Marketing concept for the website, FHNW School of Business

Today, having a competent online presence is crucial and can provide an important competitive advantage. Hoping to achieve this, the thesis firstly presents a situation analysis of vereinskalender.ch and thereafter, improvements and implementation measures are brought forward in a marketing concept.

Vereinskalender.ch is an online event platform, free of charge, directed at associations within the German speaking part of Switzerland and was founded back in 2012. The main purpose is to provide an online calendar where associations scheduling an upcoming event are able to discover time and date clashes at an early stage. The website has received over 30’000 clicks and more than 700 associations have registered. However, the client wishes to increase traffic and gain members. Furthermore, the current expenditures exceed the revenues and the aim here is to achieve a more balanced financing.

To reach these goals, a marketing concept was established in four steps. First, the initial situation was assessed by analyzing the context, customers, competitors and the website itself including a customer survey. Second, the previous findings led to the optimization measures which were chosen depending on its feasibility. Third, a positioning cross was established which presents the status quo of vereinskalender.ch concerning its strengths and competitive advantages. Lastly, the positioning together with the vision, mission and goals, acted as a basis to formulate the mar-keting mix.

The development opportunities for vereinskalender.ch are ideal. The conducted situation as-sessment clearly shows that the idea of vereinskalender.ch is unique and with its high user satis-faction and loyalty, the concept is shown to be well received. With the engagement of Mr. Scherrer and the support of the website developer, taktwerk.ch, the majority of the detected weaknesses can be improved without much effort and some aspects can over time even be converted into strengths. The limited amount of competitors gives vereinskalender.ch enough time to establish a solid customer basis and build brand awareness to increase entry barriers for potential new entrants. The opportunity to serve a second target group can be the key to increased traffic and hence experiencing growth in registrations. The increased traffic will in turn raise the attractiveness of the advertising offer and consequently have a positive impact on received earnings. The established marketing concept including the launch of the new mascot, as you can see on the picture, and the controlling measures act as a guidance to make the best use of the development opportunities and will help to achieve the strategic goals.

Authors: Ms. Rebecca Allen and Ms. Céline Heim, International Management Graduates