Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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Contents
Answer to the question no. 1........................................................................................................................ 1 Answer to the question no. 2........................................................................................................................ 2 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Print Materials:.................................................................................................................................. 2 Advertising:....................................................................................................................................... 2 Sales promotion: ............................................................................................................................... 2 Public relations: ................................................................................................................................ 2 Sponsorship:...................................................................................................................................... 3 Internet: ............................................................................................................................................. 3
Answer to the question no. 3........................................................................................................................ 4 Setting the objectives ............................................................................................................................ 4 Timeframe and budget .......................................................................................................................... 4 Choosing a market segment .................................................................................................................. 5 Finalizing the marketing strategies and communication mix ............................................................... 5 Implementing the planning and strategies............................................................................................. 5 Monitoring and evaluating of the progress ........................................................................................... 5 Marketing communications plan for Premier Inn ..................................................................................... 5 Answer to the question no. 4: ...................................................................................................................... 8 Answer to the question no. 5...................................................................................................................... 10 Integrated Marketing Communication .................................................................................................... 10 Monitoring and evaluation ...................................................................................................................... 11 Market Research: ................................................................................................................................ 11 Response Measurement: ..................................................................................................................... 12 References .................................................................................................................................................. 13
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called public relation. Its low cost feature and ability to reduce negative opinion make it one of the major communication tools. But it can also give negative results when customers fail to understand the message. Besides it is mainly use when organization tries to maintain its goodwill in case of any crisis and thus organization has relatively little opportunity to control the content, time and audience of the information communicated. 5. Sponsorship: This is now a popular tool of communication. Organizations get themselves attached with some big events through sponsorship. As these events are generally some highly popular events, organization can get the attention of huge amount of potential customers. Sponsorship is effective as people learn about the message the company is conveying very easily when they come to these events. It can also increase the reputation of the organization. Weakness of this element of communication mix is that it is generally very expensive. Besides, organization has little opportunity to communicate customers in details in this method. 6. Internet: The present era of technology has made the internet a strong element of market communication mix. From children to adult all are now involved with internet in one or other ways. Internet has given lots of flexibility and wide range of facilities in communication. Web banner, classified ads, pop-up screen etc. are some ways of giving advertisement through internet. Further organization can communicate their valuable information to the customers by their community pages e.g. in Facebook, twitter. Effectiveness of this tool is that organization can get the facilities of all previous tools altogether in this single tool and it can get to both the individual customers and customer groups. Weakness is that bad practice by many parties in internet has make the medium less reliable to customers and thus it fails to accomplish the objective of communication.
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These steps construct the structure of the marketing communications plan. All these steps are explained below: Setting the objectives First and very important step of communications planning is to set the objectives or motives or purposes of the marketing campaign under planning. These objectives are important because the following steps and all the activities will be done based on fulfillment of these objectives. These are in turn set to achieve the broad marketing objective of the organization. These objectives can be classified into three broad category learn, feel and do. In the first category the company tries to make people aware of the company or its product or brand. In the second category it tries to create a positive feeling or believe about the company and its product or service. Finally in Do category objective, organization tries to focus on inducing people to be involved in the real purchase of the products or services of the organization. (Bowie & Buttle, 2004) Timeframe and budget The company needs to determine the timeframe for this marketing campaign which will tell about the time limit within which each of the objectives should be achieved. This can work as a controlling mechanism. Timeframe gives much detail instruction to the parties under the responsibility of implementing the communications plan. Most of the times, this is done for a shorter time period e.g. 5 months or 1 year. But long term objectives are also set and timeframe can be longer. On the other hand the management also needs to make a budget of the marketing communications plan. Without budget the campaign can be uncontrollable. Budgeting involves the identification of the amount of fund needed to conduct the promotional plan and also the
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determination of the allocation of this fund. There can be many approaches to prepare this budget, but the mostly used method is percentage of sales. Choosing a market segment All the communication campaign is not targeted to all the customers of a specific organization. Many times organizations target a single or multiple groups of customers to whom the message of the communication campaign is conveyed. It is always important that the information to be communicated through the campaign must be communicated to the most suitable customer or customers at the most suitable time. (McCabe, 2009) Choosing the right group will help the company in achieving the objectives as well as help the company to avoid large loss of unsuccessful marketing campaign. Finalizing the marketing strategies and communication mix In this step, the detail marketing plan is made through choosing the appropriate strategies for the communication and the communication mix for the campaign. Depending upon the strategies in this stage, management adjusts the budget and time frame of the campaign also. How the campaign will communicate the planned message to the audience, how the result of this campaign will be measured, which Medias to used and in which extent, etc. are some of the issues determined in this level. Implementing the planning and strategies Strategies taken will have no value until these are implemented properly and according to the plan. Success of every plan depends on its proper implementation. Implementation phase thus must be completed carefully as it is critical for the achievement of the objectives of the communication campaign. Monitoring and evaluating of the progress Finally the progress and activities of the communication campaign must be regularly monitored and evaluated. Any error identified must be solved instantaneously for ensuring better accomplishment of the marketing campaign. Marketing communications plan for Premier Inn Here we have taken a hypothetical case of marketing campaign by Premier Inn. As a market leader of hotel business Premier Inn has already gathered huge reputation and has won several awards for its superior performance and cost leadership. Its wide availability is also a great factor of its success. But it has found out that for being a large hotel company many people think it is only expert in accommodation services. This means people are not fully aware of its high quality restaurant services and other services, like countrys best swimming training program held by the hotel. Finally, for the upcoming Wimbledon 2013, many tourists will come to the UK and many of those will have a visit in many tourist places of UK. Premier Inn wants to grab most of those tourists to its hotels by making them aware of the superiority of the hotel.
