Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Dear thara1988,

Your question raises rather more questions than you might have realized. At least, in my book it does:

Why now?
Why you?
What growth does the board expect?
What do shareholders expect?
In which market will this growth take place?
Across which sectors of which market?
Compared in growth to which other companies?
Spending what money on what marketing?
How will growth be measured externally?
Against what benchmarks will growth be measured internally?
What kind of company?
What niche?
Who do they serve?
What do they make or provide?
Who directs policy?
How closely will R&D mirror, match, or drive growth?
How will this plan polish the brand?
How will it connect to future marketing needs, trends, and expectations based on the success of THIS plan?

And so on.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

1. Analyze your TGs and segment them.
2.Analyze the needs and expectations of your target customer according to the segments
3.Look at your competition - i.e., who they are, what segments they cover, how your competition has positioned themselves
4.Analyze your company's strenghts and weaknesses as to possible satisfying the needs and expectations of your customer segments
5.Think of positioning your company's product/services in a way that better addresses the needs of your audience and what is your company's Unique Selling Proposition and why.
6.Think of the best way to communicate your Unique Selling Proposition to your customer segments( TG
7.Consider who can help you best reach your target customers.

Hope this helps...

- Ritesh

it seems to me you are a asking how to pick a company, rather than how to produce a marketing plan.

If I were a student writing a marketing plan, I would look for a company:

- in an industry which interests me

- using a technology that I understand

- which has information readily accessible, e.g. financial documents available online

- which focuses on a single or limited number of markets and products

- which has a strong connection to your university (you might check with your office of experiential learning to see which companies offer internships, as these firms apparently have a culture of working with universities)

- which are local to you

- which are growing, and therefore are potential employers for you down the road

And so forth.

If it were me, I would narrow down your list of 100 to three to five companies, start researching them, and see where you seem to have the most traction and the best ideas.

Good luck with your project!

I agree with Telemoxie's idea for choosing a company.

There are good research sources on https://goodsource.tripod.com/index.html -- check the Business and the General Reference categories toward top of page.

Hope this helps.

Corpcommer - MC

I wold choose a company that along with meeting the requirement of being FTSE, is also one that is mostly homogeneous. If you chose a company like Unilever, they have so many products in so many segments, it would be hard ti do a marketing plan for the company (instead, they would normally be done at division or product levels). A company with more focus in one area would make it easier to make the plan.

You may want to choose one which you have some direct connection with (a friend work for, etc.), so you can maybe get some inside info on.

Beyond this, choose one in an industry that interests you, as what you learn from this project could then be useful after you get out of school (many of these companies also recruit on campuses).