Designing a Marketing Camping For Tourism Companies
Introduction
A marketing campaign is a management concept created through the incorporation of the different aspects of marketing (Dibb et al., 2012). In a competitive market, the creation of an integrative marketing campaign should be driven by the customer’s communication preferences together with any other helpful information that is required when doing a marketing campaign. Therefore, before launching a new marketing campaign, business owners should carry out a marketing research that will provide the organisation with target customer’s demographic information (Mba 2011). Conducting a market research is also essential to the business owners as they gather information that defines how an organisation can reach out to the target audience in the most appropriate ways (Malhotra, Birks, and Wills 2012). With crucial information such as how the audience makes decisions and type of media they employ to access and analyse product information, it is easy for an organisation to develop a workable marketing campaign. In support of this point, Blythe (2012) argues that marketing research is a necessary procedure for organisations, as marketers use the activity to get more information about environmental issues such as economic shifts and government activities. The information gathered is an addition content to the marketing campaign, as marketers use the information to learn the possible problematic factors that are likely to influence the organisation.
Thus, as there are many ways for an organisation to succeed in a competitive environment, this paper provides an integrated marketing campaign with a consistent message created under the influence of the various marketing concepts. The focus of this paper is English Riviera Tourism Company, as one of the leading tourism organisation in the UK. Since marketing in the UK tourism industry has been changing over time, the integrated campaign for English Riviera Tourism Company will be based on marketing tactics, principles, and marketing concept presented by different scholars.
English Riviera Tourism Company’s Marketing Outline
English Riviera Tourism Company’s main goal is to unite Torbay Tourism industry through the delivery and development of effective services that will ensure the growth of tourism in the Torbay region in the United Kingdom (English Riviera Tourism Company 2017). English Riviera Tourism Company is a private firm commissioned by Torbay Council set for various responsibilities with the key roles involving marketing activities and operating the visitor information services. To carry out activities such as advertisement and delivering of different marketing campaigns, the company is supported by private sectors in the UK mostly in Torbay region (English Riviera Tourism Company 2017). The advertisers working to promote English Riviera Tourism Company are called promotional partners. The advertisers are playing a crucial role in the development of marketing programs for English Riviera Tourism Company, as through the support the firm has become one of the leading destination for tourism marketing services in the UK (English Riviera Tourism Company 2017). Importantly, over 300 local tourism businesses in the Torbay Bay are now supporting English Riviera Tourism Company, which is substantial for the organisation in terms of gaining promoting tourism business in the UK as well as the marketing activities (English Riviera Tourism Company 2017).
Through these responsibilities, the company has promoted the tourism industry in Torbay Town, but the company can become more effective with the use of high profiled marketing campaign. The marketing campaign will bring a new experience to the company, make it is more competitive, and ensure that the firm reaches to its desired customers. The new marketing campaign designed for English Riviera Tourism Company is internet marketing campaign, as the campaign incorporates all form of marketing activities including basic advertising principles. According to Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2012), the world is becoming connected in many effective ways through the implementation of technology in major business activities such as marketing. Similarly, for an organisation to plan their e-marketing programs efficiently, the marketers should predict the result of e-marketing and tap into a lot of research relating to the utilisation of the internet to facilitate the marketing concepts and principles (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2012).
To present a well-designed campaign, planning will be relevant so that the campaign accomplish its intended goal for the company and be designed with as little budget as possible. Blythe (2012) points out that an organisation can carry out a marketing campaign to achieve many objectives such as launching new products, differentiating its product with other companies’ product, or to position itself in a competitive way in the market. However, the internet marketing campaign for English Riviera Tourism Company will be designed for image building so that the company can convey a particular message for its services and brand. The new campaign is meant to promote the reliability of tourism services in Torbay Town and promotes the brand name of English Riviera Tourism Company. The campaign is also based on the market research, where the information about the company’s audiences is highly considered in every step conducted in the creation of the campaign. Bradley (2013) affirms that market research is an essential activity for both marketers and the business. In this case, the market research is viewed an enabler for business success and a factor that influences marketers in making essential strategic decisions that are centered on the information gathered from the market audiences (Bradley 2013).
