Weber State University



Weber State UniversityB.I.S Capstone Project (Business Administration, Health Administration, and Communications)Marketing PlanBy:Mason SchlangeMarketing PlanExecutive SummaryIn this marketing plan, I have focused on the areas that could be used to help the organization Forever Bound Adoption. I will explore the areas in which the organization can improve, and in areas that could be explored to increase the overall exposure of the organization. By discovering which weaknesses are at hand and being able to overcome them is what will make the organization better at the end of the day. By investigating possible target markets in this plan is important because you need to know who you will be marketing to. Without a target market you can’t have a marketing plan. Understanding what these target markets are seeking in terms of services is key to being able to reach out to these individuals seeking adoptive services. I will identify the target markets and ways that they can be reached in the most efficient ways possible. I will explore how larger adoption agencies market, discussing how they do their day to day marketing and what makes them a successful adoption agency. This area is useful because one can take these ideas that are being used and apply them to your own organization. By being open minded to new ideas on how to adopt could help the organization grow and reach the sought-after target markets. A part of this marketing plan that I would like to highlight is the idea of discussing marketing on the internet, and social media. These are two areas that have a massive amount of traffic flowing through them and would be a huge missed opportunity if missed. Being able to operate these two areas could help reach out to those who are seeking adoptive services, and it opens doors for possible collaborations with other organizations. Situation AnalysisSWOT Analysis: (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats).Strengths:A strength that I would like to point out about Forever Bound Adoption is that they are a local agency that is always looking for birthmothers, and adoptive parents. They offer many services for those who are seeking adoption services, which allows them to reach a larger demographic of clients. The CEO and employees are delightful to work with. They are very kind, generous, and offer a large amount of expertise in the field of adoption. They have a strong sense of caring about every single individual they encounter.Weaknesses: An internal weakness that Forever Bound Adoption faces is the use of marketing in the Social Media domain. This is a large area of marketing that is being missed out on. Website speed, and up to date technology. The website has recently gone through a revamp, but later in this marketing plan I will display the speed of the website for those trying to reach it via internet. Overall marketing is a weakness. Marketing can be hard to master in the case of adoption because of how tricky the subject can be, but with the right ideas and tools it can be done. Opportunities: An opportunity that is out there for Forever Bound is that there will always be the opportunity of finding a birth mother who has been through an unplanned pregnancy.Another great opportunity that Forever Bound has is that there are individuals out there who can’t have children and would love to adopt. This is the opportunity of finding adoptive parents.Threats:A threat that Forever Bound faces is the loss of clients due to the fact that they aren’t the only local adoption agency. Facing off against other agencies can be hard because there isn’t a massive number of birthmothers looking to give their child up for adoption. In the world today, many women who go through an unplanned pregnancy choose to either raise their child as a single-parent, or the choose abortion. Both are options for the birthmother, and they have the right to do what they feel is best for them. Target MarketThe target market is those birthmothers who may be considering adoption, and those who are considering becoming adoptive parents. Typically, the age of unplanned birthmothers and those couples looking to adopt are on the younger side of the spectrum of age. Ages ranging from 18-35 is a good range of ages to focus this plan on because those are the ages that have a higher chance of unplanned pregnancies, and those looking to be adoptive parents. The psychographic profile of these target markets is that they are a group of people who are considering adoption and are looking into it. The precise wants and needs of a birthmother giving her child up for adoption are that they want what is best for their child, and what will be the best process for them (the parent). Understanding that adoption may be hard for some individuals is important to keep in mind when marketing adoption. When considering the couples that are looking to be adoptive parents understanding their wants is also important when marketing a service to them. Adoptive couples are seeking a child because they may not be able to have a child based on medical reasons. Understanding that these medical reasons can be a harsh truth but showing them that adoptive services can ease that pain with the opportunity of adoption is of upmost importance. Adoptive couples are looking for the best opportunity to adopt a child and going through a smooth successful adoption process can be vital when working with an adoptive couple. Competitor Environment Competitor: A Act of LoveStrengths: The strengths that A Act of Love have includes they are a local adoption agency in an area that could use adoption services, and they are one of the few local adoption agencies, thus creating more opportunity for them to take clients from Forever Bound. Another strength they have is that they have strong word of mouth reviews, similar to Forever Bound. The individuals who have gone through their services praise them for their adoptive services. Weaknesses: A weakness that A Act of Love has is that their website doesn’t seem to be appealing to visit, it has information, but is very bland and not as memorable as the Forever Bound’s new website. A Act of Love also has to compete with other local agencies with the selection of birth mothers, and adoptive babies. They also face weaknesses such as abortion, and single parenting. Threats: With the competition of finding a birth mother they could miss out on an opportunity because they are facing others. Another threat they will face is that since there are other local agencies, birthmothers and adoptive parents may choose another agency over them. They like all adoptive agencies, will face the threat