Escalla week

Last week was our second training week spent at Escalla!

This week comprised the first half of our 'Principles of Online and Offline Marketing' training. We covered a range of topics, and contemplated how these were all relevant to our own business and how it will be in the future in our future careers. Below I am going to underline the topics we covered; this well help me with revision too!


The 7 P's of Marketing

Product
Place                 The original four...
Price
Promotion             
People
Packaging
Positioning


Product Lifecycle 



Looking at the Product Life Cycle and how it is present in my business.  There are 4 main stages in this cycle; The Introduction, Growth period, Maturity or Stabilization, and lastly the decline.



                                                                                     
Team Structure

Looking at the hierarchy structure for my business. The key departments in a business, and how they all come together to form a successful team. The hierarchical structure usually goes:

• Owners
• Directors
• Senior Managers
• Middle Managers
• First Line Managers
• Specialists
• Frontline Staff
• Trainees/ Juniors.

Shared Objectives and Collaboration

• Business objectives
• Team objectives
• Personal objectives                         What they are and why they need to be shared. 
• Project objectives
• Company Vision
• Values
• Mission Statement   

Collaboration Tools

Online and Offline Collaboration tools, and when they are best used. Online examples -  email, slack, trello, office 365, skype, online training and webinars. I have looked at the advantages and disadvantages of these. 

Offline examples - Face to face, Microsoft Office, meetings, phone calls. Again looked at the advantages and disadvantages of these.

Influencing others - methods and behaviours that are effective in influencing others, and how we make use of these as a marketer. This job is effectively influencing customers to buy a product, so this is very crucial in my job role! Key methods involve trust, positivity, developing strong relationships, negotiation and inclusivity. 

Meredith Belbin's model of team roles - looking at Belbin's theory of that every team needs a person to fulfil each of these roles in order for the team to be successful. 

Customer Lifecycle - a customers journey through the business. There is two versions of this that I looked at and am planning to revise.

Customer Segmentation - Customer Profiles - I made two customer profiles for two different Audi models. Obviously this is quite a loose idea, as not everybody fits into such categories when they are making a purchase. However for the sake of this exercise I came up with two 'stereotypical' customer profiles, how I would then target them as a marketer, etc. 

Engagement Methodologies - methods that we use and could use in the future, ways that we reach our audience and market our products.

Marketing Plan - an idea with the aim to maximise brand awareness online.

Phew.. That's about it! As you can see we learnt a lot and began a chunky report which is going to be fantastic evidence for my apprenticeship. I thoroughly enjoyed the week, and am pleased to feel I have learnt more about the industry I am in and how it will all become relevant as we progress. I really enjoyed being back with the group again, sharing our thoughts and ideas. Now back to reality and I have quite a lot to do after being out of the dealership for a week. I am still thinking up an idea for a strong digital campaign that I can run. I am still considering the Q & A video I had mentioned previously, and for the meantime I will keep thinking of some other potential options.  For now, I will be coming up with some great social posts, getting through some photos and videos, updating AutoTrader descriptions, and uploading and optimising a fair few YouTube videos. I am also planning lots of revision in my more quiet periods; my most effective revision method has always been just writing it out, again and again... spider diagrams and such things don't help me much at all. So I am preparing to get through a lot of paper!

Bye for now!