Many organisations in the tourism industry want business instantly, but marketing campaign takes time. For the creation of the integrated marketing campaign for the English Riviera Tourism Company, the process is set to take the shortest time possible. For the marketer creating a marketing campaign through a shorter timescale, one should involve all the materials required for the task and engage with the potential customers within the market (Kotler and Armstrong 2013). If the marketer does not commit to a timeline, some parts of the marketing campaign may claim a significantly long period, and it may influence the activity’s outcome. Internal communication will also be a key determinant for the setting of the timeline for the campaign. The plan is to promote the organisation’s image and for this to happen, the marketer should create an environment where the stakeholders in the organisation are given the opportunity to have their say on the marketing campaign tasks (Blythe, 2013; Kotler and Armstrong 2011).
Theoretical Justification for the Development of the Integrated Marketing Campaign
The Importance of Integrating with Existing Brand Values
Identifying the business audience is essential for any direct marketing campaign. For this reason, developing the marketing plan before the development of a campaign for English Riviera Tourism Company, the company needs to consider carrying out a detailed research that will reflect information about the company’s services and its brand. Bradley (2013) posits that it is necessary for marketers to understand the nature of marketing before carrying the research that involves any marketing concept. In this case, one can note that in the development of an integrated marketing campaign, the research will expand the marketer’s knowledge and skills that will be essential to the task of designing a marketing campaign (Wilson 2011). In addition, for the process to be effective to the organisation, the marketer will consider communicating the objective of the campaign to both the firm’s audiences and any other person who will be involved in the campaign. McDonald (2011) asserts that before an organisation implement decision on to spend money on designing a marketing campaign that incorporates different marketing functions, it needs to be clear on whether the communication strategies are in the right way to achieve the marketing objective. When an organisation integrates communication to marketing activities, this allow the firm to combine communication effort with customers feedback, where they can consistently communicate with the organisation freely (McDonald 2011). As designing a marketing campaign for a tourism organisation will include tailoring the campaign in different ways, the advertisement for this case will be an influential strategy, as it will determine the success of the campaign. Mba (2012) reveals that an organisation can use advertisement to appeal the marketing campaign as most of the audiences are influenced by any advertisement tasks with a consistent message.
The integrated campaign for English Riviera Tourism Company will follow the following procedures with each step reflecting the analysis of the market, company identity, brand creation, and budget. The first step involves the analysis of the prospect to whom the campaign involves. In this context, the step will involve researching on the characteristics of the customers in the tourism market. With the understanding of these characteristic the marketer will come with a clear plan about designing the marketing plan for the company. Brace (2013) proposes that for anyone to structure a marketing activity that requires information about the audience, the data can be collected through a questionnaire survey. This implies that for the marketer preparing the integrated marketing campaign for English Riviera Tourism Company, through the questionnaire it will be easier to collect data through establishing a self-completion instrument where the customers served by the company will fill simple question regarding the organisation’s services and branding.
The second step will involve creating the company’s identity. Many organisations have identified the benefit of internet marketing, and therefore, it will be essential for the marketer in the case of English Riviera to consider introducing the key concepts that will succeed the company’s brand and create the identity of the company’s services (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2012). The third step will involve the marketer outlining the brand identity and the purpose of the campaign for the organisation and the strategies that will be used to implement the campaign. The purpose of the integrated marketing campaign for English Riviera Tourism Company brand is to increase the recognition of the company’s brand and create awareness of its services within the tourism industry. According to Blythe (2012), when businesses are focusing on increasing the awareness of their brand, this means that these organisations are using their brand to get the attention of people in the market. However, to avoid any negative influence on the process of creating a marketing campaign aimed at promoting the company’s brand, the marketer will assess the brand awareness by measuring how well the brand is known by the people in the tourism industry is.
