Strategies for a Century-old Organization in the Uk

Introduction

The charity organizations together make an industry, and like other industries, they too need to carry on marketing campaigns to reach a higher number of people. In the UK, the marketing environment has some special characteristic, based on which a charity organization should market itself (Qi, 2017). The chosen organization, which is operating in the UK and over the world for over a century, had faced some challenges while operating in the market. It had done market research and used the latest technologies to improve its services, to reach an increased number of people, and bring a positive change in the society regarding the need for first aid.

Discussion

Background of the Charity

St John Ambulance is a group of organizations, which provides medical services, as well as first aid services in many countries around the world. It was established in 1877 in England, where most of the staff members are volunteers of the organization. The International Order of St John, along with its priories, affiliates, and oversees these associations (Fong, Taylor and MacFarlane, 2016). The members can be of any religion, and as they work in many nations, so they have to abide by the medical practices of that country, the national laws along with the different cultures. This brings variation in the role of St John Ambulance in each country.

Marketing Strategies and Activities

The marketing strategy which St John Ambulance follows is very straight forward and can create an impact on the consumers. The marketing strategy of St John Ambulance is different from other organizations because unlike those, it is not a company, which manufactures or sells products or services. The organization is providing its medical services for over one and a half decades, so it can understand the needs of the consumers, which changes over time (Holding et al., 2017). The organization has a strategic vision towards the market and is not just providing first aid to the injured. They are focusing on making the people ready to provide first aid to their near and dear ones, even before medical aid arrives. This way they strategize their marketing activities in a way where they aim to make the health care system stronger with the help of technology, innovation, and help from the volunteer and others.

Marketing Environment

St John Ambulance is a charity organization, and it has to operate in different kinds of marketing setting. They market their services to people, without any differentiation of age, gender, or any other factor. The organization gets different environments in different countries in which they operate (Stuart, 2016). The difference in this marketing environment can be due to political factors or the legal factors of a particular country because each country has different laws regarding healthcare and medications. Moreover, there are cultural differences between countries, which could be kept in mind while making a strategy of marketing its services through advertising or any other marketing campaign.

Challenges Faced in Marketing in the Digital Era

With time, every sector in the market is going through drastic changes. The greatest and fastest changes had come with the digital era, in which people are living in the present. Before the digital era, the marketing strategies followed by different organizations were simple, and a single strategy could be applied to attract the consumers for a long time (Harris, 2018). However, in the digital era, people are becoming more aware of different factors, through different media, and thus know about many marketing strategies used by organizations all over the world. That is why there is a need by every organization to keep innovating constantly and bring new marketing strategies, which could make the consumers select them over their competitors. However, the charity sector is different from these organizations and needs a different kind of marketing.

Understanding the Need for Marketing

Most of the organizations are incorporating technologies and digitizing the processes, to reduce the manual work. Apart from that, technology can help in speeding up the procedures, which results in higher productivity and profit as well. However, the organizations, which provide charity, exist for a long time, and their main aim is to provide the needy with necessary aid. The charity organizations had given more importance in improving their care and services to the people (Ryan, 2016). However, with passing time, the number of charity organizations had increased largely, which ranges from small, medium to large ones. Among them, only the large charity organizations have thought to expand and understood that the organizations to require to market itself and its services. St John Ambulance is a large charity organization, which markets itself so that people think of them when they need medical services or first aid solutions.

Lack of Volunteers

Currently, St John Ambulance is facing challenges, and the digital era can be held responsible for it to some extent. Digitization of different platforms and processes of organizations had brought changes in the operations. Moreover, due to innovation and modern technologies in the medical sector, the human population is increasing in the UK and other countries. With an increasing number of humans, there is also an increase in the number of people falling ill or getting injured, and thus the need for medical care and first aid had also increased (Alfes, Antunes and Shantz, 2017). That is why the number of volunteers, which used to be enough in the early time, is falling short. As a result, the need for more volunteers is increasing, but the unavailability of it has become one of the greatest challenges for St John Ambulance.

