Reference no: EM131702709

Part -1:

Marketing plan management

Performance objective

In this task you are required to develop a management plan for provided marketing information to monitor and review its progress after a period of time. You will also need to delegate roles to individuals within the organisation, establish and use KPIs to assess progress, and communicate information about marketing activities as required.

Assessment description

As part of this task, you will need to ensure that you understand the mission and strategic objectives of your organisation, in particular the marketing objectives and legislation requirements. Such legislation requirements would cover areas such as: copyright laws, privacy laws, Trades Practices Act, Direct Marketing Code of Practice and defamation laws. You will need to develop plans for managing the marketing activities for the organisation, with specific attention paid to the integration of marketing and sales activities and the delegation of roles and responsibilities to individuals and teams within the organisation. You will need to develop materials to communicate the marketing objectives and management processes for the marketing plan for a range of staff and stakeholders, and will need to monitor and review the progress of the marketing objectives over time. An understanding of relevant economic, social and industry directions, trends and practices will be required to assist completion of the assessment.

Procedure

Using the case study information provided, develop a management plan for the marketing activities being conducted within your organisation. This should includeinformation under the following headings:

1. Marketing activities: Review proposed marketing activities and accompanying information to identify and describe three activities that show the potential for the organisation (within the established marketing objectives).

2. Integration of organisational activities: Discuss and prepare a brief summary describing how the range of marketing, promotional and sales activities (detailed in the provided case study information) can be integrated to ensure the achievement of the established marketing activities.

3. Monitor progress: Monitor the product, distribution, pricing and marketing communication policies in relation to market changes, marketing plan objectives and organisational requirements. Monitoring progress would also involve an evaluation of statistical and data techniques to measure marketing performance.

4. Distributing and pricing: Review the proposed models for distribution and pricing of product, and describe how this should be adjusted to allow for the market fluctuations (as identified in the case study). Provide a plan for how distribution and pricing can be monitored over time, in relation to market changes and adjustments in organisational requirements (as described in the case study), to create monitoring reports for your organisation.

5. KPIs: Provide a plan for how progress (using the metrics of return-of-market-investment and market share) can be measured against performance targets, to ensure that marketing requirements are being met.

6. Delegation: Develop draft staffing proposals for the delegation of roles and responsibilities for various marketing activities and efforts within your organisation.

Once you have provided the information above, you need to meet with the CEO (your assessor), and discuss with them the information you have gathered about the proposed marketing activities and your management plan. In particular you should discuss and agree on the proposed delegation of roles and responsibilities for marketing efforts described in your management plan.

With the CEO's approval, you should develop information to be shared with relevant personnel in your organisation, including all information provided under each heading above, as well as:

communication: Describing the communication strategies to be put in place to assist individuals in working together to achieve marketing objectives.

Specification

You must provide:
- A management plan for the marketing activities, with clear strategies and actions for the achievement of marketing objectives [Steps 1-6]
- Summary notes from your meeting with your CEO.

Your assessor will be looking for:
- Evidence that you analysed and identified the needs of the case study. and reflected these in the management plan you have developed.

Case study

You are the marketing manager for a chain of home-ware stores in Brisbane called Houzit. The marketing plan for the 15 Houzit stores was developed over 12 months ago and you are actively engaged in implementing the strategies to achieve the marketing objectives. Specifically, you are instigating those marketing activities that meet the marketing objectives of a 12% market share (up from 11%) and an increase in sales by 8.5% over last year's result. No expansion stores are planned during this phase of consolidation and on average the stores achieved $24,680 per week for the year.

The next six months of the marketing plan calls for increased marketing to match the growth in seasonal demand that occurs during this period. In particular, you should focus on magazine advertising and PR, together with in-store promotions and web based promotions.
You are assisted in the marketing role by Marie and Tony. Marie manages the advertising/PR while Tony is a specialist search engine optimiser and webpage designer. You enjoy taking responsibility for the in-store promotions because it keeps you connected with the key personnel and the trends in merchandise category sales.

Lamberts Consulting are also a preferred supplier of market research, marketing audits and marketing consultancy.

The market for home-wares in Brisbane is estimated last year at $175 million per annum with an anticipated growth rate of ten percent in the coming year.

The next six-month campaign is designed to take advantage of the seasonal growth in bathroom fittings and mirror categories with linkages to the other two categories of Houzit: bedroom fittings and decorative items.

Some of the leading home-ware magazines are selling advertising space with the opportunity of a PR write up in their magazine and website. You see this as a key driver in achieving the marketing objectives because you are aware that your major competitor is slashing their advertising budget and putting what they have into sponsorships.

It is planned that the in-store displays will feature these advertising visuals and link the featured products with other areas in Houzit's assortment. At the same time, the company's web page will also carry the advertising visuals on the home page and will use the PR copy in article marketing on popular article content sites. The webpage will be targeted towards the key words found in the PR article and featured in the advertising of 'stylish bathroom' and 'exotic mirrors'. These keywords will also be secured via pay-per-click traffic directing.

All advertising, PR and in-store displays will carry the web address line of 'Find us at houzit.com. To date, the webpage has simply been about company and product information with no opportunity for customers to order and pay online. This is one area that Lamberts Consulting has recommended to the board as an area that should be considered in the distribution channel options. You have been asked to fit this into the plans over the next six months.

