Aberdeen Maritime Museum - Marketing Audit and - Business Plan Example

Aberdeen Maritime Museum Marketing Plan Table of Contents Executive Summary 2 Mission 3 Objectives 4 MarketingAudit 5 a.The product 5 b.Price 7 c.Place 7 d.Promotion 7 Market Overview 9 SWOT Analysis 11 Executive Summary Museums are not about market shares and numbers but their impact on the society and making the community and its culture better. Through focusing on the social impacts of museums, there is a need to sensitize the public to support museums. Aberdeen Maritime Museum is the city’s award winning museum within Aberdeen city that keeps the history of North Sea among the people of Aberdeen. It is situated in the ancient Shiprow and integrates the Provost Ross’s House (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). The Museum has an assortment of artefacts that capture fantastic ancient moments of shipbuilding, fishing, fast sailing ships and the history of the port. Aberdeen Museum seeks to deepen its visitor base by increasing the number of its annual visitors. The museum will attain this through a marketing mix that incorporates unique product and service attributes, suitable location and effective promotional mix. The promotional mix will include intense advertising in print, audio-visual and the internet. Increasing the presence of the museum on the internet is anticipated to yield better results. The tourism and attractions market in United Kingdom is set to increase in the next five years. As a result, Maritime Museum is set to benefit from it. The museum market has four primary competitors. These include Aberdeen art gallery, Cowdray Hall, and Provost Skene’s House, and the Scottish Lighthouse Museum. The museum hopes to increase its customer base by 50%. The primary customer targets include both parents and children. The other target segments include the general public, commercial tours, schools and colleges, and business visitors. Mission The mission of Aberdeen Maritime is to connect the rich artistic heritage of Aberdeen culture and the city’s long association with the sea, as exemplified in its assortments, and the exceptional visitor’s experience. Aberdeen Maritime Museum is committed to the pre-eminence of the visitor experience and excellence in every element of its assortments and programs and draws on both traditional and new implements of communication, presentation, and interpretation (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). The museum purposes to serve its varied public as an inventive, vibrant and hospitable centre for discovering through visual arts. Additionally, the Aberdeen Maritime Museum purposes to gather, preserve, study, showcase and kindle appreciation for and promote understanding of mechanisms of art that jointly signify the wide range of human attainment at the highest degree of quality, all in the service to the public (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). In this regard, this marketing plan purposes to increase the number of visitors to the museum, including those making visits online to the museum official website. This plan will aim at improving and developing a strong set of audience development and marketing practices and skills and set groundwork for sustainable development of the Museum’s brand name (Baker, 2001). Objectives The primary objectives of Aberdeen Maritime Museum revolve around communications and impact. i. Impact From a marketing point of view, the requisite is not so much to attend to the needs of the customer but to generate a setting in which the customer is willing to be dared to develop a spectrum of response towards art. Art is about “resonance and wonder." This plan expects to increase on-site visitors by 50%. The Museum plans to increase the general public visits by 10percent, commercial tours by 15%, schools and colleges by 15%, business visitors by 10%. In order to directly impact procedures of the Aberdeen Maritime Museum’s achievement in educational efforts, the Museum aims to increase the number of college visitations by 20% and teen visitors by 30%. The Museum wants to delineate a success in sales beyond an increase in the number of visitors to a wider assortment of visitors to satisfy the standards of measure of social and educational impact of the Museum (Feldstein, 2010: 34). ii. Communications In addition to the objectives identified under impact, Aberdeen Maritime Museum, will seek to develop its target markets and the underserved market segments through increasing aided and unaided awareness of Aberdeen Maritime Museum (Hede, 2013), and increasing preference for the museum as a destination among the target markets (French & Runyard, 2011: 113). The other objectives of Aberdeen Maritime Museum include i. Generate netted revenue from an amalgamation of membership and admission fees, retail sales, special events and programming. ii. Obtain new funding sources including government grants, foundation grants and corporate and private donations. Marketing Audit a. The product The product of Aberdeen Maritime Museum remains to be the Museum galleries, permanent collections, exhibitions, and miscellaneous items (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). The Museum houses an outstanding assortment of fast sailing ships, shipbuilding, port and fishing history (Dennison et al., 2002). It also offers exceptional galleries of the North Sea gas and oil industry. The Museum stresses on products and services offered in order to attain the social and educational outcomes (Brodgen, 2012: 176-82). Aberdeen Maritime Museum offers an excellent assortment of maritime paintings and objects that are exploited to the full within the Museum, with touch screen consoles, education room, computer visual database, and practical showcases and bringing the production of the North Sea industries. Aberdeen Maritime Museum also offers related objects and gifts at the Maritime Museum shop that is situated within the Museum. It also offers refreshments such as tea and coffee at a cafeteria within the museum (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). The