Executive Summary
American Power Conversion Corporation has been in the electronics market for more than two decades. The company is known for its innovative products and technological excellence. The company has well-performing products such as the SurgeArrest Essential. The research will present a comprehensive marketing plan for the SurgeArrest Essential product by examining the current market situation and business strategies. These variables are vital in establishing the sustainability of the American Power Conversion Corporation’s marketing strategy against the focused returns on investment.
Current Marketing Situation
Segmentation
The American Power Conversion Corporation retail model targets user of the SurgeArrest Essential who form the majority of its market catchment. Since this target group frequents the corporation’s distribution stores, the company is in a position to conveniently direct the customers to their designated delivery points and stores without having to directly deliver. The company has merged the strategy with advertisements since this group of consumers has access to social media. Due to exposure to information sources such as newspapers, television, radio, and magazines, product announcement through these avenues has enabled the company to double its market base. As forecasted in the market research, this strategy has been successful towards dominance as it offers a variety of options to consumers, while at the same time, maximizing benefits of economies of scale to the company (Farooq & Jan 2012). The SurgeArrest Essential is very attractive.
The American Power Conversion Corporation has a partner which medium businesses retailing products similar to those of its competitors, such as the SurgeArrest Essential across the US. This strategy has enabled the company to expand its market and besides making it easy for customers to access the SurgeArrest Essential product. To attract this segment, the company offers free delivery, delivery on credit, and a series of discounts based on the sales volume by these retailers.
Targeting
The American Power Conversion Corporation is currently the leading producer of the power surge arresters in the global electronics arena and offers some of the latest and most advanced SurgeArrest Essential product options. Every household consists of potential customers of the SurgeArrest Essential product since electronics have become basic needs (Farooq & Jan 2012).
Positioning Strategies
In the overcrowded global market for electronics, product position is directly linked to the success in the short and long term, especially for the SurgeArrest Essential product. To achieve the desired goals, the company has positioned itself to emphasize the difference between its products and those of its competitors. To diversify market operations, American Power Conversion Corporation has continued to create multiple brands of the SurgeArrest Essential through its innovative team in order to keep the company ahead of the other competitors. This has created an environment of own competition and blocked other competitors from encroaching into the company’s local and global markets (Farris, Bendle, Pfeifer, & Rebstein, 2010).
Opportunity and Issue Analysis
As a prerequisite for sustainable organization performance, the strategic issues that the American Power Conversion Corporation is currently facing pivot around the most appropriate market that the company should focus on or neglect for the SurgeArrest Essential to survive the competition. Under this strategic issue, the American Power Conversion Corporation currently faces the dilemmas of critical focus on the most reachable market, the potential of entering the stratified European market, the potential of regrinding its current SurgeArrest Essential brands, and the best strategies of increasing ambiance without appearing as a copy cat of the main competitors. Therefore, what are the best strategies that the American Power Conversion Corporation should focus on to survive competition in the dynamic electronics industry? To respond to this question, the following question will be answered.
What strategy will be necessary to properly differentiate the SurgeArrest Essential’s brand?
Objectives of the Marketing Plan
Attract
The main objective of this marketing plan is to attract the customers’ market through the company’s website and fan pages to increase the customer traffic for the SurgeArrest Essential product. The objective aims at packaging the SurgeArrest Essential as a favorite of customers who want to protect their electronics from a power surge. The use of social media to attract this market segment is achievable since the target market frequents social media as a site for interaction and purchase of different products (Farris et al. 2010).
Customer retention and loyalty building
Properly modified website and fan pages will reassure the customers on the reliability of the SurgeArrest Essential. Through massive recruitment of online fans in the Twitter and Facebook pages, the company will not only benefit from an increased traffic of online compliments but also record high rates of customer loyalty as most customers are influenced by reactions from other clients. Customer retention strategy is meant to position the company as a market leader for the SurgeArrest Essential product in terms of customer satisfaction tracking and response.
Marketing Mix Strategy
The pricing objectives, strategies, and procedures
Pricing of products and services is of fundamental importance in the four elements of the marketing mix that generates profit for business enterprises. The factors that influence the price of commodities and services can be categorized as external and internal (Jin, Suh, & Donavan, 2008). Owing to the pricing objective of the company; quantity maximization, the company’s marketing strategies include multiple pricing, ‘good, better, best’ pricing, loss leader pricing, and product-bundle pricing.
Multiple pricing aims at luring customers to make large purchases by offering slight discounts to customers who buy goods in large quantities. The price of a single SurgeArrest Essential is slightly higher to those that purchased in bulk. For example, buying two SurgeArrest Essential at once will cost the customer approximately $3 less than buying a single product. Besides, the prices are offered in a series of three formats with the price of each series rising above the price of the previous series. For instance, premium SurgeArrest Essential will cost less than the same number for different customers (Farris et al. 2010).
