STP (part 3)

Positioning and the five-box:

For the ideal donor to the AAVC (our customer in this framework), I've put together this five-box exercise to help with identifying the positioning strategy that the organization should adopt.

1. Current Do: I'm not a donor to the AAVC

2. Current Belief: I'm not aware of how to support cycling in Ann Arbor or the impact that my donation can have.

3. Consumer Proposition: Supporting the AAVC is a great way to support cycling in Ann Arbor and even a relatively small donation can make a huge impact.

4. Desired Belief: AAVC is a great way to support cycling in Ann Arbor and my donation can be very impactful.

Somehow this doesn't seem quite specific enough but maybe that's not the point of this part of the strategy development.

5. Desired Do: Donate to AAVC

STP (part 2)

Target audience description:

"Scott is 49, he lives on the north side of Ann Arbor with his wife and 3 kids. Scott owns and operates a successful physical therapy practice in Ann Arbor that has primarily focused on serving elderly patients, but he has been looking to expand the practice into the rapidly growing area of sports injuries. He has always biked recreationally but has recently taken an interest in competitive cycling. While he has heard of the Ann Arbor Velo Club, he is not really aware of what it does, one of his friends (a local dermatologist) just joined the AAVC which has Scott considering it as well. Scott usually donates $5,000-10,000 annually to a variety of national and local organizations that support active and healthy lifestyles. He is involved with a local high school, providing physical therapy services and even working as an assistant coach for the cross-country team when his daughter was running. He considers himself very health conscious and an advocate of sports as a way of staying healthy."

AAVC Mission

Someone had asked to see the mission for the AAVC so I pulled this from their website:

To develop skills and abilities across all groups (junior riders, senior men and women and masters racers) and to give members the opportunity to develop these skills and abilites through organized coaching, scheduled training rides and clinics and a variety of racing opportunities. Riders with the ability and desire to go further with their racing, are encouraged to join an elite team when ready to do so.

Feedback

Thanks to everyone that has provided feedback. Let me try to clarify a couple of things.

First, I realize that I failed to include the organization's core competence and I'll have to go back and append that post. The way I see it, the AAVC's core competence is a skill at event management and promotion. An "event" in this context also includes organized group rides, training sessions, and skills clinics, in addition to the large organized races that the AAVC puts on. I struggled a little with defining this because I feel like what the AAVC is really good at is educating new riders and developing their racing skills, and the strategic assets that lead to this ability are the members of the organization that are experienced and have a lot of knowledge of the sport. But what it comes down to is that the AAVC is best at is giving these experienced members an outlet for sharing their knowledge with new riders through the events that we put on.

My goal with the stimulate demand portion of the strategic quadrant is to stimulate growth in the area of donors. As I mentioned in class (and have since confirmed with the organization) we have almost entirely "heart loyal" donors. My goal is to stimulate demand among some "head loyal" donors.

STP (part 1)

For the AAVC I think that because I'm focusing on an acquisition/stimulate demand strategy in terms of source of volume, I need to be focusing on the main or category variable. I'm not entirely clear on how to define my category variable but I think that I want to change the perception of the AAVC as a valuable platform for supporting the activity and sport of cycling in the community. The risk focus is promotion of cycling. The focus will be on plotting the latent demand, that is, estimating demand for potential customers.

Category, customer definition, other players.

The category that I've chosen is bike racing support in Ann Arbor. This positions the Ann Arbor Velo Club (AAVC) as the leader in the category. Their customer definition is non-donors to the AAVC because the goal is to increase donations rather than increase membership at this point. The other players in this space might be other local groups like MCG, The Ann Arbor Triathlon Club, and the Ann Arbor Bicycle Touring society, though none of these groups do exactly what the AAVC does where we do it in terms of supporting new bike racers as they work to develop their skills, strength, knowledge, and confidence around cycling. This is a little challenging because I feel like the AAVC fills a very specific niche and there are not really many direct competitors locally. This may be because AAVC has been the main player in the market for nearly 40 years and has built up some strategic assets and a size in the market that makes the cost of market entry too high for local start-ups to be successful.

FE, Core Competence, Business Objective, Etc.

-The Fundamental Entity that I'm going to be working with is the Ann Arbor Velo Club (AAVC), which is an umbrella brand for the 6 racing teams that we have in development. A number of these teams have their own sponsors and donors which means they are essentially branded differently even though they are still technically a part of the AAVC.

-My Goal for creating an effective marketing plan for the AAVC is to increase donations and sponsorships to the club by 20% for 2011 over what we received for the 2010 season. The timeframe for this goal will be January 2011 because we will need to order the team uniforms which operate as our primary means of advertising for donors and sponsors in the upcoming year.

-Category definition: The AAVC is in the business of training and supporting new bike racers.

-Customer definition: Any person or business in the Ann Arbor area that is interested in supporting the sport of bicycle racing.

-Marketing objective: To acquire new donors and sponsors to the organization.

-Strategic assets: Coaches, existing knowledge, branded events, skill at event management and promotion, existing donor base.

-Source of Volume: Acquisition/Stimulate Demand will be the primary strategy employed. Since the goal is to increase donations, we will begin by trying to attract new donors to the organization.