Marketing Plan: Lolas Cupcakes - Essay Example

Marketing plan: Lola’s Cupcakes Table of Contents Introduction (Situational Analysis) 3 Background 3 Contemporary issues 3 Target market 3 Goals andObjectives 4 Proposed overall strategy 4 4Ps: Promotion 4 Advertising 5 Sales Promotion 6 Loyalty Schemes 7 Personal Selling 7 Public Relations 8 Conclusion 8 Reference List 10 Introduction (Situational Analysis) Background This paper is based on the marketing activities and proposed forthcoming strategies of Lola’s cupcake. It is an UK based company which started its operations in 2006. It was established by two friends Victoria Jossel and Romy Lewis, who started baking cup cakes from their home kitchen and eventually moved their business to Primrose Hill (Lola’s cupcakes, 2015b). Over the years the company has expanded rapidly and is best known for its quality and style. The design of Lola’s cupcake has gained the preference of several customers. The company also started to leverage the facilities of e-Commerce and stared taking cupcake orders online. However, the company was acquired by Asher Budwig in the year 2011, but the brand name of Lola’s cupcakes continued to exist and the parent company decided to continue the business operations with the same vigour and focus on quality and design (Lola’s cupcakes, 2015b). Contemporary issues The contemporary issues faced by the company are on the grounds of health issues. The cupcake and bakery industry has faced certain challenges owing to the changing consumer perception towards healthy diets. The rise in obesity rates in UK has made the customers to shift to food items with less sugar content or lower calorific value (BBC, 2014). Since, cupcakes have high quantity of sugar and can be considered to be a source of obesity so they have faced significant health issues. Moreover, from the point of view of the food consumption pattern of the customers it has been found that the customers, who prefer to eat halal, do not eat gelatinous cakes (Lola’s cupcakes, 2015a). Thus in order to target a wider range of customers Lola cupcakes need to offer a new range of products that offer non-gelatinous products. Target market The target market of Lola cakes has been selected be all across London. The company has decided to target the customers based on their demographic and psychographic profile. The product category of bespoke designer cupcakes is targeted at the young population with the age group ranging in between 12-30 years. Based on the pricing of Lola cupcakes, the products are targeted at the middle and upper middle class of the society, which as a result allows the company to target a wide customer base (Lola’s cupcakes, 2015d). However, the narrow product offering also decreases the opportunity of the company to widen the customer base and target customers from several other demographic segments. The bespoke cupcakes are quite popular among the people with a “sweet tooth”, thus it can be stated that the product cater to a very specific need of the customers. Goals and Objectives The goals and objectives of Lola cupcakes are to create a strong brand image of style and quality, which will act as a strong competitive advantage for the company. In the near future the company is looking forward to increase its product portfolio and will dig deeper in to the bakery industry (Lola’s cupcakes, 2015a). At the same time Lola cakes will also expand in terms of geographic diversification in overseas locations mostly within Europe. This will help the company to increase its target customer base, thereby increasing its revenue generation. Proposed overall strategy The overall proposed strategy of the company is mostly on the grounds of promotion in the domestic market, product development and market expansion. In order to cope up with the increasing competition in the contemporary business market environment, Lola cupcakes need to create a strong differentiation in the product offering by developing innovative cupcake designs and variations that will attract the customers. The availability of a multiple variety of cupcakes will also help the firm to attract new customers and retain the existing ones. In terms of promotional activities the company will adopt new promotional and marketing communicational strategies to improve its brand image and increase consumer awareness of the new product introduction and reinforce brand recall. 4Ps: Promotion The promotional activities of a firm is essential is meeting several internal objectives that is necessary to ensure long term sustainability of the company and making the customers aware of the product availability and features. The promotion is one of the primary aspects of the marketing mix that helps a company to create brand awareness and brand recall among the customers. A core objective of the promotional activities is to positively influence the purchasing decision of the customers in favour of the company so that the customers purchase the products that the company wants them to purchase. It acts as the driving force of any business operation. The promotional activities can be conducted in several ways which can help to attract and retain customers. This section will discuss about the promotional strategies that Lola cupcakes can implement to further improve their business. Advertising The advertising involves print advertisements, television commercials, internet advertisements and radio broadcasting services (Anderson and Vincze, 2008). Currently Lola cupcake is only dependent on the print and social media advertisements. However, in order to increase the overall exposure to the target audience it will implement an integrated communicational strategy, which will include a combination of several advertising strategies in order to create a strong term impact on the audience. The advertising strategies of the