Marketing Plan Report

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Pennsylvania State University *

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310

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Marketing

Date

Jan 9, 2024

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pdf

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Uploaded by BrigadierFieldStingray7

Elements of the Marketing Plan – Group 8 Marcus Ford, Dylan Spangler, Trajan Robertson, William Burke

Executive Summary Our innovative water quality testing device and user-friendly mobile app cater to a diverse customer base, ranging from health-conscious families and professionals to environmental scientists and businesses. With a focus on simplicity and affordability, our competitive pricing strategy starts at $60, offering exceptional value. Our unique selling proposition lies in our intuitive app, which translates complex data into easy-to-understand visualizations, fostering understanding and engagement. Part of our retention strategy involves building customer loyalty through ease of access and education. We educate customers about water contaminants in a simple and understandable manner, fostering trust in our product. By emphasizing the importance of clean water for overall health, we create a sense of value and necessity among customers. Strategic partnerships play a vital role in our growth and impact. Collaborations with outdoor stores like REI and sporting goods retailers expand our customer base, aligning our product with the health-conscious values of outdoor enthusiasts. Partnerships with backpack companies such as The North Face and camping gear providers enhance brand recognition and attract new customers, especially among avid hikers and campers. We also partner with hunting supply stores, charities, and health organizations to reach diverse demographics and underserved communities. Partnerships with water filter companies like Katadyn and Platypus Gravity Works showcase the compatibility between our measurement tool and their filtration products, emphasizing the effectiveness of both. Additionally, collaborations with home improvement stores like Lowe's and plumbing companies such as Delta and Kohler create convenient avenues for customers to discover and adopt our solution. These strategic joint ventures and partnerships not only ensure customer loyalty but also drive brand recognition, customer acquisition, and positive societal impact. We revolutionize how people access, understand, and ensure the quality of their drinking water, creating a healthier and more informed world. Together, our comprehensive retention

strategy and strategic joint ventures and partnerships propel our mission to provide clean and safe drinking water to households, businesses, and outdoor enthusiasts worldwide. Target Customers Our target customers are diverse, representing a wide range of individuals, families, and businesses who share a common need: access to clean and safe drinking water. They are families seeking the best for their loved ones, professionals leading busy lives, and students with a thirst for knowledge. Psychographically, our customers are health-conscious individuals who prioritize clean and safe drinking water. Whether it be ensuring water clarity at home or filling up on the go, convenience and ease of use are essential to them. Our target customers range from homeowners who want to ensure their family's well-being, restaurant owners and managers who prioritize water quality, and health & fitness enthusiasts who desire clean water for overall health, to environmental scientists and government agencies who require tools for ensuring public water supply safety. They all share a common need - a reliable, accessible, and easy-to- understand tool for monitoring water quality. Pricing & Positioning Strategy After initial research we have realized that with this type of device, the more features and complexity that is added to the product, the more expensive it gets. This made a lot of sense to us and played a crucial role in determining how we want to position and price our product. Through researching our competitors and their varying products, we decided that we want our product to fill gaps in demand that other competitors cannot offer to close. We believe to do that we must focus on keeping costs low to the consumer while giving them an immense amount of usable information. Our main competitor is DANOPLUS, they produce smart water quality testers. Their multifunctional device tests the 6 most important measures of water quality: pH, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Electrical Conductivity (EC), Salinity, Specific Gravity (SG) and Temperature. It is equipped with mobile online app monitoring; this provides the user with a smart and straightforward way to view real time data. Using any smartphone (Android or iOS), users can

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backtrack the data curve of each parameter up to the past 30 days. It’s the perfect tool for trend comparison and analysis. We will get to it more in the unique selling proposition, but we believe this to be our main competitor as we want to harness technology to pack more of a punch with our product. DANOPLUS had a moderate price point of $70. The lowest cost competitor was TDS and their digital water tester. With the push of a button, the TDS water tester can tell you your overall water purity level, which will be displayed on the screen in ppm (parts per million). They offer an impressive price point of $13.98 at the sacrifice of additional features. We strive to undercut competitor prices at first, and we plan to do that by looking at DANOPLUS’ price and dropping it by 10-15%. This puts our product at around $60, and we intend to split our pricing between the physical product and the subscription services for our app. To drive initial demand, we want to offer deals and ways for consumers to try our product so allow us to explain. Let us say that the physical product is $45, and the subscription services are $15/month with 3 months free. This allows consumers to pay as they go. We want to be known for a quality, low price product and scale our prices upward as demand rises. Our position intends to be slightly above average product quality with average to slightly below average prices. Unique Selling Proposition (USP) Our main unique selling propositions are the paired app and our team up strategies. Through research we have become aware that the demand for the physical product isn’t as high as the supply. We know if we want to enter this market, we must be creative and think of ways to persuade someone to buy our product. We are also aware that we are living in the information economy, where information supply is so high and the context and ability to understand it is so low. This is where our app comes in, combined with the physical product, gives consumers the ability to see and understand the quality of their water through a format that is both fun and stimulating. This means the app must have a well-designed user interface, fast loading time, strong data security, and be user friendly. This app would be real time, and do things such as alert you when the water quality of your home changes, notify you of quick statistics about your water, assign your water a grade or score, and educate users on what clean water is instead of throwing complex words at them like pH, turbidity, chlorine levels, lead, bacteria, etc. We understand that in today’s time, consumers do not have hours to spend searching through their

