Summary
Communication is very critical for any business entity in the current competitive marketplace. In this project, the researcher seeks to develop a communication strategy that can be used by Open Doors Letting Agency in its new market. The strategy will define tactics and controls that this firm can use to achieve the best results. The plan will also include a critical analysis of the external and internal environmental forces and how the agency can manage them to come up with an effective and actionable communication strategy.
Background
Open Doors Lettings Limited is a company offering let services to students in Buckingham. Having been acquired by an independent letting firm it is now time to promote the presence of its brand among students in Buckingham. The main target market for this firm is the University of Buckingham students’ community. This relatively new firm is yet to gain a strong foundation in the market. The market has other players who have been present in the market with a very strong brand that is trusted among the student community. Open Doors Lettings Limited comes into a highly competitive industry.
This means that it must find a way of managing this competition if it hopes to achieve success in the market. It must find a strategy that will endear its products to students to penetrate the market that is currently dominated by top brands. According to Fill (2013, p, 57), building a brand is one of the most complex activities in the marketing process. It requires an effective marketing communication strategy that will not only help the firm to pass the relevant information to its target audiences but also enable the clients to communicate to the firm. According to Temporal (2010, p. 58), many firms are now seeking interactive communication platforms.
Passing a message to the target audience remains very important. However, equally important is the need to get the views of the audience, either in response to the communication passed to them or on any other relevant factor concerning the products offered by the firm. Marketing communication will be critical to Open Doors Lettings Limited as it moves to Buckingham. This is a new market that this firm has not operated in, and this means that it is yet to understand the local forces. Other rival firms are already operating in this market, and this will require the marketing team to understand the market to find ways of penetrating it. The marketing strategy must help this firm to create its brand awareness among the target market.
Objectives
In this plan, the primary objective will be to define effective marketing communication strategies that can be used by Open Doors Letting Limited to penetrate the new market in Buckingham. According to Temporal (2010, p. 86), developing a marketing communication plan starts by developing clear objectives that should be achieved. The objectives act as a map, guidance towards what it desired.
With clearly defined objectives, it becomes easy to understand what needs to be done, how to do it, the stakeholders that should be involved, and the timing of the strategy. In this section of the plan, the researcher seeks to develop objectives that will guide the operations of the firm in the new market. To do this, it will be necessary to understand the primary target market. This firm targets students at Buckingham University. Setting the objectives for this firm should be done with a clear understanding that the buyer behaviour of the students is always unique. Most of them are young adults who are very much concerned with the impression others have about them.
For this reason, they will prefer houses that give them some sense of class. On the other hand, the marketing team must understand that these students’ purchasing power is relatively low. Most of them are still depending on their family members to meet their financial needs. This means that when developing a marketing communication plan, the management must seek to find a way of bringing out the issue of class and cost concurrently to capture the attention of the students. The following are the specific objectives of this plan.
- To develop a strong relationship and sustainability between the firm and its customers in this new market
- To create brand awareness among the student in Buckingham within the next three weeks
- To ensure that this firm captures 35% of the market share in this market by the end of the year 2015 through the help of effective marketing communication strategies.
- To ensure that there is an interactive communication system between the firm and its stakeholders
Strategy
When it is clear what a firm seeks to achieve, then the next step, which may be a challenge, is to determine how to achieve it. Marketing strategies are long-term plans on how a given firm can achieve sustainability in its operations and gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. In this strategy, the focus is to determine how the sales of the firm’s products can be promoted among the students of the University of Buckingham. According to Egan (2013, p. 47), several strategies exist that a firm can use to penetrate the market. The following are some of the strategies that the management of this firm may consider taking.
Market dominance strategies
One of the strategies that firms use in the market is the dominance strategy. The market share of a firm within the specified market determines it. In this regard, we have four types of strategies.
The leader
A market leader is defined as the dominant firm within a given market because of its large market share and ability to set a pace for other firms within the industry. It dictates the market forces because of the perceived financial strength and market dominance. Open Doors Lettings Limited is not yet in this position because it is just making its entry in a market that has been in existence for some time. However, it is the ultimate position that it should be after operating in this market for some time. It should aim at attracting more clients to the housing facilities it offers. Developing superior products is just one aspect of it. The marketing team of this firm will need to develop effective marketing communication strategies to inform the target audience about the superiority of the products offered by the firm.
