me an e-mail with your thoughts on the subject and I’ll read it on the plane? We can get together when I get back to finalize the choices.”
“Thanks, Michelle. I will do that,” you say. Integrated Marketing Communications
Effective Integrated Marketing Communications
Introduction
Modern marketing calls for more than just developing a good product, pricing it
attractively, and making it available to target customers. Companies must also
communicate with their customers and there should be controlled direction to those
communications. Promotion provides the primary communication function. As one of
the four major elements of the marketing mix, promotion uses advertising, personal
selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing to achieve the
company’s communication objectives. Place, the last of the four Ps, makes the product
available to customers. Distribution channels are identified as being a set of
independent organizations involved in the process of making a product or service
available for use or consumption by the consumer or business. Making decisions
involving distribution channels are among the most complex and challenging decisions
facing the firm.
There is a need for developing effective integrated marketing communications.
Marketers know that as mass markets have fragmented, a shift is underway away from
mass marketing. In addition, vast improvements in information technology have sped
the movement toward segmented marketing. The result of these two trends is that
companies must now blend promotional elements into an integrated marketing
communications mix that carefully coordinates all the elements of the promotion.
Advertising and Public Relations
Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas,
goods, and services by an identified sponsor. There are five important tasks to be
accomplished as the marketer attempts to organize and direct the advertising function,
including setting objectives, budget decisions, message decisions, media decisions, and
campaign evaluation. The marketing firm can undertake the advertising function itself
or it can contract with an advertising agency to accomplish its advertising objective,
planning, and implementation.
Public relations is an attempt to build good relations with the company’s various
publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and
handling or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories, or events. The organization has a
variety of tools at its disposal for accomplishing this feat. One of the overriding tasks
of public relations is to control the exposure and relationship with the mass media. By
focusing on consumer attitudes, awareness, and knowledge of the organization, the
company is better prepared to succeed.
Personal Selling and Sales Promotions
Robert Louis Stevenson once noted that everyone lives by selling something. Today,
most companies use salespeople to bring their company’s offering to the consuming or
business publics. The salesperson’s role is a key one in the organization. The high cost
of maintaining a sales force means that management is especially interested in how to
efficiently organize this vital element. The following six basic steps or decisions are
important to the sales management process: designing sales force strategy and
structure, recruiting and selecting salespeople, training salespeople, compensating
salespeople, supervising salespeople, and evaluating salespeople.
As an element of the marketing mix, the salesforce is very effective in achieving
certain marketing, communication, and promotion objectives. The formal steps in the
selling process that aid the accomplishment of these objectives are prospecting and
qualifying, preapproach, approach, presentation and demonstration, handling
objections, closing, and follow-up. If the salesperson follows these steps, he or she is
more likely to be viewed as a problem-solver rather than a hard-sell salesperson by the
consumer.
Great salespeople have drive, discipline, and relationship-building skills. Relationship
marketing is the process of creating, maintaining, and enhancing strong, value-laden
relationships with customers and other stakeholders. Relationships are more important
than mere transactions. Transactions can be completed quickly whereas relationships
can last a lifetime.
Sales promotion is a process of providing short-term incentives to encourage purchase
or sales of a product or service. Sales promotion offers the buyer reasons to buy now.
In addition, sales promotion is also intended to stimulate reseller effectiveness. Sales
promotion has grown rapidly in the recent past because of pressure to increase sales,
increased competition, and the declining efficiency of the other mass communication
methods.
Distribution Channels
Each channel system creates a different level of sales and costs. Unlike flexible
elements of the marketing mix, once a distribution channel has been chosen, the firm
must usually stick with its choice for some time. In addition, the chosen channel
strongly affects, and is affected by, the other elements in the marketing mix;
furthermore, a firm needs to identify alternative ways to reach its market.
Channel design begins with assessing customer channel-service needs and company
channel objectives and constraints. The company then identifies the major channel
alternatives in terms of the types of intermediaries, the number of intermediaries, and
the channel responsibilities of each. No system, no matter how well it has been
planned, is without conflict. Managing distribution conflict is a necessity if quality
service and low cost are to be delivered.
In today’s global marketplace, selling a product is sometimes easier than getting it to
customers. Therefore, physical distribution and logistics management are receiving
increased attention from strategic planners. The task of physical distribution systems is
to minimize the total cost of providing a desired level of customer services while
bringing those services to the customer with the maximum amount of speed.
Competitive Advantage and Pricing Strategies
Building Competitive Advantage: What is your value proposition?
The product strategy is also about positioning the product for competitive
advantage. One way to do this is by developing the product’s value proposition.
The value proposition communicates the product’s benefits to the targeted
markets. Essentially, matching the right message with the right market is the
goal of communicating the value proposition. The purpose of the value
proposition is to state how your product meets the wants and needs of your
customer-targeted markets.
The value proposition helps to build competitive advantage in the marketplace
by communicating the differences, or differentials, of your product versus
others. Value proposition statements identify the target customers, the value
proposition, and key competitors (Good Examples of Positioning Statements,
n.d.).
Developing a unique value proposition entails writing a clear, effective
statement that includes the following:
•
•
•
•

Identifying the target market who wants or needs the product
Identifying the key benefits of the product
Describing the products or service
Describing how the product is unique or different from the competition
Product Pricing Strategies
The product strategy also includes the marketing P of pricing. Several pricing
strategies exist that can flex based on the product life cycle. The product life
cycle (PLC) includes the following four stages:
•
•
•
•
Introduction: The sales growth tends to be slow during this stage.
Growth: The market acceptance grows, and sales increase during this
stage.
Maturity: The sales growth slows because the market is saturated
during this stage.
