BSBMKG609 Develop a marketing plan
Assessment 1
Devise strategies and plan marketing
tactics
This unit forms part of the following qualification(s):
BSB61015 Advanced Diploma of Leadership and Management
BSB60215 Advanced Diploma of Business
BSB61315 Advanced Diploma of Marketing and Communication
Contents
Task 1 3
Task 2 3
Task 3 3
Assessment 1 - Devise strategies and
plan marketing tactics
In this assessment task, you are required to review and evaluate marketing opportunities for
an organisation and develop marketing activities that reflect strategic directions of the
organisation.
For the organisation outlined in the case study provided, identify two marketing opportunities
and evaluate each opportunity for risks, strengths, weaknesses and alignment with
organisational objectives. After you have reviewed the opportunities, select the best-fitting
opportunity for the organisation and develop marketing strategies, approaches and activities
to take advantage of the opportunity. You can research other organisations to understand
how they develop and produce a marketing strategy, particularly to assist you in determining
specific goals or objectives. This may assist you in setting specific metrics for your
assessment case study.
You may choose to work on your own business idea. If you choose to do so, you must
present your idea and supporting documentation for approval before starting the task.
Task 1 - Organisational overview
a) Develop an organisational overview that:
outlines the strategic direction and organisational objectives
outlines the current size, capabilities and resources of the organisation, including any
notable strengths and weaknesses
identifies any gaps between the objectives and the current capabilities and
resources.
You may choose to submit your evidence via written response, or whiteboard photo.
The objectives are to build an education platform that able to support and connect the transition of
learning. It encourage people how to learn in more effective and impactful way by open and sharing
knowledge across organisation and communities of students to solve the challenges across the
university or college.
Just like other online based educational agency, we targeted on students worldwide by providing them
platform on education discussion and giving services and information for international students on visa
applications, online student accommodation/ hostel, university course taken in different university
programme. We also team up with several leading university in order to let students explore, learn,
experiencing the learning environment and be proud as one of the alumni in the future. Although
technology has open up many possibilities in education system, however the touch of human qualities
like connection, consultation and curiosity in developing the education platform is crucial.
Due to the global pandemics occur, we have to practice social distancing to prevent more virus
spreading. Thus, we have to limit the number of student and visitors visit per day in our office.
However, we and Neutopia is an online education platform, meeting and classes can be done online
and these encourage Australian students and overseas students benefited through research and referral
before they start their actual university course.
b) Compare your organisation’s current marketing strategies to common marketplace
strategies used by competitor organisations.
You may choose to submit your evidence via written response, or whiteboard photo.
IDP Education Agent is our main competitors; they had been professional in this field for years.
IDP Agency has spread across other countries like United Kingdom, Canada, Indonesia,
Australia, etc thus this create brand image, government connections (visa purpose) and trust
among other overseas students. Although we are just a small start up educational agency, we
could slowly build our brand image in Sydney especially during this pandemic where most
universities encourage international student to travel back their home and our educational agency
could give an online consultations via Zoom, video call, or email on helping overseas students to
rearrange their visa applications, information on the availability of new intake for new student,
online accommodation arrangement.
Task 2 - Opportunities
a) Outline potential opportunities to grow the business, including:
any strategic alliances or cooperative business models
any new products or services to offer specific market segments
any opportunities to increase sales or generate greater market penetration using
current products
any opportunities to take over other organisations, for example, competitors or
smaller start-ups
any opportunities to grow the business model through franchising or direct selling
models.
You may choose to submit your evidence via written response, or whiteboard photo.
- Cooperative business models
Recruit, support and retain education agency staffs that have knowledge and
experience with the company. Maintain and create working policy and better working
environment among co-workers as they are the person who ensures the students are
achieving for what they applied.
Connect students to get them prepared for college or university of their choices by
discovering their passion and interest. The students need help from agency to create a
plan for university which leads to open up their career path as well as motivation
throughout their journey in university.
- New Products / Services to offer
Online Accommodations
There are two choices for student accommodations, renting our own accommodation
to students or collaboration with Australian who is the owner of apartment that
searching tenant who are interested in renting their apartment and we took few
percentage of commission by recommending them.
Career Path
We partner up with several companies that are looking for fresh-graduate students to
fill up certain positions in the company. Thus, we could create job application system
like SEEK to connect graduate students with companies.
