Marketing Plan: Social Media Site, Theflak For Voting And Statistics Essays Example

Executive Summary

The marketing plan outlines the background, the market, the potential and target strategies, and planned budget for theFlak’s marketing strategies and practices. theFlak is an online poll voting site aimed at interacting with and engaging online users, particularly social media subscribers, to vote on various important issues. Hence, theFlak offers people a platform to voice their stance, opinion, or perspective on selected issues in politics, sports, and current events among others. theFlak aims to generate revenue through online advertising. The greatest challenge for theFlak is outmaneuvering the existing competition (Luther, 2011). Nonetheless through collaborations with software and application developers, social media sites, and data mining companies, theFlak could establish its brand (Davis, 2010) as a legitimate site with genuine and trusted content.

The Business Challenge

theFlak is an online poll voting platform for end users. theFlak has created areas of interest for voting including the American government and politics, sports, army combatives, education, jobs and careers, relationships, television shows and movies, celebrities, music, food and restaurants, science, religion, weather, news and current events, and technology. theFlak will also host polls about adult issues such as prostitution, and those that relate to men and women. theFlak’s service is free and will be open to all online users. Nonetheless, theFlak will primarily target social media users to make dissemination of information about the company and increase exposure of poll voting questions in social media sites (Tuten & Solomon, 2014).
The primary objective of this report is to create a brief marketing plan for theFlak. The company aims to gain revenue from its sponsors and through advertising and promotions on the site. theFlak may also gain revenue by selling data from poll votes to data mining companies.

The Market

In this section, theFlak’s market would be defined based on the company’s target market segment. The discussion will also include an internal and external analysis of the company by assessing theFlak’s strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities. This is essential in the strategic planning process (Tanner & Raymond, 2012).
Customers: theFlak will offer its services to two main group – companies looking for advertising and promotional opportunities and data mining companies. Companies from any field or sector would need to advertise and promote their brand, goods or products and offering. These companies may take advantage of theFlak’s online presence and reach to advertise and promote their brands and offerings. Data mining companies could also take advantage of theFlak’s services by using information generated through polls for their own use and analysis. Some data mining companies could also use theFlak to conduct their own polls. Both groups of customers would benefit from theFlak’s link to billions of social media users around the world.
Company Analysis: theFlak’s strengths is that the company could brand itself in a way that creates brand equity (Davis, 2010). Through collaborations with social media sites and data mining companies, theFlak would be able to brand itself as a legitimate and trusted online voting poll service. Data mining and social media companies may endorse theFlak to be a legitimate polling site where users may obtain data that genuinely reflects the views of the social media generation about various issues.
Collaborators: Collaborators include application developers, social media sites, and brands or merchants. Application developers would help theFlak create an online application that would be accessible to social medial sites such as Facebook and Twitter, among others. theFlak could also extend its services by creating an application for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. theFlak should also collaborate with social media sites for promotional purposes. theFlak, for instance, may collaborate with Facebook to promote the site and make voting more accessible to subscribers through the integration of theFlak application on the Facebook platform. theFlak may collaborate with brands or merchants for sponsorship.
Competitors: theFlak will be competing with other online voting poll sites. The Internet is inundated with different types of poll voting platforms such as Poll Maker and Easypolls among others. Hence, the challenge for theFlak is to establish a unique brand to differentiate itself from the competition.
Business Climate: The business climate is defined by opportunities and threats to the business. Opportunities include cultural, social and technological forces. In modern society, our culture evolved due to the digital age. Technological forces, particularly the prevalence of smartphones and other portable devices such as tablet computers. Due to this, many people have subscribed to social media. Consequently, the digital age has defined the culture of communication (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2012). For these reasons, theFlak may take advantage of these forces or factors to increase awareness about the company’s services and offerings. Existing threats, on the other hand, include the competition. theFlak is generally new in the online poll voting service. The company would face challenges in introducing the brand and capturing the interest of end users who are already familiar with other online voting polls.

The Strategy

The Strategy: The main strategy is to collaborate with social media sites and data mining companies to establish theFlak as a legitimate brand when it comes to poll voting and generating information that reflects the opinion of the public. Social media will be the primary platform for marketing (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2012). Other alternatives include direct marketing through e-mails. However, collaborating with social media sites would be more effective due to the widespread reach in terms of the number of subscribers of various social media sites. Moreover, it would be easy to establish the legitimacy of theFlak compared to the competition if the company gains the support of data mining companies.
The Offering: theFlak offers online poll voting on various issues and topics. This service will free for online users. theFlak will make its offering available online and accessible through social media sites. theFlak will also offer advertising opportunities for brands to advertise and promote their brand on the company’s website and pages. In terms of pricing, theFlak will be based on current online advertising rates. Rates will be incremental depending on the size and run time of online ads. Cost will be competitive. For example, and average advertisement will cost $70 to $100. theFlak will also gain revenue from “clicks” on these advertisements.
The Communication Plan: As formerly noted, the communication plan is to establish theFlak’s brand as a legitimate source of information (Strauss, 2010). At present time, people use polls to express their opinion and to see how their opinions compare with that of others or the majority. Through partnership with social media and data mining companies, theFlak may establish its brand as a legitimate and trusted source of information. Data mining may use information from theFlak to analyze issues and make conclusions. In this way, users may see theFlak as a more reliable source of information compared to other poll voting sites.
Distribution: theFlak’s distribution strategies depend on its online presence. theFlak will have its own website. However, to spread awareness about the site and increase the rate of use, an application will be integrated into social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to increase advertising and make it easy for users to sign up in the polls and share it to their friends or followers.

Budget

Investment: theFlak’s budget will cover the cost of website development, application development, the involvement of application or software developers, and payment of partnership with social media sites and data mining sites. Website hosting will cost $25 to $50 a year. The fee for application or software developers range from $800 to $1500. Cost of partnership with social media and data mining sites will depend on the agreed upon rates with third parties. Other expenses include office space and employment, facilities or infrastructure, and utilities. Overall, theFlak is expected to invest $100,000 for the entire project.
Return: theFlak’s short term financial goals will be measured through the rate of the poll voting’s use. theFlak aims to reach 500,000 users on the first year, which would then guarantee 10 percent of returns. For the succeeding years, theFlak will aim to reach 5 million users to use the site and its application, which would guarantee at least 20 % of returns for the company.
Other Sources Required: Other sources the company would require include computers and the infrastructure, an office space, and highly talented individuals to create polls and man the site.

Conclusion

theFlak’s marketing plan focuses on the company’s collaboration with social media sites and data mining companies. The company’s main goal is to establish brand equity (Davis, 2010) by focusing on the company’s legitimacy and content to establish trust and reliability among users and data mining companies. The company also aims to draw millions of users to take advantage of advertising and promotions for its main clients – companies or brands from various sectors that aim to advertise with the company.

References

Barker, M., Barker, D. I., Bormann, N., & Neher, K. (2012). Social media marketing: A strategic approach. Florence, KY: Cengage Learning.
Davis, J. A. (2010). Competitive success, how branding adds value. New York, NY: Routledge.
Luther, W. M. (2011). The marketing plan: How to prepare and implement it. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
Strauss, R. (2010). Marketing planning by design. New York, NY: Routledge.
Tanner, J. & Raymond, M. A. (2012). Principles of marketing. Flat World.
Tuten, T. L. & Solomon, M. R. (2014). Social media marketing. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.