LAB PARTICIPATION - 25% ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS FOR GROUP ASSIGNMENT: As a group, you will be brainstorming and confirming your choice of a product OR service that you will focus on for the rest of the semester. You will then need to build a digital marketing strategy on how to build a website to create a business. STEP 1: Development of Business + Marketing Strategy - NICHE RESEARCH Determine your market niche: research potential ideas for a website, either product or service. Have a team meeting and discuss different options. Once you have a business idea, then create a SWOT to analyze the idea and then a PESTEL analysis. Create tables to display the information (Your brainstorming of the SWOT is your attendance activity with the forum discussion). What is your business objective? What are your goals going to be? STEP 2: USE TOOLS FOR RESEARCH Use 3 online tools to assess the popularity of your niche. You want to choose a business idea that people are searching for and that has a high volume of search. Provide screenshots of each online tool. STEP 3: DEVELOP A MARKETING PLAN Marketing plays a vital role in successful business ventures. How well you market you business, along with a few other considerations, will ultimately determine your degree of success or failure. The key element of a successful marketing plan is to know your customers--their likes, dislikes, expectations. By identifying these factors, you can develop a marketing strategy that will allow you to arouse and fulfill their needs. Identify your customers by their age, sex, income/educational level and residence. At first, target only those customers who are more likely to purchase your product or service. As your customer base expands, you may need to consider modifying the marketing plan to include other customers. Develop a marketing plan for your business by answering these questions. Your marketing plan should be included in your business plan and contain answers to the questions outlined below. 1. Who are your customers? Define your target market(s). 2. Are your markets growing? steady? declining? 3. Is your market share growing? steady? declining? 4. Are your markets large enough to expand? 5. How will you attract, hold, increase your market share? 6. What pricing strategy have you devised? STEP 4: FIND THE RIGHT DOMAIN NAME Think of a business name for your product or service idea. Choose a potential domain from www.godaddy.com (or any other domain website) for your business. Include at least one of the popular keywords in the domain name. Take a screenshot (DO NOT PURCHASE THE NAME). STEP 5: CREATE THE REPORT INCLUDING STEPS 1-4 Create a report: Title page - identify all students involved in this assignment Table of contents - Description of Niche market SWOT + PESTEL analysis tables Business and Marketing strategy Keyword Tools - show screenshots (DO NOT BUY THE TOOL; use free version) Domain Selection - show screenshot (DO NOT BUY THE DOMAIN) Roles + Responsibilities of each team member Marketing Plan References + CITATIONS