The Internet Marketing Site Project
Internet Marketing 448, Fall 2007
Dr. H. Bruce Lammers
Marketing Research
Technology
Lab
California State
University,
Northridge
The internet marketing (IM) site project will be based on the classic,
traditional S-T-P-E-E stages of strategic marketing planning:
- Segmentation Stage.
Identifying
and describing the parameters of the market segments and subsegments
for
your IM site. This is a heavy research stage. It
is critical that all of your presented information is verifiable, i.e.,
proper referencing and footnoting is absolutely essential.
Prove that your segments are viable. Be prepared to defend
your criteria for declaring your market segments as viable, e.g., measurable,
reachable, profitable, and the like.
What are the bases of your segmentation, e.g., demographic,
psychographic,
values, needs, etc. Again, only verifiable information is
acceptable.
Unverifiable information will be declared as either lazy, armchair
speculation or as plagiarism. Plagiarism, per our
syllabus,
is an F in the course and possible expulsion from the College of
Business
& Economics, depending on how upset the Dean is when he reads the
report.
- Target Market Stage.
Choosing
the segment at which you intend to aim your IM site. Convincingly
demonstrate that your target is the best choice of the segments you
identified
from the segmentation stage.
- Positioning Stage. Position
your IM site to fit your target market. Declare and defend your
marketing
objectives, marketing strategies, and marketing tactics.
Positioning
involves adjusting and tweaking the marketing mix variables (the 4 Ps).
What is (are) your overall strategic
marketing
objective(s)? Objectives must be quantified so that you can
ultimately
determine whether you have actually hit or missed your objectives,
e.g.,
"...to increase the perceived quality of our twin-engine
airplanes
by 10% within the United States in six months or less."
What is your overall marketing strategy
for each of the 4Ps? e.g., "we'll use a skimming price policy to
meet the overall marketing objective..."
What are your specific marketing tactics
for operationalizing each of your 4Ps strategies? e.g., "the
price
will be set at a high skimming level of $70 million per plane..."
- Execution.
Do it. Include actionable procedures for evaluating how well you
hit your objectives.
- Evaluation. Did it
work?
Were
the marketing objectives met?
Presentations of Stages 1 & 2 above
(Segmentation
& Targeting) will begin on October 4.
Presentations of Stage 3 (Positioning) will begin
on November 1.
Presentations of Stages 4 & 5 above
(Execution
& Evaluation) will begin on December 6.
