Marketing

1.0 Executive Summary

Our new marketing focus, made explicit in this plan, renews our vision and strategic focus on adding value to our target market segments, the small business and high-end home office users, in our local market.

American Technology will change its focus to differentiate itself from box pushers and improve the business by filling the real need of small business and high-end home office for reliable information technology including hardware, software, and all related services. Our marketing challenge is to position our product and service offerings as the high-quality, high value-add alternative to box pushing in a vacuum.

Product 1997

GEN $1,372,500

Systems $3,293,500

Service $380,000

Software $799,250

Training $113,000

Totals $5,958,250

1.1 Vision

AMT is built on the assumption that the management of information technology for business is like legal advice, accounting, graphic arts, and other bodies of knowledge, in that it is not inherently a do-it-yourself prospect. Smart business people who aren't computer hobbyists need to find quality vendors of reliable hardware, software, service, and support. They need to use these quality vendors as they use their other professional service suppliers, as trusted allies.

AMT is such a vendor. It serves its clients as a trusted ally, providing them with the loyalty of a business partner and the economics of an outside vendor. We make sure that our clients have what they need to run their businesses as well as possible, with maximum efficiency and reliability. Many of our information applications are mission critical, so we give our clients the assurance that we will be there when they need us.

1.2 Objectives

1. Increase sales by 20%

2. Increase gross margin to more than 25%.

3. Increase our non hardware sales to 65% of the total.

2.0 Target Markets

AMT focuses on small business in the local market, with special focus on the high-end home office and the 520unit small business office.

Market 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 Total

Home Office $25,000,000 $27,500,000 $30,250,000 $33,275,000 $36,602,500 $152,627,500

Small Business $50,000,000 $52,500,000 $55,125,000 $57,881,250 $60,775,313 $276,281,563

Totals $75,000,000 $80,000,000 $85,375,000 $91,156,250 $97,377,813 $428,909,063

2.1 Market Definition and Segmentation

We have broken our markets into groups according to standard classifications used by market research companies: home offices and small business.

Exact definitions of these market segments is not necessary for our marketing planning purposes here; general definitions will suffice. We know our home office customers tend to be heavy users, wanting high-end systems, people who like computing and computers. The low-end home office people buy elsewhere. We also know that our small business customers tend to be much less proficient on computers, much more likely to need and want handholding, and much more likely to pay for it.

2.2 Target Market Segment Strategy

We cannot survive just waiting for the customer to come to us. Instead, we must get better at focusing on the specific market segments whose needs match our offerings. Focus on targeted segments is the key to our future.

Therefore, we need to focus our marketing message and our product offerings. We need to develop our message, communicate it, and make good on it.

2.3 Target Market: Home Office

The home offices in Tin town are an important, growing market segment. Nationally, there are approximately 30 million home offices, and the number is growing at 10% per year. Our estimate in this plan for the home offices in our market service area is based on an analysis published four months ago in the local newspaper.

Home offices include several types. For our plan, the most important are the home offices