Marketing Communication Plan for Aer Lingus - Essay Example

Marketing Communication Plan for Aer Lingus Introduction Aer Lingus is the Ireland’s international Airline and the headquarter of the company is in Dublin. Aer Lingus Airline has 47 modern airbus crafts and the flight deals up to 10.6 million passengers. The mission of the airline is to build a connection between the Ireland and the world by offering best services at competitive price. Context Analysis: The Customer Context: The key target segments of Aer Lingus are price sensitive leisure, business leisure, and premium leisure passengers. Airline targets both male and female customers and age limitations from the age of 18 to 65 years. The airline has its operations in UK, America, Europe, and Ireland. The major focus of the airline is on B2B. In order to collect information, the company should use more social media. Moreover, it has been recommended that the company should focus on B2C as well. The main reason is that the B2B is a small customer size segment as this will increase its revenues (Dialogue marketing, 2014). The brand image of the airline is professional but affordable. People perceive the airline as a low cost airline and customer expectations average quality service from the airline. The company to increase its brand image and to meet up the customers’ expectations, the management should advertise the qualities and services offered at the given price as well as should promote the brand image while advertising to attract more customers. The Internal Context: The company has a marketing budget of $ 4 million, and this budget is spread over the period of two years. The fund is substantial and may not require any further funds. Culture, Values, and Beliefs: The airline is committed to serve at the central and convenient locations, so that there is large number of passengers travelling. The mission of the company is to connect the Ireland with the world and different countries of the world with Ireland through providing quality services at competitive price. The secondary mission of the airline is to enhance the connectivity for the customers. The company is facing issues as the brand of the airline is not renowned and many people are not aware about the brand, thus it is essential the values are communicated clearly and more widely so that it reaches to a larger audience. The Business Context: The brand awareness of the airline is not strong in the United Kingdom. The perception of the airline is low carrier airline, however it is not the best service providers as compared to its competitors. Thus, this low price perception has been blurred as well due to the offerings of Ryanair and other low-cost airways. The company has limited locations to go and has lower customer retention rate particularly when compared with the competitors. In order to attain all these goals, it is essential to design a proper marketing strategy considering the competitors as well as the internal and external environment. For enhancing the customer awareness, it is essential that the airline should be marketing the benefits to the customers (Anderson, 1982; Wit, and Ron, 2010). In order to be a good service provider and improve the customer retention rate, the company must aim to change the perception by different effective marketing strategies. For this, the company should promote the benefits and brand and provide the customers with a complete brand assocation and relation. Airline must enhance the reach to more locations and should change the perception through the promotion of new classes, brand facilities, prices and other benefits. The External Context: The key stakeholders of Aer Lingus are business class and leisure people. Moreover, in order to increase the satisfaction of the customers, it is essential that the company needs to communicate that the customers are important because they are the key sources of profit for the organization. PEST Analysis: Political environment: Very few countries pose taxes on the airline passengers, and Ireland is one of these countries. Ireland imposes a 10% tax on passengers and this discourages them to visit the country. Government poses heavy charges to the airline industry that is a big hit for airline. Moreover, oil prices have always been an important and unavoidable issue for the airline and decrease in the prices of oil has resulted in the favor of the airline industry. Therefore, it can be said that the political environment for Irish airline industry is good (Aer Lingus.com). Economic environment: Economic environment has an enormous impact on airline industry and even the Ireland airline industry. Due to the economic crisis, people have less disposable income, and Dublin airport is witnessing a considerable decline in the travel of passengers after 2008. However, challenges remain but the macroeconomic environment of the company is showing the signs of improvements in the last 2 to 3 years. So the economic environment is supporting the company, and with improvements in the economic situation, the number of passengers can increase. The volume growth of passengers has increased in 2014, and the increased volume represented 7% in six months. Social environment: Changing in the socio-cultural values can impact the industry. The company is highly used by B2B professionals, and with increasing use of globalization and orgnaizations expanding their operations to other countries, the airline can witness positive impact. Technological environment: Technological change is constant and a key to success of the airline. Technology is constantly improving and advancing due to the competitive pressure (Hill, & Jain, 2007). Company has also launched the mobile apps and website with improvements to attract customers and book flights online. However, with increased use of online meetings and video conferences, it can negatively impact the airline industry. Communications