Strategic Digital Marketing Plan of Get Kids Going Company - Essay Example

1 Year Strategic Digital Marketing Plan with a view as to how this may be developed over three years Contents Introduction 3 Campaign plan and media schedule for 2014 4 Extension of fundraising activities 12 A detailed budget breakdown 15 Conclusion 17 References 17 Introduction Get Kids Going (GKG) is a charity based company operating in the United Kingdom. The company provides the children and young people who are disabled with the provision and opportunity of participating in sports activities. The company provides high end wheelchairs specifically designed to be used by disabled children and young people below the age of 26 years to participate in different sporting activities and events. The wheelchairs marketed by Get Kids Going (GKG) can be used by disabled people for specific sports like table tennis, sledge hockey, boccia, basketball, sailing, marathons, athletics, skiing, tennis, rugby, archery, shooting, power lifting, fencing and so on. The company is dedicated to inspire the disabled youngsters in the United Kingdom to actively participate in different kinds of sporting activities and events. The company also provides the disabled kids and young people with sports grants which can be used in the training, travel, physiotherapy, competition fees and development and design of sports wheelchairs. The aim of Get Kids Going (GKG) is to provide long term support and encourage the disabled children and youngsters in the country to achieve the dreams regarding their sports careers and their goals to become sporting athletes. The company recognizes that there are many talented youngsters in the country who dream to become athletes and runners. However, the enormous expenses required for training to become an athlete and to participate in the sports events like marathon act as restraints to the achievement of these dreams by the young disabled sports aspirants. The activities of the company are supported by the sponsorships of different marathon runners and athletes. Hundreds of athletes and runners in the country are supportive of the activities of Get Kids Going (GKG). These runners support the functioning of Get Kids Going (GKG) by running in various national and international sporting events like the Bupa Great North Run, Paris Marathon, New York marathon, Virgin London marathon, Ride London 100 Cycling Challenge, Berlin Marathon, L’Etape du Tour and other sports events taking place indifferent countries of the world. The support of donation and charity given by many companies, schools, trusts and individuals are also critical for the continuity of the activities of Get Kids Going (GKG). Campaign plan and media schedule for 2014 A digital marketing plan involves the use of digital and electronic medium as an important medium for promoting and selling the products and services of a company (Sadler, 2001). Get Kids Going (GKG) is a company that runs on mainly two sources of income. The major part of income for the company comes from the marathon runners and their sponsorship activities. This forms for about 80% of the total income of Get Kids Going (GKG). The remaining 20% of the income of the company comes from legacies and individual as well as corporate donations. The company has started some activities related to digital marketing. However, these activities are rather less and in an embryonic stage. The company has taken initiatives to mark its presence in social media sites like Face book and Twitter. However, the activities are not regularly monitored and are mainly in an undeveloped stage. The public relations of the company are much low key affairs. The person who had been employed for managing the public relations of the company through blogging activities and media presence has left the job sometime back. After that, the position of a regular blogger and PR manager is empty. The company needs to appoint a PR manager to supervise and manage the public relation activities of Get Kids Going (GKG). The company is an avid user of Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a digital promotional tool and is usually among the first two results of searching about this domain through key words. However, the click through rates has decreased by 10% in the last year which is likely to impact the digital presence of the company to a high extent. An increasing level of competition to buy spaces for the runners is acting as a threat to the sponsorship activities and fundraising activities of Get Kids Going (GKG). Therefore, the company needs to develop a new digital marketing plan that would help to increase the visibility of the company in the digital domain. This would facilitate the sustainability and fundraising activities of the company in the future (Morden, 2007). A properly developed digital marketing plan and campaign is extremely necessary for the company in the present situation. The digital marketing plan is developed based on the following model. (Source: Henderson, 2014). The digital marketing plan and campaign of Get Kids Going (GKG) is aimed at enhancing the fund raising activities of the company by increasing its visibility and establishing its brand image in a stronger manner. The world is evolving technologically with most of the people using the internet and other technological mediums as a part of their daily lives. The population of the United Kingdom becoming more tech savvy and therefore, the internet has emerged as a significant medium of marketing and promotion by businesses in various domains. So GKG should start using these opportunities as a part of their digital marketing campaign. The individuals as well as institutions like schools, colleges, companies etc. have become avid users of the computers, internet, mobiles and other technological platforms for collecting information as well as an important part of their decision making processes (Quelch, 2007). Therefore, it is important for Get Kids Going (GKG) to enhance its digital presence in order to negate competition and in order to access new sources of income generation. The target market selected for the digital marketing plan include all the charitable houses, individuals and institutions who are likely to donate funds for Get Kids Going (GKG) as well the runners and athletes whose sponsorships act as a main source of funding