Digital Marketing Communications For Ingogo: Comprehensive Marketing Plan

Situation Analysis

Discuss About The Marketing Management Digital Communications.

A marketing plan can be defined as a major part of the overall business plan. A solid marketing strategy is regarded as the foundation of a well written plan of marketing. It is a comprehensive blueprint or document, which outlines the business marketing or advertising efforts for the upcoming years. It also describes in detail the business activities, which are involved in accomplishing the specific objectives of marketing, within a specific time period. The marketing plan also gives a brief overview of the current marketing position of any business, its target consumers and the marketing mix of the business, which can be utilized to achieve the goals or objectives of marketing. It has a formal structure but can be utilized as both formal and informal document that helps in making it more flexible (Armstrong et al., 2015).

The purpose of the report is to create a comprehensive strategic marketing plan for a company named Ingogo. In addition to this, the report highlights the company’s competitors in the market as well its opportunities to grow. Ingogo is an Australian Company that specializes into online taxi booking services as well as payments. Its taxi payments and booking services are both for the passengers as well as its drivers. The organization also provides its customers with a mobile application as well as a website, which helps them to book cabs for now or later, from any part of the region (Ingogo.com.au, 2018). Moreover, the report throws light on the potential market segments, target market positioning, marketing objectives, financial objectives and implementation of the promotion mix, within the organization.

Founded in the year 2011 at Australia, Ingogo has been specializing in online bookings and payments of taxi services. Ingogo Company has its own booking system, which allows the customers to book their cabs from any part of the region. The analysis will help in understanding its current position better in terms of marketing and it will assist in having a clear understanding of what needs to get improved.

For developing a better market summary, the marketing plan that is being presented for the Ingogo Company will address the topics of demography, demand analysis, SWOT analysis and current competition.

The taxi industry in Australia is related to the tertiary sector of their economy and claims to cover around 97% of the Australian economy. Hence, the company faces huge competition in the competitive market, which may increase significantly. All the advertising efforts of Ingogo Company are being developed on the basis of their benefits and services.

It is seen that the taxi fares of the country has been higher than the customers’ willingness to pay. This in turn, is reducing the travel volumes. Therefore, the demand for mobile application cab services is increasing, as they are also providing car sharing options among the consumers.

The major competitors of the company are Artesian Capital Management, Mobius Venture capital, Sydney Seed Fund, Fat Hen, Blackburd Ventures and others. Moreover, Ingogo has a strong customer base and the company has managed to win the hearts of its target consumers. It offers its customers with several opportunities, like fixed fares including all tolls as well as charges. The drivers are well behaved and serve the customers as per their demands. They take the fastest route available and do not keep its customer waiting. They always look out for new ways to reward their consumers and keep them satisfied (Ingogo.com.au, 2018).

Market Summary

The vision of Ingogo Company is to improve the cab services’ experiences for the customers as well as their drivers. As per Ingigo’s manual, in just a few years, the company has grown in a significant manner, with its offices at Melbourne, Sydney, Pertg, Adelaide and Brisbane. They are now the third largest cab payment company at Australia. They provide several opportunities for its target customers to earn and deliver better services to them (Ingogo.com.au, 2018). However, the company’s biggest threats are its competitors, which equally provide satisfactory services to its passengers. Moreover, Ingogo’s biggest competitor is Artesian Capital Management, which has more than 152 employees than Ingogo. Therefore, the company needs improve their cab services and employ more and more skilles employees in order to compete on the international level. In addition to this, it is important to enhance their marketing techniques in order to cater to the most number of target consumers.

The biggest strength of the company is that it employs experienced workers and trains them on a daily basis. It has a strong and market drive business model that allows them to keep all the market entry techniques at place. It has opportunities of participating in the high demand industry as well as steady future demands. Its target market includes almost all segments of individuals belonging to the age group of 21-70. Moreover, there recent comical advertisement campaigns featured some old women with a smart phone in their hands, which portrays that they can also book a cab for themselves (Ingogo.com.au, 2018).

