National Employment Pact Strategic Marketing

The National Employment Pact (NEP) was founded immediately after the end of revolution in the spring 2011. The NEP was formed as a practical response to the growing challenge of unemployment facing the Egyptian youth, particularly in the “Blue Collar workers”. The establishment of NEP came as a result of partnership between the German-Egyptian business communities supported by GACIC. On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and German Federal Foreign Office (AA), German Development Cooperation (GIZ) supported the NEP. Due to this NEP is under the patronage of the German Embassy in Cairo.

The National Employment Pact (NEP) objectives

The NEP has two core objectives:

The first objective is to provide as many jobs as possible to the Egyptian youth as well as place them with matching job seeker’s. The NEP achieve this objective through professional employment facilitation with specific focus on “Blue Collar Segment” such as skilled work without university education, semi-skilled and unskilled work.
The second objective is to promote and focus attention to the quality of employment. This is achieved through collaboration with Egyptian companies in the creation of decent and fair jobs. In addition, the NEP supports the implementation a motivation in the work environment in order to increase the productivity of the workforce.

The strategic marketing of the NEP

The strategy of the NEP is based on the four pillar: scale, innovate, sustain and partner. The first pillar ensures that there is a national dissemination of the employment based on the replication model driven by the needs Assessment and value proposition. The second pillar governs the quality and innovation which is attained through continuous improvement and standardization (Hollensen, 2013). The third pillar ensures that there is available finance to support institutions and setup legal governance. The NEP ensure that the funding is utilized based on the sustainable financing model. The fourth pillar ensures that the NEP engages with stakeholder through Lobbying, PR and Marketing.

Read also Strategic Marketing Process

Strategic marketing for the NEP involves three processes: planning, implementation and aligning the products and services to conform to the needs of the clients in the market. Analysis have indicated that marketing department finds it challenging to move products and services in the market at faster rate. With the competitive nature of the job market and high unemployment rate that have rocked Egyptian labor market, the NEP needs to strategize their marketing model as well as provide products and services that addresses specific needs of the consumers in the market. For instance, the NEP main marketing strategy is to build a strong network partners worldwide. This one of the marketing strategy that has enable the NEP to support its members and Egyptian companies to successful export more of their products into the Germany and European market.

The NEP should effective utilize the services of the Import Promotion Desk (IPD), which is the platform utilized by the Federal Republic of Germany to promote imports. The IPD serves as link that connects small and medium-sized international business communities from emerging nations and developing countries and the German importers. The main objectives of the IPD is to ensure that there is a well-structured and sustainable import promotion of particular product and services from a chosen partner countries. These countries must comply with high quality, environmental and social standards. The IPD assists the NEP to consolidate the interest of the Egyptian exporters and those of the German importers with the objective of growing the market from the emerging and developing countries. By facilitating the access to the German and European market, IPD enables developing countries as well as those emerging nations to grow their economic structures, hence improving development in Egyptian labor market.

Prior to identifying the potential needs of the market, the NEP should evaluate its strengths based on the resources and capabilities such as financial, time and human resources. Also, the NEP should consider internal and external factors that affects market such as political and social dynamics as well as economic, technology and competition from other organization operating in the same market environment. These internal and external factors influence the rate at which the product and services move in the market as well as the provision of services and productivity of the country. It is very important for the marketing team to consider all these factor before deciding on the marketing strategy that the NEP should utilize since it influence service delivery to the clients.

Generally, strategic marketing involves the use of marketing mix which requires the analysis of traditionally referred to as 4Ps which are price, promotion, place and product. However, as the market become more competitive, three Ps was added; people, process and physical evidence. This is the process that the NEP should utilize in defining the course of action that helps the organization to realize its short-term and long-term objectives as well as gaining the competitive edge. It is important for the NEP to comprehensively analyze the 4Ps in order to come up with strategic marketing which is appropriate for the organization. Marketing mix is part of the marketing strategy that help the NEP to promote its products and services. Although the 4Ps have been expanded to 7Ps, 4Ps remain the core factor for marketing department to choose the action plan that which is suitable for marketing plan.