company will firstly include creating a set of teaser campaigns that will involve highlighting the new cupcake designs and the new variants that will be launched in the market. The teaser ads will be based on pictorial description of the products without mentioning the brand name or the product name in anyway. The whole idea of the teaser campaign is to increase the curiosity of the customers and to increase their interest in the upcoming products (Boone and Kurtz, 2012). The teaser campaigns will be introduced in medium such as television commercials, print ads such as billboards and hoardings, and in magazine. The company will have to maintain and consistency in the advertisements so that the customers can relate all the advertisements and can understand that all of them are about the launch from the same company. The teaser campaigns will last for one month to ensure that the desire amount of exposure to the target customers has been achieved. Following the teaser campaign, the company will launch the final advertisements. The final advertisements will act like a revelation of the teaser campaign. It will give the customer a clear idea of what the company is trying to convey and what are new products that are available (Cant, 2009). The final advertisements will depict a clear link with the teasers so that the customers will be able to relate to both the advertisements. The television commercials will highlight the new healthy options that the company have introduced as a new value proposition. The commercial will depict that the health conscious young customers are enjoying their cupcakes which have arrived in new variants. The central idea of the advertisements will focus on enjoying the favourite taste without having to worry about gaining weight. The same communication will be addressed all across the other communication mediums such as print media, radio broadcasting and internet advertising. The rise of the internet usage and the rapidly growing popularity of the social media services have opened new opportunities for the firms to conduct effective marketing communication (Ivanov, 2012). Lola’s cupcake will leverage this technological advancement to increase the brand awareness of the company. It will also publish its advertisements online, so that it can target a wide range of customers over a large geographic area. The internet advertisements will be published on the popular websites as a form of banner ads. The social media advertising will also be conducted by the company in order to create exposure from all the possible directions. The firm will post banner ads on Twitter and Facebook. These two most popular social networking sites will help the company to advertise its products to millions of target customers in a most cost effective way. The social media advertising are quite cost intensive as compared to other traditional advertising mediums such as news paper or television commercials. Thus these advertising mediums will help the company to create brand and product awareness though multiple directions (Ferrell and Hartline, 2010). This as a result will increase the impact of the advertisements and will create top of the mind brand recall and break the existing clutter created by the rival firms. Sales Promotion The concept of sales promotion bears the central motive of pushing the initial sales of any particular product and service, and at the same time it also attracts the customers to try out the new products. The sales promotion also allows the firm to particularly attract new customers who are drawn by the lower price as compared to other products (Duncan and Moriarty, 2007). The sales promotion activities of the company will include offering the newly launched products at a discounted price for a limited period of time. The sales promotion will be communicated through television commercials and the internet and social media. Sales promotion by the company will only be offered to selected market areas. This as a result will not only increase the interest and hype of the new product, but the same time it will also help the company to get a clear insight of the level of acceptance of the new products among the consumers. In the sales promotion of the company it will offer the new variants of cup cakes in smaller packages at a lower per unit price. The promotional offer will be available in the online shopping site of the company. Lola’s cupcake will introduce the promotional offer for the first two months only and it will only be available for the small single service units. This as a result will allow the company to control the cash flow of the company. Thus, these sales promotional activities will help the company to improve its product awareness and increase the overall attractiveness of the brand. Loyalty Schemes The loyalty schemes are effectively used by the companies to retain the exiting customers. Customer retention is one of the important aspects of business operation that allows the company to have a steady stream cash flow. Cant (2009) mentioned, “80 percent of the company’s revenue is generated from the 20 percent of the customers”. Thus, this statement suggests that the retention of loyal customers is quite important from the point of view of the company’s sustainability (Anderson and Narus, 2007). The loyalty programs of Lola’s cupcakes will include discounts and product offers on bulk purchases along with discount on the number of purchase made by the customers. The online presence of the company will be leveraged to implement a successful loyalty scheme program. Since, online purchases can only be made by registering through a particular email id, so this makes it easier for the company to track the purchasing pattern of the loyal customers. This as a result will facilitate to effectively offer discounts to the customers who has made a significant