Business Questions and Response, Coursework Example

Part 1

Guerrilla Marketing

From the first e-Activity, discuss the key elements that made the guerrilla marketing so successful. Explain your rationale.

The fact that the airtime for guerilla marketing is reduced, the advertising creators were expected to make specific adjustments to the ideas that they are aiming to share to the public in relation to their commercial. Given that majority of the commercial ads that are following the guerilla marketing approach are shown through internet portals, the said marketing campaigns need to be both brief and appealing. This indicates that guerilla marketing is more dependent on what needs to be shown to the customers, how they are needed to be shown and what specific reaction is expected from them. For guerilla marketing to be successful, it has to be able to draw the attention of the audience in an immediate time span and be able to retain and extend interest of the market, which would mark the product’s brand in their minds, which could be used for suggestive marketing later on.

Discuss possible best practices from the guerrilla marketing campaign that different types of small businesses could leverage. Provide specific examples to support your response.

Unlike huge and specifically directed marketing, guerilla marketing is more general. The idea of the campaign under this reputation of marketing is based on time and appeal. The ads need not be lengthy, in fact, they should be able to explain the message of the company in bits of seconds as the persons or the target audiences gaze their eyes on the advertisement. This would best provide small businesses a possible opportunity to create a brand that would specifically appeal to the market they are aiming to affect. For instance, given that the campaign advertisement need not be expensive but instead efficient in getting market attention, small businesses simply need to know what they want to impose on the people, what message they want to share and get the best source for posting so as to influence the right target of market they would want to influence. Online companies such as Amazon.com started from establishing such marketing campaign tools. While their online reputation is being set online, the company grew into a more known organization that provides online service, which allowed them to get the attention of many. Most of these campaigns were found on social media sights and short yet most visited blogs in the internet.

Advertising and Promotion

From the second e-Activity, determine the best possible way to leverage Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites to advertise and promote the small business of your choice. Explain your rationale.

As mentioned, Amazon.com started small, and yet it grew to the market giant that it is at present. Utilizing social sites have best helped the website to get proper attention from the market, which later on allowed it to produce as much profit as expected from its operation. Likely, smaller competitors of this giant in the e-commerce industry could best be able to learn from the strategies that it has embraced when it was still starting. For instance, an upcoming challenger to Amazon.com is the Hello Hello Books from Maine which has its physical store and its online site at the same time. The owner, Lacy Simmons, could best be able to direct attention of the target market into her e-shop through posting short yet interesting and inviting commercial ads [photo-based stories] that would turn the attention of the audience and thus check out what she has to offer. Given that the social sites are now visited for several millions of times every day, popularity is expected to increase given that the commercial advertisement she would create is appealing enough to the public she wants to target.

Select a small business with which you are familiar and then determine the best way for that business to stretch its advertising budget. Provide specific examples to support your response.

Stretching the marketing budget is easier especially if the platform of campaign is friendlier compared to huge advertising strategies in the market. Understandably, the guerilla marketing approach allows for such chance to gain attention from the market on the part of small businesses in the industry. As mentioned earlier, Hello Hello Books, a website that is defined by its already established reputation in Maine could gain benefits from this approach. Stretching the budget would involve choosing the right length of the ad, choosing the right package of posting the ad, and picking the right sites to where the campaign advertisement would be posted. Looking through all these factors would assure the proper presentation of the message aimed while also manifesting the needed attention of the market towards the business through a cost-effective foundation.

Part 2

Creating a Solid Financial Plan

Discuss the best way to leverage a breakeven analysis when defining a business strategy.

When it comes to establishing a business strategy, it is important to know what the business has compared to what it is able to make. The financially-based analyses suggested through the breakeven point of defining a business status is important when establishing the competitive value of the business itself. Comparing the performance of the business with its base capital and the balanced profit it is able to make from the market it serves shall provide a good source of indication on whether or not it could take to incur several advancements in its operations or at some point even improve its marketing strategies in the market. Directing the business’ budget towards activities that would provide it with the chance to grow within the industry and towards a more defined market reputation could all be decided upon through the existence of a breakeven analysis.

Analyze the 12 financial ratios mentioned in the textbook and determine which is the most useful to the greatest number of small businesses. Explain your rationale.

The financial ratio that could be most useful to small businesses is that of the activity ratio. Given that small businesses are dependent on the operation-defined results from their daily activities, being able to analyze their performance from such operations is important in defining the status of their business in comparison with other organizations in the industry. The activity ratio would be able to indicate whether or not a specific operation in the business that they are engaging in provides them with the profit they hope to incur. This way, organizers would be able to decide whether to retain or cancel particular operations that they are engaging with everyday.

Managing Cash Flow

Analyze the steps involved in preparing a cash budget and determine which steps presents the greatest number of obstacles to the greatest number of small businesses. Explain your rationale.

For small business, it is the phase of the estimation of sales and expenses that specifically posts the most challenging aspect of creating cash flow and establishing financial plans. This specific phase requires that the business foresee future business performance based on its past operations and the yielded results from such operation. Relatively, this is not that easy for small businesses as they are still scaling their capacity to perform against small and large competitions in the market.

Analyze the steps involved in avoiding a cash crunch and make at least one additional recommendation for doing so. Provide specific examples to support your response.

Leveling account payables with the operational yields of the business is necessary. Incurring account payables more than what the business is able to produce within a specific span of time would jeopardize the chance of the business to grow. Instead, it might even bring about the failure of the business to produce a sense of development through time if it is not able to establish strong and distinctive source of finding for the account payables that it incurs every now and then. Balancing the operational yields with that of the expenses it incurs is essential in the process of retaining the financial integrity of any small business.

References:

Chapter 10: Working with Executives.

Hamel, G. & Prahalad, C.K. (2004). Competing for the Future, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.

Levinson, J.C. (2001). Guerrilla Marketing, Secrets for making big profits from your small business, Houghton Muffin Co. New York.