Decline: Profits diminish because of better competing products during
this stage.
Pricing can also act as a differentiator in the marketing plan as an agent of
competitive advantage. During the four phases of the product’s life cycle, the
1
Competitive Advantage and Pricing Strategies
company is concerned with gaining market acceptance.
An example of flexing pricing strategies during the introduction stage of PLC
would be to implement a penetration pricing strategy. This type of strategy sets
an artificially low price in the introduction stage to gain market share, and then
it slowly increases the price as the product gains market acceptance
(Positioning, n.d.).
References
Good examples of positioning statements. (n.d.). Retrieved from Growth
Connection Web site: http://www.growthconnection.com/Examples-OfPositioning-Statements.htm
Positioning: As popularized by Al Reis and Jack Trout. (n.d.). Retrieved from
Quick MBA Web site: http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/riestrout/positioning/
2
Integrated Marketing Communications
Effective Integrated Marketing Communications
Introduction
Modern marketing calls for more than just developing a good product, pricing it
attractively, and making it available to target customers. Companies must also
communicate with their customers and there should be controlled direction to those
communications. Promotion provides the primary communication function. As one of
the four major elements of the marketing mix, promotion uses advertising, personal
selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing to achieve the
company’s communication objectives. Place, the last of the four Ps, makes the product
available to customers. Distribution channels are identified as being a set of
independent organizations involved in the process of making a product or service
available for use or consumption by the consumer or business. Making decisions
involving distribution channels are among the most complex and challenging decisions
facing the firm.
There is a need for developing effective integrated marketing communications.
Marketers know that as mass markets have fragmented, a shift is underway away from
mass marketing. In addition, vast improvements in information technology have sped
the movement toward segmented marketing. The result of these two trends is that
companies must now blend promotional elements into an integrated marketing
communications mix that carefully coordinates all the elements of the promotion.
Advertising and Public Relations
Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas,
goods, and services by an identified sponsor. There are five important tasks to be
accomplished as the marketer attempts to organize and direct the advertising function,
including setting objectives, budget decisions, message decisions, media decisions, and
campaign evaluation. The marketing firm can undertake the advertising function itself
or it can contract with an advertising agency to accomplish its advertising objective,
planning, and implementation.
Public relations is an attempt to build good relations with the company’s various
publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and
handling or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories, or events. The organization has a
variety of tools at its disposal for accomplishing this feat. One of the overriding tasks
of public relations is to control the exposure and relationship with the mass media. By
focusing on consumer attitudes, awareness, and knowledge of the organization, the
company is better prepared to succeed.
Personal Selling and Sales Promotions
Robert Louis Stevenson once noted that everyone lives by selling something. Today,
most companies use salespeople to bring their company’s offering to the consuming or
business publics. The salesperson’s role is a key one in the organization. The high cost
of maintaining a sales force means that management is especially interested in how to
efficiently organize this vital element. The following six basic steps or decisions are
important to the sales management process: designing sales force strategy and
structure, recruiting and selecting salespeople, training salespeople, compensating
salespeople, supervising salespeople, and evaluating salespeople.
As an element of the marketing mix, the salesforce is very effective in achieving
certain marketing, communication, and promotion objectives. The formal steps in the
selling process that aid the accomplishment of these objectives are prospecting and
qualifying, preapproach, approach, presentation and demonstration, handling
objections, closing, and follow-up. If the salesperson follows these steps, he or she is
more likely to be viewed as a problem-solver rather than a hard-sell salesperson by the
consumer.
Great salespeople have drive, discipline, and relationship-building skills. Relationship
marketing is the process of creating, maintaining, and enhancing strong, value-laden
relationships with customers and other stakeholders. Relationships are more important
than mere transactions. Transactions can be completed quickly whereas relationships
can last a lifetime.
Sales promotion is a process of providing short-term incentives to encourage purchase
or sales of a product or service. Sales promotion offers the buyer reasons to buy now.
In addition, sales promotion is also intended to stimulate reseller effectiveness. Sales
promotion has grown rapidly in the recent past because of pressure to increase sales,
increased competition, and the declining efficiency of the other mass communication
methods.
Distribution Channels
Each channel system creates a different level of sales and costs. Unlike flexible
elements of the marketing mix, once a distribution channel has been chosen, the firm
must usually stick with its choice for some time. In addition, the chosen channel
strongly affects, and is affected by, the other elements in the marketing mix;
furthermore, a firm needs to identify alternative ways to reach its market.
Channel design begins with assessing customer channel-service needs and company
channel objectives and constraints. The company then identifies the major channel
alternatives in terms of the types of intermediaries, the number of intermediaries, and
the channel responsibilities of each. No system, no matter how well it has been
planned, is without conflict. Managing distribution conflict is a necessity if quality
service and low cost are to be delivered.
In today’s global marketplace, selling a product is sometimes easier than getting it to
customers. Therefore, physical distribution and logistics management are receiving
increased attention from strategic planners. The task of physical distribution systems is
to minimize the total cost of providing a desired level of customer services while
bringing those services to the customer with the maximum amount of speed.
Customer
Characteristics
Who are the
target-market
members?
Characteristics of
Intermediaries
Product
Attributes
How is the
intermediary
promoting the
product?
Long or short
channels?
Marketing
Channels
Environmental
Forces
Type of
Organization
What is the
atmosphere of
the economy?
Large or small
firm?
Competition
What are the
competitor’s
channels?
Selecting Marketing Channels
The 4 Ps of the Marketing Mix
Product
• Know it better than
anyone.
Place
• Where are you selling?
Price
• How much does it cost?
Promotion
• Tell your audience about
it.

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