Unit 6: Launching a Marketing Campaign
Marketing is not just a matter of internal strategies and customer analysis. There are factors outside of the company that must be taken into consideration with any marketing strategy. Though marketers can control how they might respond to customer needs and expectations, they face the often-unpredictable reactions of customers to them. Maintaining customer satisfaction is essential to sustainable success. Marketers need to be sensitive to the regulatory and ethical constraints that may be placed upon them by a wide range of domestic and international industry standards and the expectations of society.
Companies must also face social forces that challenge their success. For example, marketers must be aware of the social and cultural aspects of each region in which they choose to market a product. Even a worldwide brand such as Coca Cola must adjust its marketing strategy for every region it enters. An awareness of the cultural factors affecting a marketing strategy can make the marketing message much more effective. Quite often marketers will address social issues especially relevant to lives of their audiences or the larger society with social marketing campaigns.
Finally, as a marketing campaign prepares for its launch, all the issues addressed in this and earlier units must come together in a formalized document - the comprehensive marketing plan.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 32 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- identify and describe customer satisfaction factors that affect marketing efforts;
- identify components of social marketing;
- explain how to adjust to cultural factors that affect marketing efforts;
- describe how to prepare a comprehensive marketing plan and perform this task; and
- explain ethical considerations impacting marketers.
6.1: Satisfying the Customer
Read this chapter, which emphasizes customer communities, loyalty management, customer satisfaction, ethics, laws, and customer empowerment.
6.2: Marketing Ethics
Read this article on business and marketing ethics in the global marketplace. Pay a visit to the Center for the Study of Ethics' webpage, which is linked in the reading, and participate in the discussion topics for this subunit.
6.3: Social Marketing
Watch this video on social marketing. Most of the tools for promoting commercial projects can also be applied to advancing social causes and programs. You may read along with the transcript here.
6.4: Cultural Modifications for Marketing
Read this article about international communication tactics, using themes and images that transcend cultural differences. If you publish a website, then you are positioned to reach a global audience. English may connect those in global business with a common language, but we still need to be sensitive to cultural differences.
6.5: The Marketing Plan
Read this chapter, which discusses marketing planning roles, the parts and functions of the marketing plan, forecasting, and the structure of a marketing plan audit. It also discusses PEST Analysis and other external factors that affect marketing decisions. Some of the material in this chapter is a review of concepts addressed in the course up to this point. Key takeaways include the steps in the forecasting process. Thus, you will be able to identify types of forecasting methods and their advantages and disadvantages as well as discuss the methods used to improve the accuracy of forecasts. Lastly, you will apply marketing planning processes to ongoing business settings and identify the role of the marketing audit. Answer the discussion questions at the end of the chapter.
Listen to this lecture, which discusses where to spend your marketing dollars and the costs associated with different types of marketing vehicles. This information is a very important component of the marketing plan. Without a budget, you cannot implement the marketing plan. Many external factors will affect the marketing budget.
6.6: Marketing Plan Project
Follow these instructions for completing a marketing plan project for this course.
Once your marketing plan is complete, follow the instructions for peer assessment of your plan, which you can post to the discussion forum if you want to.
Review this template suggestion for preparing your marketing plan project. Feel free to revise, expand, or replace template headings as you see fit for your own particular project.
Unit 6 Discussion and Assessment
After reviewing the unit materials, post and respond to the following topics on the course discussion board. Feel free to start your own post and respond to other students' posts as well.
What key components do you believe are most essential to maintaining customer satisfaction? How might you address those in your own marketing efforts? Find an example of a social marketing campaign you admire. Who was the marketers' target audience? What media did they select to connect with their audience and why? What message did they convey? Marketing plans will naturally be modified according to the type of service or product marketed, company structure, particularities of the target audience, etc. Consider a marketing campaign you might launch. What would be the primary components of your own marketing plan? Posting and responding to the discussion questions in the forums should take you approximately five hours to complete.- Receive a grade Receive a pass grade
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
- This assessment does not count towards your grade. It is just for practice!
- You will see the correct answers when you submit your answers. Use this to help you study for the final exam!
- You can take this assessment as many times as you want, whenever you want.
