Samenvatting

This advisory report is written for Rowans Leisure Centre in North London. The leisure centre is well-known in (North) London and offers their customers different types of entertainment, such as bowling and karaoke. They recently added the option to hire a suite at the centre. The request to Sense Advertising is to create a marketing communication strategy for their suites. Because the suites are not as well known by people, as they would prefer. In addition, the suites are not rented to full capacity. These problems resulted in the following problem question: 'How can Rowans Leisure Centre generate more income right away, by approaching which target group(s) and which marketing communication strategy is the most effective to use?' By researching the company and its surroundings, literature on marketing communication strategies and profitable target groups, the research question will be answered in this report. The report consists of two parts: one part describes the recommended strategy and the second part is a communication plan. The strategy needs to be applied when having contact with the client and the communication plan is designed to gain clients and communicate the strategy to potential customers. The overall strategy for Rowans Leisure Centre's marketing communications is to make it possible for potential customers to imagine their event being held in the suite. IMAGINE is the keyword in this strategy. This strategy is effective because, once a potential customer has a visual in mind of their event being held in one of Rowans Leisure Centre's suites, they continue adding ideas to that image. They build their perfect event based on that first image in mind. The perfect circumstances to make them imagine that picture in mind, must be created during the first communication phases with the client. Two principles are given with their range of advices. The first principle is to help the client imagine that picture in mind. This by anticipating on the narrative a customer creates when making a behavioral decision. To be able to have a view on that narrative the company has to know its customer. This can be done by using three advices: (1) Add questions to the enquiry form, (2) a pre-meeting questionnaire and (3) an online tool. The second principle for the advices is to keep the potential customers from being distracted during the imagination process. This can be done by giving the customer the information in a sequence. This helps them imagine and visualize their event being held in Rowans Leisure Centre. Taking away possible worries that the client may have, is a part of the second principle as well. The advices in this category are: (1) Mention the costs, (2) a practical script, (3) "Can you imagine?" and (4) combine services to get the party started.
There are four important trends given to implement when letting the suites. A live Twitter screen, the possibility to personalize the suites to the client's wishes, getting rid of the "big bad company" image and respond to the health issues of today. These trends will make the company a flexible party to do business with; its image will be more up-to-date and its customers will feel more unique.
The communication plan focuses on three target groups: corporate event planners (north London), professional event planners for events up to 500 people and occasional event planners for all different kinds of events, such as birthdays and fashion shows. The goal is to have at least one booking a week for the suites. The target groups need to be informed and a dialogue needs to be started with the corporate event planners to build a bridge between both companies. A big opening event for the suites will make the target groups aware of the suite hire option and a dialogue can be started with, the in potential most rewarding target group, corporate event planners.
The results, costs and proceedings are given at each single advice. This makes the advices easy to implement. The recommended order to implement the advices is to start with the opening event and the additions to the webpage, followed by the first principle of the strategy and thereafter the second principle. This will improve the effectiveness of the given advices.