3. Proposal by Ali Akbar Khan:
To increase sales and profitability in Universal Media Services (UMS) .
UMS INTRODUCTION:
UMS is the pioneer of Ad agency in Pakistan, founded in 1990 by Mustaq Lakhani, with a broad
vision, to increase awareness about the need to foster innovation and specialization in
advertisement industry in Pakistan. Its sole purpose is to uplift our all stake holders and give
them the key to the path of Success.
Consumer behavior is continually evolving in the wake of rapid technological developments. As
an industry, we are challenged to keep up, to foster innovation, to create new experiences, to
always look ahead.
We built this agency from the ground up, fostering an entrepreneurial culture. And we continue
to be heralded as leaders not because we know everything -- but because we know our learning
(and teaching) is never done.
CLIENTS :
Mc Donald
KFC
Pizza Hut
Junaid Jamshaid
K & Ns
English Boot house
Khanani & kalia
Alladin
Naheed Superstore
Metro Cash n carry
Nokia
Nike
REWARDS AND RECOGNITION:
We have been recognized as “ strategic advisors in search engine “ by Jackson Magazine thrice
and get SEO award from all leading international and doestic agencies.
For us client satisfaction and importance is most important than rewards and it is our main
reward.
4. PROBLEMS IDENTIFICATION:
UMS is facing 3 critical problems and barriers and therefore experienced a sharp decline in
sales.
1) Increasing Competition
2) Shrinking profit margins
3) Changing customer tastes
We need to address these problems on urgent basis, must take concrete steps and effective
actions to turn them turn to our advantage .
RESEARCH:
UMS was founded in Nov 24, 1990. We are the pioneer of ad agency in Pakistan. We were
undoubtedly the trendsetters and we brought a new concept that was not previously very
common in those days.
Prior to 90s, domestic organizations used to hire individual photographers, cameramen and
untrained speakers and there was a dearth of technical equipments.
In that period of time, UMS had to start from the scratch. We had to develop as agency
infrastructure, for even others to come, since UMS believe in healthy competition which is good
for all of us to keep improving our services for the end user and for our economy.
UMS facilitated our clients to significantly increase their market share and get a healthy return
on their investments (ROI)
After the new millennium, new players enter into the market. UMS welcomed competitions for
improvement in quality and services and for the mutual benefits of the end user .
But there were radical changes in society as well as in business. New players offer the same
service at lower prices and even grabbed our clients. They now grabbed a significant market
share from us.
Gone are the good days that we were market leaders. Now are Market Share is on 30%.
Our competitor MU creations are now at 55% of Market Share. We are now facing cut throat
competition.
5. First we reached saturation point. Now we are at the decline stage or I would better say, if
things doesn’t get any better and we didn’t do anything about it, then very soon we all would
be doing something else
SUGGESTION:
We have to anticipate trends, well in advance of our competitors.
UMS
90%
65%
30%
90%
65%
30%
8%
30%
60%
2% 5%
10%
UMS MU Creations other players
Market Share
UMS MU Creations other players
6. Based on what is happening today, where is the market going? Where is it likely to be in three
months, six months, one year, and two years ?
We have to accurately predict what is likely to happen in the future based on what is happening
in the present.
We ought to adopt the principle of the offensive.
Napolean said, “No great battles are ever won on the defensive.”
Our company cannot win by playing it safe, by retreating or by simply cutting costs.
To succeed on our competitive battle field, we must seize the initiative. We must always be
attacking, moving forward, continually innovating and marketing in new and better ways.
The most important number in any business is cash flow. The purpose of business warfare is to
generate sales, revenues, and cash flow in a steady, predictable, consistent process in the face
of determined competitors who also want the same thing.
In business, the equivalent of the offensive, or the attack , in warfare is marketing and sales to
your competitors .
The key to business success is increased sales activity and sales results. Success requires
advertising, promoting, marketing to, and attracting prospective customers and then selling
effectively and converting them into buyers. In times of economic uncertainty, every effort and
activity in the organization must be focused on sales generation and new customer
development.
We must get back to our roots and ask the following questions “
1) What exactly is to be sold (what exactly are our services ) ?
2) To whom our services are to be sold?
3) What will the customer prefer our service to that of our competitors?
4) How are the customers to be identified and attracted?
5) How are they to be sold?
6) By whom are they going to be sold?
7) How much are we going to charge?
8) How are we going to charge this amount?
9) How is the product going to be paid for?
10) How will the product be produced and delivered?
11) How will it be serviced and maintained?
12) How will all of these activities be monitored and managed?
7. We also need to understand our Target Market.
We need to apply the Pareto Principle that is 80/20 rule to our sales and marketing activities.
What are the 20% of marketing and sales methods that generate 80% of our sales and
revenues.
