UMC - How Can I Improve My Report

UMC Report. How can I improve my submission?
Getting it right
Step 1 - Interpreting the brief
The first aspect of analysis starts with the title. In this case it is clearly a piece about the
marketing of an organization plus recommendations related to digital marketing. So I’d
expect an introduction and background to the organization, a section on their current
marketing, but there needs to be detail on the recommendations.
Also a marking scheme was provided. Students are always advised to follow the marking
scheme in order to ensure they have the right content in the right proportions to score the
highest marks from the specified 2500 words. Let’s “drill down” into what was offered.
Step 2 - The Introduction/background and marketing definition (worth 10%)
You must consider the marking scheme when generating reports. With a weighting of 10%
we’d expect circa 250-300 words so don’t skimp on this. You need to provide a strong,
succinct introduction:
 What is the organization? What market(s) are they in? What do they actually do?
 It is too easy to offer a generic, descriptive element on companies. You do not score
marks for describing a company.
 You must grab the reader’s attention. So offer future forecasts? Some aspects, say
on competitors.
 Is there a definition(s) of marketing? And are these referenced?
Step 3 – Demonstration of knowledge and understanding of the chosen organisation’s

marketing activities (worth 25%)
At 25% of the total I’d expect 600-700 words to be dedicated to this section to do it justice.
This needs to use external secondary information to demonstrate what the organization does
in terms of their marketing activities. Who are their customers?
It will be easy to see who had understood the core subject matter and those who clearly had
not put the time or effort into their studies. How can you demonstrate what an organization
currently does without checking? You will need references for this.
Step 4 – Use of theory and application to the product/organisation (worth 25%)
Use theory to help you show your answers. This needs references and use of appropriate
sources; Wikipedia / MarketingTeacher.com / Tutoor2U / etc. are NOT appropriate sources
at university level. They’re not even appropriate sources at GCSE so should be avoided.
Take the theory used in the module and select what is relevant for your organization. This
may be different to someone else’s on the same module who has a different organization.
We would expect to see 600-700 words of relevant theory used: this will come from the
concepts on the module, the core text and your wider reading.
 The brief was clearly about the marketing activities so make sure you have used
theory to evaluate these.
 Avoid ‘dumping’ of irrelevant aspects into answers e.g. SWOTs, Ansoff etc. This
module is clearly about tactical marketing and NOT strategic marketing so why use
these models? Also if we want an environmental analysis it would have been clearly
stated in the brief.
 Don’t try ‘guessing’ at the answers and as the teaching team have been stating
throughout the semester, the use of core knowledge/theory and
demonstrating/application, is now required.
The seminar activities were designed to enable you to undertake the assessment. This
raises some questions about attendance/engagement.
Step 5 – Evaluation of information gathered; Conclusion/ recommendation (worth

25%)
This is a key section: what does this all mean? You need to interpret what you have found
and then make recommendations for their digital marketing. If the conclusion/
recommendation section is worth 25% you should offer enough content to garner marks. At
25% of the total we’d expect 550-600 words to be dedicated to this section as a minimum.
It is all too easy to offer lightweight, generic conclusions often being half a page long and in
the worst cases only a line of two.
 Conclusions should summarise the key issues of the report and justify why they
are the key aspects.
 Do not include new material in the conclusions that does not appear previously in the
report. Your conclusions should be based on what you have found
The recommendations should develop the conclusions into what could/should be done in
future.
 All recommendations should come with a discussion of any obvious issues.

 For example if you recommend a digital advertising campaign you should suggest
where/when and also acknowledge issues such as cost. Even at this stage you can
use support (e.g. academic theory and/or evidence).

Step 6 – Format (structure, spelling, referencing) (worth 15%)
 This is a professional report – make it look like one!

 You should have a professional-looking cover page
 Please ensure your Cover Page has the key features e.g. the date, word count etc.
You need to include your seminar tutor name on your cover page.
 There should be an Executive Summary and Contents Page before you even start.
 The Executive Summary should come before the contents page. It should feature
why the research is of interest, what’s involved, what are the key findings and should
finish with the key recommendations. In short it should be a one-page précis of the
whole piece: no more than 300 words
 Pagination should not start until the main body of the report, so “1.0 Introduction”
should be on page 1.
 This is a report, not an essay. As marketers we don’t write essays! This may be
acceptable on other Courses say in the humanities however in Business Schools we
expect reports and attention to detail.
 Diagrams should be applied rather than generic. They must have a Fig No’s and a
title.
 There should be a correctly constructed bibliography showing your references so
please provide one.
As a reader we’re not interested in what you ‘feel’ about a product, marketing activity or the
organisation. At university students are asked to become much more analytical with
subject/theoretical content and application, and sound basic skills are required to
demonstrate this effectively.

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UMC Report. How can I improve my submission?

Step 1 - Interpreting the brief

Step 2 - The Introduction/background and marketing definition (worth 10%)

Step 3 – Demonstration of knowledge and understanding of the chosen organisation’s

Step 4 – Use of theory and application to the product/organisation (worth 25%)

Step 5 – Evaluation of information gathered; Conclusion/ recommendation (worth

 All recommendations should come with a discussion of any obvious issues.

 This is a professional report – make it look like one!

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