Introduction
To a great extent, some marketing professionals, such as managing directors (MDs), lack adequate comprehension of the marketing role in a venture. Therefore, hiring the appropriate expert is essential as it enables the business to expand while mitigating all the marketing challenges, thus increasing productivity. The company’s senior management can learn marketing principles and practices to help the business grow and expand.
File Presentation for Review by Managing Director
Marketing Role Assessment in Attainment of Business Objectives
Several objectives need to be set by the managing directors to assist the venture in achieving its intended growth level. As a result, different strategies, tools, and techniques, including the deployment of the marketing department, aid in attaining pragmatic objectives. One role of marketing is establishing and growing relations between the clients and the venture by offering quality service via marketing channels, such as social media, thus increasing the business reputation (Gringarten, 2021). Therefore, marketing assists in growing the customer base by informing the clients of services and products, making consumers purchase items, and generating a sustainable correlation with them. In addition, it helps the venture enter new markets, tackle business rivalry effectively, and advance its market share, translating to a solid competitive advantage. The marketing role enables the business to achieve its objectives of increasing profits and improving customer satisfaction, as marketing creates room for communication for services, including product offers and discounts.
External Factors Analysis Impacting Business Marketing
At first, external factors, including economic, political, environmental, technological, social, and legal elements, impact business marketing. Regarding political factors, conditions including implementation of government actions, such as the United Kingdom’s Brexit, could make deter the venture not marketing itself in global trade. The availability of recession created by economic components will affect marketing as customers would have minimal disposable income to spend on purchasing services and products (Erickson, 2017). Therefore, a business cannot spend its profit proportion on marketing as clients cannot afford to purchase from them. In addition, values and behaviors, which are social factors, influence marketing. For instance, targeting a given country’s aging populace impacts marketing by focusing on opening a larger customer base.
Recently, technological advancement has impacted how a venture markets itself, whereby marketing services and commodities on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, highly merits the business. The environmental components, including using renewable energy sources and reusable and recyclable materials for products, can influence marketing to appeal to the public that the venture aims at being environmentally friendly (Dolnicar et al., 2018). Lastly, legal elements, such as country regulations and policies for business operations, impact marketing. For instance, the prohibition of selling a given service or product in a particular nation indicates that the marketing campaign will be ineffective in handling legal restrictions.
Marketing Responsibility Examination in Not-For-Profit Organizations
For not-for-profit organizations (NGOs), the main role of marketing is to give them publicity for their offered services and products through communication. In NGOs, the marketing responsibility involves building client relationships and brand image, acknowledging the target market, enhancing social networking, generating income, and changing attitudes (Jobber & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). The use of marketing enables the provision of the crucial database to the individuals, making them contribute financial support for implementing their activities as part of corporate social responsibility. The marketing helps the NGOs receive donations from community members, philanthropists, and government funding to support their charity activities.
How Marketing Strategy Reinforces the Sales Function in a Venture
Considerably, the marketing strategy supports the business’s sales functions in multiple ways, including satisfying the client’s demands by communicating with them by asking about their expectations of services and products and how much they are willing to pay. The phenomenon enables the venture to promote its commodities to consumers and offers discounts and promotions, escalating general business sales (Jobber & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). The marketing approaches can be executed in several merchandising processes to spearhead operations and establish sound attainable business responsibilities. Creating awareness regarding products via advertising and branding campaigns and using technological application strategies sends explicit messages to the business stakeholders on what the clients want and persuades them to make purchases (Dolnicar et al., 2018). Techniques such as content and email marketing assist in obtaining many lead generations, whereby a venture has a higher chance of selling its items. The marketing strategy formulates regular reporting and performance tracking systems for every individual in the sales function. Therefore, it supports the sales duty by revealing the selling cycle and aligning this with marketing and promotional content.
