Introduction One of the first steps in your new career or any future position in marketing is to read the organization’s business plan that provides direction to all the operational areas of a business, from marketing to finances to human resources. Knowing the planning process of an organization and appreciating the interaction of plans at different levels of the company will help build an effective, strategic, consistent marketing plan. The marketing plan is a report that outlines the direction and activities of an organization’s product/service development and life cycle, pricing tactics, means of distributing the product/service to customers and/or clients and of course the promotion of the product/service. (Jaffey & Tuckwell,2018) Assignment Purpose By the end of the semester you and your team will have analyzed and developed an entire marketing plan. Your team (acting as marketing consultant) will research background information of your chosen organization (your client) to first of all, build a report that analyzes the environmental situation to come up with recommendations that strategical align with your research findings (Assignment 1). Next your marketing consulting team will develop a strategical plan for your client incorporating the marketing mix or the 4P’s (Assignment 2). Directions Form a team of 3 or 4 (notify your instructor if you want to be placed on a team).Complete the Team Charter including your marketing consulting team name and logo submit via D2L dropbox by the due date.Choose an organization that you are interested in conducting research on and building a marketing plan for throughout the semester. The organization must be a small to medium sized business that initially you have identified gaps in their marketing. The organization must operate in Canada; however, its head office can be global. It can be a profit or non-for-profit organization. It can provide products, services or both. You will have to focus in on only one of the organization products or services to complete in depth analysis. Discuss your choice of organization with your instructor to ensure it meets the criteria. Introduction (5marks) Provide a brief introduction of the company. Address the following points within your introduction: company name, location, background (point out key things from their background that are impacting or happening with their business currently) products or services offered, and any other information about your company you feel is important. This is not the historical background of the organization rather a one to two paragraph explanation of your chosen organizations product or service and what you will be talking about in your report. Company Orientation (10 marks) How does your organization relate to its customer/client? In other words, what orientation does the company illustrate from the evolution of marketing? Be sure to provide reasons to justify your choice. To do this you must analyze the company and decide which one of these orientations BEST describes your company’s current practices. (See Chapter 1, Module 1) PESTEL and S.W.O.T Analysis Summary (20 marks) Provide a brief overview of what is happening in the overall environment. This is the political, economic, social, technical, environment and legal milieu, or PESTEL. This will help you determine the practicality of your recommendations.Now complete a S.W.O.T analysis on the company.Present your researched information in a SWOT matrix (point-form of marketing factors not business and for the scope of this plan,1-3 points are fine.)Then provide a logical analysis of all the external and internal points you listed in paragraph form. This summary of the SWOT should explain why these marketing aspects are strengths or weaknesses to the company.Research should be evident to help support the SWOT analysis. However, the S.W.O.T is to be the team’s thoughts and ideas NOT an internet S.W.O.T. (See Module 2, Chapter 3) Target Market Profile and Positioning Strategy (15 marks) To help make decisions for marketing strategies and prioritizing them, during our research phase of planning we must segment our market. Once the target market profile (or consumer profile) and the organizations’ positioning strategy is determined as marketing consultants we can focus on the target audience that offers the most potential and purposefully position the product or service so it is appealing to our target audience. The positioning strategy acts as the foundation to the marketing plan because all marketing tactics and activities will depend on what the organization/brand wants the customer/client to perceive about them. (See Module 5, Chapter 7) Create a profile for your client’s primary target market. Include a snapshot of your organization’s ideal customer/client by identifying the key aspects of their demographics, psychographics, geographic and behavioral characteristics. Specific detail and research need to be evident. Define the company/product’s position strategy relative to the positioning statement and positioning map. These aspects you may not find in your research so develop your own, be sure to note in the report that you have made assumptions in your design. Recommendations (7 marks) Based on your research and analysis for your client, list two recommendations for strategical implementation regarding the marketing mix. These recommendations must align with your research findings for them to credible and rationale.Consider which growth strategy would be most applicable for your client. (Module 2, Chapter 3) Conclusion (3 marks) Provide an overview of the key findings of your research report.This conclusion should align with your introduction (were all the key factors addressed in the report that you said you were going to address).Also, a strong conclusion will provide the next steps for the client,in other words, the action you want to persuade to take.Ultimately this is how you are going to gain business and make revenue for your company. Deliverables Submit a single spaced, 12pt Cambria or Arial font, business report of no more than 15 pages (excluding the title reference page or appendix) to your “client” via the Brightspace (D2L) designated dropbox.To meet exemplary professional standards the report must: *reference all research using APA style and formatting (think copyright law); *show purposeful editing of writing style including proper grammar, spelling and punctuation. *use marketing terminology used in our class; and *have at least 5 research sources to back up your findings, including your client’s website and our course textbook. Milestone Meeting with Instsructor On the date specified by your instructor your entire team will meet with your instructor to provide a summary of your progress to date on your research. Peer Evaluation While the report will receive a grade, individual student grading may vary based upon instructor observation of group interaction, and a completed peer evaluation form. Students will be given an opportunity to submit a “confidential peer evaluation”. Any members that have low peer evaluations will lose up to 10 marks off the final grade of the assignment. Content of a Marketing Plan (Assignment 1 &2) Reference Page Jaffey, M., Tuckwell, K. J. (2018). Think marketing (3rd ed.). Toronto, Canada: Pearson Education
