Paper Example on Advertising & Marketing Agency: Concentrating on Increasing Market Share

1a.

The company is an advertising and marketing agency that is based in New York. The agency was founded in 1850 in London and it merged with another New York company in 1964. It offers services in brand strategy, advertising, business strategy consulting, digital transformation and customer engagement.

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The company's strategy is concentration with an emphasis on the increasing market share of the advertising and marketing industry. The marketing industry has evolved rapidly due to the rise of social media. This has seen the rising of many companies offering similar products and therefore increasing competition. To maintain their competitive edge, they concentrate on improving their services to their clients. The main advantage is the workforce that they have developed over the years.

1b. the Target Audience

The target people of the training program are the early career employees that join the company almost immediately after completing their studies. The training is intended for the employees who join the marketing department. The problem that has been previously noted among other early employees in the previous years is the deficiency of good marketing skills to enable the company to compete in the industry. The early employees have little work experience and hence they find it hard to apply their theoretical knowledge to the practical skills needed in the workplace. Some of them lack good communication and interpersonal skills which are essential to thrive at work. This creates a need to introduce a management trainee for the young employees joining the company.

2. Needs Assessment

Performing a needs assessment before launching a training program in the company is paramount to ensure that it is useful to the trainees and the right skills are imparted. To begin with, data should be collected from the company employees including the managers and senior executives on the need for a marketing management trainee program in the company. This should be done through surveys and personal interviews asking the employees what they think of such a program in the company. The survey should also focus on the skills they think should be imparted on the trainees, the approach and the duration of the training. The employees should also air out their views on any reason they think that the training may not be suitable for the company or any challenges the program may face. Having the opinions of the current employees could help in understanding the company better so that the most appropriate program can be developed. It will also help to understand the challenges that early-career employees face in the company and therefore address that in the training program.

Deep analysis should follow to understand what the company's employees think about the program. This process should help if there is a need to proceed and develop the training program or if the idea should be shelved at the moment. The expected challenges should be addressed for the smooth running of the program. After conducting the needs assessment, it was discovered that a marketing management trainee program was necessary for the company to properly train early-career employees who join the company. They should be trained in various skills to become good in marketing skills. Some of the areas that were strongly emphasized are brand and specialty marketing, digital marketing, global strategic marketing sales, and market research. These areas would enable them to gain meaningful diverse experiences that can positively impact the company. The aim of training them is so that the company can significantly add the marketing team who can serve and impress the clients. Therefore a management trainee will be helpful to the company.

3. Objectives of the Management Trainee

The company focuses on marketing and developing a business strategy for clients. Therefore, a marketing management trainee would be designed to build a workforce that is well equipped to deliver the best results for the clientele. The first objective is to equip early-career employees with essential marketing skills in digital marketing, brand and specialty marketing and business strategy skills that can satisfactorily offer excellent marketing solutions to our clients. The second objective is to train employees with decision-making skills, project management skills and proper communication skills for them to develop into leaders of the company soon. The third objective is to help accelerate the professional development of young employees through competency-based, online and on-job learning to become renowned marketing experts.

4. Training methods

On-Job Training

On the job training is a hands-on method that teaches the employees the necessary skills by doing the actual work. On job training occurs in the same work environment that the trainee process to practice the skills s/he has gained. The training is performed using existing documents, equipment, and knowledge in the workplace. It is very suitable for the management trainee program as it gives the early-career employees opportunities to learn in the work setting while working on real projects for the clients. The trainees get the opportunity to work while learning and gaining experience under the supervision of a manager or a supervisor. This ensures that skills are transferred to other employees and creates continuity in the company. It also ensures that the high standards of marketing work is maintained among the new employees.

Since other workers in the company are involved in the training, the trainees become very competent in their job and the time to learn is greatly reduced. Training includes the technical know-how of the job including using data analysis to determine the best marketing method and creating lasting slogans. Other skills that are passed on to the employees include leadership and communication skills, company policies and requirements and interpersonal skills. While these skills may be ignored in most workplaces, studies show that they are very essential in molding leaders in any organization. Training on the company policies ensures that the culture of the company is effectively passed down to all the employees and that it is maintained for years to come. The new employees also appreciate the values of the company and seek to adhere to them in their work. The performance expectations of the company are also instilled among the employees, therefore, they can match the standards set by other employees.

