Developing An Effective Marketing Strategy For Cultured Cities In Toronto

Discuss about the International Marketing for Effective Entrepreneurial Management.

The report throws light on the marketing strategy that would be used while entering into the international market. Cultured cities, the start-up company aims to expand its business at an international level. The chosen international city in which the company can expand its business is Toronto. Toronto is based in Canada and is one of the most educated and cultured cities of the world. An effective marketing strategy is needed to explore the available opportunities in the preferred city. This will help the organization to take maximum advantage from the identified market opportunities.

With the help of marketing mix or the 4P’s of marketing, the consumer needs in this market can be easily evaluated. The 4P’s of marketing includes product, price, place and promotion (Festa et al. 2016). The promotional and pricing strategy that is to be used by the company to penetrate in the market will also be discussed. Canada is known to be as the leading country with regards to the technological start-up business throughout the world. Most of the cities in Canada are highly advanced in all the cultural, economic and political aspect. While Toronto being the capital city of Canada is the home to various important offices of the foreign owned subsidies as well as Canadian business.

The report aims to describe the insight of the marketing mix strategy. Moreover, the alignment of the business environment as compared to Australia will be discussed. Recommendations will also be provided while analyzing the market opportunities within the chosen city, Toronto.  

Cultured Cities is a start-up business that was founded in the year 2016 by two B-school graduates (Cultured-cities.com. 2018). The service provided by them is in the form of online city guide that would help the people to discover popular and new venues, deals and events. The potential customers availing the services are budget conscious consumers, young and free university students and travelers or backpackers.  All the popular events, local bars, cheap meals, deals and hidden gems are presented in a very user-friendly manner with an interactive map of that particular city by the volunteers. The company has launched its business in Melbourne and Perth and will soon expand its business in Sydney. 

The marketing initiatives have to emphasize the easily accessible services to convince the potential customers. it is highly significant to make the people believe that information provided to them is worthy. The services obtained should be good value of the price described and up to the expectations of the consumers.  Through the 4P’s of marketing the elements needed to be adapted to meet the consumer’s demand can be ascertained.

Product

Product: the primary aim of the service is to bring together enthusiastic volunteers and writers to contribute towards making the city of Toronto a popular place and providing the various tourists with the opportunities (Khan 2014). This would help them to understand the different options available to them when they visit a new city. In addition to this, it will also provide them with an opportunity to different business in Toronto to promote their business. They could gain opportunities and engage in high revenue generation. Product is actually the combination of both the tangible and intangible products. The product is the destination that is to be experienced by the people the views of the location travel to the Toronto. 

The entertainment provided at the destination as well as the facility and accommodation provides the basic package as a product.  Therefore, it is a composite product and in the absence of either of the components, the entire product mix is incomplete in form (Arif and Balo 2017). As each of the element has its own significance in the product mix. The content development of the online website will be helpful in providing efficient services to the customer and services. Detailed information about the city nightlife, club, cafes, sights, venues and deals helps the visitors to make adequate buying decisions for their clients. Initiating new services is actually the life blood of any business. An effective content provides the potential users all the information from the company.

 In today’s time, great content engages the customer by providing abundance of information. All the important questions of the potential customers regarding Toronto should be answered by company’s website before any query posted by them. a development project is needed to be managed so that all the key parameters relating to the project can be ascertained. Through SMART model, which is specific, measurable, agreed, related and time-limited features the objectives can be achieved (Salam, Inam and Awan 2015). This would help in monitoring progress and flexibility should be made within the plans.

Price: pricing is one of the most crucial decisions that are to be made for the success of the business. The amount that is to be charged for the services will help in determining the revenues of the business in future. Developing a pricing strategy to enter into the market for a start-up business is highly significant. There are three factors that should be considered before charging for the services. These factors are costs, customers and competition.  Canada is a highly developed country with the stable and strong economy.  This indicates that the market is perfect for investing and setting up prices that would lead to maximum revenue. The target audiences are the travelers, backpackers, professionals and customers who are highly budget conscious (Phan and Vu 2015). The volunteers providing the contents are also the young people, travelers and the local people of the Toronto city. Therefore the pricing strategy would be such that would create a positive impact on the loyal customers. This will be further helpful in attracting and new customers.

Price

Through fermium model the company, Cultured cities can gain maximum revenue with this effective pricing model. Freemium is generally an internet based model used by the businesses. Basic services are provided to the customers free of cost but additional charges are levied on the premium features (Wu 2016). This strategy is quite helpful in increasing the user base besides generating more revenue and profit by implementation of this micropayment strategies.

As Cultured cities is a start-up business and initially distributing the services for free would be best and highly effective to attract more customers. Though most of the customers would not be able to reach the stage of premium but this model will help in attracting new prospective and premium customers. The freemium technique will not charge for the basic services provide to the customers but later on charges will be added to explore more about the city. Through Freemium the company can easily monetize their services offering in the business market of Canada (TechCrunch. 2018).

Place: various distribution strategies can be preferred for providing the online tourism service in Toronto. In the recent time of digitalization, internet is an important medium that is widely used nowadays to contact to each other at different parts of the world. The transportation, infrastructure facilities and communication act as an important factor for the development of the business in that particular country. The transit system of Toronto is created in a user-friendly way. This helps the local people besides the travelers and the backpackers to easily travel around the city. Besides an adequate transit services, the country also indulges in providing paratransit services. In Toronto, the urban transit system is effective that is useful in serving the people.