Distribution objectives and strategies
Marketing strategy distribution channels are essential before actualizing projections of a blueprint. This plan functions on the margins of informed decision making after comprehensive research on the viability and sustainability of a new product or a modified product. To achieve desired margins in sales and total revenues generated, a proper marketing plan should integrate entry strategy, comparative advantage, and market segmentation since in most cases, there is always a strong competitor or competitors that passing might prove challenging due to existence of consumer perceptions and household names. The SurgeArrest Essential’s distribution objectives and strategies are to meet the demand of customers across the globe and ensuring efficiency in the supply chain management (Jin, Suh, & Donavan, 2008).
As a strategy for further penetration of the expansive global electronics market, the corporation has improved on its distribution network by adding a fleet of automobile product display shops and an online store. These automobiles are fitted with visible posters of the company products. The automobiles are allocated to different regions across the US where the availability and visibility of the company’s SurgeArrest Essential product is minimal. To successfully implement this strategy, the corporation has doubled its current expenditure on product distribution channels to the market. However, this cost is projected to substantially drop after a short period as the company will start to benefits from economies of scale as a result of dispatching more products into the market due to improved product visibility (Sarin, Challagalla, & Kohli, 2012).
Promotional objectives and strategies
The corporation actively uses the new media element (NME) techniques to promote both their production and their vision on the SurgeArrest Essential product. They are willing to use innovations in style, which brings fruits of colorful, bright presentation of the SurgeArrest Essential with unusual forms. Such a production has to be published and promoted on Instagram, company website, and social media where customers can see promotion and be excited. The corporation has its website where the promotional campaign is a little bit more than just a gallery with pictures of the SurgeArrest Essential product. The company’s website is part of its communication strategy and it requires a professional attitude to keep content under control (Sarin, Challagalla, & Kohli, 2012). The attractive values of the SurgeArrest Essential are painted as perfect in the various advertisements about the product through the use of bright and powerful communication themes such as universal compatibility with all electronics.
Action Programs
The American Power Conversion Corporation may use the expanded marketing mix to improve the performance of the SurgeArrest Essential product through the creation of a need in the mind of customers to ensure customer loyalty and market expansion. The company’s product multi-branding as a positioning strategy may enable it to integrate the expanded marketing mix by balancing the elements of intangibility, inseparability, and heterogeneity in the 7Ps of its market mix as a result of improved product visibility for each target segment. The company can use a strategic brand equity model to integrate the advertisement approach to its market penetration strategies for the SurgeArrest Essential. To achieve this, the company should segment and differentiate its market along consumer-based market segmentation procedures. Specifically, the online kiosk model should use the local media channels to keep in touch with the target segment (Sarin, Challagalla, & Kohli, 2012). This is summarized in the proposed brand equity model diagram below.
To increase credibility and maintain the SurgeArrest Essential visibility, the corporation’s website and social media channels should be modified to encompass processes and features that flawlessly facilitate a healthy lifetime relationship between the product and its clients across the globe.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization for the SurgeArrest Essential website can be achieved by installing plugins that possess extra features like page navigation, thumbnail, and customized page numbers. Specifically, this proposed system in Google will consist of a multi-tab page that will serve different areas and services to customers. When implementing the SEO in Google, it is necessary to revise the algorithms constantly for the search result for the SurgeArrest Essential website to remain at the top. This can be achieved through revising the content to ensure that all the information on the website pertains directly to the needs of potential clients (Farris et al. 2010).
Twitter/Facebook fan page promotion
Social media, especially Twitter and Facebook have gained popularity among potential customers of the SurgeArrest Essential product who use these sites as interaction modules to share technology culture and exchange ideas. The Twitter and Facebook pages are ideal tools for branding and community following building for the SurgeArrest Essential product. These pages will help the company to reach its customers by skipping or bypassing the traditional gatekeepers, such as written magazine publishers, and placing them online so that customers can get them directly (Sarin, Challagalla, & Kohli, 2012).
Projected Profit and Loss
After the implementation of the proposed marketing plan, the profits for the company are expected to double as more customers will buy the SurgeArrest Essential product. The entire marketing plan will increase product visibility and increase sales.
Controls
The corporation may use the online traffic results to draw a growth calendar for the social media marketing strategies after every six months to fast track the initial objectives against the realities of market swings for the SurgeArrest Essential product. Besides, the company may be in a position to locate the regions with the highest and the lowest traffic in order to improve its social media marketing strategy. Also, the company may be in a position to accurately determine the average duration of access to these sites in order to track the success of its social media marketing channels before and after implementing the marketing plan.
References
Farooq, F., & Jan, Z. (2012). The Impact of Social Networking to Influence Marketing through Product Reviews. International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Research, 2(8): 627-637.
Farris, P., Bendle, N., Pfeifer, P., & Rebstein, D. (2010). Marketing metrics: The definitive guide to measuring marketing performance. Alabama, Al: FT Press.
Jin, H., Suh, J., & Donavan, T. (2008). Salient Effects of Publicity in Advertised Brand Recall and Recognition: The List-Strength Paradigm. Journal of Advertising, 37(1): 45-57.
Sarin, S., Challagalla, G., & Kohli, A. (2012). Implementing changes in marketing strategy: The role of perceived outcome and process-oriented supervisory actions, Journal of Marketing Research, 3(12), 564-580.