Marketing Plan
Opportunities
The opportunities available for Roundup River Ranch include:
Opportunity 1: The use of social media platforms such as Twitter to connect with the customers.
Opportunity 2: Use of engaging videos. Indeed, Roundup River Ranch is represented as a company that provides camping, recreation and rehabilitation services, with a well-developed and simple working structure.
Opportunity 3: Having a flexible and various programs and favors, that could satisfy a large specter of customer’s demands (“Roundup River Ranch”).
Opportunity 4: The camp has a full-fledged formation, with different programs that can achieve or satisfy different goals and issues. For example, River Ranch is working with children with illnesses and disorder. Moreover, it has several and relative camp programs for disabled people.
Opportunity 5: It is located at the shore of the lake and has a beautiful environment. The conditions are quite fair and comfortable at any season.
Opportunity 6: In addition, the camp has an international partnership and collaborations, which allows traveling and discovering the whole world.
Opportunity 7: Moreover, it has strong mental and team-building programs. In that case, customers are gaining an important life and social experience, which will be always useful.
The list of opportunities gives an indication that Roundup River Ranch, is in a better position of growing and winning the competition in the market. The available opportunities are a significant avenue towards attaining international recognition in the industry.
Pricing Strategy
The pricing strategies will include:
• To attained the highest market share possible in the industry
• To offer stable prices to the customers
• To maximize the profits as much as possible but charging reasonable prices to the customers (Pricing objectives and strategies 1)
• To charge a price that will enable the camp to get new customers or penetrate the market in the new regions.
The camp will charge reasonable prices to increase the profit margin. It was will not compete basing on the price but other factors such as effective marketing to win the competition. Moreover, the organization is set to ensure that it offers the best services again any competition to look different, embracing the idea of product differentiation. In addition, it will be necessary for the camp to offer discounts to the loyal customers. It is important to realize that appreciating loyal customer helps to a great level in retaining these customers (Pricing objectives and strategies 1).
Evaluation and Control
Formal Controls
The formal marketing controls are mechanisms, processes, or activities that are designed by the company to assist in making sure the implementation of the marketing strategy is successful. They include the input, process and output controls. In regard to the input controls, these refer to the actions taken before the marketing strategy implementation. Among the most important input controls are recruiting, selecting, and training workers. Other input controls deals with the financial. In this regard, these input control activities encompass decisions linked to resource allocation (financial and manpower), capital outlays for the required equipment and facilities, and increased expenditures on R&D. Indeed, the financial resources can either break or make a marketing strategy or its implementation (Hartline 272).
In regard with the process controls encompass activities, which take place in the course the implementation intended to influence the employee behavior in order for them to support the implementation of the strategy. Among the most important process controls is the system utilized in evaluating and compensating employees. The employees in general, ought to be evaluated as well as compensated on the basis of the criteria that are relevant to the strategy. For instance, in case the strategy is found to require that the salesperson put in more efforts in offering customer service, they ought to be rewarded based on those efforts and not on the number of fresh accounts created or sales volume. In addition, the level of authority as well as empowerment given to employees is another important process control. Even if some level of empowerment can contribute towards increased performance, when employees are offered excessive power, they normally turn out to be dissatisfied and confused with their work. Indeed, having excellent internal communication, which is another control process, can play a major role in helping to do away with such problems.
In regard with the output controls, these ensure that the marketing outcomes are aligned with the projected results. The basic means to output control entails setting the performance standards against which the actual performance can be measured. In order to make sure there is accurate marketing activities assessment, all the standards of performance ought to be based on the camp’s marketing objectives. Among the best techniques of carrying out the evaluation of whether the standards of performance have been attained is to utilize a marketing audit in order to examine the camp’s marketing strategy, objectives, and performance in a systematic way. The main goal of a marketing audit is to make identification of the problems in the present marketing activities and to make plans concerning the essential steps towards correcting such problems. (Hartline 273). A marketing audit can turn out to be very elaborate and long, or can be simple and short.
