Analysis of Marketing Strategies and Practices

This assignment provides a detailed analysis of various marketing strategies and practices from academic sources. It includes a list of references to relevant studies and articles on topics such as niche marketing, account-based marketing, hospitality marketing, social marketing, sports marketing, and e-commerce strategies. The summary also mentions the importance of digital marketing plans for business growth and development.

Marketing Essentials

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1 Explaining duties and responsibilities for marketing officers and structure and operations
of marketing department.........................................................................................................1
P2 Explaining how these duties and responsibilities will contribute to wider organisational
objectives................................................................................................................................3
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................4
P3 Using 7P's compare Your destination approach with National express in achieving
business objectives.................................................................................................................4
P4 Producing a basic marketing plan for nationwide expansion............................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
For a company to have its own marketing department who can look after the
promotion, distribution, advertising and selling of product or services is very essential.
Marketing is that function of any organisation which can lead it to development and
growth.. The present report is about Your Destination which is a new transportation
company, specialised in private personal hire to industrial level facilities in UK. As a
new entry in the transportation industry Your Destination need to expand its market
area and to compete with National Express, “the market leader”. For this expansion
and growth Your Destination is required to to set up objective, do SWOT and
PESTLE analysis, and work according to 7P's of marketing mix.
TASK 1
P1 Explaining duties and responsibilities for marketing officers and structure and
operations of marketing department.
Today every companies are having their marketing department which is
responsible for marketing planning and the execution of the plan in business to
develop and grow company. Marketing officers or marketing managers are the head of
this department whose duty is to make marketing plan for the company and execute
the plan. The duties of marketing officer include expenses and planning, maintaining
brand image in market, expansion of company, collecting customer feedback and
experience and making policy by analysing the risk (Akbar, Omar and Wadood,
2017). It is the responsibility of marketing officer to make, execute and analyse the
growth of marketing plan. Your Destination is a new transportation company which is
specialised in private personal hire to industrial level transportation facilities in UK.
As it is a new company so surely need to expand its business nationwide level and to
be able to compete with National Express who is presently a market leader in
transportation industry. For this expansion and growth Your Destination need to first
know the duties and responsibilities of marketing officer and to make a marketing
plan as well.
Expenses and planning- the first and foremost duty of the marketing officer is
to do the marketing planning which will tell Your Destination what is the
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objective and goal of department. Marketing officer will plan according to need
and demand in market and planning will also include all expenses which
department and company will incur. Without planning for marketing officer
will never know where they are lacking behind form the other market players
of transportation industry.
Maintaining brand image in market- only planning what is to be done and
what is to be achieved is not enough marketing officer also need to maintain
the brand image of Your Destination. Maintaining brand image and reputation
of Your Destination is in the hands of marketing officer the message which it is
giving to customers is very essential in the growth of company and its revenue
generation (Badrinath, 2016). Brand image is possible only when the company
is able to bring innovation in transportation industry which help the company in
developing and attracting new customers in market.
Expansion of Your Destination- if planning and maintenance of brand image
is done in a well and good manner then surely new customers will get attracted
towards Your Destination and business will automatically expand in market.
As Your Destination is now operating in London and Essex and wants to
become a nationwide company with its branches in Manchester, Newcastle,
Glasgow and Aberdeen which is possible only with expansion plan.
Collection of feedback- what does customer feel while travelling in the buses
of Your Destination or what kind of changes they want to bring in company
can only be learnt by customer feedback. Customer feedback include the
collecting of customers experience and find out the new ways to simplify
relationship between customer and Your Destination.
Executing and analysing the growth of plan- by just planning the marketing
officer will not come to know grow of Your Destination it certainly will need
to execute the plan and to analysis the growth of that plan. Progress of the plan
can be analysed by growth pattern of company and by calculating profits
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P2 Explaining how these duties and responsibilities will contribute to wider
organisational objectives.