Lamberts has also alerted the company to the fact that the strong Australian dollar was making their imports cheaper to buy, putting pressure on the local suppliers to match prices. As a result, some of your competitors have signalled a drop in the retail price of their quality imported home-wares. Imports were usually an area of high margins for the company and any loss there could be a serious issue.

Monitoring both the Australian dollar and competitor prices has been set as a priority for the coming six months. The board has set a benchmark of 15% of new sales generated as an appropriate customer acquisition cost. This is a KPI that the board wants monitored along with the market share percentage.

Part -2:

Staffing support plan

Performance objective

In this task you are required to develop a plan for the coaching and mentoring of staff involved in the marketing activities. Included in your plan will need to be descriptions of how you intend to provide feedback and instigate corrective actions to staff who are working with you to fulfil marketing objectives.

Assessment description

As part of this task you will need to ensure that you understand the mission and strategic objectives of your organization, in particular any guidance given by these or other policy and procedure documents on staff interactions and staff training. Your plan will need to establish strategies for coaching and mentoring staff, providing feedback and when necessary, instigating corrective actions to ensure that marketing objectives are being met. Legislation requirements will also need to be addressed. Such legislation requirements would cover areas such as: copyright laws, privacy laws, Trades Practices Act, Direct Marketing Code of Practice and defamation laws.

Procedure

Develop a Staffing support plan for supporting through Individuals and work teams with delegated roles and responsibilities within your organisation. This should include information under the following headings:

1. Strategies: specific strategies for mentoring and coaching of staff throughout the period of the proposed marketing activities

2. Resources: models for assessing use of resources provided to attain required marketing outcomes

3. Feedback: a model and mechanism for providing feedback to staff throughout the process

4. Performance: a process to be used for identifying weaknesses in individual and team performance (in meeting the requirements of the marketing objectives for the delegated marketing activities) and instigate corrective actions when required.

Using this information, review the two scenarios provided:

Scenario 1: Describe how you would provide one-on-one coaching to the individual identified in the scenario to assist them in achieving the required marketing outcomes

Scenario 2: Describe the performance to-date of the individual, and describe the corrective actions you could take to ensure that marketing outcomes continue to be achieved.

Specifications

You must provide:
- staffing support plan [Steps 1-4]
- responses to each provided scenario [Steps 5-6].

Your assessor will be looking for:
- Evidence that you analysed and identified the reflected these in the staffing support outline needs of the case study, and you have developed.

Case study

You know from experience that the marketing and promotional activities you have planned for Houzit are going to put pressure on your team. However, you accept this as the nature of the business, and you have developed strategies to help the team achieve the marketing objectives in the most efficient and effective way. Both your key personnel in this plan, Marie (Advertising/PR) and Tony (Website) have expressed ambitions to pursue a career in company management. You agree to help them by providing coaching and mentoring when you see attitudes, skills or knowledge levels that could help them achieve their ambitions.

You have also set up a formal weekly meeting to discuss the KPI results generated from the accounting information system and their individual reports. You also use this meeting to emphasise the concept of team achievement and that financial resources should be allocated to the greatest need. You also address where they can achieve the greatest return that is in line with the marketing objectives
You make a habit of taking them on store visits so their role does not isolate them from personnel and products on the front line of the business. Another strategy you employ is to cc them on all emails that affect the whole marketing group, apart from the private and confidential correspondence.

Scenario 1: Coaching and mentoring

Marie achieved outstanding results in her university degree. However, her lack of 'real world' experience makes her uncertain and she lacks confidence to make decisions. You have agreed to be her coach and mentor. She has come to you recently for help i and discussed with you a significant range of issues she wanted help with.

She has often commented that having you as a coach has given her a safe° lace to off load some issues that bothered her and a place where she can get unbiased, confidential support. She is also appreciative of you when you provide her with opportunities to further develop skills she already has particularly in areas or advertising. She is a keen learner and wants to team new skills as they relate to marketing. She has especially asked for more knowledge in web design and web marketing but every approach to Tony has been rejected flatly, sometimes with what seems like distain.

One of the most important aspects of the coaching and mentoring for Marie is the opportunity to get a fresh perspective on ideas and to seek out advice, suggestions and options from an experienced person like you. This is particularly important for her in how she gets PR happening in the most effectively way.

She often comments that another thing she gets out of your coaching and mentoring is that she gets to know her boss better which promotes a more team based approach to problems.

Scenario 2: Tony

Tony's approach to the job is quite different to Marie. He is not a keen learner of other forms of marketing apart from Internet marketing which he often calls 'the future of marketing". He sees his knowledge as his own intellectual capital and is never keen to share it with anyone. His teaching method is full of jargon and he shares knowledge at a speed that makes learning even more difficult.

He often presents ideas for internet market that would certainly boost traffic to the site but which you believe are unethical under the company's ethical standards. So, you don't approve them.

This rejection of some of his ideas sees him less keen to participate on more general marketing activities like store visits. In your mind, Tony needs to correct his attitude if he is to perform his job effectively.

It has recently come to your attention via a Lambert Consultant consultation, that the company's website has links to a home business that Tony's friend operates in providing installation services for company purchased products. You have not given Tony approval to make this link, and decide to take corrective action on this and other issues related to Tony.