water data to determine quality or trends. We aim to do that by giving consumers visual information and explaining all concepts in simple terms. For example, graphs, charts, point systems, etc. Marketing Materials and Promotions Strategy The target market our product will be interacting with will consist of those who like being outdoors such as hikers, those who are willing to be informed of their at-home water quality, as well as those who simply want assurance of their water quality while they are on the move. To promote our product to prospective customers, one of the marketing materials that will reach our target customers effectively will be an app that can be easily paired to our devices. Marketing this app opens doors to potential customers and/or partners. For example, our product in a home system for testing water quality would be beneficial for realtors trying to sell houses because it would only increase the value of the homes. We will also use a website to reach our target market. The website will include things like updates on new systems being developed, staying informed of how to promote better water quality, and assistance with issues with our product. To promote our product, the use of social media campaigns and online advertising will be an effective tactic for reaching target customers. The ads will contain interview-like reviews of those who have tried our product and how it affected their overall health. The ads will even include situations where it might be beneficial for customers to use our product, such as finding clean water when hiking. Then as the reviews are played out, we will incorporate the app and our website for more information on our product with the aim of improving water quality for all. Conversion Strategy Improving website and app navigation and usability will keep people coming back. There is an option for people interested in our mission for proper quality water to sign up for emails on the latest updates. Our website and app are not simply just to promote our product, but to bring attention to the issues that surround bringing quality water to those who need it. Appealing to the public will only boost our market. To those people we bring in, the user interaction must be at least satisfactory.

Offering limited time offers can put a sense of urgency on the potential buyer. In this case, they would be willing to pay a reduced amount for our product, or possibly a combination of things for a good price (promotions in app, BOGO, etc.). Potential buyers must act quickly on these limited time offers, which in return may boost our traction in our target markets. Including customer feedback gives potential buyers qualities to look out for. It is impossible for a product to not have any issues. However, when there are issues, customers can be aware of the commonalities between the previous customers and our product. We do not want our customers leaving dissatisfied and manipulated, so we will do our best to include acclaims and criticisms. The feedback that is given also gives us areas to improve in to improve the relationship between the product and customer. Retention Strategy As it is known, customer Retention is quite important for running a successful business. It is quite expensive to keep trying to acquire new customers. Part of our retention strategy is to build customer loyalty. This will be achieved through ease of access. By this we mean that the customer will be able to understand what exactly they are reading in our water tester and understand what these reading mean. Contaminated water can be quite complicated, and the average person will not know what components are harmful and at what levels. It is important to educate our customers while making it easy to understand. Trust goes a long way if people believe in our tester and trust it, they will be less likely to go to a competitor. So, this would create customer loyalty by building their trust. People will be more interested in reusing a product that they understand and that brings a valued utility to their Everyday lives. Being interactive with the customers is also important because then they have something invested in the product themselves. This Reinforces that our product is here to improve their lives so that our customers do not feel like another dollar sign or statistical data point. We would ask our customers for feedback to keep them engaged, to keep them happy and coming back. Health is important, and contaminated water can lead to many diseases. The World health organization states” Contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to transmission of

