Marketing Strategy in Business
Marketing strategy centers on customer satisfaction as its main objective. It is a process through which an organization commits its limited resources in increasing product awareness so as to achieve high sales and sustain competitive advantage. Marketing strategies vary according to the nature of businesses. There are some strategies which are expensive and only suites big businesses while some are cheap and appropriate for small scale businesses. Types of marketing strategies include push and marketing strategies. Push marketing involves introducing new brands which are not yet known in the marketing. They include products whose presence in the market is not yet known by the potential consumers. In pull strategy, the consumers are aware of the presence of the brands in the market and are eager to know more about the product brands. Sidetrack Computer Tech firm will use both push and pull marketing strategies in order to achieve a marketing mix that will powerfully attract customers towards buying its products (Belch, 2008).
Push marketing
Since the new products and services of the firm are not yet known in the market, the firm will engage push strategy to create awareness of its products to potential customers. Through this strategy, the company will seek to acquire leads and concentrate on converting the leads into loyal supporters. The company will engage the push strategy just for a short term since it is only meant to introduce the new products to the potential buyers. The strategy will involve:
- Emailing: the company will create and maintain a data base of email addresses for potential customers. This will enable the company to push email advertisements to the potential customers. This method is cost-effective and is expected to generate more sales.
- Creating incentives: giving incentives will attract more customers. The company realizes the potential impacts of products promotion based on incentives. The company intends to give commissions for a limited period to customers who will be buying its products and services. Loyal customers will also be rewarded on commission basis whenever they introduce the company’s products to their friends and relatives or whenever they bring new clients.
- Paid adverts: the company has set aside funds to be used in paid advertisements. There are many types of paid advertisements that the company will consider. These will include print, radio, televisions, billboards, posters, and brochures.
- Partnership with other businesses: it is important to create contacts with other businesses which may have access to new markets. These businesses will be those that require computer products and services and/or ready to help in supplying the company’s computer products. The business partners will be paid referral fees for every referral made for the purchase of computer products and services from Sidetrack Computer Tech Company (Lake, 2010; Belch, 2008).
Pull strategy
Sidetrack Computer Tech will later involve the use of pull strategy in promoting its products. This will come after the company brands will have been in the market for sometime and well known to potential consumers. Advertisements will be designed in such a manner that will attract potential customers to seek the products and services. The company will set its products at a higher standard to maintain customer loyalty. This strategy will use:
- Sales promotion: the company will use various sales promotion methods. These will include price discounting where discounts will be calculated on the normal prices according to the number of products purchased. Coupons will be used to encourage repeat purchases; there will be certain gifts to be given to customers who purchase the Sidetrack Computer Tech products; these gifts will include free software, free data cables for peripheral connections and compact discs.
- Word of mouth referral: this is a third party advertising and is relatively cheap. The sales representative has been trained to talk to customers and inform them to refer their friends, organizations and institutions about the company’s products. We will also organize events like free stations for free video games and sponsor charity activities which will offer the company’s representatives good opportunities to explain more about the computer products.
- Customer relationship management: we will seek to attract new and maintain the existing customers through improving the interactions of the company and its clients. This will involve quick services, after sales services for a limited period of time, and solving customers’ complains.
Marketing research planned
The company plans to carry out a market research in order to determine the number of competitors already in the market. The research will also focus on finding consumer behavior in response to different advertising strategies. The research will be done using quantitative method of data collection method; the design will include determining the research purpose, what to be learnt, data collection, evaluation, analysis, and communication of the research results (McQuarrie, 2006). The cost of research will be as follows:
Items Costs in $
20 hired field workers @130 2600
2 data analysts @530 1060
Material and logistics 670
TOTAL 4330
Ongoing cost
Currently, the company has employed forty employees who are already being paid monthly salaries. Amongst them are five executive managers for various departments and the rest are subordinate staff members spread in different departments. The company already pays a total of $11,000 and $140 for electric bills on monthly basis. The company also bought a building for its operations at $30,000.
Reference
Belch, G. (2008). Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communication Perspective. New York: McGraw-Hill
Lake, L. (2010). First Steps to Marketing a Small Business. Web.
McQuarrie, F.E. (2006). The market research toolbox: A concise guide for beginners. New York: SAGE.