Marketing Plan

“Don’t Hurt My Peelings” is the premier natural, healthy juice and smoothie business in Wilson, North Carolina. “Peelings” is the quintessential “cool college town hangout” – a place to stop by quickly if you’re on the run or a casual place to meet, study or enjoy those special facets of everyday life with friends. We will offer a variety of creative and unique flavors and options, ranging from Juices (beets, carrots, celery and ginger) to both the staple (Mixed Berry) to the unique (Banana Bread) smoothies. Each of our drinks will be completely natural – including all fruit, vegetables and dairy products. Our goal is to use locally and/or sustainably sourced produce as often as possible, never using chemically modified substances, pre-made, sugary syrups or powders of any sort.

“Peelings” is located in an area with a population of approximately 4,200 people that live within 1 mile of our location, 37,000 that live within 3 miles of our location, and 54,000 that live within 5 miles of our location. (Hunter). Traffic counts for Forrest Hills Road and Raleigh Road (the cross road of Forrest Hills Road) each day are approximately 20,000 and 26,000 vehicles respectively. (Hunter) Wilson is the county seat of Wilson County, and is also 40 miles east of North Carolina’s capital – Raleigh, with two colleges – Barton College and Wilson Community College also within its territory. We will focus primarily on those within Wilson and the surrounding areas, and will not be exporting our smoothies or juices internationally.

Arguably the two most important facets of a business is the product but also the customer – a business must obtain a diverse and loyal customer base to generate and maintain sales and profits. In order to do this – we must consider our customer base and our customer profile. As our business is located in a college town, many prospective customers will be college-aged students as well as friends and relatives of these undergraduates. However, we do not want to limit our customer pool, and also hope to attract all Wilson residents.

Our smoothies and juices we offer will be a healthy snack/meal alternative, thus luring a separate but equally important segment of customers - those in the area who have gym or other fitness studio (i.e. Yoga, Pilates, Barre) memberships at locations such as Regency Athletic Club or Victory Fitness. These customers will most likely be on-the-go

fitness and/or health-minded individuals, and our product is conveniently both healthy but also quickly and efficiently purchased and easily transportable. Lastly, due to our adamant decision to use solely natural fruits and vegetables, we also hope to attract those interested in sustainability and environmentally conscious.

As we are targeting these customers specifically, we will be

using the Consumer Sales Promotion Method, attracting consumers to our retail store and motivating the customers to buy our product through multiple marketing techniques (Pride 439). There are four major types of primary market research that can be conducted for new or existing businesses that wish to better understand the current market they are in. Observation is a technique used wherein the researcher simply watches potential customers purchase or use products that are similar to theirs and listen to what they have to say about that product. Focus groups are used in order to obtain immediate and direct feedback about a product and what can be done to improve it. These are typically conducted with a moderator asking specific questions about the product and its uses while approximately ten consumers answer those questions. An interview is a research method used when a researcher wants to ask questions one-on-one with a potential customer. Finally, surveys and questionnaires are used to option information and opinions from a large group of people at once. Our firm has decided that administering surveys and questionnaires to potential customers would be the best way to approach researching the market we are becoming a part of. However, since surveys and questionnaires are more effective when a larger sample size is used, we must distribute the survey on multiple channels. We will distribute the survey electronically through email or social media websites, physical mailing, and in store visits.

Wilson Population

College Students

Environmentally Conscious

Fitness/Health-Minded

We will also focus on Selective-Demand (or Brand) Advertising – selling our specific brand rather than advertising smoothies and/or juices as a whole (Pride 427). In order to reach this target market, we will be using a varied Promotion Mix, combining the following myriad of promotional methods to attract customers (Pride 424).

According to Shea Bennett at AdWeek, the average person spends six hours per day on the Internet, with social networking comprising 28% of this time. With such staggering numbers, Internet Advertising is a clear and cost-effective advertising medium. A social media campaign will be launched on multiple platforms (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook)– advertising our new business to prospective customers and those that use social media extensively – college aged students, therefore increasing exposure and providing valuable marketplace insight. We will create a Facebook page, inviting people to like our page in order to gain updates on new menu additions, discounts, and any company updates. Any updates that are posted on our Facebook page will furthermore be tweeted. Twitter will be treated as an intermediary; we will tweet any updates but also post pictures, many of these pictures will be the same as the photos on Instagram that we will post. As incentive to follow our social media platforms, we will offer discounts to our followers in certain tweets, Facebook statuses, and Instagram posts, allowing followers to provide us their username and the designated code to obtain a discount upon checkout.

We will also work in conjunction with the fitness studios in the area – giving members of these studios a discount on their first purchase. Furthermore, we will utilize a Frequent-User Incentive (Pride 441) method: “punch cards” – after the purchase of ten drinks, the next will be free of charge.

In terms of distribution, we will be delivering the product, a smoothie or juice, directly to the

consumer, utilizing a direct channel of distribution, with the product transferring directly from the producer to the consumer (Pride, Hughes, Kapoor 396). With the use of this channel, we will be better able to control the quality and price of our product, while building a closer relationship with our customer.

