Public Relations and Social Marketing

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND SOCIAL MARKETING 4(1+3)

Lesson 13 : Market Oriented Strategic Planning

Phase - 1: Literature review and colleague interviews

• Step 1 describe plan background, purpose, and focus
  Start with noting the social issue the plan will be addressing. Summarize the factors that led to the development of the plan. To do this effectively try to answer the following questions.
  
  What's the problem? – health problem like swine flu or malaria etc./ climatic problem like tsunami, cyclone, draught, environment pollution etc.,/ social problem suicides, child labour etc.
  
  What happened? – a detail history of the incident narrating the impact of the problem.
  
  It may include epidemiological, scientific, or other research data related to a public health crisis (e.g., increases in obesity), a safety concern (e.g., increases in cell phone use while driving), an environmental threat (e.g., water supply), or need for community involvement (e.g., blood donations).
  
  A purpose statement is then developed that reflects the benefit of a successful cam­paign, and then a focus is selected choosing from the vast number of potential options to contribute to the plan's purpose.
  Example: Malaria management
  
  Options: Education, medicine supply, health checkups, campaign to keep surroundings clean, spraying, mosquito net promotion, improved water quality etc. There may be many options; out of t he focus issue will be chosen.


• Step 2 conduct a situation analysis
  Relative to the purpose and focus of the plan, a quick audit of factors and forces in the internal and external environment of the organization has to be conducted through SWOT analysis. This will provide information to the organization to identify themselves as competent leaders to move towards focused issues. The plan purpose, target audiences, major marketing objectives and goals, desired posi­tioning, marketing mix strategies (4Ps), and evaluation, budget, and implementation plans will be decided in this step.


• Step 3: select target markets
  A marketing plan ideally focuses on a primary target market, although additional secondary markets (e.g., strategic partners, target market Opinion leaders) are often identified and strategies included to influence them as well. Hence this is more critical step, because rich description of target market is provided using characteristics such as stage of change (readiness to buy), demographics, geographics, related behaviors, psycho­graphics, and size of the market. In a three-step process target market are selected.


• Segmenting the market (population) into similar groups
  
• Evaluating segments based on a set of criteria
• Choosing one or more as the focal point for Positioning and marketing mix strategies.