®
Why people matter in organizations.
A communicative strategy to future success
Luuk van Leeuwen & Kees Winkel
Marketing plan
Content
™ Chapter 1 – Starting position
Page 3
™ Chapter 2 – Situation analysis
¾ § 2.1 Internal analysis
ƒ § 2.1.1 Strategies
¾ § 2.1 External analysis
Page 3
Page 3
™ Chapter 3 – The SWOT analysis
¾ § 3.1 – Internal analysis
¾ § 3.2 – External analysis
Page 4
Page 4
Page 4
™ Chapter 4 – Confrontation matrix
Page 5
™ Chapter 5 – Options in strategy
¾ § 5.1 – Used strategy
Page 5
Page 6
™ Chapter 6 – Segmentation
¾ § 6.1 – Market segmentation
¾ § 6.2 – Chosen targets
Page 6
Page 6
Page 6
™ Chapter 7 – Positioning the product
Page 7
™ Chapter
¾ § 8.1
¾ § 8.2
¾ § 8.3
Page
Page
Page
Page
8 – Marketing goals
- Target group objectives
– Promotional objectives
– Break-even goals
Page 4
7
7
7
7
™ Chapter 9 – Marketing strategy
Page 8
™ Chapter 10 – Marketing mix
Page 8
™ Chapter 11 – Making the plan of activities
¾ § 11.1 – Yearly promotional cycle
¾ § 11.2 – Promotion budget
¾ § 11.3 – Free publicity
Page
Page
Page
Page
™ Chapter 12 – Feedback and evaluation
¾ § 12.1 – Evaluation of the plan
¾ § 12.2 – Recommendations
Page 12
Page 12
Page 12
Marketing plan – Vision Mission Compassion
by Carla Lekkerkerker and Martine van Dorsten
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Chapter 1 - Starting position
This marketing plan is for the new book ‘Vision, Mission & Compassion’ by Luuk van
Leeuwen and Kees Winkel; this means the plan is for a product. In this book the
writers describe a complete new theory in which they explain why people matter in
organisations. The publisher of this book is Royal Van Gorcum BV which is a small
publishing company that publishes mostly educational books. This plan is to set out a
way to market the book by using the possibilities and budget of Royal van Gorcum
BV.
Chapter 2 - Situation analysis
It is important to make a situation analysis in order to determine the internal and
external environment of the organization and the product to get a clear view on what
is being dealt with. The situation analysis is done by taking a look at the situation
within the market and the organization itself.
§ 2.1 – Internal analysis
Royal Van Gorcum, founded in 1800, is one of the oldest independent scholarly
publishers in The Netherlands. Active in both local and international markets, the
company is renowned for the high standard of its publications, its excellent in-house
printing facilities and a solid distribution network. There are about 100 people
working within the company.
Royal Van Gorcum publishes yearly about 140 text books, monographs and edited
volumes for professionals and about 25 journals for academic and professional
societies. The publications cover such areas as Humanities, Social Sciences,
Geography and Earth Sciences, Education, Management, Health Sciences and
Medicine.
The amount of publishes books is divided over the several markets as follows:
70 % for the educational market
25 % for the professional market
5 % for the scientific market
§ 2.1.1 – strategies
The company uses a yearly promotional cycle that includes the following
components:
1. A catalogue of all books from Van Gorcum is published in January.
The catalogue is oriented on teachers and divided into several subdivisions.
2. News letters are sent out in February, March, April and October emphasizing
what is going on within Van Gorcum BV, whether new books are being
published of showing what has been published.
3. Sample copies of books are sent out to teachers to try and convince them of
putting certain books in the booklist for their students.
4. Press, journals, direct mail, and internet among others are used to get extra
promotion.
There is also a promotional budget for each publication that can be used for
additional promotional activities.
Marketing plan – Vision Mission Compassion
by Carla Lekkerkerker and Martine van Dorsten
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§ 2.2 – External analysis
The book is mainly written for the educational market, for higher education and
courses, and this market is worth € 3,500,000. It exists of 187 titles counting for
70,000 books.
Although Royal van Gorcum mainly focuses on the educational market they also
operate within the professional market and within the scientific market.
