Marketing Plan
Section 1 - C3P Marketing
Section 1.1 – Overview
Organizations and private businesses have inadequate protection and controls over unauthorized
use by authorized cardholders, which results in a loss of funds. The current methods of
addressing unauthorized use are expensive and subjective. The C3P credit card will provide
adequate protection for our customers, the businesses, to be able to protect their financial assets
while allowing employees to purchase their approved items. The method in which the use of our
system is achieved is;
The business will contact us requesting the use of our cards.
Upon receipt of that business banking and credit card information, we will then
program the requested amount of C3P cards and deliver them to the business.
The business will then in turn distribute the individual cards to their employees.
Once all is in place, the business owner/manager can then access their account with
C3P's dynamic system online and modify each card to control purchases by;
 Certain spending limits,
 Allowance at certain store types using MCC's,
 Allowance for specific items using UPC's.
What this means is the business does not have to rely on good faith by giving their credit card to
the company employee and hoping that they do not misuse the card, instead they can stop the
purchase from happening at the point of sale.
Section 1.2 – Target Customer Analysis
The initial target customers that C3P will choose are some of the local small to mid-size
businesses within the Hampton Roads area that have a large employee base that uses corporate
credit cards. The reason that we have chosen this market is that we have already interviewed
such business managers such as EDO and SAIC who have already expressed a great need and
interest in this product. These companies alone reflect a loss of either $250,000 per year or $100
per employee. Market analysis could not find exact figures on the number of businesses in either
the Hampton Roads area or even the United States, however figures were found showing that the
growth of this product could be beyond substantial, with data showing that in 2006 Visa alone
had $190 billion spent on corporate business credit cards. However, C3P needs only to corner the
local area alone to create a marketable success.
We have chosen SAIC and EDO as our initial customer because after interviewing business
managers in both companies, startling facts were uncovered; one employee used the company
credit card to put $14,000 down payment on a house, another employee bought several $1,500
airline tickets, and canceled the flight to collect the cash refund, which he used to finance his
private company, and finally another employee bought $1,500 in thongs at Victoria Secret. This
is just a bare look at the types of business credit card misuse that occurs today.
Section 1.3 – Marketing strategy
Marketing Strategy steps:
• Meet with individual business leaders who have large employee use of corporate credit
cards
• Prove successful with single beta project
• Pursue a greater region of businesses
• Begin advertising campaign
• Receive vendor buy-in
- Companies such as Target, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, etc.
• Take on full scale nationwide implementation
• Initiate add campaign through all advertising mediums
- Business and technology sector of newspapers
- Television and Internet
- MarketPro Technology shows
Our product has very specific customers. Simply advertising to everyone will not get our product
sold. This requires that we travel to the individual businesses that we wish to market our product
to and meet with the leaders of these businesses. Our market is specialized because we are
looking for businesses that issue corporate business credit cards. We must directly communicate
with these businesses on a regular basis. We will need to meet with top management personnel
and express our idea to them. Once we have them interested we must provide a presentation and
also a demonstration as to how this product works. We need to show them the C3P can deliver on
its promise. We will need to show them that these businesses will be able to greatly limit the cost
of credit card misuse within their company.
Section 1.4 – Initiate Beta Testing
Once we have a business that is willing to use our product, we must set up and initiate a beta test.
We want to start EDO or SAIC as they both have offices within the Hampton Roads area. We
chose these companies not only out of reason for expressing great interest but also for the fact
that these are businesses that are close to the Green Team’s base of operations. This will allow us
to monitor the progress of C3P. This will be essential to making a name for our product. The beta
test must go with as few problems as possible. Any major problems during the beta test could
result failure of the product.
Once we have proven our product to the business with the beta test, we then can move on to
more businesses. We will initially expand along the east cost targeting C3P to as many businesses
as possible. With more businesses using our product we will be able to start becoming a far more
recognizable company. After this is achieved it is only then that our company and its product can
spread through the east coast of the U.S. and then the west.
Section 1.5 – Vendor Alliance
Due to the nature of our product we have to incur a vendor alliance. For our product to be
successful we need to have the UPC database of certain major stores so that we can use the
innovative aspect of restriction by UPC. Also to be able to send this information over the point of
sale (POS) terminal we need to update them so that they can handle the sending of UPCs along
with the other credit information. A major marketing strategy needs to be implemented here
alone in which we will demonstrate the benefits to the individual vendors. The first benefit is that
targeted vendors receive business from C3P cardholders. These vendors can also request
precedence in the UPC lookup as well as receive advertising on the C3P website. Overall we
must demonstrate to these vendors that this is the new way of the future and that they need to be
at the forefront of this emerging technology.
