Marketing Plan for CCTV System Products & Services

Introduction

This plan presents the marketing strategy to be employed by a business that deals in CCTV system products, design, and installation, and maintenance services on the CCTV systems, to roll out the supply of its new shipped CCTV products to the market. The plan entails the product descriptions, the market analysis of the CCTV systems and services markets, the business' SWOT analysis, the market mix strategies, and objectives as well as the marketing controls. As it is widely known, the security threats have kept on increasing day by day and, therefore, a need to provide systems that tend to deter the criminals from committing various crimes, and in case they commit them, provide a way of tracing them and bringing them to justice. The business comes in for this purpose - to provide quality security solutions to its customers while making them the main priority.

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Product Description

This marketing plan concerns the provision of Information Technology (IT) services to the end users in the security industry. In particular, the business deals in products and services around design, installation, and maintenance of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems, sometimes referred to like the video surveillance infrastructure for various organizations, businesses, streets, or private properties. A CCTV system helps in the capturing of real-time videos of the occurrences by various characters in a given setting and relaying them using either wired or wireless transmission method to a monitor and the storage device for future verification.

Basically, a fully installed CCTV system by the business features either analog or digital security cameras, a network of RJ45 or RJ59 cabling system, either DVR or NVR video recorders, data storage devices such as the hard disks and the display unit control system which involves the use of a monitor, television screens, or mobile phones. Additionally, the system cameras have capabilities of night vision functions that enable them to record videos even in the low light conditions. Because of the ever emerging security threats, CCTV system can be installed in various estate buildings and residential apartments, state offices and buildings, city streets and highways, transport facilities such as bus and railway stations and airports, business premises such as banks, casinos, shops and hotels, various industrial plants, and many other areas.

There are several benefits of the CCTV system. The footages can be used by the relevant investigation agencies to apprehend and arraign in court the perpetrators of various crimes such as shoplifting, robbery with violence, and terrorism, among others. Therefore, they help to deter criminal groups and thieves culminating into a reduction in fear of crimes in various businesses and homes. Also, the systems promote remote monitoring and help the top management and the decision makers to observe the way various employees, customers, and the general public are relating to each other, just from a central point. Finally, for the businesses, the CCTV systems promote efficiency in the ways of operation while limiting chances of losses through pilferages and robbery. As a result, the businesses that have these systems installed are likely to be profitable.

Situational Analysis

In the situational analysis section, we shall discuss the market characteristics and trends for the CCTV systems as well as the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as far as the business is positioned to provide the technical services in the area.

Market Analysis

In today's world, the security threats are ever on the rise, ranging from the small scale organized crimes to the globally coordinated terror attacks on the business, public utilities, and residential installations. For this reason, there has been an increasing trend of installation of the CCTV systems in military camps, shopping malls, banks, airports, casinos, private homes, and even the warehousing stores to monitor the flow of activities in real time and at all the times of operation. Almost everyone has developed a sense of alarming concern for their safety and protection and the costs for manufacture and servicing of the CCTV systems themselves, and incorporation of the innovation aspects in the devices have dropped significantly in the few past years. These have been the key driving forces in the consumerism and market trends in the CCTV systems service industry.

The market segmentation of the CCTV systems has been done based on various factors. First, the bifurcation has been done based on the areas of application. Here, the most common and wide applications are in the banking, transport, military, retail, industrial, and healthcare sectors. In a small scale basis, a variety of applications in the education facilities as well as individual residential premises, mostly in the affluent neighborhoods in the towns and cities, are on the rise. Secondly, the market is also segmented based on the components of the system itself, such as the camera type, video storage technology, video surveillance, and management software, servers, and monitors. The kind and the level of technology has been observed to divide the customer body almost into two halves - the old conservatives who prefer the initial technologies such as the analog cameras and the younger consumers of ages less than 35 years, who prefer the newer and innovation-driven powered devices such as the IP cameras. Finally, a similar segmentation technique that results in a similar customer grouping depends on the various CCTV camera styles such as the bullet, dome, discreet, and traditional.

