MT494 Unit 8 Objective and Task Marketing Budget Example

Every Dollar to an Objective: An MT494 Unit 8 Marketing Budget of $31,800 for Sandberg Lanes

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT494: Bachelor's Capstone in Marketing

Unit 8 Marketing Budget

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Sandberg Lanes, its costs, the vendors' prices and the expected results are composite; the sources cited are real.

Objectives

Three objectives from the plan head the budget, each with a number and a date. The first target has Sandberg booking eighteen weekday afternoon groups in month twelve, up from five today, and about 150 across the year. Second, average spend per guest at those events rises from $27 to $34 through food packages. Third, one in four first-time corporate bookers books again within twelve months. Every spending line below is tagged to one of these objectives; two lines considered in drafting, a radio campaign and a billboard, served none of them directly and were cut.

Method

The total was built upward using the objective-and-task method: for each objective, the tasks needed to reach it were listed and costed, and the costs were added (Kotler & Keller, 2016). The total was then checked against what the owners could afford and against two simpler methods, described at the end.

The Seven Lines

Paid search on team-outing terms, $7,200, serves the events objective. Ads run on searches such as team outing ideas and holiday party venue within the two counties, at about $600 a month. At an expected cost of about $45 per inquiry, the line should produce about 160 inquiries in the year.

A purchased list and mailed kit, $4,100, serves the events objective. A list of 600 office managers and human resource coordinators at mid-sized employers receives a printed kit with the package menu, photographs of recent groups and a voucher for a free planner visit. The expected result is about 60 planner visits or calls.

Two chamber mixers hosted at the lanes, $3,400, serve the events objective. Each mixer brings about 80 chamber members into the building for an evening, with food and free bowling, and is expected to yield about 25 qualified leads.

A planners' open house, $2,600, serves the events and spend objectives. One free weekday afternoon for about 40 planners, mostly the cost of food, lets them try the package and taste the buffet that raises spend per guest.

A part-time events coordinator, $9,600, serves all three objectives. Twenty hours a week at the center's wage rate for the busiest eight months covers answering inquiries within a day, sending quotes, hosting events and making the follow-up calls the return objective depends on. This is the line that closes the largest gap found in the situation analysis: until now, nobody's job has been to sell.

Booking software, $1,500, serves the events and return objectives. A group booking tool with online quotes and deposits replaces phone calls and notes, and its records feed the dashboard in Unit 9.

A reserve, $3,400, is held back for the best-performing line after month four.

The coordinator is the largest line because without a seller every other dollar produces inquiries that nobody answers.

Cost per Result

Dividing $31,800 by the 150 projected events gives about $212 per booked event. That figure flatters the plan. Sandberg's booking log shows roughly five weekday groups a month arriving with no promotion at all, and they would come anyway. Counting only the 90 added events gives about $353 per added event. Farris et al. (2010) measure a marketing return by the extra contribution a campaign produces over what would have happened anyway, and the 90 added events are that extra. Point-of-sale records put a typical weekday group at 22 guests spending $34 each; once the buffet and the host's wages are paid, roughly $470 of that $748 is left to cover rent, heat and the lanes. The budget therefore pays for itself if the added events arrive, but with a margin of about $117 per added event rather than the $258 the first figure implies.

Phasing

Spending is phased toward the autumn. Most companies plan holiday outings between August and October, so the mailed kit, both mixers and the open house fall in those months, together with about 60 percent of the coordinator's hours. Search runs all year at a lower level, with a rise before the spring quarter, when some companies plan team events. Phasing the budget against the planning calendar rather than spreading it evenly puts the money where decisions are made (Wood, 2017).

Cuts in a Stated Order

If weekday bookings trail the dashboard's month-four target, the budget is cut in this order: first the second mixer, then the mailed kit, then half the open-house food. Search and the coordinator are protected, since inquiries depend on the first and every booking passes through the second. Ranking cuts in advance means the owners will not have to argue about them under pressure.

Comparison With Simpler Methods

A percentage-of-sales method at 3 percent of the center's annual revenue would have produced about $24,000, too little to fund the coordinator alongside any outreach. Matching the spending of Ridgeline Social, which keeps a full sales team, would have required several times the owners' budget. The objective-and-task total lands between them, and unlike either alternative, each of its dollars can be followed to an expected booking.

References

Farris, P. W., Bendle, N. T., Pfeifer, P. E., & Reibstein, D. J. (2010). Marketing metrics: The definitive guide to measuring marketing performance (2nd ed.). Pearson.

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

Wood, M. B. (2017). The marketing plan handbook (6th ed.). Pearson.