I. Background Introduction to Company/Organization Name and describe the firm and what it does in no more than 3 paragraphs. State what industry your organization is in. If you don’t know, look it up in Hoovers (https://www.loc.gov/item/98801437/) or other source. Is your company privately held or public? The reader should be able to know what your company does, in general, after reading this. II. Environments…. This is about the Industry your firm is in. Don’t just talk about your firm. Use these headings. A. Competition: Again, what industry is it in? Competition means any. organization your customers might go to instead of yours. DO NOT SAY YOUR COMPANY HAS NO COMPETITION: IT DOES. Complete discussion of the industry (number of competitors, total size, $$$ sales of industry) and competition, big and small. The more you show what you know about your industry the better. How competitive is your industry? Show exhibits about your organization and your competitors. Show exhibits about industry in EXHIBITS. B. Technology: In general, what technology is affecting your industry and how, not just your company, the industry? What technology do you use to make this company a success? C. Economy: Study what is happening right now in the econmy (inflation,GDP, supply chain, resource supply, employment, interest rates…) How are major economic factors that are going on right now impacting your industry? D. Legal or political factors: Those that affect your business and industry. Legislation, rules, laws that are being discussed that your reader might be interested in. Impact of war or anything else in the news that you hear may impact the industry? E. Customer trends: What are the customers (consumers or businesses) doing differently that impacts all the members of your industry? Answer the statement; “Customers are tending to do more or less of this…” F. What is the effect of Covid-19 on this industry and suppliers in this industry? For the Environment section, you need to do research beyond that which you find in your company. You also need Exhibits to show what is happening. III. The Organization’s Marketing Mix A. Target Market: First discuss the company’s target market, who is served? Consumers, businesses, donors??? How well do you know them, be specific? Be as precise as you can on this, it affects the rest of the marketing mix. Compare to competitors if you can. In your Goals, below, you may want to focus on a sub-set of these customers. Make sure you mention them here. Use an exhibit to show sales, market share if you can. . B. Offering (Product/Service): What does the company offer to its customers? Here again you might want to focus on a sub-set of your company’s products or services so that you can make the case more manageable. Exhibits would be good to help show this. Compare to competitors. C. Revenue/Pricing: How does your organization pay for itself? You can’t be expected to reveal internal data, just give a general overview of how the revenue comes to the company. If you are working for a non-profit, don’t forget that donations are often essential. Compare to competitors. D. Distribution: This is partly the questions of: Where are your customers? How does the customer obtain the offering? (Online, in stores, at events?) How do your competitors distribute their products? If it’s a service, the customer still has to get at the offering and it could be local or around the world. E. Marketing Communication: What are the company’s present methods of promoting its offerings to its customers in the target market (A, above) and to other stakeholders. Here consider all advertising (on-line and off), social media platforms, influencers, sales promotion, events, personal sales people (is there a salesforce?), and public relations. How does your company decide (measure) if these methods are effective? How do they measure success? Exhibits might also show what competitors are doing on these same variables. Exhibits are useful to show off what your firm does and what the competitors do for product, price, place and promotion. Show your company’s work and compare it to competitors. IV. SWOT Analysis: Use the STRENGTH, WEAKNESS, OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS headings. Based on what you have analyzed to this point, thus section should discuss strengths, weaknesses (these are internal to the firm), opportunities and threats (these are external to the firm) of your company. Please revisit your MKT 301 text or the index of any basic marketing principles book for specifications of a SWOT analysis. For Opportunities are one of the building blocks for your goals (V, below). These are not “things your company might do” but things in the environment (trends, situations) that your firm can take advantage of. Use the headings to explain each element of the SWOT. The SWOT Chart should be included with the Exhibits