Within the educational market this is about both students and teachers as the buyers
of the books, but teachers are often the ones who decide which books have to be on
the booklist of the students which makes this group the main focus.
The selling of the book is mainly focused on The Netherlands to start with. There are
options in both Helsinki and Vienna for the international market, but there are no
plans yet to go international on a large scale.
Chapter 3 – The SWOT analysis
To get a clear view on what the options are, it is useful to list all the strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the product.
The internal analysis is set out in the strengths and weaknesses while the external
analysis is set out in the opportunities and threats.
§ 3.1 – Internal analysis
Strengths
1. The book includes a whole new concept which makes it innovative.
2. The book is written by experienced marketing and communication experts.
3. The price of the book is low budget.
4. As the writers are teachers themselves, they know teachers and students.
Weaknesses
1. As the concept is completely new it is also unknown.
2. The promotion has to be done low budget.
3. The writers are known as being teachers and experts, but unknown as
writers.
4. The publishing is (mainly) focused on The Netherlands.
§ 3.2 – External analysis
Opportunities
1. The possibility to publish the book on international level.
2. While now focusing mainly on the educational market one can focus on the
professional market as well.
3. There is a growth in attention to and demand for marketing and
communication (strategies).
4. Communication strategies have been the same for years. Small changes have
occurred, but no new strategies have been introduced.
Marketing plan – Vision Mission Compassion
by Carla Lekkerkerker and Martine van Dorsten
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Threats
1. The book is one in a million books on marketing and communication.
2. It is difficult to implement a new strategy into the world of marketing and
communication.
3. Competitors might have a higher budget to work with for promotional
activities.
Chapter 4 – Confrontation matrix
The confrontation matrix is made by combining the strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats of a product. The matrix is used to answer the following
questions:
- How can a strength be used to participate in an opportunity?
- How can a strength be used to defend ourselves from a threat?
- How can a weakness be improved to participate in an opportunity?
- How can a weakness be improved to defend ourselves from a threat?
Although here the SWOT has not been put into an actual matrix to keep a clear
overview; these are the combinations made within the matrix:
Strength and opportunity (attack strategy):
S: The book includes a whole new concept.
O: Communication strategies have been the same for years. A new strategy would
be an opportunity.
Strength and threat (defense strategy):
S: The book includes a whole new concept which makes it innovative.
T: The book is one in a million books on marketing and communications.
Weakness and opportunity (strengthening strategy):
W: The publishing is (mainly) focused on The Netherlands.
O: The possibility to publish the book on international level.
Weakness and threat (withdrawal strategy):
W: The promotional activities have to be done with a low budget.
T: Competitors might have a higher budget to work with for promotional activities.
Chapter 5 – Options in strategy
The confrontation matrix gives insight in how the organization should position itself
in the market and with its product. From the confrontation matrix four strategies can
be found; the attack strategy, the defense strategy, the strengthening strategy and
the withdrawal strategy.
Attack strategy
When one combines a strength with an opportunity an attack strategy can be formed
to use in the market. For this book the strength of it being innovative can be used to
participate in the opportunity of bringing new strategies and innovative views on
marketing & communication into the market.
Marketing plan – Vision Mission Compassion
by Carla Lekkerkerker and Martine van Dorsten
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Defense strategy:
Combining a strength with a threat gives the possibility of creating a defense
strategy, by using the strength to defend one selves against a threat. For this book
the strength of being innovative can be used to defend one against the threat of the
market already existing of an extremely large amount of books on marketing and
communications.
Strengthening strategy:
A weakness can be turned into a strength in order to participate on an opportunity
for the product or the organization. One weakness of this book is that the publishing
is mainly focused on The Netherlands, but this can be changed into a focus on
international level in order to use this opportunity.
Withdrawal strategy:
The withdrawal strategy is focused on strengthening a weakness in order to defend
one self from a threat. This can be done by working against the competitors who
have a higher budget by trying to increase the budget for additional promotional
activities. This can be done by saving money from other projects or by changing the
division of budgets.
§ 5.1 – Used strategy
As the book is a product that is about a whole new communication strategy it is
marketed by using an attack strategy.
In this case this would be the bypass strategy which is an indirect strategy. By using
the bypass strategy a challenger bypasses the competitors and targets easier
markets. For this product this is done by leapfrogging into a new strategy to replace
the existing communication strategies.