The last step involved in the creation of the integrated marketing campaign is the allocation of the money for the campaign plan and implementation. In this step, the marketer will assess the budget so that it is ensured that the money allocated for the campaigns is justifiable and increases the company’s revenue (Kotler and Armstrong 2013). Blythe and Megicks (2010) claim that a marketing campaign need to be adopted according to several elements such as the size of budget and number of the potential buyers or customers of the market. It is impossible for a marketer to achieve everything at the same time, so the money to spend on the process of preparing and implementing the marketing campaign should be realistic and accommodating to the activities involved in the process. The marketer will need a budget size that will fit the tasks because in the tourism market may at some point be complex and multifaceted for the organisations. As Palmer and Hartley (2012) assert, a good marketing manager should read about the theories of marketing, and use the skills on the theories of marketing practices to critically set creative and analytical marketing campaign that will succeed in the globalised and complex environment.
The Importance of Market Research and Environmental Planning
As the process to initiate the marketing campaign for the English Riviera Tourism Company is to be carried out by fulfilling the steps discussed above, the marketer should know the importance of understanding the tourism market environment. Kotler and Armstrong (2013) express that marketing environment is a marketing concept that refers to forces that influences the capability of a business to develop a workable relationship with its customers. For many organisations, the marketing environment research is substantial because the process examines the cases of both micro and macro- environment (Blythe 2012; Dibb et al., 2012). The purpose of the English Riviera Tourism Company marketer doing a marketing environment research before designing the campaign is that the exercise will help the marketer ensure that the marketing activity can anticipate to environmental changes and come up with response strategies that will be used in dealing with any environmental changes.
Kapferer (2012) maintains that any marketing effort should be based on the choices that are determined by competitive environment. As such, companies should initiate the marketing activities such as marketing campaign with the idea of becoming responsible for the positioning of their brand and carrying out business activities in an ethical manner. Consequentially, this will allow the companies to make different environment factors that are coherent to their business activities. When the marketer for English Riviera Tourism Company understands the environment that the business operates at, this will allow the marketer to initiate a marketing campaign that controls the environments in which the company operates. Significantly, the integrated marketing campaign concerning how English Riviera Tourism Company will be using internet marketing will operate well and with a hierarchical structure if the marketer has an idea about the environmental factors that influence the company and its marketing activities.
The Importance of Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics
With the process of integrating marketing campaign identified, it will be vital for the marketer to consider the importance of marketing sustainability and ethics in relation to the task of designing the campaign and implementation. Information technology ensures that information travels, as fast as possible and for the marketer to ensure that the internet market campaign set to build the image of the English Riviera Tourism Company is sustainable communication management is required. Roper and Fill (2012) confirm that corporate communication is an enabler and a transformer factor that marketers in organisations can use to maintain and sustain their campaign through different strategies. Here, the marketer will be required to take the task of communicating to internal members of the organisation so that members are informed about what is expected from the in ensuring that the new campaign is sustainable and serve as many customers as possible. To enhance sustainability for the integrated marketing campaign that is meant to introduce the use of the internet for the English Riviera Tourism Company in carrying out marketing activities, the advertisement will be needed (Fill, Hughes, and De Francesco 2012). Parsons and Maclaran (2009) outline that customers sustainability is highly inclined by advertisement and most of the organisations are adopting the trend to increase the awareness of their brand.
On the other hand, in the task of preparing the integrated campaign, the marketer should consider ethics as a major principle of marketing (Parsons and Maclaran 2009). Blythe (2012) defines ethics as the principles that explain what is right and wrong for the marketers. Most marketers rely on the moral rules that are part of their organisation’s culture, which is a way of portraying ethics within the marketing department. At the same time, Blythe and Megicks (2010) note that ethics in the organisation affects the collective belief system and determines how different people in the organisation behave, especially what constitutes ethical marketing. When the marketer at English Riviera Tourism Company incorporates ethical standards to the creation of the integrated marketing, the campaign will be acceptable in the market and it will be a key determinant of the achievement of the organisational goals and objectives.
