Implementing and Monitoring Marketing Activities - Case Study Example

Implementing and Monitoring Marketing Activities [Student’s Name] [Institution Affiliation] Marketing Activity- Relationship Marketing The marketing activity suitable for supporting BBQ objectives is relationship marketing. The objectives of the marketing plan were to increase company sales, increase customer loyalty, and establish strong brand recognition and to continuously increase profits. In achieving these objectives, the primary need will be to attract, develop, and retain customer relationships, which will be enabled by relationship marketing. Relationship marketing refers to the creation of a mutually beneficial relationship between company partners and often necessitates personal communication with the customers. In the case of BBQ, it will incorporate three main elements: identifying and building a database of potential and current customers, which records and cross-references, a wide range of lifestyle, demographic and purchase information. The second element will entail delivery of different messages to these customers using established media as well as new media channels depending on the customers’ preferences and characteristics and tracking every relationship to examine the cost of getting the customer as well as the lifetime value of his or her purchases. Relationship marketing will enable BBQ to retain customers for long-terms and this will bring about many benefits. The aim for the company is to have lifetime customers who will enable the company to grow through increasing productivity through various aspects. Relationship marketing will enable loyal customers to recommend the company services to other people; the customers will also be willing to try the company new services as they have trust in them. The loyal customers will also be willing to pay more for the services in case of price adjustments as they are loyal to the company and trust its services. They will also inform the company on any problems with the service, which will enable the services to be improved. The ultimate gain will be an increase in sales, market share, as well as dominance. With these benefits, relationship will support the marketing objectives, which entail increased company sales, increased customer loyalty, and established strong brand recognition as well as continuous increase in profits. Increasing profits is actually the goal of every company. Relationship marketing in this case will urge the importance of long-term relationships as well as retaining existing customers over getting new ones because a bird in hand is worth two in the bush (Saravanan & Ramkumar, 2007; Bruhn, 2003). It will be a continuous process of engaging on cooperative and collaborative activities, programmers with immediate and end users customers to create and improve mutual economic value at lesser costs. Customers are the building base of every company and in this case, relationship marketing will be collaborative and ongoing to ensure that BBQ achieves its objective of working towards increasing customer loyalty by increasing its customer list from 10,000 to 16,000 in the next three years. This increase in customers will translate to growth of the company sales to $20 million in the next years. It will also enable the establishment of strong brand recognition in and outside Brisbane by ensuring that at least, two in three people become aware of the brand in the next 18 months. Successful implementation in BBQ practices will require a strategic approach, which will encompass expanding customer-centered processes, selection and implementation of technology solutions, empowerment of employees’ customer information, knowledge creation capacities to set apart the customers as well as the capacity to gain knowledge from the best practices. Individual Elements of Relationship Marketing The main elements of relationship marketing in BBQ will include financial bonds and social bonds (promise, trust commitment). The financial bonds will tie the customers mostly through financial incentives, which will take the form of reduced prices for larger volume purchases and reduced prices for loyal customers who have been with the company for a long time. Financial incentives and rewards for loyal customers will enable the company to retain the existing customers and build it through referrals. This will enable the company to retain its market share because of a large loyal customer base. The financial incentives will be combined with other relationship strategy to set the company apart from its competitors thereby giving it an added advantage. The social bonds will be more personal than organizational. Social bonds will be investments of time as well as energy, which will yield constructive interpersonal interaction among partners, though this will vary from official organizational contacts to private and informal contacts. The social bond with the customers will be made stronger using multilevel contact between parties; the most important social bonds will be trust, promise, and commitment. Promise is usually an important element of relationship marketing approach. The marketers usually give promises and then persuade the customers for a particular desired goal. Aside from making promises, BBQ will embark on attracting new customers, building relationships, maintaining, and enhancing relationships. Failure to keep promises interferes with the notion of evolving relationships. Therefore, fulfilling the promises made to customers will be an important way in ensuring customer satisfaction, their retention, as well as a long-standing profitability. Trust in the BBQ products and services will lead to commitment to the relationship, which will in turn result to the customers exerting