Direct & e-Marketing
Term Project Requirements
Spring II 2002
Mercer University Atlanta
The basic objective of this project is to employ the fundamentals of
direct marketing to promote a product or service of your choice. Although you should
use email, the WWW and/or other newer techniques for promotional purposes, the promotional
plan you submit should also be comprehensive (i.e., don't
ignore traditional forms of direct promotion). Web site organization, design
and functionality, is far more important than appearance.
After forming your groups, you should develop a calendar to complete the following
requirements by the due date.
- Decide upon a
product, service, organization or concept that you wish to promote. Be as specific as possible. You may select existing products or create a new
one. Determine the most likely target market
and describe them demographically and psychographically.
Analyze the target market to determine how many significant segments are included
and describe these segments. Estimate the
relative size and importance of the segments. Finally,
detail the main communication objective you will need to accomplish to market your product
successfully to the target market.
This portion should be complete by March
25.
- Using some form
of the organization chart approach that we discussed in class, layout the basic
organization of your website. Be sure to
allow for the different paths that will be needed to accommodate the separate segments you
described in step 1. The layout should
include a brief descriptive title for each separate web page contained in your site, as
well as the planned links between pages. You
should decide upon a general appearance or “theme” for your site at this stage. Otherwise, the pages will not work well together
and may appear disjointed. Each group member
must be primarily responsible for developing at least one web page contained in the site.
Due date for this portion is April 8.
Develop
a working draft of the website that will serve as one of your main direct response selling
media. Although I recommend the use of FrontPage software, you can also develop web
pages using HTML, MSWord and FrontPage Express, among others. There are many resources on the web that provide
free site development tools and graphics. Some
of these also provide free web site hosting, as do most commercial ISP's (eg. BellSouth,
Earthlink, etc.). Following are just a few:
http://www.angelfire.com/
http://www.freegraphics.com/
http://www.stormpages.com/
http://hitbox.com/
To some extent, this is a trial and error process.
Don’t be afraid to experiment. The
final product should be loaded onto one of the free web hosting services or delivered to
me on diskette(s) for loading onto my web site.
REVISED
Due Date: April 15
- Develop a promotional
plan complete with examples of any email, postal, broadcast or print media campaigns
you believe are necessary to drive customers to the website and/or toll-free call
center. The format is not particularly important to me. It should be designed
to be easy to follow, logically arranged and professional in appearance. Beyond
that, you have complete creative freedom. Your group will present the key points of
this plan on the last class date.
The final report should include the specifics regarding:
A. Target Market (see step 1. above)
B. Primary Communications Message (see step 1.)
C. Communications Strategy
1. How the message will be delivered
2. Rough budget and media schedule
3. Examples ads for each media used
(Minimum: email, postal & print)
D. Analysis of Required Responses and Total Costs
REVISED Due Date: April 22
