Coaching Session
Sullivan Window Company: Lauren Smith
Having a clear and an effective strategy for product promotion provides the necessary impetus to guarantee a competitive edge in the global market. In the contemporary world, the managers’ efforts should go beyond providing a high-end product to preparing the right reception for new ones. Having an effective and clearly thought out marketing mix is crucial and surpasses sales of even a high-quality product (Becerril-Arreola, Leng & Parlar, 2013). How a company deals with the existing customers and efforts towards attracting the new ones should be the focus of any business entity. Sullivan Window Company does not appear to have a problem maintaining its existing customers, but with a sluggish sale of new products and the inability to attract new ones. It’s a new marketing plan and the organization should focus on creating a strong reception for newly released products and attracting new customers through a procedure that would help it to reduce duration of customers’ calls.
Action Plan
Attracting new customers is an expensive and a demanding exercise. However, there are cheap and inexpensive promotional strategies Lauren could engage to increase sales of new products and attract new customers without spending too much time on customers’ calls. The new plan is a four-part procedure that includes the creation of loyalty programs, promotional pricing and point of sales of purchase displays and use of influence.
Engaging Influencers
The advancement of technology has introduced new challenges in the market. At the same time, it has created new platforms which companies could make use of to advertise existing and new products. The major test is the flexibility of a business to keep in pace with the trend. In the contemporary world, it is becoming an imperative to reach technological investment threshold for survival as the old marketing strategies are slowly becoming defunct. Smith could, for instance, could engage the function of bloggers and Facebook accounts as a platform to create awareness of the product beforehand. This would be a good place to start, as blogs are usually informative about the benefits of a product. A customer looks for diversity, but it would be difficult to achieve this if they are ignorant of other options (Kotler, 2015)
Point of Sale Purchases Displays
At least 65 percent of decisions are made in store place. What a prospective seller sees in the store counts when making the decision. Usually, with a strategic point of sale environment, there would be very little for the seller to add. There are certain checkpoints Smith could target to place displays about new products including but not limited to speed bumps and dustbins. Besides, she could consider issuing free samples at the point of sale. The latter is a sure way, especially when promoting new products. The defining environment around the point of sales encourages impulse buying, and this is good for the growth of business. Often, a customer calls to inquire if a business offers a certain product, or even on the existence of attaching offers. If the company makes this information available, customers' calls will scale down with a substantial fraction while at the same time promote certain product sale.
Promotional Pricing
The power promotional pricing should never be underestimated, especially when a new product comes into consideration. Discounting is a concept that any business should pay much regard. Tagging a discount on an item increases demand (Becerril-Arreola, Leng & Parlar, 2013). It is an important practice, especially when the need to reduce overstocked products emerges. However, knowing which products to issues discounts on is a choice that one has to make. It is important that the company understand the reason it wants to affect a discount on a certain product. It is often prudent to attach discounts on a new product to trigger impulse buying while at the same time creates wide scale awareness. Besides, the company could contemplate bundle pricing and markdowns of prices on all products. However, the two should be backed with massive advertisements for efficacy.
Loyalty Programs
The company should come up with loyalty programs. Any company needs to have an ascertainable base of loyal customers, and until it engages necessary procedures, this may be a difficult task. Launching a massive loyalty campaign may be expensive, but there are particular inexpensive procedures Sullivan could deploy. For instance, taking customers' emails at the checkouts and use them to inform of exclusive sales, coupons, and discounts could be a good place to start. The focus should be making a customer feel welcome again (Gordon, 2012).
At any given time, it would be necessary to have markers to track the success of the plan. The object includes reducing the customer calls and promoting sales of new products. Smith should conduct periodical assessments to establish whether the plan is driving the company closer or further from the objects. The plan should be able to reflect positively on rates of customer calls and returns from sales of new products. In a typical business setting, there is not a general marketing formula. Often, a specific company has to modify a general strategy to keep it in phase with its unique needs. Findings from periodical assessments should be crucial in making a determination if any modification is necessary.
Conclusion
The success of a business is a function of the efforts of its human resource base and the efficacy of its marketing mix. Adopting a working marketing mixing is easy in theory, but fraught with many operational challenges. Often, problems arise when trying to avail new products in the market. There is not a standard marketing strategy. Finding a working plan is a trial and error procedure. However, certain procedures are known to have a higher potency than others do. Sullivan Company could engage the plan outlined there above, but with modifications as it would necessary for optimal gains.
References
Becerril-Arreola, R., Leng, M., & Parlar, M. (2013). Online retailers’ promotional pricing,
free-shipping threshold, and inventory decisions: A simulation-based analysis.
European Journal of Operational Research, 230(2), 272-283.
Gordon, R. (2012). Re-thinking and re-tooling the social marketing mix. Australasian
Marketing Journal (AMJ), 20(2), 122-126.
Kotler, P., Burton, S., Deans, K., Brown, L., & Armstrong, G. (2015). Marketing.
Pearson Higher Education AU.
