Marketing Communications Plan for Student Universe

Marketing Communications Plan for Student Universe

1. Executive Summary

In the recent past, the number of visitors touring the Northern Territory has declined. Some rumors which are far much from the truth have been spreading to assert the reason for this declining figure (Crossman et al., 2018). As a result, the Students’ Universe asked for the development of a communication plan, which will help create a campaign that will deliver at least 350 bookings from the UK travelers to the Northern Territories booked via our agency during the month of June 2021. Firstly, the plan analyses the Student Universe internal environment and provides the SWOT analyses for the competitors. Secondly, the plan explores the target population for the campaign. Thirdly, the plan gives the objectives for developing the communication plan and the necessary strategies for achieving the objectives. Finally, it explores the implementation process of the strategies in order to achieve the objectives and the relevant contingency plans for the whole process.

2. Introduction

Student Universe is an agency whose main task is to make the global experience possible. The agency holds on to the ideas that travelling is one of the important tool in learning because when students travel, they come back with more knowledge and inspiration. The headquarters of the StudentUniverse are located in Boston, UK, and we are the world leading travel booking service for the students and youth. We also have offices in London, Toronto, New York, Philippines, and Brisbane.  Our main objective is to promote travelling among the students and youth by offering good deals such as the student discounts, youth fares and more importantly, top deals for flight, hotels, tour groups and many more other friendly services. In the recent past, millions of students have booked tickets with us either to travel in various parts of the world such as the Northern Territories or just to travel home from school.

Since our agency was formed, it has gone through a series of inventions that make our services more convenient and easily accessible by students and youths. For instance, in 2000, our agency launched the first online booking engine which made booking easy for the clients. In 2010, our agency launched the initiative of offering discounted airfare for the youths aged 18-25 years. In 2018, our agency won a reward of the Best Youth Travel Agent at the Global Youth Travel Awards for the third time showing that our agency has been offering the best travel services for the youths.

The main objective of this Marketing Communication plan is to help create a campaign that will deliver at least 350 bookings from the UK travellers to the Northern Territories booked via our agency during the month of June, 2021.

3. Situational Analysis

Students Universe has emerged to be the best promoter of the youth travelling because it offers discount for all tickets for the students and the youth and has a well-designed travel package services that suits the interests of the youth. Student Universe offers the opportunity for the students to travel in groups but a collective group tickets which are well discounted. The Student universe has worked together whit the local universities in the UK to promote and organize for the groups travel events with discounted services which has played important role in marketing the agency in UK (Rao, 2020). However, the student universe only offers travel ticket discounts to the students and those who work in the school. This means that the friendly services offered by the student universe are only designed for the Youth and not the general public. Additionally, the agency does not advertise its services which make it less popular. Finally, the agency has suffered some threats which have been dragging down its performance. Firstly, thing like accident and natural disasters which are beyond control of the management, for instance, floods and heavy rain which hinder the travelling. Accidents can controlled by formulating internal policies which ensure safety for traveling. However, there are some other causes of accidents which cannot be managed by our agency in any way. This poses threat to our operations (Rao, 2020).

Figure 1: SWOT analysis for student universe

Source: Rao (2020)

The agency has experienced steep competition from other agencies. Some of the strengths of the competitors which may pose a challenge to our agency include; advanced technology for the competitor agency, strong financial position, and a larger market share because they are the world biggest travelling agencies. The competitor agencies also have the opportunities such as changing the consumer taste and preference, enjoying the advantage of social media through advertising, and expanding their market through fare tickets discount offers. These strengths and opportunities for the competitor agencies pose a great challenge to Student Universe. This is because they are bigger organizations and can possibly enjoy the economies of scale which anable them offer discounts to the clients. Additionally, they are likely to offer a wide variety of services because their target population is the members of general public and not a specific age groups as it has been case with the Student Universe.  if the competitors offer tickets at price lower than the price set by the Student Universe, the latter will lose customers because they will choose the cheapest option. Finally, the competitor agencies advertise their productsin many parts of the UK. As a result, they get more popular than the Student Universe which makes them gain a greater market share compared to the Student Universe.

