Introduction
Small businesses are independently
owned and operated businesses by entrepreneurs. They usually require less
capital and less staff. Their net sales and profits are not as much as highly
operated businesses. Small businesses like local grocery shops, medical shops
and But in order to survive they need a strong marketing or promotional
strategies.
Regardless of what the company
sells or does, it’s important to learn about who your consumer is so you can
effectively target them with your promotion strategy.The nature of most people
is if they don’t know the product they won’t buy it. The more they see the
product through social media or television advertisements the chance of buying
that product is high. Like wise a small business being established will not
easily reach to success point. The owner should implement the most effective
promotional strategies for that particular business.
Marketing strategies are one time
process, they have to be unique and different each year. Now according to the research
article by (Alexey, 2015) when a company
improves its promotional activities they gain more customers and increase
sales.
Promotional strategies
Events: these small businesses can organize, sponsor or participate
in fair exhibitions, college promotions, and charity programs where they can
directly interact with the customers. Through these kind of events they can
provide an opportunity to know about customer feelings and experience of the
product.
Website: this promotional tool is efficient, cost effective and can
be reached easily by any age category. Even for a small business, they can
create their own website and promote their business. Being on social media is
the most effective way of reaching to the customers easily.
Direct-Marketing: this is also a reliable tool as there will be no middlemen
and they can reach to the target customers directly. It avoids excess cost of
post, direct mailing and tele calling.
Advertising: this the most frequently used promotional tool by many
small businesses. They believe that this is the best medium for promoting their
products as it’s flexible and they are selective in nature. Advertising is also
cheaper considered to other types.
Sales Promotion: the owners of the small business can offer
different choices on purchase of a particular product; like discount, price
off, gift coupons, vouchers, free samples etc. this is a direct approach but it
is for a short term. Many of them provide these kind of offers on different occasions
like ‘Eid, different festive, new year, Christmas etc.
Market positioning of “Rene”
In order to understand the
direction of promotional strategy, there is a need to reveal what position the
company occupies on the market and in customers’ minds. According to Ries &
Trout (1981), the company’s market positioning refers to its unique position in
the audience’s minds, connected to a very specific and differentiating set of
associations.
“Rene” positions itself as a high
quality product provider and sets a relatively high price on it. It is obvious
from the map that “Rene” takes a distinct place among the competitors on the
market and in the customer’s mind. Therefore the promotion strategy has to be
individualized and focused on its uniqueness and high quality of the product.
Research data collection and Analysis
In the article selected the whole
process of choosing data collection method and implementing is based on
Mirola’s (2014) lecture notes on “Planning and Implementing Marketing
Research”. For the research of “Rene” the company they selected, the
qualitative research method is selected by using questionnaire and personal
interviews for data collection.
For the first question only 24 people
answered it. Among them 10 were regular customers, which is almost half of
them. There were 4 people who visit the shop 1-2 times a month. Having a small
research group it can be said that either the company is highly ranked or there
are more strong competitors.
Question 2 is very important to
know how to attract and target the customers. But here none of the promotional
techniques attracted the customers. It shows that 14 respondents attracted to
the way they displayed that is the showcase. 4 of them said they knew about the
shop from internet. This means that they need to concentrate more about
promoting their business on social media.
In question 3 when asked whether it
is convenient to receive information about sales and upcoming offers via sms,
almost all of them (12 people) said yes. According to the research article
customers who were at the shop first time said that it will be more comfortable
form them to get information on e-mail. But one customer wanted all the
information to be received through a personal call.
Question 4 shows the effectiveness
of the company’s website. Majority of them do not use it. But there are 6-7
people who check it at least once a month. This clearly shows that they need to
upgrade their website and need to include website promotions in their strategic
plan.
Question 5 was about customer
feedback about the shop assistant’s performance. The customers have responded
it with only 4 and 5, this was a result they didn’t expect. So this means that
the representatives of “Rene” knows how to keep their customers satisfied at a
highest rate.
Conclusion
The various constraints have shown
that small firms also can use their own promotional strategies according to
their target customer. In some places small businesses gain a special position
in the industrial structure because of their ability to utilize labor and
create employment. Therefore small it has become a source of employment for
those in need. Other than that the small businesses need to work on the discussed
promotion plans and keeping their customers satisfied.
References
Alexey, A. (2015). Promotional plan for the small
business company in conditions of current crisis. Case company: RENE.
Retrieved from Thesus:
https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/101071/Antonov_Alexey.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y