MKT 500

Introduction

Safe & Sound Safe House is a safe house for women and children in desperate need of secret housing and shelter from their oppressor. We are a nonprofit organization located in Washington, D.C. Safe &Sound is a 501 © 3 funded by grants, donations, as well as locally and federally funded. Our company was established in 2006. We are a 16-unit apartment building housing two families per unit. We have a childcare facility in the basement of our facility, which facilitates infants from 6 weeks to 4 years of age. Safe & Sound provides immediate job placement, job training, social skills, resume writing, cooking classes, facility house etiquette and much more to every client who we accept into our program. Each unit is fully furnished with beds, bedding, dressers, sofa, loveseat and a dinette kitchen set. Each unit has a kitchen and each kitchen has an electric stove/oven, microwave and adequate pots, pans and dishware to include silverware. Each unit also has one washing machine and one dryer. We have a 30-day occupancy turn around. An occupancy may be extended depending on the individual needs of the client. Safe & Sound has strong ties in the community and is equipped to receive women and children who come to us with literally no money, food or clothes. We provide vouchers for food, clothing and childcare upon arrival. We also provide transportation and or travel vouchers. We are an anonymous organization and therefore can only be contacted via authorized social service centers, authorized churches or an authorized social worker who are employed by our organization.

Mission

Our Mission at Safe & Sound is to provide an anonymous, safe, clean and therapeutic environment to women and children who are in desperate need of immediate housing. We are committed to being a dynamic service to our clients by aiding them with the resources and tools they need to start a new life. There is no time to waste. Safe & Sound has a fully staffed professional team who are experienced in various areas of trauma, abuse, neglect, employment, engagement and integration back into the community and workforce. Our staff welcomes every client with open arms and aids them with getting their lives back on track, while tearing down the stereotypes of all negativity, self-doubt and fear. Our approaches with love yet aggressive. Our motto is “It is impossible to stop a woman who will not quit”.

Short-term goals and Long-term goals

In the next 12 months, I would like to add to the beauty of the landscaping by adding a variety of trees and bushes to beautify the landscaping. I would like to be able to afford 24-hour security officers to incorporate with our 24 hour outside perimeter surveillance system. I would also like find a house to rent to expand my safe house enterprise in the next twelve months. In addition, I would also like to add a recreation/ community room to our apartment building safe house for the sole purpose of our clients and their children to have the opportunity to have various celebratory and communal events on the premises. Under no circumstances will our recreation/community room ever be rented, reserved or used for any outside person, Company Corporation or entity. Within the next five years, I would like to own three safe houses with each house having their own transportation vanity is my goal to increase my network of corporations who make annual generous donations while maintaining confidential and anonymity of our clients.

Environmental Analysis

Develop an environmental analysis that includes competitive, economic, political, legal, technological, and sociocultural forces. There are several services similar to our safe house. Calvary Women’s Services, Sasha Bruce, and S.O.M.E. So Others Might Eat are just a few. These programs offer shelter, safety and other services, but none of them is exactly like the services we will render to our clients. In the realm of economics, there are several obstacles and challenges we will need to address and overcome such as women facing discrimination for seeking shelter. Women are typically at a greater risk for various violent offenses. Women historically have had to face the threat of physical abuse, verbal abuse, being treated inhumanely and ostracized from their families and in their community. Women are sometimes hesitant to seek services in these shelters and safe houses for their fear of not being able to attend to their basic care. In some cases there is an over promise and under deliver of services period. There are many beneficial reasons technology is essential in the realm of a safe house such as ours. Technology has the potential to connect victims with advocacy groups near and far. Technology provides a platform for survivors to have a voice. Online resources, apps and hotlines help victims get legal help and information quickly. Some states have integrated technology and the law to make filing a complaint easier. Politics plays a major role in subsidies allocated to programs such as ours. The McKinney Vento Homelessness Assistance Act 2002. Mandatory, expansive, complicated rules make it challenging clients to adhere to but keeps the company from being in litigation and decreases liabilities. Legally more clients are likely to be victims of sexual and emotional abuse. “In order to best serve women with their diverse beliefs, norms, values,

Religious practices, languages, sexual preferences, ages and abilities it is essential that all frontline workers be open to knowing about and accepting individual uniqueness “as stated in the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters, Module 9.

SWOT

STRENGTH

1. Houses women and children

As an organization, we consider one of our strengths to be the ability to house both women and children most of them who are seeking confidential refuge from an abusibe or unsafe living condition. We have enough building structures to accommodate both women and children comfortably.

