Executive Summary
Henry Booth House (HBH) is one of the non-governmental organizations that provide educational and healthcare services to low-income families in Chicago. The organization has qualified professionals who provide quality services. HBH has various weaknesses including the insufficient capacity to accommodate its clients. However, it can maximize its strength of partnership to increase its resource base and attract more family donors. With the increased use of social media platforms for marketing, HBH will create contents that can be shared over social medial platforms. HBH’s strategic marketing and public relations plan will effectively communicate to the target audience. Additionally, the plan will have objectives and evaluation criteria to meet organizational goals and objectives.
Technological advancements have revolutionized marketing activities and the way organizations interact with their clients. Public relations involve mechanisms that organizations, profitable and non-profitable, adopt to maintain a favorable image and brand reputation. The mechanisms include the dissemination of information from the organization to the public, influencing their perception of the company. Marketing activities are one of the creative methods of enhancing public relations. As technology and business practices advance, there have been different trends in marketing that are relevant and significant for public relations. Conversational, experimental, influencer and e-commerce marketing are some of the most effective and best trends for services and product promotion.
Research and Review of Current Trends in Marketing and Public Relations
Various organizations adopt different marketing and public relations plans for the effective business-client relationship. The plans have properties that the clients can resonate with, making them remain loyal to the organizations of their choice (Tiwary et al., 2021). Meanwhile, organizations ensure that the adopted marketing and public relations plan communicates their brand position and objective. Therefore, an effective marketing and public relations plan is mutually beneficial for the company and its target audience. Different marketing tools can be integrated to reach out to many clients while maintaining the brand’s reputation in public.
Well-Developed Marketing and Public Relations Plan Defined
Marketing and public relations activities are multifaceted and require the integration of different strategies. Human-centric movements, fake news predominance, virtual working activities, and increased use of social media are current trends in public relations. While human-centric movements focus on cultural experiences to connect to the world, fake news predominance involves the misuse of social media platforms (Holcomb & Latham-Mintus, 2022). Meanwhile, the advents in artificial intelligence have led to increased use of virtual systems for businesses. Therefore, a marketing and public relations plan must consider the identified trends in public relations.
A well-developed marketing and public relations plan must incorporate five key elements to remain significant: realistic goal, well-communicated message, competitors’ awareness, relevance, and specified target audience (Holcomb & Latham-Mintus, 2022). The identified elements of a well-developed marketing and public relations plan are consistent with the current trends in business and marketing. Setting realistic goals makes the plan easily executed and the objectives achievable. Effective communication allows an organization to spread its message without interfering with the cultural beliefs of its target audience (Dillard et al., 2021). Additionally, a marketing and public relations plan must be aware of competitors’ operations to avoid unethical competition. When communicating and promoting their products or services, organizations must remain relevant by targeting a specific audience.
Importance of a Clear Message
The brand message is significant for marketing and public relations activities. Organizations communicate their value proposition through their mission, vision, core values, goals, and objectives. When formulating a marketing and public relations plan, a company must integrate its value proposition in a manner that is well-understood by the target audience and the public in general. A mission statement is an action-based declaration of the organizational purpose and its service to the clients. Meanwhile, a vision statement involves an idealistic emotional future of a company. Marketing communication should integrate organizational mission and vision statements to enhance customer loyalty.
Core values are crucial for organizational ethical philosophy and brand positioning. When marketing their services or products, companies need to have an ethical philosophy. The goals and objectives of a marketing plan are formulated based on the vision, mission, and core values. A well-defined and clear message helps an organization reach out to a large audience. Moreover, the message allows the company to maintain its consumer base by increasing the loyalty of its current customers. Furthermore, a clear message is significant for communicating organizational culture which can be attractive to some potential clients (Fredrick, 2018). Therefore, a marketing and public relations plan with a clear message is effective and crucial for attracting more clients.
