Assessment 3: Individual Report Marketing Fundamentals

1. Background Summary

Plastic Whale is based in Amsterdam and the company is engaged in cleaning services of waterways (Plastic Whale 2020). The process to clean wastes related to plastics are collected from waterways are done by this company. By doing this, the company cleans the plastics found in water wastes and make those regions plastic-free. Currently, the company is operating in the Sydney Harbour Region and trying to make the region free from all plastics. 

The accumulation of plastic waste in the water bodies around the globe has been creating great concern for humanity and wildlife as well. Plastic Whale is planning to organise an event that could create awareness among the people. The initiative of the company is to reuse and recycle plastic wastes. The vision of the company is to make the target small families living nearby Sydney Harbour to be aware of recycling of the plastic wastes. This vision of the company would be enabling it to enhance its brand value in the market and position it to be above its competitors in the global market.

The demography of the target groups has enabled it to promote its initiative more efficiently as these are the ones who are relying on the manufacturing of the boats and fishings around the coastal areas. Plastic Whale has found that the area around the Sydney Harbour region is an ideal place as the market standard including the people’s living of lifestyle and their choice match and fulfils the intentions of Plastic Whale which will fulfil to meet their intention, as the products that Plastic Whale procures are in demand in this market and are the choice of the people living in. Thus, the target market would be enabling the company to be improving the situation of the positioning of the company in the global market. Plastic Whale has chosen to adopt the online media for promotions because they have noticed that the people living in this area are a big user of online tools for shopping as well as for collecting information.

2. Promotional Mix 

2.1 Digital Marketing

a. About

The idea of promotion is to maximise the visibility of an activity to the mass so that all the options that are in the range of an organization, can be portrayed and help in visualizing the target audience (Jones and Verity 2017). There are various ways and techniques and an organization can promote with a mix of all. The company could choose Digital Marketing strategy for promoting the marketing campaign to make the water bodies to be plastic-free..

1. Promotions through company Website:

Live status along with detailed content about the event needs to be highlighted in the official website of the company.

2. Search Engine Marketing:

Optimising the websites would enable the customers to find the official website of Plastic Whale when they search for the details of the even in any of the search engines like Google, Yahoo or any other search engines. Pay per click is another interesting model of advertisement which will turn the customers' interest more to look into the advertisement (Bhandari 2017).

3.  Social Media Marketing:

This is considered to be one of the most important and strongest modes of marketing to keep targeted audiences to be well informed on a real-time basis (Vijay and Srivastava 2019). Plastic Whale can create good and professional profiles of all the available social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn as well as on YouTube. Through the use of these social media platforms, Plastic Waste can promote their brand and advertise complete details related to the event that will highlight its purpose that includes banners, pamphlets and even video advertisements.

4. Email Marketing:

Sending attractive emails containing the highlight of the event and its contents inside the premises along with catchy email subject lines will interest the customers to read through it (Sahni, Wheeler and Chintagunta 2018).

b. Implementing the promotion mix strategies 

Product:

For Plastic Whale, the product is to promote their cleaning services of waterways which means they want to promote the cleaning of all kinds of wastages that are plastic-based plastic-based from waterways in the Australian Market at Sydney Harbour with a mission of “Plastic Free Water”. The mission is to take part in various activities of water sport and different kinds of educational activities and raise awareness about plastic-free water. This will help to minimise the plastic waste and save the animals living in the water which includes people of all ages.

Price:

Plastic Whale is organizing a program near the Sydney Harbour Market beside a lake to promote their campaign. The entry fee of the program will be absolutely at free of cost, however, the fun activities inside will have attractive offers for children, couples and families.

Place:

The location of the event will be at Sidney Lake which will be facilitated with various kinds of sports and water-based games. This event will be in a joint venture with the NN Group and the Royal Netherlands Water sports Association (Plastic Whale 2020). The chosen place is centrally located where people can easily visit the place and has all the facilities related to water games and also to demonstrate the activities of how to maintain plastic-free plastic-free water.

Promotions:

To expedite the mission of promotion, Plastic Whale should engage in promoting the event through social media sites and sending emails to its customers. The promotion will help Plastic Whale to reach its targeted people and so that they will be able to understand the mission of the company and will be aware of what is the purpose of the event.

c. Marketing analytics to measure the success 

Overall Website Tracking:

The website visits of people have been tracked and the data can be seen to track the customer's visit and how much time they had spent on the website looking into the campaign.

The number of visitors visiting the website of Plastic Whale would be telling about the influence that the marketing campaign has created upon the global customers about plastic waste reduction.

New Visitors V/S Repeat Visitors:

It is found that there an increasing number of new visitors would mean the perception of the brand value created on the mind of the customers (Zhang et al. 2019). Thus, an increment of the number of new customers with the retaining of the loyal customers would be significant for Plastic Whale to be understating the success of its digital marketing campaign.

Average Session Duration:

This implies to the duration the customer was on the page. Higher time duration means that the reader likes the detail. 

