Metro Bank's Marketing Communication Plan for Branch Launch in London

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Metro Bank's marketing communication plan for the launch of two new branches in Greater London (Greenwich and Bromley). It begins with an introduction to communication plans in business and then defines the target audience for Metro Bank. The report then explains the promotional mix theory, emphasizing the role of advertising, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion. The report details Metro Bank's advertising strategies, particularly the use of social media, and justifies the chosen promotional channel. It also explains the key communication message, which informs customers about the branch openings and highlights special offers. The AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) is used to evaluate the marketing approach. The report concludes with a discussion of feedback collection methods. The report is supported by references to relevant academic research.

Running head: MARKETING COMMUNICATION
Marketing Communication
Name of the student
University name
Author’s note

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Introduction
A communication plan in a business is a manner of connecting with the valued
stakeholders by giving them an insight regarding the different products and services. A
communication plan needs to be transparent in nature and should contain all the effective
policies and guidelines. Here a communication plan has been designed for the METRO bank
to announce the launch of two of its more branches in Greater London - one in Greenwich
city and the other in Bromley. The assignment will discuss in a nutshell the promotional
strategy adopted by the bank for increasing its target customer base.
Description of the target audience
In this respect, the target customers of the METRO bank are the one settled across the
Greenwich and Bromley city. Initially, the target customer group may be apprehensive to
invest with the bank owing to better investment options provided by surrounding local banks.
Therefore, the trust within the target customer group needs to be building gradually. In this
respect, most of the customers were ready to open an account with the METRO bank owing
to its good repute and hassle free account opening procedures which allowed the customers to
complete the account opening formalities with the bank within a day (O’Hern and Kahle
2013).
Explanation of the promotional mix theory
Out of the four P’s of marketing mix, one P stands for promotional mix and covers the
aspects of – advertising, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion. Advertising
forms a very important part of a promotional plan. Therefore, effective advertising through
television, news, audio and social media can help in reaching out to more number of target
customers. The powers of print and social media could be used for building of effective
public relations with its target customers (Paradi and Zhu 2013). Additionally, hosing of
personal web pages can help in selling the products and services directly to the customers.
Promotional strategy of METRO bank
The METRO bank used advertising strategies for reaching out to its target group of
customers. The various channels of advertising used by the METRO bank over here are print
and social media. As commented by Messai and Jouini (2013), with more digital media

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inclusion there is more number of people online these days over a number of social
networking sites. Therefore, the METRO bank can pitch its products and services through its
social media pages by directly pasting a link over there. Some of these could contain market
statistics and data comparing the performance of the bank with a few of its competitors. Thus,
the customers get justify their choices with logic.
Justification of the chosen promotional channel
The promotional channel chosen by METRO bank over here is social media as a large
size of audience could be connected at the same time worldwide with the use of such
marketing media. Here, the communication could be modulated from an individual to large
mass at the same time (Henry et al. 2013). The size of investment is less as the social
networking sites could be easily availed by each and everyone with the help of any low cost
Smartphone (Frias‐Aceituno et al. 2014). As supported by Finch et al.(2013), the availability
of social media in a number of different languages can make understanding easy for a large
customer section.
Explanation of the key communication message
The key message chosen for the communication plan is – “to inform the customers
regarding the opening of branches of METRO bank in the Greenwich city and Bromley”.
The communication message was written in a manner to give the target audience an
idea about the business objective of the bank. The sole objective was to open more number of
branches. However, some of the other exclusive features offered through the newly opened
braches will also be communicated through the message. For instance, some of the first come
first serve customers would be given the facility of opening an account with as less as 5
pounds (Grubel 2014).
AIDA used to explain the METRO bank marketing theory
Here, the AIDA model has been used to evaluate the manner in which the METRO
bank will achieve it promotional targets. The model have been further divided into –
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
Attention – The Metro bank would like to open two more branches in the greater London

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Interest – The customers will be able to open the account within a day with minimal deposit
of 5 pounds.
Desire – The customers will be offered prime membership facilities based upon first cum
first serve basis.
Action – in order to reach the maximum number of customers the bank will use mobile
platforms so that the customers residing across the globe can access their monetary
transaction at the click of a finger (Alhakimi and Alhariry 2014).
Collection of feedback
The bank plans to paste a number of links containing Google forms which contains
close-ended questionnaire pertaining to employee feedback regarding the products and
services availed from the bank. The responses could be used for arriving at statistically
significant results which can help in addressing the service loopholes.

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