Integrated Marketing Communications Campaign for Al Taxis - Business Plan Example

Executive Summary

The success of any entity depends on how well it communicates its marketing information to its target market. There are several media as well as other channels that companies can use to accomplish their goal of passing the communication to the public. The choice of communication is a strategic as well as a tactical decision that the management of any firm has to consider carefully before engaging in any action. This paper highlights the marketing communication plan that Al taxis, a taxi company considering for its digital marketing, detailing the strategy and the action plans that the company intends to implement the strategy.

An Integrated Marketing Communications Plan and Campaign

Introduction

Marketing is one of the core ingredients of a successful business. It allows an enterprise to communicate its information to existing as well as potential customers. Having a proper marketing mix enables the company to get its information to the market in an efficient and effective manner. The way a company communicates its marketing information is of great importance because it determines how the number of people that access it as well as the state in which the information reaches them . This report details the marketing communications plan for Al Taxis, a company that offers its services in Newcastle in the United Kingdom. The company has been in operation for several and is a part of a huge market made up of many different players. The recent entry of Uber into the market has complicated matters for traditional operators who were almost caught unawares by the disruption and have now been left scrambling to salvage their business. The management has identified online marketing as the means that will enable it evolve and stay ahead of the competition while helping it interact with its target market that consumes a lot of information on digital media platforms.

Situation Analysis

The company has been engaging in marketing activities on a small- scale in a bid to promote its products. It has a website with images as well as a catalog of the different items in stock. However, it has no proper strategy for to improve its visibility online and thus has yet to maximize its online capabilities. As it is, the company engages in a host of marketing activities on a low scale because of budget constraints. It does this by listing on local classifieds in the city of Newcastle as well as buying advertisement time on local radio stations.

The marketing model adopted by Al Taxis has worked for it this far and has helped the company grow its sales since inception. It has enabled it to grow to the current level of operations and carve itself the market that it has so far. While the current strategies may have worked before, they may not work in the future especially now that the company is looking at expanding into new areas and increasing the number of customers it serves in the next one year. The means used are appropriate, but they are not sufficient as it is and cannot support the needs of the business going forward. The reason for this is that they do not reach as many people as the company would like, making it difficult to arrive at the targets.

Objectives

As it is, Al Taxis has no online marketing communication strategy. The business has an objective of providing high- quality services based on a model of trust and reliability to guarantee customer satisfaction and patronage. The service sector is very competitive, and providers have to provide the very best to their customers if they are to stay ahead of their rivals. Therefore, the aim of interventions the company will make is to enable it to have a strong online presence that will see it engage customers in the best way possible. The Taxi business is very competitive because many other operators are providing similar services. Therefore, a marketing strategy is something a business has to have if it aims at standing out from the rest of the competition . The objective of the company’s communication efforts is, therefore, to provide it with a means of sharing its strategy with the market and to build excitement around its services and brand.

By developing an online presence, Al Taxis wants to boost its visibility online that should translate to sales. The visibility should lead to increased brand equity as measured via Google Analytics. One of the ways to gain equity is creating a legion of loyal followers and customers to form a mailing list, and they will be receiving an email once a week detailing the latest promotional information and updated catalogs. The target is to have the digital portion of the business contribute at least 20 percent of the overall revenue that the company makes in two years as it supplements the existing platforms.

Strategy

How one carries out, a given initiative determines the level of success that they will achieve. As such, Al Taxis has come up with an elaborate plan of action that will enable it to meet its intended targets. The first action that the management of Al Taxis has set out to do is to establish a digital marketing team that will be responsible for carrying out its digital marketing and creating its online presence. As such, the members of the team will come up with the course of action that the company will make in launching its communication plan and will report to the management on their progress. The team will include someone who has a background in informatics for their analytical knowledge, an IT specialist and someone from marketing among others so as to have a diverse composition and bring people with different skills on board.