of abortion and single parenting. Competitor: Heart to Heart AdoptionStrengths: Some strengths that Heart to Heart Adoption has is that they offer many services with their adoption. They will provide financial assistance with groceries, household supplies, clothing, and bills. They will also provide housing or help solve the issue of relocating by providing safe-haven at their rent-free apartments. Weaknesses: Like many adoption agencies, they will face the weakness of facing off against other agencies. They offer many services that other agencies offer also, so a prospect could see their services, and just go to another one because their services don’t stand out to them because they could get it elsewhere. Abortion and single parenting is a weakness that is faced, and in most cases the biggest weakness an adoption agency will face. Threats: The threat that is being faces is the ability to lose an interested prospect to another local agency, or to abortion and single parenting. They are in Salt Lake City which may cause people who live North of Salt Lake to pick a more local agency. Industry Best PracticesA way to possible reach a higher level of success within the adoption world could be by evaluating larger companies, and how they go about their day to day business functions. By doing so you can learn what works for them, and by taking these approaches you could use them to enhance your own practice. In this section I will be exploring a few of this larger companies and explaining what they do good, and ways to possible incorporate these tactics into your own business. American Adoptions:American Adoptions is a very large domestic adoption agency in the United States. They are a non-profit adoption agency that works across the nation of the United States. A strength of American Adoptions that really stuck out to me was how they are present in 49 states. As you can probably imagine in terms of marketing this could be huge because you could reach a much larger demographic. I understand that Forever Bound more than likely has no plans of expanding on a level like that, but it could be an idea to consider possibly spreading out along the state of Utah in a larger geographic span. Heart of Adoption, Inc.: Heart of Adoption like American Adoptions is a company that is based around the United States. Being in 37 states across the nation is a big part of their success because they have access to all the target markets in their marketing plan though their vast location advantage. Like stating earlier, Forever Bound is a local agency and probably doesn’t plan on expanding that far but could possible spread deeper into the state of Utah. Something that I would like to expand on with Heart of Adoption is the access speed of their website. On the google website speed test they scored with a 4.1/5 second, giving their website speed rating a “Good Performance”. This is an important thing because as times change people are using their phones to access these websites more and having a faster website can result in gaining more exposure to these seeking services. Marketing TacticsProduct: Domestic Adoption: “We help you through every step of the newborn adoption process: your home study, building your adoption profile, marketing, matching, placement, and finalization”.International Adoption: “Forever Bound Adoption is excited to help orphaned children of the world find caring loving families”.Embryo Adoption: “At Forever Bound Adoption, we are proud to offer this unique service to couples struggling with infertility”.Services Forever Bound offers: Counseling and support, financial support, medical care. Price: At Forever Bound they offer free services to those who are seeking adoptive services. Through the Forever Bound website they offer many solutions on how to fund an adoption. They also offer a unique financing coach, that can help with the difficult task of knowing how to finance adoptive services. Promotion:From what I have investigated the best way to promote the services being offered is through internet marketing (ads), and through social media. When using social media there is a higher chance of gaining exposure if used correctly. With the vast number of individuals using social media on a day to day basis there is a much higher probability of reaching these potential future clients. By using the internet/social media tactic you can reach not only new potential customers, but also collaborators, and further company personnel. Place:The manner in which the key aspects of the offering are delivered to target customers and collaborators are through the Forever Bound website, and the marketing that takes place outside of the home office. Marketing such as hanging flyers up, passing out brochures to the public, and a simple word of mouth by past clients. A way this area could be improved is through the reach out through a stronger social media presence.Online Marketing Strategy Keyword Strategy: When talking about keywords it is important to find ones that will stick out and bring in the most exposure. Successfully being able to use keywords in a campaign are essential to developing a search engine marketing plan. When using keywords, you should involve high-performance words that will drive in traffic to a business. There are three steps that can be followed when creating a keyword strategy. Firstly, you must research the keywords that are being considered. Second, you must analyze the keywords and make sure that the words that have been selected will be worth the time, and effort of marketing them. And lastly, grouping keywords will help you organize the keywords that have been selected into phrases and optimize relevancy and overall website traffic. Examples of potential keywords: Child Adoption, domestic adoption, affordable adoption, local adoption, local adoption resources, affordable adoption, ETC. Search Engine Optimization Strategy:Search engine optimization is following the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a website by going through the step to ensure that the website that is being promoted is on the top of the lists of the search engine. By going about this strategy, you will be able to gain more exposure due to the idea that the website that is wanted to be used will be one of the first websites to pop up on a google search, when using the keywords that are selected to be used for the plan. The website that will be getting used needs to have a certain relevancy to the topic being searched, and if it does not it won’t show up when trying to be searched. The quality of the content of the website is also very important because if they website is not appealing