marketing-analysis

Email :- [email protected]

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Topic: - ways in which small businesses typically market themselves

and my recommendations on how a small business could improve

their marketing approach.

Author: - Suresh Singh

Queen's email :- [email protected]

Market analysis Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland

mailto:[email protected]


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Introduction: - Marketing plays crucial influence in start-ups and small businesses but can’t

guarantee return on investments. In this paper, I will display marketing approaches for small and

medium enterprises. Marketing approaches vary with industry types, so it would be an injustice to

standardise approaches for all small businesses. Here I will shortlist and analyse businesses

marketing strategies and their execution. I will also include my recommendations to show

advancement in the approaches.

My approach is broadly classified in two categories namely long term and short term [1] [2].

Selection of these categories based on the requirement of the project and willingness of the

company. It depends on the company; how passionately organisation wants to classify marketing

strategies, audience, code of conduct and outcomes with which the marketing team deal will

formulate a marketing plan [1] [2].

Long Term: - This approach is considered as foundation of the marketing strategies in the companies

and consists of many small targets [1] [2] [3]. Long term strategies show vision of the company. In

this approach; small, medium and large enterprises, first invest in understanding of customer’s

requirements, expectations, demand and how company and its product is going to fit or fulfil

growing demand and expectations in their related business[3][4].

Short Term: - This is the sub section of the long term plans but act like an individual identity in the

marketing strategy [2] [3]. Generally small and medium industries adopt sub section of the long term

plans (Short term) to generate quick revenue [4] [5]. These approaches may be big win in short time.

From here, we will know-how small businesses use marketing strategies to achieve long term

benefits.

Survey: - Enterprise survey shows that 15% companies in the world conduct surveys for their

product marketing [5] [12]. These surveys provide precise statistics of the market trends, products

and consumer behaviour; but taking out useful picture from the survey is still a big challenge for

small businesses [12]. So it’s highly recommended that surveys must be done in precise informative,

creative and communicative mode.

Advertisement: - Advertisement is one of the prime mechanisms for the marketing agents. This is

thoroughly used in all set of projects and industries. I would like to classify advertisement in four

sections.

1) Local Radio: - Study shows 3 million listeners, listen radio every day in Ireland while 53% listeners

of this total audience prefer to tune their local or regional radio [21]. This study also reveals,

entertaining radio advertisements attract more customers to the businesses than simple

advertisements and exponentially increased sales by 10% of the businesses [13] [14] [21]. This is a

good medium to target local urban consumers, but before investing in radio advertisement,

businesses have to make sure; selected radio station must have reach to their target audiences and

their advertisement must be creative enough to create buzz in the consumer.

2) Local or National Newspaper: - Statistics from “2011” shows "5.2 million" newspapers get sold

every week but recent marketing trend presents decline in print media sale while online reader has

been increased [7][22]. These statistic shows, which medium of newspaper advertisement is more

beneficial for the businesses. In my opinion, businesses must check newspaper reputation and


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regular customers of the newspaper before investing in newspaper advertisement. This could play

critical role when company has to target some specific group of customers.

3) Digital Socialization (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc):- Digital Socialization is the modern

centralised marketing platform that not only provides interactive advertisements while also assist to

target social consumers [15]. This is branded as essential social connecting medium. [15]. Research

shows social media generates 70% of the leads [15] [16]. This figure is too big to avoid but

businesses have to make sure they are targeting right geographical and group of people in the social

media [8] [15] [16]. In this era, social media is too big and vague, so chances are very high that

company is not reaching to its potential customers. But businesses can overcome this fear by using

social media advertisement (Facebook, Twitter etc) statistics. Businesses have to highly concentrate

on the statistics of these platforms and worked accordingly to improve their performance in

marketing and revenue [10] [15] [6]. The advantage of social media advertising over print media is

you can be very specific about who sees your ad, what age, interest and gender and even specify the

time of day your ad appears. This is not possible with print media.

