Blue Mountain Spring Water, Inc.: Marketing Plan
Blue Mountain Spring Water, Inc. Blue Mountain Spring Water Marketing Plan Executive Summary This three year marketing plan has been developed to show where our company is heading and how we are going to get there. For us to reach these goals we had to obtain a loan to expand our facility to accommodate the additional machinery and storage that will be needed. We have been in business for the past five years and have showed a significant profit each year. The next coming three years will be no different. We are expanding our facility, along with our distribution area.
We are introducing new products along with different sizes of our bottles. Financial Goals Blue Mountain Spring Water will increase our customer base and expand our distribution by reaching beyond the borders of Pennsylvania. We have several target markets; children for the age of 5 -13, active teenagers and the elderly. We plan to start selling our product in the state of Florida, Georgia and other southern states by the end of this fiscal year. Our revenues over the past five years have provided us a significant portion of the amount we need to expand our production facility to accomplish this task.The loan we have received has no interest for three years .
We expect to have it paid back in full within two years. As with any company we are always trying to improve our product and develop new product lines. Our research team currently is developing a new product line: flavored water with all natural ingredients. We are also developing a delivery service of our water. Our bottle design team has finished a 5 liter design that will be fitted to a water dispensing unit.
These units will be rented to office buildings and houses for a very low cost per month. We will stop production on the 2 liter bottle.The machinery that was manufacturing the two liter will start producing the 5 liter bottles. We are also investigating doing a cross promotion with local area dealers who have their coffee machines placed in office buildings. We have proposed to these company’s let us supply the water for your product.
We are in the process of find dealers who only deal with high quality coffee. We don’t want our name to be tarnished. These new product lines will increase our revenue by 15%. We plan to donate vending machines and stock those with our water free for a year in each grade school in the area around our facility.This has also been proposed to different schools in the new area we are going to distribute in.
As will be described below, we have joined together with a company that will grind up our used bottles and recycle them into material we will be able to make more bottles out of. The raw form of plastic is very dependent on the price of oil. Given the current situation of oil prices today and the possibility of another disaster on an oil rig, this process of grinding up used bottles will save us money. The cost of this process will be a fraction of the cost of being new raw materials. Non-financial GoalsNew product line – Flavored water, 5 liter bottle and also distributing coffee machines that will be able to hook up to the 5 liter bottle. Our new geographic market will be the southern states.
Along with our campaign when a consumer turns in 25 of the cardboard bottoms from our case they will receive a free case of our water. We are also starting another campaign, when they return 50 plastic bottles to a local recycling center they will receive a coupon for a free case of our water. We have joined together with a company that will grind up our bottle and recycle them into the raw form of plastic.This company will sanitize and clean each bottle before the grinding process. This will allow us to manufacture bottles with purchasing any new raw materials. This will keep our costs down and the price of our product the same.
Core Competencies At Blue Mountain Spring Water we strive to go beyond what our competitors are offering as a product line and the price of their product. We have achieved this for the last five years and will continue to do so. We are continuing to develop new product ideas along with ways to make our production aspect run more efficiently.With our new product lines we will not sacrifice quality to manufacture a product that doesn’t meet our high standards. This is also true for the partnerships we are going to develop with other companies. We are only going to do business with companies that have the same high standards that we have.
A. Strengths •Blue Mountain’s talented founders understand the product and target market due to their technical and marketing experience. •Blue Mountain has achieved increased distribution at several levels in its regional market, while consistently increasing annual revenue. Our company has no debt and is poised for significant growth. •An unlimited water resource and a self-contained, state-of-the-art bottling facility, ensures excellent quality control. B.
Weaknesses •Blue Mountain’s founders may lose sight of the company’s business scope as it expands. •Blue Mountain is relatively unknown outside of its regional market.•Expansion could potentially create cash flow problems and require additional employees. •Blue Mountain’s bottling facility may require physical expansion when sales eventually exceed capacity. C. Opportunities Start producing product lines that stay within the company main product – junior water products for example.