Self -directed Learning

Self-directed learning is when the learner takes the initiative of acquiring knowledge with minimal supervision from others. Self-directed learning could be used to teach the management trainees marketing terminologies and skills that require time to understand ("Self-Directed Learning"). Since these lessons are self-paced, they get the time to research and thus gain the necessary depth of the subject.

Marketing management training should be administered through web-based learning that allows the participants to access the knowledge from any device and location. The lessons should be recorded thus giving the trainees time flexibility to access the lessons at the time of their best convenience. Self-direct learning offers unmatched convenience and flexibility to the users.

The company can define the learning goals of the program and therefore determine the content that is offered to the trainees. The trainers are pre-screened by the company to ensure that they qualify as trainers in the given field. In the company, the trainers should be experts in the marketing field who have previously worked in top companies in senior marketing positions.

Another advantage of self-directed learning is its cost-effectiveness ("Self-Directed Learning). Web-based learning is accessible to all the trainees without the need for multiple recordings. The information could also be used for many years until the information becomes obsolete therefore creating the need to create new videos. This greatly reduces the cost of training new employees while still ensuring that they are well trained.

Finally, self-directed learning allows learners to be evaluated and their progress recorded ("Self-Directed Learning"). Through tests and exams, the company can track the understanding of new concepts by the trainees. By measuring the results of the employees against the set goals in the learning process, the company understands the progress that has been made over time. A self-directed learning process will, therefore, be beneficial in training marketing managerial trainees in the company.

Case study Learning

A case study is an active learning method that entails being presented with a real-life situation and reviewing it to resolve the issues. Our management trainees should be offered organization case studies that mirror real-life for them to analyze and propose the most appropriate marketing solutions for the company in question. The expectations for the trainees should be clearly outlined to help them answer the case appropriately.

Case studies could work really ell for the trainees because they are relevant to the day to day work of the company. Most people learn better from examples rather than logical reasoning with basic principles (Brown, n.d.). This makes the use of case studies very effective for the marketing trainees to better understand their field. Since most of the case studies require a student to develop a solution to an open-ended problem with multiple potential solutions and outcomes, the trainees are forced to employ and develop bigger thinking skills of analysis, evaluation and decision making.

Case studies often require the trainees to work in teams to come up with an answer that could be a fully developed action plan, a decision or a proposal (Brown, n.d.). This will be effective for the company to foster good team working skills among the trainees which will be easily translated to the real work of the company. Case studies also include discussions and debates among the trainees, therefore, giving them a chance to enhance their persuasion and storytelling skills (Brown, n.d.). The trainees may also present their final proposals to other members and the instructor thus getting an opportunity to enhance their communication and public speaking skills. Case studies are a very effective tool for marketing management trainees to practice scenarios that mirrors the actual and develop the best solutions that can work in the real world.

5. Transfer of training to the job

For effective transfer of training to the job, supervisors of the management trainees will be used to follow-up on them. The supervisor's work is to manage the trainees and ensure that all the work is done to the right standards of the company and up to the satisfaction of our clients. For example, the supervisors could discuss the business strategy developed by the trainees to ensure that it is solid and that it will lead to the desired outcomes for the client.

Second, supervisors should give feedback to the management trainees. They should be keen to check ho the trainees are applying the newly acquired knowledge and give them feedback on ways of improving their work. Both positive and constructive feedback is important to the trainee to enable him/her know the areas they are performing well and those that need improvement.

Extrinsic reinforcement will be used to motivate the trainees to continue using their new skills and become better in their marketing skills. As a form of motivation, the trainees who demonstrate the right marketing skills as taught in the training will be promoted faster and become supervisors in the company within one year compared to the rest who will wait for two years.

Intrinsic reinforcement will be offered when t...