Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary ……………………..…………….......................................….................................... 3 2. Marketing Environment …………………………………………………….................................................... 4

2.1 Competitive forces …………………………………………………………................................................................... 4

2.2 SWOT Analysis ………………………………………………………………................................................................…. 4

2.3 Consumer and trends …………………………………………………………..........................................................… 5

2.4 Target Market and Consumer Segmentation ……………………….........……..................................……... 5 3. Marketing Objectives ………………….............………………………....................................................... 6 4. Positioning and Brand Strategy ……....………………………............................................................. 6

4.1 Competitive Advantage and Strategic Focus …………………………....................................................…. 7

4.2 Strategy Canvas ………………………………………………………………….............................................................. 7

4.3 Brand Differentiation …………………………………………………........................................................................ 8 5. Marketing Strategies ……………………………………………………..…….............................................… 9 5.1 Branding and Positioning ………………………………………………................................................................... 9

5.2 Digital and Online Marketing …………………………………………………….................................................... 10

5.3 Traditional Marketing…………………………………………………………….……................................................... 10

5.4 Agent Technology Training………………………………………………............................................................... 11

5.5 Internal Agent Management ………………………………………….…….......................................................... 11

5.6 Customer Retention and Customer Service …………………………………….……................................... 12 5.6.a More on Customer Relationship Management ………………………….……................................ 12

6. Implementation Plan ………………………......…………..................................................................... 14

7. Evaluation Plan ………………………..……………............................................................................... 15

1. Executive Summary

BPS is positioned as one of the market leaders in the merchant services provider industry in the Rio Grande Valley; one of the pioneers in the market that certainly gained ground from its first-mover advantage over 14 years ago. However, increasing competition, emerging cloud and payment techno-logies, as well as inefficient customer service and customer relationship management, pose a threat to BPS’s future growth and expansion.

Throughout the years BPS has stayed true to its local roots, particularly leveraging word of mouth and peer references to promote its products and services. In addition, BPS employs local agents that rather than employees, they become independent sales agents that know the area and community. Their agent status also gives them the right of being their own “bosses”. This very same business model is one of BPS’s main threats and weaknesses, but could also represent a great strength with the proper supporting material and training.

Looking at the market in a broader perspective, it seems that customer preferences and the competiti-ve landscape have been changing drastically since BPS first came into the market, particularly fueled by the fast-growing economy in the RGV in the last 10 years. Not only do customer trends and prefe-rences seem to be changing, but also the fact that business owners and decision makers might be shifting into other alternative technologies and companies for their merchant services needs such as: Square and other emerging new technologies, national merchant services providers, and banks’merchant services; among many other external factors.

This marketing plan aims to tackle the challenge of revamping the BPS brand by positioning and diffe-rentiating it from its competitors, particularly focusing on the areas where competitive advantages can be achieved and among the target markets of local business owners and larger corporate decision-ma-kers. The primary objectives of this marketing plan are to successfully position the BPS brand within the market as the preferred choice for merchant services, improve customer management and sales processes, and ultimately optimize sales. This marketing plan will also discuss:

- Current marketing environment- Consumer segmentation- Marketing objectives- BPS´s new positioning and brand strategy- BPS points of differentiation- Marketing strategies- CRM optimization- Implementation Plan

2. Marketing Environment

2.1 Competitive Forces

2.2 SWOT Analysis

2.3 Consumer and Market Trends

Fifty years ago, the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas was a rural, agriculture-based economy characte-rized by sporadic growth. Today, the area is being transformed into a major international trade area by developing first-rate commercial, retail, office, industrial, medical, retirement and educational facilities. The promotion of international and retail trade, tourism and manufacturing is among the most success-ful along the U.S.-Mexico Border.

The Rio Grande Valley includes the four southernmost counties in Texas: Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and Willacy. It is in the geographic center of the region most recently termed the Rioplex, which includes the four Rio Grande Valley counties and the Northern Mexico border cities between Matamoros and Ciudad Mier.