Identifying and Reaching Your Target Audience Groups
Various approaches can be adopted to reach a specific audience during marketing. The target audience can be determined by digging deeper into an organizational customer database. Conducting competitive analysis, using social listening for deeper insights, and identifying specific demographics are the best practices for identifying and reaching target audience groups. Competitive analysis helps an organization compare the competitors’ approaches and identify available opportunities. Meanwhile, social listening allows an organization to understand what potential clients say about its products and services. Consequently, a well-defined message and product development can be integrated to meet consumer needs. Defining the demographics of the target audience helps in adopting specific tools for marketing and public relations. Competitive analysis, social listening, and specifying audience demographics are crucial for identifying and reaching potential clients.
Investigation of Current Trends in Marketing and Public Relations Tools
Technological advancements have revolutionized marketing and public relations activities among business organizations. Consequently, there are an array of marketing and public relations tools that organizations can adopt. Although traditional marketing activities promoted a personal touch with the clients, digitized ones are more effective and reach out to a larger audience (Holcomb & Latham-Mintus, 2022). Social media platforms are on the frontline of attracting many clients to various products and services. YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, among others, are the common social media platforms that can be used for marketing and public relations. Social media are relevant since they attract different potential clients and can allow one-on-one conversations with them.
Additionally, the use of blogs helps organizations describe their product or service offering to their clients. Blogs are frequently updated web pages used for personal commentaries or business content. Through blogs, organizations can provide product or service reviews which are crucial for consumer decision-making. The blogs are relevant since they can provide an in-depth analysis of a specific product. Furthermore, the use of e-commerce platforms and print media such as billboards and flyers helps organizations promote their products. E-commerce websites and print media are significant since they help reach the specific client at a personal level. Social media, blogs, e-commerce websites, and print media allow experimental and conversational marketing, making them relevant for product or service promotion.
Evaluating and Refining a Marketing Plan
Evaluating and refining a marketing plan is significant since it helps an organization identify gaps in its existing approach. A market evaluation, and analysis, involves an assessment or research on the selling opportunities available in a specific niche. An evaluation process involves a series of actions: determining the market state, understanding the target audience, and running a competitor analysis. Upon conducting the evaluation analysis, the organization identifies barriers and develops a refining strategy. Revising the current plan to minimize the barriers identified is important. Organizations reduce risks to their businesses by revising marketing plans. Additionally, avoiding barriers helps companies maximize their profitability through marketing. Furthermore, the target audience feels like part of the organization since their needs are met and solved. Therefore, evaluating and refining marketing plans is significant to the organizations and their target market.
Comparative Study of Current Marketing Trends and Early Childhood Education
While marketing and public relations have a common objective of enhancing the relationships between businesses and clients, they differ in various circumstances. Early childhood education involves provisions of services that must be communicated well to the target audience. Technological advancements have improved marketing and public relations activities that can be compared. The basic similarity between marketing and public relations is the use of technology in communicating with clients. Additionally, the two areas are aimed at improving organizational brand reputation. Traditionally, it was difficult to distinguish marketing practices from public relations. However, the advent of social media platforms has gradually influenced the two areas of early childhood education. During the 20th-century marketing and public relations solely involved direct-marketing activities. Recently, many organizations reach out to their clients through social media and other information communication technologies.
Marketing practices involve conversations through social media to influence potential clients to make purchases. Meanwhile, public relations practices involve conversations that intend to understand the problems faced by the public in general. For instance, marketing in early childhood education may be intended to influence parents to enroll their children in specific schools. However, for public relations, organizations may seek to understand barriers to early education and possible actions. While marketing practice’s implicit goal is profitability, public relations aim at positive perceptions and predispositions. Therefore, the two areas integrate trends such as conversational and experimental marketing to achieve their goals.
Marketing and public relations in the field of early childhood education can be distinguished from other professional fields. The primary goals, increased profitability, and positive attitudes by the public are similar for all fields. However, the approaches used by different fields are unique. For instance, in early childhood education organizations will emphasize the importance of quality education. Meanwhile, in healthcare organizations emphasis will be on quality health and well-being. Moreover, the target audience will be different since early childhood education will target parents and children while healthcare organizations will target all population segments. Although organizations utilize technology in marketing and public relations their approaches depend on the type of product or services they provide.
