Marketing Strategy of the Swimwear Galore Company - Essay Example

SWIMWEAR GALORE COMPANY MARKETING PLAN Introduction: Firm and industry Swimwear Galore company began 25 years ago with just a small collection of swimming wear; both for men and women at all ages. It started as a family business specializing in fabric but has grown in size over years. Although the business is still family owned, it has greatly grown in size and with the products on offer to what it is today, (‘Swimwear Galore-About us.’ 2014). In 2009, the company developed ‘Shop by Shape’ strategy to help with the often-tricky task of finding a style that suits everybody in matters of swimming outfits. From the feedback they received from the average woman, they developed six different girls that all had woes when it came to body issues. The company then put together a lot of tips and tricks to help find the perfect swimsuit for their shape. The company hopes that in the future they would continue to grow and promote a healthier outlook on what beauty really is and help one find something that is right, just for them (‘Swimwear Galore-About us.’ 2014). The website also show that swimwear industry is among the most fancied industries across the globe with the players fetching fabulous returns from the sale of the leisure costumes. The swimwear market has been projected to be among the most valued enterprises in the globe in the near future as swimming is increasingly being appreciated as a healthy, leisure activity across the globe. Popularity of the activity is therefore perceived as among the most influencing factor to the glowing market awareness of the swimwear. Besides, increased innovation in fashion in the industry is contributing towards market growth and especially so to the young generation (‘Swimwear Galore-About us.’ 2014). In Australia for instance, the strong sporting culture as well as beach culture has influenced much on the growth of the fashion industry especially as concerns the swimwear and such designs (Austrade, 2014). The fashion designs in Australia on the swimwear are effective in representing changes over time in customs, tastes as well as on international trends according to the website. The main brand in the industry within Australia has been and continues to be Speedo with such others as Quiksilver, Rip curl as well as Billabong companies sharing on the market segment remaining. The industry has however evolved to become very competitive with such other swimwear brands like the Wahine, AussieBum as well as Funky Trunks commanding great influence in the industry (Austrade, 2014). Swimwear galore however continues to influence trends in the industry through stocking variety of products such as Seafolly, rival, speedo, ginja, roxy, bikinis as well as one piece wears for kids and women. This does not however exclude men from the great collection for the galore stocks such products as boardies, trunks as well as briefs. Situation analysis A SWOT analysis for the galore presents a broad understanding of the firm in comparison to the industry and other players. This just as is the case with all other trading companies, the performance is influenced by both internal and external environment factors. There are therefore prevailing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities as well as threats towards the company. Strengths: having been in the industry for a relatively long time, in the company has mastered the art in performing within the industry and this explains how it has grown to become a leader in the industry. The company targets all persons and segments in the market through stocking products that would suit everyone in age, gender, body shapes as well as for occasions. Weaknesses: The growth rate in terms of opening new outlets is very slow as shown by the reason of having only two operational outlets by 2009 (‘Swimwear Galore-About us.’ 2014). This would therefore point towards weaknesses in decision making and strategizing on expansion within the market. Opportunities: The large market segment within the country and beyond presents great expansion opportunities for the success of the company. Besides, improved marketing avenues through the internet as well as online retailing avenues present great opportunities for the company. Threats: Increased competition as shown by the emergence and growth of competing firms in the industry present the main threat as being competition (‘Swimwear Galore-About us.’ 2014). Digital marketing strategic planning Marketers in the modern day respond to the customers’ behaviors through various mechanisms or ways and they adopt various tools that are meant to win customers to buy their products or services. These ways are however dependent on customers’ behavioral response to the urge to have their needs and wants met. Among the major ways that have characterized marketers’ responses to these behaviors is the market segmentation in the past (Simpson, 2005). This refers to the specialization of marketing approaches to focus to various market groups. This is by taking the consideration that the entire market frame is composed of different categories of people who could be potential customers. However, depending on certain group characteristic, the different groupings require different approaches in marketing in order to be effective in targeting them. Besides, marketing in target to the elderly may not be effective through the digital advertisement and promotions but the technique would