Chapter 6 – Segmentation
§ 6.1 – Market segmentation
Market segmentation is dividing the market in clear and reachable segments or
target groups. Every target group has its specific characteristics that need to be
researched in order to participate within these groups.
The segments in the market of marketing and communication are as follows:
- The educational market
- The professional market
- The scientific market
- The leisure market
On these segments, market research has to be done on buying behavior, reading
behavior and demographical characteristics.
§ 6.2 – Chosen targets
As found in the internal analysis of the organization the focus will be on the
educational market and then secondly effort can be put into reaching the
professional market as well. Within the educational market the focus is on students
and teachers and then mainly in the area of marketing and communication studies.
Marketing plan – Vision Mission Compassion
by Carla Lekkerkerker and Martine van Dorsten
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Chapter 7 – Positioning the product
The unique selling proposition (USP) of this book is that it is about a whole new
concept in marketing and communication strategies. There are many books on the
market that focus on strategies, but nothing like the strategy in this book. This book
is turning strategic communication into communicative strategy, using the motto
‘With all, by all, for all concerned’.
The strategies in other books are all about the products or the company while this
strategy is all about the people within the company. This is what gives the book an
emotional selling proposition (ESP); the fact that it is about compassion, focusing on
people because ‘People are the company’.
Chapter 8 – Marketing goals & objectives
§ 8.1 – Target group objectives
The focus will be on teachers and students as the book is meant for educational
purposes. It is important to reach all marketing & communication related studies that
are offered on all the HBO-schools in The Netherlands. For this reason, research has
to be done on how many schools and studies there are in this field and how many
students these studies include in total. The goal is to get as many studies as possible
to include the book in the book lists they give their students.
§ 8.2 – Promotional objectives
Geographically speaking the focus will be on the larger cities in The Netherlands as
those are the cities in which the target groups and schools are to be found.
In the promotional activities this focus will be divided:
It is important to focus the direct marketing on the teachers, but it is also important
to promote the book in general to a larger public as it is to reach also the
professional marketers and anyone who might be interested in or affected by the
new strategy offered.
The objective will be to reach as large a percentage as possible from both the
educational field as the professional target group.
§ 8.3 – Break-even goals
The break even point for this book has been set on 350 books. This is the amount of
books that have to be sold to cover the costs.
Marketing plan – Vision Mission Compassion
by Carla Lekkerkerker and Martine van Dorsten
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Chapter 9 – Marketing strategy
In order to develop a marketing strategy one has to think about how to reach the
marketing goals. This is also about how; through where and in how much time one
wants to reach these goals.
Royal van Gorcum BV has a set of yearly promotional activities for all their products,
which we will use for this book as well. This set exists of the following:
- A catalogue in which the products of Royal van Gorcum BV are offered
- News letters in February, March, April and October
- Sample copies of the book that can be sent to teachers
- Promotion through press, journals, direct mail and internet
Besides this set of fixed activities there is also a budget of € 1.000,- to spend on
additional promotional activities for each book so also for this one. The use of this
budget will be explained in greater detailed later in this plan.
The book will be published in January and the aim is to have it adopted by teachers
and students for the school year after that which means that is has to be promoted
before approximately July because that is when the booklists for the next year are
being made and we want our book to be on those lists. This gives the company
about 6 months to do most of the promotional activities in.
Chapter 10 – Marketing mix
A marketing mix is created by filling in the marketing instruments which are also
known as the 4 P’s. These are: Price, Place, Product and Promotion. For this
marketing mix the instruments are filled in as follows:
Price: € 20,00
The break even point has been set on 350 books; this means that 350 copies of the
book have to be sold in order to cover the costs. As the book is about an unknown
strategy written by writers who may be known in the marketing field, but rather
unknown as writers it is best not to set the price too high. Setting the price at €
20,00 will make the break even point of 350 books likely to be reached.
Place: The Netherlands
The book will be published in The Netherlands and will be available throughout the
whole country. The consumers will be able to buy the book in large bookshops where
educational and professional books are being sold. If the book is not available in a
certain store, the consumer will always be able to order it through each store. It will
also be available through several websites like www.bol.com or www.proxis.com.
