Project: New Marketing Strategies for Sales Decline at Aston Martin

This project focuses on developing new marketing strategies for Aston Martin to address their sales decline. It begins with an overview of the company's situation, highlighting the problem of declining sales and the opportunity to improve marketing campaigns. The project aims to analyze the reas...Read More

Project Management

Table of Contents
Project background..........................................................................................................................1
Business and project aims and objectives........................................................................................1
Current situation – problem/opportunity statement.........................................................................1
Critical assumptions and constrains.................................................................................................2
Analysis of options and recommendations......................................................................................2
Preliminary project requirements.....................................................................................................3
Budget estimate and financial investment analysis showing Net Present Value (NPV).................3
Potential high-level risks .................................................................................................................4
Quality consideration.......................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6
.........................................................................................................................................................6

Project background
Marketing strategies are the techniques and methods by which an organisation can market
their products which can ultimately help them in enhanced sale of their products and services. In
this particular business case, Aston Martin which is a large scale automotive company having
headquarters in Gaydon, United Kingdom experiencing issues regarding their sales decline due
to which a project of implementing effective marketing strategies is planned. In a dynamic and
competitive environment, it is important to market the products in such a way that it rise the need
of purchasing the product. The rationale behind planning for this project is to assist Aston Martin
that how they can improve their marketing campaigns and promotional strategies. There are
various options which are present for the purpose of addressing the issue of sales decline of
Aston Martin such as review of product, creating of new pricing strategy and may more but
among all these options the project of developing new marketing strategies is considered as most
appropriate and is selected for this business case.
There are various benefits of this project as by this not only the sales of Aston Martin will
improve but the customer relations will also be benefited. There are various resources which will
be required to the implementation of this project and few of them includes skilled staff, monetary
sources etc.
Business and project aims and objectives
Project Aim
To plan and implement new marketing strategies for Aston Martin.
Project objectives
 To analyse the reasons behind sales decline of Aston Martin.
 To implement marketing strategies of SEO, PR, social media marketing and influencer
marketing.
 To analyse the benefits which be gained by implementing the new marketing strategies.
Current situation – problem/opportunity statement
Aston Martin is a large scale automotive company which is considered as one of the best
automotive manufacturer, this company has recently faced the loss of 13.5 million pounds in the
period of three months. The company has blamed the tough Europe market for their loss but the
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analytics pointed out the weak marketing strategies of this company which are the main reason
of their sales decline.
This issue of Aston martin is an opportunity for them to develop and recreate their
marketing strategies from which they can capture wider market share and can even build an
effective relationship with their customers. According to Julia Kollewe (2019), the European
market is perfect for a brand like Aston Martin as they deal in luxury cars, the real issue is the
marketing procedure of this company due to which sales of this company are declining. In the
period of just 3 months, this company faced the heavy losses of 13 million due and the director
of company has blamed the dynamicity of the market. In order to resolve this issue of the
company, this project will be planned and implemented in which the existing marketing
strategies of this company will be reviewed and then new marketing strategies will be
implemented.
Critical assumptions and constrains
An assumption is regarded to be something which holds something of truth. These
include course of action which are anticipated to take place during the tenure of project life
cycle. For example: The assumption that Aston Martin would have required resources to devise
an effective marketing strategy. Besides this, constraints are elements that restrain the project
from being executed as per their expectations of company (Alvarez-Dionisi, Turner and Mittra,
2016). Some of the examples of constrains for the project of Aston Martin could cost, risk,
quality, schedule and resources. It is important for the project manager of Aston Martin to take
into account both assumptions as well as constrains in order to ensure success of the project in
predefined course of time.
Analysis of options and recommendations
There are several options available to the firm to be leveraged with a view to devise an
effective marketing strategy. However, after the analysis of all the options, two feasible
strategies that have come upfront are social media and digital marketing. In this regard, it is
recommended that Aston Martin should follow digital marketing as it would help the company to
connect with large number of customers at any point of time.
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Preliminary project requirements
It is very important for project manager to identify and analyse the needs and requirement
of project in order to conduct project activities in effective and efficient manner (Greene and
Stellman, 2018) Preliminary project requirements can be describe as the way through which
