Market segmentation distinguishes groups of consumers from others, the factors being age, sex, geographic, location, income and population. Segmenting by sex is a main variable as there are many products out there that focus towards specific sex i.e. Make-up is mainly aimed towards women (and the occasional cross dresser) rather than men.
After investigating the main businesses in the area there seems to be an equal split between men and women that would be in charge of purchasing accounting services and using my services.
Researching for Bright Spark Accounting Services
My type of research is secondary research, otherwise known as Desk research. This is the gathering and analysis of already available information. Therefore, my company does not have to actually carryout surveys etc, but just look up information that they need, this is where the Internet is most useful! A big advantage of Desk research is that it saves both time and money for my company. However, one common disadvantage with this type of research is that the information found is not always the information that it needed however in my case I got all the information I needed.
Market research can obviously be of great help and benefit the business enormously, which is why it is considered a very valuable tool to my business in achieving success and my objectives. After I have found out what is in demand by consumers, then I will then continue to carry out more research. So my company will continue to use research until all of the research objectives have been satisfied. If the company’s research has been successful, I should know exactly where to head in the market next. Market research can obviously help a business that is not doing very well, i.e. making a loss.
Secondary research objectives
My secondary research objectives consist of:
How much money does the population in our area spend?
The circulation and viewing figures that correspond towards my project.
Review market size and current competition to see if there is growth or decline within our sector.
Research into how much money spent on accounting services annually by all types of businesses.
To gather the information the sources I will consider using are as followed,
- Statistics on Social trends,
- Annual statistics book,
- The Internet,
- Business related textbooks
The data is easy to access so I will look up the relevant data and use it appropriately to the task at hand.
Over the Internet the easiest possible way to find out what I will be looking for, so by using search engines to find web pages on statistics. From this I will search for the relevant data, this should be simpler as I should be able to type in what I’m looking for and the data should come up.
What will make advertising successful is another important factor I will need to look at. With using AIDA as a template, it applies to advertising that needs to generate a response.
AIDA stands for ATTENTION, INTEREST, DESIRE, and ACTION. My advertising needs to get the Attention, its all about first impressions, whether the first impression is the advert that a potential customer reads in the paper or a visit to my website. Interest when some one receives one of my leaflets and that they are going to look at it for a couple of seconds, so during those couple of seconds I need to create interest, something that stands out and makes the potential customers remember my business. Desire, Bright Spark Accountancy needs to create desire for the customer, this can be done through proving that you can provide good services and create a trust between my business and the customer. Finally Action, if the 3 stages of AIDA are performed well then the action taken by the customer may be to pursue there interest in my services.
Promotional Plan of Attack
Planning promotional activity: - to successfully meet my objectives within marketing, like any business activity I will need careful planning, this will mainly be how I spend my £5000 and how to get my services across to a greater number of people
Sales literature: - this includes promotional or sales literature that is normally printed and distributed to promote my service directly to the customer this will be in the form of leaflets that be delivered around Lutterworth to every household and company/business.
Public relations: - Public Relations is a method of presenting my company and its services in a positive way to the public I will do this through portraying my company in the local paper the ‘Lutterworth Mail’
Advertising: - this is perhaps the most familiar part of marketing, advertising is information paid for and presented in the media, ill do this through the local newspaper, however I could also to it through magazines, television and radio. But the latter proved to expensive for my budget.
Telemarketing: - Telephone marketing (telemarketing) uses telecommunications and computers to market my services directly to prospective customers, I will do this through my website.
Advertising My Company
After thinking of what ways I would advertise my company, I decided that I would create some Business Cards, leaflets and a website as well as a repeated newspaper column in the local paper.
With the budget of £5000 I had to be sure that I would achieve some success. As the company is based in my local town of Lutterworth, I researched that with approx. 10000 people living there, a number of companies and small businesses there was only a dozen accountants/accounting services. The local paper is disrupted over the whole town and surrounding villages once a week on a Thursday, so my business will be viewed on regular basis.
I felt that opening my services here with the appropriate advertising would attract sufficient interest to run a successful company.
As I have set a fixed amount for my fees it should be easy to predict my income and work out how much I need to break even on the advertising costs.
The break down of my advertising:
Website £1500 + £50 per month for updates
Newspaper advertising £200 per month
10000 Leaflets + Distributor £750
1000 Business Cards £125
I have assumed that I will not receive any income through customer during the first month as I will only just start to get noticed, but once the ‘word’ gets around about my company sales will expand and develop, and through the course of continually/repeated advertising in the paper I expect sales to continue to grow.
Obviously I will measure my success on the amount of custom I receive, but all so I will provide a questionnaire for customers on how/why they have decided to come to my business for accounting services to see of any ways of improving my services.
When I will be looking to recover my costs for advertising I will be able to cover my main outlay within the first month of business after the start of the advertising, however this does not include wages that I have set up to be taken into account.