The principal cities of McAllen, Brownsville and Harlingen combine to form the northern half of the ioplex and are among the most rapidly growing region in America. The 2010 Census places the population of the McAllen MSA at 774,769, a 66.8% increase over 2001. The southern half of the Rioplex includes the Mexico border cities of Matamoros, Rio Bravo and Reynosa, which contribute at least another 1.7 million to the region’s population. The city of Reynosa according the Census of 2010 had a population of 608,891. This brings the total population of this bi-national, bicultural, bilingual, international metropolitan area to 1.4 million.Hispanics represent 90% of the McAllen area population and individuals under 35 years of age make up between 59.3% of the population. The population, although diverse, is defined by two dominant demographic criteria: Hispanic and young. The population, although diverse, is defined by two domi-nant demographic criteria: Hispanic and young.

2.4 Target Markets and Consumer Segmentation

Primary target market: Local business owners.

- Majority is Hispanic- Located in the RGV- Possess entrepreneurial skills- Care for the local economy development- Interested in networking with local business owners- High price-sensitivity, budget-conscious

Secondary target market: Large corporate decision-makers.

- Work in roles such as general managers, operational managers and accounting/finance managers.- Have offices or facilities in the RGV and border region- Interested in the highest quality in technology and services- Concerned about reliability in customer support- Actively looking to establish local partnerships- Middle price-sensitivity

3. Marketing Objectives

The marketing objectives for BPS’s marketing plan are the following:

- Position BPS as the preferred source for merchant services in the RGV.- Achieve brand differentiation amongst BPS’s competitors, catering to the Hispanic market specifically.- Increase brand awareness amongst large corporations moving to the RGV and the border region.- Effective implementation of an agent’s sales-process guide and training.- Improve agent’s recruiting process.- Implementation of a strong rewards and leadership program.- Creation of an efficient CRM system.- Improve leads-generation process.- Increase sales by at least 15% within the first two quarters upon the implementation of this plan.

4. BPS Positioning and Brand Strategy

BPS positioned as the premier local merchant services provider, genuinely interested in helping local business owners grow and succeed by offering top-of-the-line customer service and tech support.

- Competitive price as another key attribute and competitive advantage.- Only merchant services provider to offer personalized support and low rates without sacrificing tech nology and product quality.- Local merchant services provider offering the latest payment technologies.- Hispanic marketing approach, understanding Hispanic entrepreneurs, and therefore, offering tailored solutions and material for their specific needs.

4.1 Competitive Advantages and Strategic Focus

Operational Excellence:

- Focus on efficiency of operations and processes: CRM system, as well as sales-process guide and training improvement could develop this competitive advantage.- Lower cost operations lead to lower prices for customers: BPS would need to research on ways they can save from operating expenses. The CR system would definitely be a good start

Product leadership:

- Excellence in technology and product development: Product competitors such as Square own this, could be pushed through the acquisition of new technologies such as Clover and similar. - Most advanced, highest quality product offering in the industry: Probably BPS couldn’t achieve a com petitive advantage in this category.

Customer Intimacy:

- Understand customers better than the competition: CRM system development plus the advantage of being part of the local business community.- Develop long-term customer relationships: CRM system, better agent training and recruiting process.

4.2 Strategy Canvas

Strategy Canvas: The Four Actions Framework

Which factors that the industry takes for granted should be eliminated?● More than likely, personalized customer service and tech support are the aspects that are shading away the most from the industry since many new competitors are shifting towards cloud solutions and online support.

Which factors should be reduced well below the industry’s standard?● Have products been over designed in a race to beat competition? Price more than likely in here, bidding wars for the lowest rate.

Which factors should be raised well above the industry’s standard?● Convenience and ease of use. Evolving technology plays the key role in this question.

Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered?● What are the potential new sources of value for buyers? New technologies such as Clover, Get Poynt, and EMV upgrades that add extra value to merchant services including app markets to provide different types of insights, and innovative hardware solutions.

4.3 Achieving Brand Differentiation

Building a 360-degree view of existing perceptions: BPS can’t improve its current position if it doesn’t really know where it stands now. Maintaining an ongoing research on how customers, prospects, employees, and the industry perceive the organization, competitors, and the market is an essential foundation for strengthening the BPS brand. Understanding in particular the attributes that customers care about the most is a powerful guide for potential differentiation.

Managing the customer experience: Achieving differentiation in the services industry is all about service delivery. Ensuring the delivery of real business value is the greatest contribution that BPS can make to position the brand within its customers, prospects or influencers.

