Executive Summary
Gaia is a small but diligent non-profit organization that relies primarily on the goodwill of individuals to fulfill its objective. Gaia was founded in 1983 to promote environmental justice and preservation by keeping businesses and governments accountable. Gaia also hand-picks the best available bargains to ensure that its members enjoy the most wallet-friendly savings and that the community and environment continue to receive the attention and care they demand (Merino and Chinchay, 2022, p.7). Gaia works to keep woods, beaches, and cities clean. Gaia also works with notable non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing countries to help local people. Through marketing, this report intends to raise awareness of the Gaia card outside of the United Kingdom. Gaia wants to expand its business operations beyond the United Kingdom into other nations.
Rationale
The foundation aims to reach as many people as possible and promote the Gaia Card in other countries. To achieve its objectives, there is a need for development, documentation, and proper planning. The best model to use to come up with the plan is the PASTA model (Shin, Cho, and Bae, 2021, p.303). This model involves problem definition, analyzing the situation, strategizing, tactics, and action. In Problem Definition, First, the problem must be precisely described. Analysis of the foundation’s objective, concerns, and strategic goals guide the planning process. There will be a consultation to disseminate information and keep the project going (Wolf et al., 2021, p.3). Time will be invested in reviewing analytics and reports, establishing strategic strategies, and meeting periodically with critical stakeholders—a crucial aspect of comprehending the challenge before the implementation strategy.
The second phase involves an examination of the organization’s operations before formulating a strategy. The institution’s market, key interest groups, online actors, and possible online partners must be defined (Rakiti, 2021, p.67). Creating a strategy or concept within an operational plan ensures better target audience comprehension, influencing the approach. Campaign goals should be stated (Urdea and Constantin, 2021, p.502), with a significant commitment to ensure that the goals effectively reach target audiences. Segmentation, audience characterization, and insights into media consumption behaviors are needed. Prospective prospects will self-educate during lead development, where Ebooks, seminars, and papers will be created.
Decision on equipment, tools, and approaches is the next essential thing in the process. In the tactics phase, equipment, tools, and procedures are reviewed to meet the strategy’s goal. Online ads, blogging, and social media platforms let the foundation reach a large audience (Auxier and Anderson, 2021, p.3). Digitalization has made these tactics cheap and widely accessible. Social media allows many individuals to see the foundation online. Plan execution comes last after all tools and resources are established, where their content must be developed to ensure effective communication. Ads, email campaigns, and websites must be planned with the process, including creating a timetable, budget, and roles.
The Learning Outcomes Being Assessed
Having devised a plan for handling the communication plan, it is essential to determine whether it incorporates these important marketing communication strategies. Ensuring the identification of the target Market is a crucial factor. While connecting with the target market, the message should include the foundation’s Unique Selling Proposition. This aspect should be expressed explicitly on every page of the foundation’s website. Aligning the audience’s issues with our product’s solutions will be crucial in marketing the business. There are numerous locations where pollution is a problem (Vrontis et al., 2021, p.633); the foundation will address this problem, thereby promoting its services. The advertisements and social media sites to be established should include the above aspects to attract the intended demographic’s attention.
Situational Analysis
As a result of the foundation realizing the need to expand its international reach, I have been granted the role of a freelance digital marketer. I intended to aid in formulating a digital and marketing communication plan. The objective is to increase engagement with the brand and awareness of the foundation’s many activities and charitable donations on multiple continents. In addition, I will be responsible for the company’s websites and blogs, as well as partnerships, events, educational engagements, market analysis, and strategic planning. For three months, £10,000 will be spent to obtain a new message that may effectively reach many individuals. The foundation has established a substantial online presence through the updated website and social media platforms formed and circulated advertisements.
Target Market
The foundation’s primary practice area is environmental conservation and charity work. It seeks to help plant more trees and conserve the environment. The digital marketing plan aims to reach an audience of sponsors and donors, philanthropists, other environmental non-profit organizations, and environmentalists in other countries (Sauraet al., 2021, p.167). These personas represent the foundation’s most significant growth potential of setting up a foundation in another country. Reaching all these people will become easier with the new digital and marketing communication plan.
Objectives
The foundation’s main objective is environmental conservation, which involves planting trees and beating plastic pollution through recycling. It also aims at educating people on the importance of the environment. The company also does charity work where it handpicks the best brands (Yousef et al., 2022, p. e1763). The main objective of the digital and marketing communication plan is to help the foundation set up another branch in another country. This aspect will be made possible by the plan’s ability to help reach a large audience in other countries.
