A business plan is an important tool for the success of any planned business activity in an organization. Advance Digital Inc, requires a business plan that will assists in marketing their digital products in New Jersey, and internationally. To start with the company’s description is given followed by the environmental analysis. Secondly, the procedure involves coming up with the market objectives that define the goals of the organization. After deciding on the objectives, the plan includes the target market, which explains the most targeted customers and the marketing areas of interest. Product and brand positioning is also a critical factor. This assists the managers and entrepreneurs in making decisions on the amount of funds to allocate for the implementation and management of the plan. The plan also comes up with recommendations that the company should adopt to make sure that they achieve the set objectives.
Introduction
Organizations involved in digital marketing always seek an effort to communicate, promote, distribute, and sell their products and services via the internet. Internet marketing offers a perfect opportunity to explore the upcoming markets, introduce new services and create a stiff competition among the top companies both locally and internationally (Chaffey et al, 2009). The following is a marketing plan for Advanced Digital Inc. Advance Digital Inc is a media online company that provides organizations with all the advertising needs they require in order to improve their business strategies so that they can achieve their marketing goals. The company’s nationwide reach incorporated with the qualified staff that has a lot of knowledge on the local markets assists in delivering quality services to their customers. Moreover, the company gives an opportunity to consumers all over the world who have the ability to use online marketing services and are ready to buy their products and services (Insideview, 2012). In order to improve its business operations and provide more advanced services to its customers, Advance Digital Inc should develop a perfect business plan that takes care of the present day business environment.
The following is a list of products and services offered by Advance Digital Inc.
Products
Projectors (LCD and Overhead Projectors)
Computers (Desktops and Notebooks)
Photo papers
Advance Digital Inc. operates 11 news and information websites for consumers and businesses in Jersey City, New Jersey. Many organizations rely on internet in making their advertisements and promotions. This gives the company an opportunity to acquire more customers through developing a perfect plan that will outline all its competitors. According to Armstrong and Kotler (2009), marketing involves developing business objectives and achieving them through utilizing the available resources, and going deep into the business environment in order to understand the customer needs and requirements. Providing good suggestions to Advance Digital Inc. provide the company with an opportunity to achieve more profits through provision of excellent services to willing organizations. Moreover, the company requires a e-marketing plan that addresses the following issues. Market awareness, target markets, company products and services positioning, and services pricing plan. If Advance Digital Inc capitalizes on market growth through increasing customer based retention processes the company will be in a better position to achieve its goals and objectives. On the other hand, the growth of a business depends on the number of customers, and the company’s ability to retain and give them worthy services (Gay, Charles and Esen, 2008).
Aims and objectives
The main aim of developing the business plan is to position Advance Digital Inc Company as an overall digital provision company in the whole of New Jersey through offering quality goods and services.
To accomplish the above aim, some objectives are set that must be analyzed throughout the discussion. According to Fill (2005), an organization that communicates its business objectives makes the employees not only concentrate on sales but also other operations that enable the company gain a competitive advantage among others. The objectives are;
1. To be an excellent provider of all ICT solutions through the provision of quality products and services to the institution and organizations.
2. To be the overall supporter fro whole of teaching, learning programs, and knowledge development.
3. To create a team of skilled staff, with the responsibility, commencement, motivation, and high ethic through training and education.
4. Findings and Analysis
For the success of every business plan, the company should put more focus on the environment since it plays great role. In analyzing the business environment, the issues of external and internal environment come into being. The external environments pose threats and opportunities to a company thus, assists in determining the weaknesses present in an organization. While responding to various environmental factors, Advance digital Inc should set strategic options that assist in countering the environmental factors affecting the company growth. On the other hand, they could be negative environmental factors that present threats to the business, for example, competition. Strategic options present alternative plans of the business in which creative actions needed (Artur, Thomson, and Gamble, 2010).
The internal environment composes of the issues that affect the operations of an organization that come from within. Analysis of the external environment enables the company design a perfect strategy that will see it through its competitors. This depicts weaknesses and strengths for a business to participate actively in the international market. Multinational business analysis, on the other hand, outlines the potentiality of the business to gain from the market participation. The analysis involves the company’s strategic levers such as marketing, location and product, and organization analysis such as culture, people, management and structure. Knowledge of the industry’s micro and macro environment is very important in developing a vision and mission statement (Burkhart & Reuss, 1993). These are the company strength and weaknesses. Below is an analysis of the environmental factors for Advance Digital Inc.
Economy
New Jersey’s current economic recession has affected the country’s economy very much. According to New Jersey Department of labor and Workforce Development (2010), the country recorded fewer revenues between the years 2008 and 2009 due to the migration of people to countries where the economy was stable. To account for this, Advance Digital Inc should carry out their processes well and assists in stabilizing the nation’s economy in order to attract more foreign buyers. The following business plan should assists the country improve its GDP by 0.2%.