Product: The book ‘Vision, mission, compassion’.
The product is a book that is about a whole new concept in communication
strategies. It turns strategic communication into communicative strategy by focusing
on the people within an organization. Up until now the focus has always been on the
products or the companies, but people are the organization and one should pay
attention to that.
Promotion: The promotion will be done through both a fixed set of yearly
promotional activities and through additional activities by use of the budget of €
1.000,-.
Marketing plan – Vision Mission Compassion
by Carla Lekkerkerker and Martine van Dorsten
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The fixed activities are:
- A catalogue
- News letters
- Sample copies of the book
- Promotion through press, journals, direct mail and internet
Chapter 11 – Making the plan of activities
The plan of activities in the promotion of the book will consist of three parts. There is
the yearly promotional cycle used by Royal van Gorcum for all the books that they
publish. The book ‘vision, mission, compassion’ will be included in this cycle starting
in the month of publishing which is January 2007. Secondly, there is the extra
promotional budget of
€ 1000, 00 that can be spend on extra publicity for the book. Finally, it is important
to attract the attention of magazines in the area of marketing and communication
which can lead to free publicity in the form of reviews or articles.
§ 11.1- Yearly promotional cycle
Catalogue
A catalogue is published in January which includes all the new books published by
Royal van Gorcum BV. This catalogue is sent to teachers and it is subdivided into
divisions for each study area.
Newsletters
Royal van Gorcum sends out newsletters in February, March, April and October.
These news letters are meant to emphasize on the catalogue, to remind the target
groups of what van Gorcum is offering and in October it is emphasizing that van
Gorcum did as they promised.
Sample copies
There are sample copies of the book available that can be sent to teachers and other
people who are or might be interested in reading and selecting the book.
Magazines
Free publicity is an important part of the promotional activities of Royal van Gorcum
BV. Part of getting the free publicity is done by contacting magazines in the area of
studies and subjects connected to the books offered. Magazines can pay attention to
new books by writing reviews or articles about it. These magazines are contacted
trough direct mail by sending press releases and possible sample copies of the book.
§ 11.2 - Promotion budget
There is a budget of € 1000, 00 to be used for additional promotion of the book. This
budget can be used to organise an event in which both target groups, teachers and
students, are brought together.
As this book is about a totally new strategy the idea is to get teachers and students
together in a discussion about old and new marketing strategies and the
developments throughout the years.
The idea is to invite students and teachers from different HBO-schools to come
together at a certain location. At this meeting, the writers will inform the public
about the book ‘vision, mission & compassion’ and the new strategy that it is about.
Marketing plan – Vision Mission Compassion
by Carla Lekkerkerker and Martine van Dorsten
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After that the students and teachers will be given a subject by means of a statement
that they can discuss in groups.
The subject will be about the differences in marketing strategies throughout the
years and the statement used can be thought of by the writers of the book.
Event outline
Public:
We want to reach teachers and students of HBO-colleges as they are the target
group of the book. In order to reach these target groups a selection of colleges will
be made on basis of the educations in marketing and communications that are being
offered.
It is important to give the public an attractive reason to come to the event and for
this the teachers will be offered a copy of the book and a price will be set for the
winner of the discussion. This winner will be one of the students, chosen by the
writers of the book at the end of the discussion.
To get an idea of the colleges that can be contacted:
Avans Hogeschool
(E.g. Breda, Den Bosch, Tilburg)
Fontys Hogescholen
(E.g. Den Haag, Den Bosch,
Amsterdam, Groningen, Maastricht,
Rotterdam, Eindhoven, Tilburg)
Haagse Hogeschool
Hogeschool Arnhem Nijmegen
Hogeschool Inholland
(E.g Alkmaar, Amsterdam, Delft, Den
Haag, Dordrecht, Haarlem, Rotterdam,
Utrecht)
Hogeschool Leiden
Hogeschool Rotterdam
Hogeschool Utrecht
Hogeschool van Amsterdam
Hogeschool Zeeland
(E.g. Vlissingen, Goes)
In order to set out an example outline of this event an example will be used of 3
teachers per school and then also 3 students per school from the list above which
will lead to 60 people taking part in the discussion. As the press will be invited to
give extra promotion to the event and the book,10 people will be included in the
example.
