"Marketing Shirts Marketing Bars" : A Low Budget Marketing Plan for a Chicago Microbusiness

Abstract

This SIP is a marketing plan for BarTees, a small marketing offshoot project of Bandwidth Marketing, a small creative agency in Chicago. The objective of BarTees is to provide a creative, low-cost, word-of-mouth marketing campaign for local Chicago bars by putting their names and logos on t-shirts. The purpose of this marketing plan is to set up BarTees with the necessary information to see a successful launch. The interesting challenge here is the uniqueness of the product combined with the almost complete lack of budget. This marketing plan specifically outlines how to create an effective marketing plan on a strict budget, incorporating consumer research and insight to determine how to approach both bar owners and bar patrons to get BarTees off the ground. The first part of this project is a literature review, analyzing current marketing theory as well as trends in consumer research so as to figure out exactly what actions need to be taken. The literature review will focus on low-budget marketing, business to business marketing, business to consumer marketing, and relationship marketing. The objective of the review is to discuss those four marketing tactics to set up the connections section, where the information from the literature review will be analyzed and applied to BarTees specifically. Following the connections section is the applications section, which will be the meat of the marketing plan, outlining exactly what sort of information BarTees needs to take advantage of in order to launch a successful product/service. The main findings of this study relate to consumer preference in t-shirt as well as what low-budget marketing tactics really resonate with consumers. Finding the right way to relate to customers is essential, and this project deals heavily in just how to go about doing that.