Mcbride Marketing

Submitted By johnsmithrisen
Words: 970
Pages: 4

McBride Marketing Paper
BSA/310

McBride Marketing Paper
McBride Financial Services aims to be the leading provider of low-cost mortgage services in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The company goal is to break even in the next six months and to become profitable in the next year. Their target customers are professionals, retirees, and families seeking to secure a mortgage for their primary or secondary residence. The current marketing plan is based upon a promotional startup budget of $50,000 along with an additional $5,000 dollars a month that may be adjusted parallel to operational results. The current promotional plan is to target the market through local TV ads, local newspapers, informational handouts, local radio, and local realtors ("McBride Financial Services", 2011). McBride has successfully completed the first step of the marketing plan by addressing their target customers; however, there is room for improvement outside this area. Key areas to address concerning the marketing plan consist of conducting market research, effective use of media, and considerations to conduct a portion of the marketing budget on the Internet.
According to Armstrong and Kotler (2011), “Customer-driven companies research current customers deeply to learn about their desires, gather new product and service ideas, and test proposed product improvements. Such customer-driven marketing usually works well when a clear need exists and when customers know what they want” ("Chapter 1/The Marketing Concept").With this in mind, McBride will need to conduct its own survey analysis to understand the interest of their target market. After successfully utilizing McBride’s services customers should be given the opportunity to complete a customer satisfaction survey. Analyzing the interest of McBride’s customers should consist of strategically categorizing offers in several ways. This will lead to comprehensive data detailing what offers, rates, and plans both coincide with McBride’s budget and satisfy their target market most efficiently. This information can be stored in an internal database as a portion of a marketing information system (MIS). “A marketing information system (MIS) consists of people and procedures for assessing information needs, developing the needed information, and helping decision makers to use the information to generate and validate actionable customer and market insights” (Armstrong & Kotler, 2011, "Chapter 4/Marketing Information and Customer Insights"). Through the use of primary and secondary data contained in a MIS McBride will gain awareness of customer’s preference that will be beneficial and lead to higher customer satisfaction.
The current promotional plan is to target the market through local TV ads, local newspapers, informational handouts, local radio, and local realtors ("McBride Financial Services", 2011). Effective use of media is paramount in any marketing strategy. Although the later forms of media could be the most effective forms to use, this may not necessarily be the case. Blindly selecting any form of media in a marketing plan is never a good decision. Analytical data collected through market research will be readily available for dissemination by necessary parties utilizing the MIS: Effectively selecting the most effective forms of media will become a seamless venture for these parties. Data can be collected to determine what avenue the majority of target customer’s access to efficiently reach that demographic. Although this presents a phased model, the time to collect data will prove beneficial in regard to maximizing funds allotted in the marketing budget. In modern times printed media and television advertisements are constantly becoming a less consistent form of marketing. Interactivity is available today in marketing engaging customers and effectively building reputation and brand recognition. Considering the later, focusing the bulk of the company’s