•Start producing large jugs for water coolers such as the kind you put in the work place. •Market in main stream cable television commercials for example, MTV. They could sponsor events for MTV. Commercial marketing. •Non tip design is a great opportunity for them to rise above their competitors.
D. Threats •New product lines may not be well received. •Threat of contamination to lake/stream and facility. •Creating unnecessary expenditures or debt. Larger corporations could set up a water bottling facility in their region. Competitive Factors We feel that with our new plans to have five liter bottles in office buildings and available for home use.
Along with joining in a cross promotion with area coffee machine dealers, will make our name much more visible. These opportunities provide us to attract more customers. Target Market We are currently selling Blue Mountain Spring Water in select parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and West Virginia. Within the past few months we have begun selling our product at college and university campus stores.There is still a vast amount of the market for us to reach out to. The below outline shows the strategy we will use to reach this market.
A. ) Start selling at local and chain supermarkets 1. ) Shopette (on military installations such as McGuire/Ft. Dix) 2. ) ACME, Shop-Rite and Supersavers B. ) Place our product in convenience stores 1.
) 7-11 2. ) WAWA C. ) Place vending machines in area schools and businesses D. ) Reach beyond the eastern and central area of Pennsylvania and distribute to the entire state. This also applies to the bordering states, Ohio, New York and West VirginiaE.
) We will start a new marketing campaign in Florida by putting our product on the shelves of CVS and Rite AID. This new campaign will utilize the new cap design that will allow two to three pills to be stored in it. They will receive a free bottle of water with every prescription that they have refilled. Brand Identity We are designing a 5 liter bottle with a water dispenser unit that will be rented to office buildings and available for sale to the home user as well. We are looking into coffee distributors who provide coffee to local businesses.When we find someone we would like to have a sort of partnership with them so we promote our product with theirs.
In exchange we have asked that the coffee dealers provide Blue Mountain Spring Water with 1 pound packages of coffee. Distribution strategy We are going to start selling our product in southern states. We will have to rent a warehouse. We have refrigerated trucks that will deliver water to the warehouse where it will have a quick turnover. Water will not sit for any longer than five days in the warehouse.
We will scan each pallet of water as it arrives with our inventory system.This will allow us to keep track of each pallet of water and make sure there is not any water older than five days. This will work the same for our 5 liter bottles of water. We will have our trucks make the deliveries to the stores, every three weeks. Our truck drivers will stock the shelves; if any of our water is older than two weeks our drivers will remove these cases from the shelves. Each case has a “best if used by” date stamped on each case.
Promotional Strategy Our promotional strategy will take place in fall and run for a week. We will have five displays in the north.Two will be on college campuses and the other three will be placed inside malls in major cities, in neighboring states around Pennsylvania. The two college campuses will be Ohio State and University of Pennsylvania. There will be three more displays in Florida.
We will place ads on the side of public transportation vehicles, signs placed on the side of bus stops and billboard signs on the highway. The advertisement will have a picture of our product along with our slogan, “Blue Mountain is Nature’s Fountain”. We will advertise that free samples will be available and if they want to bring their own container to be filled, they are welcome to.The advertisement will also mention the different prices of the various sizes of our water. Also mentioned will be our product is placed in eco-friendly bottles.
Our display will be of a mountain with Blue Mountain water flowing down it. The mountain stream will be lined with plastic as well as the man-made lake. People can try our water fresh from the display. We will have a refrigerated truck on the side that will keep the display water cool until it is needed. The truck will also contain cases of our product when people want to purchase it after trying the sample.
If a customer does purchase our product after sampling the water, they will be given a coupon for 5 dollars off the next purchase of any size of Blue Mountain Spring Water. Pricing Strategy Our product has been on the market for five years and we have experienced excellent revenue. We must develop a new pricing strategy since Blue Mountain Spring Water is going to be sold in new areas around the country. We must keep our product reasonably priced so we don’t drive away our very large loyal customer base while attracting new customers. This will be accomplished with three pricing objectives: profitability, volume and meeting competition.