In the recent scenario, a deal with Google Waze, which is a navigation app that helps in tracking the traffic and incidents in the preferred routes (PlanetWeb.ca. 2018)? This has further made the city a better environment for residents as well as the visitors.  Proper infrastructural and technological development of the place is essential to make the business more successful. In order to provide better services, the company will open its new company in Toronto, Canada.

By creating a basic website, the in-depth knowledge about the services will be provided to the local people. the basic services involves all the in-depth knowledge of the travel destination, history of the city, resorts and this can be communicated through the company’s website (Samiee, Chabowski and Hult 2015). The website will include all the photographs, contact and location details. In addition to this, the website will help the potential customers to make bookings for their products. Furthermore, the target customers can ask for more promotional literature mailed to them and can also make other requests directly to the operators

Place

Promotion: Promotional strategy will help the business to identify their target market to establish effective goals. Cultured cities are an online service provider related to the specific cities. Better promotional strategies would further help them to assist the business in connecting and understanding with the customers and clients.  Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) the business can be promoted to the people. SEO is the process in which the online site of Cultured cities would be made more visible to the public in all the search engines. This would lead to more traffic from all the people that search for all the services offerings. The ranking of the search position arises from all the technical structure of the website (CityNews Toronto. 2018). The content development strategy also should be useful to make attract more customers.

Social media marketing in the recent times is also one of the most popular modes to create maximum revenue. This would be helpful in building the organization very helpful and would lead to nurture a social media audience. The content that is to be conveyed to the customers should be strong enough to attract the potential audiences. This would lead to build greater brand visibility and also greater reputation for the services (Kubacki et al. 2017). 

If the promotion of the business is done in a most effective manner, it would create a great impact on increasing the sales of the company. Creating an account in sites like Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest would work best for promoting the business. the strategy should involve promoting the overall content to the target customers. While posting the message in such promotional sites, main aim of the advertisement should be that a large number of customers should be attracted. The content should have high appeal to attract and retain the target audience. The people of Canada would not appreciate constant flow of promotional messages. They would rather be liked to get entertained and informed, instead of just getting the advertizing message. While posting the content to the followers, it is also important to get involved in the conversations. 

Through email marketing also the company can provide maximum potential to gain maximum customers. The ROI is very less and it’s almost cost nothing to execute the promotional activities (Dadzie et al. 2017). The subscribers from the websites can be collected and mail can be delivered to the followers on the social media sites and this would help in promoting about the latest information regarding the city to the customers. Providing newsletter about the new club or bar in the city to the people of Canada will help the customers to gain maximum advantage. 

Promotion

The consumer prices in Canada are lower than in Australia. Moreover, other prices such as consumer prices, restaurant prices and groceries are relatively lower than in Australia. But the rent prices and consumer prices including rent are higher in Toronto than in Perth.  Canadian values self-reliance more than the people of Australia.

The companies are actually depended on the people who run the businesses. In Australia, hierarchy is mainly established for convenience. The superiors are always accessible and the manger mostly relies on the teams and individual employees for expertise. While in Canada, the culture is made through interdependence among the people. While entering into the business market of Canada, it is important to share all the relevant information freely. As the people of Canada values a straightforward information exchange the information provided to the potential consumers should also be adequate. Canada is a normative society and the people values have great respect for traditions and also put a major emphasis in achieving quick results. Before expanding its business in Canada it is important that Cultured Cities should showcases the preferred cities with high respect and also focus on the heritage value of Toronto.

The process through which the services is to be delivered in Toronto should also be made more effective by encouraging pay-per clicking marketing techniques. The advertisement, offer and website page should be in good harmony and synchronization as it helps in maintain the interest of the consumers. The website page should be free of all unnecessary whistles and bells and distractions. This would further help in boasting the products benefits to the consumers.

In Australia, various e-commerce companies’ fails to realize the biggest marketing assets are at their fingertips that is their customers (Sam, Li and Chatwin 2016). in reality majority of the customers identify that the word-of mouth plays a major role while making any decisions. Therefore referrals with the help of social media would prove to be helpful in recommending about the products and services. Moreover, appreciating the loyal customers would be helpful in penetrating in the business market of Canada. A well-written and periodically emailed newsletter is a powerful method of increasing revenue and improving customer loyalty.

Increasing the clarity and transparency of information would also lead to create a better experience for the user and improve the conversion rates. Increasing the likelihood for appearance in all the search engine results in positive outcome by using relevant content. Alike, Australia people living in Canada possess a positive attitude and have great tendency towards optimism. The people put major emphasis on leisure time and are fun-loving in nature. People in Canada are more inclined towards drinking so more information regarding the pubs and bars. therefore, more information should be given to the travelers and backpackers about the bars and pubs present in the city. the pricing strategy used by Australia is mostly in the form of subscription method but while entering into Canada, freemium model would lead to gain maximum market penetration and gain competitive advantages. 

Conclusion

Conclusion:

From the analysis of the market and country, it is ascertained that the marketing mix of the chosen country is Canada is appropriate to expand the business. Through effective promotional strategies and monetization models, the needs of the consumers can be fulfilled. In the era of globalization, the environmental condition is highly complex due to the intense competition in the market. The company, cultured cities helps in providing the overall information about the city, Toronto.  The invisibility of the product gives more importance to the marketing strategy. With the help of marketing mix elements such as price, product, promotion and place, the company will adapt to the environmental condition of Toronto and thus realize its mission. Through its promotional strategy right information is provided to the people at the right time for the travel services. By interactive communication, promotional and informational benefits would be provided to the potential customers. 

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