HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL: BALNCING ONLINE AND OFFLINE MARKETING

CASE ANALYSIS

BY
SUNAPPA UMA SHANKAR
191181

1.What are the important problems confronting this firm? This includes
anticipating problems before they occur, so the firm can take steps to prevent
them as well as identifying existing problems.

They are few problems which the HBS is facing in balancing the offline and online
marketing strategies.
a. The investment in online marketing is high when compared to offline mediums and
that out of the target revenue which breckling set they did not balance the budget
where their offline mediums are doing great in recruiting the candidates and was
within the targeted revenue sudden shift to online marketing was successful some
part.
b. In the HBS focused programs courses the online marketing strategies few are
unsuccessful and didn’t generate much enrolments i.e. contextual advertising in which
the cost per enrolments is 10 X higher than the other online strategies i.e. $10,101
where display advertising, e mails, and paid search are below $1500 .

2. What information do you have that is useful for addressing those problems? What
information would you like that you do not have?

All the online advertisements and some offline ads are tracked which shows the results
of the cost per enrolments that information is enough to identify the performance of each
strategies. and, the targeted revenue which they set at 8%. Berckling said that he wants to
relocate the budget spending on both the offline and online marketing in 2010 these make me
to think that he did not satisfied with the budget that was spent on both the marketing
strategies.
3. What are the different solutions to these problems? What are the strengths and
weaknesses of each solution?

a. They need to balance the amount of budget majority is allocated to online

marketing as they out of budget for the offline marketing i.e. broachers and print
media where they are a bit efficient than online marketing in generating leads in
2010 they need to allocate the budget based on the performance of the strategies it
helps them to save some budget where they can invest in mail, print media, and
display advertising which generated more enrolments .
Strengths: some budget going to be saved
Weakness: might get chances of increasing in generating leads through online
marketing
b. They need to relocate the budget allocation as they need to decrease the budget on
contextual advertising which is not efficient in getting enrolments and prospects
and need to spend that budget on direct mail brothers where it consists lesser cost
per enrolments and performs better in generating leads as most of the enrolments
are generated through mails.
Strengths: helps to generate leads at lesser cost per enrolments
Weakness: we cannot track all the leads through mails.

4) Which solution would you choose and why is it better than the others?

I would choose the budget allocation to both the marketing strategies should be changed
because some strategies are performed poor in generating enrolments where they should
spend most of the budget on the strategies which are generating higher enrolment it helps to
get better ROI based on the cost per enrolment and the total enrolments .

5.How would you implement this solution?

Before allocating the budget based on the target revenue, I will spend the budget based on the
results which I got from the 2009 report I spend less amount on contextual advertising and
direct mails and relocate that amount on display ads, paid media and paid search which are
having a potential to generate leads.
6. if a firm face several problems what are the relationships between them and between
the solutions you have chosen?

Firm wanted to relocate the budget allocation in next year so my solution going to helps them
in saving the budget and focusing on key strategies where majority of the enrolments are
generating, and the solution will help to limit the spending and gets better profits.