Marketing Plan For Syndicate: Customer Engagement And Social Media Marketing

About Syndicate

Overview of the Company:

Syndicate is one of the recognizable medium enterprises among the scooter stores established in the market of Australia. This particular company has gained immense reputation in Australian market by impressing the scooter lovers (syndicatestore.com.au, 2018). Free style scooter culture is the primary USP of the company. After gaining image and reputation as a scooter shop, the business experts have decided to expand their entire process of business in various geographical backgrounds and attitudes.

In this very specific part, the current location of the company along with its contact detailed has been provided and these are as follows:

9/1177 Wynnum Rd, Save City Shopping Centre, Cannon Hill [next to Autobahn] – 2 minute drive from our old shop!
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday
 9:00 – 5:00  ///  Sun 10:00 – 2:00
Phone number: 07 38903269
Email: [email protected]

Headquartered in Cannon Hill, the company has started their journey as a freestyle scooter store, a shop that provides superior quality of scooters in affordable price (West, Ford & Ibrahim, 2015). This particular venture is already reputed for young generations especially for the college goers as well as kids. With the gradual flow of time, Syndicate has decided to expand its entire process of business by rendering product diversity (Bagautdinova et al., 2012). At the very beginning the scooters were only available for young people. After that the business experts have launched kids scooters, adult scooters and so on.       

While presenting the products and services it is however observed that scooter is the core product based on which the reputation of Syndicate is highly dependent. The brands which are primarily available from the store of Syndicate include Addict, Envy, Ethic, Flavour, Longway, MGP,, Micro and so on. With the gradual and dynamic flow of business the organization has decided to introduce product diversity by increasing the number of brands. Later on Syndicate has launched Zycom, Wise and Longway for creating their market demand high. As per customer services, Syndicate has appointed those employees who are professionally trained (Chaffey & Smith, 2013). On the other hand, the customer service managers are very much professional to behave with the employees with proper approach. Therefore, employees deliver fast services to the customers, which ultimately help in meeting needs and demands of the customers of various age groups.

As per current market analysis, Australian scooter industry has segmented their market by regional geographic boundaries. The target customers are also restricted within specific regional backgrounds (Dibrell, Craig & Neubaum, 2014). In this very specific study, it is however observed that the business experts of Syndicate at the very beginning were restricted within Australian scooter industry due to limited number of workforces. It is however observed that Australian scooter industry is constituted with large number of competitors (Sakas, Vlachos & Nasiopoulos, 2014). Therefore, while marketing industry market segmentation the scooter industry has primarily targeted to enhance their product diversity to render varieties of products and services (Foxall, 2014).    

Target Customers

People belonging to the cities of Australia in the age group of 20 to 35 are the main target audience (Galliers & Leidner, 2014). The customers tend to focus on expanding their entire process of business in other geographic region as well.

People in the age group of 20 to 35 are the primary target audience. The people do not have to be high-income status (Getz, 2012). The customers having average income can easily afford the price fixed by the business experts of Syndicate. In addition, the marketing executives of Syndicate have given equal priority to both male and female customers.    

As per geographic background of Syndicate, the business experts have primarily targeted some of the most popular places of Australia. The places include Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast, Cairns, Perth and so on.   

Syndicate has targeted those customers who are from different psychological and cultural backgrounds and attitudes. People having different beliefs and values can easily receive the services of Syndicate. The organization is flexible in serving different kinds of products and services (Ghezzi, Cortimiglia & Frank, 2015). In this kind of situation, the number of target customers is huge in range.     

VALS category is one of the most effective frameworks of making proper psychographic segmentation. As per values, attitudes and lifestyle of target customers the business experts tend to focus on designing their products as well as services.

In order to engage the attention of customers the business experts have grabbed three major ways.

In numerous cases, the business experts intend to make an effective rapport with the customers at their own stores. While receiving the services the customer service executives intend to show an effective professional gesture (Gilligan & Wilson, 2012). With the help of this gesture, the customers show their positive attitude in using the service again. Syndicate intends to follow this effective strategy so that customers tend to revisit their stores.

In order to grab the attention of customers the business experts tend to choose traditional media channels (Ramaseshan, Ishak & Rabbanee, 2013). With the help of traditional media channels, the business experts can multiply the messages in different geographic region. Syndicate primarily follows electronic media for engaging the customers through audio-visual presentation. 

In current business scenario, online and social media is the most effective vehicles of engaging the customers. Among most popular new media vehicles the name of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube are the most prominent (Jones et al., 2014). In addition, it has also been observed that the customers associated with Syndicate can gain immense knowledge and information from social media updates.    

Product Diversity

In this very specific table, an effective comparison is conducted by evaluating the performances of other competitors:

Aspects of comparative analysis	Syndicate	Allbikes	Skater HQ
Product diversity	Different brands of scooters such as Addict, Envy, Ethic, Flavour, Longway, MGP,, Micro are available from Syndicate stores	Allbikes is primarily reputed for motor scooter	Skater HQ is restricted within one particular product which only concentrates on Skaters
Price strategy	The price range of Syndicate is very average, which is affordable for any kind of customers.	Allbikes always follows high price range which attracts most of the premium customers	Skater HQ always follows high price range which attracts most of the premium customers
Market threats	Syndicate has to face market threat in order to attract premium customers	Allbikes has to face challenges in enhancing their number of customers	Skater HQ has to face market threats from Syndicate due to the lack of their product diversity.

