Identify one product / service from your own business or from another business with which you are familiar.
Write a report about the selected product / service. In your report you should include:
• Current marketing situation with background data on the market, product, competition, and distribution. Keep this discussion brief.
• Market analysis through a SWOT analysis. Make sure to discuss the SWOT analysis adequately.
• Objectives with goals for sales volume, market share and profit. These goals should be realistic but may have to be somewhat hypothetical because of lack of time and absence of market research to provide better ones.
• Marketing strategy with details of the 4Ps (i.e. Product, Place, Price, Promotion) and with justifications based on the above.
• A brief discussion of the Integrated Marketing Communication issues which impact on competitiveness. These issues should be discussed from an implementation point of view.
This assignment is based on the marketing strategy of a company called Helpline which was started by us, in New York. The company is in the service industry and provides various services like payment of bills for the people, courier services and apart from this the company gives financial support like loans to the people and are planning to open their new service that is insurance to the people, the corporate houses as well as the vehicles. The marketing strategies of the company are outlined in the assignment and the integrated communication mix of the company is also highlighted. The company’s current operation as well as the future operation is summarized below.
The company is called the “Helpline”, is a company that is started by me and my friend. The company was started in the year 2012. Initially the company was concentrating only one service. Over the year the company grew from a scratch to a dependable company. The company now provides help to others who want to start their own business (Chen and Chiang, 2011). The company provides services like providing small term loans to the people of the area for starting their own business in return of mortgages. The person needs to pay the interest along with the principle amount to the company every month after a certain time period. The company started with helping out people who are busy in helping them with the payment of the bills like the water bills, telephone bills, and electricity bills. There was another service that is provided by Helpline is a courier service (Uzelac and Zafar, 2006).
Helpline is an innovative as well as creative service provider in the area where it operates. The company was first in the locality as well as in the city. There was no other company which provided this service (Constantinides, 2006). We were offering our services at a low cost, with efficiency and within a short period of time. We have employees who deliver the bills as well as the parcels and other deliveries. The loans are provided in consultation with the people who will give the assurance that they will return the money along with interest. We charge a minimum interest so the people are interested to take the loan from us. We have registered ourselves as a private financing institute and hold the business license. The other services that we do are also for a price that is fair enough for the people to pay.
The people need to repay the loan with in a period of 3-4 years depending on the amount they take, and the amount of interest that they pay every month (Degryse and Ongena, 2001).
The company will provide the service 24×7, regarding the payment of the bills and the courier services. Our company is open all the time and will attend to the need of the people at all time of the day and whenever they require it
Helpline is a company that is operating in the service industry with the aim of giving the service to the people. At this point of time the company have no as such competitor in the area. There are chances that the company will have competitor in the future. We are based in Sunny Side in New York (Gander, 2012). There are many companies in the area that we have approached for our services. There are chances that they will offer to have our services in the future. Apart from the corporate offices, the people in the area have already accepted our services and they are totally dependent on us for the services.
We offer to give our services at the lowest possible cost so that they are affordable to all the people (Goi, 2009). We also give discounts to the people we are our regular clients. The people who take loan form us also have good terms. We follow up the people to check if they are utilizing the money correctly or not. The current market situation is favorable at the moment as the people are satisfied with our services. More over there are no as such competitor at the market in the area.
Though we are new in the market, with only three years of operation, we have grown quite a big within these few years.
Helpline started with the aim to provide help to the people, mainly the people who are busy. There are people who do not have the time to pay the bills by person, so we took up the charge of helping the people (Katsioloudes, Grant and McKechnie, 2007). With the advancement in the technology there ar3e various ways the people can pay their bills, so we started to look for other options to diversify our business. We came up with the delivery service that is the courier services and were successful in it. People were placing orders with us. We are planning to increase the sales of the service; that is widening the area of the service that we provide.
We have started the new section of giving loans to people who wants to start their own business, in return of interest in addition to the principle that has to be paid to us within a stipulated time period. In the next venture we are planning to add another segment to our company (Kola and Akinyele, 2010). We are planning to provide insurance to the people, the corporate sectors and the vehicles. The insurance will be given to people on the basis of the premium that they pay and the duration for which they want the insurance.
In the future we are planning to separate the two wings of the business that is the financial sector and the service sector. The market share is not as much now; we cover a small geographic location. We are opening our new office in New Jersey which is a big step for us (Kotler and Armstrong, 2012).
It is seen that there are demand of these financial services and the people always look for services where the rates are low. We are aware of the fact that we are new in the market, and it will take time for us to make the presence felt, but we are confident from the fact that people have accepted us for the services and are showing interest (Virvilaite, Seinauskiene and Sestokiene, 2011).
Our target customers are the young people mainly the fresh graduates, who have the urge to make it big in life by starting their own business. We provide loans to them. Apart from them, if we find that there are potential customers, then we also consider them (Krstic and Becic, 2011).
Product- As discussed earlier, we are in the service industry, the services that we offer are considered as our core product. We try to provide the service with utmost care and commitment. In the courier services we try to deliver the goods to the people with in time and in cases before time so that the people have faith in us and consider us while having to deliver something to the near and the dear ones (Lane Keller, 2001). Apart from the individual persons, we offer the delivery services to the corporate offices. Our payment of the bills is also open and we continue to do it and keep it open as long as there is demand in the market.
