CO-OPERATIVE UNIVERSTY MOMBASA CAMPUS

MASTERS IN CO-OPERATIVE MANAGEMENT

JOHN OILR OSAMIAT

MCM/0003/2017

DR. MWANAKAMA

MARKETING MANAGEMENT

EMERGING ISSUES IN MARKETING MANAGEMENT TODAY

1. Strategy

Will you focus on local markets or national (or global)? Will you try to service a niche or
industry vertical? Will you specialize in one aspect of marketing or handle all of the disciplines?
What size company will you target?

2. Products & Services

What are you going to sell and to whom? How competitive is the marketplace and how do you
differentiate your offering from your competitors? Are you going to specialize in one or two
inbound marketing disciplines or provide the whole nine yards? Do you have a value-added
secret sauce that sets you apart from the pack? What about packaging and pricing? Can you learn
from the experiences of other agencies, or will you need to find your own way?

3. Expertise

Now that you've decided the 'why', 'where' and 'what', let's focus on the 'who'. Who do you have
on staff now to provide your services or build your products? What skillsets are you lacking?
How are you going to attract the right people, hire them and keep them happy? Or does it make
more sense to subcontract out certain aspects of your business?

4. Infrastructure
You need a location and some form of office to house and enable your workforce. Since your
business is going digital, you may not need as much space for client meetings, but you still need
to worry about employee morale and productivity. At a minimum, you need a reliable network,
internet connection, phone system and comfortable environment. Hot or cold workers are not
happy workers. If you are going with a full or partial remote worker model, how will you
collaborate with them and manage them?

5. Technology

You're an inbound marketing agency, so you will need the best available technology for web
design and development, content creation and management, SEO, social media engagement and
monitoring, lead generation and closed-loop marketing. Our setup is constantly evolving. You
can follow our preferences via our blog.

6. Sales and Marketing

You won't stay in business long without sales. You're an inbound marketing agency, so you'd
better be good at that. You need to fill your own funnel before you can start providing that as a
service. Your clients won't buy your claims about your capabilities if they don't see you "walking
the walk". You need to dedicate a hefty amount of time and budget to your own website, blogs,
advanced content and social media. You will find that your personal rolodex runs out of sales
leads pretty quickly. Once you start generating leads with inbound, who/how will you handle
them? Do you have a solid sales process in place and closed-loop marketing to keep sales people
and marketers on the same page?

7. Managing Customer Expectations

This can be a killer. If you provide open-ended, non-specific proposals, you will end up losing
money on your customer projects. Tell your customers exactly what you are going to do and
when before you get started. Make sure they understand and agree. Get it in writing.

8. Delivering the Goods

If you are selling inbound marketing services on a retainer basis, you need to prove yourself
every month. Report your results in regular meetings and interpret the data. Update your strategy
as you go and make recommendations to improve results going forward. Look for new ways to
add value. Ask for customer feedback and pay attention to it.

9. Growing

If you are successful at overcoming the above challenges, your business will grow. Now you
have a new challenge. How can you scale up to meet demand without breaking the bank. You
need to develop a solid business plan complete with current monthly financials projected into the
future and accounting for realistic sales growth and costs. Will you need financing, and if so,
what kind? Can you grow "organically" or will you need to step it up with investors?

10. Are You Happy?

What's the point in building a successful inbound marketing agency if it isn't fun? Starting a
business requires endless hours and produces lots of headaches. You can't avoid that, but you can
think about and strive for personal satisfaction as well as monetary rewards. Build into your plan
a path for your own changing role and duties. You can't handle everything forever. Find and hire
good people and empower them to take charge. One day you will wake up and realize they don't
need you anymore. Now you can focus on the next big idea.

SWOT ANALYSIS OF SAFARICOM

Safaricom’s SWOT Analysis

Safaricom Limited is a public company in Kenya that is partly owned by Vodafone, the Kenyan
government and shareholders. It is a dominant mobile network operator. The company was
founded in the year 1993. By then, it was entirely owned by Telkom Kenya as one of its
subsidiaries.

Summary about Safaricom

 Name of the company: Safaricom

 Location: Safaricom House Headquarters; Street (Waiyaki Way), Area (Westlands), City
Nairobi)
  Business sector: telecommunications
 Revenue: 7 billion as per financial year ending December 2016
 CEO: peter Ndegwa
 Competitors: Airtel and Telcom Kenya
 Common Company tags: mpesa, mshwari, mobile shop, data bundles, Wi-Fi, fibre,
academy, hosting, developers, financial year report,

SWOT Analysis of Safaricom

The following is the SWOT analysis for Safaricom ltd

Strengths
 Experienced workforce
 Highest number of subscribers
 High profitability and revenue
 high growth rate
 Variety of products and services e.g. M-Pesa money transfer, M-kesho, M-Co-op, M-
shwari
 Largest market share
Weaknesses
 Future productivity and profitability
Opportunities
 Skyrocketing demand
 Growing economy
 emergence of new markets
Threats
 Political developments in Kenya
 Power shortages
 Cash flow
 REFERENCES

Kottler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2006), Marketing management, Analyse, Planung, Umsetzung und

Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2001), A framework for marketing management (Vol. 2). Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Kotabe, M., Helsen, K., & Kotabe, M. (1998). Global marketing management. New York, NY:
Wiley.

Safaricom website: https://www.safaricom.co.ke/