Figure 2: Competitor SWOT analysis

Source: Rao (2020)

The competitor agencies have suffered weaknesses and threats which our agency uses as a foundation for attracting more customers. Firstly, the competitor agencies have offered poor customer services. As a result, many students and youths have our agency to the competitor agencies. Secondly, since the competitor agencies are bigger, there is slow decision making process which makes them slow to adapt to the changing market trends. This is an advantage to our agency because will have enjoyed the benefits of the new trend before the competitor agency adapts to the change. The agencies have also experiences threats from the globalization because they are dealing with different cultural diversities. Finally, the competitor agencies have experienced inflation due to the agencies’ profitability, thing which has made them increase the freight charges (Rao, 2020).

The SWOT analyses for both our agency and the competitor agencies reveals that, there is need for a campaign that will promote the image of our agency to many students and youth in order to get more bookings in the year 2021. Therefore, there is need to come up with good strategies aimed at achieving the set objectives for our agency campaign and following an ordered implementation process to ensure that the strategies are implemented successfully (Rao, 2020).

4. Segmentation

The target population for our campaign has different age groups. Generation 1 consist of young British Travellers aged between 18 years and 24 years while Generation 2 consists of the Working Holiday Makers aged between 24 years and 30 years who are visiting the Northern Territories. The members of the population in the two age groups who qualify for the offers of our agency should be undergraduates or master students and all should be UK citizens with gross income between 0 and thirty thousand pounds per year. Our agency is ranked as top most unique and affordable agency in UK (Rao, 2020). This campaign targets student and young students who have plenty of vacations and free times and like spending their vacations in tours. Secondly, the targeted population consists of the students and youths who like travelling in with friends who have almost the same interest in travelling. Thirdly, the campaign targets youth workers who spend long time at their jobs and prefer travelling for tours during their holidays. Finally, the campaign targets the students and youth who like holding personal travels and like travelling for long distances and relax during their free time and short holidays (Rao, 2020).

In developing the marketing communication plan, there is need to take into consideration the decision making process of the target population in order to ensure that the campaigns yield the possible highest output. The first step is the need recognition whereby the customer recognizes the need for travelling. The second step is information search where the customer searches information about the available alternatives for means of travel and the travel destinations. After getting the information, the customer weighs the available alternatives and then decides on which one is the best. The customer then uses the chosen means and then evaluates the outcomes after travel. This process will help our agency in the process of identifying the best information to convey to the customers and how to deliver it during the campaigns (Shaw, 2020).

5. Objectives

The main objectives of this Communication Marketing plan are:

2021. To help create a campaign that will deliver at least 350 bookings from the UK travellers to the Northern Territories booked via the Student Universe in month of June 2021.
2022. Creating the consumer loyalty.

6. Strategies

The agency will employ the following strategies in order to achieve the above ojectives

1. Promotion through app, t-shirts, online advertisement, social Media and other offline means.
2. Loyalty program to get insights on customer experience with Student universe and the challenges they are facing.

7. Strategic Implementation

In order to implement the above strategies successfully, Student Universe will follow a stepped process.

7.1. Promotion

Design ads which will attract more subscribes such as:  “Get to know more about our services by downloading our app your phone and enjoy great deals. When you invite one hundred members using your app link, you will get a discount of 20% of the fare ticket prize. For every new account, the holder will get twenty free pounds and enjoy free services from Student Universe for the first 14 days. Download the app now and enjoy our great deals!” This will attract many students to download and link others in order to enjoy the offer. As a result, the Student universe agency will receive more followers increasing market (Qualtrics, 202).

Print t-shirts and provide them as a free offer to the those who book the freight to the Northern Territories. Supply Ads in social media platform to make this offer known to members of public. “There are free t-shirts for all booking tickets to Northern Territories within the month of June 2021. The t-shirts bear the name of our agency and it’s a good quality for you. All these are made for the courtesy visit to the Northern Territories, the adventurous place ever. Be one of the great team by placing you booking on time!”  Many will submit their bookings leading to the achievement of objective one (Flight Centre, 2020).

