Discussion
A marketing strategy could be referred to as the stay true to the organizational vision and mission. This strategic plan an organization focuses on to achieve its target prospective and stay true to the organizational mission and vision. This strategic approach helps the brand to attract their target audience base and convert them into their customers of the relative products and services offered by the company brand. In this case, the report attempts to sketch a marketing plan for the reopening of the theme park, U.S Park, Southeast, which was closed due to a major safety hazard, injuring two employees and visitors. As the marketing director, the responsibility is to perform a crisis management through application of significant strategies to overcome this challenge of regaining the trust of our target customer-base through proper and true advertisement and promotion of the effective changes brought about in the theme park by the organization to provide better services.
As is pre-mentioned, the reopening of the U.S Park, Southeast is the primary agenda of this marketing plan, however, avoiding any false advertisement or unethical data utilization in the process. This section of the report will concentrate on strategic approaches and methods to establish an effective marketing plan by addressing the necessary attributes.
Consumer research methods or techniques utilize the tools of research to understand the demands of their target audiences and the market trends that would help the brand to achieve their goal of attracting consumers. This directs the organization to provide better services and become customer-centric (Ares & Varela, 2018). There are various types of data collection from the market that would un-veil the consumer demands, namely, observational, simulation and experimental. Three traditional methods or ways to achieve the goal of data-collection from the market are:
- Surveys: creating precise, straight-forward and concise questionnaires, the brand can analyze its target audience and the larger the sampling size, the more reliable the results. In-person, telephonic, social-media and mail surveys could be put forward in this case to collect the immediate response and feedback concerning the reopening of the park.
- Target/Focus groups: A moderator could invoke a group-discussion with at least three different age-groups to achieve balanced outcomes (Ares & Tomasco, 2018).
- Field Trails: A preview of the improved services promised by the park authorities could be displayed publicly to gather the responses from the target-customers through real-time conditions. This will help the management understand if there is any necessity of additional improvements regarding the new safety measures introduced in the theme park
Traditional marketing strategy refers to the display of brand services and products through offline promotional events and often utilizes direct interactions with the target customer base at physical locations. The traditional marketing is believed to attract a wider audience that creates brand value, creditability, awareness and understanding (Durmaz & Efendioglu, 2016). Three traditional marketing methods are namely,
- Printing advertisements: Through the printing be it on flyers, magazines or newspapers, it helps the brand attract its prospective customers better as it associates the brand awareness through the reliable source channeling the information to them. These generate higher sales rates. New installed services for the park could be promoted this way.
- Event Marketing: Seminars, fairs and conferences could be held to display the brand offerings to again the attention of the audiences. Booths and banners can attract potential attendees.
- Broadcasting: Promoting the park services and installation of various new features like rides, photo booth, picnic and party areas through commercials on TVs and radios would address a wider potential customer-base even, informing the existing ones about the improvements. Broadcasting on this level will intrigue both viewers and listeners to conduct brand research.
On basis of analysis of the traditional marketing techniques, there are few identified advantages and disadvantages of the same and could be listed as:
- It’s difficult to ignore the promotion when broadcasted on TV and radios thus, solidifying the purpose to larger extent
- It poses lesser risk involving the proper display of brand image and offline promotions can be controlled more easily (Todor, 2016).
- Segmentation targeting is difficult in traditional marketing
- Execution of offline promotion is time-consuming unlike digital marketing methods
A digital marketing strategy focuses to promote the brand services and products through online medium or channels like the social media platforms to achieve the marketing goals in a more effective and time-efficient manner, informing and attracting a larger customer-base. Digital marketing focuses on components as lead capturing, generation and nurturing. Three effective channels of digital marketing could be:
- Social Media Marketing: This can help create brand awareness and increase conversions. This campaign can feature more than one media platforms ranging from twitter, Facebook, instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn in accordance to the consumer preference thus, a wide spectrum of audience could be informed about the developments in the theme park (Bala & Verma, 2018).
- Content Marketing: This type focuses on connecting and engaging consumers through different info-graphics that includes videos, posts, and blogs. It is more informational than sales oriented. This could help display the new entertainment features and safety measures put forward in U.S park, southeast by optimizing content, increasing online traffic.
- Email Marketing: this could be majorly utilized for retention of existing customers and for attracting new ones through refining and developing the campaign. This will build a relationship with the target base by providing personalized information about the recent changes and development in the U.S Park, Southeast. Thus, it will indicate the sincere commitment of the brand towards its audience.
Consumer Research
Some identified advantages and disadvantages of Digital Marketing are listed below:
- Global reach through digital marketing of a brand is attainable thus, attracting a wider spectrum of audience and increases brand awareness and creditability.
- Web analytics can help measure and track the marketing outcomes on consistently.
