Marketing Plan Part B Essay For Apple IPhones In New Zealand. (70 Characters)

1. Describe in detail four (4) marketing activities, based on the recommended tactics from Part B Q 3-6, which will be carried out in the marketing action plan to achieve the objective in assignment 2, marketing plan part B.  This description should contain a detailed task list for each activity. 

2. Explain the responsibilities and accountabilities of each member of the marketing team implementing the marketing action plan.
 
3. Describe the interdepartmental support required from other departments within the organisation for the marketing action plan to work.

4. Specify appropriate timelines and milestones for the activities in the marketing action plan. 

5. Develop an indicative budget for the marketing action plan, using appropriate references for pricing in the industry. 

6. Provide a comprehensive description of two (2) possible reasons why it could be difficult to implement the marketing action plan (barriers to implementation).

7. Identify and justify three (3) key performance indicators which are to be used to monitor the success of the marketing action plan.

8. Describe two (2) contingency actions (tactics) which are to be used in the marketing action plan in case the business’s staff see adverse events developing such as strikes, price wars, competitor actions, recession, natural disasters or other major events.

The marketing activities for Apple i-phones in New Zealand to be undertaken in the next quarter are:

Local Marketing- In order to meet the objectives of the company Apple can locally promote its iPhones through several ways, in the plan a set of activities are selected for local marketing, all those the activities will be discussed on by one

Point of purchase- Point of purchase marketing is also known as retail marketing, this involves techniques to draw attention of the customers, for pop marketing (Hathaway, 2014).

Posters will be used, these posters will have the specifications of the various versions of apple iPhones. The posters will be made very interesting so that it is attractive and appealing to the customers, who pass through the retails of New Zealand, these posters will be at all the exclusive stores of Apple iphone as well other smart phone stores where apple iPhones are available. Point of purchase campaigns will also be used in the marketing at the point of the purchase, coupons will be given at the exclusive stores of Apple.

In-store marketing- For in-store marketing brochures and pamphlets will be distributed to the customers, who visit the stores, newly launched iPhones will be promoted through this method.

Newspaper advertising- For meeting the objectives of the Apple iPhones, advertising will be done locally in the local newspapers, of New Zealand like Capital times, Dominion Post, Daily chronicles, The press, the idea behind this is to promote the brand in particular places of New Zealand, the areas selected are, Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch.

Public Relations- The next marketing activity according to the plan that would be undertaken would be Public Relations activities, as per the plan there will be a huge investment, the amount allocated for public relation activities is $47,000.

Press releases- There will be ten public releases for building public relations. In the press releases, there would be media releases, press statement in both recorded and written form, it would be mailed to the journalists, editors of the various newspaper of New Zealand, to the radio stations and television network.

Public events- Certain public events will be organized for the promotion of the brand and the iphones of Apple. These public events will be conducted in three cities of New Zealand, Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch.

Sponsorships- In the marketing activities two events will be sponsored, the events will take place in Gisborne and Hamilton, Apple Inc will sponsor both the events for its brand promotion and good will.

Conferences- Two conferences will be conducted one in Auckland and the other in Wellington, these two conferences will be for promotional purposes. 

Advertising is one of the most important marketing activities and therefore keeping in mind the significance of advertising activities $29,000 has been set as the estimated amount that is to spend on the advertising activities.

Online Advertising- Under online advertising, display ads and web banners will be used, the display ads will be attractive aiming at drawing the attention of the web banners,

Radio advertising- For advertising, local radio channels will be selected, like the AM network, Coast, Flava, both the FM and the AM channels will be selected for radio advertising, radio channels are very popular platform for advertisement in New Zealand, because there are many listeners to the radio stations in New Zealand.

Advertising

Television channels will also be used for advertisings, television advertising is another mot commonly used techniques of advertising,

The activities that has been planned for social marketing include:

Facebook- Four advertisement campaigns have been selected for advertising activities, through these advertisement campaigns iphones of Apple will be advertised, and the product specifications will be communicated to the customers. The face book page of the company will be used for the advertisements.

Twitter- Twitter is also one of the social networking sites that have many followers, and companies use their twitter handle for advertisement and promotional activities. There will be five advertisement campaigns from the twitter handle of the company.

