Good example of essay on strategic marketing in the context of us together organization

In order for a company to succeed, it needs to exhaust all of its resources and information to maintain its level of success in the industry. If a firm fails to plan what it will do for the next year and what direction to move to in the long term, it will have trouble allocating its resources, streamlining its processes, and yielding the highest possible profit in the following years.
Strategic planning is the process of developing and maintaining a strategic fit between the organization’s goals and capabilities and its changing marketing opportunities. It can be achieved with the effort of both the corporate level and the business unit level. The process involves defining the company mission, setting the company objectives and goals, designing the business portfolio, and then planning the marketing and other departmental strategies—the last stage of which will be carried out by the business or marketing unit of the company.
In the entirety, strategic planning is considered to be the highest possible level of business planning where the company leaders and department heads are all involved and are all working together in order to align the organizational goals and objectives with the tactics and problem resolutions that the marketing, finance, human resources, and other departments are adapting.
In the case of the organization US Together, it is apparent that the company has a clear mission: that is to provide a safe haven to various refugees from other parts of the world. Aside from that, it aims to offer different programs to enhance the self-esteem and lifestyle of their chosen community. Nevertheless, the organization only relies on donations from kind-hearted individuals in order to provide services to the refugees. There is no other funding support mentioned. If this is the situation, US Together will have a big problem in the long term due to the scarcity of funds. If they do not want to shut down in two or three years’ time, their stakeholders should sit down and talk so that they can adopt a new yet effective business scheme that will benefit them and their recipients.
For US Together to get more sponsors and to become more known to the public, its marketing team needs to develop a new marketing strategy, which aims to create value for customers and build customer relationships. A good marketing strategy has two elements: market segmentation and targeting and differentiation and positioning. In segmentation, the market is divided into distinct groups who have different needs, characteristics, and behaviors who might require separate products or marketing programs. Once this process has been done, the next focus is targeting, where the company finally evaluates each market segment’s attractiveness and then selects one or more segments to enter. For US Together to become a non-profit organization, it has shortlisted its options of beneficiaries and upon careful assessment, decided to go into the refugee community as its main recipient.
In differentiation and positioning, the marketer starts arranging for a product to occupy a clear, distinctive, and desirable place relative to competing products in the minds of target consumers. As for the US Together organization, it has successfully positioned itself as one of the very few refugee orgs who offer relevant and meaningful services to the refugees: ESL classes, employment services, interpreter services, aside from the standard services that are found in other non-profit organizations. Clearly, US Together has identified the needs (shelter, food, and clothing) of the refugees as well as their wants (livelihood programs, employment options, personality development, and the like).
Of course, to further learn about what direction the organization should follow, it must be able to complete the market research process. Whenever there is a problem, the firm needs to find solutions to it in order to avoid detrimental damage to the operations. In US Together, for instance, funding has always been a big issue (the problem). For the members of the organization to solve this problem, the marketing team needs to gather preliminary data to shed light on the nature of the problem, to identify which of the data can be used for SWOT analysis (or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Analysis) and other pertinent marketing analysis models. The information must be gathered from the macro environment (the company and all other factors in a larger scale that shape opportunities and pose threats to the firm) and microenvironment point of view (customers, businesses, and the like who are interested in the services offered by US Together). Identifying all these, along with the research objectives, will help US Together save time and energy in determining the appropriate courses of action that will help improve its funding and sponsorship from the stakeholders.
With limited donations, the refugee operation of US Together is in danger. To prevent this from happening, the organization must take advantage of various promotional materials to reach other to potential benefactors. Brochures, posters, and other similar peripherals can be printed out and distributed in places with high foot traffic. E-mails and promotional letters can also be sent to companies and renowned personalities to appeal to them about donating to the non-profit firm. Furthermore, US Together have to strengthen its online presence. Aside from its website and Facebook page, it must be active in various non-profit forum groups the like. It can commission a videographer or hire a volunteer artist to make information videos about US Together. These materials should highlight the lives of the refugees and what they need now that they are already safe and far away from danger. If the message will be properly translated in the videos, surely potential sponsors will have no doubt in supporting the organization in their advocacy. In addition to that, the firm can coordinate with the United Nations and Reliefweb to become more visible to its target customers. Of course, these strategies should be done aggressively so that results can be achieved in a short period of time.
Another brilliant strategy that US Together can apply is holding fundraising activities. It can capitalize on its product, the refugees, and ask for their assistance to make the event possible. Refugees can become resource speakers to share to the world how hard their life is and to make the rest of the population understand what they are going through. The marketing team can feature paintings, shirts, and other products that are crafted by the refugees. That way, it will be a lot easier to get proceeds for the organization. To add value to the clients (which will most likely be big companies and well-known celebrities), US Together can feature the benefactors in their press releases and on their official website.
Should US Together aim to increase customer equity or the present value of the anticipated lifetime revenue of the organization’s benefactors (less acquisition and retention costs), it must align all of its marketing strategies to favor customer equity. Yes, it is not easy to develop a marketing mix and then put the lifetime value of customers on the line. Because US Together is a non-profit organization, it can refer to its customer equity in terms of donations and funding support. Its marketing team, therefore, needs to be extra creative and more careful in developing strategies that will not jeopardize its operations and the future sponsorship stability that it must acquire. It must be able to create innovative offers and benefits to the sponsors so that a lifetime partnership will be secured. The US Together team should not get tired of initiating thank you campaigns and other related efforts so as to encourage current and future benefactors to donate, knowing that they are valued and recognized by the organization properly.
Overall, it is a difficult challenge to create a strategic marketing plan for a non-profit organization. Given its zero revenue nature and its seemingly weird product and services, the organization will have to be innovative in their promotions and advertising campaigns. To be sure, US Together should invest in top-notch human resources who can help out develop a spot-on, effective, and customer-oriented long-term strategic plan. Yes, the firm will have to spend a higher amount of money in this aspect but the lasting developments and future successes will eventually outweigh the initial costs.