Do you have time to develop a marketing plan?

Nov, 2006

As part of the Marketing Strategy subject at Melbourne Business School, our students prepare a marketing plan for a Melbourne-based product or organisation that does not currently have a usable marketing plan.

This subject is the capstone subject of our Master of Marketing degree and an elective in our MBA program.

The product can be for external or internal customers:

  • For tangible goods or services your organisation provides to external customers
  • For tangible goods or services aimed at your staff – your internal customers. This could include a marketing plan for a particular service offered to staff by HR, or for the L&D function as a whole.
  • To market your organisation to potential job candidates as a great place to work.

Although there may already be a marketing plan for your product of interest, you may require a plan for a different target market for that same product. That is acceptable, as long as the product has been in existence for at least two years so there is some history behind it. For example, we had an FMCG product that already had a marketing plan for 25-39 year olds and the organisation decided on a plan specifically focused on teenagers.

Alternatively, you may be interested in focusing on a product for which no marketing plan currently exists.

Each term we offer the Marketing Strategy subject, we provide our students with a variety of marketing plan briefs from which to select their topic. This is so we have students groups that are passionate about the topic selected to maximise quality.

While this means that not all of our potential clients are allocated a student group, early indications are that a product with exciting marketing challenges would be well received by the students and stand a better chance of being selected.

The students will do all the work themselves. Melbourne Business School subject lecturer, Susan Ellis, supervises their work. Susan’s background includes a number of years in industry as a marketer and manager, including time at Coca-Cola (US) where she managed what is now a $1 billion part of their business – so the students will be well trained.

The next opportunity for you to be potentially allocated a marketing plan student group for your organisation is early March 2007. The delivery of the marketing plan to you will be in early May, in time for the start of the financial year.

If your organisation is interested in the development of a marketing plan, please contact Susan Ellis, lecturer no later than 1 February 2007 via email s.ellis@mbs.edu or 0414 525 889