Marketing Plan Management And Staffing Support Essay For Houzit.

Marketing activities

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.

Using the case study information provided, develop a management plan for the marketing activities being conducted within your organisation.  This should include information 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.

• A management plan for the marketing activities, with clear strategies and actions for the achievement of marketing objectives
• Summary notes from your meeting with your CEO.

Evidence that you analysed and identified the needs of the case study, and reflected these in the management plan you have developed.

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.

As part of this task, you will need to ensure that you understand the mission and strategic objectives of your organisation, 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

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.

5.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

6.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.

• staffing support plan [Steps 1-4]
• responses to each provided scenario [Steps 5-6].

In this task you are required to review the implementation and progress of a marketing plan, based on the established plan and metrics.

Read the case study and understand the marketing objectives for the organisation. You will need to analyse and measure progress of the plan against established KPIS, and review targets for the next phase of the marketing plan. Data evaluation techniques to measure marketing performance should be demonstrated be the learner.

1.Analysis: analyse the marketing outcomes, changes in marketing and calculated marketing metrics (ROMI and market share).Describe the changes required to meet strategic objectives.

2.KPIs: Explain any success or performance gaps in the case study as measured against the KPIs mentioned earlier. Identify what you believe are the causes and effects of any successes or gaps. Describe marketing outcomes and how you could improve strategic performance.

3.Targets: for any identified over-performances (against targets), describe the trends and reasons for these, and set new targets.

For the promotion of the products of Houzit, one of the reputed chain of stores for House ware products, the management has taken a few interesting initiatives. The marketing team is divided into two parts. There is a department in the marketing team that takes care of the online promotions by SEO, various website and through social media. In this changing market, the management of the organizations has to put stress on the online marketing issues in order to reach the mass population. The target customers of this particular organization are young adults who have recently moved from their parent’s house or the newly married couple. The designs of their products are highly urbanized and are best suited for the age group mentioned above. The exquisite quality of their products and their durability and excellent design has made the organization reach the height of success in no time (Tahir et al. 2014). But to keep the profitability uniform the management is investing a lot of money and time to ensure a world-class online marketing strategy (Dinner, Van Heerde and Neslin 2014). Apart from that the management under the supervision of a manager has deployed a team that will look after the advertising via magazines and social events. This particular department of the organization takes up huge responsibility and almost takes care of the whole advertising process and promotional works of the organization that can be done offline.  

The management of the organization has taken up marketing on social media very seriously. The managers are stressing on social media as a platform of promotional activities because the target customers they have set, are statistically seen to have been engaged in social media sites almost 2 to 3 hours a day (Tahir et al. 2014). It is a matter of fact that the target customers of the organization are generally very active on social media and thus the management has decided to stress on the promotional activities on the platform of social media (Scott 2015). Social media platform includes pages in Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, where the management managed to make a few celebrities endorse their brand. They made the project in a way so that they can employ word of mouth tactics by the celebrities in short videos that get uploaded on a regular basis on social media websites. They provide the photos of their wide range of collections on those portals in order to attract more customers. The management also deployed a team under the leadership of a manager who is expert in website designing. This team takes care of the maintenance of the mother website of the organization and along with that they ensure that the customers can without any hesitation use their websites to make payments for the purchases without a hitch. The management has also employed a team who takes care of the offline marketing and advertising of the products of Houzit. This team makes sure that the magazines related to the Home Ware products cover their story and repeat the advertisement on the pages so that there is no gap in the marketing procedure. The management wants to launch several events involving the reputed personalities where those individuals will promote their products (Dinner, Van Heerde and Neslin 2014). Recently the management of Houzit has taken a unique way to promote their products. They have started visiting the organizations for orphan children and provide them with beds, sofa sets and many other products made by them which will be utilitarian for them. In this way the people would notice that they are doing something for the society and automatically the reputation of the brand will get on the higher side (Tahir et al. 2014). Apart from that the organization declared that they will not be using products in manufacturing goods that are harmful for the environment. They paint their furniturs using organic colors that are harmless and along with that recently they have shown their wish to reduce usage of wood to make products in order to justify their ‘go green’ movement.  The management of the Houzit is also focusing on launching unique events in order to highlight their products in the market. The management of Houzit understands the fact that the requirement of the market is ever-changing, and due to the effects of globalization, the management will have to proactively check how they can improve their quality of the products, the designs of their products and the durability of their products.

