Essay: Marketing Strategies For A Special Needs Children's Park - Small & Educational.

Setting Goals for a New Business

Question:

Discuss about the Marketing Aspect For A Small Educational Park For Children.

The report aims at giving an overview of marketing for a small educational park for the children with the special needs. Mr. Ahmed would open the park that will ensure providing training and education for the special children but also ensure some fun games that would help in improving the concentration and motor skills of the children. The report focuses on helping Mr. Ahmed in setting the overall goals for the new business keeping in context with the goals and mission. The report will also guide Mr. Ahmed with the objectives and strategies that need to be set for his new business. There are also suggestions provided on the marketing concepts for his new business.

Goal setting helps in steering the growing business in proper direction.  Establishment of the business goals involves considerable introspection into what is making the business tick and its future (Locke and Latham 2013). While considering the goal setting for his new business in context to its mission and goals Mr. Ahmed first needs to distinguish between the long term and the short term goals. The long-term goals must have a time line close to three to five years. These goals must be able articulate the mission of Mr. Ahmed’s business thereby reflecting the reason for which it was found. The long-term goals are primarily visionary goals that fall within the four general areas like service, social, growth or profit.

Service goals: These goals are related to the improvement of the satisfaction of the customers.

Social goals: These goals aim at focusing on the community by means of philanthropy

Growth: These are goals related to the expansion of the services of the business under discussion.

In addition to the long-term goals, Mr. Ahmed must also ensure figuring out the short term goals that would easily pave the way for the long-term goals. Hence, Mr. Ahmed must consider the SMART that stands for specific, measurable, action oriented, realistic and time- specific (Webster and Lusch 2013).  

Specific: Mr. Ahmed must set objectives that are highly detailed and concrete

Measurable: Before proceeding with his plan of opening the education park he should put across a figure or value to the specified objectives

Action Orientated: He must also ensure when an action needs to be undertaken and by whom

Realistic: He must also make sure that the goals needs to be challenging and he should also have the required resources for achieving them.

Objectives for a New Business

Time Specific: Lastly, Mr. Ahmed must also keep set a specific deadline for keeping things on the track.

While implementing the short-term goals, Mr. Ahmed must have a narrower timeline (Loorbach and Wijsman 2013). The key aspect of the short-term goals lies in tying them with those of the long term. Mr. Ahmed should however keep in mind that focusing on the minute details can be a move towards achieving the long-term aim.

Objectives refer to the aim that every business must undertake for meeting the future goals (Hahn 2013). Thus, objective represents the statement of the purpose. A new business can set its objectives by keeping it simple and focusing on the ones that they is easily achievable with a given frame of time. The objective for the business should be specific and measurable. While implementing the objectives the new business should break the important results into smaller goals so that they are recognizable.           

Once the goals of the new business are set it is important for Mr. Ahmed in figuring out the ways for achieving them. He should also keep in mind that goals must be realistic and achievable. He must break down the objectives into smaller chunks for making them achievable. Mr. Ahmed should undertake the necessary steps that would determine the objectives of the new firm.

Time Frame: Mr. Ahmed must ensure a start and an end date for the project he plans to undertake in the form of an education park

Actions: Mr. Ahmed must mention the actions that he plans to undertake in detail

Responsibilities: He should also mention the person responsible for helping him achieve every step

Resources: He should also detail the budget, the staffing requirements and the supplies that he will require.

Desired Outcome:  He should also describe his expectations from the actions undertaken and how will determine the achievement of the goal.

Mr. Ahmed must place a system in place that will help him in measuring the goals while keeping him in track (Fleisher and Bensoussan 2015). He can however keep it simple by ticking a completed task from the list and using additional complex process of measurement relevant for the business. Mr. Ahmed should not forget in rewarding the people who aids him in achieving the business goals.

Thus, for delivering effective strategies for the new business Mr. Ahmed must follow six simple steps:

Development of a Mission Statement:

Steps for Effective Strategies for the New Business

Mr. Ahmed should not only define the purpose of opening the educational park for the special children but also put forward their prime objective that is to provide special training and education for these children along with fun related games for enhancing their concentration and motor skills (David, David and David 2014). This helps in focusing on the needs of the short term while realizing the vision for the long term.

Development of a Vision Statement:

Mr. Ahmed should also describe the future direction of the business and the aims that it has in the medium and the long term (Österle 2013). He should mention the purpose and values for undertaking such a decision. The opening of such park will not only help to train and educate the special children but also help them in ensuring amusement.

Identification of the Strategic Objectives:

Mr. Ahmed should develop high-level objectives and highlight the priorities along with mentioning the plans that will help in delivering the vision and the mission of the business. At this stage, Mr. Ahmed must ensure that the objectives should be measurable, specific, realistic, achievable, and time-related (Hill, Jones and Schilling 2014).  Mr. Ahmed should also mention the budget requirements and the resource allocation.