for the company. The digital marketing plan is aimed at improving the incomes of the company, opening up new sources of funds for the company, generate leads and create awareness and confidence of donors in Get Kids Going (GKG). For starting the plan, Get Kids Going (GKG) should take into consideration the different avenues of digital marketing and promotions while devising and implementing the digital marketing plan for opening up new sources of income (Ryan and Jones, 2009). The digital marketing campaign is developed for a period of 1 year. Some phases of the campaign would be independent while some others would overlap each other in terms of time period. The company should start the online media content building from the starting of the campaign. The period selected is 6 months from January to June. The company should start to develop the digital marketing channels used for the marketing and promotional activities. The first stage of online content development should be through the establishment of a fully functional corporate website (Evans, 2010). This would help in increasing the goodwill and the visibility of the brand and increase the effectiveness of the campaign. The presence of an official website would also result in increasing the awareness about the brand among many charitable trusts, schools, companies and individuals. For raising funds for charitable purposes, it is extremely important to create goodwill and a positive brand image of the business in the minds of the relevant customers and stakeholders of the business. References from athletes and runners and other sponsors of Get Kids Going (GKG) should be listed as testimonials in the official website of the company (Manour, 2009). This would make the website visitors become more ensured about the positive and established reputational base of Get Kids Going (GKG). The second phase of the campaign would involve starting social media marketing processes. This would continue from July to August. The use of social media marketing is especially important for digital marketing. Other than that, GKG should improve its used of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google Ad words, Email marketing, telephonic marketing, Google analytics and try to improve the results achieved from the corporate website and also try to increase the landing page conversion rate for the visitors in the websites. The profile of the company should be set up in a transparent and impressive manner. The achievements and accolades of GKG should be listed in the social networking site pages to attract maximum responses (Kleindorfer and Wind, 2009). The employees of the company and the representatives should be active in the profiles in social networking sites. Linking back to blogs, articles and websites from the social media sites would be a useful strategy to increase visibility. The profiles in LinkedIn can act as a medium for developing contacts with potential donors including individuals and trusts (Oliver, 2007). Facebook is commonly accessed by most people in the United Kingdom. An official page of Get Kids Going (GKG) created in Facebook will help to attract more donors and act as an information source about the reliability and reputation of the company. Also, the information about the activities of the company can be accessed by the relevant users through the social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages. This would help Get Kids Going (GKG) to become a part of the vast online global community. Get Kids Going (GKG) is a company which has to deal with individual and corporate charity donors and sponsors on a regular basis (Get Kids Going Corporate website, 2013). The company should start the e mail marketing processes from April which would continue till August. The company can opt for direct marketing strategy through the use of e-mail marketing. The representatives of the company should collect the email addresses of the relevant sponsors and donors as well as the potential donors and web site visitors. Then it should send periodic e-mails to the potential sponsors. The emails would contain information about the company, company profile and activities, special offers and other information that would act as a catalyst in pushing the donors to contribute to the noble cause of Get Kids Going (GKG). A particular landing page should be created for the subject line of the email which would help to keep a track on the responses to these emails. Setting up blogs is a digital marketing strategy that required time to see the real effects. GKG should therefore continue blogging activities for a longer period of time. Therefore, the time selected for the blogging activities is May to December i.e. 8 months. Get kids Going (GKG) should employ at least two employees dedicated to manage the blogging and social media website activities of the company. These employees would have particular job responsibilities including setting up the blogs, writing the blog contents, motoring testimonials and blogs by other people and develop strategies for proper digital networking that would be beneficial for the company in the short term as well as in the long term. These employees would develop the initial entries for the blogs for Get Kids Going (GKG). The time frame required for blogging activities long because blogging is a continuous process required to create and maintain the interests of the relevant users (Wind, Wind and Mahajan, 2002). The setting up and maintenance of blogs would require expenses, especially for the technicalities associated with the maintenance. The setting up of a blog and carrying out regular blogging activities are expected to provide high returns on the investments in terms of getting sponsorships and donations from potential individual and corporate donors. Therefore, this phase is an equally important phase of the digital marketing campaign. The blogging activities are likely to add value to the activities of the company and create new sources of income for Get Kids Going (GKG). Search engine optimization is one of the most popular internet marketing strategies followed by businesses in their digital marketing plans. Search engine optimization considers the way the search engines work, the keywords that are typed into the search engines, the most preferred search engines and the contents which people search in the