section, NOT in the text of your paper. V. A Statement of the Benchmark and Marketing Goal: Your Marketing Goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. You choose one or two measures that you believe are SMART goals. First: State the BENCHMARK. This is your statement on where your firm is now. As much as you can, make these about marketing goals: sales, market share, # of units, # of clients served, # of members, etc. Do not talk about “they need more employees, they need more ads. These are ways to achieve the goals. Second: Your GOAL is where they want to be at some point in the future) …set a date, beyond the BENCHMARK.. Marketing goals are not Likes, Hits, Friends, Followers or Re-tweets. They are behavior from your target market, e.g. how does your company measure impact on sales $, market share, # of clients, # of leads??? For help on finding the relevant benchmarks and goals, look at the SWOT analysis, above. There may be weaknesses that need shoring up, Opportunities might give you ideas on how to grow, Threats might tell you what to look at in order to cut off these threats. Your Target Market might offer ideas as well. VI. Your solution to achieve goal in V: This is big, your time to shine! This is where you show your marketing plan to reach the goal, above. As much as you can, discuss what your strategy is for product/price/place and promotion. It does not have to involve all 4 p’s, but some should be attended to. It should be extensive and well thought out. Show plans and charts of what you think they should do in the Exhibits section. Show you have really truly thought about this. If this is less than a page long, you haven’t thought enough. VII. Reference page (in back) A good paper has many research sources (at least 10). You should research the industry, competitors, the company, and its products/services through a combination of resources. Search what your industry does on-line. Company supplied information is not enough. Plan to use the DePaul Library sources to find out about the industry and competitors. If your professor gives you reference links from sources he found, that means you didn’t find them…Each of these should be numbered so you can USE that number to refer to it in the text. Format this way: List all of your sources in alphabetical order on the “Reference Page” in the back. Do not use foot notes. Number each reference along the left side of the page, e.g. 1. Kaushik, Avinash (2007), Web Analytics , Wiley Books. https://www.amazon.com/Web-Analytics-2-0-Accountability-Centricity/dp/0470529393 2. Kelly, J. Steven and Amanda Low (2020) “Marketing Cases of Chicago Businesses: DePaul University 2019-2020” (Volume 1) Paperback, https://amzn.to/380PMIH When you use one of the sources in the text of the paper, cite the number of that source at the end of the sentence or paragraph. Don’t use super-script numbers, just use a regular sized number in ( ) at the end of the sentence. The rule of thumb about citing references is “if the information is not common knowledge then its source must be cited in the text.” Interviews you have should also be listed on the reference page. Please cite ALL sources (including web sources). For more information on citing sources in the required MLA format please refer to the following website: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/1/. VIII. Exhibits (Figures) ALL EXHIBITS ARE IN THIS LAST SECTION. NONE ARE IN THE TEXT OF THE PAPER. Think of your exhibits as if they were Power Point slides that you would use in a presentation. Make one exhibit per page. Think how they tell your story. Each exhibit has a number, title/explanation, and the SOURCE at the bottom. 1. You MUST include your SWOT Chart in Exhibits and it has to be readable. 2. Would a map of your location and your competitors’ locations be useful? If you are a local operation, show your firm on are map relative to competitors might help. 3. Would an organization chart help the reader understand your operation better? 4. Examples of ads (social media, on-line, billboard, TV..), promotional literature, web site, pricing sheets, catalogue pages, and sales data are all possible exhibits. 5. Scanning documents into an exhibit is easy, but sometimes it is not easy to read. Make sure all exhibits are: CLEAR, NUMBERED, HAVE A TITLE/EXPLANATION and have the SOURCE at the bottom of the exhibit. 6. **It is REALLY IMPRESSIVE when you take some data and do your own analysis on it; put it in a chart, to share with your reader. Use data from surveys or financial documents. Show that you can use EXCEL to make are chart, for instance. 7. Make sure you refer to your exhibits in your paper. In the text write (See Exhibit #...) 8. Do not stuff exhibits in this section without mentioning them in your paper. READ THIS! EACH EXHIBIT SHOULD HAVE A NUMBER AND TITLE/EXPLANATION AT THE TOP. SOURCE AT THE