Marketing is a critical process
Marketing is a critical process of gaining a comparative edge over other businesses (Berthon, Pitt, Plangger, & Shapiro, 2012). Different businesses have different marketing campaigns in place to entice more customers to buy their services and goods. A given firm's marketing strategy would include its long-term, short-term, and core activities that would analyze a company's current situation and formulate, examine, and select the most appropriate market-oriented tactics that would contribute to the achievement of company goals and overall marketing objectives. Marketing tactics would also involve public relations, search engine marketing, and pay per click. This paper presents Clean Op's marketing plan. The analysis involves the examination of the 4Ps marketing mix, financial calculations, export considerations, and the implementation of Clean Op's services.
There exist several marketing strategies
There exist several marketing strategies that are at the disposal of an emergent or a new company. These strategies include a SWOT analysis, the 4Ps, and PESTEL analysis. The SWOT analysis is a strategic tool that allows firms to gain goals thorough understanding of their environment thereby enabling them to design an excellent marketing strategy (Kajanus, Leskinen, Kurttila, & Kangas, 2012). The Canadian market has intense competition in the sector of cleaning services. However, Clean Op's main strength would be its area of focus. Firstly, the company intends to focus on the hotel industry where no firms offering similar services have ventured. Clean Op would be the pioneers, thereby attaining a competitive advantage. Secondly, Clean Op is comprised of a management team with entrepreneurial minds with vast knowledge of the current industrial trends. Therefore, the company is bound to thrive using the knowledge of these persons.
Clean Op's primary weakness
Clean Op's primary weakness is that most of the members of the management would be inexperienced in their market of operation. The company would be run based on market research that would at times be inaccurate leading to financial damages. Clean Op also has inadequate finances that would not allow them to achieve most of its plans. Reputation plays a crucial part in marketing (Yuan, 2013). This company's primary weakness would be poor reputation among consumers. The other brands in the market are well-known as they have been operational for many years. Therefore, achieving a competitive advantage over these firms would be a tedious task. Clean Op's fourth weakness is that it lacks access to vital distribution channels. The services of this company must be well distributed within the country. However, due to the lack of financial resources, Clean Op might have to wait for a long duration of time to acquire enough finances that would enable them to distribute their services nationwide.
Clean Op's key opportunity
Clean Op's key opportunity is the presence of an unfulfilled customer need. Several hotels in major cities in Canada face challenges in accessing cleaning services. Clean Op's services would satisfy the needs of this customer base. Clean Op would also have the opportunity of utilizing some of the latest technologies in service delivery. The dynamicity of the technological world has ensured that newer and more efficient models of washing machines are at the disposal of the company, thereby enabling it to fulfill the various needs of the consumers of its services. Lastly, the growing market segment is a key opportunity for Clean Op. The Canadian hotel industry is expanding as more hotels are being built. The existing hotels are also establishing branches all over Canada to satisfy their customers' wants. Therefore, Clean Op has a wide consumer base.
The threat to Clean Op's operations
The threat to Clean Op's operations is the existence of other competitive forces with a higher financial might. Most of Clean Op's competitors in the cloth cleaning industry are reputable and have amassed wealth in the business. The firms also use their resources in branding and advertising their services. Another key strength is the emergence of other firms in the future. The business environment where Clean Op operates is dynamic and lucrative. Therefore, new entrants may pose a threat to Clean Op as they might have a higher financial might and influence a market shift to their advantage.
PESTLE Analysis
The PESTLE analysis assists firms in defining their microeconomic environment (Hasibuan & Dantes, 2012). This tool would assist Clean Op in determining the political, legal, economic, social, environmental, and technological factors that might affect their operation in Canada.
Market Mix
The 4Ps mix is a crucial marketing strategy that is used by most successful firms to understand both the products that they are offering and the potential consumers' response to these goods and services (Gilaninia, Taleghani, & Azizi, 2013). This model involves the definition of the products or services that a firm deals with, the expected pricing of these services, the promotional campaigns, offers and messages, and the placement of the product or service.
Product
Clean Op is a service company that deals with the cleaning of clothes and furniture. These services are intangible but meet the various consumer needs. The Canadian Hotel industry is robust and fast-growing. The managements of most companies in this hospitality industry have in the past faced numerous challenges with their laundry. The laundry machines are also expensive and prone to breakdown. Therefore, there is a need for the third party to step up and assist in handling both laundry and furniture.Clean Op would be capable of offering cleaning services, both in-house and at the company's washing bay. In-house cleaning would be done whenever the management of the hotels insists that they would want their linens, bedsheets, and other clothing to be cleaned within the hotel. Otherwise, the company would be forced to pick up the clothes and portable furniture to the washing bay and offer their services from these points. Heavy furniture would be cleaned in-house as transporting them might be both tedious and expensive. Another key feature of Clean Op's service is the presence of an application that their clients could use to order for the services that they demand. Pick-up and delivery would be free in some areas (i.e., the areas with excellent infrastructure whereby there would be no hitches in the process of delivering and picking clothes up). The company would be forced to acquire vehicles of different sizes that would assist in transportation services.
