MKT 711 Week 8 Strategic Marketing Plan Example

Expertise at the Center: A Strategic Marketing Plan for Customer Relationships at a Wisconsin Dairy Sensor Company

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

MKT/711: Marketing and Managing the Customer Relationship

Week 8 Final Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

HerdSense Technologies, its plan, budget and targets are composites written for a model paper.

Executive Summary

HerdSense Technologies, an invented maker of dairy cow health sensors and software based in Madison, Wisconsin, earns $38 million a year, 58 percent from subscriptions, from about 1,400 US farms. Its relationships are strong where dealers and veterinarians carry them and weak among large direct accounts, which churn at 19 percent a year and carry the lowest value per cow. This plan positions HerdSense as the dairy sensor company that brings expert insight, not just alerts. Over three years it aims to cut large-herd churn to 10 percent, raise customer equity by 25 percent, grow monitored cows from 410,000 to 600,000, enter Brazil and test a paid advisory service, governed throughout by a farmer-controlled data policy.

Strategic Marketing Defined

Varadarajan (2010) defined strategic marketing as the field concerned with organizational, interorganizational and environmental phenomena related to the behavior of organizations in the marketplace in their interactions with customers, competitors and other stakeholders, in the context of creating and sustaining competitive advantage. Marketing strategy, in his view, is an organization's integrated pattern of decisions about products, markets, activities and resources. The definition calls for integration across decisions, which is the purpose of this plan.

Enduring Customer Value

Kumar and Reinartz (2016) argued that firms create enduring value when they create perceived value for customers and, in return, capture value from customers through their lifetime value, and that the two must be managed together. Their framework links the relationship and valuation analyses of Weeks 1 and 2: expertise and service raise the value customers perceive, which raises retention and lifetime value.

Situation Summary

The course established six findings. Trust rests on people, especially dealers, veterinarians and scientists, and seller expertise is the strongest relationship driver. Each cow on a dealer farm is worth roughly five times a cow in a large direct herd over its lifetime with the firm, with mid-size direct farms in between. Three disconnected systems hide early warning signs of churn. Farm income volatility, consolidation, labor scarcity and sustainability pressure shape demand. Farmers worry about who controls their data. Brazil's modernizing dairy region and a paid advisory service are the most promising growth options.

Objectives

By the end of year three: large-herd churn from 19 to 10 percent; total churn from 11 to 7 percent; customer equity up 25 percent; monitored cows up to 600,000, including 40,000 in Brazil; at least 100 farms in a paid advisory service, if its pilot succeeds; and at least 80 percent of surveyed customers agreeing that they trust HerdSense's data practices.

Targets and Positioning

Primary targets are dealer-served farms of 150 to 700 cows and direct mid-size farms of 700 to 1,500 cows, the segments with the highest value per cow. Large herds remain important for reference and scale but will be served on more profitable terms. Positioning: for dairy managers who want healthier cows and fewer surprises, HerdSense is the herd monitoring partner that pairs accurate alerts with dairy expertise, unlike competitors that sell hardware and leave farmers alone with data.

Relationship Strategy

Every account will have a named relationship owner, a dealer for small and mid-size farms and an account manager with a dairy scientist for large herds. Quarterly herd results reviews will be standard for large accounts. An annual dealer and veterinarian conference will strengthen the partner network. Alerts will be tuned to farm preferences to reduce fatigue.

Resource Allocation by Value

Marketing and service spending will follow lifetime value. Large-herd discounts will be capped at 20 percent, with integration work priced separately. Retention investment for large herds, about $1.2 million a year in scientists and account staff, is justified if retention rises five points. Dealer recruitment into Minnesota, Idaho and New York dairy regions will receive $900,000 a year.

Technology Enablement

The three systems will be linked into account health scores within nine months, feeding the renewal playbook. Dealers will gain limited, consented access to account health information.

The plan spends money where expertise changes a farmer's results and saves money where discounts only buy volume.

Responding to the Environment

A downturn playbook will trigger financing offers and steady marketing when milk prices fall below a set threshold. A neighbor program will turn satisfied farmers into hosts of field days. Labor savings and farmer-controlled sustainability reports will feature in communication.

Ethics and Data Stewardship

The Week 5 policy governs all activities: farmers own their data, sharing requires consent, data are never used to target struggling farms and an ethics review group meets quarterly. The policy is part of the positioning, since trust is the basis of the relationship strategy.

Global Growth

HerdSense will enter Brazil through a dealer partnership in Minas Gerais, with two staff on site, adapted alerts for heat stress and local breeds, local-currency pricing and a 40-farm pilot before expanding to 300 farms.

Entrepreneurial Growth

HerdSense Advisory will launch effectually with 12 founding farms, an affordable loss of $250,000 and clear decision rules at six months.

Implementation Timeline

Year one: systems integration, renewal playbook, discount policy, data policy, Brazil pilot, advisory pilot. Year two: dealer expansion into three regions, Brazil expansion if pilot retention exceeds 85 percent, advisory scale-up if decision rules are met. Year three: refine based on results and consider a second foreign market.

Controls

A quarterly dashboard will report churn by segment, customer equity, monitored cows, account health distribution, Brazil pilot retention, advisory metrics and the data trust score. Morgan et al. (2019) noted in their review of marketing strategy research that firms gain most when strategy formulation and implementation are studied and managed together; the dashboard links the two.

Budget Overview

The plan adds about $3.1 million a year in marketing and service spending by year two: $1.2 million for large-herd retention, $900,000 for dealer recruitment, $600,000 for the Brazil venture, $250,000 for the advisory pilot and about $150,000 for systems integration and the data ethics program. Capping discounts and pricing integration separately is expected to recover about $1.4 million a year, and reduced churn should add more than the remaining cost within two years.

Risks

Key risks are competitors cutting prices, slower dealer recruitment, currency losses in Brazil and failure of the advisory venture. Each has a response: compete on expertise rather than price, use field days to support dealers, adjust local pricing and stop the advisory venture under its decision rules.

Research Agenda

The plan raises three research questions: whether expertise-based relationship investments causally reduce churn in business-to-business subscriptions, which the staged rollout of reviews can test; how farmer-controlled data policies affect trust and retention compared with conventional terms; and whether effectual launches of services within established technology firms produce better outcomes than plan-based launches.

Conclusion

This plan integrates the course's analyses into one strategy for HerdSense Technologies, centered on expertise as the source of customer value and competitive advantage. By allocating resources according to customer value, linking technology to relationships, responding to economic and societal forces, protecting farmers' data and growing carefully abroad and through new services, HerdSense can build relationships that last and a business that remains economically viable.

References

Kumar, V., & Reinartz, W. (2016). Creating enduring customer value. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), 36-68. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.15.0414

Morgan, N. A., Whitler, K. A., Feng, H., & Chari, S. (2019). Research in marketing strategy. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47(1), 4-29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-018-0598-1

Varadarajan, R. (2010). Strategic marketing and marketing strategy: Domain, definition, fundamental issues and foundational premises. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 38(2), 119-140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-009-0176-7