Marketing plans briefs
Name - Original Bean
About them they are chocolate company known for “world’s best chocolate from the rarest & fairest cacao beans around” but their goal on sustainable is taking care of the rainforest that make their chocolates, they were founded in 1795 by Philipp’s forefather but the company was born at 2008. The founder wrote a book about taking care of their forest for the next generation and how they came to be known as this company is the first of many companies to be very sustainable and climate friendly with their cacao trees, they don't just take care the rainforest they care about impact how chocolate is made such as making it more ethical than most brands as they stated they found out most chocolate are made using child labour and or low paid labour and they don't want to do that at all as they have a firm believe in supporting the right of Indigenous by keeping and preserving the forest and helping in reducing climate problem and to give the right compensation to fight poverty problems with in the industry.
How big is the company? - They have over 21 employees working in this organisation.
What revenue do they gain a year? - They make around 9 million pounds a year.
Target audiences: Ages 25 to 50 are around who are interested in buying these types of chocolate bars and beans to eat and bake as well as they are more mindful in wanting to take care and be involved in the environment and have the money to do so. And research says mostly adolescents are the ones that have consumed the most chocolate as shown with this quote by this article “Chocolate consumption is particularly high among the supposedly more health-conscious generation: the 25 to 34-year-olds. In this age group, a whopping 34% say they eat chocolate every day.”
What is their product range? - They sell mostly different varieties of chocolate with different size and gift sets as well as selling their variety of cacao mass for cooking and baking goods.
What services do they provide? - some service they provide is you can help with their mission of planting more forest with one4one tree program one of the longest running programs since 2010 and from there you can track your impacted by using the app to look at you trees in the nursery, they have many information available on how they make it and how they are tested to be the richest chocolated they can make and how they source their cocoa and give back to the forest as well as giving back to the Indigenous.
What is their customer base? They care about sustainability and care of these forests and want to help contribute to the causes as well as enjoy a very adequate quality of chocolate.
What main competition do they have?
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Vivani
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Valrhona
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Ritter
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Alter eco
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Endangered species chocolate
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Beyond Good
Project title
To improve their marketing and expand on more products they can sell and to gain more customers to help their cause for sustainability for the rainforest.
Project Objective
Improve their SEO in google and be higher ranking in google search engine, start producing more things you can make with the cocoa to sell and market to your audience that are also eco friendly to gain more traction to your causes and start using social media channels more to gain more follower who would want to buy and help your mission.
Plan overview
This company has been around for 213 years and builds on firm belief on taking care of their trees that grow cocoa. They then made a company for making very rich chocolate bars and selling cocoa mass.
Their website layouts are super well done, everything is well presented and very eye-catching with their colour theme. The only real problem was searching for their website in google search engine when I used keywords such as eco friendly chocolate or sustainable chocolate brands so I have made a plan to use SEO as well as SERP to help improve their ranking in the search engine and gain traction to their webpage.
What else I have looked into are some of their social media channels and saw they are not actively posting enough content so for this the plan is to create a social media team to help with making content to gain more followers.
Overall plan is to use SEO to improve online searches as well as to improve content by using trends, trying making new products to sell so we can gain more traction to the website and to social media accounts and build that sense of community in helping with their mission.
Mission statement
Original beans are trying to bring more people to build that community to continue to help preserve the cocoa forest for the future generation to come.
Marketing objectives
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Make the original bean more well known within the UK.
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Promote and build your business growth.
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Increase sales in your products.
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Use SEO to improve your visibility.
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Make new products.
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Make an event.
Marketing strategy
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Promote more to grow this business. By building that community by actively using your online presence in different social media platforms.
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Use SEO to up your ranking in search results to be more visible to searchers.
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Make more products that you can make with the cocoa mass such as baked goods to be sold. By doing this you have higher chances to increase sales.
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Use that community to help speed the awareness of your mission and how they enjoyed your products.
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Use other sources in media to promote such as try traditional marketing like newspapers, TV ads and billboards.
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Making events to build a community around different areas in the UK to bring awareness to you as a company and what your mission is about.
Plan objectives
At least 10 to 20% growth monthly toward the business website by being constant every month on any promotional material.
Use SEO monthly to keep you ranking up in searches and to analyse your competitors and use that information to improve your website and you can use the SE ranking system as they have different tools to use from and are the most affordable option to use or you can use semrush help analysed your competitor and lean what key word they use for their website and how they show up organically in searches and many more function they provide.