Challenger
The challenger is the firm with significant potential but trails the market leader. After being acquired by an independent letting firm in Oxford, Open Doors Letting Limited has a significant financial base that it can use to launch an attack on the existing market leaders in Buckingham. This makes it an eligible challenger in the market. This position should be used to gain a competitive edge over other smaller firms in the market.
Follower
According to Yadin (2001, p. 49), the position of a follower may not be very attractive within a highly competitive industry. However, a marketing strategy sometimes works very well for small firms or those that are just making an entry into the market. As a follower, a firm will avoid confrontation with the existing firms because it knows that its limited financial strength and little market coverage may guarantee it a loss.
For this reason, it is more beneficial to appear insignificant to the dominant players and be contented with the little that the market has to offer. This way, the leading competitors will easily ignore the firm’s presence and avoid destructive competitive weapons such as price wars. This strategy may be very attractive, but it will not be appropriate for this firm. The market size is relatively small, and therefore, it is not easy to hide a firm’s presence. This means that it will have to take on the competitors directly other than trying to hide behind their backs.
Niche
This is the recommended strategy that should be used by this firm. As a niche, Open Doors Letting Limited will conduct comprehensive analysis to profile the entire market based on their financial capacity and their housing needs. After this, the marketing team will identify the most appropriate segment in terms of size, financial capacity and product needs. When doing this, the firm must ensure that it can deliver quality products to the targeted market segment. After identifying the niche, the firm should develop appropriate products that meet its needs. With the right products in place, comprehensive marketing communication will be necessary to ensure that the niche is adequately informed about the products on offer.
SWOT Analysis for Open Doors Lettings Limited
Open Doors can easily choose any of the market dominance strategies discussed above. However, this can only be determined after analysing the firm to understand internal forces that may affect its operations. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the firm that may have a significant impact on its operations in the market should be the first step. It is also important to view opportunities and threats that the market presents once the firm makes an entry into a particular market.
According to Fill (2005, p. 74), SWOT analysis is the basic tool that a firm should use to determine if it is worth taking a given business venture. It specifies the ability of the firm to penetrate a given market. It also specifies what it stands to gain or lose once the entry is made. In this plan, it is important to analyse these factors before formulating an appropriate strategy that can be used to achieve success in the market.
The strength of the firm lies in the fact that an independent firm that is already operating in Oxford has just acquired it. It already knows the best marketing communication strategy that can work when handling students. The parent firm can always come to its help when there is a need for financial support when developing the communication plans. The parent firm also brings in many years of experience into the industry. The top management of this firm, which is now at the parent firm, understands the market because of years of successful operations. Open Doors Lettings Limited will benefit from this experience.
The main weakness of this firm is that it is new in this specific field. Although the top management unit at the new headquarters in Oxford has been in this market for some time, they have not operated in the market in Buckingham. As mentioned above, developing an effective communication plan will need an understanding of the target market. The marketing communication team must understand what the market needs, and the best way that communication can be passed to them. The management may be forced to spend more in research to have detailed information on the market dynamics in Buckingham. This is an additional expense that existing firms may not need to incur.
The market offers a massive opportunity for Open Doors Letting Limited. The first opportunity that this firm will have to exploit is the social media marketing platform. According to Temporal (2010), the dominant population group that heavily uses social media is the youth. This scholar says that almost every youth in college has a Facebook account that enables them to communicate easily with their peers. It is expected that the students at Buckingham University are no different. Facebook offers the best marketing communication opportunity to this firm. It can easily develop an account and invite the local students to be members.
This platform also offers an opportunity for this firm to take advantage of viral marketing. Each student can have as many as over 1000 friends. This means that having only ten students who are Facebook ‘friends’ with Open Doors can enable it to reach out to all the student population in this University. When these students share these adverts, they get to know the brand better. Students who have experienced the products offered by this firm and were thrilled can easily be evangelists for this firm, by sharing their experience with their friends. Twitter also offers the same opportunities as Facebook.
