Give thoughts to the findings.

Project Name: Friends of Orange County Homeless Pets: Marketing Plan to Establish Community & Streamline Online Presence Description: Friends of Orange County Homeless Pets (FOCHP) is a licensed 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping homeless and relinquished animals find permanent, lifelong, loving homes. FOCHP faces heavily concentrated competition when it comes to securing foster homes and permanent placement homes for their animals. While the use of social media has allowed FOCHP to reach a wider audience in surrounding counties, ever-changing social media landscapes and algorithms threaten to disrupt the organization's visibility and viability. The marketing plan proposes solutions to increase organizational visibility and brand equity among the community and prospective temporary and permanent placement families.

Briefly discuss product, price, place, promotion, and people. Product: Animals needing foster or permanent placement homes. Price: Price per animal varies based on each individual pets health and needs. Prices may range from $0 to $400+. Place: FOCHPs headquarters are located on a ranch-style property in Menifee, CA. While some of the available animals reside at their headquarters, the majority of their available animals all live with foster families spread throughout Orange County and neighboring Los Angeles, San Diego, and Riverside counties. Promotion: FOCHP relies heavily on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to reach prospective families for permanent placement as well as prospective foster families to help handle the influx of abandoned and relinquished pets. People: The primary and secondary target markets are those between the ages of 24 and 44 and people 55 and over, respectively. The first group is composed of both single persons just out of college and looking for companionship as well as older adults with children who are looking to add a pet to their new or growing families. This group is valuable because the younger group tends to have more disposable income and the ability to spend more time training and working with younger pets for a longer period of time. The secondary group is composed of retired individuals ages 55 and older. This target demographic may have less disposable income but typically has more time to dedicate to older pets and those animals that need additional care.

Provide your strategic goals (broad) Strategic goals include (1) increasing visibility through community engagement and (2) streamlining social media presence. The first objective to increasing community engagement is to host a community adoption event. The second objective is to partner with a brand new organization. The organization should be one in which both are able to work together to make a positive difference in the community. The first objective to streamlining social media presence is to create a monthly calendar for social media posts on Instagram and Facebook that highlight certain topics and ideas that are fresh, relevant, inspirational, and educational in order to provide value to FOCHPs followers (Osborne, 2020). The second objective is to utilize the live content features on both Instagram and Facebook to foster trust among FOCHPs followers.

Explain and justify your tactical objectives (specific). It is often said that strength lies in numbers. FOCHP has a three-pronged advantage over its competitors - that is their strong network of support, foster families, and volunteers. Together, they are able to make sure that all animals available for adoption are well taken care of and healthy enough to be adopted out permanently. This network is also helpful for persons adopting the animals as they are connected to the network via referrals back to those trainers and veterinary staff who have worked with the animals to train and rehabilitate them during the fostering period. While FOCHP has a strong network of support, their support network is relatively small compared to their potential reach. The marketing plan is designed to strengthen their network through growth and expansion. This will be accomplished by increasing their visibility through community engagement and streamlining their social media presence.

Hosting pet fairs will require several volunteers to organize the logistics of the event and be present to assist potential pet owners with questions and the adoption process. 80% of pets ready for adoption should be available for viewing at the event. A list of all other pets, along with their photo and a description of their personalities should be included too. These pet fairs should be held 1x every 3 to 4 months. Furthermore, the idea is to work with an organization that has a community empowerment project that needs additional help which benefits both the members of the organization as well as the community. This partnership can be used in conjunction with holding the pet fair or by holding a different type of event such as a pet food drive or spay & neutering or pet vaccination event. To streamline their social media presence, curating social media posts via a designated calendar tool should encourage engagement and additional reach through call-to-actions and incentives that stimulate their followers to share FOCHPs helpful information and stories with their friends (Montaguti, Valentini, & Vecchioni, 2023). Insights and analytics should be checked after each month is over to determine which posts garner the most engagement and which posts have led to an increase in adoptions and contracted foster families. The addition of streaming live content should be used when hosting pet fairs and participating in other community events in order to increase awareness of their presence in the community, highlight the value of their partnerships with outside organizations, and showcase the available pets for adoption.