Monitoring Marketing Performance Strategy

4. Monitoring Marketing Performance Strategy:

In order to monitor our marketing strategy we will need to follow a number of set guidelines to ensure that all aspects are monitored correctly and efficiently. These steps are as follows:

- Start at the Beginning:

Monitoring our companies Marketing Performance should be planned from the beginning. Therefore the way in which we monitor our performance needs to be accommodated within the companies’ project plan in respect to time, resources and budget. We will start by reviewing each of our key elements with regards to our marketing plan in relation to some questions:

- What:

What elements we as an Agro Tourism hotel must monitor and with what level of accuracy? Are these elements necessary

The person responsible for monitoring marketing performance should be allocated this responsibility at the very beginning to ensure it is being managed correctly.

- When :

When will the monitored results be reviewed? This can be any point in time eg: weekly or monthly.

Methods of Monitoring Marketing Performance:

As an Agro Touristic Hotel the method of monitoring our marketing performance will primarily depend on the activities laid out by the hotels numerous facilities on offer. The hotel focuses mainly on the elements which can be measured and monitored with accuracy and dependability. Monitoring marketing performance methods have its key elements. These key areas include:

Advertising:

The effect of the hotels advertising campaign depends on the advert itself and the hotels ability to reach the correct audience with our specific advert. Monitoring the companies advertising can be done in two ways either by using qualitative or quantitative research.

Quantitative research comes in the form of an impact/ communication study and is often the more accurate of the two but it can also be more time consuming and costly. This method will entail the hotel to target consumers viewing the adverts offered by the hotel and then answering a series of

the hotel budget. This will be monitored on a regular basis to ensure that all activity is being financially controlled. This is an internal function that must be part of the regular marketing and finance interface.

Price:

This is the companies’ key driver of marketing performance and should therefore be monitored on a regular basis. This can be done internally where the staff will be asked to complete pricing monitors each week or it can be done using research/ field of sales/ agency that will report the information of all agreed intervals.

Promotion

There are many promotional techniques that can be used depending on the nature of the promoting activity. Our hotel will mainly rely on using samples to monitor promotional marketing performance as a full market audit may be too costly and time consuming. These most common techniques include:

- Mystery Shoppers: this will be used to monitor the in-market activity. Eg). A promotion which involves a free glass of juice with a meal in a particular chain of hotels, mystery eaters/ shoppers may dine at a sample number of hotels and may report on a number of aspects of the