Soot Analysis Of Internal And External Issues Affecting The National Trust.

National Trust 1 . Use a SOOT analysis to explore the internal and external issues affecting the National Trust. “SOOT analysis focuses on Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the organization”. (Mullions and Christy, 2010. P. 545). According to the case study, National Trust is a non-profit organization, which is managed by small Board of Trustees. The organization is totally independent from government, and owns a huge number of properties includes historic houses, villages, national reserves and islands.

As a non-profit organization, it would be a charity organization to the society rather than making profit for the firm. In addition, its budget is not only from membership fees, donations, but also from its business activities such as the National Trust shops and catering business. Like any organization in the world, the Trust has internal and external factors that affect the organization. Clearly, internal factors are seen as strengths and weakness, which are controlled by firm. Additionally, opportunities and threats are uncontrolled by the organization and are called external issues.

The factors that affect the Trust are listed in the box below: Initially, National Trust owns a large amount of properties as listed above. This diversity in term of business has been an

effective thing for them to carry out the organization. For example, they are permitted to own special places such as national reserves, islands and they rely on donations to look after these areas. The trust welcomes around 19 million visitors every single year. More than that, they also operate a commercial business such as Trust shops and catering production.

Due to a variety of goods and services, they attract different types of customers such as families, young or old, lovers of history or nature. Those things have delivered their session to grow the heart of special place and their aims to inspire a lot of people in many different ways. In addition, National Trust is a form of charity organization, it might attracted a large number of volunteers (61,000 people) working without salary (ethnicities, 2014). Those people are willing to contribute to the organization in daily operation activities. It helps the firm to reduce cost of advertising campaign.

Furthermore, the Trust uses social media and new technology for their promotional purposes as to increase their ‘share ability ‘. Different parts of the Trust use social media in different ways. For example, Backbone helps the organization to illustrate chances and the possibility to get Jobs from Trust. It helps them to recruit employees with the right task of Job. In addition, the National Trust has launched an phone app to promote its goods and services to everybody. It not only lists and describes the properties but also allows customers to set own favorites and search for events easily. Economics By Andy-dang fee and visitor fees does not cover all the costs of the organization. It only covers a third of the cost, the rest is fulfilled by commercial activities. Their missions may not e met if income is lower than expectation. Therefore, members and customers need to be kept by offering competitive goods and services. Moreover, the organization needs to have more and more customers so they might have to advertise and promotes their quality of services to meet customers’ wants and demands. Additionally, too many employees will leads to a problem in management.

For examples, almost of those staffs are volunteers, although they not only contributes to organization, they also leave the Job whenever they want. It may causes lack of staffs when many of them quit the organism at the same time. National trust is a charity organization, which has many opportunities to develop itself by using AID model and various kinds of promotional methods. AID stands for awareness, interest, desire, and action, which help the firm increase knowledge of customer’s wants and needs.

It would keep loyal customers and they will become ‘advocates’ over the time. Those advocates would promote goods and services of the organization and it can be considered as a genuinely strong kind of promotion. In addition, in the future, National Trust may be possible to attract a lot of new clients because of using various kinds of promotional strategy. There are both promotional methods include above-the-line and below-the-line such as advertising on newspaper, social media networks like Backbone, Twitter… Which is to communicate, understand and satisfy potential customer.

Overall, those above can be considered as the opportunities for the organization. However, direct competitor is also one of those external issues that National Trust has to face to it, which is also considered as a threat element of the firm. Although the organization has only few direct competitors, the public has alternative ways to spend on money on leisure times (Ethnicities, 2014). If they feel that Trust’s reveries do not satisfy them, they turn automatically into another better service. Moreover, not many people considered Trust is a possible workforce to work for.

Therefore, National Trust need to use more and more promotional strategies that highlight the things that the Trust can offer properly to consumers and members and promotes all the types of Jobs. 2. Promotion is important to National Trust. Discuss: a) How the National Trust promotes its activities? Promotion is very important to businesses and to the National Trust as well. The number of purposes and promotional methods they use is dependent on their deeds. According to National Trust case study, they use both above-the-line and below-the-line promotional methods to promote offers and Jobs.

Specifically, above- the-line promotion refers to traditional tools such as newspapers, radio, TV, billboards. For the National Trust, they use radio and newspaper advertising to target different types of people. For example, the Trust advertises a specific Job through national newspaper. Likewise, Country Life magazine would be a good idea for appealing to its traditional members or the Trust might use national newspaper to promote its exclusive Jobs (Ethnicities, 2014). Below-the-line promotional method associates with forms of advertising that have greater control includes sponsorship, events, mails, sales promotion.

