Creating a Strategic Marketing for Long-Term Growth-Centralian College - Case Study Example

Principles of Marketing Management Student Name Tutor Institution Course Date Creating a Strategic Marketing for Long-term Growth-Centralian College as a Case Study Background Information about Centralian College Centralian College is part of Charles Darwin University, located in Alice Springs and is 1500 kilometres south of Darwin and north of Adelaide within the heart of Central Australia. It is also located near Australia’s most famous landmarks known as “Uluru” or Ayers Rock. The college is a multi-sector Quality Endorsed Training Organization that offers educational and training services ranging from year II to a tertiary graduate level. Basically, Centralian College serves a diverse group which also includes remote communities from Ali Curung, Mutitjulu, Ntaria, Papunya, Santa Teresa and Yulara in an area of over 1 million square kilometres. QUESTION 1 Discuss the micro and macro environmental factors effecting Centralian College. Micro and macro are two kinds of the external marketing environments. Although the factors of these environments seem to be beyond the full control of marketers, they have a big influence on the decisions made by marketers when creating their strategic marketing plans or developing a strategy as illustrated in the diagram below; The micro environment factors include; the suppliers, resellers, customers, the competition and the general public (Ahmed 2014). On the other hand, macro environment factors are the demographic forces, economic factors, natural or physical factors, technological factors, political and legal forces, social and cultural forces (Samnani 2014). Both micro and macro environments pose a significant impact on the success of all marketing campaigns, and thus the factors of these environments need to be analysed in-depth when the marketer is making strategic decisions. It should be noted that taking these factors into consideration will ensure the success of an organization’s marketing campaign as well as improve the reputation of its brand in the long-term (Charlton 2014). Centralian College owns several campuses which are strategically placed across the region, with various business-to-business relationships with great organizations such as; the Australian International Safari, Nestle, Green Corps, Toyota and local establishments. In addition, the college has hosted different guests from all over the world such as, car-racing legend Peter Brock, Duke of Edinburgh, film star Ernie Dingo as well as world champion swimmer Shelly Taylor Smith. Therefore, from an external stakeholder looking point of view, Centralian College seemed to be host of activity. In actual sense and marketing point of view, however, the college was not delivering the needed value to its local community. Based on the government funding and revenue perspective, it was established that the college was operating in risk of losing its funding stream. For example, the student contact hours had significantly been reduced to the required levels and the college could not deliver enough programs to attract more students to its campuses. Generally, lack of a market culture or inability to focus on its market, was causing internal and external problems to Centralian College by limiting its growth as well as financial opportunities (Perrone 2013, p.85). It was apparent that the college was in a situation of high market, and thus had the interest to invest in capturing the market. However, the biggest issue was that the college had a diminishing and low share of the marketplace caused by the limited service options it offered to the community. What factors are critical for the college to develop a growth strategy in its marketing plan? In order for an organization to sustainably manage any transformation and strategically grow its business, it is crucial for it to implement the four strategic processes namely; initiate change, reconstruct its environment to enable change, institutionalize the processes and integrate a maintenance program (Kotler & Armstrong 2014). These can be achieved after an appropriate appraisal for new staff and developing a clear view of change dynamics has been done (Jain 2004). In the case of Centralian College, therefore, the director of marketing was required to facilitate these critical steps so as to nurture the change elements and develop a viable or profitable business. QUESTION 2 What is the current Marketing Mix (4P’s) adopted by the college? Discuss how the college have employed more of the extended marketing mix to better achieve the desired outcomes. The marketing mix also referred to as the ‘4 Ps’, product, price, place and promotion means that to meet the needs of customers, a business must develop products that satisfy them, charge the customers the right price, ensure that the goods or services are at the right place and make the existence of the product well known to the customers through promotion (Melewar & Saunders 2000). With the 4 Ps which make up the marketing mix, it means that all these elements should be designed in the sense that they help an organization to meet the customer needs and requirements. Marketing your business involves positioning it so as to satisfy the market’s needs (Doyle 2000). It is important to note that each of the 4 P’s is considered as a variable that must be controlled when creating the marketing mix to attract customers to a business (Brassington & Pettitt 2005). Taking into account that the success of the business depends on it, a marketing mix should be seen as something critical that the management in charge of marketing should pay careful attention to it (Ehmke, Fulton & Lusk 2005). In the case of Centralian College, it can be noted that the qualitative and quantitative research was conducted and four key areas were cited, established and considered the pivotal focus points for developing the 4 P’s in the extended marketing mix of the College. In particular, with product-it was established that little respect had been given for the college in the community because it was perceived that the college did not understand well needs of the community in relation to their education and training. People-lack of perceived or clear understanding of the professionalism and quality teaching was identified as an issue at the college. Place-the community was seen confused or not able to identify the objectives of the college. Promotion-it can be noted that the college did not have enough profile within the community. Based on its strategic marketing plan, therefore, it can be noted that Centralian College slowly focused on increasing its profile and branding within the wider community by establishing and building