MODULE 3: THE

MARKETING PLAN
• BUSINESS PLAN. a comprehensive paper that details the situation
analysis, objectives, strategies and tactics, and how to monitor and
control the enterprise.

• MARKETING PROCESS. Starts with identifying the customers’

needs where you are tasked to create a meaningful value
preposition.
VALUE PROPOSITION AND UNIQUE
SELLING PROPOSITON
VALUE PROPOSITION (VP)
• It simply states why a customer should buy a certain product or
service.
• The major driver in customer purchase or service availment.
TIPS FOR THE ENTREPRENEUR ON HOW TO CREATE AN
EFFECTIVE VALUE PROPOSITION TO THE TARGET
CUSTOMERS:

• Prepare a situation analysis that details the problem(s) of the

customers.
• Make your value proposition straight to the point, simple, and
specific.
• Highlight the value of your product or service.
• Adapt to the language of your market.
• Add credibility-enhancing elements.
• Differentiate your value proposition with your competitors.
ALING TERE’S SARI-SARI STORE
SITUATION ANALYSIS:
Prior to the establishment of sari-sari store, Aling Tere
notices that there is a convenience store in her vicinity,
where many call center agents, nurses, and construction
workers buy food, beverages, and other products during odd
hours (from 10PM to 6AM). She discovers that the
customers either ride a tricycle or a jeepney just to reach the
convenience store. There are two sari-sari store nearby, but
they close at 9PM. Aling Tere believes this is an opportunity
for a sari-sari store business with a twist.
• Aling Tere realizes she needs to address the needs of the
customers to differentiate her business from the competition.
She decides to establish a 24/7 sari-sari store. As an initial
investment, Aling Tere hires three mans employees who will
help her run the sari-sari store in three shifts. During their
break, Aling Tere mans the sari-sari store herself. She
designs her sari-sari store like a semi-convenience store,
where customers can freely go and choose the product they
ant. It is also air-conditioned. For security purposes, she also
installs a CCTV camera. Her task now is to craft a
worthwhile value proposition for the potential customers .
• PROPOSED VALUE PROPOSITION:

“Tindahang maasahan, bukas kahit anong oras!”

UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION (USP)

• Refers to how you will sell the product or service to your customers.
• It addresses the customers’ wants and desires. (form of product or
service characteristics, promotion strategies, and tactics, distribution
centers and supply chains, pricing, physical attributes or physical
evidence, human resources or human capital, and market
positioning strategies.
TIPS FOR THE ENTREPRENEUR ON HOW TO
CREATE AN EFFECTIVE USP TO THE TARGET
CUSTOMERS:
• Identify and rank the uniqueness of the product or service
attribute.
Put yourself in the customers’ shoes and ask yourself,
“Why should I choose you over the others?”, “Why
should I deal with you at all?”
• Be very specific.
• KISS (keep it short and simple)
• Process was ranked first as the most unique because Aling
Tere wants to solve a compeliling problem of the
customers.
• Packaging was ranked second because it is the only semi-
convenience store in the area, a hybrid of a convenience
store and a sari-sari store.
• People rank third because it is the only sari-sari store that
has three persons who work in shifts.
• USP: “Tindahang maasahan, bukas kahit anong oras!”
KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS
• Marketing research
is a comprehensive process of understanding the customers’
intricacies and the industry they revolve in.

• Market size
it is simply the size the arena where the entrepreneur’s business will
play. It is the approximation of the number of buyers and sellers in a
particular market.
• Market space or market universe
the approximate number of customers that will buy the product
or avail the service. (total market).

• Market share
the plotting and calculation of the competitors’ market share to
determine the remaining portion for the new venture.
MARKET SHARE COMPUTATION
ILLUSTRATION:
• Mr. Alvin Antonio, a budding entrepreneur, wants to
establish a rice retailing business in his area in
Barangay San Isidro. He wants to know if this
business is worth his capital and effort. He dug deep
and found that there are approximately 500 families
in San Isidro with the average of five members per
family he did a survey and found out that only 475
families eat rice; they consume an average of 1 kilo
of rice per day.
There are four other rice retailers in the area that have
been there for 10 years already, and they have equal
market shares of 20% each. The other 20% of the
market is buying in bulk (per sack) from groceries or
convenience stores. The average net profit per kilo of
rice is P10. how big is the market size and what could
be the potential market share of Alvin’s rice retail
business?
• Market size of rice business in San Isidro = Number of families who
eat tice x average consumption per annum.