Blog advertising will also help in promoting travelling to the Northern Territories. This is the ad; “There is also free one month membership trial for those who upload their travel photos into our blog @student Universe. The photos of your good times one of the best travel destination such the Northern Territory earns you a great offer.”  This will help in marketing the Student Universe as well as the Northern Territories as beautiful scenes will be captured attracting more travellers.

Promote Student Universe on other Social media Platforms with  ads such as; “Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel to get our most recent updates about out travel discounts and our most recent identified travel destinations” can help promote these pages where the followers will get to know more about the services offered by Student Universe and the fare discounts offered. As a result, the agency is likely to obtain more bookings especially to the Northern Territories. Other offline ways of promoting the Student Universe is distributing posters on the noticeboards in local universities in the UK local universities. The posters will offer information on the great deals offered by the agency for those who will book appointment of touring the Northern Territories such as discounted fare, good hotels and restaurants, and beautiful scenes in the destination (Flight Centre, 2020).

The Student Universe can also offers discounted airfares to the long distance destinations. This can attract more people to book for travel to the Northern destinations (Flight Centre, 2020).

7.2. Loyalty program

The loyalty program will introduce interactive sessions between the Students Universe and Students in the UK. There are several steps that should be followed in order to ensure that this is achieved. The first step is to create a multi-national channels revealing the consumer service systems. Secondly, the agency creates an interactive environment with the consumers in order to ensure there is a good flow of information between the customers and the agency (Bernazzani, 2020). Through this basic process of interaction, the consumers get pass their complains to the agency which are corrected with due time in order to ensure that the consumer loyalty is upheld.  Additionally, the agency offers discounts to the clients in order to keep their consumer behavior on track. Discounting the consumers upholds the consumer loyalty to the agency and thus they are likely to submit more bookings to the Northern territory. Another mechanism that can be used by the agency is motivating the consumers to share their experiences with the agency through the agency blog or responding in the online media for the agency. Finally, the agency can hold the consumer loyalty by rewarding their customers, for instance, issuing free t-shirts to the customers who submit their booking within June.2021 (Bernazzani, 2020).

8. Control

The agency has various ways of assuring the customer of their safety. One way of assuring the customers that they have safer deal is by providing insurance to them which covers their loss in case the objectives of their engagement are not met. The agency also works with other agencies in order to ensure that all the requirements by the customers are catered for. For example, the insurance companies to ensure customers are compensated in case of any loss encountered during travel.

Conclusion

This essay was about the marketing communication plan. It aim at promoting tourism in the Northern territories by increasing the number of bookings done using the Students Universe. This marketing communication plan has important sections such are the situational analysis where the agency is supposed to SWOT analysis on both the interior entities and the competitors. The  other part gives insight on the characteristics of the target population which is important in deciding on the suitable channels to reach them. the plan also gives the objectives of the campaign and the strategies on how to implement the strategies successfully. Finally, the plan gives the contingency plan that will control the whole campaign process. the plan should be followed step by step in order to make the campaign a success.

References

1. Crossman, N.D., Stoeckl, N., Sangha, K.K., and Costanza, R., 2018. Economic Values of the Northern Territory Marine and Coastal Environments. Australian Marine Conservation Society: Darwin, Australia.
2. Flight Centre Travel Group. (2020). Student Universe – Flight Centre Travel Group. [online] Available at: http://www.fctgl.com/our-brands/leisure/student-universe/ [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].
3. (2020). What is Market Segmentation? | Qualtrics UK. [online] Available at: https://www.qualtrics.com/uk/experience-management/brand/market-segmentation/ [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].
4. Rao, S. (2020). Psychographic Characteristics – Teenagers buying habits :. [online] Citeman.com. Available at: https://www.citeman.com/8535-psychographic-characteristics-–-teenagers-buying-habits.html [Accessed 2 Feb. 2020].
5. Shaw, A. (2020). Consumer Decision Making Process Definition Stages and Examples. [online] Marketing Tutor. Available at: https://www.marketingtutor.net/consumer-decision-making-process-stages/ [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].
6. Bernazzani, S. (2020). The Beginner’s Guide to Building a Customer Loyalty Program. [online] Blog.hubspot.com. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-loyalty-program [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].