Internal & External Situational Analysis Outline PDF

UNDERTAKING AN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS  2.1 Analyzing the Internal Marketing Environment to Inform Decisions for Planning Campaigns 2-1-1 Stakeholder analysis A. Internal stakeholders : employees, casual and freelance staff, man...

UNDERTAKING AN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS  2.1 Analyzing the Internal Marketing Environment to Inform Decisions for Planning Campaigns 2-1-1 Stakeholder analysis A. Internal stakeholders : employees, casual and freelance staff, managers, board members and, in the case of charities and other not-for-profit organizations, volunteers. A. Connected stakeholders : also known as primary stakeholders. They have a contractual relationship with the organization, and include customers, shareholders, financiers, distributors and suppliers. A. External stakeholders :also known as secondary stakeholders. They have no direct connection to the company, but have an interest in (and often a potential impact on) its activities. They include professional bodies, trade unions, local and national government, the media and the local community.  2-1-2 Organizational type, mission, objectives and strategies There are three main types of organization Government/public sector Charity/not-for-profit Commercial – either business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), or business-to-government (B2G) An organization's mission is its purpose, which states clearly why it exists and what it is there to do. Your mission will have a profound effect on your communication activity and campaign plans, right down to the channels you use and your budget.  2-1-2 Organizational type, mission, objectives and strategies Objectives and strategies Such differences will influence your choice of communications tools, some of which (like PR) are best suited to raising awareness or persuading people, while others (sales promotion, for example) are better for increasing sales  2-1-3 Organizational structures, history, culture, and scale An organization's structure also has a bearing on campaign planning. In centralized structures: power is concentrated at the top of the organization. The board or senior management team holds most of the power and makes most of the decisions. They keep tight control over the various divisions, departments and teams, allowing only limited decision-making at these levels or at an individual level. In decentralized structures: power is more evenly distributed, and divisions, departments, teams and even individuals have more decision-making autonomy, which normally speeds things up.  Organizational history: An organization's history will often have a bearing on its positioning, the messages it communicates and its campaign tactics. Organizational culture: Organizational culture is about how an organization behaves, and is defined in terms of its shared values, traditions, symbols, stories and legends. Organizations with customer-oriented cultures tend to be more successful. They also tend to be structured around cross-functional teams focused on areas such as new product development or improving the customer experience Organizational scale: Different organizations operate at different scales – local, national, international or global – and this too affects campaign planning. 2-1-4 Product/service portfolios and PLC analysis  2-1-5 Marketing/Communications plans : Evaluation of past campaigns One of the most important and illuminating elements of your analysis of your internal marketing environment is previous campaigns. Your organization has probably spent a great deal of time, money and effort on previous campaigns, and you can learn valuable lessons from the aspects of the campaign that worked well and were successful, and the aspects that disappointed or even failed. But you can only learn those lessons if you analyze and evaluate the results: thinking ‘Job done’ and moving onto the next project or campaign means that you lose hard-won knowledge.  Internal sources of information to inform decision-making will all have acquired a lot of information and intelligence on what customers are looking for, and your company intranet should be a repository of useful information about your products and services, customer queries, market trends and competitor information that staff around the organization have shared. Other sources and types of internal information include: customer database financial data web and social media analytics typical customer spend buying patterns engagement levels with your organization panel, club or community of customers and/or prospects.  Summary of strengths and weaknesses of campaigns By this stage of your analysis of your internal marketing environment you’re likely to have accumulated a lot of information and insights. You now need to share this with others in the organization. 2.2 Analyzing the External Marketing Environment to Inform Decisions for Planning Campaigns  Network analysis In your wider marketing environment there will be groups or networks that can have a significant impact on your campaign planning. These might be formal groupings, such as pressure groups, trade unions or business networks, or informal networks of like-minded people who share a common interest. If the network is influential in shaping opinion in your target market, their approval or disapproval could make or break your campaign. If they approve they might reach key influencers, opinion formers or decision- makers in your target market, helping you to amplify your message; if they disapprove, you may struggle to get your message accepted and your campaign could struggle.  Understand their motivation Customer analysis Understand buying decisions Understand what they think of you Understand which media and channels your customers use Internal sources of information Where do visitors to your website come from? Which other websites bring you the most traffic -yell.com or your local Chamber of Commerce, for example? Which devices do people use to access your website and emails? Does this change according to the time of day? How do they currently interact with you? Which media or social channels do they use? Are there any patterns related to time of day? Do you know where they are in the buying process? How engaged with your brand are your customers? How many followers do you have on social media? How active are they with your brand? How many times are posts shared? What are the dwell times for your web pages? You need to conduct Research Questionnaire Focus group Interview Experiments Observation  Competitor analysis – market differentiation Full Competition analysis External information sources on markets and sector/industry There is lots of free information available online about markets and different sectors and industries, but you need to check how reputable the source is and the reliability of the information. Summary of opportunities and threats As at the end of your analysis of the internal marketing environment, you need to Summarize your findings. Again, you may find it useful to list these under two headings – opportunities and threats NOW SWOT By Marwa Mohamed