Please submit the Introduction to a Marketing Plan: Aligning Organizational Objective to the grade book.

Your submission should be a minimum of 2 pages written in APA format, including a cover page and a reference page.

In this unit, marketing's role in the achievement of an organization's objectives was introduced.

Practice: Imagine your company (or the business where you'd like to work) has asked you to analyze organizational goals and objectives in the framework of a marketing plan.

This is just an introduction to your marketing plan.

Throughout this course each unit assignment will be developed as part of your Final Project Marketing Plan.

Introduction to a Marketing Plan: Aligning with Organizational Objectives

What are your company's goals and its objectives? How does your company achieve this goal and its objectives?

e.g. Starbuck's goal is "To inspire and nurture the human spirit- one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time."

What is your company's product along with the problem it solves?

Describe the market for your company's product.

Is there competition? How many? What is the competitions' market share?

Describe your company's unique niche in the market.

Suggestion: Outline the market using SWOT approach by listing the company's products: strengths, weakness, threats and opportunities

Introduce one financial metric and one performance metric that is important to the final marketing plan.

(It is not required to add this metric, yet. Just describe each metric and its importance to the plan.)

Research tip: Use the following keywords to search for a company income statement:

Google Keywords: Company Name Year Income Statement Forbes

Example: General Motors 2011 Income Statement Forbes

In this example, we used General Motors' 2011 Income Statement for the company focus and for the data shown above under "GM 2011." The quotation marks will narrow the search results, too.