YouTube is another attractive communication platform that this firm can exploit. Developing commercials, that students should find relevant, and posting them to YouTube can generate wide viewing among the target audience. These marketing communication strategies can help Open Doors to make a big difference as it seeks to expand its market share.
Tactics
Once the objectives are known and the strategies set, the next step is to develop tactics that will help in achieving the objectives. Developing a tactical plan that will be used in implementing the strategies is very important. The vision of the firm must be broken into specific tasks to be carried out by specific people within the firm. This is where most firms make serious mistakes. It is possible to find that the tactical plans are not in line with the overall vision of the firm. The operations managers who are directly involved with operational activities may consider having shortcuts, especially when they feel that the vision is complicated when it comes to its practical aspects.
In order to avoid such cases, the top management of this firm should coordinate closely with the mid-managers to ensure that the policies they apply are in line with the firm’s vision in the market. This is a relatively easy task because Open Doors Lettings Limited is still a small firm with few employees. The first step of developing an effective way of achieving the set objectives is to use a marketing mix to know specific areas of activities that this firm will engage in so that the interests of the customers can be met.
Marketing Mix
Traditionally, four marketing mix elements were believed to be the only areas of product offering that a firm had to focus on in the market. However, the increasing levels of competition have forced researchers to come up with additional three elements to help ensure that customer is given the highest value in the market. In this section, we will analyse the relevance of the seven marketing mix elements to this newly developed firm.
Product
The product element is the first factor that the management of Open Doors Lettings Limited will need to ensure that it meets the needs of the customer. For this firm, it is offering letting services needed by students at Buckingham University. However, it will need to ensure that this product meets the standards needed by the students. As mentioned before, the students need more than just a simple room in which they can stay. They need more than that. They need social amenities within their hostels that will eliminate the need to travel to other locations to access them (Morta 1999, p. 73).
For this reason, the management will need to ensure that these services are readily available within the premises to enhance the quality of life for the students who will be staying there. These students also need a sense of class in the houses they stay in. This will have to be reflected in the houses in terms of the style used in finishing the units.
Price
The pricing element is also important when defining the marketing approach that a firm will take, especially when entering a new region. Customers value the pricing strategies because it not only defines their ability to access such a product but also tell them of the value of the product itself. According to Ray (2001, p. 36), higher priced products are easily associated with high value in the market because it targets the rich. On the other hand, low priced products are considered to offer poor quality as it targets the poor. However, many marketing managers are always faced with a paradox of pricing and demand.
Setting low market prices may make the products offered to the learners more affordable, and the management of Open Doors Letting Limited will expect to have more clients coming for its products. However, this may not always be the case. Customers may associate the low prices with compromised product qualities. This will drive them away from the products. On the other hand, overpricing the houses may make them unaffordable for the students. Wernerfelt (2006, p. 239) says that it is very important to understand the market segment targeted to know their buyer behaviour.
It is important to understand their capacity and expectations when they are looking for houses to rent. The management will also need to evaluate the market trends to determine the prices charged by other existing players and the view of customers about these prices. The management should then determine its cost of operation. With this knowledge, the management will need to set a competitive price that will not jeopardise its profitability in the market. The firm should avoid evoking price wars, especially given the fact that it is a new entrant in the market.
Place
The place element of the marketing mix entails having the product at the right place at the right time. Customers need to have the product readily available in the market. The products offered by Open Doors Lettings Limited may not be moved from place to place. However, the houses should be conveniently located near the university, for easy accessibility. The students will need hostels where they can easily access from their college. This firm should ensure that their premises meet these criteria. Having the premises miles away may attract very few clients. This may affect the ability of the firm to achieve success in the market.
Promotion
The promotion element is the focus of this paper. Currently, the University of Buckingham students have access to housing facilities that they get from the existing businesses. The entry of Open Doors Letting Limited will not increase the number of students in this university. It means that the firm will need to compete with the existing players for the small market. This requires superior promotional campaign strategies that will endear it to the customers in the market. The promotional campaign methods should be specific in targeting the right consumer segment in this market. The campaign must be appealing to the target market.