- High competition rates are witnessed as a global reach for your brand evokes global competition and can prove to be a challenge to face competitors
- Online Feedbacks and Complaints: any critical or negative feedback could be detrimental for the reopening of the U.S Park, Southeast given the past occurrence of safety hazard in the park and might damage the brand reputation (Kannan, 2017)
On understanding the concepts and aspects of both digital and traditional marketing methods and strategies, it is evident that both have their own advantages and disadvantages, however, these pose as essential and potential methods in promoting the reopening of the U.S Park, Southeast. Digital marketing methods involving social media, content and email marketing would prove to be impactful in targeting a larger customer-base through the global reach it provides. This type of marketing method will attract new customers and inform the existing ones about the developments and safety measures installed in the park to effectively regain their trust.
While, traditional marketing especially, utilization of the broadcasting method could prove to be effective in branding of the services offered by the park (Todor, 2016). The commercials and announcements on TV and radio will impact both listeners and viewers and event marketing could produce positive impacts by featuring the brand developments publicly. Face-to-face human interaction is effective and creates customer trust towards the brand.
However, for maximum optimization of the brand, traditional and digital marketing in tandem with each-other would provide more effective results than when used individually. The efficient mixing of both the methods would help in the business growth and branding through increased customer trust, transparent communication with target-base, and proper estimation of results. Eventually, this will attract larger audience for the park. For instance, combining online-streaming and broadcasting will increase the brand-awareness by advertising about the brand offers and services though podcasts and other social-media platforms. Another way is to promote event marketing through social media platforms, this way it will increase attendees thus, maximizing the brand optimization,
A crisis management strategy or plan summarize to sketch or brief on the outline for the course of action that an organization or brand should prepare in a critical situation as this one, wherein, U.S Park, Southeast is facing due to a safety crisis in the recent past. The goal of crisis management is to minimize and control the damage caused alongside with the aim of business restoration (Moon, 2020). The plan should clearly specify and defines the roles for the individuals involved in this program. This section will put forward a set of strategies to improve the brand image, as follows:
- To meet the customer expectations, the brand has to focus on building a crisis management team including various members from different operational teams ranging from manufacturing, service designing to IT leads to brainstorm about the potential crises involved with the reopening of the park and likewise, possible mitigations has to planned accordingly. This helps provide a transparent idea about the safety measures planned.
- To meet the employees’ needs the organization can outsource to develop a framework by investing and recruiting in experts relative to crisis management. The experts can outline a training module for the employees, detailing skills and techniques required to mitigate a potential crisis (Ponis & Ntalla, 2016).
- One potential crisis on reopening of the park could be relative to Malevolence like kidnapping as, the target-audience for the park involves families with children, and such potential crisis cannot be over-looked. To plan ahead for the mitigation of such a challenge camera should be installed at every corner of the park and emergency numbers should be active and available to each visitor in the park.
One ethical issue could be cut-in-the-line-pass that is the visitors bribing the employee in the theme park to cut in the line and if it is allowed it would be unfair to all the other visitors waiting for their turns for the rides. This ethical challenge could be managed by providing prior reservation options through online apps and generating tickets for same. Proper checking before allowing for the rides can solve the issue.
One possible legal issue that might arise is death due to technical errors in the rides and thus, is a serious problem. This can be managed through regular up-gradation of equipments and employee training to understand the function of the rides in the park. a prior disclaimer about each ride experience should be given to visitors before they sign up for it.
Conclusion
On basis of the research and findings about the concepts of marketing strategies and crisis management, it can be concluded that the U.S Park, Southeast should understand the demands of their target-audience including their potential and existing customers to ensure a safe and satisfying experience on their ends. Combining the traditional and digital marketing in this case of reopening of the theme park could prove to be beneficial to attract larger audience and regain the trust of earlier ones. Building a Crisis management team is highly suggested to ensure high safety measures.
References
Ares, G., & Tomasco, P. A. V. (Eds.). (2018). Methods in consumer research, volume 2: alternative approaches and special applications. Woodhead Publishing.
Ares, G., & Varela, P. A. (Eds.). (2018). Methods in Consumer Research, Volume 1: New Approaches to Classic Methods. Woodhead Publishing.
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.
Durmaz, Y., & Efendioglu, I. H. (2016). Travel from traditional marketing to digital marketing. Global journal of management and business research.
Kannan, P. K. (2017). Digital marketing: A framework, review and research agenda. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34(1), 22-45.
Moon, J., Sasangohar, F., Son, C., & Peres, S. C. (2020). Cognition in crisis management teams: an integrative analysis of definitions. Ergonomics, 63(10), 1240-1256.
Ponis, S. T., & Ntalla, A. (2016). Crisis management practices and approaches: Insights from major supply chain crises. Procedia economics and finance, 39, 668-673.
Todor, R. D. (2016). Blending traditional and digital marketing. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Economic Sciences. Series V, 9(1), 51.
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