Market Analysis/Strategy

Project Description

As a prelude to and fundamental component of your Comprehensive Business Plan (Project 4), you will research, draft, and design an all-inclusive Market Analysis and Marketing Strategy for your team Project Manager’s business idea. This analysis and strategy will give you the opportunity to do some extensive research, analysis, and synthesis of your specific market in order to gain a greater understanding of your business or industry, including the potential for positive revenue, your competitive edge within that market, and a comprehensive strategy for marketing your future business. Further, you will need to keep your multiple audiences in mind when doing this research (investors vs. customers). In total, your market analysis should be quite comprehensive (~10-15 pages) and make clear your understanding of where and how you will fit into the market and how you plan to position your company.

The type of research (i.e. five sources, only one of which is “non-academic”) you will need to complete in order to successfully and thoroughly develop project 4 will depend, to a great extent, upon your business and its future location; you may find that you need to do some first-hand, survey-type research of the relevant market to ensure that there is a felt need for your business (product of service).

Project Goals

Writing in Context

• writing for a range of defined audiences and stakeholders;
• negotiating the ethical dimensions of workplace and/or business communication;
• representing one's business goals and innovative ideas persuasively, in written and oral forms.

Project Management

• Understand, develop and deploy various strategies for planning, researching, drafting, revising, and editing the important and necessary documents of entrepreneurship, including business plans, marketing materials, white papers, resumes, trademark applications, and grant proposals, both individually and collaboratively
• Select and use appropriate technologies that both effectively and ethically address professional situations and audiences.
• Build professional ethos through documentation and accountability.

Document Design
Make rhetorical design decisions about workplace documents commonly used by entrepreneurs, including

• understanding and adapting to genre conventions and audience expectations;

understanding and implementing design principles of format and layout;

• interpreting and arguing with design;
• drafting, researching, testing, and revising visual designs and information architecture.

Teamwork
Learn and apply strategies for successful teamwork and collaboration, such as

• working online with colleagues;
• determining individual and group roles and responsibilities;
• managing team conflicts constructively;
• responding constructively to peers' work
• soliciting and using peer feedback effectively;
• achieving team and business goals.

Research
Understand and use various research methods to produce professional documents, including

• analyzing professional contexts;
• locating, evaluating, and using print and online information selectively for particular audiences and purposes;
• triangulating sources of evidence;
• selecting appropriate primary research methods, such as interviews, observations, focus groups, and surveys to collect data;
• working ethically with research participants.

Technology
Use and evaluate the writing technologies frequently used in the workplace and for entrepreneurship, such as emailing, instant messaging, image editing, video editing, presentation design and delivery, HTML editing, Web browsing, content management, and desktop publishing technologies.

Deliverables

What follows is a list of some of the major components of a comprehensive Market Analysis and Strategy that you should consider.

Market Analysis:

• Defining Target Market, Market Size, etc.
• Analyzing your Industry, its participants, your market, and market trends
• History of the industry or market
• What need or demand your company fills
• The current and prospective buyers of your company’s products or services
• What type of buyers of your company’s products or services (“brand-conscious” buyers, impulse buyers, window shoppers, bargain shoppers)?
• What motivates customers to buy?
• Relevant demographic profile: income, gender, occupation, marital status, ethnicity, education?
• Location of target market: live, work, play, etc.
• Unique opportunities for additional differentiation of your business…technology, positioning, or segmentation
• Your value proposition
• Forces, trends, and market potential of your industry that supports your business objectives
• Cite experts, market research firms, trade associations, other credible sources
• Significant statistics for your industry: revenue size, number of businesses, units sold, employment figures
• Principle distribution/sales channels for your business
• Patterns and trends of your industry (growing, leveling off, shrinking)
• Factors that influence growth or decline in your industry
• Changes in demographics, consumer taste, or needs for your industry

Marketing Strategy

• How you plan to make customers aware of your product or service
• What message you are trying to convey to customers about your product, service, or company
• Specific methods you will use to deliver and reinforce that message
• What messages you give customers to motivate them to purchase your product or service:
  • Product: the tangible aspects of the product or service
  • Price: the cost advantage
  • Place: the location’s convenience and décor
  • Promotion: the amount and nature of the marketing activities
• Five F’s of Customer Satisfaction:
  • Functions: how the product or service meets customer needs
  • Finance: how the purchase will affect customer’s overall financial situation
  • Freedom: how convenient it is to purchase and use the product or service; how they will gain TIME and less worry in other aspects of life
  • Feelings: how the product or service makes customers feel about themselves
  • Future: how customers will deal with the product or service and company over time: support service, lives down the road, increased sense of security for future

• What message you are trying to convey (for each of the five f’s)
• Which message is most important to your target market
• How you will express your message to your customer in each of the following:
• How you will disseminate information:
• Fit: your marketing vehicles must reach your actual target and be appropriate for image.
• Mix: use more than on method so customers get exposure to you from a number of sources.
• Repetition: it takes many incidents of exposure to make a customer aware of a message.
• Affordability: is the marketing plan within your budget?

• Professional Assistance:
• Marketing/PR Consultants
• Ad Agencies
• Direct Mail Specialists
• Graphic/Web Designers
• Medium (billboards, displays, tv, radio, online, newspapers, etc.) and ways of marketing/advertising (PR, informal marketing, word of mouth, customer-based, etc.)

• How you will convey your digital presence (if you have one) in your marketing materials: URL, e-mail address, letterhead, business cards, ads, ?
• Where you will allot your advertising dollars (media, Ad Executive, PR, etc.), frequency of ads, size, types, who will create them, cost of each. etc.
• How your message will reach your target market; how much your plan will cost (placement and production)
• How you will describe your unique selling position in a one or two line catchy phrase or slogan
• Are your choices ETHICAL?
• How much money will you dedicate to advertising and promotion in the first, second, third years?

As a whole, this project will function to 1) prepare you for writing the Market Analysis and Marketing Strategy, and 2) give you practice in research, analysis, and synthesis of information gathered in the wild

Grading for Market Analysis/Strategy

The Market Analysis/Strategy Project is worth 15% of your total course grade and breaks down as follows:

• 50% - Market Analysis
• 50% - Marketing Strategy