Marketing department play an important role in promoting and expansion of
business to wider areas of market it just like the face of any business enterprise in
market. The role of marketing department in developing Your Destination will
certainly include managing brand, providing marketing material for promotion,
creating content for the website of Your Destination, monitoring social media,
conducting market research and communicating with vendors and agencies (Burgess
and Munn, 2017). Marketing department forms a healthy relationship with all other
departments of Your Destination like with operations department, finance department,
sales department and human resource department they all coordinate and work
accordingly.
Operations and marketing department- they both will work closely to
ensure the quality of service is provided to customer is best and so that there
are no complaints from customer side. As marketing department will do market
research to know market demand and will tell operations department so work
accordingly to supply the product or service. This is also important for the
market expansion plan of Your Destination.
Finance and marketing department- is there a sufficient budget to meet the
need for research, promotion and distribution of service of Your Destination is
work of finance department. Finance department will always want that all
departments should work in the allocated budget only so that wastage of
resource is reduced to minimum.
Sales and marketing department- marketing department will concentrate in
increasing the sales volume of Your Destination and building market share by
promoting company in a good and better way. So sale and marketing
department will coordinate with each other to increase to customer base which
will grow sales.
HR and marketing department- humans are the most essential resource of
any company without which no company can perform in a better way. So
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managing these human as a resource is the role of HR department and the main
role include recruitment of qualified personal in Your Destination. Marketing
department promote the company because of which Your Destination get the
best and most qualified person.
All these departments in Yours Destination work together to grow and develop
company in market and also help in the expansion plan of Yours Destination across
UK (Heroux, 2017). Conflicts can also arise while working together in the company
which should never be overlooked by management as can hinder the grow of Your
Destination. Marketing department influence a lot to all the departments as it tells the
growth opportunity to Your Destination and also demand of customers in the market.
Marketing department help company to do market research by collecting customer
feedback which assist management in knowing what customer is demanding from
company. To manage Yours Destination it is necessary to manage all departments of it
so that they can lead to harmony coordinate with all. For the expansion plan across
UK Yours Destination will need to coordinate its department and plan accordingly to
achieve the goal.
TASK 2
P3 Using 7P's compare Your destination approach with National express in achieving
business objectives.
National Express is market leader in transportation industry of UK and Your
Destination takes it as its biggest competitor and want to become market leader. For
this Your Destination firstly need a good and sustainable business and marketing plan
or strategies. The marketing plan will include 7P's of marketing strategies which tell
the product and market specification to company. 7P's are marketing mix of a
company's strategy which Yours Destination will be implementing in its plan.
Marketing mix is the fundamental model in marketing which is a combination of all
factors which Your Destination can control to influence consumers to remain the
customers of firm.
It includes 4P's and 7P's where 4P's is traditional method and normally used by
product oriented company of markets whereas 7P's is modern method and
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implemented by service oriented company (Domegan and et.nl 2017). As Your
Destination being a service oriented company will be following 7P's of marketing mix
to increase its sales and profits. Transportation industry is wholly service directed
company and focus on customers service more than on product or price. The 7P's of
Your Destination include product, price, place, promotion, physical evidence, process
and people.
Illustration 1: Marketing mix
(Source: Marketing mix, 2017)
Product- in marketing product mix include planning and developing the right
type of product satisfying the need of customers all the dimensions of product
are known as product mix. Product mix does not only include product of a
company but also the service provided by it. Yours Destination will concentrate
on the quality of service which it is giving to customers and maintain it so that
customers are always satisfied.
Price- is a value of purchasing a product or availing a service given by buyer to
a purchaser. Price of Yours Destination will be based on class of travel which it
is providing, load factor during the journey, profit margin of the company and
competitors price in the market. Yours Destination is providing a good and
affordable range of price to its customer according to distance of the journey
and number of passengers travelling.