their efforts to maintain the important relationship. Maintaining as well as strengthening trust will be an important part of a long-term success relationship with the customers. Commitment (affective and calculative) will build jointly helpful relations with the affective commitment being more valuable. In his framework, Adam Lingreen (2001) offered an all-inclusive constructs of relationship marketing. The three constructs in this framework include objectives, defining construct, as well as instruments. According to the framework, objectives of relationship management include customer delight, customer contentment, retention, and customer dependability. The important constructs include loyalty, trust, co-operation, mutual values, power, and lack of inconsistency, communication, non-opportunistic actions, and interdependence. According to the framework, the instruments for achieving relationship marketing include database marketing, direct marketing, quality management, services marketing, and customer collaborating. BBQ will adopt this framework in implementing relationship marketing. Timeline Duration Activity Marketing Activity Reward Jan-March Identify individual customers and establish how they can be reached Database marketing March-May Differentiate customers by their needs and values Database marketing May-July Interact with customers, establish a dialogue Data base marketing Direct marketing Quality Management Customer Partnering Financial and Social bonds July-September Customize, treat every customer as an individual through automated process or personal contact Data base marketing Direct marketing Quality Management Customer Partnering Financial and Social bonds September-ongoing Make the relationship a continuously learning relationship Data base marketing Direct marketing Quality Management Customer Partnering Financial and Social bonds The initial step in using relationship marketing will be establishing a customer database. The customer database will be a strategic asset for the company. Initially the company will require the capacity to utilize mass media as well as other identified media channels as a ways of prospecting for customers. After identifying the potential customers, their names as well as other relevant details will be captured for future communication. The company will keep in mind that not all customers are good target for relationship marketing and not every target is a customer. As a result, the initial database will be carefully developed and segmented. The properly designed marketing database will enable BBQ to expand its internal capacities to incorporate relationship marketing. The company will create a database of affluent possible purchasers of its new dwellings and those requiring renovations and replacements. Marketing research will play an important function in the development and refinement of these databases and the database will be built on secondary data. The second step in the relationship marketing will entail delivery of differentiated messages to the targeted households. This will take place about six months after the company has built the database. This will be a means of developing the capacity to communicate with a defined audience of the potential and existing users of the company services and structures. The media that will be used will provide the capacity to broadcast the message to the whole audience or circulation and it will target the exact defined demographic slices, as this will mean that there will be more precise targeting which will have a greater impact. By doing this the company will know the customers to target for classic and expensive new dwellings and those to target for cheaper dwellings. The third step will entail tracking the relationship to make media costs measurable and effective. Media innovations will enable the company to identify what works and what does not. As a result, relationship marketing most significant effect will be a change in the manner decisions are made about where to advertise. In the past, these decisions were based on diverse measures of exposure, for instance cost-per-thousand circulation or audience. In BBQ, the decisions will be made of ex-post aspects, for instance, verification of penetration of the targeted audience and evidence of sales results. By doing this, the company basis of measurement will change and the emphasis will change from cost-per-thousand to the value of reaching a certain target market. The company will assess the cost of gaining as well as maintaining a customer relationship over several years. Once more, marketing research will play an important function in this stage of the relationship marketing approach. A survey research will be used for tracking and necessary statistical tools used to process information retrieved from the database. Direct marketing will work with personally addressed messages to enhance to enhance a close relationship. Direct marketing will entail usage of mail, telephone and other forms of media. Customer relationship management will count in the use of relationship marketing, as it is a systematic way of applying relationship management in practice especially when it comes to customer relationships. It will entail active work in handling customer relationships on a wider scale with long-term profitability and company survival in mind. Direct marketing will be used after building a customer base and its major strength in relationship marketing is that it is a communication tool, which will be best suited in building the relationship between the company customers and its brand. Quality management in relationship marketing will entail targeting specific segments with a differentiated set of relationship and preferences priorities. Relationship marketing