Lean Six Sigma approach in Marketing
The City of Kawartha Lakes was facing discrepancies in matters of marketing and advertising when it came to informing the city’s residents about the programs and services that were offered by the City. This was a matter of concern as the city mainly relied on tourism and improper advertising or branding could mean reduced revenue.
Lean Six Sigma approach in Marketing saw chances of improvement in the existing process, and DMADV was applied in order to come up with channelized goals that would follow a corporate branding mechanism.
The SIPOC map revealed that there was no system to understand and gather the actual requirements of the customers. Additionally, most of the marketing and advertising expenditures were never above $5000. Time and staff involvement was also much more than necessary.
Further FMEA (failure mode and effects analysis) identified dissatisfied and also misinformed customers. 47% of the time was spent in activities that did not add any value to the system.
During the analysis phase customers (both residents and tourists) were asked about their preferences and the data was ranked in order of priority. This DMADV technique involved tools such QFD which bridged the gap between the current situation and the actual need.
While Lean Sigma in Marketing brought out the cause of most of the inconsistencies, it was essential to design a system that could eradicate the issue. While designing, it was essential to eliminate redundancy, increase the ROI, while maintain the city’s laws and bylaws.
With the DFSS design approach in Marketing, approximately $90,000 was saved in hard costs, and there was an immediate improvement of 20% in productivity. DMADV ensured positioning a central staff to establish a consistent branding, while ensuring both the customer’s and City’s standards are met.
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