The Trust uses both social media and new technological activities to share their messages widely. For examples, the Trust has been offering to younger people opportunities to apply for Jobs through blobs or Backbone. Furthermore, they has launched an ‘phone app so that users can not only have knowledge about their properties in England, Wales, Northern Ireland but also encourage them to create their ambition. By using social media, National Trust has a lot of effective activities. For example, normally the Trust took 53 days and 2,400 pounds each person hired when they operate the recruitment campaign.

However, it would reduce cost and less time- consuming at 800 pounds each person and 42 days (Ethnicities, 2014). In addition, people know about National Trust better and well through the Internet like backbone websites and Twitter because it has a huge number of users recently. 3. The case focuses on the APS and AID business tool. In what ways could these be used by business to inform its strategic direction? According to Body (2014), in order to satisfy customer’s needs, wants and demands n the target market, marketers need to select the right strategies of promotion depending on the goods and services being delivered.

Marketing mix – also known as four As’- product, price, promotion and place, is one of the most convenient ways to group those factors. For the National Trust, all of the four factors of marketing mix are highly interacted with each other. Clearly, the products of the Trust combine both intangible and tangible such as events, handicrafts… In order to promotes their goods and services, they allow customers to have choice and add value on membership through a wide range of activities.

For instance, customers may have more chances to spend their holidays on Trust land or they can learn something new from Trust professionals. In addition, Price refers to amount of money that producers add on the particular products. For the Trust, as a non-profit organization, their prices are made in order to part of marketing mix; it depends on the image of brand and what customer wants (Ethnicities, 2014). For examples, for Ideas, they probably can use skimming pricing for their products. When they bring out new products, they charge a high rice and the price will be reduced if the product is no more exclusive.

Place refers to a channel through which products reach to customers, which includes either physical location, online or over telephone. For examples, Apple offers its customers with a wide range of products that they can buy online through its website or they can straight away go to Apple store to pick what they want. Promotion refers to marketing communication, how business keep contact with their customers. It covers all the techniques through which customers know about business products like social media, newspapers, and online network.

For instance, Avian promotes their products through TV advertisements and in that way people understand more about their water. They may want to get those things after advertisement. Furthermore, one of the most modern marketing and advertising principles is known as AID model, which stands for awareness (attention), interest, desire, and action. Attention portion in marketing occurs at the beginning, which is designed to attract new customer and increase knowledge of new goods and services for existing customers as well (Chris, 2014).

If your goods are standing out and different from others, it can give rise in customer’s attention. The second stage is generating interest of customers after gaining prospects’ attention. In order to hold their interests, the organization should promote and clearly state the benefit in which the products have delivered. The aim of this stage is to provide to the customer with necessary information and move them to the next stage, desire (Laryngitis’s. Net, 2014). At desire stage, all the firm wants is that customers create a desire to have the products with needed information provided.

A unique selling point may result in more customers buying your product rather than your competitors. Action is the final tag of AID model, customers may make an action to purchase your product if your company has done well this strategy. Moreover, purchase action will be made as simple as possible as a result of offering a wide range of payment such as credit cards, cheeses, and cash(Laryngitis’s. Net, 2014). 4. How could a business use (online) social media for promotional purposes and what advantages or disadvantages might this have?

Social media is a form of Internet marketing, which includes many kind of social networks such as Backbone, Instating… (Kim, 2014). It is not only the way that friends business. However, this type of promotion has both benefits and drawbacks. There are many ways for a business to use an online tool to promote their goods and services as a social media channel to connect them with their customers. According to Wight (2014), ‘social media is transforming the way business is carried out’. Recently, consumers buy more often on the Internet than go to outlets to purchase products.

Therefore, if a business does not use the right social network to promotes their products, they might miss out on the chance to catch a lot of customers. Because they are expecting to look for a business and brand on their. Clearly, a business should find their target market first by segmenting their market. For example, they need to know that who their customers are, their lifestyles, their interests and that could give a firm an indication of the kind of social media that their customers are likely to use.

For example, Backbone is a useful social website to advertise products and services due to a large amount of users. Therefore, almost all businesses aim to promote their activities on there to attract more and more customers. You have not mentioned the drawbacks of social media and there needs to be more valuation in your work You need to demonstrate use of ‘hedging (might, could, may, etc) and ’cause & effect’ language (leads to, causes, can result in, etc) – particularly in References: Soddy, D. , 2014.