4) Videos and YouTube channel: - Statistics show that YouTube has 4 billion views per day and top

MNCs have boosted their investments on videos [8] [9]. These stats show potential reach of

YouTube to people, here we should not forget before YouTube how video used to be so expensive

that it was out of reach of most small companies, now with new software and smart phones, making

a company video is accessible to anyone. Videos are better medium to show “why company's

product is better than others and how it is going to fulfil customer’s goal?” [8] [9] [10]. It also crystal

clear unique selling point of the companies. But we have to remember, customers only buy new

product when they feel, they will fulfil their goal with the product and videos help them to

understand exactly why they should buy this product and how this product is going to bring change

in their life [15] [17]. Here, I will recommend to focus on video content marketing so that it could

reach to as many people as possible [8]. Small businesses have to specially take care of this

deficiency in their marketing approach to gain momentum of their video filled marketing.

Maintaining videos content and creativity with sharing philosophy would definitely help institution

to get customers attention.

Email Marketing: - This practice is used by businesses to familiarise their products and establish

their brand value [10] [11]. Recent study shows most of the businesses prefer to stay with email

marketing and don't want to cut their allocated budget for this segment [7] [11]. Study also shows,

sent emails have only 21% open rate and 2% click through rate while emails also getting caught in

spam [11]. But on the other side email and text messages are the most direct method of getting your

message in front of the customer, it does not require them to look for your product or service [11].

In my opinion, companies must use email marketing services that can provide detailed statistics of

their marketing campaign [10] [11] [23]. Businesses must also ask for comparative campaign

demographics from their email service provider. This will help companies to overcome their

operation weakness and improve click rate.

Sponsorship: - Sponsoring local events or team is one of the favoured marketing techniques for

small and medium businesses [5] [18]. Sponsoring local events; directly expose companies to the

community and delivers community welfare message to the local people [18]. While sponsoring a

local team could lead more acknowledgements because sports team travels different county and


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regions with in the country. It does nationwide advertising without much expense [18]. Despite of

many advantages, I would recommend before sponsoring a team, businesses should know audience

of the team; because sponsoring team which don't have company's potential customers would lead

no revenue to the business.

Gift Offers: - These type of offers help to create enthusiasm in the people to try product at least

once and also generate fast revenue on investment [13] [15]. Trail offers or tastings in supermarket

can be very effective for market research and testing new products [15]. It’s a low cost method of

advertising and people like to get something for free. It can help build brand awareness [13] [15]

[20]. But, businesses have to watch, trend of the customers’ behaviour after using or buying their

product. Businesses have to improve their services and quality as per customers’ feedback to stay

long in the market [13]. This will send significant message to the customers as well and ultimately

help small and medium businesses to get more customers and revenue.

Customer Service: - Customer service contributes in execution of the marketing strategies and fills

the gap between marketing and sales department [19]. This is one of the main sections of the

marketing groundwork [18] [19]. It helps in delivering messages directly to the customers. On the

other hand, happy customers also do word of mouth advertising and give positive feedback about

company. In broader view, it generates significant impact on overall performance of small and

medium enterprises. Research shows getting new customer is far tough than maintaining existing

customers [19]. In my opinion, I will recommend small businesses must invest on customer service

so that more happy customers can come out from the company. Companies can also use a small

feedback form (in case of no customer service budget), this will assist companies to target more

optimized geographic location and large group of customers.

Website: - This is unquestionable mandatory requirement for all types of industry. Small and

medium companies must have a website with concise informative content [14] [15]. Companies

must use advance technology (e.g. Google analytics etc) to track their visitors location and their

activity on the website. This collection of information will help them to know, from where they are

getting traffic on their website, which part of the website is more visited by customers etc. This

information would help small companies to do more advertisement in traffic generated geographical

locations and improve website performance.

Conclusion: - Marketing medium and strategies can be twisted and fixed as per business

requirement, but generating revenue using marketing techniques is the biggest challenge for the

small businesses [1] [2] [3] [4]. It has been seen, products failed despite of its best marketing

campaign, so strategically putting everything on marketing plan would not help small businesses to

run for long time [6] [7]. Companies have to find their unique selling points and take their customers

very sincerely. In the last but not least, I would like to say Coordination of marketing strategies,

unique selling points, customer service and sales must be key parameter for small businesses.


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