The prices will be set upon many different factors – but primarily it will be set to ensure a profit. We will take into account prices of ingredients - and the inevitable fluctuation of these prices during their respective seasons. Taking into account all fruits and vegetables (blueberries, cantaloupe, raspberries, apples, strawberries, pineapple, oranges, mangos, mixed berries, bananas, kiwi, carrots, beets, celery, spinach and kale) we can anticipate the average cost to be 92 cents per cup of fruit and vegetables (“Ward Produce”). Furthermore, we must consider the business’ utilities, including the leasing cost of the building ($34,200 per year), the utilities cost, and necessary equipment prices (fridge, freezer, cutlery, blenders, etc.). The total cost for our capital equipment is $14,984.59, including ten tables, thirty stools, two fridges, one freezer, two ice machines. We also will have other equipment costs that we will pay on a necessary basis, such as cups (12 oz., 16 oz., and 24 oz.), plastic cutlery, straws, napkins, etc. We are paying our eight employees $8 per hour, each will work 40 hours a week. Furthermore, we will have two managers, each paid $10 per hour, and also working 40 hours per week. This will account for $3,360 per week, which will also need to be considered when pricing our product.

In preparation for the Grand Opening, we have created a diverse and interesting menu compiled of a multitude of healthy juices and smoothies to satisfy all preferences, cravings, and health needs. Furthermore, we have acquired the necessary equipment, furnishings, and ingredients, which will be required to have a fully functioning smoothie business.

Our business has been strategically laid out and we are prepared and excited to introduce customers to a new world of exciting and delicious smoothie and juice flavors and combinations. We invite all smoothie and/or juice lovers, newbies or anywhere in

Producer Consumer

between to stop by on our Grand Opening to obtain a discount on the first purchase and to experience what makes us different, unique and exciting - we promise we won’t hurt your peelings!

Market Segmentation:Market Segmentation is a strategy that is used when a business is trying to reach a

specific target market with their products, ideas, or services. (Hughes 341). While “Don’t Hurt My Peelings” will lean towards targeting people who take their health and diets seriously, we will generally use an undifferentiated marketing approach in attempt to reach anyone who is looking for a convenient, healthy snack that will not cost them a lot of money. While we do plan on using an undifferentiated marketing approach in order to maximize our potential customers, we believe that developing and maintaining personal relationships with our customers will benefit our business more so than almost any other technique used. Making a superior product to that of our competitors and taking the time to gain each customer’s trust on an individual basis will ensure that a large percentage of clients will eventually become patrons.

Forecasting Sales: Another important aspect of the marketing process is developing an accurate sales

forecast for the years to come. A sales forecast is simply an estimate of how many units of a particular product a firm believes it will sell in a given year. (Hughes 347). This step is such an important one due to the fact that if we underestimate the amount of sales we will make it will cause us to miss out on potential business. Conversely, if our firm overestimates the amount of product we will sell we could potentially order more supplies than we could use in a given time frame; this would also result in a loss since the money spent on excess supplies would be wasted.

In order to gain a better understanding of the sales our firm should expect to make; we will utilize secondary market research. Secondary market research is any market analysis that has not been directly acquired by our firm. This type of research can include past sales of similar businesses, outcomes of focus groups or interviews conducted by other firms, as well as the results of various surveys/questionnaires distributed by other firms. Since our firm is already creating and distributing our own surveys and decided that this form of primary research is the most suitable for our business, we have no need to utilize the results of these types of research conducted by

other companies. However, we do believe that it will be beneficial for our firm to analyze the sales history of a similar business in our industry. We referenced the popular juice and smoothie company “Jamba Juice” for this assessment and made an estimate on the amount of sales we would make each month and year based on this information. Reference Appendix () for a detailed outline of our forecasted sales for the years 2016, 2017, and 2018. (“News Release”).

Works CitedBennett, Shea. "28% of Time Spent Online Is Social Networking." SocialTimes. AdWeek,

27 Jan. 2015. Web. 05 Nov. 2015.Hughes, Robert J., and Jack R. Kapoor. "Building Customer Relationships Through Effective Marketing." Business. By William M. Pride. 11th ed. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning, 2012. 334-60. Print.Hunter, and Associates. WestPoint (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 5 Nov. 2015."News Release." Jamba Juice Company. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2015. Pride, Bill, Bob Hughes, and Jack Kapoor. "Section 5: Marketing." Business. 12th ed.

Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning, 2008. N. pag. Print. "Ward Produce." Wards Triad. Wards Fruit and Produce, Inc., 2011. Web. 01 Nov. 2015."Wilson, North Carolina - Simply Wonderful." Wilson, North Carolina - Simply Wonderful.

Welcome! Wilson Visitor Center, 2015. Web. 01 Nov. 2015.

Sales Forecasting for “Don’t Hurt My Peelings”January (2016)

$43,000.00

January (2017)

$46,500.00

January (2018)

$42,300.00

February $43,500.0

0 February $47,000.0

0 February $41,500.0

0

March $44,300.0

0 March $46,800.0

0 March $41,750.0

0

April $45,000.0

0 April $46,700.0

0 April $42,300.0

0

May $45,300.0

0 May $47,500.0

0 May $42,100.0

0

June $45,800.0

0 June $46,400.0

0 June $42,700.0

0

July $46,200.0

0 July $46,200.0

0 July $43,500.0

0

August $47,000.0

0 August $46,300.0

0 August $44,250.0

0

September $47,800.0

0September

$44,400.00

September

$44,800.00

October $47,200.0

0 October $44,200.0

0 October $47,350.0

0

November $46,800.0

0November

$43,800.00

November

$45,400.00

December $46,500.0

0December

$42,900.00

December

$43,500.00

Total Sales Revenue:

$548,400.00

$548,700.00

$521,450.00