Contingency Plans

The marketing plan that we are recommending would present very low risk for the Demmer Center to implement. The social media part of the plan would have no cost because networks like Facebook are free services to use. There is also a small amount of time that would have to be devoted to the Facebook page since the Demmer Center already has one made; the focus would stay on keeping it updated and continuing to track users. There is a low monetary cost for the Demmer Center to attend campus events and spread the awareness of the center. The cost will go into creating promotional materials, such as fliers and displays of information, for potential customers. We look forward to seeing the Demmer Center succeed using our flexible, low-cost marketing strategy.

Controls

         When implementing our recommended marketing plan, the Demmer Center will first be able track how their media presence has changed. The Demmer Center should first start to track all of the traffic that they have on their website. If they started to track how many people on average went to the website before implementing the social media buzz, it will help them to understand if their actions are drawing more attention to the website.

         The Demmer Center should also track the type of people that Like their Facebook page. This will help them to understand who is hearing about their business and with what type of media they want to hear more about the Demmer Center. As stated in the marketing plan, the Demmer Center should look to see if females and parents are following their Facebook presence. Parents will be looking for information about what other children are doing at the Demmer Center, and females will be looking to see if they would enjoy their experience there. Another control that the Demmer Center should use would be expanding their Facebook presence on other pages. They should 'Like' other pages on Facebook that focus on MSU and the surrounding area to expand their presence. 

         Similar to tracking online, the Demmer Center should keep track of the gender of new customers that show up to the center for the first time. This should help to understand if the marketing plan is attracting the new target market the center is targeting, as well as help them understand the exact demographics of their customers. 

Projected Financials

In the short run, the only spending incurred by the Demmer Center will be as a result of a advertising; since it will be on-campus, and possibly in collaboration with MSU Marketing (and therefore funded by the University), it will be very cheap to implement. The Center’s website was created internally, so the only cost is the creator’s time in condensing information. Additionally, social media startup and updating costs nothing but time, but work sharing will curb stresses and prevent the hiring of an additional employee for digital communication purposes.

In the long run, spending will be minimal, our strategy will have been refined and social media updates will have been continuous. So long as the strategy is properly executed and an increase in new customer rates, facility traffic and social networking traffic occurs, an increase in profit and active memberships is foreseeable.

Action Plans

Because of relative low cost of implementation, the managers of the Demmer Center are certainly capable of implementing and monitoring a marketing plan. We recommend implementing our proposed strategy in Fall 2011, when activity in East Lansing is at its annual peak. We expect that a complete sequence of tasks will take no more than three months, if a timetable is diligently followed. The results of our new marketing strategy should be measured with the following: new customer/trial rates, facility traffic, social networking traffic, and overall bottom line-- profit.

            Month 1 surrounds the creation of digital connection to consumers. Because reaching and educating people is crucial to gaining new customers and achieving their objectives, the Demmer Center’s first action should be to “clean up” their website: condense information into fewer tabs, update the calendar regularly, and make group rates and package deals clearer. In an effort to further connect digitally to consumers, the Center should also immerse itself in social media, including regular Facebook status updates, an e-mail subscriber list, and Twitter account for the purpose of notifying followers of special rates, events and promotions. It is important that these be updated frequently and regularly.

            The next focus in Month 2 lies in creating buzz on campus and in the community. Campus and community events geared toward The Demmer Center’s respective target markets will be scheduled, social media updates will continue, and advertisements targeting the 20-29 year old female will be rolled out.

            Finally, the focus in Month 3 is on collaborating with MSU’s Kinesiology department in order to create a KIN course revolving around shooting sports for MSU students. Beyond these three months, effort to retain customer loyalty is vital.

Marketing Strategy

The Objectives:

Our determined marketing objectives, target markets, and marketing mix rests on the Demmer Center’s vision of a recreational facility that is educational, fun, and available to nearly every age group. To reiterate, the objectives of this project are the following: gain new customers, connect digitally to customers, and connect further with MSU’s student body. An increase in student and family traffic, followers via social media, trial rates and profit are expected outcomes of our proposed strategy.

The Target Markets:

The Demmer Center deals with two market segments primarily. One is 20-29 year old college students in Ingham County for team sports and recreational purposes. The other consists of families in the area of indiscriminate family size, life cycle and social class for mainly recreational purposes. Both segments’ skill level may range from novice to expert. So, respective campaigns should be implemented for each target market, and the campaigns will have some overlap in the communication channel.

An unmentioned target market presented itself in our results: 20-29 year old females. Though 87.5% of female respondents had never visited the Demmer Center before, a 75% willingness to learn how to use a bow or firearm fell into our lap. As such, we are confident that a campaign targeting 20-29 year old females will prove to be successful.

The Marketing Mix:

Through our investigation we determined that the Demmer Center’s offerings (a.k.a. product), distribution and pricing do not need to be changed; their means of promotion is where potential improvement lies. In order to facilitate our problem-finding process after our meeting with Michael, we conducted a survey through Qualtrics for the purpose of estimating awareness and perception of the Demmer Center. The respondents to our survey were almost entirely comprised of Michigan State University students.