- Opportunities to increase sales
Accommodation: by creating online accommodations it ease overseas students to
choose which apartment and area that they would like to stay with different price
according to the area. First time renting apartment (member only) will get 10% off
for the first 3 months. This will encourage students to sign-up for membership and
increase sales and usage of the online applications.
Career Path: Conduct survey and satisfaction comments through accepted fresh-
graduate applicants. Keep the online job vacancy updated and post several
students satisfaction comments on the main page.
- Opportunities to take over other organisation
By engaging with students problems and handling their problem in short time will
increase the satisfaction of the students using the online applications. Allow them to
share their experience using the application in their community platform. If there are
lots of positive feedbacks, then it will attract more students and hopefully takeover
small start-up business.
- Opportunities to grow business model
By having the survey and looking at demand data, we hope to expand our office in
different country that is in higher demand of educational agency. Thus, location,
economic performance of the country, political situation will be huge consideration
before expanding.
b) Identify two marketing opportunities that meet the objectives, and evaluate the risks and
benefits of each opportunity.
You may choose to submit your evidence via written response, or whiteboard photo.
Introduce phone application / mobile application to ease student accessibility into the
educational agency website.
Benefits: All information regarding the application into university, accommodation,
visa application, IELTS, and other requirement will be clearly stated inside the
application. Students just have to download it through AppStore. This leads to
efficiency and knowledge sharing in the platform and increase Neutopia staff
productivity as they can solve and handle matters more effectively especially during
pandemic where going on location are not allowed.
Risks: Language inherent risk which consists of code quality, numeric flaws, and
information leakage. Malicious data infiltration which sensitive data is secretly being
transmitted through phone such as deliberate transmission (address book, email,
phone log), Surreptitious transmission (microphone, GPS, or camera data) and
Infiltration via sockets (Email, HTTP, SMS, DNS)
Diversify the product, not only helping students on arranging application to enter
university. We could also diversify into different categories such as assistance for visa
application, student accommodation, student health cover/ insurance.
Benefits: Increase sales and number of interest/ visit because students does not only
come for university application, they could also seek advice for visa application
process or other information required before studying abroad (example:
Accommodation, pre-departure support and student health cover)
Risks: it reduce the quality of service for university entrance applications as online
staff has to focus on different area and different needs of students. Students might
shift to other online education agency as we are lack on focusing company main
objectives. Second, it leads to more costing in arranging different categories for
students in terms of labour and cost of marketing.
c) Recommend the opportunity that best addresses organisational objectives and:
develop a marketing mix strategy that fits within the capabilities and resources of the
organisation. Include detail on which strategies you’ll employ, such as:
o direct marketing
o email
o social media
o trade shows
o events
o other relevant strategies
You may choose to submit your evidence via written response, or whiteboard photo.
Marketing Mix Strategy (mobile application):
- Product: Able to perform at all mobile devices and tablets, radiant colors and simple
graphic design, contain important point of information.
- Price: Discounts 10% for first 3months of accommodation using our mobile
application, other free offerings given for membership students.
- Place: Application will be available in Apple Store (iPhone users) & Google Store
(Android users). Staff of our education agency could introduce student the usage and
purpose of our mobile application.
- Promotion: Direct marketing to students/ visitors who visit our website or office,
promote our mobile application through social media nowadays such as Instagram,
Facebook. Lastly, during educational events, we could promote our mobile
applications usage to students who visited our booth.
describe how your strategies align with the strategic direction of the organisation, and
give justifications for your selection.
By launching mobile application, we could reach more students not only in Australia
regions but also overseas students who are interested in studying overseas. Mobile
Application will have all the information needed for students starting from university
application & requirement, until information needed after reaching the country they
study. Especially during this pandemic where students/visitors are limited to visit
location, this will give an opportunity for the educational agency staff to assist their
problems encounter personally through “Chat Us” and help giving students
information that they unable to ask. We are trying to expand and build an education
platform worldwide in order to support and connect learning transition.
Review the marketing strategy performance using an appropriate tool (competitive
analysis, life cycle model, value chain analysis, etc.). Discuss if the current
marketing strategy is meeting the organisation’s against objectives.
You may choose to submit your evidence via written response, or whiteboard photo.
- Competitive Analysis: As our company running the business over long period of time, there
will be multiple opportunities to grow in business. However the company still has to deal with
some challenges. For example: We increase promotions and interesting event offerings to
maximize product visibility and brad awareness. Our major competitors is IDP Education, we
try to gain national presence and increase number of customer by gaining reputation due to high
quality of services.
