I have researched companies marketing strategies and plans. I want to share my findings and learning with a fictitious company and try to explain their next steps on how they should improve marketing and find a new perspective on things. 

The most famous gym in the city offers versatile exercises and weight control services for their customers. The company wants to improve their marketing and use their customer register better. They must focus on getting new customers and indent current customers better. I think the crucial thing to do now would be make research about marketing by professionals. Get the numbers and data out and start making a new marketing concept based on that. 

Current customers 

Create a database of current customers: 

-Basic personal profile; contact information 

-Purchasing behavior; past purchase history and payment history 

-Contact info; past individual marketing, and affects 

-Customer satisfaction info; complaints and feedback (Pirkanaho 2018) 

The customer database should include personal information, contact information, and starting and quitting times. The customer database should also gather information about different person’s activities at the gym. How often or rarely person enter the gym. That can be done by some data software. That data would be important when creating new marketing materials. It’s easier to turn the marketing to more specific target groups. When gathering customer information to any databases, everything must be done by personal information law regulations. 

Personal data can be gathered when a new customer gets a membership. When you get the membership usually you have to accept personal data usage in order to get it. This is the first step and really important to get the info of members. Now the customer database is a valuable tool for marketing. 

When marketing is allocated, members can feel that they are taken care of and the company wants to help. That can be calling to customers or for example offering one free personal training meeting every year. People that go to the gym more rarely may need more help and support for exercising. There can be also people that their motivation has gone down. The company could offer small group sessions and exercises for them to try something new in order to get back the fire. There are no limits to creating sessions and events to get motivation back. The main point is that different people like different things and the company must be creative and find new fun things to offer. In the future new things like small group training sessions can increase sales when you ask extra price for that. What type of additional services customers would like can also be found by making a customer feedback survey. 

New customer 

When trying to get new customers, marketing is usually supported by past feedback. I would prefer a quality customer survey that is done together with the customer in a certain way. Questions to customers are created with professionals of marketing and sales. The questions will be asked face to face, by phone, or by email. The questions will be asked from different people, active old members, new members, and members that have just quit. Find a sufficient number of answerers based on how many members the gym has. This is the information and feedback we especially need in order to create marketing material that our customers want and need. Info is from customers and the company can use it for example on different marketing campaigns. 

The goal of marketing 

The goal of marketing is to get new customers and keep current customers in the gym. Usually, the marketing target is to increase members by 20%. With marketing, you are able to see bigger pictures and manage particulars better (Mäntyneva, 2008,5). 

  Creating favor in competition is critically important for small and regular size companies to survive in a competitive environment just like gyms. The brand offers benefits for both sides, for customers and the owner of the brand. The brand makes the value and separates the company from competitors. Brand identity includes the values and action plan presenting something unique that others don’t have. The values create the base for brand identity and it’s often immutable. The uniqueness of the company must show in values and inaction plan every time. In small and regular size companies’ owner’s personal values, background, beliefs impact their company’s identity. (Sandbacka, 2010 ,10). 

Making the service process and productization marketing a product can help customers understand what the company is offering, and that way bring value in supporting the brand. The process can also be cut in parts and sold in smaller pieces if we want to lower the bar for customers to start cooperation with the company. (Sandbacka, 2010,6). 

 For marketing the first thing to do is to complete research, find out which information is important for customers. In professional marketing research, the author plans the data acquisition methods, leads the process from the start to the end, and then analyzes and reports the data for the client (Mäntyneva, 2008, 9). There are different options for research. It can be about quality or amounts. It’s important to choose which works better. When researching about memberships it’s important to get the image of how customers feel about the collaboration with the company. The products and services the company sells are processes and occasions for customers that they participate and create together with the company. Researchers should include this process more in the investigation. (Mäntyneva, 2008, 102). 

  When doing the research about customers these things must be noticed: The length of membership and what type of questions will be present to which type of target audiences. Three major steps where customers are divided are the beginning of membership, permanence, and the end. Age ranges also give some information which could also be under tracking. 

 Own marketing to different target audiences. It’s important to create a picture of what is important for every different group. One group as an example can be elder people. They are retired and not working anymore. The company could offer cheaper daytime membership. That would mean that elder people would go to the gym between 8-14. That way elder people have more space and peace to exercise and at the same time gym would have people in during that quiet period. As an additional service, the gym would offer some group exercises for older people in the morning time. Other important target audiences are younger people and especially teenagers that follow megatrends like fitness lifestyle. For that good marketing, the method would be for example use social media influencers.  

 One thing to remember is that branding, values, and target groups must be ready before starting the marketing process. Finding the correct channels for marketing is important. For different target groups, the channels are different. Elder people and teenagers use very different commutation channels, elder people can get the info from the newspapers when at the same time teenager see the same post on social media. Budget is urgent to have in order to track the money-benefit scale how much money is used and how many new customers are made. Marketing makes the company’s logo and brand shine and makes growing easier. 

SOURCES 

Mäntyneva, M & Heinonen, J & Wrange, K. 2008. Markkinointitutkimus. Helsinki. WSOY Oppimateriaalit Oy.  

Sandbacka J & Saeaniemi S & Tähtinen J. 2010. Brändatään pikkaisen , pk-yrityksen  brändikirja.Oulu. Taloustieteiden tiedekunta Oulun yliopisto.