It has been mentioned that social media offers this firm an immense marketing communication strategy. Almost all the students in this University use Facebook. Creating a Facebook marketing strategy will help this firm to reach the target audience much more easily. It will also enhance viral marketing that is very important among the youths who make their purchasing decisions based on peer pressure. The use of YouTube marketing will also be relevant because these students frequent YouTube to watch movies. The use of billboards and posters located strategically within or next to this institution may also be of help to this firm.
Physical layout
The physical layout has become one of the major elements of the marketing mix. In the real estate market, the ambience is one of the most important factors that define the buyer decision-making process. It is a fact that some of the students may not afford highly-priced beautifully furnished duplex because of their financial status. However, this does not mean that they will be willing to go for poorly finished old-fashioned houses.
They want affordable decent houses that are properly painted and with all the basic requirements such as clean water, electricity, internet connection, and any other additional benefit that comes with such hostels. In fact, most of the students will base their buying decision on the physical layout of the products offered to them. If the facility has all the basic needs of the students, then there will be higher chances that the students will be interested in renting it. The management of this firm must make an effort to address this issue to make their products more competitive in the market.
Provision of customer service
Another critical component of the marketing mix that the management of Open Door Letting Limited should emphasize on is a provision of customer service. As the competition become stiff, customers are becoming more sensitive of how they are treated when they purchase various products. The firm will need to maintain a regular communication with the customers to know if they are getting the right value out of their products.
The management will have to hire caretakers who will be readily available to meet the needs of the customers whenever this is necessary. They will be responsible for cleaning the hostels, maintaining security, and ensuring that they repair any damage that may occur when the customers are using their services. Occasionally, the management should make visits to the clients to get to know factors that affect them within these facilities. This will help in creating a strong bond between the firm and its employees.
Process
The process aspect of the marketing communication mix is an extension of the customer management process. This will need an analysis of the market environment using PESTEL. The political environment within the institution should inform the marketing communication manager how to coin its marketing messages. The economic status of the target audience will define the nature of the product this firm will offer.
The social environment, especially issues to do with racism should be avoid be avoided in the marketing messages. Advancement in technology will be of great benefit to this firm when selecting the communication strategy. The social media, which will heavily be used in the communication strategies of this firm, is a creation of technology. The environmental issues should be observed when using communication means such as posters. These posters should not litter the school compound. Finally, this firm will need to abide by the legal structures, including the rules and regulations of the school, when coming up with communication messages.
Marketing Communications Mix
This report is specifically focused on developing effective marketing communication plans that can be used by Open Door Lettings Limited to promote its brand among students in Buckingham University. The above sections have systematically explained what needs to be done by the marketing unit and the top management of the firm to ensure that the promotional campaign becomes a success.
However, this section will focus on how these proposed strategies should be implemented in terms of communicating with the clients. According to Fill (2005, p. 54), there has been massive changes in the market as the world embraces advanced technologies. In the past, marketing did not make much sense because competition was almost non-existence. During this time, the world market only had a few large industries companies, most based in Europe.
The main concern of these firms was to ensure that they deliver their products to the market. Once a given product is presented in the market, consumers would have no choice but to buy them because of lack of alternatives. However, this has changed a lot in the current world. The product and production strategies of marketing have changed. The world has become as competitive as many new firms enter the existing markets to fight for a share.
This has worked in favour of the customers who are now allowed to decide on what they want. This has forced firms to take an outward-in approach to marketing, also known as social marketing. In this strategy, the firm has to go to the market, get the views of the clients about what they want in the market, and then develop products that meet these demands. For this reason, communication has become a very important tool in the current market for any firm that seeks to manage the competitive market.
A firm has to find a way of maintaining an effective communication system that will not only help in passing information to customers, but also maintaining an interactive communication process. Marketing communication mix has become an important model that defines various strategies that a firm can use in order to ensure that it interacts closely with its customers. The figure below identifies the main areas of communication during promotional campaigns.
As shown in the above diagram, a firm should consider five areas of focus that when planning for its communication strategies. Open Doors Lettings Limited may consider some of the elements more important than others. However, the most important thing is to identify the elements that may work best in reaching for the customers and maintaining an interactive forum.
