Describe about the Marketing Fundamentals for Business Strategy and Recommendations.
This report helps to know about Open Family Australia. It shows the organization’s overview and service description, company’s micro and macro environment, market segmentation, market targeting and consumer profile, differentiation and positioning. Open Family Australia is an organization that belongs to the part of youth service providers of Australia among non-profit sectors of the country. Open Family Australia observed that school dropout rate is increasing among Australian youth thereby rendering them jobless due to lack of skills and knowledge. The aim of the organisation is to help such individuals in Melbourne. Further, the organisation is affected by changing social trend of increased dropout and family issues and low economic status of certain groups that provide it with its customers. Moreover, stable political parties, government agencies and community help the organisation in its endeavors. The target market of the organization divided into two parts in the one part it contain the poor youth and the another part of the target market consists of different excited youth between the age group of 18 to 35 years who are accountable for providing the service to the target customers. Further, the organization requires appropriate promotional strategy that will help in obtaining significant market share in this field. Moreover, the company seeks to position itself as the best service provider to the youth in Melbourne by building a distinct brand image among its target market. Further, it seeks to differentiate it services by adding a touch of sympathy, empathy and care to it for helping its clients.
The purpose of this report is to highlight the role and aspects of integrated marketing mix in promotion strategy for Open Family Australia. Further, recommendations for promotional tools that can be used to establish the organisation as brand and create awareness among people about their services and ways to volunteer and donate for the organisation has been provided.
Promotional Mix
Integrated Marketing Communication refers to introduction of all the techniques of brand promotion to promote a specific products and services along with target customers. In integrated marketing communication, all aspects of marketing communication work mutually for improving sales of products and services (Blakeman, 2014). It is essential to know about customers perceptions about the company’s product for the marketers (Chitty, Barker, Valos, and Shimp, 2011).
Integrated Marketing communication tools include various methods for promoting a service such as advertising, direct marketing, sponsorship marketing, promoting through social media like Twitter, Facebook, etc. Integrated marketing communications includes coordination and integration of boulevard, communication tools and sources within the organization that minimizes the cost of services and maximizes the impact on customers (Yeshin, 2012). Promotion mix focuses mainly on the customers and ways to sell and deliver products and services to the customers. While, integrated marketing communication focuses on all the components of the marketing mix such as price, product, promotion and place.
Integrated marketing communication play an important role to provide the proper information to large audience. Integrated marketing communication is essential for direct interaction with the customers. Moreover, it not only promotes the products and services but also develops trust among the customers who would always join. Integrated marketing communication provides a large variety of options, which assist the companies to connect easily with the target customers. It helps in creating awareness about the services with advertising and other tools of integrated marketing communication (Olenski, 2013). It is important for the growth of the organization and customer retention. Organizations understand the worth of strategically integrating the large communications functions rather than having them operate autonomously. Integrated marketing communication is one of the simplest ways for an organization to maximize the profits on its investment in promotion and marketing. IMC is considered as a key element of competitive advantage by various organizations because sales and profit are increased while saving the money, stress and time (Saeed et al., 2013).
Recommended Promotion Tools and Elements
Integrated marketing communication uses various tools that help to promote the product and service of organization that includes personal selling, advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion and sponsorship (Blakeman, 2014). Further, it includes various social media tools such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube and many more. In the context of Open Family Australia NGO, promotional tools should be specific and cost saving as well as it should be fulfilling organizational objectives. It should use these promotional tools such as advertising, direct marketing, events and social media platforms because besides being cost effective, these promotional tools will provide better results to organization in terms of greater awareness and wider market reach.
Advertising: Open Family Australia should use advertising to promote its services. Advertising refers to an organizational activity to promote the product and service. This organization can advertise its services by using some techniques that includes print media, official website and radio (Shimp and Andrews, 2012). These are specific tools for advertising the service of NGO. Open family Australia can use official website and print media that includes newspaper, posters and flyers. The organization can use official website to convey the message or information to public. It can upload photographs, videos and social events related information at the website. Website requires one time investment to build but it can be used as a cost-free advising too for the rest of its life. To attract maximum audience and increase greater awareness, the organization should used newspaper that can contain an article or advertisement about NGO, its services and volunteer’s contribution. All age group people use newspapers that will help to attract large audience at low cost.
Open family Australia can use posters and flyers for advertisement. Posters and flyers is an effective way to build awareness in public. It can contain a message or attractive tagline or some detailed information and message that can be easily distributed and display anywhere that includes all educational institutes, public transportation ways and stands and other public places (Farabi, 2012). It can attract large number of audience at low cost. These advertising tools helps in greater awareness and wider market reach. It provides information to audience at low cost. Therefore, Open Family Australia should use these advertising tools for promotion of NGO.
Events: Open Family Australia should use event as a tool of integrated marketing communication to promote its services. Events refer to gathering of people to promote a product or service, convey a message and build the awareness among public (Vel and Sharma, 2010). The organization can organize various events for social welfare as well as they can share the social message with public. Organization can also tie up with small enterprises, educational institutes and other public places to conduct its events. The main objectives of organizing an event are to build awareness about social welfare. They can encourage the youth to work as volunteers and fill up application form at online or offline basis. At the time of event, volunteers can share their views, experiences and expectation from NGO with the audiences. Thus, audience can also ask some questions to them. It is a better way of share the views and experience with public. In the event, NGO can facilitate volunteers which will not only increase the morale of the one associated with the organisation, but also motivate others to join them. Therefore, it can be recommended that Open Family Australia should organize events that will help them to fulfill organizational as well as marketing objectives.
