The quality and aggressiveness of the marketing and advertising strategies that a business, especially the startup ones, implements can spell the difference between a booming and steeply declining startup sales figures. Naturally, more innovative and aggressive marketing and advertising strategies would equate to significantly larger sales margins and vice versa for more lame, old school and outdated marketing strategies. Marketing and advertising strategies are so extremely important for startup businesses that it can be one of the primary indicators of the company’s success in future, aside of course from more innate factors such as the necessity index of the products and or services being offered, and the sell-ability as business and sales people would call them. The objective of this paper is to answer to relevant questions about the business plan that our group is trying to propose.
Is your project missing an opportunity to grow and develop its product that was not developed by the group? Furthermore, in addition to the recommendations from the group, do you see this business venture increasing or expanding its current business model?
In almost any startup business model, there will always be a lot of choices to choose from. A business manager or owner may, for example, have the option to start its product research and development efforts slowly or in another scenario, one may choose to execute such process more aggressively.
Either way, the aggressiveness of the product research and development efforts should depend on a number of factors which most often includes the impact of quality on sales (which is often present in almost all products’ cases as customers would naturally prefer higher quality products than lower quality ones), the product’s price relative to its quality, among others. Marketing studies have shown that one of the most common mistakes that business managers commit is the lack of attention given to product research and development because most of the attention is given on marketing and advertising efforts . While there is a lot of evidence that may suggest that focusing on marketing and advertising strategies is indeed a good way to boost sales, brand awareness, and product popularity, it does not mean that business managers should take the other aspects of the business such as product growth and development for granted.
This is one of the most common and obvious reasons why most startup businesses lose the opportunity to grow in the long run. We always recommend that business owners devise a comprehensive and at the same time, balanced business plan, preferably one that does not fail to consider all aspects that may have an impact on business growth and development, and then make additions on some aspects such as product growth and development as necessary. It would certainly be bad for the business’ future if it customers would find out that it does not bother to allocate more resources on marketing and advertising, which by the way tend to be one of the most expensive business departments, despite the fact that other company departments such as the research and development are underfunded. In general, as long as the company uses a balanced approach that covers all aspects of the business and not just the marketing and advertising, there should be no reason for the current proposed business model not to expand.
In addition, are you taking into consideration other competitors in the same market? You will need to include in your formal report and examination of the competition, local and nearby, and what is your products’ competitive advantages. You will present a formal report that examines the competition’s advantages and disadvantages. You may use projections, graphs, and data and conclude with a solid list of your own recommendations
It is inherently necessary for startup businesses and even those who are trying to start a venture in new or foreign markets to include an industry and competitive analysis in their comprehensive business plan. What makes these steps important is the fact that it enables the business managers to have a clear view of the level of risks they may be putting their investment funds and other resources into. So yes, we seriously take our would-be competitors and doing an objective study about them into consideration.
We are yet to conduct a formal analysis of the examination and competition but in general, we are expecting for huge competition-related challenges ahead, especially when we consider the fact that we are a startup business trying to make a name for our products and the company. Our competitors may include international food and service industry players such as McDonalds Corporation, the world’s largest chain of fast food restaurants. For years, this company has opened branches after branches and has continued to enjoy a stable and often continuous growth in sales every year.
This is just one of the companies that we think would pose as a threat to our company’s growth competition-wise. So what is it that set our products apart from that of McDonalds? Firstly, our food products are high quality and made from high grade materials. What the customers see in the advertising and marketing materials that we circulate both offline and online is what they get. Also, we do not operate as a self-serving fast food chain. We have a complete set of waiters, servers, and cooks that are always ready to take our customers’ orders and address basically any service and product-related concerns they may have. In line with our goals, we have four recommendations for the person who will manage and oversee the business:
- Balance the management team’s attention and effort between marketing and advertising and product research and development.
- Continuously improve product and service quality across all branches.
- Focus on the provision of high quality customer service.
- Be adaptive to the consumer preferences and tastes and to the continuously shifting market trends.
Works Cited
Englis, B. "Global and Multinational Advertising." Journal of Marketing and Advertising (2013).
