Marketing Planning - Selling Yourself - Essay Example

? Marketing Planning: Selling Yourself The paper is on a marketing plan on how to sell myself as a product. Upon analysis of various articles and research papers on the process of marketing products, this paper has used the thoughts available on SWOT analysis, market mix and targeting and positioning strategies to demonstrate how I sell myself as a product. INTRODUCTION After a process of introspection, I was able to create a marketing plan; positioning myself as a product, my business goal is to acquire a job within an advertisement agency. Making use of SWOT analysis and evaluating how my personal strengths and weaknesses and external environmental factors can affect my position in the market, and by utilizing the four P's referring to product, place, price and promotion to define my market marketing mix, I put forward my marketing plan to advertise myself in the market. It is of utmost importance to "know" the product that one wishes to sell (Marketing Yourself Assignment, pg 4) so that an effective and clear image of it can be shown easily to the potential employers and buyers. In this case, the product that is up for sale to the market is myself. How to demonstrate that I know myself as a product means that I must carry out an introspective and reflective analysis of my own capabilities and skills, and come to recognize what it is about me as product that will encourage or discourage potential employers to purchase me. The best way to delineate these positives and negatives about myself as a product is to make use of the SWOT analysis. The acronym SWOT stands for strength, weakness, opportunity and threat (Renault & Schultz, n.p); a major use of this tool is to expose the positive aspects of an organization and "potential problems" (Renault & Schultz, n.p). When I choose to focus on the "internal" factors for SWOT analysis, I will be listing my resources and experiences that can impact the success of my product; making a list of my positive and negative aspects is a useful foundation. As a product, my strengths include that I am dependable and determined when working on a project, I am effective at communicating with my co-workers and enjoy working with others, I am honest and responsible with any tasks that are assigned to me, I am particularly adroit with computers and IT work, and lastly I am a fast learner and have the drive to do well in my career. In terms of my educational strengths, I have completed my education up to an undergraduate level, and I have excelled in many extracurricular activities. Moving onto my weaknesses as a product, at times I can be inflexible about changing the course of project, I often try to establish myself in the most authoritative position in any business venture, and lastly I do not have a significant amount of work experience. Using the SWOT analysis like this will allow me the opportunity to brainstorm and ponder on what I am as a product and where I can go with my strengths and weaknesses (Renault & Schultz, n.p). Moving onto objectives, it is important to state what my purpose as a product is to achieve. As stated earlier, my aim as a product is to be part of an advertisement agency. Once I have stated my aim, I have to uncover what my target market is. Khan mentions that the target market is that part of the market that a company will provide services to (Khan, pg 60). There are two factors that should be considered when carrying out market targeting; the attractiveness of the market segment, and the "capability" of the company itself (Khan, pg 60). This means that I will have to supply my services to that part of the market that seems most attractive to me in terms of entry barriers, possibility of high growth rate, price sensitivity and size of that part, and so on, and in accordance with my current brand image and technological capabilities (Khan, pg 61). Once I have completed my market targeting, I have to advance to positioning; Khan defines this as the " art of creating the mental shelf space, which your company and its products occupy in the minds of prospects," (Khan, pg 62). Here, I will have to portray a positive image of myself as a product to my target consumers; I can do this by comparing myself to the products of my competitors and by establishing myself as superior in comparison, I position myself in respect to use or by price, quality and attribute (Khan, pg 62). In my case, since my target market is the advertisement agencies, as a product I will have to establish in the minds of my potential employers that I am better than my competitors in terms of price, which in this case is substituted for by my salary, in terms of quality which in this case is substituted for in terms of my educational background and work skills, and in terms of attribute which in this case is substituted for by the personal qualities such as honesty and determination that mark me as separate from other competing products. Manktelow and Carson in their article have introduced a remarkably lucid definition of what marketing is; they define it as " Putting the right product in the right place, at the right price, at the right time," (Manktelow & Carson, n.p). As a product, I will have to put myself in the market as the kind of product that I have found that consumers want, in a place where I believe they will be able to purchase me, at a price that I believe they will be willing to pay to purchase me, and at the place where I believe they will be able to purchase me. The marketing mix is a useful tool in determining how to produce products that consumers want and are willing to buy; by exploring different marketing options and combining them with each other I can find out what kind of product consumers are looking for, what price they will pay for it, and so on. This is an integral part of constructing a marketing plan; without examining the different combinations of the market elements of price, product, promotion and place, I might be left with a failed business venture. For instance, if I decide to sell expensive meat products in an area where the consumers only eat vegetables, I will not make any profits. As a product I must therefore find the correct mix of the four Ps of marketing. In terms of product, I must find out what is it that the consumers want from a product, what appearance they prefer and how they will use it (Manktelow & Carson, n.p). In terms of price, I will have to find out how much customers are willing to pay to purchase the product and how sensitive to changes in price the consumers are (Manktelow & Carson, n.p).With regard to place, I will have to examine where consumers will go to buy my product, and lastly in terms of promotion I will have to figure out how to advertise my product to my consumers and what is the best time to do this (Manktelow & Carson, n.p). In conclusion, it would be appropriate to claim that in order to successful sell myself as product I must utilize various marketing strategies. Firstly, the use of SWOT analysis will allow me to list down my strengths and weaknesses, and allow me to reflect on these and devise ways of overcoming the negative aspects of myself as a potential product. Secondly the use of marketing mix and the 4 Ps will allow me devise the perfect combination of price, product, promotion and place which will ensure the successful marketing of my product. Lastly, the strategies of market targeting and positioning will allow me to enter into my desired market segment and portray a positive image of myself as a product. Works Cited Khan, Tahsina. STP Strategy for New Product Launch-a Work in Progress. N.p.: Http://www.ijbmi.org/, Mar. 2013. PDF. http://www.ijbmi.org/papers/Vol(2)3/Version-1/I235665.pdf Manktelow, James, and Amy Carlson. "The Marketing Mix and 4 Ps." Http://www.mindtools.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 July 2013. . Marketing Yourself Assignment. N.p.: Http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/, n.d. PDF. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~jjacoby/C550001/MARKETING_YOURSELF_EXERCISE.pdf Renault, Val, and Jerry Schultz. "SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats." Http://ctb.ku.edu/. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 July 2013. . Read More