Thursday, February 16, 2012

Successful and Unsuccessful Marketing Plans



Introduction
A marketing plan can make or break the overall success of a product or service. The way that fire services has both failed as well as succeeded with their different marketing techniques is a good example and the things that should and should not be done when trying to carry out a successful marketing plan. The movie Warrior’s failure to attract an audience used the excuse that America wasn’t ready for MMA. Taking a look back, it seems that it may have been the marketing teams fault more than Americas. Each of these examples are great to look back and learn from for any marketing plans that are created in the future.
Marketing Plans
A marketing plan is a company’s action program that details the strategy that they are using or planning to use. The strategy can be for one specific product or an entire line of products, depending on how individualized the plan is. The plan should be a “fully detailed analysis of the market you are participating in, strategies you’ll employ and the tactics for executing these strategies” (MarketingPlan.net, 2011). The marketing plan can make or break the level of success that a product or service achieves. A lot of time, effort, and energy should be placed into a marketing plan because of the impact it has.

Fire Services
The marketing plan for Fire Services was successful for many different reasons. They looked at their services as a whole and tried to utilize every aspect of the service in their marketing plan. Respected speaker on fire services marketing Ben May stated “how we perform our job, our uniforms, our apparatus, our public appearance, and non emergency public exposure all market us to the community” (Hyden, 2011). His ability to see fire service as a concept reinvents the way that they go about doing their marketing.
Fire services start with their strategic plan and develop their marketing plan from that. This enables the fire service provider to keep the original vision in mind. They utilize the strategic plan as a navigation tool for the marketing that they do. This is a good example of how including all of the aspects of the product or service that you are creating a marketing plan for can lead to the overall success of the product or service itself.
In the same article, reasons that marketing attempts have failed in the past is highlighted. The major reason for marketing failure has been company’s inability to separate marketing from selling. They detail how the modern day marketing techniques that are used are a relatively new concept. Where, in the past things have been sold because we need them to meet our everyday needs, the newer marketing is geared towards meeting needs and wants and reaching out for people disposable incomes as well.
 This is a good example of the fact that knowing the strategic plan and using it to implement your marketing plan is key. If the right elements of a product or service fail to be built on, it has the potential to compromise any marketing efforts that have been put together by the company. From the examples, it is obvious that what is chosen to be in the marketing plan is essential.  An extensive and well thought out marketing plan is imperative to the success of any product or service.
Warrior
A recent movie that was dubbed a failure by critics alike was called Warrior. Part of the reason that led the movie to be a failure was MMA’s lack of mainstream appeal. The movie was about MMA fighting. It was concluded that the public just wasn’t into the idea of MMA fighting enough to take an interest in going to see a movie about it.
 Instead of being a breakout movie to introduce MMA to a broader audience, it ending up flat out failing miserably. This could have been the marketing teams fault because they failed to spike the public’s curiosity about the emerging sport. It could also be that people just aren’t interested in cage fighting. Nevertheless, the movies marketing team was unsuccessful in securing the markets interest and the movie’s box office debut turned out to be a disaster.


The more saddening truth about the movie is that its marketing team had a budget of $45 million dollars (Snowden, 2011). Contrary to the title of the article “Does Warrior’s Box Office Failure Show The Mainstreams Still Not Ready for MMA And The UFC” (Snowden, 2011), there is a lot of contradictory evidence that we have seen. Shows about The UFC, such as The Ultimate Fighter, have gained large audiences in the past. If so many people can be interested in a television show, the marketing team for the movie should have been able to produce a better turn out for the movies box office debut.
A large audience also shells out a hefty amount buying UFC fights on paper view. The marketing team for this project did not do a good job of taking advantage of the elements of marketing that these shows and events do. I don’t think that it was the audience not being ready for MMA; I think that is a prime example of when marketing plans fail.  
Conclusion
From a failure at the box office for an MMA movie, to the successes and failures of fire services marketing campaign, there is a lot that can be learned. Not making the same mistakes as other have in the past is one of the best ways to ensure success in marketing. An extensive and well thought out marketing plan can help a product or services success immensely. These examples help to show the gravity of poor decisions as well as plans that paid off.

References
Hyden, T. (2011, April). Retrieved from At the Crossroads: Fire Service Marketing and Strategic Planning: http://ehis.ebscohost.com.proxy.cecybrary.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&hid=101&sid=e367d57d-e0e2-45e7-ade6-b6c977d8e89d%40sessionmgr112
MarketingPlan.net. (2011). Marketingplan.net. Retrieved from What is a Marketing Plan?: http://www.marketingplan.net/what-is-a-marketing-plan/
Snowden, J. (2011, September 19). Retrieved from Does Warrior's Box Office Failure Show The Mainstreams Still Not Ready For MMA And The UFC?: http://mma.sbnation.com/2011/9/19/2434990/UFC-News-movie-mainstream-warriors-box-office-failure-show-the-mainstream-fox

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