MARKETING AD PLAN (Coursework Sample)

MARKETING AD PLAN Author’s Name Course Number: Course Title Due Date Business Structure As a grocery retailer focused on providing discounted prices for most of our products, our store will limit its consumer offerings to the bare essentials. Basically, this means a limited variety of food products offered at permanently low prices. The discounting strategy aims to provide our customers with high product quantities with an emphasis on economics of scale. We will use a simple display of our products in individually distinguished low-height shelves. Outside of the in-store design aesthetic for our store, we focus on optimized logistics and close business relationships at the supply chain level. We ensure high reliability with our suppliers which also incorporates low-cost services and supply chain processes. Target Market Our target market includes households with average annual earnings and who look for the most lucrative product deals and buy groceries in small batches while being located within a twenty-mile radius from our physical store. We also target the young couples, families, and professionals with limited time to do grocery shopping and hence rely on online alternatives to get the job done. Marketing Objectives Increasing our sales and profits. Our major objective as a discounted produce seller is to find a buyer for all our products while earning the highest possible return on investment. However, acknowledging the presence of major competition from bigger retailers in the industry, including restaurants and large-scale merchandisers, our strategy will be to offer highly discounted prices without compromising on the quality of the items on our shelves. Our fresh discounted produce aims to serve the customer sector searching for a bargain and a healthier option to replace the foodstuff offered in restaurants. As a small grocery store company, we will also offer non-food products, such as affordable supplements and plant extracts. We will also extend our business operations schedule to 8 p.m. to accommodate customers who leave work late or make last-minute online ordering decisions. All our product options will target customers seeking a one-stop shopping experience. Increasing customer traffic. Our grocery store will strive to gain higher customer traffic by situating our physical store in a high-traffic area. Our options will include central business districts and locations near residential buildings and apartments. We also hope to build customer traffic by enhancing our store’s physical access and situating our business to strategically suit our driving customers, especially those branching off from major roads. Proper in-house lighting and security provision will also be a priority for our customers who shop at night. Building customer loyalty. Because of the small-sized nature of our start-up, we aim to quickly increase and expand our customers’ loyalty to us. The loyal customer is the one who repeatedly comes back to our store at least once every week. Our chief approach to building a repeat customer base is by offering loyalty programs meant to reward return customers and first-time customers according to purchase volumes. Our rewards will include shopping coupons on popular products, discounted sales, and free product offerings. Our Company Marketing Mix: 7P’s Product Our store will mainly be a physical retail company; however, we hope to maintain a strong online presence to avail our entire product range to customers who find the convenience of purchasing goods and services online. Our store will have two main product categories; that is the fresh produce section and the health and wellness section. The grocery section will include a full line of fruits such as bananas, strawberries, grapes, apples, watermelon, oranges, blueberries, lemons, peaches, avocados, pineapple, cherries, cantaloupe, raspberries, pears, limes, blackberries, clementine, mangoes, and plums. We will also stock vegetables such as potatoes, tomatoes, onions, carrots, bell peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, lettuce, celery, mushrooms, corn, garlic, spinach, green beans, cabbage, sweet potatoes, green onions, cauliflower, and asparagus. Place Our main line of business will be in the form of a physical store located in [insert city and state here]. Apart from our physical store at [insert city], our company provides fresh products to customers through online channels, including a website, social media platforms, and affiliate/email ads. Price The pricing strategy we will adopt for our grocery store will be competitive pricing. We will adopt the everyday lower prices (EDLP) strategy to boost our competitive advantage and amass more loyal customers over time. The EDLP pricing model will involve selling fresh produce at the lowest day-to-day adjusted prices so that our customers can build confidence that our prices will not be subject to promotion-driven changes. Product pricing is critically important in the retail industry and certainly in our store. Further, fresh produce consumers have resorted to cutting back on grocery budgets with the goal of sustained healthy food consumption at lower prices. What will drive our customers in large numbers to our store will be our competitive pricing. We will endeavor to price our fresh produce and health supplements at significantly lower prices than our competitors. The EDLP pricing model will help us gain appreciable competitive advantage which will guarantee sustained customer loyalty. We will also adopt an everyday lower costs (EDLC) model to counter the demands of the EDLP model. The EDLC will involve making efforts to cut operating costs at every possible situation in our business operations. Promotion Although our grocery store will be a physical retail brand, we will need to expand our operations through e-commerce. The other product sale channels we will utilize as a company to promote our products will include television/radio press, printed media, and social media. We will run advertisement campaigns following a predetermined schedule to prompt high-volume sales. People Our store will heavily emphasize cost cut-down to promote cost saving for our customers. We will also strive to keep our small staff team happy and content. We will leverage technological innovation and become a people-focused company that invests in its employees and customers as a strategic priority. Process Apart from supply chain optimization and a lean distribution network to suit our customers, our store will also adopt optimized internal operations which will help improve inventory management and lead to time and money savings. Physical evidence Because we are a physical retail business, many factors play into physical evidence. While the current global digital transformation has diluted the need for paper-based currency, other factors such as branded packages, merchandise, and our store’s physical infrastructure count towards physical evidence. With time, we will incorporate gift cards and set aside a budget for branded packaging used to ship our fresh produce to our online buyers. According to a recent survey by the Packer’s Fresh Trends, about 82% of fresh produce consumers purchased pre-packaged produce within the last year. Therefore, we see the importance of including special discounted packages in our product offerings to appeal to this consumer audience. Marketing Activity Our choice of marketing activities will be influenced by national and global marketing trends associated with grocery stores (see figure 1). Figure 1. A graph showing the most- to least-impactful marketing strategies for grocery stores. Combining coupons and the internet with print media are important tools for grocery store sales success (Mspark, 2022). Print advertising A Nielsen Homescan study has reported that 80% of households will gravitate towards printed ads, such as circulars, more than digital ads when making grocery shopping decisions (Siegner, 2018). The study also found that grocery shoppers read circulars from home where such kind of media has the highest penetration compared to the store environment which has a significantly lower penetration for consumption of circular media. This means that grocery customers leverage advertising to aid in purchase planning and decision-making, the choice of store to visit before leaving the house, and spontaneous purchasing. Further, the Packer’s Fresh Trends survey reported that about half of grocery shoppers stopped shopping their fresh produce online citing the lack of ability to smell and touch fresh produce. These findings reflect the need to adopt print media advertising targeting shoppers who prefer visiting physical stores than shopping online. For our print media advertising strategy, we will combine newspaper/magazine advertising with other forms of print media, such as leaflets, circulars, and receipt printing, to maximize our customer reach both at home and in the outdoor environment. Newspaper advertising has continued to dominate grocery store advertising since post-1970s and has remained an influential tool for businesses hoping to reach out to customers in their local community (Ruby, 2022). Our plan is to leverage newspaper and magazine advertising which is comparatively cheaper than billboards and banners. The cost of a newspaper/magazine ad will be dependent upon the publication running it, the newspaper/magazine’s circulation footprint, advert color and frequency, and the day of the week it is published. As such, we intend to run one ad twice per week in the same newspaper section for two months. Afterwards, we will run the same ad in a larger display format seve...