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diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio. Absent, inadequate, or inappropriately managed water and sanitation services expose individuals to preventable health risks.” (W.H.O-2023). When our customers understand the risks and why this product improves their quality of life it will become essential to them. Solving a problem that improves the quality of life that people depend on is a fantastic way to retain customers. Once people realize the problem and how it impacts their overall health both long and short term, they will realize just what a value our product will be to their quality of life. Lastly it is important to make customers feel good about choosing to use our water tester. This can be achieved by reminding them that they are doing the right thing keeping their families' water clean and safe. Our product is here to improve lives and make our customers happy about choosing to use our services. This will be rewarding to customers and be a positive reinforcement of why they are doing the right thing. The goal is that our service will be so beneficial that it will be difficult to replace! Joint Ventures & Partnerships Partnerships with outdoor stores like Rei, Dicks Sporting Goods, and other sporting goods stores would be great partnerships. This would be strategic for both companies because supporting our product would show that these retail stores care about their customers’ and their health and wellbeing. Finding clean water sources or just knowing water is clean is very important especially for avid outdoors people and these would be our main repeating customers. People do not want dysentery or water that could have parasites and other harmful compounds in it. Since hikers and outdoors people are always encountering new water sources this product would be vital to them. So, our company could do partnerships with backpack companies or really anything outdoors related. However, backpack companies would be the most ideal or any camping equipment producer because their products could be directly paired with our product. For instance, we could do partnerships with The North Face or Osprey and have them package our tester with their backpacks or camping gear. This would help with brand recognition and securing new customers. This service would also be vital for hunters because they are in a very

wild area with no real infrastructure. So, we could do partnerships with stores like Cabela's or hunting supply stores. Our company could even do partnerships with charities and health organizations. Doing this would benefit both organizations because both are trying to improve people's quality of life. We think it is important to educate people about the dangers of contaminated water so partnering with organizations like this would be advantageous for both. Our company would also do partnerships with water filter companies that do not have a measurement tool for water quality. It would be good for both companies because it would show the benefits of both companies' products. The customer would see that the filter is in fact working and would also see the utility of knowing what is in the water they are consuming. Some of these companies would be Katadyn or platypus gravity works. Pairing or packaging both products together makes the most sense as it would cover all aspects of delivering healthy and clean water to our customers. This would allow our customers to be educated on how prevalent of a problem this is Lastly our company would also conduct partnerships with home improvement or hardware stores like Lowes or Home Depot and even Partnerships with faucet and plumbing companies like Delta or Kohler. This would be a straightforward way to get new customers because they are coming to these stores to improve their homes and living conditions. Creating Our Application To facilitate the creation of our app we would outsource most of the coding work to expedite this process. This is most beneficial as it would save us time and money by having it developed professionally. Some sites that offer these services are Fiverr, Upwork, Aloa, and even LinkedIn to name a few. Our company would pay the developer to design the app to our constraints and liking. With the modern conveniences of today's society, it is quite easy to find a developer to outsource this work too. We aim to have a clean and interactive interface so that our customers know exactly what they are reading and what the data means. Our company's goal is to educate our customers and the easiest way to do this is by having a simple layout that presents the facts

in a logical and yet beneficial manner. We would task the developer with coding our app so that it imports the water data from our tester into the customer’s profile, and then interprets the data to give them a reading or rating of their water quality. This process is accomplished through A.P.I. connectors ( application programming interface) that would link both devices so that the data can be translated. We would even include an about section that simply explains each aspect of the reading and what contaminates adversely affect health. Again, reiterating the importance of educating our customers, our goal is for our customers to be able to easily read and understand what our app is conveying. Now the cost for these services would range from $250 to $2000 for the app to be developed. This is quite feasible for our company to pay and have our app developed and functional.

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References “16 Effective Tips For Building A User-Friendly Mobile Website Or App.” Forbes , Forbes Magazine, 21 Feb. 2023, www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2023/02/21/16- effective-tips-for-building-a-user-friendly-mobile-website-or-app/?sh=6b51ce7938fc . Bayram, Seyma. “Billions of People Lack Access to Clean Drinking Water, U.N. Report Finds.” NPR , NPR, 22 Mar. 2023, www.npr.org/2023/03/22/1165464857/billions-of-people-lack- access-to-clean-drinking-water-u-n-report- finds#:~:text=Around%202%20billion%20people%20around,Water%20Development%2 0Report%20released%20Wednesday . Drinking Water | US EPA - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency , www.epa.gov/report- environment/drinking-water . Accessed 17 Nov. 2023. “Drinking-Water.” World Health Organization , World Health Organization, 13 Sept. 2023, www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking- water#:~:text=Contaminated%20water%20and%20poor%20sanitation,individuals%20to %20preventable%20health%20risks . Iannace, Katie. “Top 9 Features of a User-Friendly App.” Designli Blog , 30 Nov. 2022, designli.co/blog/top-9-features-of-a-user-friendly-app/. “Importance of Water Quality and Testing.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 28 Oct. 2020, www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/ public/water_quality.html . Matthews-El, Toni, et al. “14 Customer Retention Strategies That Work In 2023.” Forbes , Forbes Magazine, 22 Aug. 2022, www.forbes.com/advisor/business/customer-retention- strategies/ . “Salinity and Temperature Meters.” Danoplus , www.danoplus.com/ . Accessed 16 Nov. 2023.

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