3.05 Employ Marketing information to develop a Marketing Plan

Researching the Industry Trends and patterns of change Industry forces that affect your business – understanding competitive forces can help a business plan a strategy to succeed ◦ Barriers to entry ▪ barriers to entry – conditions or circumstances that make it difficult or costly for outside firms to enter a market to compete with the established firm or firms ▪ economics of sale – situations where the cost of producing one unit of a good or service decreases as the volume of production increases ▪ brand loyalty – loyalty to or the tendency to buy a particular brand of a product ◦ threats from substitute products ◦ sources of supply ◦ buyers' ability to bargain ◦ technology

Researching the Industry (con’t) Industry demographics – includes the number of companies, annual revenues, and average size of the companies by number of employees The competition ◦ market share – a portion of the total sales generated by all competing companies in a given market ◦ niche – a small, specialized segment of the market ◦ market positioning – the act of identifying a specific market niche for a product ◦ competitive advantage – a feature that makes a product more desirable than its competitors' products

Researching the Industry (con’t) Competitive Intelligence – Competitive advantage – studying the competition is critical to finding your company's competitive advantage. The following list ways that are helpful to understanding your competition: ◦ visit competitors' outlet ◦ buy your competitors' products ◦ search the internet and your competitors' web sites

Researching the target customer ◦ creating a customer profile – a complete picture of a venture's prospective customers ◦ evaluating customers' needs ▪ customer needs analysis – pinpoints the features and benefits of your goods and services that customers value ◦ forecasting demand – three ways to forecast a demand figure: ▪ one, to use historical analogy products ▪ two, to interview prospective customers and intermediaries ▪ three, to go into limited production to test the market Issues in entrepreneurship

Mass Marketing Mass Marketing is trying to reach all customers with a single marketing plan

Competitive Analysis – section of a business plan that should demonstrate the proposed advantage of the business over its competitors. You can gather information on competitors the following ways: ◦ viewing their web site ◦ talking to their customers, vendors, suppliers, or employees ◦ attending trade shows◦ ◦ searching newspaper and magazine databases

Adjusting to sales environment changes ◦ SWOT analysis – a strategic planning technique that analyzes a company's internal strengths and weaknesses, and studies opportunities and threats in the external sales environment ▪ Internal factors may include: changes in spending on other parts of the company's marketing and promotional mix changes in what is happening in different territories or markets changes in sales management practices changes in number of salespeople supervised by one person ▪ External factors may include: intensity of competition-based total market potential concentration of potential high-volume buyers geographic distribution of customers Adjusting to sales environment changes

Resources Allen, K.A., & Meyer, E.C. (2006). Entrepreneurship and small business management (pp. 104,124-129,293 ). Woodland Hills, CA: McGraw-Hill Glencoe.