Integration of organisational activities

After implementing these techniques in the marketing and promotional activities for about a few months, the management was amused to see the results. They found that the profitability of the organization actually got increased by 2 percent after the thorough marketing activities and statistically the management can expect a boost of about 5 to 6 percent in the profitability after a 12 months continuous marketing and promotional activities. After a thorough checking up the past statistics with the present balance sheet, the management of the organization was seen to be satisfied with the level of growth of the organization (Scott 2015). It is a matter of fact that the organizations need to adapt the current trends of the market in order to sustain in the steep competitive market. No organization can show a laid back attitude towards the changes of the market requirement; else they will eventually lose their position in the market as there will always be one organization that has the potential to replace one.

The management should engage into pricing the products after thoroughly researching the market and then only they can set the prices (Ryan 2016). At initial stages, they can lower the pricing and after building a solid customer base they can experiment with the pricing according to their requirement to get the best results.

The distribution of the products has to be done by managing the supply chain in a better way. The company needs to have provision of utilizing vehicles so that the goods can be transported from one place to another in an efficient manner. The queries of the wholesalers have to be dealt so that it can help the company in replenishing the products once it has gone out of the stock. This will help in maintain a smooth supply of the products in the markets.  

The management of Houzit can measure the work rate of the employees by calculating the profitability of the organization after implementing the new regulations and apart from that calculating the increased satisfaction level of the customers and the salability of the market shares of the organization are potential indicators of the performance of the workforce (Dinner, Van Heerde and Neslin 2014). It was seen that the organization experienced a huge amount of profitability about 3 to 4 months after implementing the new regulations.

To keep the work rate high, the management had to recruit employees according to the requirement of the organization. To keep the workforce motivated, the management of the organization deployed many small teams consisting 10 to 15 employees under leadership of a manager. In this way it is easier to manage the workforce and keep them motivated.

After analyzing all the factors, it can surely be said that using social media platform as a tool of promotion and making small teams of employees within the organization are two best decisions among the initiatives taken by the organization. It can also be said that, the management can use all the techniques mentioned above can be taken into consideration as potential tactics that can lead the organization to glory.

Monitor progress

Thus to conclude, it can be said that implementing good strategic marketing policies can help an organization to achieve the desired success where as if any organization invests huge effort in producing quality products but implements no marketing strategies, would never be able to reach the height of success they deserve.

To maintain the profitability of the organization the management will have to focus on thorough training and development process for the employees. In this particular context, Tony and Marie are two managers who take care of the marketing and promotional activities of the organization. It is seen that the working style of both Tony and Marie are entirely different and that is why their process of training should be different (Jehanzeb and Bashir 2013).

In this particular context, it is seen that Marie’s approach towards work is quite friendly and she is a keen learner. Marie wants to share the knowledge she has with other employees of the organization (Ryan 2016). It is seen that though Marie have achieved her degree in marketing management with flying colors, but she has some problems in dealing with real time situations while implementing the tactics. As Marie is a dedicated learner, it would not be a huge problem to train and develop the productivity of her. Quite surprisingly after managing the offline marketing department, Marie shows deep interest to learn the online marketing tactics and that is a very good gesture being an employee of the organization. It is seen that it is easier to train a person who has the need or will to learn and develop more in future (Abdullah et al. 2014). Marie’s attitude of an enthusiastic learner actually keeps he position a bit higher than Tony’s.