There are two questions that serve as fundamental filters through which to run BPS’s points-of-diffe-rence benefits: Are they desirable to customers, and can BPS deliver them? When the answer to both is yes, a point of difference can become a strong, favorable, unique brand association.

Desirability: To qualify as desirable, a point of difference must be perceived by the brand’s audience as both relevant and believable. Relevance is easily over-looked. It’s worth noting that as long as benefits are perceived as enhancing performance, they needn’t have any real effect. In the case of BPS, the quality of being a local merchant services provider could be perceived as relevant to local business owners because of the reliability and accountability it offers to deal with a merchant services provider located in the same community as your business; a quality that’s both believable and desirable.

Deliverability: A product’s point of difference needs to meet three deliverability criteria. First, creating the point of difference must be feasible. Second, positioning on a particular benefit must be profitable. And finally, the positioning must be preemptive, defensible, and difficult to attack. While consumers may find low rates or bundle promotions attractive as points of difference, all too often these features compromise profitability and are easily imitated.

5. Marketing Strategies

5.1 Branding and Positioning

Objective: The objective of this strategy is to position the BPS brand not only as the preferred mer-chant services provider, but as the local business that being from the same community, identifies with its clients and partners; therefore, cares about their continuous business success. The proposed brand positioning will also achieve BPS’s brand differentiation among its competitors. Pairing a local and attentive approach to conducting business, along with the service and technology capabilities of a major enterprise. “Technology that Excels. Support that Cares”.

Methodology: Strategies to be implemented to achieve the objective are:

- Featured content from current BPS customers about their experiences working with BPS, their success stories, and how BPS has always been there. Potential customers will see these local stories as experiences they can relate to, and in return, they will be more likely to reward BPS with their business and trust.

- Development of new branding material and branded content reflecting BPS core values and competences emphasizing on its local way of conducting business and customer service focus. In other words, development of better branded content that promotes BPS brand image.

5.2 Digital and Online Marketing

Objective: The objective of this strategy is to position BPS’s brand and offerings in the place where business owners and decision-makers spend most of their free time, online. This strategy will enable BPS to be the first search result whenever any potential customers are searching for its related pro-ducts and services. BPS should be the one they find first, click through to and ultimately either make a purchase or query. Similar to the brand strategy, the digital strategy and campaign should focus on improving brand awareness and establishing a strong online presence. Support

Methodology: Strategies to be implemented to achieve the objective are:

PPC: Used when venturing to new markets such as Harlingen

SEO: Establish online presence in unexploited markets. Leverage niche services through SEO such as “pos systems” or particular merchant services technologies (Clover).

E-mail marketing: Keep proactive communication and leverage upselling. Should generate qualified leads as well as nurture current customers. (Drip campaign, segmented)

Social Media: Aligned with brand and overal advertising strategy to reinforce BPS brand image, positio-ning and points of differentiation. Answer support questions in real time and introduce new products and services.

5.3 Traditional Marketing

Objective: The objective of this strategy is to leverage traditional media and other communication channels to positively position the BPS brand and its service offerings within the market in order to bring awareness to the brand and drive new leads and sales. Traditional marketing also serves as a great tool to earn credibility and trust from the local business community, particularly through local bu-siness and non-profit events and publications. The same as in the previous strategies, traditional mar-keting mediums will focus on transmitting BPS’s brand message of “Technology that Excels. Support that Cares”, more specifically, its local way of conducting business and its focus on quality customer service.

Methodology: Strategies to be implemented to achieve the objective are:

- Sales Collateral- Smart Cars- Direct Mail- Print Advertising (BA)- Chambers of Commerce events- Business organizations events- Word of mouth

5.4 Agent Technology Training

Objective: As stated in the brand strategy plan and marketing plan objectives, one of BPS’s main focuses will be on improving its agents’ training process in order to develop a competitive advantage based on superior customer service and tech support. The objective of this strategy is to position BPS as a local, trusted business partner and reliable merchant services provider, highly leveraged by the training and supporting material that its staff will have available. Embrace disruptive technology and introduce new versions of technology solutions to the market

Methodology: Strategies to be implemented to achieve the objective are:

- Improved recruiting process- Identify technology solutions- Maximize the potential use through 3rd party apps- Detailed and informative training process- Sales-process Guide (binder)- Agent’s Sales supporting and promotional material

5.5 Internal Agent Management

Objective: The overall objective of this strategy is to create accountability amongst the organization and its agents as well as creating a more efficient sales process and competitive environment that can drive sales by motivating and incentivizing sales agents through different systems and programs. The creation of such environment and efficient reward programs will enable BPS to send better trained agents to the field that are capable of closing sales but are also committed to driving results and more importantly, providing quality customer service.

