STRATFOR Projected Tools/Resource Needs for Marketing Initiatives

Here are some of the resources that I believe we will need. Some we have. Some we will need to get.

Choosing Targets:

Target Attributes (i.e. Profile) for three targets:

  1. Control
  2. Suspect A
  3. Suspect B

This will need to be as much Demographic, Geographic and Psychographic or Lifestyle information as we can get.

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Occupation
  • Income
  • Homestead
  • Interests
  • Etc.

I think you have a lot on what you call your “core” subscriber. We need to build profiles on that one and two “other” suspects. It seems to me that we may be able to a great deal of this in-house.

If we decide to refine the Suspect Targets more we may need to do research: in-house or outsourced.

Messaging:

We will need to build some things that STRATFOR may not be accustomed to building. Some we are likely to be able to build and others we will need to get some outside help.

The craftspeople we are likely to need are:

  • Copywriters (the advertising variety)
  • Designers (for print and online)
  • Graphic artists (ditto)
  • Photographers
  • Videographers
  • Audio producers (if we were to do radio)
  • Video producers/directors
  • Media Coordinators/Planners/Buyers
  • SEO and Adword technicians
  • Social Media Mavens (this might be from your PR staff)
  • Print estimators/planners/purchasers (if we were to do Direct Mail)
  • Research assistants

Some of these may overlap and I may have missed one or two. I can and will do some of this work and/or help train some of your staff to do things that we can do and might anticipate doing in-house going forward.

Media:

We will need to do a fair amount of top line media research. I can narrow this stuff down pretty fast but for the first campaign(s) we will need some help in-house gathering media information, rates, etc. I would like to train you and at least one other person on how I do this so that you can determine how much you will want to do in-house going forward. Part of the idea is to build an in-house agency so that you maximize control and recapture media commissions you would otherwise give up.

Much of the media plan we can do ourselves but some of the TV and Radio we may want to acquire outside specialists to negotiate, place, track and reconcile the buys for us. We can work with media buyers who will do it for less than we can or are likely to be able to in the near term. It is largely the network stuff that gets tricky and difficult to handle.

We will need to:

  • Research
  • Plan
  • Negotiate
  • Buy (place the orders)
  • Monitor
  • Reconcile

Other:

We could use someone who can help us project manage. That may be an intern or someone else on staff if they have the bandwidth. Likewise, we could use someone who is far faster than I with a spreadsheet to help us build budgets and testing scenarios.