Individual Reflection: Blueprint for Professional and Personal Growth: Your Future as a Manager - Assignment Example

CREATING GOALS FOR THE BLUEPRINT FOR PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL GROWTH and number: submitted: Executive Summary Throughout the course, one major understanding that was developed was the fact that marketing is most necessary for staging competition within the business environment. Indeed without competition, marketing will rather be a luxury rather than a necessity (Perreault Jr., Cannon & McCarthy, 2014). Of the contents of the assignments however, the one that really helped in gaining full understanding of marketing for competitiveness within the organization I work in is how technology innovations affect marketing strategies.

This content made me realize that to be efficient and effective with marketing, it is important to focus the marketing strategy on changing trend and the new within the business environment today is technological advancement. As rightly stated above, it is important to focus the organization’s marketing strategy on changing trends on the business environment. Today, as companies and organizations are becoming more and more complicated and advanced with the use of technology, it is important that my organization also respond accordingly.

Based on this, it is anticipated that my improved understanding on how technology plays a role in marketing is to help me lead the stage in modernizing the company’s existing marketing strategy to focus technology. Currently, greater part of the company’s marketing strategy is non-technology based and so the real value of technology have not been tapped. Through the content and assignments, my understanding of the role that marketing plays within the organization has totally changed. Today, I know that marketing is not all about the manual efforts that the marketing team puts to its work by being physically present at places where it wanted to market its products and services.

This is because an understanding has been developed about virtual marketing and how this can be paraded on the wings of technology. In light of this, my goals are going to change by focusing more on how technology can be employed in making service delivery better. Personal brand Based on the new understanding and experiences attained, a new personal brand has been developed. This personal brand can simply be described as Mr. Versatility. In this form of personal brand, I seek to take advantage of every marketing tool, marketing platform, target segment, as well as distribution channel by ensuring that I have one comprehensive marketing plan that meets the needs of all these.

To have versatility as a personal brand, it is important to ensure that I will be seen and represented everywhere my potential customers will find themselves. This is however something that cannot be achieved in person and thus requires a more powerful strategy. The intended powerful strategy that will be used in implementing the Mr. Versatility personal brand is promotion blends. Labrecque, Markos & Milne (2011) noted that promotion blends makes it possible for marketers to combine series of promotional strategies in marketing a single entity.

Because of the use of different promotional strategies, it is possible to ensure that one’s presence will be established at different places at a time. For example, there will be promotions on TV, newspapers, social media, and on bill boards all at a time. By so doing, the versatility brand can be achieved. An example of experience in this course that helped in embodying this personal brand is contents on “Promotion plans and blends”. To achieve the intended personal brand, it is important to ensure that my personal values and ethics are factored.

Personally, I have values and ethics that focus on respecting people’s privacy. For this reason, as much as I would want to be present everywhere, I am going to respect people’s privacy and personal engagements by avoiding the use of spam, telemarketing and other forms of illegal forms of online messaging. Action plan Going into the future, I have developed a professional and personal development goal of becoming a utility player. To be a utility player in this context means that I should be useful in several ways that my company wants to make use of me.

By so doing, I must not be stuck to only one department or functional area such as marketing, without being useful to other departments within the same organization. This goal is particularly significant based on the important role that cross-functional teams have been noted to play in today’s organization. Kaplan (2008) associated efficiency and effectiveness within the organization with the need for all functions within the organization to be played interdependent of each other. But to fit into such a cross-functional team, one ought to be highly versatile and a utility player who will be found to be useful for different duties and purposes.

Based on the resource reviewed in the course of promotional blend, one would understand that being a utility player is a requirement to be able to blend different roles and strategies To achieve the overall goal, there are two specific objectives that will be pursued. The first objective is to learn the basics of functions played by all other departments whose roles are related to marketing. Some of these departments could be the sales and accounts departments. The second objective is to learn the act of team work so that I will be able to function with all others in an effective manner.

This objective is set so that I will find it easier to fit into the cross-functional team. As part of the action plan, the first objective is to be started immediately and completed in the next 3 months. Within 1 month of starting the first objective, the second objective will also be started but both will be completed simultaneously. After the goal is achieved, my personal brand of being versatile will also be expected to be achieved. References Kaplan, R. S. (2008). Reaching your potential.

Harvard Business Review, 86(7/8), 45–49. Labrecque, L. I., Markos, E., & Milne, G. R. (2011). Online personal branding: Processes, challenges, and implications. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 25(1), 37–50. Perreault Jr., W. D., Cannon, J. P., & McCarthy, E. J. (2014). Basic marketing: A marketing strategy planning approach (19th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.