closer relationships with the community. As a result, customer relationship management became crucial for the college in building and maintaining their customer relationships for the purpose of growing a profitable business as already supported by (Buttle 2009). In so doing, the college penetrated the marketplace with its core as well as expanding business. Other activities such as, Information Days or held at different locations, events around town, community-sponsorship functions that took place include; the Alice Springs Show, establishment of mini college self-service information booths within the town and participating in various youth activities like skate parks and field hockey sporting activities. Furthermore, quality professional and sustainable advertising was generated for both electronic and print media. The college appropriately redesigned its stationery to give it a more attractive corporate image by using underutilized logo. Information materials such as, prospectuses and handbooks that provide the outline of courses being offered were as well redesigned for easier reading (Perrone 2013, p.86). QUESTION 3 Discuss the Strategic steps the college established when developing the marketing plan. In order for the college to develop the core business and successfully implement its strategic marketing plan, various meetings were held with all the academic teams, continuous communication took place through the internal email system. By use of an internal newsletter, it also became necessary for the college to provide frequent interpersonal updates regarding activities happening in the college as well as ensure weekly reporting of the updates to the Directorate. Therefore, developing the college’s business meant that the Directorate was required to be well-informed and prepared for the suggested changes that would strategically position it. It was important for the Directorate to create a sense of excitement in the College by encouraging the staff to develop a feel of pride about the activities or businesses of their college and appreciate the rate at which various changes are taking place. In particular, the college used the BCG growth-share matrix approach to analyse its products, where it was established that the college was in a situation of high market, and thus had the interest to invest in capturing the market. However, the biggest issue was that the college had a diminishing and low share of the marketplace due to the limited service options it offered to the community (Perrone 2013, p.86). Research show that five critical factors if appropriately used them ensure your strategic plans become successfully implemented. The factors include; engagement, communication, innovation, project management and culture (Baker 2008). It is notable that strategic planning should be considered as a process and not an event, and thus engagement of all levels of staffs across the organization becomes a critical factor in the process. Specifically, staff engagement creates more input and builds the commitment of staffs to the end plan. Similarly, strategic planning processes are successful only in organizations where a bottom up and top down communication is enabled. This implies that communication to the levels of employees opens up or informs them that a strategic planning process will take place in the organization (Stanleigh 2014). Employees need to know that some strategic plans involve developing a new product, offer a new service or simply re-structure a department and organizational culture to become innovative as well as implement a process for fostering innovations (Mendenhall 2015). By establishing a Marketing Project Team made up of different members from various faculties, the college had the objective of ensuring that effective communication of the processes that were occurring is provided in addition to quickly gaining the respect of all the staff. Therefore, the team’s duty was to match the business development programs put in place with the activities so as to ensure that they work in the best interest of the College. It was crucial for the appropriate teams to convey and get back the relevant information. In so doing, the success of the strategic marketing plan was successful. This clearly indicates that Centralian College ultimately achieved growth of its core business capabilities not only in the short run but also for long-term development (Perrone 2013). Once the strategic plan is integrated, two critical elements associated with project management must be taken into consideration; identifying the projects needed to ensure success accomplishing each strategy and developing a prioritization of the entire projects to monitor that the high priority ones are appropriately allocated with resources to ensure success (Stanleigh 2014). Through relationship marketing that was based on two fronts: the internal college and external local stakeholders as well as with their respective communities. The directorate of Centralian College aimed at encouraging their staff members shift their thinking level that for long has been centred on their shells or classroom activities to at least develop a feel that their roles were equally important in communities. The main objective was to train and encourage the team of lecturers become local celebrities who will sustainably execute their duties as effective marketing tools. By working as local celebrities, it was expected that the team of lecturers from Centralian College will be able to impart the needed skills and knowledge in a given subject area to the locals, an approach that is argued for (Lawrence & Buttle 2009) as a way of enhancing customer development strategies for achieving exceeding expectations. This implies that internal marketing already practiced by the lecturers in Centralian College was basically a direct way of ensuring that staff only shared the goals of the college but to show that such professionals were also part of achieving them (Perrone 2013). The practicality of the strategic marketing plan was implemented through the consultation process with staff, where they were frequently reminded that they had the necessary knowledge and great opportunities they could apply and take to expand their programs. Therefore, the staffs were encouraged to share their most enjoyed or special interest area with the community. A weekly feature highlighting such specialities was included in the local newspaper where staffs were profiled and managed the information booths within the town. This means that lecturers had great opportunity to be confident about their strategic objective of expanding their learning bases far beyond the lecture halls (Perrone 2013, p.86). 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