Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums - Essay Example

Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, marketing plan Executive summary The purpose of this paper is to strategize the most effective method of increasing the visitors that visits the Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums. The values and core strategy will be used as a basis to come up with an effective plan. The Aberdeen Art Gallery was chosen for the analysis and for coming up with a marketing plan specifically because of the uniqueness that it has compared to its competitors. The plan will focus on five parts, the mission statement, objectives, audit, market overview and Swot analysis. The objective will be followed by the strategies that can be used to achieve them. Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, marketing plan I. Mission statement Aberdeen Art and gallery museum’s mission is to enhance conservation, research, and exhibition, to let the public aware, know and appreciate tale of the city’s long relationship with the sea. II. Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums’ objectives The museum should set its objectives so that it can move forward and always be referring to the objectives to enhance that it is moving on the right track. The objectives that will be set forth should be SMART, which translates to specific, measurable, realistic, and time bound. The following objectives are formulated using the guidelines of SMART; Creation of an environment that will attract the youths and more tourists Have 500,000 of visitors of the target audience with the 1st year Have at least 25% of the target audience revisit within the 1st year Register at least 30% of the target group on “Friends of Aberdeen museum” Increase the use of social media and technology in the museum Increase the tourism attraction to about 10% within the 1st two years Acquire sponsorship to partner in marketing the museum The strategies that will enhance the realization of the objectives set above include will be considered. Formulation of objectives is very important, which is based on identifying the best opportunities from the situational analysis. One of the key considerations is of setting the museums goals are that it should be consistent with the long term goals of the museum. When mentioning goals and objective, “they are a bit challenging but this is the charm it carries” (slater and Olson, 2001). The manner in which they are challenging is because they demand a lot of information to be gathered processed and evaluated. The external environment is usually uncontrollable, but using the normal PESTEL (political, economic, society, technology, environment, legal) it is and will be favorable for the marketing plan. The political environment of the company is favorable this is because of the mission statement that will make the government and the local council of Aberdeen to support the project. The mission statement where it states that they will enhance conservation will be very much supported by the state government. The economy of the United Kingdom is one of the most stable economies of the world. This will help so much in the prices that will be set and help to raise more revenues to the Art gallery and Museum. Social factors are also favorable in the United Kingdom; the society of the country is diverse and very conservative this can be seen from the fact that the country still keeps the monarchy system of government. The fact that there is introduction of technology in the museum, this will make the environment to be very favorable. Most of the museum doesn’t incorporate technology but this will be very catchy in this arena of technology environment. The Art gallery and the Museum are working within the legal environment as prescribed by the government. In terms of including more technology, a TV screen, which is preferably built on the wall, should be placed next to each painting/piece of art that is connected to a touch screen either on the wall or on a stand in front of the painting. This will give the guests a chance to write their opinion or thought about that particular piece of art., which will then be displayed on the TV screen. This accomplishes the need for self-expression and new technology is met and it provides a base for further discussion. The format of the TV screen should be similar to that of Facebook, to increase familiarity amongst the target audience. Another manner in which technology can be explore in the museum and the art gallery is by placing QRL codes, which can be scanned with iPhones or other smartphones, should be placed next to each piece of art, holding small videos with the artist explaining their vision or similar. The employees should be given some amount of time to as part of their job description to create online content ad on social media platform such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram, and on the museum webpage. This is supported by Scott, he suggests that when one is using social networks, they should create a page that reaches an audience that is important to your organization”, “provide valuable and interesting information that people want to check out” and lastly “create groups and participate in online discussions” (Scott 2007, p. 234). This makes the posts to be of a more personal character than if it was synthesized by the marketing director, who has the possibility of not having a glance of the new exhibition. The strength of using internet in marketing is in its speed and relative ease of use, this is evident as the mobile phones are used by all most all most everyone. The internet can also generate a dialogue between the provider (museum) and the consumer through the platforms such as twitter. Other benefits include the fact that it is cheap and cost effective e.g. just opening Facebook fan page which is free; it has the ability to target specific audiences. The strategy will entail making the new art museum contemporary and approachable to the target audience using social media, new technology, and experience based concepts and other elements established as being within the realm of the target audience and the contemporary type of product the museum. The young generation doesn’t visit this museum more often; they view the museum as “boring places” targeting this group increase the people vising the museum. This means creating experiences and events with staged, well worked themes, changing the exhibitions regularly, using modern technology and social media to expediter before, after and during the visit. The benefit of using after the visit strategy is that it is going to enhance that there will be revisits along with financial and personally appealing incentives. To target the tourist a proper strategy will be the use of technology and collaborate with tourism partners and agencies. This will enhance more awareness and enable more visits. It will be also of great importance if the museum uses a unique selling proposition strategy, that will emphasis uniqueness and attributes, to make the art works and the museum product a superior ‘brand.’ I recommend this type of strategy because it will attract the target group (18-28yrs). To achieve these objective the museum should ensure that it profiles itself on its highly contemporary features, in order to attract the youths, such as complete experiences, events, using technology, social media extensively and so forth. The museum is aimed at enriching the tale the city’s long relationship with the sea, but it must however make profits to sustain it and act as a source of income to the Aberdeen county council. Though the mission statement focuses on the societal perspective i.e. it’s societal oriented the museum should develop an objective that ensures that there is cumulative growth of profits projections overtime. For the next five years the profit should be deemed at growing to 50%, this will enable the museum to be able to preserve some of the magnificent art works. The growth of profit should come from local and international visits of the museum. To accomplish the marketing objective the museum should develop benchmarks to measure and evaluate progress. The objectives should be reviewed regularly to ensure that there is appropriate feedback and possible corrections are adhered to on a timely basis. III. Marketing audit Marketing audit is the comprehensive study of all marketing activities of a company; the process is systematic, periodic and independent. The audit will examine three key main areas; the first is external marketing environment, then internal marketing environment and lastly the evaluation of current marketing strategies. The internal environment of Aberdeen art gallery and museum is controllable. Aspects such as the mission statement, the goals and objectives can be controlled by the management of the museum. The resource of the art gallery and museum are up to the task, the employees, time management and even other stakeholders. Focusing the marketing audit of this plan where the four ‘Ps’ are used, the first one is the price where the price will be raised higher to cater for fact that sophisticated technology is used. This strategy will act as prestige pricing; this is because the perception of the customer will be increased due to the use of technology. Looking at the product, there will be a lot of increase in the visits as there is captivating factor of technology. The places where the Aberdeen Art gallery and museums are located are very unique as it is the only place where the displays of the North Sea oil and Gas industry can be viewed. The promotional methods used in the plan include advertising through the internet using platforms such as the social media (Facebook, twitter). IV. Market overview The market overview of the Aberdeen gallery and Museums is on the tourism industry. There are various competitors around the city of Aberdeen this include The Gordon Highlanders Museum which is the closest competitor. The target of the youth makes the market to be potential large and it will also enable to beat the close competitors. The market will also be segmented through pricing as not all the exhibitions will be the same. V. SWOT analysis Below is a SWOT analysis, this analyzes the Aberdeen Art gallery and museum’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunity and threats, which issues a synopsis of the position and possibilities of the museum. Strengths and weaknesses relates to internal matters, meaning things within the control of the museum, and opportunities and threats relates to external matters outside the control of the museum (Pickton and Broderick, 2005).this analysis of the will be based from my prior visits to the museum and the general as well as the common knowledge of the about the city of Aberdeen. Strengths: There are various strengths that will arise from the museum and gallery if it embraces new technology and practice. One of the key strength from this, is that the museum will be very unique, as compared to other museums. Museums are known to deal with ancient things and incorporating technology to ancient staff becomes something so exceptional not only in UK but around the globe. This will make the museum to increase its attraction; the museum will offer a platform where an advanced technology as well as offering a more fulfilling experience that can’t be attainable in any other museum. This will make the museum to gain more audience that will be interested in experiencing something new and contemporary at the same time. Through this it will be diverse in a manner such that it will attract almost all age groups, including tourists families at least one member of the family within the target audience. On additional to this the Aberdeen Art & Gallery Museums engages in youth forum, this is a fantastic way for those aged 14-24 years to be involved in shaping the Art Gallery’s young people’s program. The museum is also very assessable due to the fact that it is within the city and this adds to the list of its strength. Concluding the strengths is that the museum will have changing exhibition, events, tours, and themes encouraging revisits as compared so most of the other museums that tent to conserve one type of theme. Weaknesses: There is a potential weakness in costs depending on the prices set as it is possibly too expensive for the target group. Persons aged 14-18 years don’t have a reliable income; they rely on their guardians and parents. The other obvious weakness is that the technology placed in the museum should run effectively and be supervised. There may be also flaw on the fact that the museum is expected to be changing exhibitions, this been a very crucial strategy to improve the revisits in the museum if not handled properly it can turn to be disappointing. The changes that are supposed to be implemented in the museum can be time consuming and expensive. Opportunities: The obvious opportunity is that the museum can boast of is the fact that it is the only place in the united kingdom that one can view the display of North Sea and Gas industry, this opportunity is very important as it can attract all sort of people across the united kingdom. The population of Aberdeen has been growing gradually, this opens up for more potential visitors in the future. Institution of higher learning such as Aberdeen University can act as source of visitors bearing that the institution has quit a number of international visitors. The educational institution in Aberdeen could be very resourceful, this because the museum can act as resource center for history student and this only means that the visits will increase. The uniqueness and the attractiveness of the museum offer room for collaboration with restaurants, hotels and stores. This can be in the form of discounts connected with visiting multiple places or other promotional materials. Threats: The threats are going to be looked from the proximity of the museum, in terms of competition for attracting the audience and especially the target audience. Aberdeen and its environs have many other attraction sites to visits. Especially if this is perceived from the tourist perspective, who will tend to visit the obvious and common tourists sites such as Balmedie Beach, Footdee (Fittie), Johnstone Gardens, The Gordon highlanders museum, His Majesty’s theatre, St Machar’s cathedral and many more attraction sites within Aberdeen town. It is logic that the tourists will have limited money and time, for this reason thy cant visit all the sites in Aberdeen. These threats leave the Aberdeen art gallery and museum to have no option but map the competition. The close competitor of Aberdeen is The Gordon Highlanders museum. 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