Week 6 EOC: Developing a Marketing Plan

• demonstrating to potential investors that your company can grow and offer returns,

My restaurant plan involves skating. Skating isn't for everyone, but everyone who's interested in skating likes to watch skaters do their tricks and warm ups, and wipe outs. "focus on one thought: What does this customer need? Visualize your product or service fulfilling that need. If you believe in your product or service, and there is a good fit, you will be able to see this without any problem." pg. 201. Why do fans love NASCAR? They love the sound of the engine, the smell of petrol going through the air and burning tires, the devastating crashes and the celebration of the winning car. That's what brings people back. My restaurant will bring skaters and tricks, and a show that everyone loves when watching people skate.

• identifying the most beneficial target markets for the organization,

When you identify your target market, you want to find who you're selling your product/service to. Whether it's a family with 3 children and 2 dogs, or and elderly couple looking for a home care nurse that is available 24/7. Finding the target defines who you will sell your product to and once you've found that, you're that much closer to keeping your customers. Friends, family, and professionals can help you define this as it says in the text in the book, "If you can get relatively objective friends, colleagues, or family members to read the plan as early as the first draft, you can probably get valuable feedback and ideas for improvement. If you need assistance with spelling and grammar, or any other aspect of the format, this is the time to get it." pg. 57 My target market for my skate park restaurant includes kids, teens, and young adults who are into skating, BMX, and generally things that are noted as adrenaline inducing activities. 

• evaluating the competitive and industry environments,

My location will be an indoor skate park. Indoor is absolutely needed because if you're going to eat, you can't have wind and dust being blown into your food, plus the wind just distracts and messes up the skaters, so you'll be getting more failures than successful kick-flips. My competition would be those who are themed restaurants. I can't compete against a place like IHOP or Denny's because those places just serve food. I offer more than that. "If you can find a sufficiently large niche to sustain your business, you can set the company apart from the competition and maintain the advantage. A focus strategy can work with differentiation and cost leadership." pg. 19. I offer an experience, a show, cheers, and wipe outs. 

• illustrating the pricing strategy,

My pricing is the tricky part. I want to be able to price out my food, which isn't going to be costly, just grilled cheeses, hot dogs, pizza, and burgers. Something just to fill the stomach, but a large part of costing is your labor. My labor will consist of cooks, but the waiters are more than just waiters. They are the skaters/performers. I need to be able to generate enough revenue to be able to pay 3 to 10 performers.

• detailing the promotional plan and budget.

Back in the day, the way skaters promoted themselves were through sick videos and flyers stabled onto boards and street lamps or electrical polls. Now, we have social media and youtube videos. Skating montages are a huge part of Youtube and Facebook. Click a video on Facebook and related videos will show businesses and ads. If you can relay those ads to Facebook users you can react out to your target market in a matter of weeks and everyone's coming on board.