The Lace Hair Wigs Organization - Research Proposal Example

PROMOTIONAL PLAN LACE HAIR WIG SERVICES AFFILIATION: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 2.Communication Goals – AIDA 3 3.Describing the promotional tools to be applied 4 3.1 Advertising 4 3.2 Personal Selling 4 3.3 Sales Promotion 5 4.Maintaining a promotional mix 5 5.Positioning strategy 6 6.Budget Allocation 6 7.Measuring Campaign effectiveness 8 Promotional plan for Lace Hair Wigs 1. Introduction The Lace Hair Wigs organization is a new business that has just emerged recently for the hair treatment of the different types of customers, for treating the different types of hair problems. As it is a new business it needs to create its awareness in the market and so needs to develop a promotional plan. The promotional plan has all the aspects of phases of communication between the customers and the seller, how the service will reach out to the customers by using the different modes of promotional tools and other activities of running the promotional campaigns. This promotional plan is divided into four steps as follows: 1. Describing the promotional tools to be applied 2. Maintaining a promotional mix 3. Budget Allocation 4. Measuring Campaign effectiveness 2. Communication Goals – AIDA AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. The message that is being delivered to the customers through the various promotional tools should have their message communicated in a crystal clear way to the customers. The elements of AIDA should be implemented perfectly for the customers to get attracted towards the service or the product. 3. Describing the promotional tools to be applied The promotional tools, that will be applied for the promotion of Lace Hair Wigs is advertising, personal selling and sales promotions. 3.1 Advertising The advertising of Lace Hair Wigs can be done through creating campaigns in different areas of the city for promoting the beneficial services of Lace Hair Wigs. The campaigns can be conducted in colleges and universities for promoting the awareness among the female target population. The sample wigs can be demonstrated in various ways of how it can come in use for the young female students. Campaigns can be arranged in fashion institutes and also in the fashion shows. Print and electronic media can also be used for advertising the application services and different types of wigs that are present with the retail outlet of Lace Hair Wigs. 3.2 Personal Selling For retail firms, the process of personal selling starts the minute any customer enters the stores or shops. For service related retail firms the customers’ should be found by detecting the potential customers who would be readily willing to acquire the services, which is the case with the Lace Hair Wigs organizations. They need to target their customers according to the services they are offering and then make sure that the potential customers have awareness by means of applying the personal selling tools (Advertising and Sales Promotion 2010). The importance of forming public relations is highly important for running of the successful businesses. In organizations, the tools of public relations and word of mouth play an important role in attracting the key customers towards the business. 3.3 Sales Promotion The sales promotion can be conducted by distributing flyers to all the potential target areas such as colleges and universities. The college and universities students will be highly attracted towards the wig services when they find out that there are free gifts available with the purchase of wigs (Advertising and Sales Promotion 2010). Buying of two to three wigs may result in discounts is another attraction for the customers. Discount coupons can also be offered at different potential places where the target customers can get an access to the coupons. 4. Maintaining a promotional mix The promotional tools that are used needs to be having a promotional mix according to how much of each of the different promotional tools will come into use. The advertising for this retail service needs 75% implementation. The personal selling tool should be implemented to about 15% and 10% of sales promotion. This has been decided by considering the fact that this business is a new business and at the first instance it needs to get a lot of market awareness for the customers to know about this service. The different promotional activities and media related campaigns should be conducted for getting the message across to a wide audience. The promotional activities could include the following: Getting sponsorships for the arranging a event Conducting trade shows Giving out coupons and free samples Conducting contests and giving the sample wig as prizes Conducting media campaigns may be expensive as it may require being in touch with the media reporters and then constantly getting the advertisement broadcasted on TV. 5. Positioning strategy The service applications and the hair treatment product of Lace Hair Wigs are basically targeted towards all the fashion related people who are interested in having latest hair styles and getting the hair treatment done if they find any flaw. This organization is new in its service potential and hence it can attract a lot of customers through the various push and pull strategies that exist. The advertising should be so attractive and should sound that its worth trying so that customers will make an effort to try out the Lace Hair Wig services for the first time, and if satisfied they will repeat their purchase (Rise and Trout 1981). 6. Budget Allocation The budget should be allocated by the considering the various cost for the promotional tools being used. Most of the trusted channels of advertising that are the Yellow pages, flyers, direct mail, business cards and others. Since the advertising tool has to be invested in to the maximum, the budget for advertising would be high as shown below (refer to marketing plan): Weekly advertising Week1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Gumtree London Yes £50 Yes £50 yes £50 yes £50 Flyers Yes £100 Yes £100 No Yes £100 Google Yes £300 No Yes £300 no Hair magazine Yes £200 Yes £200 Yes £200 no Personal selling Yes Yes Yes Yes Sales Promotion Yes Yes Yes Yes The advertising budget should be categorized into monthly installments or the quarterly installments. According to research the new businesses should spend about 5% of their gross revenue projections for the purpose of advertising (Promotional plan 2009). Also the use of annual promotional calendars should be implemented so that it remains in track on what week and date the promotional activities are taking place and what was their cost per week. For evaluation of the advertising budget allocation for the company projections should be carefully analyzed. The customer profiles should be reviewed and accordingly future budgets should be prepared. The advertising goals should be written down in a clear statement so that it is clear to everyone (Promotional Plan 2009). 7. Measuring Campaign effectiveness The advertising campaign that will be run around the city for promoting the services of hair treatment can be evaluated by the no of customer responses they receive. The no. of visitors they receive in their retail outlets (Trout and Rivkin 1996). If the promotional campaign is successful then the sales levels of the customers purchasing the wigs will increase dramatically. Since the product is not that expensive, as it considers that most of its customers will be young students, the wigs are reasonably priced which will allow the target customers to purchase a variety of Lace hair wigs for different occasions. If repeat purchases are there then this would show that the product is running successfully. The promotional plan should have creativity by applying flashy looks and styles in their advertisements and campaigns. Sample of all wigs should be present so that the customers have a fair idea how the wigs look like. References Ries, A. and Trout, J. (1981) Positioning, The battle for your mind, Warner Books - McGraw-Hill Inc., New York. Trout, J. and Rivkin, S. (1996) The New Positioning: The latest on the world’s #1 business strategy, McGraw Hill, New York. Advertising and Sales Promotion (2010). Article base: Available at: http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/advertising-and-sales-promotion-1005018.html. Accessed on 25 July 2010. Promotional Plan (2009). Available at: http://www.smallbusinessnotes.com/operating/marketing/promotionplan.html. Accessed on 25 July 2010. Read More