Instagrams are slightly newer than the face book and the twitter, through instagrams the companies can post pictures of the iPhones for advertisements, instagrams are gaining popularity in the social networking sites, so it would be very beneficial to use instagrams for advertisements. There will be five different advertisements that would be posted in the instagram.

The next very important activity that would be conducted would be, market research. Market researches are conducted to forecast and the Upcoming trends in the markets and the way those trends are going to affect the market as well as the business. Apart from that the market researches are also conducted to know the customer behavior and perception towards the products, market researchers also help in knowing the various strategies adopted by the competitors.

Under the market researches, two different activities will be conducted market survey and “Impact studies”. A survey of the customers will be conducted to know the customers feedback, about the various iPhones used by them, if any, also to check the satisfaction level of the customers from the products and services of Apple iPhones. This would help the company for product development and product development for future iPhones. Another marketing activity that will be conducted is impact studies, to know the on the impact of online advertisements on the consumers, impact studies are conducted in a specific area to know the impact of a particular topic.

The sales executive will look at the activities like the point of purchase marketing. His duty will be to focus how the point of purchase marketing is carried out. For this he can visit retail stores which will be doing the point of sales purchase and advice them on performing the various tasks like giving free coupons to the customers, he would tell the retailers to promote and advertise the various apple iPhones to the customers. So that the customers choose to buy the iphones of Apple (Nejad,  Niroomand, & Kuzgunkaya, 2014).

Advertising executive will look after the various advertising activities that are going to be carried out in the marketing activities. It will be the duty of advertising executive to plan the various advertising campaigns, on television, radios and the social media, he will see that the all the advertising activities are carried out as per the plan and according to the budget set. He will see that advertising in print media like newspapers is carried out properly for which he will coordinate with the different newspaper agencies and communicate the advertising plan to them (Moriarty et al., 2014). 

Social Media

The social media marketing executive’s duty will be see that all the marketing campaigns on social media are carried out in proper way, it his duty to plan all the marketing campaigns on social media and execute them, the various activities will include planning on campaigns on Face book, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. All the campaigns should be according to the allocated budget (Moriarty et al., 2014)..

The public relation agent will also be included in the team. The pr agent’s responsibility will be look at the pr activities that would be carried out in the marketing plan activities. He will plan the various press releases and it will be his/her duty to see that those press releases are both in recorded form as well as in written form as per the plan.  Then these press releases will be mailed to each of the journalist. The PR agent will do the planning of public events, and he will be accountable to see that all that has been planned for public events are carried out properly to meet the objectives of marketing plan. The PR agent should organize conferences and he will see that the press conferences are done in a peaceful manner, and the company’s public relation is maintained. The next task PR executive will do is plan for the sponsorships, the two events that are planned to be sponsored, in the Christchurch and Hamilton.

The planning executive’s duty is to plan all the marketing activities, he will plan the each events. It would be his duty to make timeline of all the events that are to be carried out, planning plays a very important role and there needs to be a proper plan, otherwise it will be difficult to organize and execute the activities (Moriarty et al., 2014).

Financial executive’s task is to prepare a budget and the allocation of funds for each of the activities that are to be carried out in the action plan. It is his duty to to see that there are no unexpected expenses that would disturb the events that are planned, it is his duty to show the prepared budget to the senior management so that they can approve it. He will allocate the funds for each of the activities as per the budget (Moriarty et al., 2014)..

The duty of the control executive is to see that the activities follow the set standards. It is his duty to compare the planning and the actual performances, if there is a deviation it is the duty of the control executive to suggest corrective measures so that the task is once again carried out according to the set plan. He will also see if there are expected expenses and report to the financial manager (Moriarty et al., 2014).

The market research executives will carry out the marketing research to meet the research objectives. The researchers will conduct surveys, they will choose and sample size and conduct a survey, the purpose of the survey will be to get the feedback of the customers, the researchers duty will be to design a questionnaire and give it to the sample size, so that they can give their feedback. The researchers will also be responsible for conducting the impact study, to know the impact of the social media marketing on the customers (Moriarty et al., 2014).

Market researches

Interdepartmental support is very much required for carrying out the activities, the departments. Carrying out a marketing activities not just require marketing department, rather it includes other departments as well, the support of the other departments like, Finace department, HR department, Research and Development department.