project manager can analyse the requirements of project. With the support of preliminary project
requirement activities of project can be conducted in required manager in order to attain set
goals. In this project the major requirement is for funds, human resources, technology and
resources. Preliminary requirement is mention below in detail.
Human resources – This resources is one of the crucial resources as employees are
responsible for developing strategies for successful implantation of the plan (Martinelli and
Milosevic, 2016). It is essential for project manager to select highly talented and skilled
employees for implementing marketing strategies in appropriate manner. So that it will attract
large number of customers towards respective company.
Financial resources – This refers as the funds that is required by project manager to
correctly conduct all activities of project. In order to implement digital marketing strategies and
attain set objective high amount of funds will be required. This will support in timely completion
of project activities .
Technology – New and innovative technology will be very helpful for respective
company to conducting activities of this project in appropriate way (de Araújo, Alencar and de
Miranda Mota, 2017). There are many advance technology that will support in execution of
marketing activities on different digital platforms. High and emerging technology will help in
gaining competitive advantage from other rival companies.
Other resources – There are various other resources and raw material that is required by
project manager in order to complete activities of project on time. It includes all those resources
that support employees to implement marketing strategy as well as using new technology in
effective way. Infrastructure of organisation and other resources that support in execution of
project task.
Budget estimate and financial investment analysis showing Net Present Value
(NPV)
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Initial investment = 250000
Discount rate= 10%
Depreciation= 10% (straight line method)
Tax rate= 5%
Year Cash flow
1 35000
2 80000
3 90000
4 75000
5 20000
Solution:
Year 1 2 3 4 5
Cash flow 35000 80000 90000 75000 20000
Less: Depreciation (10%) 3500 8000 9000 7500 2000
Cash flow before tax and after
depreciation 31500 72000 81000 67500 18000
Less- Tax (5%) 1575 3600 4050 3375 900
Cash flow after tax and depreciation 29925 68400 76950 64125 17100
Add- Depreciation 3500 8000 9000 7500 2000
Free cash flow 33425 76400 85950 71625 19100
NPV= Initial investment- discounted cash flow
Year Cash flow PV
factor
Discounted cash
flow
1 33425 0.9091 30386.67
2 76400 0.8264 63136.96
3 85950 0.7513 64574.23
4 71625 0.683 48919.87
5 19100 0.621 11861.1
218878.84
NPV= 250000-218878.87
= 31121.13
Potential high-level risks
There are different types of risk that is associated with digital marketing strategy risk and
implementation of project task. It is very important for project manage to identify and analyse
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different risk that can have negative impact on project management and strategy execution.
Different potential high level risk are mention below in detail.
Lack of skilled employees – Less skilled and insufficient employees will lead to have
negative impact on performance of project. Lack of capable employees with less knowledge and
understanding about digital marketing will not be able to carry task in required manner.
Financial risk – This is one of the major risk that can affect the complete project as less
funds for conducting project task will lead to failure of project (Haverila and Fehr, 2016). It is
essential to have right amount of financial resource to perform task in needed manner and
completion of task in set time frame.
Strategic risk – This risk is related to development and implementation of strategy. It is
very important to develop effective strategy that will lead to attaining set goals. Creation on
ineffective strategy will lead to failure of task and project execution.
Quality consideration
The procedure of quality management is followed along with the project from its
beginning to end, as it is an integral part of the project management. The efficient management
of quality in the whole project is deeply concerned with the standards of excellence. It seeks to
promote the whole process onto a desired level besides that it also provides aids to fix and cure
the inefficient quality of the project (Bakhshi, Ireland and Gorod, 2016). Higher rate for
satisfaction of all the stakeholders is achieve through proper quality management as it
emphasizes more on the improvements on necessary points as well as it helps to remove certain
unproductive and irrelevant facts from the project. The main aim of quality management is not
only to find and fix the glitches from the project but necessarily the goal is of continuous
monitoring and controlling the project in terms of quality, by giving essential measures to
perform better in all the directions and approaches of respective project.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Alvarez-Dionisi, L. E., Turner, R. and Mittra, M., 2016. Global project management trends.
International Journal of Information Technology Project Management (IJITPM). 7(3).
pp.54-73.
Bakhshi, J., Ireland, V. and Gorod, A., 2016. Clarifying the project complexity construct: Past,
present and future. International Journal of Project Management. 34(7). pp.1199-1213.
de Araújo, M. C. B., Alencar, L. H. and de Miranda Mota, C. M., 2017. Project procurement
management: A structured literature review. International Journal of Project
Management. 35(3). pp.353-377.
Greene, J. and Stellman, A., 2018. Head First PMP: A Learner's Companion to Passing the
Project Management Professional Exam. O'Reilly Media.
Haverila, M. J. and Fehr, K., 2016. The impact of product superiority on customer satisfaction in
project management. International Journal of Project Management. 34(4). pp.570-583.
Martinelli, R. J. and Milosevic, D. Z., 2016. Project management toolbox. John Wiley & Sons,
Incorporated.
Online
Aston Martin blames tough European market for £13.5m loss. 2019 [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/nov/07/aston-martin-blames-tough-
european-market-for-135m-loss>
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