Marketing Plan: Bottles UP H20 PDF

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This is the term paper/assignment for the class: a marketing plan for a start-up company....

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Running Head: Bottles Up H20

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Bottles Up H20 Dr. Fei Prairie View A&M University

Table of Contents

Bottles Up H20         

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Executive Summary Background & Description of Product How it Works Situation Analysis SWOT Analysis Marketing Strategy Conclusion & Limitations References Appendices

Bottles Up H20 Executive summary

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The smart water bottle industry has been increasing due to the amount of people that are health conscious, it is also expected to increase all the way to 2025 according to Grand View Research (2017)- this is what Bottles Up H20 wants to enter into. Bottles Up H20 is a smart water bottle that tracks your water intake. The water bottle comes with an app that allows you to compare and compete your water intake with your friends. Our mission is to assist, connect, educate and encourage people around the world to reach new heights and new milestones in daily H2O consumption, in a fun, exciting and innovative way. The company & management. Bottle Up H20 is headquartered in the city of Prairie View and incorporated in Austin. Our services. Our clients are people that are health conscious and avid water drinkers. Bottle Up H20 offers a variety of features to make your experience with our product pleasurable. The features include: ● An application to connect to people around the world. ● A portal that will allow you to form a group of daily drinking buddies and alerts that your buddies are drinking and how much they have drunk. ● The ability to sync drinking which allows or reminds your group that they haven’t taken a sip so everyone has to take a sip at the same time. ● Water tracking that will tell you when you are almost done/and track your monthly drinking with buddies as well. Situation. An economic factor that can affect the company is the increased price in raw materials. This increase in raw material can affect us because this will cause an increase in the price of the product and a chance that we cannot afford to buy the materials because we are a startup company. The social factor is something that we can take advantage of because the amount of people that want to be health conscious has been on a rise, and our product represents that. The technology is what makes our project stand out, there is no other product on the market that has the same technology that we have. Our biggest competitors are LifeFuels Smart Bottle,Hidrate Smart 3 Smart Water Bottle, My Water and Drink Reminder, Hydromate USA, and Hydromate USA. All these companies have strengths and weaknesses that set themselves apart. We are targeting customers that are into their fitness and health. Bottle Up H2O will help our customers keep track of their water intake. We attract consumers that want to keep up with their water intake. Our product is meant to change our consumers to help improve their health. Consumers can purchase our product on our website (BottleupH20.com), along with Amazon and selected retail stores.

SWOT. A major strength that Bottle Up H20 has is its uniqueness. There are many features like pairing up with friends to track each other's drinking process and connecting to people around the world that makes our product different from our competitors. Another strength is our price, our prices are cheaper compared to our competitors. This is an advantage to the company because we can attract new customers and they are getting more than they pay for. With strengths come weaknesses, because we are using advanced technology there will be some

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technological challenges that will be faced. Some opportunities that we can take advantage of is the growing number of people that are becoming health conscious and value environmentally friendly products. Our biggest threat is budget, because we are a startup company, we do not have a big budget for marketing and promotion. Strategy. The price of our product is 55 dollars, we choose the penetration pricing strategy because since we are a new company we wanted to start with a low and customer friendly price to get consumers to purchase our product. We plan on promoting our product on social media, using influencers, and utilizing Google Ads. Background/ Description of Product The name of our product is Bottles Up H20. This product was designed by three highly motivated college students who wanted to take healthy living to the next level. All three of us were athletes at some point in our lives and because of this reason we understood the importance of drinking water every day; although we all understand how important it is to drink water daily we all struggled to do so. In fact, we began to search the web and found that, according to WebMD (2019) on average for women it is suggested that we consume a little over 2 liters of water a day and for men the suggested water consumption is around 3 liters a day (see Appendix A for more information on suggested water consumption). We all realized that we were nowhere near our suggested water consumption and because of this, we saw this as an opportunity to not only address but to attempt to fix a problem and that's how we came up with our current product Bottles Up H2O. Bottles Up H20 is a smart bottle that allows you to partner up with people around the world who share the same who will help you and compete with you to meet your daily H2O goals. Bottles Up H20 is powered through an application and bluetooth bottle that will help you connect to people around you if you choose or you can login to our app and meet people anywhere in the world. How it works/ Instructions First the user must install the application on their phone, then begin to set up their profile (this includes username, email, age, daily water consumption goal, and location). After they create their profile through the application, the user will receive a confirmation email that will validate their profile. Once they finish creating their profile through the application it is time to pair the profile with the water bottle. There is a power button located at the top of the bottle which the user is to hold and press for 3 seconds until the LED light on the bottle turns blue. Once the user has their app connected to their phone it is time to get to know the people around them. When searching for drinking buddies, the concept is similar to Tinder, so swipe left if this is a drinking buddy you do not want swipe right for a drinking buddy you want. The user is able to have up to five people per drinking buddy party.