2.2 Advertisement

a. About

An advertisement is a form of promotion which is based on mass communication. It is supported by the seller who wants to sell the product or services to customers and it is based on the communication with the sales team and customers (Anwar and Climis 2017). Through the proper advertisement, the customers can use the proper buying decisions for the purchase of the product. Theory of the advertisement of Vance Packard mentions the use of the five elements which are the mediation of reality, loyalty shifting, magic of meaning, the hidden message and the last is the imitative desire (Nelson 2013). This helps the company to make the proper use of the advertisement with proper classification and it will help in the increment of the product sales.

b. Implementing the promotion mix strategies

The promotion is one of the significant factors through which the reputation of the company can be increased. The use of proper advertising makes the company more accelerated in attracting customers (Anwar and Climis 2017). The Plastic Whale Company can use the radio and television to make the customers more aware of their services and products. The company can also use the electronic media and social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to make the customers aware about the environmental conservation concerns and the display of the recycled plastic products like furniture and boats.

c. Marketing analytics to measure success

The Plastic Whale Company can use the marketing metrics of page views, most visited pages and social reach to understand the level of the success of the advertisement which is accelerating the fulfilment of the objective. The advertising page views through social media can help the company to know the environmental concerns of individuals who can be potential customers of the company (Chen et al. 2020). The most visited pages of the advertising social media can help the company to know the number of individuals who want to take part in the tour programs involved in the water body cleaning. This will help the company to increase its memberships and customers. The use of the social reach will help the company to understand the level of the global brand expansion which the company requires to gain more prosperity. This will also help the company to create new bases other than Sydney.

2.3 Personal Selling

a. About

The personal selling is the promotional strategy in which the employee or the salesperson promotes the products to the customer as part of the communication based on the marketing (Bintariani, Astawa and Darlina 2018). This helps to create important customer enhancement and relationship. The use of communication plays vital in establishing a proper relationship with the sales team and the customers. Personal selling can use some monetary resources from a cost-effective company. This promotional strategy also requires some time to hire the proper salesperson and to train them in the field of product knowledge. The efficiency of this promotional strategy that the profit received can outweigh the expenditures. The theory of the selling is based on the AIDAS theory (Marketing91 2020). This has five parts and the attention, interest, desire, action and satisfaction. This help the company to make efficient selling which can make the customers more delighted and the revenue of the company will also be increased.

b. Implementing the promotion mix strategies

The Plastic Whale Company can use the AIDAS theory for the progression in the promotional activates of personal selling.

Attention: The Plastic Whale Company can use its salespersons and members of the sales department to make the individuals get more involved in the participation in the eco-friendly activities of the company. The company can use a face-to-face interview with various customer to make them respective members and customer.

Interest: The sales members of the Plastic Whale Company have to promote more eagerness to the individual about the facilities and the products of the company. The sales team can use leaflets and brochures which can be given to the individuals to make them aware of the present rise in water pollution through the plastic. This will help the customer to know the concerns of the services of the company.  

Desire: The sales team of the Plastic Whale Company can accelerate the desires of the customers in environmental conservation activities. The company has arranged tourism and adventure programs which be used to convince the customers. This will help the company to gain profits. The company can use demonstrations and presentation to the individuals who want to become a member of the company. This saves time and expenditures. The objective of the company will be achieved.

Action: In this part, the Plastic Whale Company can make the initiation of the deals and agreements with the customers through the memberships. The customer and the company will exchange their money and services. This will help to make the customer more active in the taking part in the environmental conservation activities. The company can also display the recycled items of their products which can be consumed by the customers for more delights.

Satisfaction: In this part, the customers are satisfied with the services and products of the Plastic Whale Company. The admiration and recognition of the sales team will also be enhanced. The new membership in this company will help the company increase its brand value. The customers will be satisfied and they will circulate the information ad facilities of the companies to the other individuals and by this, the company will receive promotional advantages.

c. Marketing analytics to measure success

The Plastic Whale Company can use the marketing metrics like the Bounce rate to know the number of the individuals which has been interacted with sales team have left the website pages of the company. The company can use the marketing metrics of conversion rate to know the number of individuals who are the members after the convincing of the sales team. The company can also use the impression marketing metrics to know the views of the new customers or members about their opinions in the company 'services and product. These applications of the marketing metrics will help the company to make its objective to be fulfilled. The profit of the company will increase and the number of customers will also increase.

3. Conclusions with Implications for Plastic Whale 

Since Plastic Whale is engaged in waterway cleaning service and reuse the accumulated plastics for manufacturing products, for this reason, the intention towards their mission is for a very noble cause that will lead to environment friend initiatives. The reuse of plastics materials by recycling them for normal daily life is a part of the waste management initiative. The promotion initiative by Plastic Whale is a very good initiative which will help the people to be more aware and create a consciousness amongst them that what are bad effects of plastics and how they should avoid and try to extinct the use of it from their daily normal life.

Plastic Whale has chosen the customers after a thorough study about them from the inputs and data received from various online sources. The customers are mainly who are the lovers of boat and furniture are the main target. The reason for this is, the products that Plastic Whale produces are boat and furniture. To reach the goal by Plastic Whale they have to choose chose various process of the digital media like the use of various social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube to promote their intention through these platforms and also redirect the readers by creating links towards their official website so that apart from promoting about the event, they can also portray the company’s products. Creating a free entry to the event and low cost of a ticket for inside activities with variations of price range and other offers will attract most of the customers to attend the event. Apart from that the place chosen for the event also makes a big advantage as the place is centrally located and the communication is very easy for the people visiting the event. The time chosen by the company is also a great factor. The time that they have chosen for the even is just the right time as there will be holidays going on at that point of time and people will be in all mood enjoy the event with games and at the same time learn everything about environment-friendly things and how to avoid plastics from daily usage and will be able to learn the bad effects of using it. The learning from this event will help them to be more cautious about the environment and they will also come to know how Plastic Whale is manufacturing its product by the use of waste plastics and recycling them for next use.