number of purchase over the years. Lola’s cup cake will offer the system of point redemption. Points will be stored for each purchase made by the customers and these points can be redeemed in terms of price discounts for the customers’ next purchase. The loyalty schemes of the company will give bundle offers where the customers will be able to avail discounts on combined purchases. Personal Selling The personal selling strategies can be used by the companies to further increase the awareness of the products. Some of the firms are largely dependent on personal selling which forms the basis for their business activities, whereas other firms can use personal selling as medium of effective BTL (below the line) communication (Schultz, Kim and Kang, 2014). The firms employ sales executives to visit customers at their home and convince them to buy the products. The effectiveness of personal selling is not only reflected in the increased number of sales, but it is also targeted to improve the brand awareness of the company (Thorson and Moore, 2013). Lola’s cupcake will implement personal selling strategy to improve its promotional activities. The company will send executives to door to door to offer coupons and sell smaller samples to the customers. The personal selling activities will only be conducted at selected areas of London only. Since the central idea of the company is to create product awareness and not to make it a central source of revenue, therefore the company will only implement this strategy on selected high traffic areas. This as a result will make the customers aware of the new product launches of the company and at the same time give them an idea about how good the product it. The personal selling as a mode of promotional activities can be quite critical for the company, as for any new customer it will be a firsthand experience, thus the company needs to ensure that the products offered through personal selling is of highest quality. This as a result will create a good first impression, which can help the company to achieve higher brand equity. Public Relations Maintaining good public relations is one of the effective ways of promoting the brand of a company. The public relation (PR) activities mostly include corporate philanthropy and CSR activities that lead to corporate branding. The PR activities are mostly used to increase the overall brand equity of the company and not of any particular products (Blakeman, 2014). The PR activities of Lola’s cupcake will focus on public awareness on healthy foods and healthy choices that the people should make in their daily life. The company will introduce CSR campaigns like “fight against obesity” and “support healthy eating”. These campaigns will not only increase the overall brand valuation of the company but at the same time it will also help to communicate the underlying message that the company is trying to convey. Conclusion The marketing mix of a company gives an overall view of the company’s marketing strategies and future activities. The promotional activities of a firm are one of the most important aspects of the marketing strategies and without it the company cannot pursue its long term goals. The promotional activities of Lola’s cup cakes will help it to further improve its brand image and increase the brand awareness among the customers. This as a result will help the company to attract its target customer. The company will implement an integrated marketing communication strategy that will help it to influence the purchasing behaviour of the customers in favour of the company. In order to achieve that it will utilize the promotional activities like television commercials, internet and social media advertising and traditional print media. The company will also incorporate other strategies like personal selling, PR activities, sales promotion, loyalty schemes, etc. These promotional activities will create a strong impact on the audiences and it will increase the level of brand preference among them which as a result will increase the overall revenue generation of the company. Reference List Anderson, C. and Vincze, J., 2008. Strategic marketing management. 5th ed. London: Chapman and Hall. Anderson, J. C. and Narus, J. A., 2007. Business marketing: Understand what customers value. Harvard Business Review, 76(6), pp.53-62. BBC, 2014. Obesity quadruples to nearly one billion in developing world. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 2 June 2015] Blakeman, R., 2014. Integrated marketing communication: creative strategy from idea to implementation. Pennsylvania: Rowman & Littlefield. Boone, L. E. and Kurtz, D. L., 2012. Contemporary Marketing, 7th ed. New York: Kaplan Publishing. Cant, M., 2009. Marketing Management. 3rd ed. New York: Free Press. Duncan, T. and Moriarty, S., 2007. A communication-based marketing model for managing relationships. Journal of Marketing, 62(2), pp. 1-13. Ferrell, O. C. and Hartline, M., 2010. Marketing Strategy. 5th ed. Mason: South-Western Cengage Learning. Ivanov, A. E., 2012. The Internet‘s impact on integrated marketing communication. Procedia Economics and Finance, 3, pp. 536-542. Lola’s cupcakes, 2015a. Handcrafted Lola’s Cupcakes. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 2 June 2015] Lola’s cupcakes, 2015b. About Us. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 2 June 2015] Lola’s cupcakes, 2015c. Charity. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 2 June 2015] Lola’s cupcakes, 2015d. LOLAs Party Cake. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 2 June 2015] Schultz, D. E., Kim, I., and Kang, K., 2014. Integrated Marketing Communication Research. The Handbook of International Advertising Research, pp. 455-483. Thorson, E., and Moore, J., 2013. Integrated communication: Synergy of persuasive voices. New York: Psychology Press. Read More