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The features of this product include an application to connect to people around the world, a portal that will allow you to form a group of daily drinking buddies and alerts that your buddies are drinking and how much they have drank. The user is also able to sync drinking which allows or reminds your group that they haven’t taken a sip so everyone has to take a sip at the same time. Water tracking will also tell you when you are almost done/and track your monthly drinking with buddies as well. There will be two different modes: partner mode and group mode. Partner mode is designed for people who only want to partner up with one person while Group mode allows you to drink with a group where you can indulge in group dates, games and more fun. Situation analysis In theory, the analysis of our product entails a clear and somewhat concise understanding of product features to obtain a better understanding as to why the product was designed and developed. This includes why it is designed, the way it is designed and the sole purpose of the product for our target market. This analysis also entails comprehension of the buyers’ attitude toward our product and how we can position our product in the market in order to meet the needs and expectations of the customers. We would like to ensure that we are doing everything possible to understand our customers. We have designed and incorporated special features that will cater to our customers based on our findings of needs and desires of customers in similar markets. To meet the needs of customers we must set our price somewhere in between the prices of our three main competitors, with prices ranging between $20- 149. External Environmental Scanning (PEST Analysis) Economic. An economic factor that could affect our business is the increase of raw materials because our product is a water bottle it is a necessity to use these raw materials, which may cause the price of our product to increase. The economy is an important factor because this will affect the price range of the Bottle Up H2O. The smart water bottle industry has been increasing due to the amount of people that are health conscious, it is also expected to increase all the way to 2025 according to Grand View Research (2017). The increasing income and improved standard of living has really driven the growth in the industry. The smart water bottle market is a 28.5-million-dollar industry and the hydration tracking apps are expected to witness lucrative growth (See Appendix B for more information on this industry). Something to keep in mind is that in today's economy more people are conscious of what they are buying so our water bottle may not be in their price range. Therefore, differentiation and strategic pricing is imperative.

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Social. It is a trend now that people are promoting healthier lifestyles. This is beneficial to our product because it promotes healthy living. Many people make it part of their routine to exercise and to increase their water intake- The Bottle Up app will fit in perfectly with the lifestyle. The demographic groups that will most likely use our products are middle class men and women that are into healthy living and exercising. Technology. Technology is what makes our product so unique. Yes, there are other water bottles that have apps but with our product you cannot just track your process but your friends as well, also with our advanced technology it can tell when you have not been drinking water, along with notifying you when you should drink the water. Competition LifeFuels Smart Bottle. This product has been seen in Men’s Health, Engadget, BBC and Forbes. It comes with bottle, tracker app, charging cable, and requires “fuelpods”, which are canisters of natural flavoring as well as nutrients that is slowly released into the water. Prices for the LifeFuels Smart Bottle alone is $99, with the starter pack being $149-179. The starter pack comes with the bottle, all the accessories and three introductory fuelpods. Their marketing strategy includes social media, amazon, and bundle deals by way of their starter packs. They have a market geared towards the tech savvy, wellness-minded individuals who also appreciate sustainability. Their strengths include that they cater well to their market due to the addition of their app, the product has the ability to sync to apple watches, as well as the overall concept. They also have their bundle deal/starter pack as a marketing strategy. Their weaknesses include the fact that the product is expensive, you have to continue to buy fuel pods, they have a poor following on social media, low amount of reviews, their overall marketing strategy could be stronger, as well as no brick-and-mortar presence. They have the capability to attract customers who assume they are getting a good deal due to starter packs and can market towards tech-savvy customers and those who support sustainability. Their environmental response includes that they could study their target market and their social media habits to have more attractive content to gain exposure, better market bundle deals, and abandon or adjust the fuelpods idea. Hidrate Spark 3 Smart Water Bottle. This product comes with the bottle and the app and is on sale for $60. It has an LED light/sensor and bluetooth capabilities. They have a similar market to the LifeFuels Smart Bottle, which includes those who are tech savvy, into wellness, and into sustainability. Their strategy includes collaboration with other companies and the use of social media. They are sold at Target, on Apple.com, and were even featured on the blog, “delish”. The addition of the app is smart, they collaborate with other companies, the LED lights are attractive, the price is smarter, there is the ability to have “friends” on the app, and it is sustainable. As for weaknesses,

