The Marketing Strategies
This section of the marketing plan provides the marketing objective, the selected target market, the selected services, our marketing statement and our promotional recommendations.
Goals tell were a business wants to go; strategy answers how to get there. Every business must tailor a strategy for achieving its goals. The strategy must then be refined into specific programs that are implemented efficiently and corrected if they are failing to achieve the objectives.
Michael E. Porter, author of the book 揷ompetitive strategy: techniques for analyzing industries and competitors?has categorized strategies into 3 generic types, which are:
Overall cost leadership
Here the business works hard to achieve the lowest costs of production and distribution so it can price lower than its competitors and win a large market share.
Differentiation
Here the business concentrates on achieving superior performance in some important customer benefit area valued by the market as a whole. It can strive to be the service leader, the quality leader, the style leader, the technology leader, etc.
Focus
Here the business focuses on one or more narrow market segment rather than going after the whole market. The firm gets to know the needs of these segments and pursues either cost leadership or some form of differentiation within the target segment.
As said before, Cumeco n.v. is in the business of steel construction, pipefitting and welding. We think that Cumeco n.v. must adopt a strategy that is based on a combination of the differentiation and focus strategy. Our recommendation is that Cumeco n.v. must start focusing on becoming a niche-player. As explained in the opportunity and issue analysis a market nicher is a smaller firm that chooses to operate in some part of the market that is specialized and is unlikely to attract larger firms.
Now we can start developing a marketing strategy statement. The different clients we visited for our research had one thing to say: Cumeco n.v. delivers quality. The one word that kept coming back was QUALITY. The marketing statement should therefore be 搕o become known in the industry as the symbol of quality in the business of metal construction, pipe fitting and welding which can be accomplished by always meeting the deadline and delivering quality works? With this marketing statement in mind we will start developing the marketing plan.
In our opinion, our main objective is to increase the awareness of the company抯 name and the services it provides and to position Cumeco n.v. in such a way that when you hear the words Cumeco n.v you immediately think of quality. By introdusing such concepts as Total Quality Management it will be able to create a sustainable competitive advantage.
We believe that with our recommendations this can be accomplished. To evaluate the effectiveness of our plan, we recommend a survey to be done 6 months after the execution of the plan has started.
The image of a company is very important, because it抯 what your target market perceives of your company.
The selected target market is
8 The general contractors as they are in charge of big construction projects and take on smaller contractors like Cumeco to do a specific construction job
8 The architect bureaus as they make the drawings and in most cases make the calculations
8 The construction bureaus as they are specialized in making construction calculations
8 Various companies e.g. manufacturers, factories (Amstel, Coca-Cola)
8 Utilities companies e.g. Kodela, Setel, KAE
The perception of the customer is very important even in the steel construction business. If the general contractors have a good impression of your company, it will be easier to get a job order. Cumeco n.v. is being associated with quality, which is a good sign, but it is also being associated with high prices. So we抣l have to work on their price strategy. Cumeco n.v. has to start lowering its cost in order to have a better competitive advantage.
Although it is nice to be innovative and come up with a new product, we feel at this time Cumeco n.v. must not come up with a new service but work on the existing ones. We feel they should:
?Increase their steel construction job orders
?Increase their pipe fitting (steel and PVC) job orders
?Increase their aluminum welding job orders
?Heavily promote their new sandblasting and coating facilities
Recommendations
Since the first visit to Cumeco, we unanimously decided that a major problem at Cumeco was the absence of an employee in charge with all the marketing & public relations activities and mostly sales. Mr. Chirino is a person who wants to be and is on top of each project. He makes sure the contract is negotiated and signed, the project planning is done, the project calculations are correct, the job is started, finished and delivered on time. As you can see, he does not have the time to keep himself busy with the marketing and PR activities and perform as a salesperson. We know it抯 costly to take someone extra on the payroll. If Cumeco wants to make marketing the key to increase the awareness of its company and products or even their sales, a marketing officer with additional duties such as sales is a must. This person would be working closely with Mr. Chirino so he/she must be trustworthy.
With the marketing officer in place we can make as much suggestions as we like, because we know there is someone in charge of the execution.
Job description marketing officer
In this type of business personal selling is the key to success. You have to know your clients, visit them regularly and build a long lasting relation with them. The Marketing officer must function as a sales person. It is the job of the sales person to give customer service. He/she will go to the general contractors, the utility companies, the architect bureaus and the construction bureaus and try to establish contacts and build relationship with these clients. The sales person is in charge of making these companies aware of the existence of Cumeco, it抯 products and services and that Cumeco stands for quality in business of metal construction, pipe fitting and welding. Once they are interested in offering Cumeco a job, Mr. Chirino steps in. He is the one negotiating the contract as he has more knowledge of the company抯 capabilities, the work and the calculations. After the job has been taken and delivered, the sales person goes back after say 6 months to check up on the customer to see if everything is still satisfactory and maybe even if they have another job.
The marketing officer is in charge of coordinating the marketing efforts. Our main objective is to increase the awareness of the company抯 name and the services it provides and to position Cumeco n.v. in such a way that when you hear the words Cumeco n.v you immediately think of. We tried to incorporate all the marketing tools we believe will give results.
Advertising
We are aware that Cumeco does not have the funds to do much advertising. If we want to achieve our goal one point in the future we will have to start paying for some advertisements. Our suggestions are:
8 Newspaper adds in 揇e Makelaar?
8 Adds in the yellow pages of the telephone book
8 Direct mailing of informative folders to the target market
We do not recommend any event or sponsorship marketing as we perceive it not to be effective. It will not reach the target market specifically.
One of the main promotional activity Cumeco must start working on is PUBLICITY. We can start working immediately on publicity. Our suggestions are:
8 For the inauguration of the new sandblasting and coating facilities, give an inauguration party and invite the press. Give out press releases together with a folder containing all the work you have accomplished. Invite your target market (head of the departments in charge of maintenance of the various utilities companies and the project leaders of the architect bureaus, contractors companies etc).
In marketing we also have promotional items to put at what we call the Point-of-purchase. We can make posters to put at the hardware stores. These posters must make frequent visitors of the hardware stores (who may be in the business of construction) aware of the name Cumeco.
Actually it抯 difficult to come up with sales promotion items for a construction company. We do recommend free merchandise in the form of calendars, mugs, pens and key chains to be distributed to the target market. These items must have Cumeco抯 logo very clearly printed on it to increase awareness with its target market.
Budget
Marketing calendar
Word Count: 1441
|
|