Section 2 - Marketing Finances
Section 2.1 – Price Point for Customer
The price of the box for our customer is going to be related mainly to the licensing of the
software. The overall average cost of the package is $35,500 based on an average of 500
employees per each business. This can be further broken down into the rental fee for the server &
database as $20 per employee or on average $10,000 total. Then you add the cost of the software
package which will run as a yearly rate of $20,000. Then there is an extra service fee for any
maintenance or other items of this nature that need to be dealt with at a yearly rate of $5,000.
The final item that is added to the box is the actual C3P cards themselves costing $1 per card or
$500 on average. This overall price is a very reasonable cost for this product that companies will
be willing to pay as such surveyed companies reported spending of in excess of $250,000 on
corporate credit card protection.
Figure 1
Cost per Customer
Section 2.2 – Profit
Figure 2
Break Even Analysis
As you can clearly make out from the break even analysis chart for us to start gaining profit
in the out years we need to have 4 customers, however to start to show initial profit we need
to have 18 customers on board to beat the cost of the overall project which is budgeted at
$624,434.
Section 2.3 – Benefits for the customer
There are a multitude of benefits to the customer. All of which will be outlined thusly;



Secure and efficient control of company funds
Reduces corporate credit card fraud
o Unscrupulous purchases protected against
Reduced costs to prevent and lessen the effects of fraud
o Legal Fees/Court costs
o Manual Audits


Corporate money is spent according to company policy
Advanced Phase: Parental control of children's spending
Companies such as EDO and SAIC have displayed serious losses due to credit card misuse and
have spent a copious amount of dollars in efforts to control that misuse. This is not merely
limited to these companies either; this occurrence is analogous to almost every business that uses
business credit cards. Our product would stop the chance of any misspending what so ever and
completely limit the cost of prevention that these companies have to implement.
Section 2.4 – Break Even Point for Project
Figure 3
Break Even Point
The charts above illustrate how many customers C3P needs to break even. The analysis includes
our initial profit which is our total budgeted costs for all phases, our customer support costs (the
out years costs per year and the 20% increase for every 10 companies we acquire as customers),
total revenue, and profit which is based on our Phase III/initial out years budget total. Based on
the calculations, we will need to have 14 companies as customers to break-even. Highlighted in
red is also the 4th company, which represents when we will be earning a profit based on our
productions out year’s costs.
For more in depth research on the finances see the budget plan.
Section 3 - Industry Analysis
Section 3.1 – Current Competition
Competition Matrix
Section 3.2 – Description of Competitors' Product
MTU Purchasing
MTU Purchasing Credit Cards use existing credit card readers, have customizable purchase
restrictions, black out MCC codes, can set spending limits and are for business use.
Government Credit
Government Credit Cards use existing credit card readers, can set spending limits, and are for
government use.
Food Stamps
Food Stamp Cards use existing credit card readers, track purchases and patterns, has
customizable purchase restrictions, can black out UPC codes, prevents duplication, and is for
government use.
Worldwide Purchasing
Worldwide Purchasing Cards use existing card readers, has customizable purchase restrictions,
can black-out MCC codes, can set spending limits, and is for business use.
LeCarte Purchase
Lacarte Purchase Cards use existing card readers, has a customizable database of MCC, has
customizable purchase restrictions, can blacks-out MCC codes, and is for business use.
NASA Smart-Pay
NASA Smart-Pay Cards use existing card readers, can set spending limits, and is for government
use.
Pay-Pal
Pay-pal is a purchasing system that uses a similar idea to intercept credit card purchases to verify
receipt of items. It is mainly for personal use.
MasterCard
MasterCard's new business credit card is our greatest competitor. It uses existing card readers,
tracks purchases and patterns, has a customizable database of MCC, has customizable purchase
restrictions, can black-out MCC codes, can prevent duplication, can set spending limits, and is
for business use.
Section 3.3 – Market Analysis and Future Market Need
All of these companies are trying to solve one problem, fraudulent misuse of company funds
using business credit cards. As you can see from the competition matrix above, our solution is
taking leap in the advancement of security, efficiency, and quality combined. Special notice must
be taken to the innovative aspect of UPC control which is only implemented at the store level
with Food Stamp Cards. The advancement which our product has taken is what makes it such a
viable product and a worthy investment. C3P overall, will greatly advance the capabilities of
credit cards across all fields. As long as we obtain vendor alliance we have access to sufficient
resources to get this done. C3P is a well conceived and organized project that the Green Team
proudly takes on and is positive of its success.