If your instructor assigns a marketing plan for your class, we hope you will be excited—for two reasons.
First, you will get insights into trying to actually “do marketing” that often go beyond what you can get by simply reading the textbook. Second, thousands of graduating students every year get their first job by showing prospective employers a “portfolio” of samples of their written work from college—often a marketing plan if they have one. This can work for you.
This “Building Your Marketing Plan” section at the end of each chapter suggests ways to improve and focus your marketing plan. You will use the sample marketing plan in Appendix A (following Chapter 2)
as a guide, and this section after each chapter will help you apply those Appendix A ideas to your own marketing plan.
The first step in writing a good marketing plan is to have a business or product that enthuses you and for which you can get detailed information, so you can avoid glittering generalities. We offer these additional bits of advice in selecting a topic:
• Do pick a topic that has personal interest for you—
a family business: a business, product, or service you or a friend might want to launch; or a student organization that needs marketing help.
• Do not pick a topic that is so large it can’t be covered adequately or so abstract it will lack specifics.

1. Now to get you started on your marketing plan, list four or five possible topics and compare these with the criteria your instructor suggests and those shown earlier.
Think hard, because your decision will be with you all term and may influence the quality of the resulting marketing plan you show to a prospective employer.
2. When you have selected your marketing plan topic, whether the plan is for an actual business, a possible business, or a student organization, write the “company description” in your plan, as shown in Appendix A (following Chapter 2).

Data from appendix a

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The Table of Contents provides quick access to the topics in the plan, usually organized by section and subsection headings. Color-Coding Legend Blue boxes explain significance of marketing plan elements. Red boxes give writing style, format, and layout guidelines. Seen by many experts as the single most important element in the plan, the two-page Executive Summary "sells" the plan to readers through its clarity and brevity. For space reasons, it is not shown here, but the Building Your Marketing Plan exercise at the end of Chapter 2 asks the reader to write an Executive Summary for this plan. The Company Description highlights the recent his- tory and recent successes of the organization. The Strategic Focus and Plan sets the strategic direction for the entire organization, a direction with which proposed actions of the marketing plan must be consistent. This section is not included in all marketing plans. See Chapter 2 The qualitative Mission statement focuses the activities of Paradise Kitchens for the stake- holder groups to be served. See Chapter 2. FIVE-YEAR MARKETING PLAN Paradise Kitchens, Inc. Table of Contents 1. Executive Summary 2. Company Description Paradise Kitchens, Inc. was started by co-founders Randall F. Peters and Leah E. Peters to develop and market Howlin' Coyote Chili, a unique line of single serve and microwavable Southwestern/Mexican style frozen chili products. The Howlin' Coyote line of chili was first introduced into the Minneapolis-St. Paul market and expanded to Denver two years later and Phoenix two years after that. To the Company's knowledge, Howlin' Coyote is the only premium-quality, authen- tic Southwestern/Mexican style frozen chili sold in U.S. grocery stores. Its high quality has gained fast, widespread acceptance in its targeted markets. In fact, same-store sales doubled in the last year for which data are available. The Company believes the Howlin' Coyote brand can be extended to other categories of Southwestern/Mexican food prod- ucts, such as tacos, enchiladas, and burritos. Paradise Kitchens believes its high-quality, high-price strategy has proven success- ful. This marketing plan outlines how the Company will extend its geographic coverage from 3 markets to 20 markets by the year 2026. 3. Strategic Focus and Plan This section covers three aspects of corporate strategy that influence the market- ing plan: (1) the mission, (2) goals, and (3) core competency/sustainable competitive advantage of Paradise Kitchens. Mission The mission of Paradise Kitchens is to market lines of high-quality Southwestern/ Mexican food products at premium prices that satisfy consumers in this fast-growing food segment while providing challenging career opportunities for employees and above-average returns to stockholders.