Call to Action
Early childhood education is a multifaceted field that involves various stakeholders. The field targets children and parents in its marketing and public relations activities. Therefore, an elevated marketing and public relations practice will help organizations attract more students. Early childhood education programs should embrace current trends such as conversational and experimental marketing to reach a larger audience (Huang & Rust, 2020). The use of personal stories will help the potential audience relate their experiences with the services being marketed. Additionally, integrating technology into marketing and public relation activities will make the programs sustainable for any future changes. Therefore, it is significant for early childhood education organizations to integrate marketing and public relation practices that are consistent with the current trends.
Company Profile
Organizational Overview
HBH is one of the organizations that has focused on the provision of early childhood education and family services. The organization is a 501(c)(3) non-profit social service agency created by the Chicago Ethical Humanist Society in 1899 (Henry Booth House, 2021). HBH has about one hundred and twenty-two-year of social services. Currently, the organization has provided early childhood education to more than twenty-one families in Chicago. With more than seventy-five professionals, HBH is one of the most outstanding early childhood education programs. The organization aims at providing quality programs and services to children as early as possible. While economic, political, and social issues, including COVID-19, are detrimental to HBH, it has continued to provide quality services to low-income families in Chicago.
HBH Vision, Mission, and Goals
Successful organizations are guided by precise vision and mission statements. Additionally, organizational goals are significant for determining the course of actions and operational mechanisms among companies. HBH, as a focused program, has a unique mission, vision, and goals that are crucial for its growth and operations. HBH’s vision is to be recognized as a leader in creating sustainable social change by assisting families, children, and communities in breaking the poverty cycle and empowering people to achieve lifelong goals. Meanwhile, the organization’s mission is to improve the quality of life for families in economically diverse Chicago communities through integrated and comprehensive early childhood learning, social services, and family health.
Through HBH’s mission, education and healthcare are the great areas of focus. Early childhood learning includes introducing children to different curricula for their cognitive development. The organization, through its professional teachers, provides educational services to children from low-income families. Moreover, the organization has partnered with various healthcare providers for the quality of well-being of children. The services and programs of the organization include Early Head Start, Head Start, and Early Head Start Child Care Partnerships services in communities like Douglas, Greater Grand Crossing, Englewood, Uptown, Morgan Park, South Shore, Austin, Kenwood, Hegewisch, Humboldt Park and Auburn Gresham (Fredrick, 2018). Partnerships have made HBH remain competitive in early childhood learning for children from low-income families.
Program Assessment
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
Although HBH has various strengths that create opportunities, it is subjected to threats. Unlike many similar organizations, HBH has sufficient knowledge of its community. Chicago is a diverse community with people from different cultural backgrounds. While it may be difficult to understand the needs and problems faced by residents in Chicago, HBH has stakeholders who have lived with the community for a long. Consequently, HBH has a wide scope of the social, economic, and political situations in Chicago. Moreover, the organization has employed qualified professionals who deliver quality services. The professionals work towards HBH’s organizational goals. Knowledge of its community and the presence of qualified professionals have greatly contributed to HBH’s success.
The organization has various weaknesses, making it unable to effectively deliver its services. One of HBH’s weaknesses is the lack of enough space to accommodate its clients. Many centers have limited space capacity, making it difficult to accommodate many children. Consequently, the organizational impact is only felt by those who manage to attend various programs. Additionally, HBH is subjected to natural pandemics such as COVID-19. During the pandemic, the organization had to cancel the majority of its programs in line with the government’s directives. Lack of capacity and threats by natural pandemics are detrimental to HBH since they make it difficult to achieve set goals.
Meanwhile, there are several opportunities available for the organization. HBH has partnered with various organizations for service delivery and capacity building. The partnerships can be extended to further help low-income families. For instance, the organization can request support from partner hospitals to provide free or subsidized services to children and other members of low-income families. The organization understands the community well and can take that as an opportunity to improve its service provision. Therefore, HBH must work on its weaknesses while expanding on the opportunities and strengths identified.
