Marketing Essentials: Barclays' Roles and Strategies Report

This report delves into the marketing functions and strategies employed by Barclays, a major financial service company. It begins with an introduction to the importance of marketing in today's business environment, followed by an overview of the roles and responsibilities of the marketing function within Barclays, including promoting products and services, increasing the customer base, gaining a competitive advantage, increasing market share, and building customer relationships. The report then explores how marketing relates to the wider organizational context, highlighting the interrelation between marketing and other departments such as human resource management, finance, and information technology. It also examines key marketing strategies, including the 7Ps marketing mix and the SOSTAC model, concluding with an effective marketing plan for Barclays.

MARKETING ESSENTIALS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
LO1..................................................................................................................................................4
P1 Key role and responsibilities of the marketing function........................................................4
LO2..................................................................................................................................................6
P2 Marketing relate to the wider organisational context.............................................................6
LO3..................................................................................................................................................9
P3 7P’s marketing mix strategy...................................................................................................9
LO4................................................................................................................................................15
P4 SOSTAC MODEL................................................................................................................15
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................19
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................21

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is one of the major functions to a company or business. Currently no business
can achieve its decided targets in the market without using marketing functions. Nowadays top-
level management within most organisations are putting their huge efforts for making their
marketing functions more and more effective. There are marketing team of a company always
needs to be highly effective in its job role, because effective marketing team always provides
effective results in the market to a company. Day by day competition within each industry is
continuously increasing, in which upper management of an organisation should give order to its
marketing department for using well-developed and well-improved marketing tactics and
strategies within its daily marketing functions.
In this dynamic and modern world, only those companies or businesses are able to earn
high profit in the market which using modern marketing strategies, because modern marketing
strategies are more effective in attracting lots of new customers as compare to traditional
marketing strategies (Yohn, 2019). There is digital marketing strategy is also a small part of
modern marketing strategies. This report discusses marketing functions of the Barclays.
Basically, the Barclays a financial service company and multinational investment bank,
headquartered in London, United Kingdom. This bank provides different services, like; retail
banking, commercial banking and private banking etc. In the report’s ending, an effective
marketing plan also has been included for the Barclays.
LO1
P1 Roles and responsibilities of the marketing function
The marketing function plays an excellent role within a company, because this gives
opportunity to company for promoting its products and services at the large scale in the market.
Currently marketing function plays great role to the Barclays as well. According to the top-level
management of company, currently the Barclay is one of the most popular banking companies in
the United Kingdom, in which the marketing function of company is one of major reasons which
contributes in maintaining this position of bank in the banking sector of the UK. This statement
of Barclays’ top-level management is completely true, because bank can’t maintain high
reputation in the market without involving marketing function within its daily operations.

On the other side, the marketing manager of Barclays is very effective in its existing job role,
because this manager always uses such marketing strategies in its daily operations which
provides great return to the Barclays (Song and et.al., 2018). Top-level management completely
knows this fact that, competition within the UK’s banking industry is increasing day by day.
That’s why top-level management and marketing department of Barclays are currently focuses
developing and innovating more marketing strategies and techniques which can enable to bank
for gaining huge competitive advantage in the market. There are some major roles and
responsibilities of the marketing function has been discussed below which helps in understanding
the actual value of marketing function within Barclays.
Promotes products and services: Currently Barclays provides lots of banking services to
customers or people in the market. In this situation, promotion of its different services is very
necessary take to the company for increasing its profit ratio in banking sector of the United
Kingdom. That’s why there is marketing function is one of major ways to this bank which
provides great facility of promoting products and services at the large scale in the market.
Basically, Barclays is taking huge advantages through its marketing function. For example;
currently this company is able to effectively promote its various banking service across the
United Kingdom. This attribute of Barclays’ marketing function enough to generate huge
revenue in the market.
Increase customer base: Currently each banking company within the United Kingdom is
putting high efforts for gaining large customer base in the market (Vaid and Ahearne, 2018).
Basically, when a company has large customer base in the market, then it can easily lead its
respective industry or sector. There are top-level management of Barclays also trying to gain
very large customer base. In this situation, marketing function is one of the best ways to
company for gaining large customer base. Generally, upper management should give order to its
marketing manager for running different marketing campaigns in various markets segment for
positively influencing customers. In these marketing campaigns, marketing team of Barclays
need to run some informative advertisements which can convince to people or customers for
buying banking services through Barclays. By taking these all steps, the bank will be able to
achieve large customer base within banking industry of the United Kingdom.