20% of our activities account for 80% of our profits. In addition, 20% of our activities account
for 80% of our expenses, and the activities that represent 80% of our expenses may be closely
related to most profitable activities. We are spending most of our time, money and energy in
areas that are not profitable at all.
STRATEGIES:
Now let me repeat the 3 critical problems and their solutions
1) Increasing Competition
2) Shrinking profit margins
3) Changing customer tastes
To deal with increased competition, we must improve the quality of our offerings and the speed
at which we deliver them to our customers. To deal with shrinking markets, we must expand
into new markets and increase our product offerings to attract new customers. To deal with
shrinking markets, we must expand into new markets and increase our product offerings to
attract new customers. To deal with changing customer tastes, we must develop and market
services that our customers want today, rather than what they may have wanted in the past, in
the 90s, after UMS came into being.
Since competition is fierce, survival is at stake.
We need to be innovative and find cost effective ways for high-performance and productivity.
As per Peter Drucker:
“If you don’t understand innovation, you don’t understand business “
Following are my strategies to increase sales and profitability and to restructure and reinvents
ourselves.
We would also be adopting through the line (TTL) approach
8. This strategic approach allows brands to engage with a customer at multiple points (for example, the
customer will see the television commercial, hear the radio advert and be handed a flyer on the street
corner). This enables an integrated communications approach where consistent messaging across
multiple media will create a customer perception.
We would have a perfect combination of Pull and push Digital Marketing strategy.
Pull digital marketing technologies involve the user having to seek out and directly select (or pull) the
content, often via web search. Web site/blogs and streaming media (audio and video) are good
examples of this. In each of these examples, users have a specific link (URL) to view the content
Push digital marketing technologies involve both the marketer (creator of the message) as well as the
recipients (the user). Email and SMS are examples of push digital marketing. In each of these examples,
the marketer has to send (push) the messages to the users (subscribers) in order for the message to be
received.
Below are my marketing strategies :
1) Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) , Search Engine Marketing ( SEM) and Internet
Marketing
We would be devising strategies for the following 2 types of companies
a) Pure Click Companies
b) Brick and Click companies
a) PURE CLICK COMPANIES
Pure Click companies are those companies whose revenue is generated through their websites.
In the first phase we will design a CMS (Content Management System) based website. It would
be product specific highly professional website
In the 2nd
phase we would be providing them Top Class SEO services so that they can get Page-1
Google Ranking
b) BRICK AND CLICK COMPANIES
These are the companies that have a showroom, shop, organization etc . They have also
website as additional marketing option. So we will provide them SEO and SEM services
9. We need to increase traffic of our visitors in our company website umsagency.com .So that
visitors, prospects and potential customers searching for ad agencies world wide, find our
company on the top of Google Searches.
Companies who on the top of Google searches get more visitors and potential customers and
hence eventually get more business .There is rapid proliferation of quality inquiries and
business orders.
What we can do is ask our web developer and SEO experts to use hot key words and continually
search for hot keywords and include in our back end programming so that our company
website is getting high end optimization.
The earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in
the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engines users.
But this is not sufficient. Our website Google ranking will improve by using the hot keywords.
But still cannot be at top due to low traffic of visitors; leave alone on Google 1st
page.
To be on the organic searches we need to be first on the inorganic searches. That is we need to
invest in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) that is Google Ad words (The sponsored links in
Google).
SEM is the best way to present your products to your buyers when they search them!
Skillfully handled search engine marketing can save you lots of money and drastically
increase your ROI
The best thing about SEM is that It is only targeted at people who are interested in your
products
SEM offers you high visitor to buyer conversion rate
SEM allows you to reach over 90% of all internet users efficiently and cost effectively
Gaining a customer through SEM costs money & requires your continuous attention
You have to Research a lot and find out the best keyword for your campaign
You will have to make sure that your money is not getting wasted through inappropriate
traffic
You are suppose to do:
Competitive Analysis
Advertisement type selection
Reporting and Analysis
10. Bid accurately
And many more
Experts will Prepare, Execute and manage your SEM
Clients investment will be thoroughly monitored and best buyer Traffic will be fetched on
product pages
you will simply tell us your products and get buyers directly in your inbox
Once our website become popular in 1 year, we need not to invest in SEM , since our Search
Engine Optimization ( SEO) will become strong due to increase in traffic.
We must also market our ad agencies in popular social network websites such as Twitter ,Face
book and professional network websites such as LinkedIn.
Advertising on twitter and facebook is also known as social media optimization (also known as
SMO or
SMO include blogging commenting on other blogs, participating in discussion groups, and
posting status updates on social networking profiles
Social SEO) website content.
We must also use email and SMS marketing.
For Email marketing, we will form a database of prospects and divide them as per industry.
Then we will send them email templates specific to their industries and products
For this purpose we will hire email and SMS marketing companies.
