Chapter 20. Strategy: How Everything Fits
Vignette: Planet Java is a new product launched by CocaCola that has had such a popular response from consumers that only limited pilot testing was done before producing the product nationally.
Featured URL: http://www.cocacola.com
Step By Step
You are probably familiar with sets of items where there are a series of sizes and each one fits into the next size - be it boxes or Russian dolls. Marketing strategy is much the same way. The marketing strategy for a company contains many elements, and one of the more important parts is the marketing plan, central to everything the company is hoping to accomplish. Gaining competitive advantages and using them well means that the resources and strengths of the business will be used to the maximum benefit and weaknesses will be recognized and steps will be taken to minimize their effect on the success of the endeavor.
In Chapter Nineteen, you worked with a marketing plan for a web site that would appeal to senior citizens, using a list of questions to consider as you developed ideas for building an effective marketing tool for the internet. You used ideas from existing sites targeting children and revised the site to appeal to an older market.
In this chapter, you will refine this process, generating your own guidelines for developing a marketing plan that encompasses the whole outlook for a company. You will have ideas for the web site, now place this in the larger context of the plans for the company on all other levels. You want to be able to not only see where you are today with your marketing ideas but where you plan to go in the future.
Choose from one of the following business ideas to develop your marketing plan:
Find at least two examples on the web of sites promoting a similar business in an effective manner to give you ideas for your business and marketing plans. See the Site Ideas in the Resource section to get started with your search.
1. Develop a Business Mission statement for your business
2. State your objectives - include the use of a web site to promote
your business.
3. Do a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
Site Ideas
Open Search Guide to Classic Cars - http://www.i-opensearch.com/recreation/automotive/classic_cars/
Latin and Salsa Dance Club Directory - http://www.latin-dance.de/
Personal Fitness Trainer Marketing Association - http://www.alltrainers.com/
Just Gift Baskets - http://www.justgiftbaskets.com/google/
Cosmetic Companies Guide - http://beauty.about.com/cs/cosmeticcompanies1/index.htm?terms=cosmetics
Sports and fitness gear - http://bodybuilding.about.com/cs/onlineshopping1/index_3.htm?terms=sports+gear
Marketing Sites
Marketing North America Resource Directory - http://www.marketingnorthamerica.com/
Canadian Institute of Marketing - http://www.cinstmarketing.ca/
About.com - Marketing - http://marketing.about.com/index.htm
Marketing Your Business for Success workbook -
http://www.sba.gov/gopher/Business-Development/Business-Initiatives-Education-Training/Marketing-Plan/
Search Sites
Google - http://www.google.com
Dogpile - http://www.dogpile.com
Mamma - http://www.mamma.com
Handy References
Dictionary - http://www.dictionary.com/
Voycabulary - http://www.voycabulary.com/
Thesaurus - http://www.thesaurus.com/
Ask Jeeves - http://www.aj.com/
WWW Virtual Library - http://www.vlib.org/
AltaVista - Translator - http://world.altavista.com/
Instructors: Optional Activity
As with all of the Web exercises, the exercise for Chapter Twenty can be used as suggested or certain parts can be adapted to better suit your student population. You will want to estimate how much time is required to complete any part or all of the parts. It will be helpful to give students a suggested time frame for completing their assignments. It will also help to determine how much credit might be given for the assignment.
Super Marketer's Tool Kit
One of the best tool kits you can have as a marketer is a bookmark or favourites file that you can have as easy reference when you need information related to your field and you need it in a hurry. There is so much information available on the Web today, information that is constantly evolving and being modified. One way to keep up is to have your own list of helpful sites.
If you are using Netscape as your browser, you can go into Bookmarks and organize your bookmarks into folders signifying the categories that are helpful to you. For example, you may have folders on sales, on marketing associations, marketing agencies, on public relations, etc.
Once you have organized your bookmarks, you can save that file. It is helpful if you save it with a file name other than simply "bookmarks" - try using a date so that you know when this file was last updated. For example, bookmarks12-01.html. If you have a server you can do a file transfer and put the bookmarks file on the Web to access from whatever computer you happen to be using. If you don't have this option, simply save your file to a diskette and carry the diskette with you to use wherever you happen to be using a computer. You would simply go to Floppy drive A and double click on the file name or in the Netscape Browser, go to Bookmarks, edit bookmarks and File - open bookmarks file.
Bookmarks can be especially helpful if you create a personal bookmark file as this will display the most commonly used bookmarks along the toolbar for easy access when you are on the Web.
If you use Internet Explorer, then you will want to set up folders in
your Favorites so that you can easily find the sites you want to be able
to find easily. There is nothing more frustrating than to have to spend
a lot of time looking for a great site when you can no longer remember
the key words you used for finding it in the first place.
It is also helpful to keep your best search engines and other handy
references like a dictionary or thesaurus or library bookmarked -
for examples, see the Resource Section.
Create your own marketing bookmark or favorites file and save it to
a disk.