Strategies and tactics are formulated in order to help a company to achieve its goals and objectives. A goal is regarded as a specific result that a company aspires to receive in order to sustain itself as well as extend its operations. A goal is measured financially and is used to illustrate what a firm regards as success. On the other hand, strategies are statements about how a company should realise its objectives.
Strategies are considered as long term and high level ideas. They help in direct an organisation on how to operate in order to realise its objectives. Strategies help to link a firm’s goals and delivering of value to customers. In order to create a market value, or value proposition for target markets, marketers should be in a position to establish the values of targeted markets.
A value proposition is regarded as a strong emotional evoking statement that validates a customer’s unfulfilled need and instills assurance that the unfulfilled need will be satisfied. Tactics are considered as those actions that are taken in order to execute a strategy. Some examples of tactics include; TV advertisements, website page, newspaper advertising as well as retailer promotions (Kotler, Adam, Brown & Armstrong 2005).
BBQfun Company is about to realise all its 2008 goals that involve making sure that in the next ten years it will become a national retailer brand, catering to the needs of home markers with a range of unique, high quality outdoor-lifestyle products made accessible to all through its easy manage plan.
Its new objective that is to be realised by the year 2018 is to see BBQfun Company with a significant retail presence in outdoor-lifestyle in every Australian capital city, starting with 15 stores in the greater Brisbane area and growing to 50 Australia wide.
In order to embark on pursuing the new objective, the CEO of the company requested the marketing manager to undertake an organisation review, The review was aimed at identifying the strategies and tactics to be adopted, the roles of different stakeholders to be involved, resources that will be required to execute the strategies as well as the kind of assessment and monitoring strategies that will be employed to monitor the marketing activities to be adopted.
The new BBQfun goals include;
- To improve the quality by changing local suppliers to national ones.
- To realise more profits by extending BBQfun market niche.
- To increase the sale of BBQfun products by using better branding Methods.
The management of the company will employ the above strategies in order to improve the performance of the company. The company should use internet advertisement tactic in order to identify potential suppliers it can contract for supplies. The company can opt for a merger as the tactic for extending its operations within as well as outside Brisbane.
Through a merger, the company will be in a position to increase its stores from 10 stores to 50 stores. Similarly, the management can opt to expand through acquisition process provided the company is in a position to afford the huge costs associated with this expansion. In order for the company to increase its sales, the management should consider a tactic of using more effective promotional methods.
Formerly, the company was using radio advertisements as its main promotion method which it considered very expensive. In order to intensify the branding process, the company should consider adopting other promotion tactics such as newspaper advertisements, conduct joint industry retailer promotions, create an email newsletter as well as promote the products in the Brizzy magazine (Reh 2012).
There are various stakeholders that are involved with the marketing process. The marketing managers and the marketing and sales team are important stakeholders in the marketing process. The sales and marketing people are the one that determines the values of customers in order to advise the production team on what to produce depending on the preferences and tastes of the customers.
In addition, the marketing team is the one that conducts marketing researches to identify the most effective promotion tactics that a company should adopt. In this case, the marketing team has identified advertising in the Brizzy magazines as well as the use of joint industry promotions as the most effective promotion tactics that will help BBQfun company to increase its sales in a cost effective manner.
The accounting department is also a very important stakeholder in the marketing process as it is the one that allocates funds that are required to execute the plan. Finally, the executive team is imperative for the success of the plan. In order for the strategies and tactics proposed to be executed, they should get the approval and support of the executive management.
In order for BBQfun company to execute the proposed strategies and tactics, the executive should approve and support them. Once the proposed strategies and tactics are accepted by the executive management, they are then assigned appropriately finance and human resource.
Organisations where all employees work towards the realisation of a company’s objectives have a high rate of success. One sure method of ensuring that employees have high morale and work in harmony is ensuring that there is good communication across all levels of management. Executive directors should in addition, ensure that there is adherence to professionalism and moral conduct at all levels.
Encouraging self directed teams by cultivating leadership and maintaining high level of safety across all levels is imperative. Good leadership is essential in ensuring that a company realises its set objectives. Therefore, firms should provide leadership’s trainings and programs that emphasise the importance of working as a team. The company should encourage its employees to form self-directed teams.
In addition, the human management department should ensure that it carefully tracks employees’ performance, qualifications and experiences in order to ensure that appraisals, promotions as well as successions are done accordingly. This will make all employees to feel safe and motivated to work as a team towards realisation of a firm’s objectives.
BBQfun management should make sure that there is a good working environment for all its employees. The management should make sure that there are good inter-departmental relationships in order to enhance efficiency, performance as well as innovation within the company. The management should make sure that there is a team that comprise of representatives from different departments.
Such a team is very important and especially in ensuring successful change processes. Therefore, by the BBQfun management making the best use of such a team, it can increase the rate at which the proposed strategies and tactics are realised in order to ensure that the set objectives are realised within the specified time limit (Reh 2012).
It is imperative for the management of the BBQfun Company to make sure that it monitors its marketing activities accordingly. This is essential in ensuring improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of the marketing process. There is a need to create appropriate metric frameworks in order to monitor market performances of the BBQfun Company.
Creation of the metric framework will then be followed by developing and utilising marketing dashboards in order to control marketing performance. The main objectives of performance monitoring will be to get key outcomes and goals to optimise BBQfun Company performance.
List of References
Kotler, P., Adam, S., Brown, L., & Armstrong, G..2005. Principles of Marketing, 3rd edition, Prentice Hall, New York.
Reh, F. 2012, Vision, Strategy, and Tactics. Web.