Price- The prices that we charge from the people are low and competitive in the market. We believe that in goodwill of the company and think that the word of mouth has an effective influence on the people. The interest rates against which we offer the loans are not high and are easily payable by the people. The insurance section that we are starting is also for attractive. The premiums are not high and the people will be able to afford it (Marsh, 2011).
Place- we are currently holding our operation in New York and the nearby areas, and we are opening our new location in New Jersey. We are hoping that it will be successful.
Promotion- mainly we are promoting with the help of advertisement in the television as well as newspaper. Apart from this there are hoardings that will display the services that we offer. We believe in word of mouth as the best way of promotion. We rely on that very much (Samli, 2013).
Personal selling
Word of mouth includes the promotion that the consumers of the services do in when they are satisfied with the services. They recommend the service to others when their needs and wants are fulfilled. HELPLINE tries to give good service to the common people as well as the service sectors so that they spread the word to other people (Mihart, 2012). Often employees of HELPLINE will spread the good word for the company so that they are able to sell the loans, insurance to the people. They must mention that their rates are low compared to others and they offer services at a minimum cost.
Social media is becoming an important platform for communicating the message to the people as a large number of people have access to it (Obikeze and Eze, 2013). If one people are benefitted from the services or them like the experience they will talk about it in the social media and share their experience, which will make the services of helpline known to the people. Thus it is an important medium of communication.
We are planning to open the official page of the company in
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/helpline/newyork
Twitter https://Helpline.twitter.com
Our website is www.helpline.net
Our email id is [email protected]
To have a website is important for a business. The company helpline is planning to open a website so that the people, who have less time to come to the office personally in order to collect information about the services, can see the website and collect the necessary information from their home and in the near future they can also place the order over the internet (Otubanjo, 2013). The website will contain all the necessary information regarding the loans and the insurance and the criteria for those.
Business to business partnership is important for helpline since it will make them stronger in the market and they will have more customers. Moreover it will help the company in case of financial crisis and other tough situation (Rajkovic, 2011).
References
Chen, W. and Chiang, A. (2011). Network agility as a trigger for enhancing firm performance: A case study of a high-tech firm implementing the mixed channel strategy. Industrial Marketing Management, 40(4), pp.643-651.
Constantinides, E. (2006). The Marketing Mix Revisited: Towards the 21st Century Marketing. Journal of Marketing Management, 22(3-4), pp.407-438.
Degryse, H. and Ongena, S. (2001). Bank Relationships and Firm Profitability. Financial Management, 30(1), p.9.
Gander, J. (2012). Firm debt structure, firm size and risk volatility in US industrial firms. Applied Financial Economics, 22(5), pp.387-393.
Goi, C. (2009). A Review of Marketing Mix: 4Ps or More?. IJMS, 1(1).
Henry, C. (2002). Kotler’s strategic perspective on the new marketing. Strategy & Leadership, 30(4).
Jiao, Y. (2011). Corporate Disclosure, Market Valuation, and Firm Performance. Financial Management, 40(3), pp.647-676.
Katsioloudes, M., Grant, J. and McKechnie, D. (2007). Social marketing: strengthening companyâ€Âcustomer bonds. Journal of Business Strategy, 28(3), pp.56-64.
Kola, O. and Akinyele, S. (2010). Evaluation of Effectiveness of Marketing Communication Mix Elements in Nigerian Service Sector. Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, 7(2), pp.76-80.
Kotler, P. and Armstrong, G. (2012). Principles of marketing. Boston: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Krstic, I. and Becic, S. (2011). Implementation of marketing strategy: Factor of competitive advantage.Marketing, 42(2), pp.118-126.
Lane Keller, K. (2001). Mastering the Marketing Communications Mix: Micro and Macro Perspectives on Integrated Marketing Communication Programs. Journal of Marketing Management, 17(7-8), pp.819-847.
Marsh, R. (2011). A new company descriptor takes us into a new era. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 28(1).
Mihart, C. (2012). Impact of Integrated Marketing Communication on Consumer Behaviour: Effects on Consumer Decision – Making Process. IJMS, 4(2).
Obikeze, C. and Eze, P. (2013). An Empirical Assessment of the Relationship of Marketing Communication Mix and Performance of Business Organizations. African Research Review, 7(2).
Otubanjo, O. (2013). The Extended Corporate Identity Mix. IJMS, 5(1).
Rajkovic, T. (2011). Innovation Strategies in New Product Development. Frankfurt: Lang, Peter, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften.
Ruskin-Brown, I. (2006). Mastering marketing. London: Thorogood.
Samli, A. (2013). International consumer behavior in the 21st Century. New York, NY: Springer.
Scheiber, S. (2001). Building a successful board-test strategy. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Uzelac, N. and Zafar, S. (2006). Strengthening the link between marketing strategy and financial performance. J Financ Serv Mark, 11(2), pp.142-156.
Virvilaite, R., Seinauskiene, B. and Sestokiene, G. (2011). The Link between Standardization/Adaptation of International Marketing Strategy and Company Performance. EE, 22(1).
Zahay, D. and Griffin, A. (2010). Marketing strategy selection, marketing metrics, and firm performance. Jnl of Bus & Indus Marketing, 25(2), pp.84-93.
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