Topic 7

My assignment required me to develop a marketing mix for Monster.com. Monster.com is a premier service provider in the job placement industry. The company has both B2B and B2C components. The marketing mix is broken down into four advertising categories including television, newspaper, internet, and other.
First, I will focus on the B2B portion of the company. There will be no television advertising for the B2B component of Monster.com. Those in charge of hiring are not likely to be persuaded to use the service by simply seeing a television commercial at home. Advertisements will be in local newspapers nationwide. This would appeal to small businesses. The ads will run in the business section of the newspapers during the work week. Online advertising will target web sites related to business and more specifically, human resource websites. Affiliate programs will be made available to websites related to business or human resources. It will not be productive for affiliate programs to be found on non-business related websites. Viral marketing will focus on chat rooms and blogs that are related to human resource issues. The final aspect to the advertising campaign will consist of attending and contributing to conferences and conventions that are related to the human resource industry. The publicity at these events will result in word of mouth advertising.
Since the advertising on the B2C side will be directed at a wider audience, more avenues of advertising will be needed. Television advertising will focus on two main time frames. The first targeted time frame is the nine to five work week that will be directed to the unemployed. The second time frame will be prime time during the week. This will attract the working class people who turn the television on before going to bed. There will be no advertising on the weekend when people are less likely to be thinking about their jobs. The advertising will be on a variety of shows to attract the full range of the target audience.
The jobs section of the newspaper is a starting point for many job seekers. The advertising will be in local newspapers and will run continuously since it is such a great resource to find customers. Since the target audience is so vast, online advertising will be wide spread. The websites will be reputable to maintain the image of Monster.com. Also, websites that are visited on a daily basis by consumers will be targeted. Sites like CNN.com, ESPN.com, and MSN.com will be ideal because they are viewed by many people daily. Unlike the B2B portion of the advertising affiliate, programs will be available to all websites that do not contain objectionable content. Viral advertising will not be used for the B2C advertising because the target audience is too large to effectively reach enough people in this manner of advertising.
The final form of advertising will be billboards. This is a great way to advertise the service to people when they might be thinking about changing jobs. After a rough day at work, many people will be tempted to visit the website if they see an advertisement while driving home.
The marketing mix for the two components of Monster.com differ because the target audiences are different. The focus for the B2B component is to get the message to the appropriate people. The B2C advertising goal is to get the message to as many people as possible.