The business target market is all the mentioned traditional installations that depend on the CCTV systems as well as the individuals in the form of private homes and property owners. This means a wider age bracket but limited to some extent, to the middle income and high-income earners.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis

The SWOT analysis of the business is as follows.

Strengths

The internal strengths are as below:

i) The business has an adequate and well-skilled workforce. Over time, the business has been able to attract and retain a good number of experienced staff in the security and technology field. Slightly above 70 percent of our employees have installed, maintained, and serviced the CCTV systems for ten years and above in other prominent companies, with good customer reports. They have also been exposed to several training sessions that sharpen their skills and knowledge as far as the CCTV works are concerned (Bull et al. 2016).

ii) The business offices are located at strategic positions that enable easier access by the customers. Our offices are located in the capital city's Central Business District as well as all the other major cities and towns (Bull et al. 2016). This makes our presence be felt almost everywhere and, therefore, boosting our customer base.

iii) The business offers a wide variety of quality products and services as far as the CCTV systems are concerned. These range from analog as well as the recently introduced and advanced equipment. Furthermore, the business has engineers who design, install, and periodically provide maintenance services to our large client base. This makes the business unique as it is one among the five that offer such a wide range of security solutions to the customers.

Weaknesses

The internal weakness, as far as the business is concerned, are as follows:

i) The business does not have any patents for security solutions fully developed by it. Despite being among the major suppliers and service providers in the CCTV systems sector and owning a research laboratory for improving the existent security technologies, with specific and dedicated synergy towards the CCTV systems, the business does not own any patents. Therefore, the research department has not lived to its task (Bull et al. 2016).

ii) The business has a policy concerning the promotion of senior managers in the departments. Each manager serves for a maximum of three years (Bull et al. 2016). When a change is effected, some important tasks are not usually well concluded, therefore, leading to loss of some customers or poor marketing since the new managers find it hard to adopt in their new departments.

iii) Many installations and maintenance equipment owned by the business are outdated. Since most of the equipment was acquired at the time of the business commencement, many are unserviceable and simply outdated as far as the technological world is concerned (Shaw, 2016). As a result, complaints of relatively low-quality services from the customers have been received.

Opportunities

The following external opportunities are available for the business to make use of:

i) The business can take advantage of the expanding business relations between the government and the neighboring nations to expand their operations into such countries. This will help the business expand the customer base, source more skilled personnel from a varied background, and also widen the range of the security and technological services and products it provides (Shaw, 2016).

ii) The recently enacted government regulation that stipulates that each upcoming building to be used by the public and as residential apartments must be fixed with security and monitoring devices is bound to promote the business's products (Shaw, 2016). The business can, therefore, supply more quality and technologically advanced CCTV systems knowing that there is a ready market locally. The result will be an increase in sales and profit margins.

iii) The demographic analysis projection that the average incomes of families will be increasing by about 10 percent annually and that in the next five years, the economy will have about 10 million private homeowners' opens up more opportunities for the business. Since the business was ranked the second most popular in the sector, many people know about it, and it can improve its advertisement efforts so that it gets a majority of these new homeowners and entrants in the middle class for the provision of security products and services.

Threats

The following are the external threats that the business is faced with:

i) There is an ever-increasing competition in the sector. There is an unchecked emergence of businesses that deal in the CCTV products and offer the related services. Most of them ship their products from the same manufacturer as the business and offer design, installation, and maintenance services equally. They have embarked on modern promotional methods for their products and provide the most modern and technological products. With such strategies, they are likely to attract mostly young people who are increasingly becoming homeowners in the economy, and the business is likely to experience a drop in sales caused by a drop in the number of customers.

ii) The customers are becoming more sensitive to quality issues since they have a variety of suppliers and service providers to pick from. With the recent trend of customer complaints on some defective products and poor services by the business, it is likely to lose some of the customers a move that will see a shrink in the profit margins.

iii) For a long time, the business has relied on CCTV systems and other related products manufactured overseas due to the quality reasons. With an increase in the shipment for the security products by the shipping agencies, a proportional increase in the prices to the final customers is likely to result (Shaw, 2016). This might reduce the affordability of the products leading to the dropping demand. The business might be forced to cut on the supply, and this will affect the sales and eventually, the profit margins adversely.