be most appropriate for the middle ages and young generation segments (Wilson and Malcolm, 2001). Marketers are continuously acknowledging the differences within the market groups that are stipulated on age difference. Certain marketing procedures will be more appealing to the young generation than they are to the elderly and vice versa. This therefore has necessitated the marketing groups to adopt the mechanisms that are seen to be most effective in targeting the distribution in age and social economic demographics of persons. Understanding the behavioral characteristics of consumers at the different age segments is critical in adoption of favorable target strategies as well as in segmenting strategies. Through the natural segmentation by age and gender, the marketers are therefore able to address the various segments effectively and accurately through adopting the most relevant tools such as advertising through various channels while targeting the different age groupings and gender (Jiang, 2011). Determining digital marketing objective The main marketing objective that drives the e-marketing of swimwear by the company is advertising and creation of brand’s awareness. Just as is the case with many marketing strategies that are adopted by trading persons of firms, e-marketing by the company is aimed at increasing the awareness of the products, prices, promotion tools as well as convenient places of accessing the outlets for the swimwear supplies. This paper adopts and proposes that the swim wear galore uses the search engine marketing tools as part of the digital marketing strategies that are currently pursued. This is because with the company having an already functional website, only little improvement in design and linking with efficient search engine marketing service providers like Google and Yahoo Inc to reach out towards the target segments of potential customers as majority of people today use Google ads words. There are main features that would be dominant in designing the business website and these are together with the capacity to have as much information as possible, higher capacity for interactions, ease of access by other people as well as high level of confidentiality especially on customer information. This would be effective in overcoming strategic challenges that are posed by advancement of technology including increased security risks, high compromise of individual information as well as lowered probability of customers and or the company to lose sensitive information (like personal banks account information and company’s secrets) to unauthorized person (Baltzan, 2012). Digital marketing through search engines provides the widest coverage towards potential customers because internet use has become the ‘in thing’ in the modern day. Besides, the agency would be targeting mainly the middle ages and the youths who have been shown to be most active in use of internet for research, social media and general exploration. Besides, with major competitors in the costume industry investing greatly in the digital marketing such as the search engine and social media as effective marketing tools, the agency is strategically placed to exploit the great opportunities and benefits that online marketing would present (Rowley, 2002). This study therefore presents the proposal of adoption of the search engine tool of marketing as the most effective owing to the nature of industry under analysis. Digital marketing strategy Marketing is seen to entail a wide range of activities, which span from production, transportation, processing, packaging, advertising as well as sale. Human behaviors to a great extent influence the marketing strategies and techniques. It is also worth acknowledging that different marketing strategies are most appropriate within different perspectives than in others. The marketing strategy alluded to in the discussion involve a number of features among which are creation of awareness among the target populations and having effective means of targeting the potential customers for the swimwear products. The use of the e-marketing and in particular adopting SEM (search engine marketing) as a form of digital marketing strategy is the main tool to be used (Agarwal, and Kumar, 2013). The tool as advocated for would be effective in not only reaching many people but also clearly portraying the clarity of the firm’s vision and target. The agency would adopt such slogans as ‘working in solitude but communicating to multitudes’, ‘mixing outfit pleasure as well as business professionally’ as well as ‘creativity and fashion’ which would all insinuate to the strategic alignment of the company with modernity and trends in fashion as far as swimwear is concerned. Three D animations as well as property images would be useful in painting ‘clarity and reality’ to the focus customers whenever they visit the search engines and this would affect the feeling and vision of the target customers thus influencing them positively towards buying the costumes. Through the strategic use of digital marketing strategies, the firm would effectively reach out for such potential customers as who are often literate and capable of using the search engines intentionally or otherwise and in the process coming across the ads. The right choice of search engines for ads provides the most efficient and effective tools that would be used ‘spread the word’ effectively through effectively targeting the market through the internet as well as having