Objectives: Setting the objectives is important in planning actions and in defining how targets have to be achieved. Every organization set some objectives that lie at three level; organizational objectives, marketing objectives and communication objectives (Masterman, 2012). Before moving to communication objectives, it is essential to understand the corporate and marketing objectives that will help in clearing the concept of communication objectives (David, 2007). Organizational objectives can present achievement of higher profits, increased sales, growth of operations, increased earnings ratio, good corporate reputation, and maximization of shareholders’ wealth (Johnson,  Scholes, & Whittington, 2008). Marketing objectives can be derived from the corporate objectives and should be related to the needs of market that has been targeted (Kotler, 2003; Ares, 2004). The objectives may include increase the sales by 10% in a year, increasing market share by 5% in next two years, and increasing the penetration of distribution up to some particular percentage in a year. Communication objectives are designed to influence the customers and to communicate the message and analyze whether the message is communicated effectively (Thackeray, Neiger, and Hanson, 2007). It analyzes how the mind of the consumers should be influenced. Communication objectives ultimately serve the corporate and marketing objectives (Kotler, and Keller, 2009). In result of satisfying the communication objectives, companies mostly face enhanced sales and increase visits. However, the objective of the airline communication plan should be as follow: To enhance the customer awareness up to 45% within 6month of the marketing efforts among all of the target audience of Aer Lingus. To enhance the brand image and brand engagement by 10% and create understanding of brand that result in increased customer demand for Aer Lingus services within 1 year. Changing the attitude of customers and their perception regarding the airline as lower rate carrier. Customers should be excited regarding the new services of airline and they should perceive airline as high quality service providing carrier and the airline that is best for traveling. In order to achieve these objectives, different marketing communication tools are utilized such as advertising, personally selling, sale promotions, direct messaging and etc. Marketing Communications Strategy: Developing the marketing communication strategy is essential for every organization (McManus, White, & Botten, 2008). Even if the organization is offering the best products or services, but these are not communicated appropriately to the customers, then no one will be able to know them and thus, no one will buy them. Somewhat is the case with Aer Lingus; company’s communication, as the strategies are not good and effective and they are lacking in this domain. Therefore, finding out about the organization’s services is hard. There are three basic types of strategies push strategy, pull strategy and profile strategy. Push Communication Strategy: The aim of push communication strategy is to communicate value added offerings to customers through marketing channels that push customers to make repeated purchase (Kotler Armstrong, Wong, and Saunders, 2008). The aim of this strategy is to build relationship with customers and intermediaries (Peng, 2009). Possible approaches that can be utilized include sale promotions, sale promotions, advertisement on print media such as journal and magazines. Personal selling techniques are also used as a communication strategy (Roger & Peterson, 2010). Pull Communication Strategy: Pull strategy is a costly approach. By utilizing the pull strategy, companies encourage customers to increase the sales. This strategy includes advertising through multiple channels and promotional activities. Using this approach, companies provide discounts to customers that force them to demand the company offerings (Rugman, & Collinson, 2009). The major aim of this approach is to change the perception and attitude of audience, and to increase the awareness and improve the brand image through providing information to customers and through educating them (Fill 2002). Personal sale promotions, service demonstration through internet such as YouTube videos, and direct mailing such as emails can be useful tools to achieve these objectives. Profile Strategy: Profile strategy is different from push communication strategy. Pull communication strategy aims to differentiate the company’s services from all other competitors (Day, 1990). The aim of this strategy is to build image and trust among stakeholders and it can take multiple forms such as e-mails and newsletters, approaches that can be utilized including short term press releases or long term sponsorships (Gosnay, and Richardson, 2008). However, the main strategy that will be used for Aer Lingus will be the combination of both pull and push communication strategy. Combinations of these strategies will be useful. One of the reasons for using the combination will be that the perception of airline is a lower price airline and the airline low customer loyalty. Therefore, this strategy will be appropriate in the current condition particularly when there are multiple substitutes in market. The major objectives or aims of this strategy is to increase the customers’ understanding, changing the perception of customers, changing the attitude, improving the brand image, and enhancing the brand awareness. Integrated Promotional Mix: In order to achieve the target, it is essential that communication tools are utilized carefully and effectively as it has been decided that both pull and pus communication strategies will be applied (Fill, 2009). Therefore, different forums will be used to approach the customers. Both online and offline communication tools should be used to communicate the message. The major focus