Technology
Technology keeps advancing every day requiring managers to be informed on the new technologies available. The company should focus on innovations that are according to the current technology, and are capable of accepting future changes. On the other hand, the advancement in the use of social networking sites should assist the organization in carrying out its marketing plans through advertisements and promotions.
Society
Society plays a big role in the improvement of an organization. The society has known the advantages associated with e-learning making Advance Digital Inc improve on its processes so as to offer education to people online while at their homes. The society also depicts the amount of customers that a company can have therefore, organizing events that stimulate people in the society increases chances of having a big market.
Strategy formulation
The company should focus on selling instructional technology products, and provide quality services to customers. On the other hand, the company focuses on supplying learning materials to schools and institutions of higher learning in order to improve their education delivering processes. The most common brand names used by the company are NEC, SHARP, PANASONIC, MITSUBISHI, INTEL, SONY and CANON. Creating a good business strategy is very crucial for success on every company willing to grow. In developing a business plan strategy, determining the source of problems is very essential. An organization comprises of three segments namely; people, processes, and culprits. Most companies perform an analysis that aids in market entry strategies and formulation. Strategy formulation involves the analysis of the market strategy segmentation, target market, and product positioning (Lewis and Slack, 2003).
Market segmentation
The company should make use of the Ansoff’s strategic planning to design its marketing strategy. The Ansoff strategic option takes care of the current market situation and the future market situation. In Advance Digital, the current market comprises of many competitors like Apple Inc, who provide high quality computer systems and accessories. This poses a great threat to the company’s market growth since the competitors are known for many years. To counter the above, Advance Digital should come up with more technologically advanced products that are more efficient and customer pocket friendly. According to Kumar (2009), a company should formulate marketing processes that are in line with the present business environment, and aim at achieving the company’s set objectives. Setting up future business strategies will assist the company in defeating the competitors and improving their operations all over the city.
In addition, the company should hire qualified and knowledgeable staff that has the capacity of delivering quality products and services to customers. This enables the company increase its sales margin and improve on the amount of revenue achieved. On dealing with the current market, Advance Digital should come up with business targets for the coming years. In doing so, the management plans for organic growth of the company through making joint ventures with other major companies like Microsoft Inc. According to Peter and Donnelly (2006), the Ansoff’s strategy equals marketing objectives when an organization keeps in track all activities related to quality performance. Advance Digital should adopt a marketing structure that contains all elements required in undertaking need analysis of the market share. In so doing, the adopted strategy assists in segmentation of the potential market of the organization products that help in analyzing the needs, and formulation of measures that the company wishes to adopt. .Marketing segmentation strategy helps businesses to concentrate and utilize the available resources and opportunities to realize profits and become competitive in the market (Armstrong and Kotler, 2008).
Target market
All business in different sectors performs an analysis that focuses on market entry strategies formulation in order to hit the target market. The target markets for Advance Digital Inc are: University and colleges, Schools, private companies, and government sector. According to Richard & Marcic (2008), the market, cost, competitive advantage and the government policies forms the driving factors to winning in the business world. In planning for the target market, understanding customer lifestyle is very important. Taking an example of the products offered by Advance Digital Inc, most customers in different institutions prefer equipments that are efficient and easy to carry. The company produces notebooks that are easy to carry, apart from containing all the necessary applications that a normal desktop has. On the other hand, the planning for the target market requires an organization to carry out a research on the ground level aiming at gathering information from the potential customers. Responding to customer issues and queries go along the way in achieving customer satisfaction; thus, in attracting and retaining of customers. It is easier to satisfy and delight customers when their true and perceived needs are known than when they are unknown (Hair, 2008). The calculations for the total target market potential for the year 2013 are shown in table 1. The company expects more customers from the university, colleges and schools, as opposed to private companies and government sector.
Customer
Number (per month)
Market Purchase
Payment Sales
University and College
Private Company
Government sector
Products and services positioning
The ideas generated by the company about the product are sorted out in line with the results of the research. The ideas found to meet the desires of the target market are then adopted by the company and used for the product development (Khanna, Palepu, and Sinha, 2005). The company needs to display and arrange their products with a lot of creativity and nicely places in order to attract more customers and students from various institutions. The company produces famous products that many students use in their studies. On the other hand, the company should aim at provision of quality services to customers in order to encourage them to come again as many times as possible. All efforts and activities in a business should have unity and focus on giving customers what they demand. If customers prefer to have constancy in service, the business should ensure that, if the customers are price sensitive, the businesses should offer fair prices, if customers focus, or are delighted more on reliability and variety, then the businesses should unify its efforts and resources toward delivering that. Businesses operate to attain growth through profits; thus, the operations should be cost effective (Linton & Donnely, 2009).