Our survey results highlighted, not surprisingly, a substantial lack of student awareness. We prefer to look on the bright side of this scenario: the potential for trial rates and new customers is great, especially within the scope of MSU. Students prefer to be communicated to through social media and on-campus events, so digital networking and on-campus events should be implemented accordingly. Digital communication will prove to be beneficial, including cleaning up of the Demmer Center website and regular participation in social media. Potential on-campus events may include shooting tournaments, classes taught in collaboration with Residential Life or a day at The Rock to garner attention. Collaboration with the Kinesiology department to create a new MSU course could prove to be beneficial as well, since students will have to rent equipment and use the facility for credit. In appealing to the 20-29 year old female target market, the Center should advertise their classes for women with a message that encourages them to empower themselves by gaining hands-on shooting knowledge and experience.

Other community events, such as competitions and workshops, should also be created for the purpose of attracting the Demmer Center’s familial target market. Places like the Hannah Community Center provide venues that attract Lansing-area residents that may otherwise be wary of traveling to campus. Social media updates may also be targeted toward families, informing them of promotional rates and events.

The Demmer Center also gets a crash course in brand positioning. The top-notch safety of their facilities will prove to be an asset in their message: safety was the top attribute ranked by respondents, in terms of importance, of a shooting sports facility like the Demmer Center. Therefore, it will be of paramount importance to position itself as a safe environment. Despite the fact that all shooting facilities have to meet safety regulations, safety will act as the Demmer Center’s competitive advantage. However, their top-notch cleanliness is not nearly as important to consumers, since it ranked toward the bottom for our respondents. Still, we posit that, when targeting families, cleanliness would be beneficial to emphasize.

Objectives

            Our objectives for this project focus mainly on getting locals to walk in the front doors and to educate them about the Demmer Center.  Results from our survey show that 34 out of 42 people have never even been to the Demmer Center, so just over 80% of our survey population has never set foot in the Demmer Center, compared to 45% of our survey population telling us that they knew the Demmer Center existed.  So people know it exists, but they haven’t yet had a Demmer Center experience. 

Another situation brought about from our survey results is the population’s perception of safety at the Demmer Center; so, another main objective is to show how safe the Demmer Center is. In educating and advertising to locals about the Demmer Center, it is imperative that we position the Demmer Center as a safe place. We want families to see our positioning and be familiar with the fun and safe atmosphere that the Demmer Center has to offer. 

            One more objective is to make it convenient for people to find information about and connect with the Demmer Center.  Firstly, we would like to clean up the website.  They started off on the right foot by having a website full of pertinent information, but it is a little bit cluttered and confusing to navigate.  Additionally, social media is a must: their Facebook page is new, but needs some more upkeep, especially in terms of regular status updates. 

            One final objective is to have the Demmer Center get affiliated with Kinesiology department here at MSU.  The Kinesiology department has classes ranging from scuba diving to karate.  Why not have a class where students learn how to shoot a bow or gun?  Tapping into this will further increase MSU students’ awareness as they sign up for classes. 74% of our survey respondents indicated consideration of take a shooting sports class for credit. This tells us that a class is a great way to get your name out to our collegiate community and it would most likely get plenty of students that wish to enroll.

Key Issues

Have you ever visited the Demmer Center before?

Through meeting with Michael at the Demmer Center and our research we saw many key issues presented.  The biggest issue is that the Demmer Center is making people aware of its existence and encouraging them to visit the center for their recreational purposes, as opposed to strict affiliation with organized team sports.

One of their biggest issues is getting people to buy memberships. A huge contributing factor to their lack of membership sales is that not a lot of people know what the Demmer Center is. If our marketing strategy is implemented, more attention (and therefore more memberships) from people in the surrounding area would result. Some of the memberships that the Demmer Center has right now are people who want to support the University, and are mostly MSU Alumni or family members of the Demmer Center staff. This is a problem because these people have memberships but do not even visit the Demmer Center at all. Therefore, they may be supporting the Demmer Center financially, but are not really supporting the business by giving their time or spreading the word about the Demmer Center to people they know.

Financing is another issue right now as well. The Demmer Center is a newer company and they have to pay the starting costs to get the company afloat in the long run. They are also on a Michigan State University loan, and are trying to make money to pay it off. Obviously, the absence of customers and memberships is making it difficult to make money to pay the starting costs and pay off the loans from MSU.  One more issue that was pointed out to us by Michael himself was aesthetics of the buildings sign.  The sign is a small, close-to-the-ground university sign that most people don’t even look at.  Michael would like to replace it, but once again there are not enough funds, and signage is more of a secondary cost right now.

The Demmer Center community wants the center to be a family and friends atmosphere.  The only problem with that is getting families over the issues of safety.  However, our team witnessed that this facility could not be any safer.  Without the families visiting, this means that kids aren’t coming in, which is a market the Demmer Center very much wants to come in and experience.  They have shooting ranges for kids and friendly staff to help throughout the process, but if they don’t come in these resources can’t be used.

A drawback for many experienced shooters is that the Demmer Center only offers shooting of guns that have a .22 caliber rifle or less.  Many hunters and shooters shoot much more powerful firearms.  So, the “weak” firearms do not provide any real incentive to use the Center’s equipment for experienced shooters. When talking about shooting and archery, there aren’t any combination memberships for these two activities.  There is only one for archery or one for the rifle range.  That doesn’t allow someone to shoot both without buying both memberships, which can get pricey and will eventually drive valued, experienced shooters away.

One last issue is definitely the Demmer Center’s website.  It is great that they have a website, but it is cluttered.  They have too many links on their main page which impedes can confuse users and people that seek information about the Center, which can turn someone off very quickly.  Additionally, the address on the website is correct, but when typed into MapQuest or Google maps, it takes you in the wrong direction.  There is apparently no way to fix it, and for those wanting quick internet directions it is an inconvenience.