Introduction of Tactical Plans:

Mr. Ahmed should also translate the strategic objectives for his new business into more detailed short-term plans (Griffin 2013). The tactical plans will contain functions related to the organization. Mr. Ahmed should focus on the measurable results and communicate to the stakeholders regarding what they need to do. In other words, Mr. Ahmed must introduce short sprints for executing the strategies in practice.

Measuring the Performance Management:

In addition to the hard work, it is also necessary for Mr. Ahmed for continually reviewing all the action plans and the objectives and make sure that he is still on the track for achieving the overall goals (Schaltegger and Wagner 2017). Managing and monitoring a whole strategy represents a complex task that is also the reason for most of the business leaders in looking for alternative methods in handling various strategies. Managing, creating and reviewing a strategy requires one in capturing the relevant information, breaking down the chunks of the information, prioritize, plan and capture relevant information thereby having a clear strategic vision.

There exist various marketing concepts for a new business which includes:

Ensuring Consistency:

The marketing concept that Mr. Ahmed could adopt for his new business involves consistency (Awadid and Nurcan 2016). This will help in lowering the marketing cost of his educational park while enhancing the branding effectiveness.

Marketing Concepts for a New Business

Undertake Planning:

Planning represents the vital part of a new business. Mr. Ahmed should therefore ensure planning of the budget, marketing strategy and other concepts before opening the new educational park for the children with special needs.

Proper Strategy:

Strategy should instantly follow planning since it acts as foundation for the other activities of marketing (Chang 2016). Mr. Ahmed should thus develop a strategy focusing on whom to target, how to target and keep them as customers.

Identifying Target Market:

New Business owners should focus on the target market for reducing marketing waste. A target market which is well defined will ensure easier implementation of the other concepts. The target market in case of Mr. Ahmed is the children with the special needs.

Budgeting:

Budgeting also indicates an important marketing concept for a new business. It is one of the hardest and the inaccurate part of the marketing aspect. It has been found that owners of the business lack experience in marketing and so the budget ends up being skewed. Thus, budgeting will help owners like Mr. Ahmed in distributing the available funds in the opening of the educational park.

Advertising and Promotion:

Advertising and Promotion represents a complicated marketing concept and is a key aspect for new business (Hackley and Hackley 2017). Therefore, Mr. Ahmed should undertake advertising and promotion for informing the target market about the how his new business would benefit the children with the special needs. Hence, proper advertising and promotion will also lead proper recognition of the business.

Ensuring Customer Relationship Management

The concept of the customer relationship management (CRM) holds significance in the world of marketing (Choudhury and Harrigan 2014). New business owners often view the concept as something massive or feel intimated when it comes to its implementation. However, proper maintenance of the customer relationship management helps in creating consistent and loyal customers. Mr. Ahmed should therefore keep this aspect in mind.

Credibility

It is necessary for a new business to establish its credibility. Credibility of a new business depends upon its latest results. Mr. Ahmed should ensure enough credibility for his new educational park.

Using the Social Media

Nowadays with the emergence of the internet there has been a strong presence of social media across all the vital social media platforms like the Facebook, You tube, Twitter to name a few (Aral, Dellarocas and Godes 2013). New business must present them on various social media platforms for better exposure. In this context, Mr. Ahmed should let the entire world know about the opening of a new educational park for children with special needs by posting them on the various social media platforms. Thus, Mr. Ahmed must ensure that he makes the most of these social media platforms.

Roll out of Campaign

Public relations play an essential role in launching of the new business. One can however make use of the tactics of media relations for getting extensive coverage by the press. Irrespective of the chosen publicity route, it is necessary for Mr. Ahmed to ensure that the service of the educational park is completely open thereby maximizing the returns from coverage (Effelsberg, Solga and Gurt 2014). Thus, the roll out of the press paves the way for closely following the other marketing efforts. The results from all the media would enable Mr. Ahmed in adjusting the campaign of his new business in taking advantage of what is working best for it.

Thus, the marketing concepts of a new business should not only undergo examination but also planning and execution for it to succeed. Each of the business is considered unique and possesses the additional components that require consideration.

Conclusion:

The report ends by giving an insight on the various marketing concepts that the new business must undertake. The report also discusses about the goals, objectives and strategies Mr. Ahmed should put forward in keeping with the mission while opening an educational park for the children with special needs. The park would not only provide education and training to these children but also implement activities that help in the development of concentration and the motor skills amongst such children. It has however been found that a combination of advertising with the proper set of strategies will help in achieving the desired marketing results. None of the marketing strategy seems ideal for drawing overnight customers. However, there occurs an increase in the sales and customers if such strategies are consistently applied. In some cases it won’t prove to be an effective marketing on the part of the business owner until they are made a part of the coordinated marketing plan. Thus, if marketing is considered as a rope then advertising represents one of the strands that made the same rope.

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