A marketing plan is a key part of business success. You will begin this project by explaining the purpose of a marketing plan and how you believe it will be helpful to the sample business. You will then use the information in the vignette to create an appropriate Mission Statement and determine the business's Competitive Advantage.
This week, you will submit Part A of your Marketing Plan.
Prepare this part of the plan in a Word document, using APA style. This portion of the plan should be approximately 1-2 pages long, not including the cover page and references page.
Ensure you write in paragraph form and sufficiently elaborate on the topics to be covered. One or two brief sentences in each area will not be sufficient.
Use these headings in bold font in your plan and cover the points beneath each heading.
Introduction
- Briefly discuss the main facts about the business.
Purpose of a Marketing Plan
You should write at least one to two paragraphs to explain this.
- Explain the purpose of a marketing plan in general.
- How will this marketing plan support this business's organizational goals?
Mission Statement
According to Stanford Professor Guy Kawasaki – your Mission Statement should be more like a Mantra than a long run-on sentence. Keep it short and sweet!
- Given the facts in the vignette, create a short mission statement that you believe captures the essence of this business.
- Explain why you have selected the specific wording that you did. In other words, why did you choose to phrase it in this particular way?
- Discuss what you feel this statement would mean to the customers and how you feel that it would drive their behavior.
- Discuss how employees of this company would interpret the Mission Statement and how you hope it would drive their behavior.
Competitive Advantage
Once you have written a mission statement, you can write your competitive advantage statement. This statement takes what you have said in your Mission Statement and proves it. It brags about the specialness of your business in just a few words. It says what you do that’s better than anybody else. Be sure to explain why you think this Competitive advantage statement compliments your Mission Statement and does justice to the uniqueness of this business.