Marketing Plan Week 5: The Most Cost-effective Methods

Marketing Plan – Week 5
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Your Institution of Affiliation
August 5, 2017
Introduction
In almost any startups with limited budgets out there, business owners are required to make difficult decisions as to how to distribute the limited resources that they have. One of these difficult decisions includes prioritizing between advertising and distribution, during the business’ early years. In this article, the author would first focus on the advantages and importance of these two channels. Specific advantages of the two would be discussed, relative to the niche and the market of the author’s chosen product which is Beats by Dre. As of now, it is, no surprise that this brand of headphone has already a strong presence in the market. In this article, however, the author would assume that this is a newly created brand of headphones. In line with this, the author believes that between the two channels stated above, advertising/marketing is much more important in order to build the consumer base for this particular product during its startup. Therefore in the succeeding chapter, a particular marketing strategy would be proposed. A strategy that is aimed at communicating the most messages with the most cost-effective methods available.
Distribution vs. Promotion
The product which we have in focus is Beats by Dre, a headphone brand created by Apple. This particular headphone brand is designed to deliver superb sound quality for casual listeners, audiophiles, and music professionals alike (Apple.com, n.d.). One of the most stunning characteristic of this headphone is its punchy bass and crisp sound quality. However, in order to create this wonderful product a great deal of materials cost for research and development had to be incurred. Although, the results are far superior from the cost, finding a consumer market would not be easy especially due to the high market saturation, with other products offering other headphones even with lower qualities. Going back to the “promotion mix” in chapter five and by cross checking the characteristics provided there, it would only show that advertising is much important than distribution due to these characteristics: (1) small size of purchase, (2) little product complexity, (3) more resources available for promotion, (4) large number and dispersion of potential consumer base, and (5) low buyer information needed to sell the product (Boundless.com, n.d.). The main reason for the aspects stated above, is because of the very nature of our product. It must be noted that a headphone, just like any other headphones, is easy to operate, portable, and are used by a very large consumer base. By going back to the promotion mix, the characteristics stated above would most definitely prove that in selling headphones for a large market it would be better to focus on marketing rather than distribution, especially for a startup. In the succeeding chapter a strategy as to how this marketing would be done, in order to attract a large consumer base, would then be discussed.
Marketing the Beats
In marketing these headphones, it must be noted that the sales prom...