The Importance of Market Segmentation, Position, and the Market Target
Elliot, and Percy, and Pervan (2011) suggested that for an organisation to build and develop its brand, it should focus on building a brand relationship with its customers. In this essence, the customers represent the target market of which it is a central marketing concept that influence the success of the campaign. Blythe (2012) highlights that marketing should be viewed as a series of outbound activities, but a concept that organisation should use to create a contact between the target and the brand. In modern organisations, targeting is the concept of marketing that is concerned with the aspect of selecting the segment that the organisations want to serve (Kotler and Armstrong 2011). This shows that the identification of the target will be important to the designing of the integrated marketing campaign. The marketer will use the target for marketing communications and as a driving force for the integrated marketing campaign.
In the case of the market segmentation, the marketer will consider different characteristics of the target market of which the characteristics of the target market are key to the creation of an efficient marketing campaign. Most of the market segmentations for different business setting are divided according to demographic factors, psychological factors, and lifestyle elements (Egan 2011). Under these categories, the marketer for English Riviera Tourism Company can come up with meaningful strategies that they will be used to communicate and launch a new campaign relating to the using of internet for marketing activities. Understanding the market segment is important because this allows the marketers to design a marketing campaign that is focused on the real customers within the tourism market (Egan 2011). Developed in 1957 by Smith, segmentation is a marketing component that involves the grouping of consumers in terms of their needs and desires (Blythe 2012, Kotler, and Armstrong 2011). Knowing the market segmentation is important for the company because the marketer will create a marketing campaign that concentrated to meet the need of a specific group of people. Besides, the identification of the segment will ensure that the marketing effort carried out by the English Riviera Tourism Company marketer is effectively done and the marketer implements the plan economically.
The market positioning which is the ranking of the company’s brand or the company itself in terms of the volume of sales it makes in a certain period will importantly play a key role to the designing of the integrated marketing campaign (Kotler and Armstrong 2013). In addition, marketers should understand that positioning is a component that is concerned with the relationship between two brands from different companies operating in the same segment (Blythe 2012, Egan 2011). This implies that before the marketer designs the integrated marketing campaign for English Riviera Tourism Company, it will be better to understand the concept of brand position, as this will give the marketer an idea concerning the position that the company occupies in the mind of the customers and the way it relates to other brands. What is remarkable about the integrated marketing campaign for the English Riviera Tourism Company is that the marketer will use the activity to position the company with a different advantage that will give the company greater success than any other company in the market. Blythe and Megicks (2010) proclaim that to initiate a market effort such as a marketing campaign; an organisation should develop a theme attached to the marketing effort so that they provide a meaningful distinction for different customers’ in the market.
Conclusion
This paper tries to explore the integrated marketing campaign from different aspects that define marketing efforts and the meaning of marketing tasks. The paper discusses the concept of marketing and the way a marketer can use the marketing concepts to create an integrated marketing campaign for English Riviera Tourism Company. The paper presents the English Riviera Tourism Company as a major tourism company in the UK and as a firm focusing on promoting tourism industry in Torbay region. Drawing from the marketing concepts presented in this discussion, it is clear that marketers should consider different marketing elements before initiating a marketing activity. Marketing research and examining the market environment are crucial to the process of designing a marketing campaign. From the discussion of the two components, it is evident that marketers can use marketing research and environment to links marketing activities, brand, and customers within the market. To expand the marketing campaign concept, from the discussion it is noted that marketing concepts such as ethics, sustainability, segmentation, positioning, and targeting has impacts on various marketing activities. In other words, to get the effective impact from the marketing campaign for English Riviera Tourism Company, the marketer should understand different marketing principles, theories, and concepts, which will allow him or her to manage the marketing principle in the right manner.
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