Methodology: Strategies to be implemented to achieve the objective are:

- Leaderboards- Streamline inventory (limiting hardware options)- Agent of the Month- Incentives Program- Monthly Luncheons- Company getaways- CRM

5.6 Customer Retention and Customer Service

Objective: Currently, BPS agents know how to follow up on leads and close a sale. However, there isn’t a clear process or system that helps them retain those customers, which is one of the most important characteristics of customer service. It is also important to note that acquiring a new customer is more expensive than retaining a current one, that’s the importance of customer retention. The objective of this strategy is to provide a clear guide for agents on how to retain customers, follow up on queries and leverage technology to streamline their workflow. This will significantly increase the amount of cu-stomers that each agent is able to support while keeping it efficient and orderly. It will also enable each agent to take on more clients which in return menas a larger return to them.

Methodology: Strategies to be implemented to achieve the objective are:

- Centralized Support- Cross-selling and up-selling- CRM

5.6.a The BPS Way: More on CRM, Centralized Support and Agent Support

Customer Relationship Management System

The custom-built CRM system will become the infrastructure of the company’s business processes, in-tegrating both sales and support into one application. The system will provide reports of the business activity and bring both data and accountability to the company and agents. The establishment of these business processes will allow BPS to become a scalable company and venture into new territories whi-le keeping sales agents on track to grow their portfolios while retaining current customers and offering superior satisfaction.

Contact Management

The integrated contact management feature will be comprised of two primary lists: “Leads” & “Custo-mers”. Leads will be a continuous growing list of potential clients that the agent has contacted and is working on. After a lead is created, depending on the feedback from the client, they will either move into a deal proposal, meaning the lead is interested, or they will be disqualified, meaning that they are not interested. Unqualified leads will be visible to anyone in the system in order for other agents to save time before reaching out to these clients who are not qualified.

A sales process will be divided in 4 stages: Screening stage, Proposal stage, Closing stage, and Follow-up stage. Once the lead has been won, it will be converted into a customer.

Goals

In order to motivate agents to regularly use the CRM system, a goals program will be established. An example of a goal is establishing that agents visit 50 leads a week. A set of requirements will be put in place for agents. In this case, the agent must add 50 leads and log a visit with notes on what actual-ly took place during the visit to qualify as one of the 50 leads. A progress bar will be displayed in the dashboard and a live leaderboard will be displayed throughout the workplace in order to promote a competitive environment among agents and growth in the company. Incentives will also be provided to the top performers.

Centralized Support

Now that customers have been centralized into one platform, support will be migrated from zendesk into the CRM platform. By providing new customers with a welcome packaged, and support stickers on their equipment routing them to call (956) 631 1234, we will begin centralizing support tickets in one place, and create a role of a manager. This manager will have access to the full BPS customer databa-se, and must sign the appropriate paperwork in order to take on the role.

As a customer, there will be fields, in order to track the customers, equipment, card processor, and history of communication in between the rep and them.

This person will receive tickets via phone & email, and input them into the customer profile from the CRM. When doing so the agent will receive an SMS notification of a new ticket, and based on the urgency will have a timeframe to close it. The manager duty will include holding agents accountable of closing tickets, and following-up with clients to make sure the service was above par.

Agent Support

Centralizing support will not end merchants calling agents directly, in-order to minimize that. Agents have been provided business cards with a call-fire number. Utilizing the call-fire API we will aim to integrate both voice calls & SMS into the CRM. Incoming voice calls will be matched with existing customers in the database, and the recordings saved for future use. Agents will be instructed to always open a ticket, following a call.

Manager will go through calls, and make sure agents are being held accountable of following the proper procedure. Failure to do so will result in disqualification of company incentive programs.