Marketing Plan 2010 - Proposed
Chairman
- Join Date: 31/12/1969
- Post count:
Hey everyone. Attached is the proposed marketing plan for 2010. If you have any questions about anything in it, PLEASE shoot me off an e-mail to robm@spocon.org.
Thanks,
Rob
- Robert McDonell
- Chairman, SpoCon 2012
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| SpoCon Proposed Marketing Plan.doc | 54 KB |
| SpoCon Proposed Break Even Analysis.xls | 250.5 KB |
| SpoCon 2010 calendar for 2010 events.doc | 130 KB |
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Darla Hammond
Logistics Department
With your break-even analysis you put $30 as the unit price, but we have a variable price, depending on when you buy a registration. Also the average unit price for last year was $20.44. Was this taken into consideration? Also I know that we upped the volunteer rate by $5, and we had 147 who paid the volunteer rate. Where as we had only 375 people pay full price. I am just worried that your average unit price is a bit high, with the previous years intake.
Rob McDonell
Chairman
Great question Darla. The break-even analysis was utilizing a median value, rather than an average.
The reason I used the median rather than the mean is because while the mean was $20.44 there were some extreme values pushing that value down. The central tendency of price last year focused more so on that median value of $30.00 when certain effects were taken into account such as volunteers. Volunteers don't exhibit from a consumer purchasing standpoint the same behavior as our full membership customers.
So, in this case, it seemed more prudent to utilize the median. Let me know if you have any other observations by the way. I really like the input!
Rob
Darla Hammond
Logistics Department
Actually because we are selling the unit at diffferent rates thoughout the year, a better median price would be $27.5 or $25, because we are only selling our $35 memberships for a month before the con. Also volunteer rate needs to be taken into account since last year it made up 22% of our membership, which is a significant amount. I could use last years numbers to come up with a more specific price by adding the $5 to volunteer rates, and to the pre-reg. figures, if you would like, since that is how much we raised rates this year. I think that using a lower median will give us more acurate figures than using a higher one. I still feel that $30 is to high of a median rate to give us acuarate numbers.
Rob McDonell
Chairman
Well, I am not sure how a "better median" rate would be picked since the definition of the median value is defined as the number separating the higher half of a sample, a population, or a probability distribution, from the lower half. In this case, the median value is separated at the $30 rate because that is simply the middle value.
I disagree that taking into account volunteers as a measure of central tendency would be a valid consideration. Again, central tendency, which is a median value, omits consideration of outliers such as the volunteer group. How can we tell that the volunteer group is an outlier group? The answer would be looking to the mean rate of attendance last year which, as you stated, was $20.44. As I stated above, there were extreme values, in this case, a very low rate that was distributed to our volunteer group, that pushed that mean value down significantly, which is why we are omitting that and using a median value rather than a mean value. They are an outlier group based on particular response not related to the standard purchasing behavior of our general clientele.
I hope that clarifies the reasons for using that particular statistical concept.
Rob
Rob McDonell
Chairman
By the way Darla.........thanks for the spirited discussion on the forum here and on the phone last night as well!
Norma Barrett-Lincoln
ConCom
Given current economic conditions, I would prefer to plan using the lower per-capita value rather than the higher.
Norma Barrett-Lincoln
ConCom
Help me out here - how would we use VALS and PRIZM to achieve the marketing goals?
Rob McDonell
Chairman
Hey Norma!
I am going to go over the VALS/PRIZM information at the budget sub-committee meeting tonight at 7 p.m., but as well, after that, I will be posting that information on here as well. So, look for that here shortly.
I will comment further on the reasoning behind the use of the median value rather than the mean. I also, just to ensure that I was on the right page and that my statistics knowledge wasn't failing me spoke with Dr. Murff about it as well today and she agreed with the reasoning I am using. Perhaps I am not explaining it well though, so I will ask her to jump in on the discussion as well to hopefully explain it in a different way than I did.
Thanks!
Rob
Paula Grenvik
Darla, since I used to have to figure median values to set the hourly rate for a business I handled finances for, I would like to sit down with you and see your figures.
Paula Grenvik
2010 SpoCon Art Chair
Edgar
Crumudgeon at Large
Hey guys,
In my experience figuring projections for income and breakeven on these things, your most accurate guesses(held closest to later reality) sets membership price at $27.5 for a $35 at door for an event with a price structure the same as ours. This has held true with more than one con.
I don't have #s but as i said, it has held true in my experience.
Darla Hammond
Logistics Department
Paula,
That would be great. I would love to sit down and work on that, it's something that would help through out the con, not just here. I was not so much worried about the median value as I wanted to make sure we were using past cons into figureing out a good average cost.