• Market size = 476 families x 1 kilo per day x 365 days

= 173, 375 kilos of rice

• Market size profit = 173, 375 kilos x P10

= P1, 733, 750 per annum
TERMS
• Customers are said to be the lifeblood of the business.
• Customer requirements are specific features and
characteristics that the customers need from a product or
service.
• Market intelligence includes customer profiling, drives
the entrepreneur on what correct strategies and tactics to
employ.
• Market segmentation is the process of grouping similar or
homogenous customers according to demographic,
psychographic, geographic, and behavior.
MARKET SEGMENTATION
DEMOGRAPHIC
• DEMOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION also called
socioeconomic segmentation, is the process of grouping
customers according to relevant socioeconomic variables for the
business venture.
• SOCIOECONOMIC VARIABLES include income range and
social class, occupation, gender and age, religion, and ethnicity.
• INCOME RANGE AND THE SOCIAL CLASS it represent
the purchasing power of the market.
• OCCUPATION
• GENDER AND AGE GROUP
• RELIGION AND ETHNICITY
PSYCHOGRAPHIC
• Psychographic segmentation is a process of grouping
customers according to their perceptions, way of life,
motivations, and inclinations.
• Perception a process wherein an individual receives
external stimuli.
• Physiological motivations involve the needs of the
person.
• Psychological motivations involve customer’s
preferences.
• Motivations are also affected by their aspirations and
deprivations.
• Aspirations are what the customer wants to achieve.
• Deprivation involves the customer’s recognition of
certain voids to fill.
• Customers’ inclinations involve preferring one product
over another as a result of gaining a refreshing experience
when using the product, possibly due to the product’s
unique features or due to it giving more value than the
other products.
GEOGRAPHIC
• Geographic segmentation simply grouping customers
according to their location. This is critical in the analysis of
the target market as this encompasses the cultures, beliefs,
preferences, politics, and lifestyle of a certain geography.
• It can be as small as a street, a village or a barangay.
BEHAVIORAL
• Behavioral segmentation is the process of grouping the
customers according to their actions. These behaviors are
instigated by occasions, desired benefits, loyalty, and usage
of products or availment of services.
• Occasions drastically affect the customers’ buying
behavior.
• Desired benefits determines the exact needs of the
customers and offer the most suited product or service for
them.
• Loyalty the result of maintaining satisfied customers.
• Usage of product or availment of service a behavior
segmentation factor that describes to the entrepreneur how
often a product is being used or the service is being availed.
• Segmentation a strategic and an efficient way of classifying
and grouping customers, there is also a term in marketing
called aggregation.
• Market aggregation it happens when an entrepreneur wants
to target a broader market as possible because the product or
service that the business offers is suited for an
undifferentiated market.
TALKING TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

• Marketing research will not be complete without talking

directly to the target customers.
• QUALITATIVE RESEARCH includes identifying the
written or spoken opinions of customers.
• QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH involves analyzing the
customers’ preference by using relevant statistics (such as
those in surveys).
INTERVIEW
• One f the most reliable and credible ways of getting
relevant information from the target customers.
• It is a face-to-face contact between the
researcher/entrepreneur and a respondent where the
researcher asks pertinent questions that will give him
significant pieces of information about the problem that he
will solve.
• SAMPLING which is the selection of respondents that
statistically represent the total population.
TWO MAIN TYPES OF INTERVIEW:
• UNSTRUCTURED INTERVIEW, an informal type of
interview and does not follow a specific set of questions and
produces qualitative data. It is a preparatory interview to gather
ideas about the problem(s) that will be solved.

• STRUCTURED INTERVIEW, it employs specific set of

questions and produces quantitative data. A prearranged
questionnaire with specific questions usually answerable by
yes or no (closed-ended), force ranking, multiple choice, or
choose-the-best will be answered by the respondents.
FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSION
• Commonly used by market researchers to capture
qualitative results from target customers.
• It is a process of mining customer and noncustomer
experience and insights about a specific product or
service.
FGD ADVANTAGES:

• The researcher can get combined insights from the

participants.
• The participants are more spontaneous and
enthusiastic because of the interaction with co-
participants, thereby sharing more insights to the
researcher.
• It can be observed by various spectators.
FGD DISADVANTAGES:

• It obtains only qualitative data.