Location:
As both of the writers of the book are teachers of the Hogeschool Utrecht the event
can be organised there as this might function as a promotional activity for the
Hogeschool as well. The event can be held at the restaurant at the HU, Faculty of
communication and Journalism. As the event can function as promotion for the HU it
should be possible to get to use the location for free or for a low budget.
Time:
The event will be held on a late-afternoon during a school week; this to give the
students the possibility to travel for free by using their OV-jaarkaart (public transport
pass). By organising the event during the week late in the afternoon it is most likely
to have teachers and students coming to the event.
Marketing plan – Vision Mission Compassion
by Carla Lekkerkerker and Martine van Dorsten
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Catering:
The catering can be very basic as it will be enough to serve the visitors two drinks
per person and maybe cake to go with the drinks. The catering can be done through
the catering service of the HU which makes it possible to keep it low budget.
Invitations:
Teachers can be contacted by phone or email through schools and they will be able
to inform the students about the event. It might even be interesting for the teachers
to organise some sort of contest to select a few people who can come to the event
together with them.
Costs:
-
Location
Catering
Luuk van Leeuwen & Kees Winkel
Copies of the books – for the teachers
Reward for the winner(s)
Total costs
€ 00,00
€ 200,00
€ 200,00
€ 400,00
€ 200,00
€ 1000,00
§ 11.3 – Free publicity
As the promotion has to be done low budget it is important to create free publicity.
This can be done by getting the attention of written press (magazines, newspapers,
etc) and maybe also radio and television. All of these groups can be reached through
press released or by offering them sample copies of the book. The idea is to get the
press to write about the book in an article or in reviews. Most magazines have a
specific target group that can be used to match with the target groups of the
product. For the promotion more focused on people in general newspapers can be a
way to reach those people.
As explained in the event outline some people from the press will also be invited to
attend the discussion meeting. This is also to get them to write about the event and
of course about the book itself.
To get an idea of magazines and newspapers that can be contacted:
Adformatie
Communicatie
Communicatiesignalen
Magazine over Communicatie
Klink
Interne communicatie
Management Trends
Management Tools
Marketing
Tijdschrift voor strategische
bedrijfscommunicatie
Psychologie magazine
Bestuur & Management
Marketing plan – Vision Mission Compassion
by Carla Lekkerkerker and Martine van Dorsten
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Chapter 12 – Feedback and evaluation
§ 12.1 – Evaluation of the plan
Marketing activities need constant testing to determine whether the marketing goals
have been reached or not. This also gives information on whether the chosen
marketing mix has been the right one to reach the goals. Testing can be done by
market research and the evaluation from this research can be turned into feedback
that can be used as input in following marketing planning processes.
For this plan the actual turnover can be used as one part of the evaluation of the
marketing process. The higher the turnover the more likely it is that the right
marketing mix has been used. Effectiveness of the marketing activities can be
measured through the total turnover at the end of a process, but also by doing
research among the target group(s).
In this situation it could also be useful to set out a research for example by using a
questionnaire among the teachers and students that were in the target group. From
this questionnaire one can get information on whether the people have heard about
the book, whether they were interested and why that was or was not the case.
The organized event can be used in the research as well as it is quite easy to
question the participants about what they think about the product and whether or
not they became interested in the book as a result of the information given during
the event.
§ 12.2 – Recommendations
Looking back on the plan it can be said that the promotional activities deal with some
of the weaknesses and strengths mentioned in the SWOT-analysis in order to make
the book more popular among teachers and students.
Writing a marketing plan can give good insight into what a product is and what the
positive and less positive characteristics are. While in the marketing plan one will
focus on just a selection of strengths and weaknesses; it is a good idea to take a
closer look at what is put aside. The parts of the SWOT analysis that are not used
straight away might be very interesting to work on in the future.
Therefore the opportunities mentioned in the SWOT analysis are part of the
recommendations to conclude this marketing plan. The opportunity of publishing the
book on international level might be an option to realise in the future and while
focusing mainly on the educational market now; in the future the company might
think about focusing more on the professional market as well.
Marketing plan – Vision Mission Compassion
by Carla Lekkerkerker and Martine van Dorsten
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