Lack of Funds

In addition to that, with digitization and modernization, the equipment used for giving first aid is also being improved. This is increasing the expenses related to buying the equipment, training the volunteer or staff to use them, and using them on the needy people. However, with the improvement in equipment and technologies used, the number of charity donors and sponsors are not increasing equally. This is leading to a shortage in the fund, which was used to provide charity services to the people in need. According to the annual reports of St John Ambulance, it is found that the organization is facing losses consistently every year from some time (Hyndman, 2017). However, the chief executive of St John Ambulance mentioned that, if the losses are compared to the substantial reserves they have, then it could be found that the loss is relatively small. However, due to lack of donations and sponsorships, they have to draw the money from the reserves, which itself is not a good sign. That is why they should understand that there is some problem in the way they conduct their charitable business and the way they market their services. On the other hand, due to the lack of funds, they would not be able to use much of the funds to market their brand, which might have improved the image of the charity organization.

Ban of Advertisement

St John Ambulance has adapted itself with the changing needs in the digital era. It uses different old and new media for marketing the brand and its services. As a medical service and first aid provider, it aims to make the normal people aware of the different services they offer. One of its aims is to make people understand the need to know first aid themselves so that they can provide it too, even before the ambulance or first aid service provider arrives the spot (Kim, Youn and Yoon, 2019). The place could be at home, school, office, or on the way somewhere. To spread this fact among the maximum number of people, they had used the audio-visual media. The people involved in marketing had made advertisements through which they can portray the need for learning first aid.

The advertisement was about a father who had been diagnosed with cancer and after treatment survived out of it. The advertisement does not end here, and shows the father attending a family party but choking to death. The reason behind his death had been the lack of first aid knowledge and training among the party attendees and family members. This advertisement was able to convey the message that the lack of basic first aid knowledge and training can be life-threatening (De Buck et al., 2015). Due to its sensitive content, it was only aired after a certain time in the night, but even then, it seemed offensive to a section of people and is even said to be distressing for those who have cancer. Charity organizations like St John Ambulance face this kind of criticism, because of the themes they choose for their advertisements. Sometimes the images they use for advertisement in the print media are also hard-hitting.

According to the marketing team of the organization, it is necessary to use those images and themes so that they can raise awareness about the particular cause. The director of marketing of St John Ambulance, who is also in charge of fundraising and communication, had made it clear that the number of people who are offended by the advertisement is a small fraction of its consumers (Kureckova et al., 2017). The team had apologized for the tactics they use in their marketing but they also want that the people understand the need behind the campaign. According to them, the advertisement might shock the people and make them wonder why a charity organization had chosen such a theme. However, the situation would be more shocking if such incidents happen in reality.

From the above discussion, it can be understood that St John Ambulance is facing a few challenges in its marketing due to different factors in this digital era. While the lack of funds had created a barrier in its growth, the lack of volunteers also had a great impact. Being a charity organization, it had taken a long time to understand the need for marketing its services. Most importantly, the ban in its advertisement had been one of the great challenges in its marketing, which had reduced its spontaneity of conveying strong messages to its consumers.

Transformation in the Marketing Practice

The society is changing, and the biggest contributor had been technological factors. It had been around for three to four decades when the world had started transformed from manual to digital. Moreover, within the last decade, every aspect of human life had gone through drastic changes due to technological advancement (Mejia, Urrea and Pedraza‐Martinez, 2019). Every organization had gradually incorporated technology in its operations to improve the processes and procedures. The charity organizations work for society, and thus is concerned about their changing needs. These organizations are also advancing in their operations, and making the latest technologies part of their tasks.

St John Ambulance had started a free first aid guide where people can send text messages and learn about different first aid procedures. Apart from that, they have even launched a free first aid guide, which is free to download and can provide support to the one needing it. With this application and text guide, they want to make the people realize that, it would be a great mistake if someone has to die due to a lack of knowledge and training among the near and dear ones about the first aid (Mantas, 2019). Even if one has to face a situation where the person needing first aid is unknown, with the proper first aid training, he or she can save the person’s life. In normal times, people have to wait for first aid providers to give them first aid, and this wait can turn fatal if the accident is life-threatening and might result in loss of lives.