Advertising
Advertising is one of the most commonly used promotional campaign methods that are popular among large corporations. According to Egan (2013, p. 70), promotional campaigns make it possible for a firm to reach out to a large market segment with specific information about a given product. Although in most of the cases it is non-interactive, it has been considered appropriate in reaching out to the target market.
However, the situation is a little different for Open Doors Letting Limited. It is a small company unable to support expensive television commercials or newspaper adverts. Moreover, it has the advantage of having almost all its target market concentrated in one region. This eliminates the need to engage in expensive television commercials. However, this does not rule out the importance of advertising as a strategy that this firm can use to reach out to its clients. In fact, it remains one of the best strategies for reaching out to clients. The management will only need to scale down the campaign to the local level.
The advertisements should be concentrated within the school (Liudi 2009, p. 90). This will require some form of creativity. With permission from the school’s authority, this firm can develop posters with the right message to the target group and spread them within the compound. This is a less costly, but very effective method of reaching out to the customers. Using the right graphics, the firm can be assured that the target group will not ignore the notice. Using quality papers and effective graphical representations, this firm can easily explain to the clients what they offer, the costs of their services, and their location.
Technology has become a formidable tool that defines the way that people in the current society live. In this University, it is apparent that most of the students have access to a high power internet connection. They can have it through their phones or at the computer library at the school. Marco (2002, p. 112) says that almost every youth in the United Kingdom with access to the internet has a Facebook account and regularly visits YouTube.
This number is even higher among college students. This means that Open Doors Letting Limited can use the internet to reach out to the target audience. The firm can prepare a simple commercial, post it on YouTube, and share it with the target audience. The firm can find a binding factor or anything that may make the YouTube movie viral among the student community. It may be accompanied by some popular gossip within the campus that will help in attracting a large audience within the firm.
Facebook and Twitter may also be other popular forms of reaching out to the clients with a message about the existence of the firm, and the products it offers. Advertising will form about 65% of the marketing communication in this firm within the first year of operations.
Personal Selling
Personal selling is the least applied promotional tool in the current market, especially among large corporations. This is so because it is very expensive in terms of human, financial, and time resources. It involves going directly to the client and engaging them in a face-to-face discussion to inform and convince them about the need to purchase a given product. However, it is the most appropriate tool that should be used by Open Doors Lettings Limited in its initial state of market entry. At this early stage, this firm needs to create a close relationship with the customers in this school.
The management will have to hire representatives who will be sent to the clients to engage them directly and explain to them the advantages of using the services offered by this firm. The representatives will be a team of intelligent men and women who is familiar with the needs of students within the community. Physical appearance is one of the most important qualities that people use to make their judgments about various issues.
It is very easy to dismiss a shabbily dressed person who comes with a message about a given product. In case the targeted person is kind enough to listen to the message presented by such a person, chances are high that they will dismiss the message, or even associated the product with the poor dress code. On the other hand, people will always treat well-dressed ‘executive looking’ individuals. This means that the management will need to ensure that its representatives retain a proper dress code when going to meet the clients.
The cost of using this strategy may be high. However, using students to reach out to their fellow students may be the best strategy because of the importance of personal selling. The students will only work for two hours a day. Based on the issue of minimum wage requirements, the firm will offer $ 20 per day to five students to do the work in two days in a week. At this stage, getting the response from the customers is also very critical.
These representatives will need to record the response of the potential clients in order to gather relevant information on how this firm should operate. The management should remind the representatives that they should ensure that they address any questions or doubts that the firm may have about their products. The management may subject these representatives to some form of training so that they have full knowledge about the firm and its products. They should be the source of knowledge, and not confusion.
Sales Promotion
Sales promotion involves organising contests, offering coupons, or such related activities to attract attention of the target group. At this stage, this sales promotion may not be appropriate because the budget is limited to only £1000. Organising a sporting competition would be as effective as a supporting promotional campaign. However, the management may consider using it in future for its clients as a way of enhancing their level of satisfaction while using these services.
