Question

Q1 Required)

"Black-owned businesses have been hit especially hard by the pandemic," Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, wrote in a Thursday blog post announcing the new initiative. "But we know that millions of people want to help."

This project will demonstrate the simplicity of creating a small business to function effectively in a global market.

Create a marketing plan for a wood selling company

You must identify and articulate the strategic and tactical elements that will play a role in growing the business. The quality of this work of is up to you. Your plan should be no more that 3 pages. In the link below, you will find marketing material to include in your plan.

This plan should include:


1- One-to-one marketing

2- Viral marketing

3- Social marketing

Answer 1

Why marketing is important:

Never mind the size of the company, the principles of marketing applied properly can improve one's profitability. Marketing is an changing process that links firms to customers. Marketing encourages the exchange of goods and services for money in a way that is profitable to the firm and satisfying to the customer. The marketing process is constantly being adjusted and customized to different situations based on three strategic business factors: the company, the customers, and the competition. It is important that wood products' organizations and their managers be familiar of how these three factors interact and constantly adjust business strategy.

Create a marketing plan for a wood selling company

Markets:

Markets are generally defined as all current and possible buyers of a product or service. A key assumption in this definition is that these buyers are able to financially make the purchase. Marketing strategy is generally organized around target markets. These target markets are parts of the market toward which a firm targets its products or services. The markets can be divided based on a variety of different characteristics, which can range from demographics to product application to geography.

There are three different methods used for defining target markets. They are the following mass marketing, niche marketing, and market segmentation. Each of these three techniques can be effective when used properly in the right situation for the right product. These methods are discussed in more detail below.

Mass Marketing:
Mass marketing involves a single marketing program pointed at large numbers of customers with essentially the same product, promotion, etc. Mass marketing concludes that all customers have similar needs in relation to a particular product.

Niche Marketing:
The opposite of mass marketing is niche marketing. With this technique, a particular group of customers is focused on and given specialized attention. Marketing to this group is very focused. This can be a very effective method for smaller companies with finite financial resources. Creating a niche market can be attained not only with the product, but also with specialized attributes and services as well.

Market Segmentation:
Almost in between mass and niche marketing is market segmentation. This necessarily means taking the overall group of customers and breaking them up into similar smaller groups. Products and marketing activities are generally concentrated on two or more well defined groups.

Distribution:

Without proper distribution, products have no way of reaching the final consumer. Distribution systems are arranged into channels. These channels are an organized set of institutions whose goal is to move goods from point of manufacture to point of consumption or usage. The institutions that exist within these distribution channels are known as intermediaries or middlemen.

Functions of Middlemen/Channel Intermediaries:

• Maintain contact with buyer
• Negotiate price and delivery
• Establish contracts and delivery
• Transfer title
• Provide credit/collection
• Service product and provide other services
• Provide inventory/storage
• Arrange transportation

Pricing:

Pricing is a complex process that is important to the success of a company. Price is the amount of money that is charged for a product or service. However, there is much more involved in setting a price than this. The price of a product has to incorporate a number of variables in addition to just the product cost. For instance, when a load of lumber is purchased the price charged must be sufficient to cover the following costs: the cost of producing the actual product, marketing that product, transportation, packaging, insurance, and any necessary taxes. It is also necessary to consider company objectives when arriving at a price. As you can see, pricing can be a very compex process that is affected by many different variables. It is important for the individuals in charge of this task to understand how to account for these factors when setting a price.

Price depends on:

• Impact of Wholesalers and Retailers
• Competitive Environment

Pricing objectives:

• Profit-oriented
• Sales-oriented
• Status quo-oriented

Pricing Strategies:

• Cost-based
• Demand-based
• Competition-based

Promotion:

This is a very appropriate definition of promotion. Many times promotion is confused as only selling. Selling is only part of it. The key objectives of promotion are to inform, convince, and/or remind. This is accomplished by communicating information about a product or service that will create a favorable impression in the minds of the recipients of this communication.

Advertising
Advertising is a paid form of non-personal presentation of a good, service, or idea. It is probably the most familiar form of promotion. Each of us sees hundreds of advertisements everyday. The ability to reach a large audience at a relatively low price is one of the positives of advertising. One of the drawbacks, as we all know, is that advertisements are easily ignored. Advertising can be ended through many different types of media. These can include:

• Radio
• TV
• Magazines
• Newspapers
• Billboards
• Direct Mail
• Business Cards
• Letterhead

Personal Selling
Personal selling is a person to person or one to one presentation of information about a firms' products or services. This type of promotion is used mainly in the wood products industry. It has many benefits over other forms of promotion.

Sales Promotion
Sales promotion is a non-personal communication in the form of like free samples, coupons, point-of-purchase literature, trade shows, contests, etc. Trade shows have become a very good process to promote products within the industry. They happen very frequently and are normally well attended. This is an especially effective method to introduce newer products.

Publicity
Publicity includes non paid methods of displaying information about the firm, its products and services. Different examples of this would be news releases, articles in trade magazines, or newspaper articles. Publicity is often achieved with new plant openings, new product developments, and recent environmental improvements to new or existing manufacturing facilities. This can be a valuable method for creating positive public perception of your firm.

The main important types of marketing are:

1. One to one marketing:

One-to-one marketing (also sometimes written as 1:1 marketing) is a strategy that relies on getting to know the individual choices made by a customer, and then tailoring marketing outreach to each customer differently based on those choices. It’s an approach that is not used to get the customer’s attention, but to keep their attention and their business.

There are two basic types of one to one marketing:

• Personalization : the company learns the personal preferences and tastes of each consumer and customizes its marketing plan to them. Amazon.com is known for perhaps the most successful 1:1 personalization strategy, recommending products based on past purchases and interests.
• Customization : the company doesn’t learn the preferences of each customer, but instead gives the individual customer the ability to customize the product to their own tastes. A good example of this plan is a computer retailer that offers a basic platform of a laptop and then gives the customer the ability to tailor many of the laptop’s features (processor, memory storage, loaded programs) to their own tastes and needs. Many online news websites use the same strategy by allowing visitors to pick and choose the types of news stories (international, political, financial, etc.) they want shown most prominently on the site.

2. Viral marketing:

Viral marketing is a business plan that uses existing social networks to promote a product. The name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people in their social networks, much in the same way that a virus spreads from one person to another.

The viral effect can spread through various different networks, including:

• Word-of-mouth
• Email
• Social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)
• Video sharing sites (Youtube, Vimeo, etc)
• Web forums

3. Social marketing:

Social marketing look to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to social change. Social marketing focuses to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good. The goal is to deliver competition sensitive and divided social change programs that are effective, efficient, equitable and sustainable.