Target Audience Investigation
HBH’s primary audience is low-income families with children in Chicago. The organization’s focus on low-income families was motivated by the fact that poverty levels are still high in its areas of operations. HBH registers the highest number of families which are unable to meet their basic needs including education and healthcare services. The majority of the beneficiaries of HBH are parents who are unemployed and those who work temporarily. Meanwhile, the beneficiary children include those who are orphans or whose parents and caregivers cannot meet their educational and healthcare needs. The enrolled parents are subjected to job training, which is one of the most needed. The children are subjected to early childhood education programs and healthcare services. HBH employees are trained in such a manner that they embrace compassion and humanity towards the enrolled children and parents. The employees have skills that allow them to understand their client’s needs at a personal level. Although HBH primarily focuses on enrolled families, it takes part in various programs that sensitize the community to embrace low-income families. Consequently, the community is routinely involved in charitable activities that help low-income families in Chicago.
Interpretation of Results
While HBH is a successful organization its weaknesses should be addressed for sustainability. The organization cannot accommodate its clients, making it difficult to achieve its goals. Additionally, the organization suffers from natural pandemics, becoming unstainable during events such as COVID-19. Therefore, HBH must seek more partnerships and assistance from community members. With low-income families as its clients, the organization can extend partnerships with high-income families. Through the partnerships, HBH will increase its resource base, and create more space for low-income families Moreover, increased resources will make the organization sustainable during natural pandemics such as COVID-19. The use of various marketing tools such as websites, print media, and social media platforms will allow the organization to reach interested partners. The partners can communicate with the organization through various channels and provide their help.
Marketing and Public Relations Plan
HBH can adopt a marketing and public relations plan that will bring on board more partners and community members. The organization, marketing activities, can encourage high-income families to contribute towards its operations. Moreover, partners such as business organizations and government entities can be invited. While social media posts will be significant in attracting high-income families and other interested community members, print materials such as flyers and organizational portfolios can be used to pursue government and other business entities.
Goal: Increase HBH partners by 40% of the current number in the next four months.
- Objectives: To increase organizational income and resources contributed by partner organizations
- Strategies: Increasing the organizational income will help boost various activities of HBH. The activities include capacity building and meeting the needs of employees. To achieve the objective, the organization will create a donation website that will be communicated through various social media platforms. The website will have the history of HBH and its success stories. The stories will pursue the target audience to contribute towards HBH activities.
- Tactics: Physical approach to interested donors to effectively pursue them. Additionally, conversational marketing through social media will help answer any questions and concerns of donors.
- Evaluation: Measuring the achievement of the goal above will involve three steps. Firstly, the organization will list the names of all partners and their contributions. Secondly, the number will be reviewed after every three weeks to identify a percentage increase or decrease. Lastly, the stakeholders will identify various weaknesses and barriers to attracting more partners, and solve them.
Goal: Improve the organization’s reputation by increasing the number of family donors by 50%
- Objectives: Influence high-income families to become HBH brand ambassadors.
- Strategies: While low-income families are the primary beneficiaries, high-income ones can play the crucial role of donating and volunteering in various HBH activities. A good organizational reputation will attract more families to the organization. Consequently, HBH will increase its resource base. The organization will print brochures and flyers that will be distributed to the families. Additionally, posters of the call to action will be shared on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to target interested families.
- Tactics: The beneficiaries will be encouraged to narrate their journey with HBH, and how it has changed their lives. Personal stories are effective in influencing others to take an action.
- Evaluation: The organization will prepare a list of all interested high-income families and their contributions. The lists will be updated after every month to note the percentage increase or decrease. The marketing team will be tasked with releasing reports on the performance.
References
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Dillard, V., Moss, J., Padgett, N., Tan, X., & Kennedy, A. B. (2021). Attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of religiosity, spirituality, and cultural competence in the medical profession: A cross-sectional survey study. PLOS ONE, 16(6), e0252750. Web.
Fredrick, E. (2018). Death, violence, health, and poverty in Chicago. Harvard Public Health Review, 19, 1-25. Web.
Henry Booth House (2021). Henry Booth House community assessment for program years 2021-2026.
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