All teams in Language Teaching Organizations (LTOs) are crucial to our collective success. This has been evident to me throughout my experience in various LTOs.  The marketing team plays a pivotal role in fostering a strong connection between LTOs and the ELT national and international markets. Their collaborative efforts with other teams, guided by a wise manager, are what drive our success.  

Marketing has many definitions from social and managerial perspectives. Kolter, in his book: Marketing Management, describes marketing as “the art of selling products” (Kolter,2000, Chapter 1, P.3). This art is a management process that uses science in applying the core of marketing. That happens by choosing the target markets to get new customers and keep old customers. That can be done by creating, planning, and communicating. 

This guest blog post was written by Mohamed Samk.

Marketing management is responsible for detecting customers’ needs and predicting what they will need. That step is to provide satisfaction to clients and profitability to organizations. The same management responsibilities are applied to ELT as a business. Students are clients, and their needs and satisfaction are the key to business growth. The role of marketing management increases rapidly in ELT, and LTOs are facing fierce competition and change in the marketplace. That can clarify why, out of all the ELT options available, ELT marketing is my choice for this post. Marketing has four main elements:

Marketing Strategy

Strategic marketing plays the lead role in defining how an organization moves in the market and structures its competition. Strategic marketing involves the comprehensive examination of organizational, inter-organizational, and environmental factors. The ELT field plays a vital role in developing the LTO’s visions, targets, and sets of temporary or permanent goals. Also, it collects information about the local (onshore) or international (offshore) markets. In addition, it is essential to identify the marketing strategy and implement the marketing plan. 

For example, an LTO may have a target to follow a specific model of ELT, such as ESL or Global English. Strategic marketing will study the potential size of the ELT market. Plus, it helps set a suitable market plan or vary the market techniques to achieve this target. Strategic marketing also leads the LTOs to know precisely where they need to focus their time and money.  That happens after calculating the income streams of the services to highlight the most profitable ones.

Marketing Segmentation

We can define this term as having a homogenous group of customers who share standard features like targets, traditions, behaviors, needs, ways of thinking, and responses. They might also share the same county, city, and neighborhood or sharing the same age, lifestyle, and language. Customer segments support the marketing strategy to be active by highlighting some new niches that “can provide an opportunity for developing a new product” (White, R., Hockley, A., Jansen, J. & Laughner, M,2008, Chapter 4, p. 96).

In ELT as a business, dividing the market into segments helps to detect when and where an LTO can target one group by releasing specific offers to dominate the whole market. For example, the IELTS exam is a prerequisite for some high-school students to apply to universities. Therefore, marketers can make an offer for the high-school students to enroll in the preparation course with a discount only by the school ID. The segmentation can help LTOs to distinguish the lucrative segments to focus on.  Camilleri (2018, Chapter 4, p.69) supported that by saying, “Businesses may decide to focus on just one or a few of these segments.” 

Marketing Mix

Singh (2012:40) wrote: “Firms should plan a targeted approach on these four different components, and they are Product, Price, and Place & Promotion.” This is valuable advice for using the marketing mix concept. We can depend on that to define the marketing mix by saying it works through blending the Ps with a variation option to change the percentage of any P in this compensation.  Three more Ps, such as people, processes, and/or physical evidence, can be added to fit the targets or the market environment. The previous example of the IELTS exam can clearly explain using this blending in ELT. 

In the example, the percentage of P (pricing) is reduced to increase another P (promotion) in the mix. This point has been mentioned in the famous book Essentials of Marketing. The authors said, “The price can be changed, discounts can be given, and so on. With so many possible variables.” (Perreault, Cannon, and McCarthy,2017, chapter 2, p.36). Furthermore, the marketing mix is a magical tool for marketers to decide the optimal reaction in the target market process.  This is done by providing the team with a controlled basis to meet customer satisfaction and needs. This data can help LTOs to preserve profitability even in dull seasons.  “Marketing mix is recognized as a strategy used to perform marketing functions.” (Arachchige,2002, p.4).

Marketing Plan

After defining the targeted customers for a product, the marketing team needs to develop an applicable plan. This plan is to focus on vital activities with tangible outcomes to achieve the organization’s objectives. The marketing plan’s precise definition is the strategy’s written practical actions with its timeline and budget.

The marketing plan has the following contents:

• The implementation steps 
• The financial implementation 
• A clear definition of the people responsible for each task in the plan is needed. 
• A timetable for the steps.

Any LTO will deliver the same content while working on its marketing plan. The plan will, of course, differ from one LTO to another. The differences are in size, target market(s), national or international, or both, and targeted customers. It is not only that, but also its commercial goal as a non-profit or profitable organization. The marketing plan “goes through five main phases: business customizing, analyzing, strategizing, implementing, and controlling.” (Brooksbank,1996, p.16). Following this framework while working on the plan can help achieve the marketing targets.

Reference:

• Kotler, Philip. (2000). Marketing Management: The Millennium Edition.
• White, R., Hockley, A., Jansen, J. & Laughner, M. (2008). From Teacher to Manager. Cambridge University Press.
• Camilleri, M. A. (2018). Market Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning. In Travel Marketing, Tourism Economics, and the Airline Product. Springer, Cham, Switzerland.
• Meera Singh (2012). Marketing Mix of 4P’S for Competitive Advantage. IOSR Journal of Business and Management Volume 3, Issue 6 (Sep, -Oct. 2012), PP 40-45.
• William D. Perreault, Jr., Joseph P. Cannon, and E. Jerome McCarthy (2017). Essentials of Marketing. McGraw-Hill Education
• Arachchige, Jagath. (2002). Application of marketing mix elements (4Ps) in the Library sector.
• Roger Brooksbank (1996). The BASIC marketing planning process: a practical framework for the smaller business. MCB University Press.