Presentation and Handout for Review by Managing Director and Use by Board of Directors
Assessment of Various Components of the Marketing Process
The marketing process is how a venture can generate value for its clients to escalate their contentment by tracking and regulating the reactions and actions between them and the customers and pinpointing the business opportunities. The first element is the marketing audit, which assists the board of directors in examining the marketing objectives, activities, and goals and analyze the internal and external marketing environment and performance. The external factors under consideration include legal, social, environmental, economic, and political elements affecting business operations (Gringarten, 2021). The audit and environmental analysis should be systematic, independent, and detailed, free from biasness and influence to have real outcomes. Another crucial component is SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, which utilizes the external and internal environmental factors that can affect the business marketing strategies. The element is crucial as it helps identify the best kinds of marketing required in key business areas to increase the efficiency of marketing techniques and venture operations. An organization can create smart objectives and plan to examine potential constraints through SWOT analysis.
Discussion of Methods of Market Segmentation
The common market segmentation methods include geographic, social-economic, and demographic. In the demographic approach, several consumers are separated into groups relying on factors such as annual income, age, occupation, gender, and family size, and assist ventures in gathering databases regarding their target market. The socio-economic segment differentiates clients based on occupation, income, and education levels (Jobber & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). It ranks whether the target group is working or upper class, mainly when setting the price of products. Despite vending similar products, international organizations use geographic segmentation to account for diverse buying power, purchase sequence, competition, and preferences that consumers from varying regions have.
Examination of Digital Marketing Principles
The first digital marketing principle is the ratio of traditional and digital marketing instruments. The ventures operating entirely online can determine the ratio easily, and it would not involve traditional marketing. Companies operating in-store and online must embrace traditional and automatic marketing catering to the ratio (Pelsmacker et al., 2018). Another principle is the sustenance of marketing material currency, which entails the marketing content failure or success in a campaign. Not prioritizing the existing global trends within brand journalism will not impress clients, resulting in minimal sales.
Benefits Evaluation of Market Segmentation
One of the essential merits of market segmentation is improved alignment with customer needs by enabling the business to establish which target market group has the want that it could fulfill with clients’ products. After choosing the target market, research is undertaken to find anticipated expectations, including what consumers are willing to pay and the qualities of the product or service required. The subdivided markets create enhanced growth opportunities for businesses, as they help build brand image and escalate customer satisfaction, which leads to higher profitability, making the venture grow and expand (Gringarten, 2021). For example, McDonald’s may have increased profitability by having diversified breakdowns across regions, enabling them to open new branches globally. The common drawback of segmentation is having expensive marketing, which entails considering factors such as attitudes, tastes, interests, and habits of consumers.
Obstacles Experienced by Merchandizes to Market Effectively
The primary marketing challenges businesses face include lacking the appropriate personnel to explain the product or service projected to be sold to the customers. Even though a venture can have sound production processes and the best applications, it might not convince the possible buyer to purchase the product due to a lack of skills. Another obstacle arises from not identifying the required market segment (Gringarten, 2021). A lack of finance aids in not undertaking extensive market research for different market segments based on geography, social-economic, behavioral, and demographic factors. For example, McDonald’s company intends to launch a new product in the UK but may not identify the correct segment for its new product due to marketing expenses.
Training Pack for Employees
Analysis of Multiple Approaches to Researching a Market
During the market research, the venture will deploy various integrated study methods to give a general market perspective, spearheading appropriate marketing decision-making. The first research method includes questionnaires and surveys, which are used for large samples as efficient, speedy, and relatively cheap. The customers can respond to only familiar questions and not restrict their feedback. Another approach is secondary and primary research. The primary (first-hand) study enables the venture to conduct its research activities directly using their activities, indicating they can be extremely specific on what they demand (Erickson, 2017). On the other hand, secondary research involves utilizing existing business reports and documents that are cheaper and easily accessible. Nevertheless, they can be outdated and provide an irrelevant database that can mislead the company during market research.