Direct marketing refers to directly communication with target audience using email, telephone and text message. This media helps to convey message to target audience as well as collect the customer data and feedback about the particular product and service provided by company (Percy, 2014). Open Family Australia can use direct marketing to promote the service and generate the awareness of people. They can directly inform large organization, political parties and government agencies via text message, telephone or emails for fund related help. Thus, Open Family Australia can raise the fund that can be used for social welfare and fulfill its objectives.
Direct marketing will provide better result to Open Family Australia in terms of availing large donations for its welfare activities from corporate. Therefore, it should use this promotional tool.
Social media: Currently, social media is an effective tool to convey information through social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube and many more (Koontz and Mon, 2014). It is the best way to promote services among target audience. Social media helps in build public relations, create new contacts and convey information to large audience. Social media use
Open Family Australia should use social media to promote the service via social media tools. They can interact with large number of audience and provide information about social welfare. They can upload NGO related the photographs, social welfare moments and memories on social media platforms where audience’s review, likes and comment can shows their participation and interest. Further the organization can create an official page that should contain all information and regular updates. They can use Twitter to share the information about social welfare with public. Open Family Australia should use YouTube for sharing the videos and documentaries related to experiences of its members and volunteers (Schaffer, 2013). These video can also contain the activities and achievement of NGO to communicate that their work is genuine and is benefitting the society. It helps to generate awareness of audience for social welfare. Open Family Australia is targeting youth and in the current scenario, the youth of Australia is actively participating at social media therefore the organization can convey their message via social media. As well as it can suggest to youth for work as voluntaries. Social media will help Open Family Australia in creating greater awareness and wider market reach. Hence, organization should use this promotional tool as it is also cost effective.
Conclusion
Open Family Australia is working towards the welfare of the society of Australia. The increased school dropouts, jobless youth, family issues and social isolation caused by technology provides large scope for the organisation to provide its services to the troubled youth aged between 15-25 years, which is also its target market. Moreover, the company can seek help from educated youth and other government and business organisations to volunteer in providing services and donate for the welfare of socially troubled and underprivileged youth. For this, the organisation needs to position and establish itself as a brand and generate awareness among its target market (clients and volunteers/donors) regarding its services and benefits created.
Further, it has been recommended that Open Family should use advertising, events, direct selling and social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, You Tube, etc. as a part of its integrated marketing strategy to create awareness, increase the percentage of members and volunteer applications. The company can use events and direct marketing to develop public relations, gain instant feedbacks and gauge reaction of its target market. Advertisement through newspaper, flyers and radio will act as a cost effective methods to reach large segments of target market. On the contrary, social media platforms can be used for content marketing to share stories and to upload videos of members that will share their experiences and benefits.
Moreover, the organisation can use increase in number of members, volunteers and donors as a measure to gauge the success of its marketing campaign. Additionally, number of likes, shares and comments on social media platforms can also represent the extent to which the organisations’ content is being read, liked and shared by its target audience. This will help Open Family Australia to measure the success of its communication plan.
References
Chitty, W. Barker, N. Valos, M. Shimp, T. (2011) Integrated Marketing Communications. 3rdedn. United States: Cengage Learning
Blakeman, R. (2014) Integrated Marketing Communication: Creative Strategy from Idea to Implementation. 2nd edn Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
Yeshin, T. (2012) Integrated Marketing Communication. London: Routledge
Olenski, S. (2013) Why Integrated Marketing Communications Is More Important Than Ever, Forbes. [Online].Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2013/09/16/why-integrated-marketing-communications-is-more-important-than-ever/#1c7d1e5d2325 (Assessed: 16 December 2016)
Saeed, R. Naeem, B. Bilal, M. and Naz, U. (2013) Integrated Marketing Communication: A Review Paper, Integrated Marketing Communication: A Review Paper, 5(5), pp.124-133
Blakeman, R. (2014) Integrated Marketing Communication: Creative Strategy from Idea to Implementation. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Farabi, Y. (2012) Marketing Plan of Virgin Australia. Munich: GRIN Verlag.
Koontz, C. and Mon, L. (2014) Marketing and Social Media: A Guide for Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Percy, L. (2014) Strategic Integrated Marketing Communications. UK: Routledge.
Shimp, T. A. and Andrews, J. C. (2012) Advertising Promotion and Other Aspects of Integrated Marketing Communications. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Schaffer, N. (2013) Maximize Your Social: A One-Stop Guide to Building a Social Media Strategy for Marketing and Business Success. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Vel, P. and Sharme, R. (2010) Megamarketing an Event using Integrated Marketing communications, Event marketing, 11(6), pp. 1-21, [Online]. Available at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1340&context=dubaipapers (Accessed: 16 December 2016).
Vel, P. and Sharma, R. (2010) Mega marketing an Event using Integrated Marketing communications, Event marketing, 11(6), pp. 1-21, [Online]. Available at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1340&context=dubaipapers (Accessed: 16 December 2016).
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