with the desired content the users will leave. Supplying a good experience to those who are accessing a website is important because if they don’t feel the website is a good experience they will be less likely to return. Site speed is a very large factor when talking about gaining traffic through a website. In the world today if a page doesn’t load a at a reasonable time the user will more than likely exit out and try another source. Therefore, it is important to have a fast, efficient website. Paid Online Advertising Programs: Provided are some of the top online advertising programs that can be used to promote and bring more awareness to the service trying to be offered to the public.Google Shopping/Product Listing Ads (PLAs)Google Ad-wordsYouTube AdsGoogle Organic ResultsFacebook AdsSocial Media Strategy:?Today, in the world we live in Social Media plays a massive role in the day to day lives of millions of individuals. This shows that there are millions of people out there who may be interested in a product/service. Utilizing Social Media has become a very valuable tool when marketing to the public. It gives the opportunity to reach likeminded individuals who may be seeking a service. In this marketing plan that service is Adoption. Social Media allows those who are in the conversation of adoption to interact with one another and gain more insight. It allows businesses to reach out to these communities within Social Media platforms and provide a service to their set interests. In the appendix below I have provided statistics about Social Media and the impact it has and how many individuals use it on a day to day basis. I am also providing a few tips that can help improve Social Media presence, especially on Facebook. Tips: When using Social Media, it is very important to interact with potential customers, being able to interact with them shows that you are valuing them, and it will increase the chances of them exploring your page and website more. Using an Ad Booster on Facebook (application within Facebook) will boost exposure of a company, and it will show up in the advertisement panel when individuals are exploring their day to day Facebook life. This is a good way to get great exposure to a large demographic of individuals. Being an active user of Facebook is important because individuals won’t generally investigate accounts if their content is out dated and not fresh. Therefore, it is important to be very engaging and post often, showing the users that you are highly interested in the topic. Posting often will bring in more traffic to the Facebook page because users will be attracted to the fresh content, and it will allow those seeking the page to have something to engage in. Users are more likely to engage in the content posted if it is relevant to what they are interested in. CollaboratorsCollaborating could play a very big role when talking in terms of marketing. If you are able to collaborate with an organization that has access to the target market you are seeking there can be a higher chance of reaching these targets with your service/product. By collaborating the increase of exposure could also open up more target market segments that were not considered in the first place. When thinking of organizations to possibly collaborate with I can’t help but think of local Universities/Colleges. The reason being is because there is a very large demographic of individuals that go to these institutes. There is a larger range of ages attending these institutes, and if you are able to market to these places there could be a very high chance of raising exposure to the adoption agency. By marketing to an area with a large amount of people, from all different backgrounds you could really get the agencies name out there, and gain the attention needed to find more potential clients.Another idea of collaborating could be local healthcare agencies. By partnering with a local healthcare agency there is an opportunity to reach out to those who may be going through an unplanned pregnancy, and those looking into becoming adoptive parents. Being able to market to that group of target market it could be the changing point of that birthmother, or adoptive couple form choosing Forever Bound over another agency. Other IdeasAside from what was already stated in the plan above, I feel that there needs to be a large emphasis put into the social media approach. Being able to reach out to those on social media will increase traffic through Forever Bound because of the large number of individuals that are on social media in the world today. Social media also allows individuals with similar interests to connect with one another, and by doing so they will be able to connect with agencies and communicate what they are looking for when discussing the topic of child adoption. Social media has become a very large platform in terms of marketing, and to miss out on this area can be detrimental in the business world today. Positioning StatementWhen people think about Forever Bound you want them to think about not only the service that is provided, but the true meaning of adoption. The true meaning of adoption is about love, it is giving a child a chance that they may never get again. By providing these services Forever Bound opens the door of opportunity for a child who is seeking a loving family, and a family they can call their own. Also, Forever Bound is there for those parents who are seeking to adopt. They are helping them find that child that they would love to nurture, raise, and give all the love in the world to. Basing a service such as adoption around love, and compassion is key to success in the world of adoption services. Showing those seeking service that there is a genuine care about the subject, and the potential future clients. AppendixBelow are charts, graphs, and other materials that may be helpful to understanding material in this marketing plan.Percentages, charts, graphs and other materials are based in the United States.These graphs explain the percentages of internet usage.1752603238500left952500These group of charts explains the trend of child adoption, and how much it was searched via internet during certain time frames.Past 30 days: Past 90 days:Past 12 months:Past 5 years:left237491002004 – Present:The groups of charts, and data below pertain to the speed of the Forever Bound website and how effective it is. center72707500These charts, graphs, and group of data pertains to the usage of social media, and how much it is used. Social media is very important in marketing in todays world. center21336000left4508500 ................
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