The advertisements mainly targeted a not so tech savvy market and towards those consumers who still use old school methods to board a taxi. Therefore, these campaigns of the company helped them in sending a strong message to the older section of the society as well. It also targets its consumers by offering them with luring offers as well as services. Ingogo has introduced a game changing feature for its passengers, which will remove all the uncertainties of experiences with the fixed fares. Thus, the company is transforming their customer services’ delivery in the entire taxi industry through incentivizing the drivers not to cancel their bookings (Sharma & Das, 2017).

Target market positioning can be defined as the process of marketing, which acquire the products of the advertisers. On targeting a market, the companies identify their target consumers’ characteristics, who might have interest for their particular products or services. The target market positioning involves advertising on each media platform as well as other communication strategies in order to create a clear picture into the minds of the consumers. By designing, the target market positioning caters to the needs, tastes, interests as well as desires of the customers in their target market (Tanner & Raymond, 2015).

Ingogo Company’s target consumers generally include almost all segments of individuals belonging to the age group of 21-70. Moreover, with its new marketing campaign the company is also targeting the older section of the society. Their advertising campaign criticizes the old school methods of calling and booking a cab. With Ingogo’s mobile applications and websites, any individual can book a cab online, from any part of the region (Smallbusiness.chron.com, 2018).  The company is one of the leading online cab services in Australia, which has managed to provide its customers with high quality services.

Problem Statement

The vision of the company is to provide its customers as well as employees with the best cab services and become the leading cab providers in Australia. Ingogo’s objectives and goals typically involve in providing its customers with high quality booking services, so that they do not face any transportation issue. They have several marketing objectives and have undertaken advertising campaigns for promoting online cab services (Afr.com, 2018). However, they need to expand their services in order to cater to the most number of the target audience. These strategies include involving the digital media for marketing and promotional purposes.

In addition to this, the company should also adopt website promotional techniques in order to expand their services on the international platform. The company has been providing its customers with several offers, but has to do more if they want to expand their business. The founder as well as managing director of Ingogo, Hamish Petrie mentioned that the potential consumer base is expanding and significant, due to their notable taxi services. However, these steps towards their growth is immensely important and moreover, they need to demonstrate the growth potential to their investors as well (Gupta, Rodrigues & Mathew, 2018).

The understanding of the financial objectives and goals is extremely important. It forms a major part of marketing plan. It is inclusive of certain financial indicators:

• The company, Ingogo requires a high budget for their promotion of sales, they have to invest an amount in the activities that are related to sales. This includes the funds that are required for the development of the products, the promotional activities and a sum of money is required in the advertisement of the product.
• The company must make certain predictions related to the cash flow, profit, predicted revenues and expenses. These are required to evaluate the predictions that have been used at an early stage during the analysis of the value of the shareholder (Lee, Kozlenkova & Palmatier, 2015).

This is an essential part for the management of the company. It provides the organization with the insight into the required investments. Analysis of the financial part is the starting point of any organization. This is the reason it forms an integral part of the marketing plan (Rana, 2016). The financial plan is judged in the context of the assumptions. The organization must consider their major things that are necessary for the business and the cost that are related to those. In this case, the maximum investment that the company has to make is the investment on buying the cars and recruiting the drivers and the staffs. The management has to consider the estimate the payoff time, which is determined by issues such as the point when a profit will start to be made (Armstrong et al., 2015).

In this context the organization needs to evaluate and analyze four major questions. They are:

• What is going to happen in the future?
• When will it happen?
• Who will do it?
• How much will it cost?

These are the major elements in the marketing mix. It is important for the organization to target the audience personality, to create a brand personality and they should describe their type of positioning in the market. The organization must identify a particular marketing strategy. Keeping this in mind the company has to keep the factor of 7 p in mind. This include, price, place, people, physical evidence, promotion, process and product. The product should be seen as a good representation of money. The company should offer the rides to their customers in cheaper rates. The company should consider their audience to be the most important factor. The customers should be offered the best service.