will be on social media videos as well as print media. Social media is one of the best tools to explore the services in detail and it has become easier to communicate with customers using social media (Chaffey, Ellis-Chadwick, Mayer, and Johnston, 2008; Hazlett, 2010). Through videos of YouTube or on television leisure people such as students and women will be attracted. It will be express that travel is possible with quality services at lower cost. Different images will be placed to print media in order to appeal mass of target audience. The major objective of these advertisements will be to aware people that they have a chance to have high quality services at lower cost and they can enjoy exciting experience with Aer Lingus. Promotional Billboards: “Fly With Aer Lingus and Keep Discovering and Enjoying Exciting Surprises” 15 % Off for Business People 20% Off for Leisure People This promotional poster expressing the major destinations for which the discounts have been offered to the target audience and through the tag line “Fly With Aer Lingus and Keep Discovering and Enjoying Exciting Surprises”. It has been mentioned that travelling with Aer Lingus will be an exciting and enjoyable experience for customers and they will always be entertained will new ideas. Newspapers: Newspaper is also one of the best ways to communicate with business class and to communicate detailed features (Verbeke, 2013). Time is a critical factor for business class people because due to increased globalization, people have to attend meetings outside the country and for this purpose they require or prefer comfortable environment (Thompson, & Martin, 2010). This type of people wants to rest during travel and wanted to be on time at their destination. All these features will be communicated through print media. This advertisement communicates that Aer Lingus does not speak for itself, but the travelers who have travelled with the airline speak about the quality and services of Aer Lingus. This advertisement communicates the sense of positive word of mouth and target business travelers specially by communicating that flight is always on time there are no delays and they will be serve with quality experience. Such advertisements can only only be placed in newspaper but in Ireland’s big magazines as well. Social Media: The social media platform will be utilized in order to communicate the comfort level to the target market (Mulhem, 2009). The discounts schemes and other appeals such as quality travel, luggage handling services, ease of boarding, wait time, food quality, and other facilities will be communicated through communication on website and playing YouTube videos. You tube is one of the best forums that can be utilized for detailed and numerous advertisements. Fly Zone: It has been encountered that environmental sustainability concern has increased among people and people prefer to promote airlines that are environmentally sustainable and have less impact over environment. In order to change the customers attitude and perception, and to increase the loyalty; sustainability features will be communicated through Face book, fly zone booth, twitter, and other websites. Direct Marketing: Due to technological advancement almost all organizations are able to maintain the history of customers regarding the purchasing activities and to influence the customers this data will be utilized (Piercy, 2009; Wheelen, & Hunger, 2011). Direct marketing through e-mails will be conducted using this data. Through this approach, direct discounts and value services can be offered to the targeted audience that would increase the chances of purchase and the result can be immediate (Smith, and Zook, 2011). Sale promotions: Above bill board ad is an example of sale promotion. In order to promote Aer Lingus, specific discount offers will be provided to customers to the particular destinations and for specific time; the purpose of mentioning limited time period is to increase the sales immediately. Scheduling and Implementation Year 1 Year 2 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Billboard Newspaper Advertisement Social media Fly zone Advertisement Direct Marketing Sale Promotion Evaluation Tool Strategy and timings Billboard Billboard campaign will take place for initial eight months and 10% amount of total budget will be utilized on this effort. Newspaper and magazine Advertisement Newspaper and magazine advertisement will require 30% of the budget and advertisements will be published for 12 month after initial 6 months. Social media Social media advertisement will be run for two years fully due to the low cost of advertisement and this will require 10% of the budget. Fly zone Advertisement Fly zone advertisement will take place for 6 months and will require 10% of the budget. Direct Marketing Direct marketing will take place for overall period of time after initial 3 months; and 15% amount will be required for this purpose. Sale Promotion Sale promotions will take place for 3 months at an initial stage and for particular destinations. Furthermore, these will be provided to customers in the second year for 6 months after making some sales from the 1 year advertisements. For initial sale promotions 25% budget will be required. Evaluation And Control, And Feedback: Evaluation, control and feedback are the essential factors to analyze the success of the marketing communication plan (Zenker, & Martin, 2011). In order to evaluate the progress of the communication plan, focus group interviews will be conducted and customers that have traveled with Aer Lingus during the time period of implementation of plan will be requested to attend the focus group of the airline. Social media will be utilized to take feedback from customers; differed options will be placed through which customers can provide suggestions and feedback to the Aer Lingus. 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