Finance department- The finance department will make the budget for the marketing activities to be carried, they will allocate the financial resources required to carry out the various activities, and the marketing department will have to coordinate with the financial department, because they will provide the financial resources.

HR department- HR department will be responsible for hiring the team members for the activities and also be responsible for providing the manpower that would be required to carry out the various activities. The events as per the marketing action plan, the HR department will look after the salaries and remunerations to be provide to the employees involved in this action plan.

The R&D department will carry out the marketing research, it will be the duty of the Research and development department to assign their executives to conduct the researches and the impact studies required to meet objectives of the marketing action plan (Stokes, 2015).  

Businesses often face trouble while executing their plans, even after proper planning and budgeting sometimes few problems occur that are not anticipated but affect  the activities very badly, resulting in either delay in execution or failure to successfully execute the plan (Parker,  & Alford, 2017). 

Two difficulties that can be anticipated now are

There are times when some unexpected expenses occur due sudden change in the suppliers, sometimes the suppliers fails to deliver goods in time, the delays the execution of the activity, so the business is forced to change the suppliers. Often the new supplier cost might be more than the previous one in such scenario the business suffers a great deal of difficulty because the new expenses are not included in the budget, and hence it becomes a barrier in smooth functioning of the activities (Foxall, 2014). 

Miscommunication- Communication plays a very important role in any business activity and miscommunication could result in very serious problems that could risk the entire project. There might be situation of miscommunication, could happen that would lead the planned activities to danger, miscommunication can  occur between the team members, between team leader and team member, between customers and the retailer and many more, the adverse affects of miscommunication depends upon the issue. Miscommunication in the team can be avoided, by clearing all the relevant information before hand and not leaving any scope foe miscommunication, giving proper information to the customers can also avoid miscommunication on the end of customers, but if it is not considered miscommunication can cause severe problem for the planned activities (McQuarrie, 2015).  

The key performance indicators of the business activities are positive results that the business receives from the activities that it carries out. The positive results, the key indicators, or the performances are not always the monetary gains, sometimes the gains are in other factors as well like the customer interests towards the products (Hollensen, 2015). 

Responsibilities and Accountabilities of each member of the team

Some of the three key performance indicator factors are

Increase in sales- Increase in sales clearly states that the business is growing and the efforts that were taken towards the promotional and advertisement activities have finally given good results. Increase in sales can be calculated by comparing the sales from the past, companies mostly calculate the sales on monthly basis, so if the sales are more than previous month that means that the company is growing (Hollensen, 2015). 

Profit earned-If the revenue earned is more than the previous month than it is also a key indicator of good performance, profit can be calculated by subtracting the gross income earned from the cost that was involved in the manufacturing, packaging and transportation plus the factory overheads. If the income earned is more than the expense invested than it is a clear sign that company is running in profit, but if the income earned is less than the cost that was involved in manufacturing than it means that the company is running in losses and it would be a sign of poor performance (Getz & Page, 2016).

These days all companies have a page on the various social networking sites, face book, twitter, instagram, twitter, the social media marketing representatives keep a track of their social networking pages. This lets them know the popularity of their products, increased number of followers on the social networking pages show that many customers or prospects are interested on the products of the company. It is a very positive sign that the marketing efforts of the company is very fruitful, proper advertising contributes to the fruitful result and the customers try to gain knowledge about the product, this means that the customers are planning to buy any product and it is the information collection stage of their buying behavior (Krush, Agnihotri, & Trainor, 2016)..

There are many companies in the smartphone market, it somehow affects the business of  Apple iPhones, inorder to deal with the harsh competition there are two contingency actions that will Apple iPhones survive the battle and maintain its position in the market (Blakeman, 2014).

Product development- The first contingency action will be development of the iPhones, by upgrading the software that it uses, putting more user-friendly features, adding more utility apps. A market research is required for the product development, as per the plan the company can conduct a research and know from customers what features they want in the Apple iPhones accordingly the features will be added. This will help the company beat the harsh competition through the product development (Boone & Kurtz, 2013). .

Another contingency strategy that the company would adopt is in pricing strategy. The company would adopt price skimming strategy for its market in New Zealand, the company will target the customers of a particular class and promote some of the most classified and expensive iPhones to those clients. This will help the company to keep a hold on a particular segment and hence there would be less competition in this particular segment (Baker, 2014).  

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