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ZSR Library

Marketing Plan : Marketing Plan

Resources to help you develop an annual marketing plan for a specific brand.

Using secondary information to inform you marketing plan

Marketing plans are informed by a number of different sources that you place in conversation with one another to build a realistic and achievable marketing strategy. Often a combination of primary and secondary sources, we have highlighted relevant ZSR databases, texts, and research strategies to help you identify (primarily secondary) information to inform your marketing plan. 

It is highly likely you will utilize information found in these sources for multiple sections of your marketing plan; for example, marketing research available in Mintel may help inform your situation analysis (list of major competitors) as well as your market segmentation analysis (demographic/lifestyle information of average consumers).  To that end, we have organized these resources by the type of information (i.e. information about companies, industries, consumers, etc.) each resource excels at providing. 

Company & Industry Perspectives

Company Information:

  • Company History
  • Products in the line
  • Product Categories
  • Brand's mantra
  • Competitors

Don't forget to check out the company's website and their competitors' websites!

Suggested eBooks

Market & Consumer Data

Market & Product Research:

  • Brand awareness
  • Image of brand
  • Strengths & weaknesses of the brand
  • Position in the market

 

Consumer Perspectives - Social Listening

Social listening is learning about a company, brand, or product through online sources such as social media sites, review sites, and special software programs that track mentions of specific phrases across the web. Below are examples of websites that can be used when undertaking "social listening" as it relates to learning about a company's brand and how their customer's perceive them. 

Search strategy - In addition to searching on your company's specific social media utilizing hashtags including #[company name] and #[product]. when searching on sites such as Twitter. 

Remember reviews and personal opinions shared in these sources tend to be filtered through other's experiences but you can look for patterns to inform your analysis of a company's brand, segmentation analysis, etc. and generate new search-terms that can be utilized in academic or news sources. 

Social Media Sites

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok 

twXplorer: easy way to search Twitter

Reviews

Online grocery retailers, Amazon

Jamboard Link

Your Librarians

Book a research session with us! 

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Summer Krstevsksa (she/her)

Business & Economics Librarian 

E: krstevs@wfu.edu

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Morgan Ritchie-Baum (she/her)

Business & Social Science Librarian

E: ritchiem@wfu.edu

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