Tony’s case is unlike Marie’s as Tony is not at all a keen learner as Marie is, and lacks the trait of sharing the knowledge with all the employees. He is certainly not a team worker and would have thrived if he were to complete a task alone. It is seen that Tony has a strong hold on online marketing tactics and h thinks that it is the future of marketing. One thing is not right and that is Tony should not think that other marketing tactics are inferior and he should not consider those tactics inferior to what he does (Elnaga and Imran 2013). Tony does not share his knowledge with the other employees of the workforce and sometimes he comes up with the ideas that can potentially increase the viewership of the websites but those tactics do not conform to the ethical regulations set by the management. Sometimes Tony uses certain tactics, for that the individuals who are not even interested gets redirected to the mother website of Houzit and that is something unethical towards the viewpoint of the employees. To train Tony, the management would have to go through a lot of procedure in order to ensure that Tony conforms to the regulations set by the government. The management will have to stress on changing the attitude of Tony in order to restore the harmony among the workforce.

Distributing and pricing

To assess the development of the employees and especially the rate of development of Marie and Tony, the management might use the training and evaluation model. This model is divided into four parts and those are Reaction, learning, behavior and results. In the first step the management gets a brief idea about the employees by judging their reactions (Jehanzeb and Bashir 2013). In the next step when the management trains those employees, the trainer acquires knowledge about the competency level of that employee. In the next step the behavior of the employee is evaluated by the management and finally when the results come, the management gains proper database to judge whether the employee is competent enough or not.

To get the feedback, the management of Houzit will have to depend on the Indicators of the performances of the employees (Mathew and Zacharias 2017). The increase in the productivity and profitability would ensure whether there has been a development among the workforce or not.

Using the 360 degree model of appraisal the performance of the employees can be evaluated. It can be said that the employees can judge their own capabilities or they can ask for the feedbacks from the individuals with whom he or she has been receiving training (Ryan 2016). The performance level is finally evaluated by the core management of the organization in this particular scenario.

After successfully implementing the regulations regarding training and development purposes, a significant boost in the productivity of the organization is seen. The boost in productivity became the chief element to analyze the success of implementing new strategies be it in training purpose and for the marketing reason (Ford 2014). The management of the organization is keen to enhance the productivity along with the profitability of the organization, in order to enhance the reputation of the organization. It is seen that after implementation of the new strategies the revenue got increased by 10% and the weekly revenue per store in Brisbane got increased by almost 8.5%, this can be taken into consideration in order to judge the effectiveness of the newly implemented regulations (Jehanzeb and Bashir 2013). The aim of the management of Houzit is to enhance the profitability along with the customer service and the bonding within the workforce. The organization will have to consider the financial increase in the charts and thus they will have to consider that the implementation of the strategies were successful (Abdullah et al. 2014).

In this particular context, the management of the organization will have to evaluate the performance of the employees after implementing the new strategies regarding training of the employees and the marketing strategies regarding their products. It is a matter of fact that the indicators will determine whether the implementation of the strategies were successful or not (Elnaga and Imran 2013). In this scenario, the major indicators are the increase in profitability. Considering the profitability of the organization the next key indicator would be the satisfaction level of the customer base of the organization and along with that the next indicator would be the development of the individuals as competent employees in the organization. After 12 months of training and developmental programs, it is seen that the harmony in the workforce is restored and Tony has learnt how to work as a part of a team. A special training was provided to Tony in order to control his attitude problems (Jehanzeb and Bashir 2013). It was seen that his attitude towards the coworkers significantly changed after the training process and his concerning ethics also got better than before. The management communicated in a positive way and only using communication as a tool his problems were solved. For Marie there was a problem to implement what she learnt from the business schools in real life situations. But after getting exposed in real life condition in the training procedure, she overcame her short comings and emerged as an important member in the workforce of Houzit (Abdullah et al. 2014). One of the most important shortcomings that Marie had was her inability to handle the real time situation in the stores or while implementing new strategies in order to market the products offline. The management of the organization has taken up the challenge of developing the competency level of the employees and the numbers in the profitability and the productivity indicate that the process was successful. There was a significant amount of increase in the satisfaction level of the customer base of the organization after implementing the training and marketing strategies. In short, it can be said that the overall performance of the organization got increased immensely after implementing those strategies and thus it can be said that the organization has successfully implemented all the regulations.