The other objective of the plan is to digitalize the foundation to be in sync with the now-modernized world. The world has become more digitalized, and technology is taking over. This aspect will be made possible by using digital advertisement and social media platforms (Faruk, Rahman, and Hasan, 2021). The plan also aims to improve the foundation’s communication and offer a better presentation to the world. The strategy is to advertise the foundation’s work and the card on all social media platforms where the world can experience what Gaia is all about and its excellent work.
Marketing Communication Strategy
Having devised a plan for handling digital and marketing communication, using adverts on different social media platforms to advertise the foundation is beneficial. This process will include using banner advertisements which are image-based advertisements that frequently appear on web pages’ sides, top, and bottom (Morgan, 2019, p.27). The ads can vary significantly in size, appearance, and function. Most of the time, they can be located on news websites, blogs, and other specialized online communities. In this case, all these sites have many people, thus an excellent way to advertise (Bala and Verma, 2018, p.331). The adverts will be in video advertisements because it is becoming much easier to watch videos online as internet connections improve and technological advances are being made. As a result, the number of people watching video advertising has increased. Videos of the foundation’s several environmental projects will be edited and uploaded so the audience can understand the foundation’s initiatives.
YouTube advertising will also be used; the ads come in various formats and can be targeted in multiple ways. There will be a YouTube channel for the foundation where uploads will be of the foundation’s work (Wahyuni, Utami, and Education, 2021, p.6). Carousel adverts will be created to give the audience more detailed information about the brand. This ad type provides more material and a more engaging experience for viewers (Salleh, Hashima, and Murphy, 2015, p.3). There will also be a platform to compete to place its advertisements on pages displaying Google’s search engine results using Google Ads.
The firm will also gain access to millions of LinkedIn users by building a foundation profile and posting articles, videos, and information about its work. The foundation website will be extended into a LinkedIn page, connecting users to the foundation’s main website via in-content links. Finally, setting up pages on all social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, will ensure the business reach more masses.
Content Plan
The digital and marketing communication plan is supposed to take three months and include several milestones to make it a success. The table below illustrates the milestones that will be taken and the time each will take.
Marketing Communication Mix
Different tools and media are required to ensure the plan is a success. The foundation’s budget is £10,000, ensuring that all the operations pull through. The table below shows the operations and their budget.
Measurement and Evaluation
Several KPIs will help evaluate the plan’s effectiveness by analyzing the traffic and the webpage. Tracking the number of visits to the homepage, blog, and landing pages are very important. Knowing where traffic comes from helps one find profitable marketing channels. The paid advertising campaign will be evaluated based on the traffic and leads it generates. Social media updates that attract and engage new people over time indicate a rising brand following and new organic leads. This KPI shows the influence of organic search on the company’s sales and earnings. The number of links from other websites shows the popularity of the firm’s content.
Recommendation
Several key performance indicators will help evaluate if the plan makes an impact, with traffic and the website being the first ones. In addition to overall traffic, tracking the number of visits to various page categories, such as the homepage, blog, and landing pages, is essential. These figures determine which website sections have the highest conversion rate and guide the application of the best practices to the remaining pages. Understanding where the incoming traffic comes from allows one to identify the most profitable marketing channels. As for the paid advertising campaign, there will be an assessment of its success by looking at the amount of traffic and leads it generates.
Examination of the monthly number of followers on each channel helps understand if the audience is still active. If social media updates attract and engage new users over time, indicating that the brand following is growing and, as a result, new leads are being created through organic search. Keeping track of the number of new leads generated by a search engine query for the brand is crucial. Monitoring this (KPI) as a proportion of total new charges helps determine the impact of organic search on the company’s sales and earnings. The number of links pointing to our website from other websites indicates how widely our material is read.
Appendix
Below is a list of questions used in this paper to help understand more about digital marketing.
Questions:
- Does social media help in marketing a brand?
- What are the Gaia foundation and Gaia card?
- What are the benefits of digital marketing to the foundation?
- What are the objectives of the digital marketing and communication plan?
- Is digital marketing expensive?
- Which social media platforms are the best to use to market the foundation?
- How long does social media marketing take?
- What does online marketing require?
- What could go wrong with digital marketing?
- Finally, is digital marketing effective enough for the foundation’s goals?
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