- Life Cycle Model: The business life cycle consist of 5 different stages including initial to
ultimate stage of business market. Our main challenges is to not overspending the budget given.
Growth: The stages where company facing challenges and issues bidding for money and time.
Thus, the company need to implement an effective business management to build necessary
business plan.
Established: The company has to face other risks such as competitors, economy and dynamic
nature of environment. For example: Global Pandemics and Economy Recession
Expansion: The company thinks of targeting into new market by opening new office overseas.
Thus, the company has to deal with external marketing threats such as overseas competitors
pricing.
Mature: At this stage, the company will frequently facing problem such as decrease in sales
and profits, but the company could took this opportunity by having partnership with other
company that connected in this field.
Exit: The final stage of business cycle. The company is getting proper valuation from its
operation, management and competitive barriers.
include the metrics to be used in measuring marketing performance.
You may choose to submit your evidence via written response, or whiteboard photo.
- Customer Satisfaction: If the customer are not happy with the poor service and quality of
performance perform by our online education staff, then the company has to bear the loss. Thus,
the company ( online educational agency) has to ensure customers are satisfied with products
offered and service performed.
- Market share: Refer to the company revenue as a portion of the total revenue generated for the
market.
Task 3 - Tactics
a) Detail the tactics necessary to implement the strategy you have outlined, including:
scheduling of activities to enact the strategy
costing
accountabilities and responsibilities
a plan for coordinating and monitoring scheduled activities, including KPIs.
You may choose to submit your evidence via written response, or whiteboard photo.
Activity Schedule Person KPIs Cost
Responsible
Hire a mobile Aug, 2020 CEO / Owner Appoint by 31 Salary $100.000
application Aug 2020 per year (incl.
programmer to Health
create mobile insurance)
programme
Hire a Sep, 2020 Manager, Appoint by 12 Salary $70,000
marketing to Supervisor Sep 2020 per year (incl.
plan promoting Health
idea and support Insurance)
other staff
Hire consultant Sep, 2020 CEO & - Policies and Consultant &
to prepare a Manager procedures Legal Fees
model (policies - Partnership $15.000
and procedures) contact
for online (listed
application and university)
prepare training - Training
Materials
(Manual)
b) Outline any legal and ethical requirements that impact on the selected tactics.
You may choose to submit your evidence via written response, or whiteboard photo
The company need to make sure that all information use in mobile applications and company
website or any advertisement strategy must be correct, legal and trustworthy for their customer.
Because the business ethics will help to gain reputation among the students, so we could gain
more support and loyal customers from they directly or indirectly which all this things affect to
sales.
Another issues, the company has to make sure all the personal details registered in mobile
application has to be secured under the Privacy Act. Although it is going to be costly for the
company, it is to gain customer loyalty by providing them good quality of product and service.
c) Describe how the tactics fit within identified organisational resources and capabilities.
You may choose to submit your evidence via written response, or whiteboard photo.
The company has to fully understand internal and external factors that are affecting it. Thus, it
helps to identify your clear advantages and use it to be successful. Below is the three stages
process:
(1) Analyze the company
The company need to examine the resources, capabilities, strength and
weakness by using SWOT analysis as a tool to discover the company strength
and weakness. It’s easier to achieve the company objectives once you have
identify your strength without exposing your weakness.
(2) Identify strategic options
Using tools like Brainstorming to explore project so that the company could
compete with others. Brainstorming with reference to the company mission and
consider how far the company could develop.
(3) Evaluate and select the best option
Once evaluations are completed, the company has to choose which strategic
options is the best options and making sure not to choose so many options
which leads to decrease in resources.
d) Describe the process to ensure that the marketing strategies align to the organisation’s
objectives, are aligned to legal and ethical requirements and are achievable.
You may choose to submit your evidence via written response, or whiteboard photo.
The educational agency staffs are assisted to ensure guidelines within organisation policies and
procedures are being followed. The marketing staff has the role to review all the materials
before publish to ensure it comply according to Australian law and industry codes of practices.
It has to meet certain objectives such as:
- Offending people
- Breach someone copyright or violate their privacy
- Misusing personal information of students/ visitors
However, the staffs must follow company policies about what to said or not said, the image can
or cannot used during promoting the mobile application, do not include:
- Gender Bias
- Discriminatory languages or stereotyping people
- Sexual imagery or sexually explicit language