Price strategies
Advance Digital Inc. should charge appropriate prices for the high-quality products and services offered by the company. The prices should be dependent on the competitors’ prices. When the company competes prices with the rivals, they get into a better position to attract the targeted customers in a convenient way. On the other hand, the company could risk offering low prices in order to attract price sensitive customers to purchase their goods and use their services. While gaining competitive advantage, companies perform many processes while undertaking their daily business operations. The most important factor of all is ensuring that customers are fully satisfied with the quality of products and services offered. According to Brassington, & Pettitt (2007), satisfied customers always frequent a company, and in return encourage their friends to visit the company since their products and services are customer friendly.
In order to improve their sales on schools, universities and colleges, the company could offer special prices to these sectors. On the other hand, the company could offer various discounts to customers depending on the type of purchase made. Quality discounts will be offered to those customers who buy products in large volumes, while seasonal discounts will be offered when a customer makes seasonal purchases. For example, purchase for school equipments and company equipments.
Promotion strategy
Undertaking promotions in a company is very important since it helps in informing all customers about products and services offered. The aim of carrying out promotion strategies is to persuade, influence and encourage customers to purchase and use the company products and services (Suttle, 2012). The company’s promotion strategy will depend on the media, pamphlets distribution, and use of banners.
Advertising
The company should make use of media in carrying out various advertisements for its products. The most appropriate methods to use are the newspapers, radio, and the internet. All the advertisements should include the company name, physical address, and phone numbers for easier access and communication. Moreover, the company will open a website where customers can easily view their products and services.
Posters
Use of posters is very efficient since they are open for every person to see. Posters are placed in strategic places like institution notice boards, on billboards along the major highways, and in various locations along the roads. The posters will also act as an exhibition facility for the company.
Implementation
When an organization has full details concerning the marketing characteristics of iits business, it falls in a better position to implement all its planned activities. The company should look for critical risk factors and critical success factors while planning for the implementation strategies. The strategies adopted are determined by various factors related to the competitors’ response to the industry, sales projections, suppliers, business location, and distributors (Bangs & David, 2011). The implementation of Advance Digital Inc business plan involves two stages. The scheduled tasks will be for the marketing executives and sales assistants.
Tasks and responsibilities
Marketing executives.
Analysis of the market environment and find the good marketing plan for the company.
Managing and developing dynamic and strategic new business program for the company.
Implementing new business plan to increase revenue streams by developing major International and domestic corporate clientele.
Conducts intelligence studies and competitors' activities and provide market reports to the board.
Finding out a way to improve the selling and services and try to get a new idea and make sure the strategy can be achieve.
Identify the target market to the certain group of buyers and have a good communication skill with the customers.
Sales assistants.
Give information to marketing executive about customer wants.
Deal directly with the customers when customers come in the shop.
Collect information about customer's complaint.
Advice customer in making choice for the product.
Receive payment from the customers.
Make records for daily sales.
Show good attitude for example is customer friendly.
Recommendations
Advance Digital Inc should focus on giving customers quality products and services. In doing so the following recommendations are necessary. First, the company should formulate strategies focusing on the following main issues:
Increasing sales, market share, and return on investments.
Maintaining customer satisfaction, company image, and becoming consistent with these strategies.
Improving profitability.
The strategy should fall under the current marketing requirements; take care of the future resources, capabilities, and risks.
Improved speed of implementation through giving employees morale, maintain their safety, and turnover.
Retaining company flexibility, and minimizing the environmental impact.
Secondly, the company management is too reluctant in dealing with issues related to customers. Many customers complain of insufficient services offered especially when it comes to after sale services. The company should hire a team of experts who have the necessary technological knowhow, and are capable of meeting all the consumer demands. Moreover, a taskforce comprising of professionals should be set. This taskforce will be responsible for the overall operations in the company by ensuring that all the departments’ carryout their duties and give the necessary reports. on the other hand, the company should come up with training sessions aimed at educating the staff on how to handle customers at various levels. The training session will enable the company implement all its plans since every individual will have an idea of what is expected.
Conclusion
Several factors contribute to the success of a business plan. Company leaders have the responsibility of ensuring that all these factors as discussed are fulfilled in order to come up with a successful plan. On the other hand, the business environment plays a significant role in the success of the business plan. The environment is going through tremendous changes that require managers to have the necessary weapons to fight in the ever competing business world. In following the above strategy and adopting the given recommendations, Advance Digital Inc. will achieve its aims and objectives within the shortest time possible.
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