Help in gaining competitive advantage: The marketing function gives great contribution in a
company for gaining huge competitive advantage in its respective industry or sector. Currently
lots of companies or businesses in the market are successfully gaining huge competitive
advantage with the support of marketing function. In this situation, Barclays also able gai
competitive advantage in the UK’s banking industry. Basically, marketing team of the Bank
should develop such marketing strategies, tactics and techniques which can much effective than
its competitors’ marketing strategies. Of course, competitors of Barclays also plan for gaining
huge competitive advantage within the support of their respective marketing function (Direction,
2016). This is the main reason that, marketing team of Barclays should develop very productive
marketing strategies, otherwise company can’t gain huge competitive advantage in existing
banking industry.
Increase market share: Marketing function plays an excellent role in increasing market share as
well. In this situation, top-level management of Barclays need to highly use marketing function
for increasing its market share within the international banking industry. Of course, Barclays
already has gained large market share within the UK’s banking industry, but it should more
increase its marketing share, because many new entrants are continuously entering the UK’s
banking industry. That’s why it is necessary Barclays for increase its market share with the
support of marketing function. Firstly, marketing team of bank need to divide its whole market in
to small market segments for systematically understanding the actual demand of customers.
After dividing whole market into small segments, marketing team need to target all customers or
people on the basis of their income status, attitude, interest, ethnicity etc. At the end, team is
required to sun different marketing campaigns for effectively promoting its different banking
services in various market segments. This role of marketing team will definitely enable to
Barclays for gaining the large market share.
Building customer relationship: Currently each business or company within the marketing is
taking different innovative steps in their business environment for building effective relations
with customers or people within the market (Abubakari, 2016). In this situation, marketing
function is one of the best keys for different companies or businesses for building an effective
relationship with customers. Basically, most customers or people always like buy products and
services only from those companies in the market which provide maintain effective relationship

with its customer. According to different business experts, maintaining effective relationship
with customers is not a small task to a company, because each company always need to put its
lots of efforts for building effective relationship. In this situation, Barclays should take help of its
marketing team to maintain effective relations with customers. On the other side, marketing team
of this bank is responsible to go to various market segment to interact and communicate with
different customers. There are well-developed communication skills can play great role the
marketing team of Barclays for building excellent relation with customers and people.
LO2
P2 Marketing relate to the wider organisational context
Roles and responsibilities of the marketing function are completely interrelating other
organisational functions. A company can’t achieve its decided target in the market without
maintaining cooperation values between its all departments. Basically, marketing department of
Barclays always need to take help from other departments of the bank for successfully running
its various operations in the bank’s business environment. There are other departments of
Barclays also can’t run their various operations without marketing department, because every
department of company completely depends on other departments of bank for fulfilling its
different needs and requirements (Clark, Fine and Scheuer, 2017). Interrelation of Barclays’
marketing function with other functions of bank has been discussed below;
Human resource management (HRM) and marketing
Marketing function and HRM of Barclays are fully interrelate with each other. For
example; when marketing team is required some talented and skilled employees in its marketing
functions, then marketing management of Barclays directly contacts to human resource
department of bank for hiring new skilled and talented employees in business environment. On
the other side, human resource department of bank responsible to follow the instruction of
marketing team which has based on hiring employees. HRM should run its various recruitment
and selection practices for hiring some skilled and talented employees for the marketing team.
Basically, this is a system where all department of bank are come together for cooperating each
other. There are all department of company cooperate each other just because of achieving