Following are the benefits & purpose and e-mail marketing
Purpose of email marketing
Sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant
with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat
business
Sending email messages with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing
current customers to purchase something immediately,
SMS MARKETING :
An SMS Marketing campaign involves collecting mobile phone numbers usually by
customer opt-ins using a keyword sent to a short code , which adds their number to a
11. messaging platform database. Once numbers are collected, the marketer can then
prepare a special promotion or update and send a mass message to potential repeat
customers.
BENEFITS OF EMAIL MARKETING
An exact Return on ivestment (ROI) can be tracked “Tracked to Basket “ and has proven
to be high when done properly. Email marketing is often reported as second only to
search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic
Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of email subscribers who have opted in (i.e.,
consented) to receive email communications on subjects of interest to them.
My plan is t use Internet Marketing mix contextual ads on search engine result pages (SERP) ,
banner adds,blogs , Rich Media Ads, Social Network advertising , online classified advertising ,
email and SMS marketing.
The benefit of online and new media advertising is that it its range and reach. It can be viewed
by more than 240 countries world wide 24*7 and it is not limited by Geography and time
Online advertisements may also offer various forms of animation which is not possible in news
papers and magazines
In its most common use, the term "online advertising" comprises all sorts of banner, e-mail, in-
game, and keyword advertising, on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace has
received increased relevance
Developing product specific company website for them which would be has PR-Ranking 5
An automated digital assistant would be there to assist
Automated digital assistant uses artificial intelligence to assist
Automated online assistants have the ability to provide customer care 24*7 , and may, at least,
be a complement to customer service by humans.[2]
One report estimated that an automated
online assistant produced a 30% decrease in the work-load for a human-provided call centre
I would be an avatar. an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's .It may
take either a 3D form
We will also be using Chat mate so tat our clients can directly chat with our clients on that
software and close their business deals effectively .
AWeb.2.0 application would be used for chat formums with a moderator
12. . A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue
We would be designing
INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING :
Interactive advertising uses online or offline interactive media to communicate with
consumers and to promote products, brands, services, and public service announcements,
corporate or political groups.
1) TELEVISION PROMOTION:
We are spending a fortune on promotion of UMS by paying a lot to celebrities. Our expenses
are sky high. As I said before --20% of our activities account for 80% of our expenses. Instead
what we can do is to showcase our original happy satisfied customers who become financially
better off through UMS promotions. For this purpose we will select all zones and Markets so
that there is one well known entrepreneur in each market whose success story is showcase on
TV channels.
Since competition is fierce, survival is at stake.
We need to be innovative and find cost effective ways for high-performance and productivity.
2) ) PROMOTION IN MAGAZINE:
Promotions in Magazines must be creative. We should divert from the traditional marketing
strategies to innovative strategies.
Our Mission is to offer the offer the highest quality services and as a result, grow at a rate of
20% per annum in sales and profitability.
3) VARIATION IN OUR CHARGES:
Right now we are charging 20% more than our competitors MU Creations. We have been
compelled to charge this amount because if we wouldn’t charge we cannot recover our
operational costs of running the business. MU creations is charging less and offering better
services due to innovation and increase market share. It has successfully expanded its business
into new markets and due to innovation it is yet making huge profits despite of lower charges.
4) Tv Soap Marketing :
Soaps are very popular and masses in Pakistan are hooked daily and watch soaps from 7:00 pm
to 11:00 pm . That’s their daily routine. As per my strategy successful business men characters
13. in soaps , will be talking UMS and sharing their secret of entrepreneurial success by UMS in
interviews and meetings
5) Below the Line ( BTL)
Participation in exhibitions: at expo centre to close mega business deals through one-to-one
approach. It would be Direct Marketing and it can get Mega Business deals
SUMMARY:
Now we don’t have any other option available. We must take Calculated Risks.
Peter Drucker said that:
“Without the will to take risks, to venture into the unknown and let go of the familiar past, a
corporation cannot thrive in the twenty-first century”
As per my deep assessment UMS can run at Break Even Point for six months .For that purpose
the Top Senior Management has to cut its luxurious expenses in budget. So we must see to it
that our charges are competitive. Through Google Ad words we would be getting well known in
North American and European Market and through Linkedin.com we can be popular in the
Middle-East Market.
So in this pattern we would be hopefully getting orders from the overseas market.
Now after this initial success our next step would be to double our service charges that are
exactly twice the amount our competitor MU creation is charging. So well will create the
perception and develop a mind set that when ever customers think for high marketing
promotions and productivity they will think of UMS.
For masses today price of product or service is low, the quality is also low. So by doubling our
charges we will create the perception of our services are superior, tailor-made, high quality,
unmatched and the best.
In this way through reinventing and restructuring ourselves, our systems and processes we will
reestablish our self as Brand Ambassadors, regain our Competitive Edge and re emerge as
Market Leader.
These are the decisions that you cannot afford not to make. These are decisions with a very low
downside if we are wrong and positive upside if we are correct.