Place- Yours Destination is having a narrow range of service at present
including London and Essex only which it wants to grow to Manchester,
Newcastle, Glasgow and Aberdeen. This will access customer through a wide
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distribution channel with great ease. Since its establishment Yours Destination
is having a remarkable standing in transportation industry of UK (Zhao, Liu
and Pei, 2017). Customer of Your Destination can book their tickets through
various channels like online, by Yours Destination mobile app, by ticket
window etc.,
Promotion- this include all the methods which help the customer to know
more about Yours Destination which are broadcast advertising, direct
marketing, sales promotion, telemarketing etc. As Yours Destination is not a
well-established transportation company so it need to promote the services it is
having in more effective ways.
Physical evidence- this refer to environment in which service has been
delivered to customer of Yours Destination and should be very neat and clean.
The booking offices, ticket counter and especially the buses of Yours
Destination must be spacious, well designed with good looks, neat and tidy,
and the buses must be having elegant interiors.
Process- this starts with the time when the customer go on the website of
Yours Destination for reservation of seat then the time when the seat is
confirmed. Yours Destination enable the customer to book the tickets all
around the world as is having mobile app and online website which can be
assessed from anywhere (Abedi and Abedini, 2017). It is also necessary to give
all required information on website so that it is easy for customer and quality of
service is maintained.
People- at Yours Destination people is the most important P in 7P's as they are
the source of service provided to customer of company. They are one who
directly interact with the customers and by them only customer come to know
about company and its policy. People will ensure most amount of reliability
which will affect the degree of responsiveness in the customer.
National express is surely the market leader in transportation industry this is all
because it is using all 7P's of marketing mix while making market strategies. So,
Yours Destination should also use all the 7P's of marketing mix is it want to be the
market leader all the 7P's are of equal importance to company. 7P's help National
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Express to achieve its business objective in long run efficiently and in a very good
manner this can also help Yours Destination to complete the set target
P4 Producing a basic marketing plan for nationwide expansion.
Marketing plan is a set process outlining the market objective goals and
strategies used by a company to grow and advertise its products so that it can be
expanded. In Your Destination marketing department set basic marketing plan which
will help company to expand throughout UK. A good marketing plan include
marketing strategies, market objective, SWOT analysis and PESTLE analysis which
will help Yours Destination in becoming the market leader as it wants to.
Segmentation, targeting and positioning in the transportation industry is not mainly
importance as the target customer are almost every potential customer not a particular
segment (Pappas, 2017). Yours Destination want to positioned itself as market leader
position just like National express.
Market Objectives
The market objective of Yours Destination is to be the market leader in
transportation industry in f UK instead of National express. This objective can be
fulfilled only if Yours Destination makes efficient market plan of its growth.
SWOT analysis
SWOT analysis help Yours Destination to know its strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats which it is having in the market. This will analysis Yours
Destination to grow more by taking all these strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats.
Strengths- the strength of Yours Destination is that it is available online with
its website which is always up to date regularly updated, enabling customer to
conveniently book tickets around the world.
Weaknesses- Yours Destination is also having weaknesses like it is not a
nationwide company and not too popular as well (Chandiok and Sharma,
2017). It is difficult for the customer to trust a new transportation company
especially without any technological innovation.
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Opportunities- there are many opportunities in transportation industry which
will help Yours Destination to grow in market by identifying these
opportunities.
Threats- With many opportunities threats are also there for Yours Destination
the biggest one is National Express company who is the market leader and very
well established.
PESTLE analysis
This analysis describes a framework of macro environment factors which affect
the company or organisation as a whole these all include the external factors affecting
the growth of business (Rudden, 2016). PESTLE analysis involves political,
economical, social, technological, legal and environmental factor surrounding the
business and affecting the growth. This strategic tool help in understanding market
growth or decline, business position, potential and direction for operations.
Political- these are the factors which tell Your Destination that how will
government policy would affect transportation industry. Especially tax policy,
labour laws, environmental laws, trade restriction, tariffs and transportation
laws which are all made by government will affect Your Destination and its
business.
Economical- by this is meant the factors which are affecting the whole
economy or nation and affecting how Your Destination are operated and
decisions are made (Udachyna, Bandorina and Savchuk, 2017). They include
economic growth of country, interest rates, exchange rates and most commonly
inflation rate.