• Examination of the focus group session is difficult and
requires more time.
• There are potentially biased answers from the participants
because they will encounter peer pressure. There may also
be instances that one or two among the eight participants
will dominate the discussion, resulting in biased responses.
OBSERVATION
• One of the preferred and practical methods of generating ideas
because the researchers documents the behavioral patterns of people
or of objects or events without necessarily requiring them to
participate in the research process.
• The key to observation is that the researcher must be keen and
accurate on what he or she really wants to observe-he or she must
have a very clear objective.
• Observation can be performed by either a human or machine
observer.
• The machine observer employs an equipment to record the
information needed.
Examples of human observation:
1. customer purchase patterns
2. Mystery shopping

Examples of machine observation:

3. Video cameras or closed-circuit television (CCTV)
4. Traffic counters
5. Web analytics
6. Barcode scanners
7. GPS technology
OBSERVATION ONLY BECOMES A RELEVANT
TOOL IF IT MEETS THE FF. CONDITIONS:
1. If the person, object, or event is indeed observable.
2. If the person does the activity regularly or the event
happens on a regular basis.
3. If doing an interview or FGD is becoming intrusive of the
privacy of the person.
4. If the subject of observation does not take too long to
produce relevant information.
TRADITIONAL AND ONLINE SURVEYS

• SURVEY- it is a process of getting answers from a

sample of respondents derived from a particular
population.
– A very simple and practical to run because it requires
preparation of predetermined questions answerable by
definite responses using equitable scales.
PREPARATION FOR THE SURVEY
1. Sampling techniques
Sample, a percentage of a specific population
carefully chosen by the researcher to generally
represent the whole population.
Census, when the entire population is relatively
small, the researcher may choose to include the whole
population in the research project.
• Sampling techniques include probability and nonprobability
sampling.

• Probability sampling, a technique wherein samples are given

equitable chances or nonzero chances being selected from a
population.
– Randomization, wherein he or she needs to assure that every sample has
an equal representation for the selection process to be unbiased.
– Sampling error, a range of inaccuracy to which a sample might vary from
the particular population.

 Nonprobability Sampling, it does not give the samples equal chances of

being selected, because samples are instead selected according to their
accessibility or personal choice of the researcher.
2. Sample size
3. Questionnaire blueprint:
a. be specific and direct is necessary and not repetitive.
b. be flexible with the respondents’ convenient way of
answering the questionnaires.
c. ensure that each question is necessary and not repetitive.
d. always put yourself in the shoes of your respondents.
e. make sure that questions are arranged in a coherent order that
will lead to the answers required.
f. the questionnaire should look professional, divided into
strategic parts, and be properly numbered.
THE MARKETING MIX: THE 7P’S OF
MARKETING
• Marketing mix, is a widely accepted strategic marketing tool that
combines the original 4Ps (product, place, price, promotion) with
the additional 3Ps-people, packaging, and process- in formulating
marketing tactics for a product or service.

• Entrepreneurs must use the 7Ps model to do the following:

-conduct a situation analysis; set objectives; conduct strength,
weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) or competitive analysis;
and ultimately come up with marketing strategies and tactics.
• Any physical good, service, or idea that is
created by an entrepreneur or innovator in
serving the needs of the customers and
addressing their existing problems.
THREE-LEVEL CONCEPT OF PRODUCTS
OR SERVICES

• Level 1 : Core benefits of the product or service

• Level 2 : Physical characteristics of the product or
service
• Level 3 : Augmented benefits of the product or
service
 PLACE

• Refers to a location or the medium of transaction.

• Is the peso value that the entrepreneur assigns
to a certain product or service after considering
its costs, competition, objectives, positioning,
and target market.
 MOST COMMON PRICING STRATEGIES:
1. Bundling- this refers to two or more products or services in one reduced price
(e.g., 3-in-1 coffee for P8.00, manicure and pedicure for P150.00).
2. Penetration pricing- this refers to setting low prices to increase market share,
but the entrepreneur will eventually increase the price once the desired market
share is achieved (e.g., a mobile app-based transportation service offering
reduced booking fee of P15 as its introductory price).
3. Skimming- This is the opposite of penetration pricing where prices are initially
high and then they are lowered to offer the product or service to a wider
market.
4. Competitive pricing- This refers to benchmarking prices with the competitors.
5. Product line pricing-refers to pricing different products or
services within a parallel product array using varying price points.
6. Psychological pricing- this considers the psychology and
positioning of price in the market.
7. Premium pricing- refers to setting a very high price to reflect
elitism and superiority.
8. Optional pricing- refers to adding an extra product or service on
top of the original to generate more revenue.
9. Cost-based pricing- the basis of markup is the cost of sales.
10. Cost plus pricing- the markup is based on a certain percentage
of cost.
TWO CLASSIFICATION OF COSTS
1. Variable costs or controllable costs- These costs are
directly proportional to the number of products
manufactured or to the number of services performed.

