MT494 Unit 10 Weekday Group Events Marketing Plan Example

Fund Twelve Months of Weekday Group Selling: An MT494 Unit 10 Marketing Plan for Sandberg Lanes

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT494: Bachelor's Capstone in Marketing

Unit 10 Marketing Plan

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Sandberg Lanes, its owners, rivals, survey and every business figure are composite; the sources cited are real.

Executive Summary

Decision requested: approve a twelve-month marketing budget of $31,800 to sell weekday afternoon group events, chiefly to employers with 20 to 249 staff in Rock Island and Scott counties. Objectives: weekday group events rise from five to eighteen a month by month twelve, spend per guest rises from $27 to $34, and a quarter of companies booking for the first time return within twelve months. Expected cost: about $212 per booked event, or about $353 per event above the current baseline of 60 a year, against a contribution of about $470 per event. Controls: a nine-row dashboard reviewed monthly, with a ranked cut order if bookings trail target at month four. No figure on this page is new; each matches the sections that follow.

Situation

Sandberg Lanes has 24 lanes, a kitchen and a forty-seat party room that sit mostly idle between noon and five on weekdays, when fewer than 15 percent of lane hours are sold. Saturday nights run near 85 percent. Weeknight leagues have shrunk by more than half over ten years, mirroring the national slide Putnam (2000) described. Census establishment counts and two stated assumptions put the two counties' annual employer outings, at every kind of venue, near 790. Ridgeline Social sells actively to employers at about $48 a head; Lockbox Taproom caps groups at twelve per room. A party of thirty wanting to play together on a Wednesday for under $40 a head has nowhere obvious to go. The center's largest internal gap is that nobody is assigned to sell. The full analysis is Appendix A.

Research

Eighty-three chamber members answered the planner survey and six took follow-up calls. Two in three put full participation at the top of their list, with cost per head trailing in fourth. A majority wanted their outing on a weekday afternoon. About two in five said a bowling center had never crossed their minds for staff events, some picturing the smoky halls of decades past, and seven in ten could not sign off on the spending themselves. The sample was self-selected chamber members, so the results describe those planners rather than every employer. The full summary and questionnaire are Appendix B.

Target

Mid-sized employers scored 4.2 out of 5 on a matrix weighted toward weekday fit, against 2.9 for retiree daytime bowlers, the next segment in the queue. Within each employer the plan addresses two roles: the planner, who wants one call and one invoice, and the approver, who wants a defensible cost per person (Webster & Wind, 1972). The matrix and the queue of deferred segments are Appendix C.

Positioning

The statement, unchanged since Unit 6 apart from one phrase, speaks to the office manager or human resources coordinator who organizes outings. It sets Sandberg among team outings rather than among bowling centers, promises that nobody stands on the sidelines, and backs that promise with a single per-head price covering lanes, a buffet and a host, booked by one call, on enough lanes for up to 120 guests. The eight-word line a salesperson would say aloud carries the same two ideas, participation and a single call. The phrase team building was dropped after planners called it forced.

Every choice in the mix below traces to the promise of full participation and easy planning.

Marketing Mix

Product. Strike Hour is a two-hour weekday afternoon package with lanes, shoes, a buffet and a host who runs a short team challenge. It is available Monday through Thursday from noon to five only, so it fills idle hours without crowding weekends.

Price. Two tiers keep the quote simple, because planners wanted one price per head. Strike Hour Classic costs $29 per guest with pizza and soft drinks; Strike Hour Plus costs $39 with a hot buffet and a drink ticket. Both sit below the $40 level several planners said their managers would question, and well below Ridgeline Social's $48. A group of 22 on the Plus tier brings in about $858.

Place. Bookings go through one web form or one phone number, both answered by the coordinator within one business day, with an online quote and deposit through the booking software. A single route supports the claim of easy planning.

Promotion. Paid search on team-outing terms runs all year and should produce about 160 inquiries. A mailed kit reaches 600 office managers and human resource coordinators in the autumn planning season. Two chamber mixers and a planners' open house bring decision makers into the building, where photographs of recent groups and the clean, smoke-free center answer the dated image directly. Every piece leads with participation and ease rather than price.

Revisions Since Earlier Units

Three changes since the individual units are marked here. After the Unit 7 rehearsal, the presentation and this plan open with the cost per added event rather than the creative work. The month-three target for weekday events was lowered from ten to eight during the dashboard work, because the coordinator will need time to learn the market. And the Plus tier price rose from $37 to $39 once point-of-sale data showed the hot buffet's food cost.

Budget

The budget of $31,800 is built by objective and task (Kotler & Keller, 2016): paid search $7,200, mailed kit $4,100, two chamber mixers $3,400, planners' open house $2,600, part-time events coordinator $9,600, booking software $1,500 and a reserve of $3,400. Most outreach falls between August and October, when employers plan holiday outings. Should month four fall short, the owners drop spending in a sequence agreed now, starting with the autumn mixer, while the search ads and the coordinator's hours stay untouched. The full table is Appendix D.

Controls

Nine rows of measures, read monthly, run from inquiries to quotes accepted to deposits received, so a stall shows up early; event targets climb from eight to thirteen to eighteen over the year. Definitions are fixed in advance: a booked event means a deposit received. Two red months on inquiries shift search money to direct outreach, and conversion below 30 percent triggers a review of the quote. The dashboard and its rules are Appendix E.

Calendar

Months one and two: hire the coordinator, set up the booking software, launch search and publish a group page on the website. Month three: first chamber mixer and the first dashboard review against target. Months four to six: test both tiers and review the cut order. Months seven to nine, August through October: mailed kit, second mixer and the planners' open house. Months ten to twelve: holiday bookings, follow-up calls to every first-time booker and the year-end review that decides whether to fund a second year and move retirees forward in the queue.

Limitations

The plan rests on a small, self-selected survey and on conversion rates that have not yet been tested at this business. The cost per added event depends on the baseline of 60 weekday group events holding steady without marketing; if that baseline is falling, the plan's true effect is larger, and if it would have risen anyway, smaller. The dashboard's month-three review is designed to expose a wrong assumption early, before most of the money is spent.

The Decision

The owners are asked to approve the $31,800 budget and the hiring of a part-time events coordinator, with a formal review at month four. If approved, the first inquiries should arrive within three weeks of launch.

Presentation Deck

The twelve-slide deck follows the plan's order, with one message per slide, and every number on screen appears in this document with a page reference in the speaker notes.

1. Idle lanes on weekday afternoons, in hours and dollars.

2. The decision: $31,800, twelve months, a review at month four.

3. Cost per added event, $353, against $470 contribution.

4. The market: about 790 employer outings a year nearby.

5. What planners want: participation first, price fourth.

6. Who we serve: planners and approvers at mid-sized employers.

7. The promise: nobody sits out, and booking takes one call.

8. Strike Hour Classic and Plus.

9. How planners will hear about it.

10. Where the money goes, by month.

11. How we will know by month three.

12. The decision, restated.

References

Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Marketing management (15th ed.). Pearson.

Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon & Schuster.

Webster, F. E., Jr., & Wind, Y. (1972). A general model for understanding organizational buying behavior. Journal of Marketing, 36(2), 12-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224297203600204