Product

Like most of the high-end organization, the NEP offers products such as linking the job seekers with the potential employers as well as matching the qualification of the job seekers with the appropriate type of employment. They also ensures that companies create fair and decent working environment for their employees. These product and services ensures that the job seekers get the right placement for the job and works in an environment that is decent and fair. It include controlling the salary paid to the employees. More importantly, the NEP does not need to expand the range of products and services they offer to their members since some of the products might not satisfy the needs of the clients. It is important for the NEP to first conduct market research in order to establish what the customers need in order to develop products and services that meet the quality and expectation of the market.

Some of the factor that the NEP needs to consider while developing and aligning their products and services is that a product should not necessarily be tangible. The product might be in the form of insurance policy for the employees working in a high risks environment. The product and service should be tailored to provide value to the customer. In this case the value of the product and service lies on the eyes of the beholder not what the NEP management thinks to be value to the clients, but it should be what they want (Kotler, & Armstrong, 2014). The NEP should put in place systems that periodically collect feedbacks from the customers about their products and services. The feedback should also determine the needs of the customers now and whether these needs will change overtime. Lastly, the NEP should make the quality of their products and services as the priority because the quality of the product traps the consumers. According to Kotler and Armstrong (2014), both product and services are there to support each other and bring out the highest value to the customers as well as improves the reputation of the organization.

Price

It is important to note that product or services is only worth the amount the client is willing and ready to pay. The NEP marketing department needs to set the price of the products and services to be competitive. However, competitiveness should not be mistaken to mean that the organization should offer their product and service at the cheapest price in the market. The NEP should consider providing their clients with value-adds, more personal services as well as better value for money. It is important to note that price is the only element in the marketing mix that allow the organization to generate revenue while all the other P’s represent the cost to the organization. Therefore, for the NEP to price its products and service competitively, the marketing department needs to approach the issues from the customer’s perspective. Some of the factors that needs to be considered include:

The price of the products and services determines the position in which the client as well as consumers places the organization in the market place in relation to their rivals.
The higher price charged on products and services, the higher the quality the consumers expects from the product and services offered.
The price of the services serves as a relative measure that determines the quality of the service the consumer expects from the provider.
Every service or product offered to the consumer must be consistent with the quality expectation in terms of invoice, letterheads, website, promotional materials, environment and packing.
The existing consumers must be looked after very well since they are not more sensitive to the about the price of the product and service as compared to the new consumers who seeks for quality product at fair price.

Place

The NEP must ensure that the products and services they offer to the consumers are always available in the right quantity, in the right place and at the right time. For instance, the NEP must ensure most of the “Blue Collar jobs” are within Egypt. This enables the clients to seek these services in a place which is convenient and appropriate to them. The NEP may apply brick-and-mortar operation which is more application in e-commerce. It is important also to note that the way services and products are displayed to the group of clients and consumers also mean a place. In other words, place is described as a channel to which product and services are delivered to the clients. In the case of the NEP, a place is the environment in which the employers and the employees get interact. Due to advance in technology, job seekers can interact with the potential employers through NEP website as oppose to physical appearance. However, it is important to understand that at some pointing time, the employer and the job seeker interacts physically especially where the employment require physical fitness.

Therefore, the NEP must identify the appropriate channel that the organization can utilize to distribute their service and products to reach out to many potential employers and job seekers within the shortest time possible.

Promotion

Studies have shown that lack of feasible and effective campaign promotion, the organization is likely to be drawn out of the market due to fierce competition. Promotion is the initial step that make most companies to be known by the public prior to attracting any further attention from the consumers. According to Blythe (2012), promotion mix is the process of disseminating message and ideas about the producer and the provider of product and service to the potential consumers through different means. Generally, promotion can be conducted using five different means: direct marketing, public relations (PR), personal selling, sales promotion and advertisement (Blythe, 2012). Therefore, apart from selecting the target group such as unskilled, semi-skilled and work without university degree, the NEP must focus to selecting the promotional tools to make strategic management most successful.

By using one of the five promotion form, the organization is not likely to attract enough attention as required. As a result, the NEP should consider incorporating all the five forms of promotion in order to ensure the best message is delivered to the client effectively. This approach is commonly referred to as “Integrated Marketing Communication”.

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