2. Fixed costs or uncontrollable costs- These are costs not

directly proportional to the manufacturing of a product or
to the performance of the service. These are usually the
cost of equipment, employee remuneration, rental cost,
and utilities.
GUIDELINES IN GENERAL PRICING
1. Do not price the product or service below its cost.
2. Monitor competitors’ prices, and ensure that your prices are at par
with them unless the product or service is really way superior to
the competitors’.
3. Align prices with the other 6Ps (product, place, promotion, people,
packaging, and processing).
4. Implement price strategies that are relevant to your market
segment.
5. Align process with your business objectives.
• Involves presenting the products or services to the public
and how these can address the public’s needs, wants,
problems, or desires.
• A strong integrated marketing communication plan (IMC)
should be devised to deliver the compelling messages
effectively.
KEY MARKETING MESSAGES FOR
PROMOTION

1. Value proposition or unique selling

proposition of the product or service
2. Product or service image.
3. Business image
4. Business values and philosophy
PROMOTIONAL TOOLS
1. ADVERTISING, a type of communication that influences the
behavior of a customer to choose the product or service of the
entrepreneur over the competitors.
OBJECTIVES:
-informing, educating, and familiarizing the public with the
product and service offerings.
-building trustworthy image.
-increasing sales
• The entrepreneur can choose to advertise through the ff: television,
radio, internet, mobile phones, print, and out-of-home.
2. SELLING- the act of trading a product or service for a
price or a fee.
3. SALES PROMOTIONS- these are short-term
promotional gimmicks wherein practical incentives and
appealing activities are incorporated to entice the customers
to buy the product or avail of the service.
4. PUBLIC RELATIONS- these are image-building
initiatives of the entrepreneur to make the name of the
business reputable to stakeholders, such as the target
customers, government agencies, business partners, media
and the public.
COMMON EXAMPLES OF SALES
PROMOTIONS IN THE PHILIPPINES
• Sales discounts or discounts coupons
• Raffles
• Contest and games
• Promo items
• Product or service bundles
• Trade fairs or exhibits (e.g., wedding expo)
• Sample distributions or free taste/free trials
• Premiums (e.g., free toys for fast food meals)
• Point-of-purchase promotions (e.g., display stands in grocery stores)
• Advertising specialties (e.g., pens, notebooks, umbrellas, bags, calendars)
• Rewards (e.g., reward cards)
EXAMPLES OF PR STRATEGIES
• Press conferences
• Launching events
• Strong media relations through press kits
• Social responsibility events (e.g., charitable or community
events)
• Lobbying (e.g., good relationships with government
officials)
• Web public relations (e.g., blogs, social media, e-mails,
word-of-mouth)
 PEOPLE
• Is one of the three additional Ps in the marketing mix. In
today’s marketing arena, people play a vital role in
servicing customers even though the entrepreneur sells
only physical goods.
 PACKAGING
• It is how the product or service is presented to
customers. It is overall identification (look and feel)
of the product or service. This will determine the
uniqueness of the product from competitors.
 PROCESS
• The importance of the internal and external operations of
the business.
• It is defined as a step-by-step procedure or activity
workflow that the entrepreneur or employees follow to
effectively and efficiently serve customers.
FUNDAMENTALS OF BRAND
MANAGEMENT
• BRAND refers to the identity of company, of a product, of
a service, or of an entrepreneur himself or herself.
• It is a symbol of promise or assurance from the
entrepreneur that what it purports to the customers will
happen.
• BRAND MANAGEMENT is the supervision of the
tangible and intangible elements of a brand.
– Tangible elements include the product itself, its packaging,
price, and location.
– Intangible elements include perception and relationship of the
customers with the brand.
BRANDING
• The process of integrating the strategies formed from the
marketing mix to give an identity to the product or service.
• GOALS OF BRANDING
1. Establishing to target customers that the business is reliable and
trustworthy and that the product or service is the superior
solution to their current problem.
2. Differentiating with competitors.
3. Driving customer loyalty and retention.
• BRAND NAME is a major differentiator of the entrepreneur
against the competitors.
• Brand name must possess the following characteristics:
– Unique
– Extendable
– Easy to remember
– Can describe the benefits of the product or service.
– Can be converted to other dialects or languages in case the entrepreneur
expands to other territories
– Can describe a product category
– Can describe concrete qualities
– Positive and inspiring