Barclays’ final goal in decided time period (Sreedharan and Rehin, 2017). On the other side,
when marketing department of company need to develop skills and competencies of its
employees, then also marketing contacts to human resource department, because HRM of a
company always responsible to provide different training and development sessions of existing
employees.
Finance and marketing
There are finance and marketing also completely interrelate within each other, because
marketing team can’t run its different marketing functions in the market without proper finance.
On the other side, finance department runs by top-level management of Barclays for fulfilling
finance needs of different department. In can be explained that when marketing department runs
different marketing campaigns runs various marketing campaigns in the market, then it highly
required to use huge fund for systematically implementing its various strategies in selected
market segment. For example; when marketing team runs advertisement campaigns various
platforms like; television, social media, ratio etc. then this team always has required to pay huge
fund to these platforms for systematically publishing its advertisement (Punjaisri and Wilson,
2017). That’s why marketing manager of Barclays always contacts to finance department for
arranging appropriate fund to implement marketing strategies in various selected market
segment. There are finance department of company responsible to arrange required fund for
marketing department. When it has succeeded in arranging fund, then it need to contact
marketing department for providing arranged fund. These all factors are enough to show the
interrelationship between finance and marketing.
Information technology (IT) and marketing
In this dynamic and modern world, most companies or businesses taking huge advantages
through digital marketing tool. Of course, marketing team of Barclays also has successfully
implemented digital marketing tool within its workplace. Basically, when marketing team of
Barclays is required run modern strategies, then it always contacts to the IT department of
company for successfully implementing modern strategies. Currently there are social media,
affiliate, web promotion etc. are considered as modern marketing strategies, in which marketing
team at Barclays can’t run these strategies without various digital tool, machines and gadgets etc.

In this situation, marketing department of bank contacts to IT department for implementing
computers, smart phones, laptops, internet etc. in the workplace of marketing department
(Palacios-Marqués and et.al., 2019). Basically, these are major gadgets and tools which gives
opportunity to marketing team for properly running various modern marketing strategies. On
other side, IT department of Barclays responsible to work on the basis of marketing department’s
instructions. On the basis of these factors, there are marketing department of Barclays company
not achieve its different targets without cooperation of IT department, then IT department also
exist in the bank for providing various IT solutions to different departments of the Barclays.
EVALUATION
There are various roles and responsibilities of marketing plays an excellent role in
improving overall performance of Barclays within the UK’s banking sector. Upper management
of company should understand the actual value of marketing within its business environment,
because marketing function highly contributes in Barclays for achieving all decided targets in
decided time period (Mouzas and Ford, 2018). On the other side, marketing function is
completing interrelating with other functions of the Barclays.
LO3
P3 7P’s marketing mix strategy
It is the process of value exchange that is simplified through 7p’s. in other word, it is the
combination of seven elements of marketing which has goal to work together to gain the
objectives of a marketing strategy. 7P’s marketing mix strategy is applied for comparing between
Barclay and Citibank through it’s elements.
7p’s Marketing
Mix tools Barclays Plc Citibank
Product Barclay Plc is a British multinational
company which deals in finance and
banking. It has wide product portfolio
includes investment management,
digital banking, commercial banking,
Citibank is operated by it’s own
parent company Citigroup. It is a
public limited corporation which
deals with financial and banking
services. it also has wide product

retail banking, personal banking,
premier banking, international
banking. Due to the wide product
portfolio enables to attract large group
of people in the business market. it
offers another service i.e. Barclaycards
contains credit cards, mybarclaycard
and other reward cards. Premium
banking services i.e. debit card offers
by organization to it’s potential
customers (Asadollahi, Kheirabadi,
2019). It follows product
differentiation strategy that supports to
differentiate it’s product with
numerous features as compered
competitors. Barclays offers it’s
product in high quality as compared
competitors so, users are willing to
pay high cost for these products. Thus,
it is classified it’s products into five
broad categories and sells all products
under it’s name.
line that is classified all banking
products into five broad
categories like Barclay Plc such as
personal banking, global banking,
corporate banking, SME banking,
card and life insurance services,
consumer banking, internet
banking and wealth management
services to the customer. In
addition, it offers mortgage i.e.
home loan and loan against
property etc. that helps company
to meet each customer’s objective
and gives values to their money
by offering good quality product
at optimum cost. it does not have
retail and investment services like
Barclay. With the service enables
to attract large number of
customers towards company.
Online payment contains online
remittance, online transfer of
funds, online payment of credit
card bills, net banking and others
bills through electronic gadgets
etc. offers by Citibank to the
customer (Asnawi and
Setyaningsih, 2019).
Price It follows competitive pricing strategy
to sell it’s products to the customer.
The main goal of the strategy is to
It offers premium policy service
to the customers whereas account
opening charge is greater as

