Week 6 – assignment
Due as part of your Week 6 Assignment are the following components:
Marketing Strategy—Product/Service
Describe for your audience what it is that you wish to bring to market. If it is a product, describe the product, its functionality, and how it works. If it is a service, describe the service offering so that readers understand what they would receive.
Marketing Strategy—Pricing
Determine the price you will charge for your product, or, if you have chosen a service, determine its pricing (this may be based on an“average” price per service rendered).
Marketing Strategy—Distribution
Describe the channels of distribution structure you will use to get your product or service into the market
You describe for your audience what it is that you wish to bring to market. If it is a product, describe the product, its functionality, and how it works. If it is a service, describe the service offering so that readers understand what they would receive.
Marketing Strategy—Promotion
Develop a promotional effort for your marketing plan that embraces integrated marketing communications (IMC). This includes a clearly-stated message that is consistently communicated to your stakeholders.
Implementation, Evaluation, and Control
How do you intend to implement, evaluate, and control (IEC) all of the marketing activities.
FEEDBACK PROFESSOR
You have proposed a reasonable a viable model for expansion within the AT&T brand. You initial assessment here is perfectly on point, and I look forward to seeing this further develop.
Note I have only deducted for some minor grammatical errors, as noted within.
Introduction
As mentioned earlier, AT&T needs to venture into other business ideas as an expansion strategy and remain competitive in the telecommunication world. Strategically, it makes more sense for the company to get into the web services sector as it is in line with telecommunication, which is already thriving. A majority, if not all of AT & T clients, require web services. It, therefore, makes more sense for them to be the providers of the much-needed services to provide their clients with an “all under one roof type of deal.”
However, before the company implements the expansion, they have to formulate a marketing plan strategically. To come up with a good and realistic marketing plan, they have to consider details like; marketing strategy, pricing, distribution, promotion, and have a good way of Implementing, Evaluating, and Controlling the product in the market. As said earlier, the web services market is highly competitive and therefore requires comprehensive analysis before going in.
Marketing strategy
For AT&T telecommunication, marketing their new services or business would be more straightforward because they already have a considerable client base from the telecommunication networks. Nevertheless, the company must still do marketing for the new product. The best way to market the web services business is by introducing it as a promotion to all their current clients. That ay the clients will get to know about it and get to try it out. A web service is a specialized software that makes itself available over the internet and is closely related to telecommunication. The target audience is the same ones that AT& T already have.
For starters, they can offer it freely as a trial to selected clients, more so those with some degree of influence that can rally others to use the AT & T web services. That type of marketing strategy can easily make the service known to the world. They can also use social media influencers as an advertisement option (De Veirman, Cauberghe & Hudders, 2017). AT & T being an already established brand name in the sector, having influencers promote their new ventures would be easy. Lastly, the company can use its already established brand to market its new business. People already trust the quality of their other products, making it easy for them to introduce new ventures related to the old business (Flikkema et al., 2019).
Pricing
To gain a competitive aged, AT &T can charge slightly lower prices for the web services than amazon and other companies offering these services. This is achievable because the company does not need to install elaborate systems or software for the web service venture as most of what is needed already exists in the telecommunication business. For example, Amazon’s pricing for the AWS is five dollars an hour, AT& T can comfortably charge $3.5 an hour for the same service and still make a profit. The company can also have different pricing strategies that encourage potential clients to opt for their services. For example, they can have options such as more use means less payment.
Distribution
When choosing the service to venture into as an expansion plan, AT &T was strategically enough to go for a business idea synonymous with their r current business model and structure. This means that the distribution channels for the web service business are already in place as the services can be distributed using the same channels as those used in the telecommunication business. AT&T w3iil need to alert their clients that they have the options available to them, and voila! Customers can access the new services with just a click of a button.
Promotion
Promotion is vital in business, especially when introducing new services in the market. (Bozhuk et al., 2019) noted that sales and services promotion in the digital environment is essential because clients in this sector don’t do trial and error. They buy what works best. AT & T will have to promote their new business by offering free services in the beginning. They can offer the service free to their existing clients as a start. The clients are more likely to shift from wherever they have been getting their web services to the company that provides their telecommunication services.
For that to happen, AT&T must have the best pricing offers and better quality services. The company should also incorporate elaborate integrated marketing communication as a branding strategy approach (Yurdakul & Bozdag, 2018). They can use a phrase such as “we offer all you need in the world of communication technology.” Such a marketing phrase will capture the attention of their current and potential new clients who trust the brand already. The company can also use social media influencers to promote the new services offered.
Implementation, Evaluation, and Control
Once all the analysis is complete and the company is ready to introduce the new service, the implementation phase must be carried out strategically. The implementation can be done in phases. For instance, introduce one package at a time and offer different packages to different target audiences. The company can launch its new service to corporates before offering it to consumers. An evaluation must be carried out periodically to test how the services are doing. The evaluation results will guide where to make adjustments, promote more and enable the company to identify areas that need improvement. The evaluation will help AT&T to have better control of the market.
References
Bozhuk, S., Maslova, T., Kozlova, N., & Krasnostavskaia, N. (2019, March). Transformation of the mechanism of sales and services promotion in digital environment. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 497, No. 1, p. 012114). IOP Publishing.
De Veirman, M., Cauberghe, V., & Hudders, L. (2017). Marketing through Instagram influencers: the impact of followers and product divergence on brand attitude. International journal of advertising, 36(5), 798-828.
Flikkema, M., Castaldi, C., de Man, A. P., & Seip, M. (2019). Trademarks’ relatedness to product and service innovation: A branding strategy approach. Research Policy, 48(6), 1340-1353.
Yurdakul, E., & Bozdağ, A. (2018). IMC: Integrated Marketing Communication. In Marketing Management in Turkey. Emerald Publishing Limited.