Museum also incorporates Provost Ross’s House, the second oldest dwelling house in the city. The house has some archetype attributes such as a fireplace, kitchen, and beam-and-board-ceilings. Each display in the house has an information board. It engrosses quoted memories of fishermen who offer a description of their work and living lives through that period (Provost Ross’s House, 2014). This also includes quotes from their wives. Other exhibits include the Whaler’s harpoons, oil rigs, Newt Diving Suit, Elephant tusks and the names of the ships built in the city in the olden times (Reid, 2014). The top floor of the Aberdeen Museum offers a great view of the Torry and harbour areas. It also offers lifts for the disabled to manoeuvre from one floor to the other (Aberdeen Maritime Museum, 2014). Additionally, the Museum also offers services to the people with hearing disabilities where they are allowed to use the induction loop system in the auditorium. Maritime Museum also offers a broad spectrum of outreach and learning activities at the Maritime Museum. The Museum enjoys interacting with educational institutions, adult learners and the public. b. Price Admission to Aberdeen Maritime Museum and interactive resources will remain to be free. c. Place Aberdeen Maritime Museum is located off Union Street and opposite Adelphi Lane. It is located along a ramped pavement joining the Adelphi lane in the end. Maritime Museum also offers disabled access to all sections of the building. The Museum also has push chairs available for small children and guide dogs are also admitted (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). There is much space available for parking. An individual can park their car at Harriet Street, Loch Street, Shiprow, Denburn, Chapel Street, Gallowgate, West North Street Multi-Storey and the East North Street. Disabled parking space is also available at the Robert Gordon University, located opposite Aberdeen Art Gallery. d. Promotion The products and services of Maritime Museum will be promoted through advertising and publicity. i. Publicity The overall objective of public relations will be to heighten the frequency, quality and the number of media mentions of the Aberdeen Maritime Museum in Aberdeen city, United Kingdom and the global media, leading to a varied blend of articles, stories and features in consumer magazines, newspapers, broadcast news programs, radio talk shows and online sources (Ritcher, 2012: 145, Muller & Jansson, 2007:216, Morrison, 2013: 156-65). These articles will showcase Aberdeen Maritime Museum as the leading sources of excellent art experiences for the individuals and families in Aberdeen City, as a significant germ of no-cost art education for students in both public and private schools, and as a leading premier tourist destination in Aberdeen city. In order to attain these goals, various publicity programs will be designed to elicit positive media coverage. These include: a. Aggressive media relations (Lamb et al., 2012:287, Kotler et al, 2008: 256) within Aberdeen Media market, and across primary markets within United Kingdom. b. Creative publicity programs to provoke positive media coverage (Kotler & Kotler, 1998: 198, Kapoor et al., 2011: 249) of Aberdeen Maritime Museum. c. The use of advertising as the key publicity vehicles ii. Advertising Aberdeen Maritime Museum plans to use print, audio and visual, and internet advertising. a. Print Advertising Print advertising will involve the use of billboards (Hoffman & Bateson, 2011: 342) that will be located in certain places, in Aberdeen City. These billboards will target specific venues for travellers (Hede, 2013:145-51). The billboards will portray the assortment of galleries and few pictures of the facilities available within the museum. Print advertising will also be used in magazines and newspapers where a full page colour advert will be displayed. Both the newspaper and magazine adverts will be similar to the billboard since they will all have the same images. In order to further the education mission, the Museum will target magazines that are common among educators, parents and kids to push them to visit the Museum. The primary newspapers to be used will include Evening Express, City Life, and the Press and Journal Newspapers. Additionally, Aberdeen Maritime Museum plans to distribute flyers through the city. The Aberdeen City has high dynamic community groups, such as the Multi-ethnic Aberdeen Limited, that offer established communication grid within the area (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). b. Audio and Visual Aberdeen Maritime Museum plans to use the local radio and TV stations to increase awareness among the public on its products and services. Aberdeen city is well served by numerous local radio and TV stations. The local radio stations to be used will be the NorthSound 1, Northsound 2, North East Community Radio, Slick FM and Stations House Media Unit. On the other hand, Aberdeen Maritime Museum will use Grampian Television, STV and BBC. The adverts will be played during news hours and favourite TV programs (Lamb et al., 2012: 281-84). These two forms of advertising are expected to reach a high number of people. iii. Online Advertising Aberdeen Maritime Museum recognizes that its presence on the internet is an opening to spread its market reach in a way that is coherent with its mission. The Museum will add more features to its existing website (Lamb et al., 2012: 301) such as an interaction section to make it more vibrant and informative website, while passing on the message to a huge audience. The Museum will also carry out adverts through social media platforms. The primary objectives of the website and the social media handles will be to inform, create interest and entertain the visitors (Morrison, 2013: 156-58). Market Overview The tourism industry is one of the significant and developing industries in Aberdeen City. Museums are part of the tourism sector and for the past one year, have contributed to the increasing number of tourists to Aberdeen City. The primary target