Price
Pricing is a crucial element in marketing that would define the success of a start-up business (Berthon et al., 2012). Clean Op's pricing would be exclusive of deliveries and pickups. Unlike the company's key competitors such as simply laundry that charges up to $20 for pick-up and delivery services, Clean Op would only charge for the services that they offer. The pricing of these services would depend on the type of clothing that is cleaned and would include post-washing services, such as folding and hanging.Hotels have different types of clothes that would be cleaned. The most expensive service that Clean Op would offer is the cleaning of sofa sets. Most hotels have more than two-seater sofa sets in each room. The pricing for a single seating unit, i.e., one-seater, would range from $25 to $50 depending on the type of fabric. Leather fabrics are the easiest to clean and maintain. Therefore, leather seats would be priced cheaply as compared to cloth of velvet fabrics. Dry cleaning of clothes would be the cheapest service with $2.5 per shirt-pressed, $7 per skirt, and $18.79 per suit. The rationale for this pricing is that different clothes have diverse cleaning needs. Washing and folding or hanging would be charged at a flat rate of $1.99/lb. Heavy clothing such as comforters and duvets would cost $16.99 per piece as they consume a lot of resources. Delivery of all goods would only take between 24-48 hours.This pricing scheme is designed in a manner that it is slightly less than that of the competitors but still competitive. Clean Op plans to use its pricing as a strategy for attracting consumers and attaining a competitive advantage over its fierce rivals. The free pick-up and delivery strategies are also a strategy on its own. The Clean Op application would be used in placing an order and would entail the prices of the packages offered by this firm.
Place
Placement or location is extremely crucial when designing marketing or branding strategy (Singh, 2012). Clean Op would be based in Vancouver, a city with the greatest market potential before expanding to the other regions of western Canada with similar potential. This placement is strategic as Vancouver's population is one of the highest in the country. This city is also a home to most hotels of different star rating. However, Clean Op also intends to explore other regions in Western Canada with market potential. Clean Op's primary target is the hospitality industry. Therefore, all the regions of operation of this company must have high numbers of hotels.Vancouver also hosts most of Clean Op's competitors. However, the firm intends to uphold both a physical and online presence that would ensure that the company is available to the customers at any time of the day. Clean Op also plans to attend most of the trade fairs organized by stakeholders in both the hospitality and real estate sectors. These trade fairs would offer the firm the opportunity of meeting clients and advertising the services that are offered.
Promotion
Most thriving businesses across the globe utilize publicity as an essential tool for branding and marketing itself (Singh, 2012). The social media would be Clean Op's principal avenue of spreading its messages to potential clients. The company would open several social media accounts and connect and follow major hotels. Social media platforms are excellent marketing avenues (De Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012; Kaur, 2016). All updates or new services that Clean Op intends to adopt would be indicated in these social media platforms. Potential customers would also give their input regarding Clean Ops operations and highlight the areas that need agent reinforcement. The conversations in the various platforms assist firms in evaluating their successes and failures (Georgescu, & Popescul, 2015). Despite the use of social media, Clean Op would also establish a website where all their services and other relevant information would be displayed. The website will be designed in a way that there would be an area where all the persons visiting the site would rate and comment on Clean Op's services. Lastly, the mobile application that would be developed for this corporation would serve as a promotional tool whereby messages would be passed to the clients who would have downloaded and installed it. The company's key forecast is to attract more than a million users of the mobile app that would also be followers of the firm in its social media platform.
Other Factors
The primary factors that Clean Op would also consider include project management, culture, communication, engagement, and innovation. Communication is crucial in the operation of a successful firm. Therefore, Clean Op intends to keep up-to-date communication with the clients whenever the company is doing businesses. The firm would contact the clients early whenever it forecasts that there would be a delay in delivery. The company would also engage both the staff, consumers, and other future stakeholders in the decision-making process. Innovation would also be upheld with the company engaging in research activities with the goal of improving service delivery while maintaining a high-profit margin. Organization cultures encompass the various beliefs, norms, attitudes, and behaviors of employees (Hasibuan & Dantes, 2012). Clean Op would not have employees but team players. The company would have a vibrant organizational culture that would focus on the satisfaction of both the employees and the members of the team. Lastly, Clean Op would use evidence-based approaches in the management of the projects that it would undertake in the future.Clean Op intends to have met over 1000 hotels and had a constructive engagement with them within its first year of operation. Most of the target clients are three-star hotels and above with intense cleaning needs. Therefore, the sales forecasts would be approximately $500,000 within the first year assuming that each organization spends roughly $600, with $100 going to other miscellaneous needs of the company.However, there is an anticipated increase in the sales margins in the next years as Clean Op would have established its roots in most regions in Vancouver. The firm also plans to evade the existence of a break-even point despite the probability of the net costs being equal to the income in Clean Op's first months of service.