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individual parts may need to be replaced (LED replacement costs half of the bottle’s price) and they have a weaker social media presence. They have the capability to continue to partner/collaborate with companies and market on the basis of sustainability. Environmental responses include lowering the price of the replacement parts. They could also study their target market and their social media habits to have more attractive content to gain exposure. My Water and Drink Reminder. This product is an app that reminds you to drink water based on your goals. It also allows you to log progress and track it weekly or monthly with graphs. The App is free with in-app purchases and is available on androids and iPhones. This app markets towards those who are interested in overall wellness. Their strategy includes blog mentions and google search ads. Its strengths include the fact that the app is available for free with additional options for purchase, the ability to track progress and they have a cheaper business model due to it only being an app. Weaknesses include that they have no presence on social media, marketing strategy is not that good, and the overall app design is boring. They have the capability to cater to their audience and price-conscious customers, they can market to both iPhone and android users, and can allocate profits from their cheaper business model toward innovation. Environmental responses include editing and adding more attractive aspects to their app as well as gaining a social media presence. Hydromate USA. This product is a motivational water bottle with reminders to drink water written on them. The price is less than $20 and is sold exclusively on their website. Their market is overall wellness, with its marketing strategy mainly consisting of google search ads, their instagram following, as well as Facebook.As far as strengths they have a cheaper business model, easier distribution model due to exclusivity, their product is cutesy/gimmicky and they have an overall cheaper product. It comes in different designs and the company already has a large following on instagram. As far as weaknesses, they tend to have complaints on quality, their website design is sketchy, and their product is not sold in any other stores but their website. They have the capability to put more money towards marketing due to their business model, they can attract priceconscious customers,and they tend to attract customers who enjoy cutesy products. Regarding environmental response, they can improve website and product quality and could improve Facebook engagement. Internal Mission. Our mission is to assist, connect, educate and encourage people around the world to reach new heights and new milestones in daily H2O consumption, in a fun, exciting and innovative way. Drinking water doesn't have to be boring… Bottles UP! To more H2O!

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Current Status. We are still in the developing phases of our business. We are furthering our research to make sure we have the best target market and price point. Growth. Projected growth has not been determined yet as we are still collecting data and doing more research. Leadership. When it comes to management and leadership of the company, we are currently still in the process of developing a board of directors. It has not been decided who will have what role in the business at this current time. Customer Our potential customers are people who are already into health and fitness or people looking to get into health and fitness. Our product will allow the user to track how much water they are drinking on the daily and compete with other users across the world. Bottles Up H20 will attract customers who are seeking a little assistance in daily water consumption. Our product not only challenges the customer, but it also motivates them to meet their goals as well- An accountability partner in a bottle, if you will. Potential customers may purchase our product by ordering on our online site at BottlesupH20.com, it can also be purchased from Amazon and select retail stores in the near future. As of now we are currently still in the developing stages of formulating our product so Bottles Up H20 cannot be purchased. Potential customers may not purchase our product because of our price point or it could potentially be too heavy on technology for some, this would affect more of the older individuals within our target market. SWOT Analysis Strengths Strengths that the water bottle has is the unique feature that the app offers. The app offers you to pair up with friends to track each other's drinking process. The pricing of our product is a major strength because a lot of our competitors' prices are expensive. Our price is reasonable especially for the number of unique features that the app offers. The design of our water bottle is unique and with an insulated inside the water will stay cool for 24 hours. Weaknesses One weakness that Bottle Up H2O has is making the perfect app. It might take multiple tries to make the app user friendly and to make the app sync up with the water bottle seamlessly. Because we are a start-up company not many people know our brand or product. Another weakness is that because we are such a new company there are not many review or loyal customers that will vouch for our product, which means that when

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our product comes up on Amazon next to our competitors they will most likely pick their product that has more customer reviews and stars. Opportunities There has been a large amount of popularity as of late in regards to technology, wellness, and overall sustainability. People nowadays have embraced the innovation that technology has brought, and our product will be able to capitalize off of this with our bottle’s technology as well as the app. Additionally, wellness has become popular as more people are concerned with water intake, activities such as yoga and being active, as well as watching what foods they eat. These are the customers our product is marketed toward, which makes this the prime opportunity for our startup company. Lastly, there has been growing concern regarding products that are environmentally sustainable due to the threats that the lack of recycling brings to the environment. The Container Recycling Institute mentions that “more than 60 million plastic bottles end up in landfills and incinerators every day”. Our product only requires you to purchase it once, there are no additional products to buy (such as LifeFuel’s “fuelpods”) that can cause waste and is made to be continuously reusable. We can therefore successfully market towards the sustainability-concerned customer. Threats Companies with cheaper business models are able to have more in their budget as far as marketing and innovation. These cheaper business models include just having an app or just having a motivational bottle. Consumers, especially those in the innovators group, always want the next best thing so innovation and differentiation is important, especially with stiff brand and product competition. Furthermore, our marketing strategy must be stronger than theirs and rely on both traditional and non-traditional marketing (ie. google search and display ads, social media following, maybe even TV commercials). As some of our competitors already have a large social media following, it is imperative that we cater our content towards our target market more efficiently than our competitors. Marketing Strategy Segmentation & Target Market The target market strategy that we choose to use for our company is single segment targeting. This is the per...