Post content on social media every 3 to 5 times a week to improve social channel growth. And use tools to analyse this date as well as use it to help you keep up with trends.
When making a new product try to use ROI to help evaluate this investment so you know if you are making or losing profit and with that you can determine to keep those new products or try something else.
Segmentation Strategy
Studies show how people in high income households tend to have thought disposable income to be able to purchase sustainable foods the those in lower income as cause for ethically sourced food tend to cost more in how it is produced, even though this other article that conducted a survey by Mintel says that more than 57% are willing to pay for sustainable food items but due to this other report by Savanta’s Sustainability Segmentation in 2022 says that 31% of consumer could not afford buying sustainable food items as the price were to high and as well as 23% say they felt they need more evidences to pay for the extra cost in a sustainable.
With this information you can then market and show your in depth research on how you as a company make this difference in sustainability instead of keeping the info to your website try and spread so the consumer may want to try your product and maybe make something that is cheaper to sell for lower class income households to buy.
Targeting Strategy
Making products that you can sell at a cheaper price so customers in lower income are able to purchase them and to help support your branding.
Keeping up with your customers such as giving out discounts, talking about new products or doing events/news to spread the awareness of protection on the rainforest will encourage them to spread the word on how good of a brand you are and how you can build more community doing so.
Trying to connect your brand with influences that reflect your causes for sustainability by doing so will help you gain more traction to your website and new customers.
Marketing mix
Product
Think about making some product smaller to be sold so you can arrange to sell as gift sets as the one you have are only two full size bars in each gift set and most people would love to be able to try all the flavoured chocolate you have to offer and they can be gifted to other people.
You can even sell your cocoa mass in smaller quantities for people to have the opportunity to try and make some baked goods with them and make them come back for more.
Why not try making some baked goods to sell as a new range of products and will help you sell you other products as well as having the recipe for them to try as well.
Promotion
When a customer buys a product why not give out a small sample to try your other product out so they will mostly leave great reviews about how happy they are with your products.
Try selling in a store where you mostly sell more as people will have an opportunity to see your brand and be interested in buying it more in person.
Make a campaign that involves your community you build with your customer and have influencers taking the lead with it to bring more awareness to your causes.
Try posting on social media platforms about your product and what your whole brand is about sustainability and wanting to help with the wild life.
Price
Your prices are cheaper than most other sustainable branded chocolate.
You can make a discount on the amount of chocolate being ordered like 10 chocolate bars for 10% of your order. For example, you can even give a big discount on your cocoa mass for bakeries/restaurants so they can bake desserts to sell.
Place
Selling them in big and or well known stores will result in new customers wanting to know more about your brand.
You can start in small well known stores and see how it goes and then you can try and work on going into other stores.
You can even try and open a small store of your own.
People
Making sure all customer survives works are well trained to to operate with your customer as this will help custom come back and leave great reviews.
Make sure your workers are happy and fix any problem they may be having due to work so they can be well motivated to work.
Make sure if you have a social media marketing team they are well trained in internet safety, protection of dater and know not to break any rule you have set out for them to run your social channels.
Process
Make sure you can fix any problem with their orders such as they did not like the product and try to substitute it with something else to satisfy them.
Keeping up with your customer by asking them how their product was through a survey or you can see if they had any problem or are fine with customer service.
Making sure any shipment has not too many delays and being honest if there are any problems that have a cure to tell you to the customer so they know what is happening to their shipments.
Physical evidence
Making sure your social platform is well organised and well presented for any viewer looking into your branding.
If you have an open shop make sure you do regular inspection to ensure the shop is running well.
Make sure you take in the feedback from your customer to fix any probe they may be having doing so will endure if you care about how you handle yourself as a brand and that you care enough.
Resources
These are the resources I used for research.
Links:
Ethical Chocolate - all you need to know
Website Traffic Growth | KPI example | Geckoboard.
10 Best SERP Tracking Tools in 2024
How Often to Post to Social Media in 2024.
Return on Investment (ROI): How to Calculate It and What It Means.
Consumers 'cannot afford' to shop sustainably, finds Savanta | News | Research Live
How much more are consumers willing to pay for sustainable cuisine? | Mintel.