MKT 240 – Budget Case Study
PROJECT RATIONALE: The purpose of this six-page paper is to research, analyze and prepare a budget using Excel for a chosen company’s product advertising plan. You can choose any company in the world to profile but they must have a website, have run radio and TV commercials in the past and you must get approval from our embedded librarian. You will then subsequently use this company for your Capstone project at the end of the semester.
REQUIRED MATERIALS & TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS:
Textbook, Internet Access, Computer and Word Processing Skills
LEARNING OUTCOMES COVERED:
ü Discuss the value of setting objectives for advertising and promotion
ü Compare sales versus communications objectivesa
ü Describe the process of budgeting for IMC
ü Compare the economic and sales response perspectives on budgeting
ü Compare different methods of setting budgets
ü Discuss the various factors of budget allocation once funds are appropriated
The following must be included in your paper:
Identify the following:
ü Name of the company and product you are profiling and why
ü Integrated Marketing Communications Objectives
· Briefly describe the three types of IMC Objectives and their advantages and disadvantages
· Which of these would you adopt for your advertising plan and why?
· Based on Fig. 7.6 in the text, using the company and product you selected, define Objectives, Audience, Timing, and Tools/Media for each of the categories on the page. Do not be concerned with categories Cause Marketing or Group Sales unless applicable.
ü Budget Approaches mentioned in the text
· Describe three top-down approaches
· What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
· Describe two build-up approaches
· What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
· Which approach would you favor for your company/product you selected? Why?
· Describe the seven budget allocation decisions
· Which do you feel has the most merit for your product’s objectives?
ü Excel Spreadsheet Budget
· Based on the objectives and budget approach you have selected above, choose an overall budget number for one year (any number you wish that seems appropriate) and then create a 13-column spreadsheet with the categories you feel would be applicable for building your new ad campaign.
· These categories will be listed down the left-hand column and the months of the year across the top of each column. The 13th column will reflect totals for the year. Each of the categories will be assigned a portion of your total budget.
· Think in terms of social media (sub-categories Twitter, Facebook, etc.), website (subcategories redesign, hosting, domain and license renewal) newspapers, coupons, both digital and hardcopy, product launch, TV, radio. Note that in your Capstone, you will be required to write ad copy for some of these categories.
Paper Points – 100pts
You will be evaluated on the following:
ü Length of your paper – Six pages minimum. Maximum length is nine pages – your score will be docked if you exceed nine pages. The cover page and works cited/references page does not count towards your page count.
ü You must use at least 2 sources, one of which can be your text
ü Grammar & Spelling
ü APA Format (contact the HGTC writing center for assistance with APA formatting)
ü Creativity, Content & Readability
ü Knowledge of the subject matter and use of examples
ü How well you answer the questions above in the paper
ü Upload papers to D2L Dropbox – Email and late papers will NOT be accepted.
ü Librarian approval
Due Date: 2.13.22
UPLOAD PAPERS TO THE DROPBOX IN D2L
Regarding Objectives, review the information beginning on pages 216-223. Here you will see how to address the three types of Objectives that I was asking for. Objectives are statements of what various aspects of the IMC program will accomplish. The three Objectives are Marketing, Sales, and Communications.
In your Capstone, which is the second part of this project due at the end of the semester, you are building an ad campaign on a specific product so your budget should be written around that product. A question was asked about selecting a product that was doing well or not doing well. If you choose a product that is not doing well in the marketplace, it could be more fun to do because you have great leeway to make improvements. However, there is a multi-story building in upstate New York that is full of products that failed for various reasons. Some of those reasons were timing, insufficient marketing or they were simply not a good product. But the decision on what to write about is strictly up to you.
The Excel spreadsheet is at the end of the paper. Everything before that should be in Word.
Finally, for this part of the project (the Budget) you do not need to write an abstract.
There are several different approaches to formulating a budget in the real world. The text discusses five or six that are currently used by the majority of firms today. The company that I managed was over 75 years old and we had many years of experience formulating advertising and promotion budgets. This worked well for us as we were a mature industry and this was well before social media came on the scene. Typically, our approach was a percentage of previous years sales with an added figure for new media. This added figure was based on research that was conducted to determine what the new media would cost and an approximate calculation of its benefit. Sort of a hybrid approach. Several years after I retired and as social media became more dominant, the objective and task method was adopted.
For your project, I am primarily interested in seeing a total figure and then a dollar figure assigned to each media, billboards, radio, television, etc. Normally, these figures would come from a full blown marketing plan but that is beyond the scope of this course. Essentially what you will be doing is an estimate based on any research you might find or what you think a particular campaign might cost. I can tell you that the cost of advertising in almost any media is not inexpensive. One or two hundred thousand dollars or more may not be out of the question for a regional, multi-media campaign.
You want to show all categories that you plan on advertising in such as other specific social media sites, newspapers, magazines, TV spots, radio spots, site maintenance costs, etc. These will all be listed down on the left column of the spreadsheet. The top rows will list each month and then a 13th column to show the yearly totals of each line. You will then plug into each block in each assigned column the dollar amounts that you intend to spend on that category for each month of the year. Column 13 should add up to the total budget you decided on.
You want to add across and down so that you show totals for the year of each category and the month for all categories. The reason for this is control. You want to see what platform(s) perform the best and yield the results you were planning on. The ones that do not perform as expected can then be adjusted or deleted. As far as the amounts in each block, those numbers may be different seasonally. It depends on your objectives.