With technological advancements, many aspects of society had changed. The economic condition of the people is improving slowly, which is resulting in owning personal cars. Apart from that, the big healthcare organizations and hospitals have their ambulance services. All these had reduced the need for an ambulance in the UK to some extent. As a reaction to that, they had to take an unwanted step, which is to downsize its staff. Another factor, which contributed to this downsizing, is the budget pressure they had to face in the last few years, which is mentioned earlier (Booker, Shaw and Purdy, 2015). St John Ambulance is planning to reduce the budget pressure with the help of technology and other innovative tactics. That is why they had appointed the director of fundraising of the British Red Cross as their Chief Executive, who is working on making a strategy, which would bring a boost in their income source.

St John Ambulance had made technology a part of its marketing strategy, and that is why the campaigns are launched using those technologies. Video marketing is the current trend in marketing, and if the quality of the content of the video is good, then it makes the marketing campaign successful. The idea behind creating a first aid video was that many of the parents had seen their babies choking on something, and around half of them do not have the idea about what to do in the situation (Younis and El-Abassy, 2015). The video they have launched was based on the theme “The Chokeables,” where they have made an animation about the small things, which children can choke on. The video content included the way one should give first aid to the child in such a situation. They aimed to make the video highly engaging so that the viewers watch it till the end and share it with the maximum number of people through different social media.

St John Ambulance had launched a campaign named “Be the difference,” where they offered first aid guides for free to the public. At the same time, they encourage those people to contribute to the cause by donating to the charity, and themselves “become the difference” (Kariotis et al., 2018). Before launching the campaign, they had conducted a survey, where it is found that almost two-thirds of the passerby or public present in a situation fear to provide first aid to the person who might be having an emergency condition, due to lack of confidence. On the other hand, one fourth would stand and wait for an ambulance to come and hope that the other passersby know first aid.

Besides the mentioned steps, they are planning for the future, where they want to transform their first aid business to the future of healthcare. To reach this aim, they are firstly focusing on creating a strategic vision, which revolves around serving humanity. In the present, they work as a reactive health organization, and it wants to transform itself into a proactive health innovator. One must think that being a first aid provider, St John Ambulance, waits for people to get sick, or have the need for first aid (Nehme et al., 2017). However, their aim is completely different, where they want to make their community stronger, by making improvements in the technologies and incorporating new ones. Along with that, they want to build their capacity and make their services innovative. As a result of these steps, they can reach their aim to create, push, strive and evolve the way of the healthcare system.

They are planning to launch a new brand platform and bring it to life by launching it in a grand and long event, in the presence of a huge number of employees. They are testing the appetite of the consumers, and based on that; they would do their branding, advertising, and overall marketing. They are launching a campaign named “Life Goes On,” through which they are marketing their products and services in every way possible (Karl, Rother and Nestler, 2015). For TV and cinema, they have film contents, and for the online world, they have introduced Facebook carousels, online video, social canvas, and branded social content. The campaign took the help of press to spread itself, and most importantly, to make the service easily available to the public, they have designed a mobile app yet to launch, along with website structure of St. John Ambulance. To make the campaign more effective, they have decided to create an updated identity for the brand, which would include some guidelines as well.

St. John Ambulance is using this branding for marketing itself in all the possible platforms. That includes internal communication, merchandising visually, online platform, first aid kits, etc. In the next phase, they carried on direct tactical marketing to let people be aware of the wide range of services they offer, from Urgent Care centers, Medical and Dental centers to the St. John First Responder App (Gao et al., 2019). To make the brand a success, they carry on the quantitative pre-test, with the help of the Marketing Objectives Workshop. It takes into account the call volume, internal metrics, volunteer take-up, traffic at the website and employee engagement, to make the outcome increasingly effective.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that St. John Ambulance had adopted to the integrative approach of marketing with the changing needs of the consumers and the change in technologies and other social factors. To ensure that more people are aware of the need for the first aid and engage them in the same, they are using their five years strategy. They aim to make complete use of technologies and other innovative approaches to improve society in the aspect of health. That is why, they want to continue their first and foremost important task of delivering the public first aid services, and make use of social media, mass broadcasting, along with internet and mobile applications to do so. Through the different campaigns, they aim to educate the public about the necessity of first aid training and be a leader themselves, instead of waiting for others to save lives. Making the public equipped with the first aid skills and equipment, along with the confidence to deliver it, St. John Ambulance is trying to bring improvement in society, using the latest technologies and make it a success.

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