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The marketing objectives of the communications plan are: 1. Making 50% of the people of UK aware of the high quality restaurant service of the hotel within the next 2 months. 2. Making all of the customers of Premier Inn aware about its high quality restaurant service within the next month. 3. Making the Swimming training program popular in all the regions of UK within next three months. 4. Communicating the superior services of the hotel to all the potential customers of around the world who are planning to watch the Wimbledon 2013 and capture more than 50% of these viewers. To accomplish the above objectives the company will target three types of audiences. Firstly, it will target the people who want to watch the Wimbledon 2013 as well as want to get a view of different places of UK. Secondly, it will target the customers who want to learn swimming within the time spent in the hotel. And finally the customers either existing or potential who want to have high quality restaurants for their meals. Premier will use several communication tools for achieving its objectives. These are: 1. In its website, a separate page will be opened which will address all the information about its restaurants and the dishes available in these restaurants. Pictures of the food items and the facilities will be shown there to attract people. 2. A Facebook page will be open on the restaurants of Premier Inn where new dishes and new food prices will be updated. Customers will also able to comment about the quality of the restaurants which will work as promotional tool. 3. A competition will be held at different schools of UK where students won the competition will be able to attain the swimming program of the hotel with 2 days accommodation facility. 4. A commercial advertisement will be made on the Wimbledon 2013 and the attractive places of UK along with the facilities of the Premier Inn hotel to attract people to visit UK and to take the service of Premier Inn. 5. Wimbledon 2013 will be sponsored by Premier Inn to get higher media coverage. 6. Facebook ads will be made to let people know about Premier Inn and its services. 7. In different website of recipes, advertisement will be placed about the restaurants of the company. The company will follow the timeframe given in figure 1.
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Communication Mix
Website Facebook Page Facebook Ad Ads in other website Commercial Advertisement Sponsorship Competition
Month
April May June
Figure 1: Time frame of marketing communications plan A simplified budget of this marketing communication plan is given in the following table: Items Costs Brochures and other printed materials 1000 Commercial Advertisement 10000 Web ads 2500 Facebook ads 1000 Radio 1,200 Newspapers 500 Billboards 500 Sponsorship 400000 Competition 12000 Total Cost 416700 How the communication campaign will be monitored and evaluated is described in the following answers.
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hotel room with family. Through arranging the competition Premier Inn will get the attention of the people about its swimming training program. People will learn about the program and thus the ignorance about the other services of the hotel will be known to the people. When the competition proceeds, its excitement will make people interested about the service and thus they will try to learn more about the service. They will visit the webpage of the company and also communicate with people working in conduction the competition program. The winner students and their family will get the chance to enjoy the facilities and they will share their experience with others ranging from relatives to the media. This will in turn work as the promotion of the service and their shared experience will help in making people believe the program is the best one in the whole country. Finally, as people start to believe the program as the best one, they will ultimately be engaged in getting the service from the hotel. So, the marketing campaign will be successful by causing actions. And the final task is to grab the largest portion of the tourists who come to UK for attending the Wimbledon 2013 and visiting the important tourist spots. The company will sponsor the event which will provide it with great media coverage as whenever the name of the event is mentioned; the name of the company will automatically be conveyed to the audience. As a result many people will come to know about the company including the targeted tourists. This will work as the tool of getting attention. Besides, the commercial advertisement will be shown on the TV. This advertisement will attract the people to the campaign of the company. When the people will get the commercial attractive they will watch it carefully and the attractiveness of the advertisement will create some interest among them about the tour. People who plan to visit UK will then consider the hotel to be selected for their accommodation alternative. They will gather required information about the services and cost of the hotel. And the advertisement and the companys website will provide them with lots of information which will make them to believe about the superiority of the company. Features mentioned in the advertisement will also help in making people believe about the quality and cost efficiency of the company. This will create the desire for the customers. And finally this desire will turn into sales when the company will be able to keep its reputation as well as its quality. So in each case AIDA model has a close link with the success of the communication campaign. Without using the model properly the efforts of the company will become vague. In the first case, the advertisement in different websites and in Facebook must be made in such a way thus the customers feel need to click on the ads. If the message on the ads are not properly constructed and thus people do not feel any sort of attention the campaign will fail to bring the awareness of the people and thus its superior service will add no value. Again, for making the swimming program popular and successful, the competition must be arrange in a manner thus the students find it interesting to participate and the people find it worthy to give attention. Promotion of the competition must be done in a manner thus people who want to get expert in swimming will find it attractive. Finally the advertisement for TV commercial must be well prepared with enough information about the companys facilities because that will attract the
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attention of the customers to the company. In all case, the company also needs to care about the subsequent responsibility of making the customers effort interesting, making them believe the message and inducing them to get involved in action. If the company succeeds, all the marketing communication objectives will be met.
