Introduction
Our company name is called LifeWater. The company is dedicated to delivering healthy, natural, detox water to consumers and encouraging a healthier lifestyle for all. Our beverage consists of natural drinking water infused with fresh fruits such as oranges, lemons, limes, and cucumbers; which are natural detox remedies. Our mission is to be the world’s number one respected choice for drinking water in the beverage industry. We aim to offer a high quality product at a revolutionary price while changing the lives of our customers; one beverage at a time. Our purpose is to inspire people to make more health-conscious choices and pursue a better lifestyle. We want our customers to feel good and look good, both on the inside and on the outside.
Target Market
Our target market is very specific. We are heavily marketing our product to suburban and inner city areas (meaning downtown Los Angeles and areas such as North Hollywood and West Hollywood). We want to identify metro areas that are heavily diversified. A metro area is defined as having an urban core area of at least 50,000 or more population (United States Census). This is to ensure that we are capturing our target audience. The Los Angeles County Area (90012) is the ideal location to market our product. There are roughly over 7,000,000 people between the ages of 15-30 living in California as of 2014 (we are certain than number has increased since then) (American FactFinder). Ethnic wise, California is somewhat lopsided in favor of White and Hispanic/Latinos; however, these are the ethnicities we are targeting. According to the FactFinder, there are approximately 5,329,333 people classified as “White” living in Los Angeles, and 4,800,491 people classified as Hispanic/Latino living in Los Angeles.
According to the American FactFinder the median household income for residents within Los Angeles County is $55,870 (American FactFinder) and our target income per household is $50-70,000. We want to target both male and female; placing special emphasis on the female market, and California is evenly distributed in this category. The age demographic that we will pursue are male and females between the ages of 16 and 27. We aim to partner with college campuses such as USC (University of Southern California) to incorporate vending machines with our products on campuses. We believe college-goers are becoming very health-conscious and are more likely to choose products that benefit their healthy when given the option.
Marketing the Product
Our ideal customer is a risk-taker, live-liver and go-getter. We are targeting the dreamers, doers, and the people that are unafraid of outside opinion. They live life on the edge because they understand that everything is connected, and our purpose while we are alive is to find our purpose and share it with others. We want to connect with the people who aspire to change the world. Because that’s exactly what we are going to do. We’ve found our purpose.
A large part of our marketing tactics will come from social media and networking through sponsoring events. We want to drive a lot of interest through our social media platform. We will incorporate our message on several different platforms, specifically Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. We will do this by targeting and connecting with influencers with a large following and contracting with them to advertise our products on their social media accounts. Our pages will feature captivating stories about our customers, their interests and talents, updates from our networking events, and features from influencers that support our product and our company. Through social media we plan to garner a large following to drive traffic to our other platforms and our sales.
Our social media campaign will be similar to that of the Pepsi Company marketing tactics. PepsiCo is one of the leading competitors in the non-alcoholic beverage industry and is notorious for its global “Live For Now” campaign that was launched in 2012. The campaign aimed to, “invite and inspire Pepsi fans to live each moment to the fullest through a breadth of global, pop-culture platforms, including relationships with music and entertainment brand evangelists, digital innovation, epic events and unique partnerships” (PepsiCo Live). The campaign was successful because it embraced the uniqueness of its customers and their interests while partnering with popular artists (Nicki Minaj) who embodied PepsiCo’s “Live For Now” beliefs; furthering pushing their purpose while garnering the support of her fans as well. Although we will not partner with pop artists we are directing our efforts toward the digital world and planning events and partnerships with influencers instead (to attract our young market).
We plan to use a combination of marketing tactics to attract and retain customers. While the social media platform will drive traffic from the younger segment of our target market, we will also use sampling at local grocery stores such as Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Lessens, and similar stores that have older, more health-conscious customers.
Assess Market Competition
We plan to differentiate ourselves from the competition by partnering with local farmers as suppliers for our fresh fruit. We will focus on delivering quality detox water to make our product more appealing to an increasingly health-conscious audience. Whereas many beverage companies use artificial flavors, genetically modified or conventionally grown fruits, and numerous chemicals; our product will be free of all chemicals and GMOs. We are focusing on the niche market that ae adamant about their health (vegans, vegetarians, etc.). We will use recycled bottles to lessen our impact on the environment. Our competition is the Coca-Cola’s Dasani flavored water, as well as the recent Hint Water. Hint Water has a similar product as ours; however, we believe with the right amount of marketing and appeal, our product will become a favorite over Hint. Although Dasani is a flavored water, it does not incorporate real, fresh fruit, which differentiates our product from Coca-Cola.
References
PepsiCo Live. Live For Now. Pepsico Online. Retrieved from
http://www.pepsico.com/live/pressrelease/Pepsi-Launches-First-Global-Campaign-Live-
For-Now04302012
American FactFinder. United State Census. Retrieved from
http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF
United State Census. Census.gov. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/population/metro/