Strengths v Huge number of target customers v The marketing plans and activities are very well organized which can easily attracts the customers	Weakness v Few number of customer executives to plan the promotional activities v Lack of effective use of social media
Opportunities v Syndicate has immense opportunity to enter in the market of other geographic boundaries	Threats v Syndicate has to face market threat in order to attract premium customers

Political	Australian political set up is stable for running a business venture. Syndicate a can follow government regulations properly due to a transparent policies
Economic	Australia being economically developed country can gather sufficient number of target customers for availing the services of Syndicate.
Socio-cultural	Large number of people belonging to different socio-cultural backgrounds can use Syndicate
Technological	Australia is technologically advanced country; therefore, Syndicate needs to be more advanced in technology for drawing the attention of people
Environmental	Syndicate needs to follow environmental acts and regulation so that their products do not make any harm for the environment.
Legal	While running their business Syndicate has strictly maintained employability act with the help of which the business experts have to give priority to the needs and demands of the employees

Overall Objectives of the New Plan:   ?

• To expand the business in global market by increasing number of products
• To render more professionalism among thecustomer service executives for grabbing the attention of customers belonging to other geographic backgrounds

As per geographic background of Syndicate, the business experts have primarily targeted some of the most popular places all over the World in order to globalize the business. Syndicate has targeted those customers who are from different psychological and cultural backgrounds and attitudes (Jugenheimer, Sheehan & Kelley, 2015). The customers having average income can easily afford the price fixed by the business experts of Syndicate. In addition, in new marketing plan the marketing executives of Syndicate will give equal priority to both male and female customers.    

It has been observed that online and social media is the most effective vehicles of engaging the customers (Mihart, 2012). It has also been observed that the customers associated with Syndicate can gain immense knowledge and information from social media updates. Therefore, the business experts have decided to avoid traditional media or direct marketing (Lee & Lam, 2012). Social media is the only platform with the help of which customers of various geographic culture and backgrounds can be involved.   

As innovative components in overall marketing plan, Syndicate would like to include 

• Audio-visual campaign
• Financial budget of profit and loss
• New product diversification strategy

In order to design the new marketing plan the components that need to be included are as follows:

• Research and development team who will make current trends of market
• New media promotional plan to attract the attention of large number of customers
• Implementation of process mapping tool to evaluate the way of progress

In order to implement the new marketing plan the business experts would have to focus on implementing advanced technology with Syndicate operations. As a result, employees can give a constant update regarding the customers’ response (Lidstone & MacLennan, 2017). Employees need to receive an effective training and development session as well. With the help of effective training and development session, the employees would be able to efficiently operate the advancement of technology (McDonald & Wilson, 2016).  

Elements to be Monitored and how they will be Measured 

After evaluating the marketing plan of Syndicate it has been observed that the business experts need to monitor on some of the most effective issues. The identified issues are as follows:

• Lack of attractive campaign strategy to draw the attention of customers
• Lack of multi-lingual flexibility for grabbing the attention of customers

Mitigation strategies are as follows:

• The business experts would have to make an attractive audio-visual aid for promotional activities
• The customer executives need to grab multi-lingual competency so that they can entertain all kinds of customers

KPI Targets 

The KPI targets that Syndicate has set as their new marketing plan are as follows:

• To expand the business in multinational countries and to gain the attention of international customers
• To launch e-commerce business so that the number of customers can be raised

In order to make an effective promotional campaign, Syndicate should make an effective marketing budget so that the customers do not have to face challenges in getting in-depth overview about the products and services.

Promotion Tools	Amount (AUD$)
	(in AUD$)
Digital Media Marketing Tools
Facebook	AUD$4,000
Twitter	AUD$5,000
Youtube	AUD$7,500
Total Social Media Marketing expenses	AUD$16,500
Other Online Marketing Media
E-mail Marketing	AUD$25,000
Online Display advertisements	AUD$10,000
Other Online promotional Campaigns	AUD$29,000
Total Budget for Online Media	AUD$64,000
Traditional Marketing Media
Newspapers	AUD$10,000
Magazines	AUD$30,000
Total Print Media	AUD$40,000
TV Channels	AUD$75,000
Billboards	AUD$30,000
Total	AUD$105,000
Total Required Budget for Promotion	AUD$225,500

The primary resources based on which Syndicate has established their business in different geographic boundaries of Australia are as follows:

• Technological resources: All internet expense, brad brand connections, computers, bid data tools and so on   
• Physical equipments: Dining tables, chairs, electricity, utensils and so on
• Human resources: The employees associated with the operations, the managerial departments controlling the business and the facility executives facilitating the employees as well as the managers

Conclusion and Recommendation 

After conducting the entire marketing plan on Syndicate, the recommendations are as follows:

• Syndicateneed to be focused more on social media campaign rather than focusing on traditional media. In current business scenario, it has been observed that the target customers are from various geographical backgrounds and cultural attitudes. In order to grab the attention of those customers the business experts need to focus on social media platform so that customers from various geographical backgrounds and attitudes can get detailed knowledge and overview about the products and services
• The campaign that the marketing executive has created so far is based on audio-display illustration. Therefore, large number of people did not show their interest in viewing their message. However, in order to overcome this kind of situation, the business experts of Syndicatecan implement audio-visual clips on social media pages to make the entire marketing and promotional plan more colourful and attractive.         

After evaluating the entire study, it can be thus concluded that the business experts of Syndicate at the very beginning were restricted within Australian scooter industry due to limited number of workforces. The customers having average income can easily afford the price fixed by the business experts of Syndicate. People having different beliefs and values can easily receive the services of Syndicate. The organization is flexible in serving different flavoured of products and services.

Competitive Analysis

The study has also added that while receiving the services the customer service executives intend to show an effective professional gesture. Among most popular new media vehicles the name of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube are the most prominent. In addition, it has also been observed that the customers associated with Syndicate can gain immense knowledge and information from social media updates. In order to make an effective promotional campaign, Syndicate has made an effective marketing budget so that the customers do not have to face challenges in getting in-depth overview about the products and services.

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