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controlled by different groups e.g. website will be maintained by the IT department, competition will be administered by the public relationship department; advertisement will be done by the marketing departments etc. Without proper integration and coordination, these different parties may convey different message to the same customers. This will create problem through creating confusion among the customers about the company and its products and services. Again, as the company is going to achieve three different types of objectives, proper coordination is required to ensure no any activity is creating barrier in meeting other objectives. Besides, IMC helps to reduce the cost through increasing efficiency of the marketing communications team of the company. In an Integrated Marketing Communication model, people of different departments or groups work together and they share their view and information not only for their own marketing communication objectives rather for the strategies required to achiever other objectives. As a result, the management can take much suitable strategies for communication. In the case of Premier Inn, the team responsible for arranging the competition will also convey information about customers view about the hotel and that can be helpful in determining the marketing strategies for promoting the restaurant service of the company. And as the customers targeted in the swimming training program can also belong to the targeted customer in restaurant service, this information will obviously helpful. So, IMC is very important system for the organization to take more strategic decision, to communicate the message more efficiently and to reduce the cost through making the strategies successful. Monitoring and evaluation To avoid extra cost and efforts or work pressure, many organizations try to omit this phase of marketing communication. But this is very important phase of communication as it helps in ensuring the success of the campaign and accomplishment of the objectives. Monitoring is the process of tracking all the progress and activities of the current campaign. This monitoring will help in evaluation of the campaign success in terms of meeting the objectives. Proper monitoring will ensure that communication strategies are implementing properly to achieve the objectives and this will help to adjust the activities if any error is noticed. On the other hand, evaluation will check whether the objectives are really met and how much. One thing is important in monitoring and evaluation, that the current position of the company must be known to compare it with the result after campaign and the objectives must be quantifiable for evaluation purpose. (McCabe, 2009) There are two popular methods for monitoring and evaluation procedure. First on is market research and other one is response measurement. These are described below with reference to the campaign described here about Premier Inn. Market Research: the first method is market research and it can be done either by the company itself or by the other parties appointed by the company. In market research the company will conduct survey about the effectiveness of the marketing campaign. When the company tries to introduce new brand to the market or to increase awareness of the market, it is helpful to use survey to monitor and evaluate. This survey will find out how many people have come to contact
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of the marketing campaign and how much it is successful in conveying the message and building awareness. In our creative marketing campaign, the company has the objective to make people aware of the restaurant service and swimming program. A market survey can be made where people will be asked about their idea about these services and whether they take the services. Percentage of people aware about the services will be easily identified which can be compared with the current position to determine the progress and fulfillment of the objective. Response Measurement: In this method direct action of the customer is measured as the process of evaluation. Response from the customer is taken and measured to check the progress toward achieving the objectives. Mainly from the sales generated after the campaign or numbers of people communicate to the company to learn about the companys product is considered as the parameter of evaluation. In our Premier Inn communication campaign case, it is planning to grab the largest share of the tourists who come to UK for Wimbledon and visiting UK. Here the response measurement can be finding out the number of booking made by different people for that period and numbers of people enquire about the service of the hotel. Number of likes in Facebook page can be another way to measure the response about restaurant service.
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References
Atos (2011) Promoting long-term loyalty and boosting revenue. [report] Atos. Bowie, D. and Buttle, F. (2004) Hospitality Marketing : An introduction. Burlington: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann Publications. Drypen (2008) The AIDA Model to convey communication objectives. [online] Available at: http://drypen.in/advertising/the-aida-model-to-convey-communication-objectives.html [Accessed: 4 Apr 2013]. Dwyer, F. and Tanner, J. (2002) Business Marketing: connecting stratey, Relationships and learning. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw Hill. Endpoint (2012) Premier Inn: Promising you a warm welcome. [report] Endpoint. Kotler, P. and Armstrong, G. (2012) Principles of Marketing. 14th ed. New Jersey: Pearson Education. Marketingdeviant.com (2010) AIDA Marketing Model. [online] Available at: http://marketingdeviant.com/aida-marketing-model [Accessed: 4 Apr 2013]. Mccabe, S. (2009) Marketing Communications in Tourism and Hospitality: Concepts, Strategies and Cases. Kidlington: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann Publications. Nickstraffictricks.com (2012) The AIDA Model Still Relevant For Web Marketing. [online] Available at: http://nickstraffictricks.com/8212_the-aida-model-still-relevant-for-webmarketing/ [Accessed: 4 Apr 2013]. Whitbread.co.uk (2012) Premier Inn | Our brands | Whitbread. [online] Available at: http://www.whitbread.co.uk/whitbread/ourbrands/premierinn.html [Accessed: 2 Apr 2013].
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