Social- These factors include the culture and health consciousness, population
growth, Age distribution, safety of people and their lifestyles. Like in UK most
population prefer to travel from one place to other and their workplace and
home are generally on a distance which will surely increase the sales and
customer base of Your Destination transportation company.
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Technological- they also affect the growth pattern of any industry nowadays as
innovation and technology are the main part of company growth. Rate of
technological change and R&D activity will affect cost, quality and lead to
innovation.
Legal- factors will include discrimination laws, consumer law, employment
law and health and safety law (Verma, 2017). These all kind of law will affect
the level of employment in Your Destination its operations, cost and demand
service.
Environmental- this will consider the ecological and environmental aspects
like weather, climate and the climatic change in environment. These all will
affect the tourism and travelling aspect of Your Destination
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it is concluded that without marketing no company can
perform better in the economy. For doing marketing Your Destination need a full
proof marketing plan which will help the company in becoming market leader in
transportation industry of UK. All the departments of Your Destination are working
together to achieve the same goal of company and are coordinating with the marketing
department. Your Destination is also following 7P's of marketing mix which is
assisting company to become the market leader. To make an effective market plan
first it is important to set the market objective for Your Destination then it will
identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats around.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals:
Abedi, G. and Abedini, E., 2017. Prioritizing of marketing mix elements effects on
patients’ tendency to the hospital using analytic hierarchy process.
International Journal of Healthcare Management. 10(1). pp.34-41.
Akbar, F., Omar, A. R. B. and Wadood, F., 2017. The Niche Marketing Strategy
Constructs (Elements) and Its Characteristics-A Review of the Relevant
Literature.
Badrinath, S. G., 2016. Motivating investment decisions.
Burgess, B. and Munn, D., 2017. A Practitioner's Guide to Account-Based
Marketing: Accelerating Growth in Strategic Accounts. Kogan Page
Publishers.
Chandiok, S. and Sharma, P., 2017. Hospitality Marketing: Strategic Issues. In
Strategic Marketing Management and Tactics in the Service Industry (pp.
213-242). IGI Global.
Domegan, C. and et.nl 2017. Social marketing and systems science: past, present
and future. Journal of Social Marketing. 7(1). pp.74-93.
Heroux, L., 2017. Sports Outfitters’ Marketing Strategies: A Comparative
Exploratory Study in the US and Canada.
Pappas, N., 2017. Effect of marketing activities, benefits, risks, confusion due to
over-choice, price, quality and consumer trust on online tourism purchasing.
Journal of Marketing Communications. 23(2). pp.195-218.
Rezaei, S., Wee, C .H. and Valaei, N., 2017. Essential of Apps Marketing
Implementation and E-Commerce Strategies: Apps Users' Decision-Making
Process. In Apps Management and E-Commerce Transactions in Real-Time
(pp. 141-158). IGI Global.
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Rudden, D., 2016, November. Can You Hear Me Now? Marketing Essentials for
Audiologists in a Noisy Health Care World. In Seminars in hearing (Vol.
37, No. 04, pp. 325-339). Thieme Medical Publishers.
Udachyna, K., Bandorina, L. and Savchuk, L., 2017. Modelling the economic
entity behaviour in the framework of the selected strategy. Економiчний
часопис-XXI. 164(3-4). pp.85-89.
Verma, R., 2017. How can a digital marketing plan aid in the growth and
development of an online music production company?: Case Study: Ghost
Beats. 4(2). pp. 58
Zhao, J., Liu, H. and Pei, Y., 2017. Study on WeChat Marketing Strategy Based
on the Purchase Intention of Youth Group. Journal of Electronic Commerce
in Organizations (JECO). 15(4). pp.39-56.
Online
Marketing mix, 2017 [Online] Assessed through
<https://www.google.co.uk/search?
q=marketing+plan&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDz_y5
vIvXAhUBuI8KHes0AqkQ_AUICigB&biw=761&bih=777#imgrc=bVYHe
ABcv4bU9M:> Assessd on 25th Oct 2017
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