internet. GKG should employ the search engine optimization development for a longer time period. Therefore, the selected time period for the process is January to November which takes up a major share of the campaign. Get Kids Going (GKG) may use the Search Engine Optimization processes to develop its contents in a relevant manner so that the company is shown up more frequently when relevant search terms are entered into the search engines (Greenberg and Kates, 2013). As mentioned earlier, Get Kids Going (GKG) is already popular in terms of search keywords and it is showed up when relevant keywords are entered. But the number of click rates has decreased in the last year. Therefore, the company can try to increase the click rates through the use of new strategies in search engine optimization like Pay per Click (PPC). Pay per Click (PPC) advertisements would be an important source of generating more traffickers in the official websites and profiles of Get Kids Going (GKG). The click and conversion data can be collected from the Pay per Click (PPC) advertisements and used for tapping in potential donors and sponsors. These data and the call tracking options would help get Kids going (GKG) to revise the relevant contents in the websites including the heads, body scope and more. The company should ensure that the promotional and marketing message used in the websites would be directly focused on the target groups so that the potential donors can be attracted to these messages and discover the website and information about the company through keywords and searches. GKG should start building up the public relations for the company and allot a sufficient period of time for this part of the campaign. Suitable public relations strategies would help to attract relevant website traffickers into the company website and the company profile in different social media sites. Get Kids Going (GKG) should employ specific public relations managers to look after the public relations of the company. The appointment of at least one PR manager for the company would ensure that the contents for the digital marketing of the company are well built with proper consideration given to map the contents according to the requirements of the digital users relevant for the business (Wilcox, 2003). The Return on Investments (ROI) from public relations maintenance as an avenue of digital marketing is assumed to be high (Oliver, 2007). The Return on Investment (ROI) from this avenue is expected to be almost 85% as given in the budget prepared for the digital marketing plan. Therefore, the company can invest sufficient capital for setting up a proper public relations management unit in the company. Extension of fundraising activities GKG or Get Kids Going is the only charity that extends their support to the children having disabilities so that they are able to discard the problems that they face in everyday life and even participate in various sport activities like the other children. However the charity organization has limited activities of fundraising that is creating problem for the firm to carry forward its activities in the future. The major tool that is used by GKG for fundraising activities is through supporting runners, and corporate or individual donations. The major focus of this charitable organization is to make the majority of the disable children in UK mobile so that they are able to play and even take active participation in various sporting activities (Jeffs, 2008).The limited fundraising activities have enforced the organization to adopt certain appropriate measures so that it is able to sustain its business operations and extend more help towards such children having disabilities. There can be certain strategic approaches that can be incorporated by the organization so that they are able to expand on the sources of income. GKG can be built up on strategies to some more number of events taking place that attracts sponsorship. Amongst such approaches the most important one is to support the cycling events taking place that can be a major source of income for the organization. Apart from the cycling events there are even some other sport events that can be supported by the company that attract sponsorship such as that of rugby, tennis and golf. These three events can be incorporated by the organization in its operations so that all the players are given the required support and in turn this would enable the company to increase the overall income for helping disabled children (Abell, 2010).The strategic approach that needs to be designed by the company would be for the various fundraising activities that can be implemented till the year 2016. This approach would even incorporate ways to increase the appearance of GKG on the public forum. This strategy would enable the company to spread awareness amongst the people so that they are able to relate to the success stories of the company and this would trigger in some individual contributions towards GKG. The organization can even form some business ventures with the sports products manufacturing companies. The manufacturing company can perform its corporate social responsibility activities through this venture and on the other hand GKG would be able to raise some funds for all its operations (Simerson, 2011). The venture can be such as the sports products that are being purchased by customers or in bulk for big sports event a certain percentage of such products would be given to the group. The organization in turn would help the company to establish a high standard of CSR activities in the industry. These events to be undertaken by the organization have a single objective that is to increase the income by £150,000 annually within the target year of 2016. The other fundraising events that can be incorporated by the organization is through organizing events where the disabled children whose life has been positively affected by the company can be involved for any kind of sports events such as a race, which can attract people to view such innovative sports event of disabled children and in turn funds can be raised from the viewers on a large scale. This event can be conducted annually and would be a medium of entertainment as well as proclaim the message to people the potential possessed by such disabled children and the effort that are undertaken by GKG in order to create a