wide coverage and increased publicity. Uniqueness and high creativity is a virtue that would drive the marketing strategy by use of digital systems as modern trends are increasingly adopting across the globe. Besides, the relatively cheap strategy in use of search engines for marketing of the swimwear is instrumental in ensuring that relatively competitive prices are adopted for the firm’s products in order to compete favorably in the market. When a firm like the swimwear galore adopts effective tools for marketing, which are cost effective, fair pricing then enables it to navigate the market more favorably as compared to competitors. Implementation plan Marketing mix has particular attention on the price, place, promotion as well as the actual product concerning the market. Price regards the value that a product carries in the market, which has dependence on such factors as the cost involved in production of the product, the prevailing market values as well as ability of the target market to afford the commodity. The production represents the actual good on offer while promotion revolves around practices adopted to create awareness of the existence of such a product within the market (‘The Economic Times’, 2014). The marketing strategy in the plan under analysis presents a challenge in actual implementation especially because it is a virtual marketing strategy. However, the products on offer are physical, implying that they can be represented virtually through images. Online retailing would equally be an effective strategy and implementation process because customers who would prefer online trading would be reached rather easily with such virtual outlets as against the physical retailing. Online marketing also presents easy avenues for promotions as a component to marketing mix and thus potential customers and actual ones would interact through online platforms and exchange ideas over the products. Therefore, the practical steps to be followed in adopting search engine marketing for the company would be to evaluate and compare prices charged by search engine service providers like the Yahoo Inc and Google Company after which informed decisions on which service provider to contract for the adsword. Creativity would enable ease of navigation onto the firm’s website in order to have a wide coverage of products on offer. Besides, it would enable the company to have a well designed and maintained website which would be instrumental in marketing the swimwear on offer (‘Swimwear Galore-About us.’ 2014). Budget and evaluation The current trends in the marketing strategies adopted by the company have been through websites and through social media. It would be acknowledged that the use of such tools as the social media platforms in marketing of products presents one of the cheapest avenues of marketing. It is dependent on internet and the emergence of web 2.0 for office and mobile technologies has been attributed to the great success in using the interactive websites (Mort and Drennan, 2002). This is because the modern world of business is increasingly moving towards the social interactions through internet. Moreover, advancement in technology has seen development of cheaper means of acquiring information especially through search engines. Creativity has therefore seen incorporation of ads on search engines, which are therefore very effective in reaching to the large market segment of those using the search engines. Dynamics in the modern world of marketing has therefore enabled such retailing companies to exploit the competitive niche in the industry where strategic marketing does not only make the company and operations known but increases on the customers. Having invested in digital trading practices (as is seen from the company’s website), this company would therefore seek higher efficiency alone in use of the search engine marketing opportunities (‘Swimwear Galore-About us.’ 2014). Bibliography Agarwal, Princy and Vinod Kumar Shukla. 2013. "e-marketing excellence: planning and optimizing digital marketing." International Journal of Marketing and TechnologyVol3 no8, pp.130-136. Austrade (Australian Trade Commission) - The Australian Governments trade and investment development agency - Austrade."Consumer Goods - Austrades industry capability information - Austrade."Viewed March 28, 2014.. Baltzan, D., W., 2012. “Business Driven Information Systems”, 3e. Viewed March 28, 2014. Gillian Sullivan Mort:, Judy Drennan. 2002. Mobile digital technology: Emerging issues for marketing. Journal of Database MarketingVol10 no1, pp. 9-23 Jiang, Lin, Yadan Zhang, Xun He, Haijun Zhang, Jun Kang, and Bo Zhang. 2011. "Strategy Transition and Marketing Innovation of a Vertical Search Engine: The Case of Kuxun Company." Frontiers of Business Research in ChinaVol5 no4, pp. 619-634. Rowley, Jennifer. 2002. "Information Marketing in a Digital World." Library Hi TechVol20 no3, pp. 352-358. Simpson, Michael. 2005. "Marketing Planning Principles into Practice." Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development.Vol12 no1, pp. 137-138. Swimwear Galore - Seafolly, Speedo, Jets, Ginja, Separates, Bikini Sets, One Piece, Plus Size, Kids Swimwear. "About us." Viewed March 28, 2014.. The Economic Times."Marketing Mix Definition | Marketing Mix Meaning."Viewed March 28, 2014.. Wilson, Hugh N. and Malcolm H. B. McDonald. 2001. "An Evaluation of Styles of IT Support for Marketing Planning." European Journal of MarketingVol35 no7, p. 815-842. Read More