KPIs

After implementing the strategies successfully there was a significant boost in the profitability and the productivity of the organization, allowing the management to take up new challenges for the organization (Ford 2014). In the changed scenario, the management can take a risk by increasing the targets of the employees a bit to test the competency level of the newly trained workforce. In the changed structure of the workforce, it can easily be perceivable that the workforce became more fluid and dynamic in order to complete their tasks and thus the management can take up the challenge of increasing the target a bit. For the next 12 months, the organization can take up a challenge of increasing the targets of the company. This way if they push the employees a bit they can check whether the employees are competent enough to perform according to the changed targets or not (Elnaga and Imran 2013). After the training and development program, the organization received a higher amount of recognition from the customer base along with that a major boost in the profitability and productivity was seen. These are the primary indicators that proved that in changed scenario, the employees of the organizations have improved a lot (Ford 2014).

Thus to conclude, providing adequate training to the workforce an organization like Houzit can improve dramatically in the field of productivity and profitability. This fact justifies the effectiveness of the proper training procedure. The management must take special care regarding the training and developmental projects of the employees and should try to maintain a motivated and loyal workforce. For any business organization, be it Houzit or any other organization, the employees are the nucleus, and if the workforce is motivated and loyal towards the organization then they will become asset for the management. In this scenario it is seen that initially the organization Houzit was operating smoothly in the market of Australia, but when the management focused on the training and developmental issues of the workforce, the productivity and satisfaction level of the employees got a huge boost and that resulted in a significant rise in the profitability of the organization and overall customer satisfaction. Thus, it can be said that there lies the importance of successfully implementing the strategies o the organizations to get the desired result be it in profitability or in the productivity.

References

Abdullah, N.H., Ping, L.L., Wahab, E. and Shamsuddin, A., 2014, September. Perception on training and employee innovativeness: An evidence from small firms. In Management of Innovation and Technology (ICMIT), 2014 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 76-80). IEEE.

Dinner, I.M., Van Heerde, H.J. and Neslin, S.A., 2014. Driving online and offline sales: The cross-channel effects of traditional, online display, and paid search advertising. Journal of Marketing Research, 51(5), pp.527-545.

Elnaga, A. and Imran, A., 2013. The effect of training on employee performance. European Journal of Business and Management, 5(4), pp.137-147.

Ford, J.K., 2014. Improving training effectiveness in work organizations. Psychology Press.

Jehanzeb, K. and Bashir, N.A., 2013. Training and development program and its benefits to employee and organization: A conceptual study. European Journal of business and management, 5(2).

Mathew, G.A. and Zacharias, S.D., 2017, March. A Conceptual Overview on Relationship between Employee Attitude towards Training and Organizational Commitment. In Proceedings of International HR Conference (Vol. 3, No. 1).

Ryan, D., 2016. Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. Kogan Page Publishers.

Scott, D.M., 2015. The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. John Wiley & Sons.

Tahir, N., Yousafzai, I.K., Jan, S. and Hashim, M., 2014. The Impact of Training and Development on Employees Performance and Productivity A case study of United Bank Limited Peshawar City, KPK, Pakistan. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 4(4), p.86.

Tracey, J.B., Hinkin, T.R., Tran, T.L.B., Emigh, T., Kingra, M., Taylor, J. and Thorek, D., 2015. A field study of new employee training programs: industry practices and strategic insights. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 56(4), pp.345-354.

Zahra, S., Iram, A. and Naeem, H., 2014. Employee Training and Its Effect on Employees’ Job Motivation and Commitment: Developing and Proposing a Conceptual Model.