difference for these children. The other initiatives that can be taken by the organization is by involving corporate into such sports events that would be organized by the firm comprising of sports activities of disabled children. The sponsorship generation from such corporate would serve as a major tool for fundraising for GKG. These events would not be limited to the children who has been supported by the organization but would even involve other children with such disabilities so that they are able to play sports and even it would be a medium through which the organization can generate more of income to sustain its operations of charity. Further extending their fundraising activities or rather spreading more of awareness can comprise of hosting sports events in schools which would motivate children towards sports and at the same time would even raise funds for the company as there would be a specific charge for participation (Carlopio, 2010).This charitable intention of the organization would be supported by many schools and this initiative can prove to be beneficial for the firm in long run. The organization can even extend this initiative by designing a program through which they are able to convey their success stories and influence not only the school teachers but also children and parents so that they are able to contribute in small amounts so as to meet the objectives of supporting such children with disabilities. GKG through these approaches would be able to attract the corporate, schools and even individuals so as to raise funds for these children (Cole, 2003). On the other hand there is another approach that can be implemented by the company that is hiring a group of professionals who can go and approach the corporate houses and even in residential places so that they contribute in significant amounts. Maintaining such a team of professionals who would be undertaking such activities on a regular basis would help the organization mitigate much of the challenges that it is currently facing in raising funds (Thompson and Martin, 2010). The recommended approaches are all aligned with the major objective of the organization that is to raise the maximum funds possible so that it is able to expand its operation and create an impact in the life of these disabled children. The strategic approach for fundraising would not only be focused on individuals, but would involve supporting events, participants, hosting events, and even to the extent of forming ventures with companies. These approaches would increase the sources of income for the organization. A detailed budget breakdown     Budget for digital marketing plan     Calendarisation Strategies Allocated expenses (in £) Expected Return on investment Returns (in £) January, 2014 -June, 2014 Online Content Building 30,000 70% 51000 February, 2014 -July, 2014 Social Media Marketing 40,000 80% 72000 April, 2014 -August, 2014 E-mail Marketing 30,000 60% 48000 April, 2014 -December, 2014 Blogging 20,000 63% 32500 January, 2014 -November, 2014 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 30,000 80% 54000 February, 2014 - October, 2014 Public Relations 50,000 85% 92500   Total 200,000   350000 The budget for the digital marketing with the implementation of different digital marketing avenues for Get Kids Going (GKG) is given above. GKG can use a number of avenues for implementing an effective digital marketing plan. These avenues include online content building, social media marketing, e-mail marketing, setting up blogs, search engine optimization and public relations (Weber, 2009). The total budget considered for the digital marketing plan of Get Kids Going (GKG) for the year 2014 in GBP 200,000.The maximum amount of the budget goes into the investments in public relations which is GBP 50,000. Also, the return on investments is highest for this strategy with the rate of return being 85%. The social media marketing would also require much expenses of around GBP 40,000. In line with this requirement, the return from this avenue is also high with a rate of return of 80%. Other avenues of digital marketing would require investments varying from GBP 20,000 to GBP 40,000. The rate of returns for these avenues vary from 60%-70% which seems beneficial for the company. The total return estimated from the digital marketing plan is GBP 350,000 at the end of 2014. Conclusion Get Kids Going has been able to position itself as a charitable organization that is focused on the sporting activities of children with disabilities. The main objective of the company is to extend support to these children through manual wheelchairs. Though the company performs a wide range of activities and even support event and runners but their success stories of how they are able to make a difference is not known to majority of the population. The organization lacks the major communication tools that can help them to raise more funds and in turn even facilitate expanded operations of the firm. GKG has a very low presence in the digital platform and the methods that it has adopted down the line is not well formulated so as to create a strong positioning of the organization in the market place. The marketing communication plan that the organization has adopted was focused on the creating more awareness amongst the public but the objective of the plan was not properly met. The company has wide range of opportunities that can be well implemented in the form of spreading news about their success stories and the efforts that has been undertaken by them to support disabled children. However there are certain strategic approaches that can be implemented by the company so as to expand the sources of income that would facilitate the company to overcome fundraising challenges. GKG is recommended to develop an effective digital marketing campaign so that it can persuade more number of companies and individuals to contribute and help in sustaining the operations of the organization in the future. References Abell, D.F. 2010. Managing with Dual Strategies. USA: Simon and Schuster. Carlopio, J. 2010. Strategy by Design: A Process of Strategy Innovation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cole, G.A. 2003. Strategic Management. Singapore: Cengage Learning EMEA. Evans, D. 2010. Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 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