Project Outline: Marketing Plan: Software anticipating future purchases

Abstract:

  • The development of a new software with 95% accuracy in predicting consumers buying needs in the next thirty days.
  • Competitive advantages.
  • Pricing strategies
  • Marketing strategies
  • Ethical implications

Source of information:

  • The source of information includes journal articles and internetsources.
  • Real life examples such as Microsoft Corporation’s marketing and pricing strategies.

Concepts and techniques:

  • The key concepts and techniques involves are identifying the market segments which are B2B and B2C customers
  • Identifying the buyers and their categories
  • Pricing implications;
  • Pointing out the distribution channels
  • Developing a marketing venue for the software with relevant comparison in approaches to other firms.
  • Privacy concerns

Introduction:

  • Database marketing is a practice used to increase marketing activities effectiveness using advanced information technology to collect consumer information and analyze it to enhance recognition to increase consumer loyalty and sales repetition(Tao and Yeh, 2003).
  • Sophisticated databases require elaborate planning and skills for successful adoption to convert such a powerful marketing tool to increase return on investment (Tao and Yeh, 2003).

Identify the market:

  • Product segmentation variables: demographic; operational; purchasing; situational; and personal characteristic variables, (Kotler and Keller, 2011).
  • Target market includes finance firms, retailers, Internet and technology firms, insurance companies, and B2B firms.
  • Marketing significance to large firms with large customer bases that have large amounts data transactions, where the larger the data transactions, the greater the significance of this database tool (Marketing Schools, 2012)

Identifying the products buyers:

  • Further segmentation to access different market segments by customization into product editions (Komo, 2005).
  • Classification of editions into: Free trial; basic; standard; and enterprise (Komo, 2005).

Establishing a price point:

  • Common pricing strategies and practices of database software’s(Komo, 2005).
  • Assessing the potential customers expectations.
  • Assessing pricing strategies of competitors.
  • Developing pricing objectives and creating a pricing strategy.
  • Clarificationof the pricing schemes and their related options, add-ons, licensing, users, and maintenance and support costs, which are often priced as a percentage from the list prices, also giving the customers newer versions rights (Komo, 2005).
  • Providing informative understanding of the direct and indirect costs
  • Example of the cost effective solution of Microsoft SQL 2005 in comparison to other software’s(Komo, 2005).

Choosing a distribution channel:

  • The firm can use distributors, web agencies, software vendors and resellers, which would provide a local presence at a lower cost across borders (Kar, 2012).
  • Direct sales model to increase focus such as constructing a website for the product (Kar, 2012).

The communication (Advertisement) venue:

  • Marketing mix under an E-environment (Wang, Wang and Yao, 2005).
  • The 4S model of web marketing mix (Wang, Wang and Yao, 2005).
  • Establishing a sales force to target customers by free demos.
  • Exploring the medium and implementing unique characteristic such as content quality; delivery and execution; and social appeal (OpenView, 2012).
  • Social media tactics: adapting the message as a social marketing automation (OpenView, 2012).
  • Free Trials: as an effective means for B2B business of convincing the customer to take the product for a test drive (OpenView, 2012).
  • Online tools and assessments: creating tolls as a simple ROI calculator or alternative online analysis (OpenView, 2012).
  • Creating a video and visuals illustrating product performance, both online and with sales force.

Ethical and privacy implications:

  • Review of the privacy concerns related local laws (Advisen, 2013).
  • Example of privacy lawsuit against Google (Advisen, 2013).
  • Providing full disclosure of the information source to buyers (Advisen, 2013).

Conclusion:

  • The product marketed does create an added value to customers, this software substitutes researching, listening and speaking to the consumer creating a competitive advantage and the accuracy level of 95% provides a key selling advantage to the buyer which upon use will create high cost effectiveness and market growth to the customers marketing activities.

References:

Advisen (2013) The Privacy Implications of Big Data; Advisen Ltd. [Online] Available from: 25 February 2015)

Kar, S. (2012) Cloud is Changing the Software Distribution Channel Model; Cloud Times [Online] Available from:

(Assessed: 25 February 2015)

Komo, D. (2005) ‘Microsoft SQL Server 2005: Understanding database pricing and licensing’; Microsoft corporation [Online] Available from:

25 February 2015)

Kotler, P. and Keller, K. L. (2011) Marketing Management; 14th edition; Harlow: Pearson Education.

Marketing Schools (2012) Database marketing: explore the strategy of database marketing; Marketing-Schools.org [Online] Available from:

25 February 2015)

OpenView (2012) The Most Creative B2B Marketing Tactics Online; OpenView Labs [Online] Available from:

25 February 2015)

Tao, Y.H. and Yeh, C.C.R. (2003) ‘Simple database marketing tools in customer analysis and retention’; International Journal of Information Management; Vol. 23 pp.291-301 [Online] Available from:

25 February 2015)

Wang, K.L., Wang, Y. and Yao, J.T. (2005) ‘A comparative study of marketing mix models for digital products’; Lecture notes in computer Science Vol.3828 pp.660-669 [Online] Available from:

25 February 2015)