Financial View
The company's primary costs would be transportation, water, power, rental and utility bills, the salaries for team players, and advertisements and the maintenance of the various social media platforms. The revenues would be purely from sales. The key assumptions are that Clean Op's sales would be exponential. There would also be a slight increase in the cost with a large increase in the revenues as the demand for Clean Op's services increase. Clean Op's third assumption is that the various policies and legal fees would remain constant over the next decade. The expected net income is $400,000 with a 33% annual increase within the next 5 years. The proforma in the Appendix section comprises of the various revenues and costs in 5 years. The total anticipated cost of product is $30,000 and the total annual repair, maintenance, and overhaul cost is $25,000. The annual net income is $342,176.94. The appendix entails a sample five-year financial statement. $1,423,996.57 would be the net income in 5 years.
Implementation, Evaluation, and Control
The implementation phase of Clean Op's blueprint would begin with the acquisition of capital assets such as washing machines, operational and administrative areas, and other technological gadgets. The acquisition of these assets would run concurrently with advertising the services. This start-up process should take no more than two months. The evaluation of the success of the implementation phase would be determined by the number of customer callbacks that the company will receive and the number of requests that would be successfully processed.The control process is essential in the operation of any firm regardless of its location and size. The control mechanisms that the firm would use include cost advantage, volume and brand controls, and the limitation of the scale of business partners (Reichert, Bassil, Bobrik, & Bauer, 2015). Clean Op would only handle the volumes of cloth that it is capable of as overworking cleaning machines would result in constant breakdowns. The firm would also moderate the finances that it utilizes in the branding process and ensure that it has a cost advantage over its competitors. Lastly, Clean Op intends to work with many firms but limit the number of business partners so that its original creators would be the most shareholders.
References
Berthon, P. R., Pitt, L. F., Plangger, K., & Shapiro, D. (2012). Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy. Business horizons, 55(3), 261-271.
De Vries, L., Gensler, S., & Leeflang, P. S. (2012). Popularity of brand posts on brand fan pages: An investigation of the effects of social media marketing. Journal of interactive marketing, 26(2), 83-91.
Georgescu, M., & Popescul, D. (2015). Social Media–the new paradigm of collaboration and communication for business environment. Procedia Economics and Finance, 20, 277-282.
Gilaninia, S., Taleghani, M., & Azizi, N. (2013). Marketing mix and consumer behavior. Kuwait Chapter of Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review, 2(12), 53-58.
Hasibuan, Z. A., & Dantes, G. R. (2012). Priority of key success factors (KSFS) on enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementation life cycle. Journal of Enterprise Resource Planning Studies, 2012, 1.
Kajanus, M., Leskinen, P., Kurttila, M., & Kangas, J. (2012). Making use of MCDS methods in SWOT analysis—Lessons learnt in strategic natural resources management. Forest Policy and Economics, 20, 1-9.
Kaur, G. (2016). Social Media Marketing. Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 4(7), 34-36.
Reichert, M., Bassil, S., Bobrik, R., & Bauer, T. (2015). The Proviado access control model for business process monitoring components. Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures, 5(3), 64-88.
Singh, M. (2012). Marketing mix of 4P’s for competitive advantage. Journal of Business and Management, 3(6), 40-45.
Yuan, H. (2013). A SWOT analysis of successful construction waste management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 39, 1-8.
Appendix
Table 1 Proforma
Proforma Invoice
Date: ________________________
Proforma invoice #: ________________________
SENT BY
Company Name: ________________________
Name/Department: ________________________
Address: ________________________
City/State/Postal Code: ________________________
Country: ________________________
Tel./Fax No: ________________________
SENT TO
AIRWAYBILL No.
Company Name: ________________________
Name/Department: ________________________
Address: ________________________
City/State/Postal Code: ________________________
Country: ________________________
Phone No.: ________________________
Number of pieces: __________________
Total Gross Weight: __________________
Total Net Weight: ____________________
Carrier: ________________________
Description of goods
Quantity
Price ($)/Unit
Fees/Taxes
Shipping
SubTotal
Currency ________________ Total Value
Table 2 Five-Year Financial Plan
5-YEAR FINANCIAL PLAN
Company Name
Clean Op
FORECASTED REVENUE