markets for Aberdeen Maritime Museum are schools and business people and the general public (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). For the past one year, the rates of business visitors had increased considerably by 10 percent (Aberdeen City Council, 2014; Ideas In Partnership, 2008:2-6)). The major competitors in the market include Aberdeen art gallery, Cowdray Hall, and Provost Skene’s House, and the Scottish Lighthouse Museum. None of the museums charges entry fees (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). The Provost Skene’s house is an exceptional surviving example of the ancient burgh designs that are located at the centre of the city centre (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). Provost Skene’s house has a well maintained lawn with seats and a pond with fountain making it more attractive picnic and visiting spot. The Museum has a café with a glassed wall on the side allowing the visitors to enjoy their refreshments as they view an assortment of ancient collections. However, the museum lacks a lift and cannot be accessed by disabled people. This gives Aberdeen Maritime Museum a competitive advantage (Museum Galleries Scotland, 2012: 4-15). The Aberdeen Art Gallery is among the oldest museums in Aberdeen city. This museum has an assortment of paintings, artwork, and sculptures which are changed every month. It includes both modern and ancient art that includes a collection from both United Kingdom and abroad (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). On the other hand, the Tolbooth Museum is also one of the oldest museums. It had been used as a courthouse and as a prison making it possess a wealth of artefacts that were used to detain the prisoners. It is accessible by the disabled; however, no one is allowed to take photos in the museum (Museum Galleries Scotland, 2012: 4-15). Scottish Lighthouse museum hosts the biggest pool of lighthouse lenses and apparatus. There are many displays to keep everybody entertained and is interactive as many items can be played (Reid, 2014). Examples are the fact that some lighthouses can be light by pressing buttons, lens lights can be changed and bells rang and some rooms have audio visual exhibitions which go deep into the history of the lighthouses (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). However, none of the competitors offers unique art experience to visitors as offered by Maritime Museum. Through the singular emphasis on ancient maritime art and gallery, the museum is positioned as the premier source of arts and education on history, enhancement and delight for the entire Aberdeen City area (Aberdeen City Council, 2014). SWOT Analysis Strengths Unlike the other museums in Aberdeen City, the Maritime Museum offers historical maritime artefacts and galleries, which are not available in any of the museums. Unlike the other museums in the city, Maritime Museum offers access services to the disabled such as parking, lifts, and the induction loop system. Aberdeen Maritime Museum has a resourceful website that offers information on any of the ancient three thousand recorded ships built in the city in the 19th century. Aberdeen Maritime Museum has a spectrum of Lloyd’s Records of shipping from 1778 to 2004. It offers useful information to people on fishing methods and how to park one’s vessel in the harbour. It offers foreign language guides, unlike some other museums. The museum has a cafeteria where visitors can take refreshments and also has a gift shop that stocks a spectrum of items for all ages. The museum offers its visitors an opportunity to give opinions on the paintings and objects on the past Aberdeen Maritime Museum offers learning and outreach programs to schools and other visitors. Most of the artefacts and galleries are kept behind touch screen consoles to avoid any form of tampering by the visitors. Weakness The museum does not keep a list of the visitors The museum does not keep the personal details of the people visiting the site The museum does not have adequate and detailed records on the ships built in other port cities The museum does not keep a record of the crew members aboard the ancient ships that were built and docked in Aberdeen city Additionally, the museum does not keep a record of the passengers aboard the ancient ships that were built and docked at Aberdeen port. Aberdeen Maritime Museum is not located so close to the parking site and a visitor is required to walk for some distance before getting to the museum. Opportunities The Aberdeen tourist and recreation industry is developing and is anticipated to increase further, which will offer more opportunities to Maritime Museum There is increased educational awareness on the need to understand Maritime history among the schools in Aberdeen city. The rising expenses on travel abroad is expected to reduce the number of Aberdeen residents travelling to other foreign tourists attraction, and in turn increase the number of people visiting the domestic tourist destinations, including museums. Businesses are targeting Museums to be their venues for corporate events such as meetings, wine tastings, and talks, which is an opportunity for Maritime Museum to develop The development of the youth arts forum by the Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums will raise awareness and sensitize the youth to be involved in art and will boost the number of young people visiting the Museum in order to learn more about art. There is a high state support for Museums not only within Aberdeen City but within Scotland. The government offers subsidies to museums, making the government the major source of funding for the museums. Threats Any attempts to repair or renovate any of the artefacts and galleries available in the museum may distort the actual image and may not be useful anymore. The Maritime museum faces stiff competition from the other museums in the city. Although there is increased sensitivity among people, the growing modernism among people may reduce the number visiting the museums. 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