2. Security cameras on premises

We have installed CCTV cameras in every building within our institution for security reasons. Having the place monitored 24 hours every day ensures that nobody intrudes the premises. Moreover, we want to provide maximum security for these women and children who came to us for safety.

3. Well trained staff

Our organization ensured that it recruited an entire staff with the knowledge and know-how of the services we provide. We have staff who are trained to handle clients with different conditions. Moreover, we have enough psychologists who have experience in handling both children and women suffering from trauma acquired from an abusive living condition. Our staff has the ability to not only counsel but also the ability to treat patients with mental conditions caused by their past situations.

4. No men allowed

Considering that Safe & Sound Safehouse is a shelter for women and children alone, we have put in place policies that deter men from visiting the premises. Most of our clients (women and children) have had a bad past relationship with men resulting to their present situation. Deterring men from visiting our organization creates a favorable condition for healing and forgetting their past. This is what makes our organization different from our competitors.

WEAKNESS

1. Various shelters in the area

One of our weaknesses is the competition from various shelters in the area. Considering that the population within the area where we are located is small, we get to accommodate a considerable number of women and children because some of them register with the other shelters.

2. Grant funded

As a government entity, we are more risk-averse as compared to the private shelters because we are not provided with lump-sum awards. As an alternative, the grants funded to our shelter make it difficult for us to grapple because of lag times between fronting payments and waiting for reimbursements.

3. Government funded

While our institution depends entirely on government funds, other shelters within the area are profit organizations. We don’t get enough funding from the government preventing us from offering extended services to our clients. This situation poses as both our weakness and a threat to the existence of the organization.

4. Depends heavily on donations

Because we are a non-profit organization, we don’t make any profits. Therefore, we depend on donations and grants from the government and other organization to fund the institution. We have the vision of increasing the size of the organization to accommodate more women and children but we are being dragged down by lack of enough funds.

OPPORTUNITIES

1. 30 HOUSING TURN AROUND

Based on our system, we offer a 30 day turnaround for our clients. This means that after every 30 days we get to release some clients while we admit others. However, this depends on the needs of our clients. Because of the turnaround system, our clients get to live comfortably because there is no congestion in our shelters.

2. Day care on premises

As a shelter for women and children, we also provide daycare opportunities for children and infants. This is an opportunity to generate funds from the services offered. Besides, other shelters around don’t offer day care services making us the only ones around.

3. Job training for every client

Since the establishment of our shelters, we have only been accommodating our clients without offering extended services. However, we have seen the opportunity where we can train them to acquire skills on different specialties within the institution where they will be living while working. Training our clients will help cut the cost of paying workers to handle tasks within the shelters.

4. Each unit has a private entry

We have designed the units within the shelters with private entry and exits. The idea behind this was to give a sense of security and privacy to our clients. We did a research around and realized that our competitors have not designed their units the way we have. This is an opportunity for our institution to reduce the competition and attract more clients.

THREAT

1. Location is visible

We are an anonymous organization and we can only be contacted by authorized organizations or individuals. However, we are located in an open area where our buildings are exposed. Exposure of our shelters to the public threats our anonymity status.

2. Visitors allowed per screening

We only allow visitors in to our shelter after screening them. This means that the only people allowed to enter the shelters have already been registered to our systems. While this promotes security, it might be closing out unregistered visitors who might be out potential clients.

3. Kitchen in every unit

Every facility house within our shelters have kitchen and each kitchen has an electric stove/oven, microwave including other kitchen electric appliances. These appliances are used on a daily basis and this increases electricity bills. Due to this, we are required to pay a lot of money to the electric companies while we don’t generate any profits.

4. No 24 hour security

As much as we have installed CCTV cameras all over the institution, we do not have 24 hours security. We have employed guards who work during the day hours while there are no guards on alert during the nights. This might seem to pose as a security threat considering that we are giving shelter to women and children who were living under a life threatening situation before they came to live in the shelter.

Perceptual Map

Figure 1: perception map for Safe &Sound Safe house

Company’s pricing and distribution strategies

Safe &sound safe House has developed a good pricing strategy enough to help the company determine the pricing point which they can use to maximize the sale of the services being offered. While coming up with the pricing strategies, Safe & sound Safe House considered a wide range of factors which included competitor offerings, customer base, positioning strategies and business, target.

Pricing premium

With premium pricing, Safe &Sound Safe House developed penetration strategies with the purpose of attracting clients by offering affordable prices on their services. While the competitor companies are using this technique to attract more clients, our company is using the strategies to ensure that it does not result to an initial loss of income for the organization (Cohen, 2015). We are using awareness to help our organization to sufficiently penetrate or rather compete successfully in the market.