gain highly competitive organization
from the competitors. It has fixed
prices for the certain products that are
not available on competitors. It helps
company to generate high profit
margin on these products. these
products are designed for the premium
customer who can spend high cost to
get luxury services. it sells it’s
products and services i.e. consultancy
services to the customer on higher cost
as compared Citibank. Therefore, it
offers more features in products so
that customer gets more option to
purchase available products instead of
switching in other firms. Product
bundle pricing strategy also has
adopted by the organization for the
certain products that helps to attract
customers towards company. For
example with this strategy, it sells
bundle products at lower cost which
influences spending behaviour of
customers. Optional products pricing
strategy posses by Barclay that is
implemented for some specialized
products. it offers a fix price for these
products and separate prices for the
accessories that gives with it. Barclay
offers online product services to the
customer but takes greater charge on
compared others banks. It also
follows competitive pricing
strategy like Barclay that supports
to gain competitive advantage
from the competitors in the
banking sector. The main goal of
Citibank with this strategy is to
enter into new markets and builds
good brand image in the banking
sectors and in return generates
high revenue and brand
expansion. Flexible pricing policy
is another pricing strategy that is
adopted by company and changes
it’s products according to internal
and external factors. These pricing
strategy helps company to comply
with all government norms and
enables to meet each customer
objectives by offering high quality
products with wide features. It
posses’ large financial services to
keep fair balance it’s value-added
pricing policy. It demonstrates
that it follows good pricing
strategy like Barclay but unable to
generate profit margin on the
product like Barclay because it
has limited premium products
(Ealy, 2019).

online selling such as delivery costs
etc. generates good economical profit
for the company. It targets some
potential customers i.e. channel
members include retailer and
wholesalers who needs more funds to
expand it’s business. whereas it has
fixed price for the final products so
that they buy these products on lower
costs and in return earns good profit
margins on the products.
Place It follows two marketing channels i.e.
direct selling and indirect selling.
Direct selling means products are sold
directly to the customer through online
websites while indirect selling means
products are sold to wholesalers who
distributes products to different
retailers who located across the world.
in last retailers sells these products to
end customer (Gupta, 2019). It offers
it’s service worldwide and it’s product
available on over 500 retailers across
the country. So, it has high sales
revenue due to greater presence in the
financial market. It also has substantial
amount of online sales that helps
company to generate high revenue on
the product. it has extensive delivery
service providers that supports to give
wide products availability to the
It is worldwide-recognized global
bank and operates into 36
countries of the world along with
3,777 branches. Organization
generates 51% revenue from US
country through it’s branches.
While it generates 25% revenue
from the America as well (Iarusov
and Nasir, 2018). Asia generates
20% revenue of the company
which represents that it has good
revenue in the financial sector as
compared Barclay. To attract new
customers and maintains
customer’s loyalty on brand has
developed well-organized
structure and strategies as well. It
organizes training program per
quarter month for the staff so that
it’s staff become skilful and offers

customer without concerning about
boundaries. Omni channel distribution
system also has adopted by Barclay
whereas it provides online and offline
stores and permits customers to access
on it’s products. Strong supplier
management chain is major strength of
the company that assists to sell it’s
product on time to the customer and
builds good relationship between
employer and customers.
satisfactory services to the
customer. Apart from this, it has
opened numerous ATMs at
important locations so that they
get more satisfied customers. The
major drawback is this it has
limited presence in developing
economies i.e. India, China while
Barclay has good presence in
these countries.
Promotion Barclay Plc is one of the oldest banks
that has established good brand image
with changing times through it’s
products and services. It uses all
marketing tools to develop ads which
led competitive advantage from the
competitors (Juwita, Arifin and). It
uses traditional promotional tools i.e.
television, print media and other
official websites to aware customer
about it’s product and services. It also
has organized sponsorship program for
influencing brand value in the business
market. it has appointed M.S. Dhoni as
brand ambassador to influence brand
image as Barclays Premier League in
India.
Value based communication has
used by organization as
promotional tools to offer value
and delivery realistic service
through ATL and BTL medium
Visual and print media also has
been used by Citibank to get best
advantage. It has sponsored for
some famous sports events to
build loyalty of customers (Dewi,
2018). It uses limited brand
ambassador as compared Barclay
to influence brand image in the
business market.
Physical
evidence
Barclay offers it’s products in a
distinct colour packaging which is
easily identifiable on retail sales.
As compared Citibank has 3,777
branches across the world and
large number of ATMs. It