will also take the form of customer collaborating with the customers taking part in the blueprints of the dwellings and service offerings. A working relationship on this level will imply a true interaction between the company and the customers. BBQ will thus incorporate everything from database marketing to direct marketing to customer collaborating to quality management in relationship marketing. The financial and social bonds will be incorporated in the first year. Resources List for Relationship Marketing Relationship marketing will create worth for the company and share it with the consumers. It recognizes the value of customers as purchases and in delineating the value to realize. The resources that will be required for relationship marketing are financial resources for buying computers, creating databases, internet interaction, telephone communication with the customers, incentives offered to customers, marketing research. The company will also be required to hire skilled personnel for analyzing customer data and for maintain the customer database. The table below illustrates the duration and the costs, which will be required; Monitoring and Evaluation of Activities Monitoring and control of the relational marketing programme will be predominantly important, as it will allow the company to discover the efficiency and effectiveness of the resources deployed. It will enable performance levels to be compared to the objectives and strategies set out. In addition, it will offer a learning forum, which the company can use to formulate additional effective strategies in the future. The monitoring system will also determine whether underperformance is a result of poor execution, unexpected events, and unrealistic events. Monitoring and evaluation in BBQ will involve reviewing results on a regular basis, comparing planned and actual results, comparing actual spent with planned budgets and communicating with the key personnel. The database will also be helpful in the monitoring and evaluation process by tracking the responses generated, sales, sales enquiries, tracking responses in different sector, recording speed of fulfillment and comparing conversion to response statistics. It will also evaluate the media, which will be most efficient in reaching the targeted audience and comparing the response, levels of different media. Regular reports will assist the company to identify whether targets are being met. Exceptional reporting procedures will offer particularly timely information and the management will take the required adjustments if the targets are not being met. The identified monitoring activities will be carried out after 6 months to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of relationship marketing. This is illustrated well in the table below; Duration Monitoring Activity 0-2months Comparing planned and actual results Tracking the responses in different sector Recording speed of fulfillment Comparing conversion to response statistics 2mnths- 5months Comparing actual money spent with planned budget Evaluating the media Comparing response levels of different media 5mnths -ongoing Making appropriate adjustments to the relationship marketing activities Other Strategies for Smooth Implementation and Evaluation of the Activity In further ensuring smooth evaluation, adjustments will vary from reasonably minor issues such as adapting action plans (increasing frequency of size of mailing, advertising, number of recalls), to very serious changes which involving strategies. In deciding the changes to be made, the management will find the information from the database, which might be invaluable. The company will continually learn from relationship marketing activities. Improved communications will also be at the core of this approach to ensure greater responses. Undoubtedly, the internet has increased the capacity of organizations to interact and communicate with their customers on an individual level. The interactivity and customization enabled by the internet will ensure that there is a greater level of information transfer. The capacity of the internet to create customized strategies will translate to a corresponding increase in trust, which will in turn lead to better relationship development. In ensuring smooth implementation, the company will offer new dwellings for sale and services such as repair and innovation (make the promise). The customer will then decide to purchase the dwellings or use the other services (trusting intention). Excellent customer service will be an important part of customer relationship management and it will be achieved by training all the employees who have direct contact with the customers. Overall, relationship marketing will entail negotiating a ‘win-win’ situation and staying around being a resource for improved results, promoting value, long term acting and thinking, building relationship and business, retaining customers, structures created for supporting relationships, relationship focussed, long term support and empathy. It will be an incentive for long-term relationship and revenue, which will be in line with the objective of continuously embarking on increasing its profits for all the years that followed. If the marketing plan achieves its objectives, this will translate to increased productivity and the firm will consequently reap maximum benefits in all its departments. References Bruhn, M. (2003). Relationship marketing: management of customer relationships. Harlow: FT Prentice Hall. Lingreen, A. (2001). A framework for studying relationship-marketing dyads. Qualitative Market Research, 4(2). Saravanan, S., & Ramkumar, D. (2007). The dark side of relationship marketing. International Marketing Conference of Marketing and society, IIMK, April. Read More