Public Relations and Sponsorship
Public relations and sponsorship is another promotional campaign that is very popular with large corporate bodies. For this firm, this strategy may come after some time when the firm has established its roots in this market. It may sponsor popular sports such as football as a way of promoting its image in the market. Using the local press at such events may be very beneficial. Using the local university press and other local radio stations in such events may help strengthen the brand in the market.
Direct Marketing
Direct marketing involves reaching out directly to the customer with the product. This may be done through phone calls, direct mails, or other technological strategies. At this stage, this firm may ignore this strategy because some of the clients may find such unsolicited approaches annoying (Chaffey & Chadwick 2012, p. 56). However, it may be used later after understanding the market, especially among the freshly admitted students looking for places to stay near the school. Using direct mailing may be used for continuing students who are using other facilities. However, when targeting the freshmen, Open Doors this firm can use its agents initiate face-to-face communication to convince them to use the facilities of this firm.
Schedule and Budget
To roll out this plan, the management will need to have an effective schedule and a budget that will meet the expectations of the clients. All the activities involved in the project should be planned so that the project can be launched in the right time. The consultant proposes that within the next two and a half months, the management should engage in getting the right people and planning for the activities. The campaign should be officially launched in next year. The Gantt chart below shows a timeline for the activities that will be addressed by this firm.
As demonstrated in the Gantt chart above, this process should to take sixteen weeks to be completed. Every activity has a set timeline, but it is a fact that some of them can take a shorter period. In the first two weeks, the major activity will be proposal development. In the following two weeks, the team will wait for the top management to approve the proposal. The next days will involve recruiting team members that can effectively communicate with the students. Developing commercials will be the fourth stage while unveiling the campaigns will be the final step of this project.
Budgeting for the activities is also very important. The top management will need to approve this project, and for them, the most sensitive area is the budget for the project. The following table shows an estimate of how £1000 will be spent.
As shown above, it is expected that the process of proposal development will cost above £ 34 in terms of the materials needed to document the proposal and the little research that might be necessary. The approval of the same will not cost anything other than time because the management will do it. The cost of labour in all the activities described above is estimated to be £ 310, while the development of the commercials to be posted on social media will be £ 180. Unveiling of the campaign will cost £ 450. This budget may not be enough to do all the desired communication activities in the market, but the management will make every effort to ensure that it meets all the basic needs. The students of Buckingham University must get the right information about what Open Doors offers.
Controls
Defining project control for this project is very important in enhancing the success of this project. The figure below shows the specific activities that should be addressed in the project control system when implementing this plan.
The project control system defines the estimates, budgeting, contract management, cost control, scheduling, and management of finance. These activities have been defined in the sections above. The top management of this firm should be responsible for the controls in this project.
List of References
Chaffey, D & Chadwick, F 2012, Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation & Practice, Pearson Education, Harlow.
Egan, J 2013, Marketing communications, Sage Publications Ltd, New York.
Fill, C 2005, Marketing communications: Engagements, strategies, and practice, Pearson Education, Harlow.
Fill, C 2013, Marketing Communications: brands, experiences and participation, Pearson Education, Harlow.
Koekemoer, L & Bird, S 2004, Marketing communications, Juta Academic, Lansdowne.
Liudi, D 2009, Marketing communications: Interactivity, communities and content, Financial Times, Harlow.
Marco, C 2002, Marketing communications: Contexts, strategies and applications, Financial Times, Harlow.
Morta, C 1999, Marketing communications: Contexts, contents, and strategies, Prentice Hall, London.
Ray, M 2001, A Decision Sequence Analysis of Developments in Marketing Communication, Journal of Marketing, vol. 37. no. 1, pp. 29-38.
Smith, P & Chaffey, D 2013, E-Marketing Excellence: Planning and Optimising your Digital Marketing, Butterworth-Heinemann, Elsevier.
Temporal, P 2010, Advanced brand management: Managing brands in a changing world, John Wiley & Sons, Singapore.
Wernerfelt, B 2006, Efficient Marketing Communication: Helping the Customer Learn, Journal of Marketing Research, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 239-246.
Yadin, D 2001, Creative marketing communications: A practical guide to planning, skills and techniques, Kogan Page, London.