Beautiful Beds – Affordable Soft Furnishing Essay For Your Home.

1.Her father has guaranteed a loan for them and they have secured a lease on a 500 sq ft store in Westbury mall Dublin street which is leased at €38,000 p.a. incl. rates.
2.The have established a concession in Clerys in O’Connell St Dublin and two other concessions, in Athlone and Galway. ( A concession is a shop within a shop ie you pay an agreed% of your turnover to the retailer). The company has struck a deal to pay 25% to the concessionees.
3.They will be selling their bed linen online. Hence they must create a transactional website and commit to various social media channels  to communicate their unique benefit, and develop a footprint online. Comment on which channels you shall use and why.  
Hence they have three distinct ways of servicing the consumer. You can treat each channel separately when it comes to the planned marketing strategy.

Beautiful beds are a company based out of Dublin started by a couple in their mid-20. The couple were working in retail industry when an idea stuck in their brains, to revolutionize the market of soft furnishing and they quit their jobs in order to pursue their dream. Beautiful beds is a company which is into selling of soft furnishing for home, their product portfolio includes Linen bed, Duvets, Pillows and set of soft furnishing solutions for bedrooms. The Target audience for the company is young people, both male and female in the range of 24-44; it’s a pretty big segment in Dublin. The company function in mid-price segment, something which appeals to the youngsters. The value proposition is providing best quality of soft furnishing at an affordable prices to the people who have just go married, or are moving into new homes and does not have lavish budget to spend on the house, Therefore, beautiful beds comes in the picture.

Vision Statement: We are here to make your house feel like your home

Pestle analysis can be understood as evaluation and analysis of a company, it is a tool which is used to track the environment company is working in, and it is a macro environment framework (Singh, 2016)

Political: These factors determine the extent to which a government influences the economy or a certain industry. For example the government may impose some new tax or duty due to which the entire revenue generating structure of the organization might change. Fiscal policies, trade tariff that the government may levy around the year also causes change in the organization structure and policies (Victor, 2017)

The political situation in Dublin is favourable for the business; the President has rolled out many policies which makes it easier for people to do business in Ireland, hence a favourable situation for beautiful beds.

Economical: These factors are the determinants of the economy, which affects the company directly. Rising inflation, falling economy, change in foreign interest rates,  change in demand and supply, interest rate, have a strong influence on the company, and thus it is very important to monitor the economic changes happening in the country and make strategies or do a risk assessment in case of adverse situation (Tutor & Soares, 2014)

The economy in Dublin is modern knowledge economy; they focus on services and high tech industries and dependent on trade, industries and investment. In terms of GDP, Ireland is ranked as one of the wealthiest nations in the world. All these things point out to a smooth sailing economy with no obstacles for Beautiful beds to sell their products.

Target Market

Social: This analyses the social trends of the country, like demographics, buying behaviour, cultural trends etc. These factors are hugely important while considering selling of product or service in a country (Islam & Mamun, 2017)

With 43.52% of population falling in the age group of 24-52, it is predominantly a young country. Majority of the population is urban, with good educational background and working professionals, hence again a win-win situation for beautiful beds to penetrate in the market.

Technological: This is related to innovation in the technology which may affect the operations of the business in favour or against. It refers to automation in the technology and the amount of awareness related to technological innovation (Kolios & Read, 2013)

In case of beautiful beds, technology does not play a major role, hence completely oblivion to the change in technology.

Micro- environmental Analysis

Strength: These are internal to any company, they help to make one understand why they are better than the competition, what is the USP, what advantages does the organization have and so in. In short, these are the factors which can be seen as the strength of the company (Anton, 2015)

Weakness: These are internal to the organization as well; they can be seen as the points where the company needs improvement in order to win the competition (Hossain & Hossain, 2015)

Opportunities: These are external to the organization, the company cannot create opportunity, but they can exploit it (Samuels, 2017)

Threats: Again, external to the organization, only proactive approaches can save the company from the threat (Viaggi, 2013)

Marketing Mix for Beautiful Beds:

Marketing Mix: It can be understood as a set of marketing tactics which the company uses in order to promote its services or the brand (Armstrong, Kotler, Harker & Brennan, 2015). It essentially consists of 7P’s of Marketing, which are as follows:

