Module 9 - Homework Help

Johnathon Davis

6-1 Milestone Two: Marketing the Brand

MBA 645

Professor Sauers

May 1, 2022

6-1 Milestone Two: Marketing the Brand

Introduction:

After opening the park, the organization is bound to face many challenges as the incident that happened in the park, which resulted in the closure, has many implications. Although most of the concerns of the public, employees, and the government have been answered by the management and a proper make-over the in terms of safety has been done to ensure the safety of the general public and the safety of the staff, it is now up-to-the marketing team to attract as many customers as they can with their affective marketing plan. The marketing department is one of the most important departments, and after the incident and reopening of the park, its importance has increased many folds as effective marketing can attract customers to visit the park. We will discuss the effective marketing plan for the park, and this plan will also be used by other park administrations according to their demography.

Consumer Research:

Consumer research is one of the key elements for any business, and it is the responsibility of the marketing department; this is the first step while drafting a marketing plan as the consumer should be identified before because it can save the budget of the marketing department and only the right customer which suits the business can be targeted by the company, and there are two methods, I will use to do the customer research. The first one is by survey, and the second is by monitoring social media (Patrutiu-Baltes, 2016).

Surveys: Surveys are one of the best methods used for consumer research, and this method is commonly used by marketers as well. Surveys can be outsourced as there are a lot of companies who conduct surveys, but the marketing department can also do their surveys, and this will be cost-effective as well. A questionnaire should be distributed with a request to answer the questions, and this can be distributed door to door and also online by running advertisements on different social media platforms. The results of the survey can give a piece of very good information related to consumers and the target market for the organization.

Monitoring On social media: social media has become a part of everyone's life, and billions of people around the world use social media platforms for entertainment purposes as well as for searching for more information about their needs and other stuff. Monitoring patterns of the general population on these platforms can also provide very useful information about what a consumer thinks and what kind of consumer should be interested in visiting the park for entertainment purposes, and the data will help the marketing department to target the most relevant customers.

Traditional Marketing Methods:

The world has changed a lot in the past few decades, and the marketing strategies have also changed as the world has become more innovative and the marketing departments of all the organizations are also forced to innovate, but the traditional marketing ways are still there, and these methods still have good impacts on the consumers. There are many different ways of traditional marketing, but we will discuss only three traditional marketing methods, which are advertising on billboards, advertising through broadcasting, and advertising through print ads (Price et al., 2015).

Advertisement on billboards: advertising on billboards is one of the oldest methods of advertising and also one of the most effective methods used by companies all around the world. Advertisements on billboards across the region will help the park to gain new customers, and the advertisement must state the safety features of the park advertisement on billboards can be done in nearby areas to ensure new customer growth for the theme park. The method will also help to retain the existing customers as the new safety features which are advertised will ensure that these existing customers will come back to the theme park. The advantage of this method is that it covers a large population who can see the advertisement on a daily basis, and the disadvantage is the high cost of this method as it is one most expensive forms of advertising.

Broad-casting: Advertisement through broadcasting is also one of the most effective and also one of the oldest methods of advertising, and it can be very helpful for the organization to acquire new customers because of the huge scope of this form of the method, and it will also help to retain existing customers as well, the advantage of this form of advertisement is to large scope, and this type of advertisement covers all kinds of individuals, but the disadvantage is that very high cost of running this form of advertisement as advertisements are the only source of income for the broadcasting networks since these networks capture a huge audience, so they charge a very price as well. 

Advertising through Print ads: this form of advertising is also very effective, and the organization can run marketing campaigns through printing ads in newspapers, magazines, and journals. This marketing method is the oldest advertising method and can be very helpful in targeting certain groups of individuals or families. This method can help to gain new customer bases by targeting a specific audience and can also help to retain the existing customers by publishing ads and giving coupons to existing customers; the advantage of this method of advertisement is that it's cheap and it able the organization to target a specific market and customer base and the disadvantage of this method of advertisement is that it reaches very low population because only specific individuals or organizations read magazines or newspapers. 

Digital Marketing Methods: 

In this modern world, with the digitalization of everything around the globe, the digital marketing has become a mainstream marketing strategy as almost all the companies around the globe are more focused on digital marketing than before, and there are a lot of different ways of doing digital marketing campaigns, and I have chosen three most effective ways to do digital marketing for the theme park. The first one I have chosen is social media marketing and the second method I have chosen is search engine optimization, and the third method is content marketing (Bala & Verma, 2018).

Social Media Marketing: Social media is the phenomenon that has captured the world by storm, and the population with the access to the internet has their presence on social media; there are many different social media apps, including Facebook and Tik-Tok, which are mostly used by the general population and the short video advertisement campaigns can be run on these platforms, this will help the company to reach as many customers as they can, and it can help the company to gain new customers as well, the company can run the ads on social media in the region of the theme park which will help the company to retain the existing customers. The advantages of this method are that it can reach as many people as the company wants, and it can be very cheap for the company to run those ads. The disadvantage of this method is that ads will reach only those people who use social media.

Search Engine Optimization: SEO is another form of digital marketing and is one of the most effective ways of digital marketing; this method of digital marketing simply means that if someone searches about a theme park, then the top search on the search engine will be of those companies who have done good search engine optimization and to do that the first thing a company needs is an eye-catching website so that people can get the general idea of the theme park and all other information they require. This method can help gain new customers because of the good and attractive website and can help retain the existing customers as well; the advantage of this method of digital marketing is that it will help the company to increase its online presence, and it's also a cheap form of advertising. The disadvantage can be a good or even better search engine optimization by the competitor who can reduce the number of visitors to the website as well (Berman & Katona, 2013).

Content Marketing: Content marketing simply means that influencers on different platforms on social media also promote different brands on their blogs or social media pages where they have thousands of followers, and their influence can help the company to reach the maximum number of people. It can surely help to gain a new customer base and can also help to retain the existing customers as their favorite influencer promotes the theme park. The advantage of this method is that it can help the company to a certain type of consumers by targeting influencers whose content is more focused on traveling and fun activities, and the disadvantage of this method will be that this is an expensive form of marketing as influencers charge high fees for the promotions. 

Recommendation:

Social media marketing and advertising on billboards can work together to gain maximum return from the marketing campaigns, and these two marketing methods, digital marketing, and traditional marketing methods can work together to optimize the brand. 

Crisis management:

· By providing more effective safety measures to the customers, we can achieve customer satisfaction and improve from the brand damage after the incident. 

· Employees must be the focus of the company, and introducing a better pay scale and incentives will help to support the employees of the company. 

· The possible crisis after the incident can be a fear of trying those specific rides which played a role in the incident, and consumers can be reluctant to try those rides again. 

Legal and ethical issues:

The ethical issue can be a concern of consumers related to CSR, and it can be managed by introducing a policy related to CSR; the legal issue can be a false advertisement of the theme park, which can be eliminated by doing a proper content audit before publishing the advertisement. 

References

Patrutiu-Baltes, L. (2016). Inbound Marketing-the most important digital marketing strategy. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Economic Sciences. Series V, 9(2), 61.

Price, R. A., Wrigley, C., & Straker, K. (2015). Not just what they want, but why they want it: Traditional market research to deep customer insights. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal.

Bala, M., & Verma, D. (2018). A critical review of digital marketing. M. Bala, D. Verma (2018). A Critical Review of Digital Marketing. International Journal of Management, IT & Engineering, 8(10), 321-339.

Berman, R., & Katona, Z. (2013). The role of search engine optimization in search marketing. Marketing Science, 32(4), 644-651.