Evaluation of Deployment of Various Digital Marketing Channels
Technological advancements have resulted in businesses transitioning their marketing strategies tremendously. One digital marketing channel is the use of the internet, including search engine optimization, to improve the results of what the clients can find about the company quicker without scrolling through multiple pages. Another method is using social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, for marketing services and products (Pelsmacker et al., 2018). Deploying this marketing tool reaches a wider customer base, and even though there is huge competition in utilizing them, they are less costly. Lastly, by utilizing emails, the business maintains a relationship with its clients by responding to purchased products and promoting new items, leading to the acquisition and satisfaction of loyal customers.
Ways of Mitigating the Digital Marketing Challenges
Understanding the target market is the initial method for overcoming the digital market challenge. Most businesses are fictional representations of ideal clients who significantly use digital marketing platforms, including Facebook. Using survey tools can help mitigate the constraints and enable them to acquire information that will improve customer satisfaction by engaging them (Pelsmacker et al., 2018). Another way of resolving the digital marketing obstacle is by optimizing the marketing tool content. All digital marketing tools should be given equal consideration, and improving the content availability ensures that the customers receive more information about the business activities.
Marketing Plan for McDonald’s New Pizza Product in the UK
The Plan’s Proposed Strategic Objectives
For this particular task, McDonald’s company will launch new pizza for consumption across the UK in the upcoming months. The current product will be aimed at higher-income families as the target market. The first proposed objective is to introduce the new pizza into the UK market to upper-class individuals to increase profits. In addition, another strategic objective includes entering the UK’s new market and catering to people of high-end backgrounds with stronger purchasing power by offering more gourmet and luxurious food items to enhance sales. The last suggested objective is to expand the business share by introducing the new pizza, whereby the new price per time resulted in improved profits and increased client preferences and sales.
A Determination of the Target Market for the Chosen Service or Product
Considering the specific demographic, when focusing on introducing and marketing the new product, McDonald’s will concentrate on the family size and occupation of the target market. People with small families and high disposable income will be the target for the new pizza (Dolnicar et al., 2018). In addition, the intended geographical area in England, with the main focus on London, which has the wealthiest individuals. Regarding the psychographic group, the new pizza will target people with busy schedules and hectic daily activities.
Relevant Factors to the Plan Implementation
One factor in implementing the plan is tracking and regulating the market plan to identify any adverse conditions by assessing the actual and forecasted sales for the time being (Gringarten, 2021). The surveillance and management can be enhanced by reviewing customer feedback to establish the performance of the marketing plan. Another crucial factor is maintaining an effective and efficient budget, estimated to be $50000, to ensure that the new product does not result in extra expenditure. One of the barriers that can affect the implementation of the blueprint is the isolation of the marketing plan from the firm operation. The problem can be mitigated by incorporating operational activities with marketing. Another issue is the organizational barrier, whereby the marketing division fails to reinforce and assist the top-executive guidelines in executing any new project. There is a need to transform the company hierarchy and facilitate purpose-oriented culture among the workers and supervisors.
Conclusion
To a great extent, individuals engaged in executing the marketing project should have adequate experience and knowledge regarding marketing principles and practices. The consultant should aid the company in identifying the appropriate market segment, marketing strategies, and various digital marketing channels that can enable the McDonald’s company to launch the new pizza in the UK sufficiently. In addition, the business entity should pinpoint relevant objectives, plan an actual marketing budget, and track and manage the project effectively.
References
Dolnicar, S., Grün, B., & Leisch, F. (2018). Market segmentation analysis: Understanding it, doing it, and making it useful. Springer Nature.
Erickson, G. S. (2017). New methods of market research and analysis. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Gringarten, H. (2021). Marketing: Principles and practice: A management-oriented approach. Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 13(1), 119-121.
Jobber, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2019). Principles and practice of marketing (9th ed.). McGraw Hill.
Pelsmacker, P., Van Tilburg, S., & Holthof, C. (2018). Digital marketing strategies, online reviews, and hotel performance. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 72, 47-55.