There are many such online cab organizations which the people can choose (Epstein,Buhovac&Yuthas, 2015). The company must take care of all the factors that will make the experience of the customers memorable while using their service. In case of the physical factors the company must offer the best cars to the customers. After the completion of the rides the company must offer a soft copy of the bill to the customers. The product of the company is their service, they should innovate their everyday strategies related to the development of service. The organization must provide their service everywhere. The pick and drop facility should be offered to the customers in all the places. The company must put stress on their promotional activities like, advertisement, forming awareness campaigns, designing sales promotion programs, PR, performing personal selling. Promotion of the products can be done in social media as it has turned out to be one of the most effective mean of reaching out to maximum people (Adolfssson&Åström, 2016).

Potential Market Segments

Ingogo Company provides cab services to its target consumers and runs on an operator based model. A technology based company, which helps its customers to book their cabs and even two days in advance. The products of the company mainly include its cab services, share cab rides and other facilities like, cab quality. Ingogo Company offers its customers with various services like fixed fares without any tolls and taxes, no surge pricing, ability to book a cab two days in advance and others. It has changed the face of taxi industry and now, the passengers do not have to waste their valuable time in finding or booking a taxi.

Ingogo Company believes in offering services to its target consumers at lower rates, without surge charges. Moreover, it provides its customers with fixed rates, including all charges, taxes and tolls.

The company is an Australian Company, which presently serves at Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney, Perth and Melbourne.

Their promotional activities include strong marketing and advertising campaigns, with a social message in it like, “don’t drink and drive”. Moreover, they use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others to promote their company’s strategies. They also heavily rely on verbal publicity along with print and electronic media.

The implementation of the marketing plan can be done by the management of the company. The implementation has to be done once the business starts to grow. The cost of the implementation can be little high. The amount of investment can be high in this business. The owner needs to invest to buy the cars in partnership or they need to give the cars in franchisee. The effectiveness can be measured by carrying out the response from the customers or the users (Kotabe&Helsen, 2014). After each ride the company should ask send a rating card to the customers on their phones in which the customers will be able to rate the drivers as well as the quality of the service they experienced. The marketing plan can be controlled by constantly monitoring the proposed plan. This involves setting standards. This can be done with the help of the analysis of the market share, the analysis of the sales, the controlling of the quality. It involves analysis of the market ratio and the most important step is measuring the acceptability of the product in the market (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2016).

This includes the promotional strategy that the company adopts. The promotional strategy that the company must adopt is the advertisement in global level. The advertisement should be done in the television, in the newspapers and the hoardings. The company can organize the promotional campaigns that might be conducted on the streets where the people would be made aware of the way the cabs can be booked on their phones by using technology (Baker, 2014). The company can employ the method of sales promotion. It can be directed either to the sales staffs, the customers or to the distribution channel members. This includes attractive offers like coupons, discounts on rides, contests, point of purchase and rebates.

Target Market Positioning

The company needs to keep a good relation with the people so that they can stimulate the market demand (Yin, Luo& Ding, 2014). This includes the extra offers related to the product or the service that are offered to the customers. This is done to make the brand famous and to acquire the desired market. The sales promotion attracts the customers and it holds the present customers and to take advantage of opportunities that are revealed by market research. This has a huge impact on the customers. Apart from this the social media has emerged as the biggest and the easiest medium of promotion. The social networking sites have become the most preferable medium of promotion. The company can apply the strategy of promoting their services on the social networking websites (Munkhdorj et al., 2015).

Conclusion

Ingogo is an Australian organization that specializes in online taxi booking and payments. The report is a summation of the marketing plan that the company needs to adopt in order to make a successful business. The report includes the factors that the company should adopt like, the potential market segments, target market segments, marketing objectives and goals, the financial objectives, the marketing strategy, the implementation and the control measures of the marketing plan and the promotional strategy these factors form the most essential part of the marketing plan. The company is moving towards a progress as it has taken the help of technology in conducting the business.

This is an innovating plan. In spite of it the company faces the threat from the competitors. There are many other companies who have the same concept. In this case the company needs to maintain their quality and they must offer the best service to their customers. This will enable the company to attract the future customers and to hold the present customers. The customers are the ultimate decision makers. They can take the decision to shift to some other service in case they do not like the service of one single company. This is the reason the company should formulate a proper marketing plan.

References

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Sharma, K., & Das, S. (2017). Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction-With Special focus on the Online Cab Industry in Australia. International Journal of Business and Management, 12(7), 192.

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