• Price:It can be understood as the value which is put for the product. It depends on the cost of production, segmented target, ability of the market to pay, demand of the product etc. Pricing plays a very important role in the sales of the product (Strauss, 2016)
• Product: It refers to the item which is actually being sold, a product should be such that it is able to satisfy some needs of the customer or potential customer (Sharma & Sharma, 2017)
• Place: It is the point of sale; every industry has a different place to sell its product. It’s a place where the product gets maximum attention from the customer (Khan, 2014)
• Promotion:It refers to all the activities which helps to increase the sale of the product, or make the brand more visible to its consumers (Andrews & Shimp, 2017)
• People: It can be understood as individuals who are contributing towards the marketing, sales, customer relationship etc. for the product. It encompasses the entire team responsible behind the product (Nath, 2017)
• Process: The process which the company follows to sell the product, what are the business function, research and development behind designing the product and so on (Patil & Bach, 2017)
• Physical evidence: This aspect of marketing mix is related to the tangible component of the product and the store (Wasan & Tripathi, 2014)

• Develop a loyal customer base
• Establish the brand through various channels
• Develop to presence internationally

The above mentioned are the goals which are identified by the company and in order to achieve these goals they have to come up with some really innovative ideas.

Customer base is the group of customers who repeatedly buy your products or services. There is a popular rule which is followed in sales with respect to the customer base.  The rule states that 80% of the sales come from 20% of the customers hence it becomes pivotal for the organization to focus on those 20% of the customers and win their loyalties. The target audience for beautiful beds are young male & female falling in the age bracket of 24-44 years. The onus is on the marketing department to keep the customers hooked onto the company and keep them interested in the company some of the techniques which the marketing department can do in order to have the attention of its customers are:

• Making customers know what the company is doing for them: It is really important to make the customers know about the steps company is taking to delight them, to keep them coming back to the company. What new marketing gimmicks the company is playing to stick around with its customers. If the customers are aware of it, they feel connected and feel valued.
• Rewarding the customers- A customer feels valued if he is getting rewards for doing business with the company. It gives him a sense of motivation and accomplishment (Hollenson, 2015)
• Sending thank you notes
• Taking the customer feedback seriously and working on it.
• Acknowledge the issues/concern/grievances raised by the customer
• Circulate a monthly newsletter and let the customer know what is the company new to improve the customer experience

Differentiating Factor

Beautiful beds are a relatively new company and it’s not an entirely new concept, but what sets the company apart from its competitors is its product selection, the target audience and its price range. The company has three different models to operate in: Sell products in a leased space, sell products in concession shops (3) & sell the products through online sale. Hence, all channels require a mix of marketing promotion to target the customer base. Strategies the company can use to establish the brand through channels are:

Online promotion: Social media is the hot buzz word in the present world. Every company is either promoting its product or services on social, or is doing employer branding. The bottom line is that the presence of each and every company is must and should on the social media. Platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Snapachat are becoming source of maximum footfall. In case of beautiful beds, their target audience is an avid user of social media, hence targeting them their makes most of the sense. Also, the first step of online sales, which is showing the impression, can begin from the platform and the entire purchase cycle, starting from impression showing to purchase can be facilitated on the social media. Therefore, beautiful beds have to focus its maximum efforts on digital marketing and promotion.

Newsletter/ Open Mails- Customers have a tendency of forgetting once they have consumed services or used a product, its human psychology to forget about the things. Newsletter and mailers come handy in this scenario; they help customers to not forget about the company. It helps in brand recall.

Magazines: Home décor magazines, luxury magazine, which people read through while they travelling can come handy as well when establishing the brand. Beautiful beds have to promote its product in such lifestyle magazine as well, limited exposure, but presence should surely be there.

Develop to presence internationally:

In order to move outside Dublin, the company has to first have its stronghold in domestic market. Once the company has established its name in the domestic market, it can look to expansion. Before expansion, study of the market is essential, the market has to be studied under PORTER 5 forces model to understand the market attractiveness and then only they should start deploying their marketing activities to expand internationally.

Note: The expenses are assumed; the calculation of sales is forecasted, keeping in mind the population numbers

Positioning

Control KPI Metrics:

After formulating the marketing strategy, what comes next is monitoring the strategy implementation and seeing if the marketing strategy employed is moving in the right direction. There are few metrics which can ensure a check or control on the marketing strategy

Website Traffic: After formulating the online strategy, the traffic on website should go from 1x to somewhere between 1.75x to 2x. If the traffic on the website is not increasing and the transactions are not happening as forecasted, something is definitely wrong with the strategy, hence need to rethink on it. The numbers should always increase after implementing the marketing strategy. The period of monitoring should be at least 3 months

Sales: The element, for which all the marketing efforts are being driven. It is the most important quality data point to measure. With the implementation of the marketing strategy that is after doing a lot of online and offline promotions it is pretty reasonable to see the surge in numbers. The numbers must and should show an upward trend, failure to do so, the strategy should be tweaked.

Footfall: Even if the sales are not increasing, the footfall on the counter has to definitely show some remarkable results. If people are pulled to the store, it is clear that the marketing strategy is not working, now if they are not buying anything that means the product is not working for the customers. Hence, it tells which business function one has to focus on.

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