Psychology pricing

As an organization, we have used psychological pricing to ensure that our clients respond to an emotional level and not logical level. We have used this technique with the purpose of increasing demand by creating an illusion of superior value for our clients. In most cases, clients tend to focus more attention on the first number on the price tag rather than the last digits.

Integrated market communication plan

The integrated market communication plan for Safe & Sound Safe House is aimed at the implementation and development of communication plans with the aim of improving the visibility of the organization. The strategies set in place by our organization works towards the generation of positive media coverage through the social media platforms. Moreover, these strategies are being used to expedite potential clients to our company.

Branding

At Safe &Sound safe House, we are using branding to promote our services to our potential clients. Through branding we ensure that our potential clients adhere to the familiarity of our services. Often, people tend to adopt a specific service because they are familiar with the brand. When potential clients recognize our brand, there is a higher chance that they will adopt our services rather than going to an organization which is unfamiliar to them.

Marketing communication mix

As an organization, we are suing personal selling, promotion, advertisements and personal relations to market our services. We use both paid and non-personal form of media to communicate our services to our potential clients. Through advertisements, we have been able to build the brand image of our organization and also pass relevant information to our target market (Cravens, 2006). The only setback that comes with this type of communication is that it is not a long term objective of marketing communications.

Media strategy

Our target markets are the women and children who have run away from their homes because of oppression or abuse. Therefore, as an organization, we have used the internet as our preferred media to reach out to our potential clients effectively and efficiently. We have adopted a media strategy that will help to retain our clients while at the same time attract new clients to our organization. What further supports our organization’s preference for the market is the availability of internet access to almost every single one of our potential clients.

Public relations, sales promotion, and personal selling plan

Public relations

Having considered that we exist in a competitive environment, Safe & Sound Safe House has put a lot of focus on public relations with the aim of providing true and valuable information to our potential clients. We have adopted this technique purposefully to educate our clients rather than attempting to directly offer them our services. Moreover, we are using public relation to boost the image and reputation of our company. Some of the tools we have used for public relations include the social media and print media such as magazines and newspapers. The Safe & Sound Safe House public relations include; crisis management to cover the organization from any threats, building a positive image for the organization, monitoring all the media channels for any comments made about the organization by the public.

Personal selling

As an organization, we choose to use personal selling plan as a promotional technique where our staff uses their skills to build a personal relationship with our clients. As an organization, we understand that customer relationship is the key to beating the competition in the market. Some of the personal selling plans that we have employed within our organization include, customer retention and deletion, customer relationship management, satisfying needs and adding value, and client profit planning.

Sales Promotion

We have adopted the sales promotion plan in order to attract more clients to sign up with our organization. Since the implementation of this plan, we have realized that it has stimulated the sales of user services because we changed our price/value relationship and this encouraged more clients to register with our organization.

Online and Direct Marketing Plan

Safe & Sound Safe House has adopted the use of online and direct marketing plan, all aimed at increasing the number of clients who will sign up for our services. Considering that we are living in the age were media and technology is advanced, we saw the opportunity of reaching out to majority of our potential clients through internet marketing. It is way easy and cost efficient to invest in web based marketing and websites to reach out to our new clients. Moreover, this plan will contribute majorly towards eliminating other competitor organizations. Through digital marketing, Safe & Sound Safe House has been able to increase exposure to the consumers of our services.

Furthermore, our organization has adopted the direct marketing plan by using consumer direct channels to reach out and even deliver our services to our clients without passing through middlemen. Through this type of marketing, our staff is now interacting personally with the clients. This technique helps our organization to obtain an immediate response from the clients while ate the same time cultivating a lasting relationship with the clients (Kotler, 2012). Some of the direct marketing techniques used by our organization include; Telemarketing, Direct mail and catalogue marketing.

Social responsibility/cause related marketing plan 

As an organization, we created a proper social responsibility purposefully to help us market our services. Social responsibility will not only help us deal or rather successfully compete with organizations offering similar services but also attract more clients to our organization. While developing a social responsibility plan for marketing purposes, we ensured to follow all the necessary principles. These principles included; fundamental human rights, ethics and transparency, creation of value, responsible marketing and dialogue with the stakeholders.

References

Cohen, W. A. (2005). The marketing plan. John Wiley & Sons.

Cravens, D. W., & Piercy, N. (2006). Strategic marketing (Vol. 6). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Kotler, P., & Kotler, P. (2012). Marketing for nonprofit organizations (Vol. 2). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-hall.