In the era of sophisticated marketing, big data is a growing concept that many firms currently employ in their marketing strategies . Among the many uses of big data is the ability to predict trends in consumer decision- making and therefore makes it possible for entities to develop tailored marketing interventions. Al Taxis operates in a market segment that is prone to changes occurring over a short period. As the evidence with Uber proves, the sector can undergo a change over a relatively short period of time, meaning that every operator has to be thoroughly prepared for any changes that occur in the market. It, therefore, makes sense to have the predictive ability that would make it possible for the business to anticipate market changes with accuracy. As such, big data has a role to play in the strategic direction that the company’s marketing takes over the next few years.

In this era of rapid social media growth, the positioning that the business makes is critical to its success. As such, the company’s digital team has to come up with innovative strategies to optimize on the online marketplace and promote its digital presence. Google Adsense provides a platform that is relatively inexpensive and can generate traffic towards the Al Taxis’s site and products . Using click Ads as well as marketing on other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, the company hopes to drive enough traffic to see its products and hopefully make prefer their service the next time they want to move to a certain place. By creating a legion of social media followers, the managers hope that they can scale up their level of engagement with potential clients and thereby get a lot of feedback which they can use to tailor the products as well as the way it delivers them .

Tactical Plan

The tactical plan that will accompany the marketing strategy is an elaborate arrangement meant to optimize on the existing capabilities. It will involve a set of strategies as well as the revamping of the company website. Once the company establishes its website, it is important that it provides the adequate level of support for it to thrive and grow in the right way. On top of driving traffic to the site, it is important to have a competitive pricing strategy that will draw customers to select the company’s services over those of any other provider .

Innovation is a critical component of any strategy adopted by any company. For Al Taxis, it has to find an innovative way of getting people to its web- based platforms. This could include offering them discounts or introductory prices once they sign up, an offer that many of them would be keen to take up. After the signing up, the company should then use the information provided to start an online database that will form a mailing list that will aid in the dissemination of promotional information. The company should then refine the customer contact strategy regularly and across the customer lifecycle commitment and segmentation . This exercise should be for all platforms such as email and the web.

Action

The use of social media as a marketing tool is something that has grown so much over the years. The immediate benefit of using this marketing channel is the reach that the company using it can attain. Al Taxis thus has to set up actively on all leading social media platforms and have a model for interaction with the users. The digital team should establish a Facebook page, a Twitter handle, and an Instagram page at the minimum, and post regular updates to keep the users interested. For example, they may post pictures and videos of products that will keep the users enthused about what the company offers, and that would make them want to find out more about its operations .

The networked nature of life is not just limited to people but also extends to businesses. As such, Al Taxis should pursue an affiliate marketing model that involves the building of a network of partners to maximize opportunities for maximizing revenues. There are various roles that the different players in the network play and that means a business has to identify the specific role it has when relating to other members of the network. The roles could include lead generation, display, search or even voucher codes. By partnering with affiliates, the company stands to benefit by leveraging on the collective capabilities of the members in the pool, and that boosts its profile.

Technology evolves at lightning speed, and that requires businesses to adapt to the changes so as not to remain behind. It is important to have measures that position a given brand or company in a place where it can attract the most attention from those online. The strategy should have the same impact as a billboard situated at a busy corner with many people passing by, meaning that it gains maximum exposure. For Al Taxis, search engine optimization (SEO) is a tool of importance that it could use to rank its site and products on top of the priority list and make sure that there is a higher probability of customers seeing them. Also, the company will have paid searches on a regular basis all in a bid to promote the amount of visibility that it gets online that could then translate into sales.

There are many innovations in marketing and that includes collaborations or strategic partnerships with complementary brands. Al Taxis will have to look out for other entities whose business complements its own and get into mutually- beneficial agreements that would be of advantage to both parties. Such entities include accessory vendors or firms dealing in services that may be related to what Al Taxis sells.

Control

Putting a strategy in consideration is just the first step in bringing it to life. The most critical aspect is ensuring that it goes according to plan and that it yields the desired results. Control involves monitoring and evaluating the progress of the interventions that the company has undertaken against the goals that are highlighted at the beginning. For each of the tactics established, there has to be a control mechanism comprising a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that forms the basis for the assessment . The tools for monitoring the success of an online strategy include software for tracking the number of clicks as well as the email service.