uaeaccess.com
by Tony Habib
1.0
Executive Summery
In
line with our mission to supply the region market with creative services and
solutions, and supportive business consultancy, we hereby introduce a new
product to the local market of the United Arab Emirates: A commercial portal
website that collects and displays almost all companies in the UAE in some
specific fields; real estate developers, insurance companies, banks and
financial institutions, travel agencies, etc. The idea is to create a
one-stop-shop for the mass to gain access through it to different companies’
websites.
Our
product will start its life cycle by focusing on one of the mentioned
categories, then other areas will be tackled one at a time. We shall start with
travel agencies for many reasons, briefly because they are many, they lack
advertising and people use to travel a lot.
The website on its final stage will consist of
tabs titled with different business categories. Each tab (page) will display
logos of the companies that signed with us. A company can buy as big space as
it wants within the range of minimum and maximum we set in the websites’ terms.
A company can display in these pixels its logo, animated banner or even a
promotional message.
We will be targeting by this product two
different segments: organizations (direct costumer) and end users (costumer’s
costumer). Costumers will pay us for renting the pixels space on the portal as
well as for how we promote it to the mass.
2.0
Marketing Situation
2.1
Company situation analysis
Ratio
Middle East has been in the market for more than five years now, and that
enriched it with connections as well as deep knowledge of the business and
consumers market. From the other hand the company has on board, already, all
the professionals needed to initiate this website.
2.2
Competition
The product is totally new to the market, that’s why competitors
don’t exist yet. After launching the site if competitors try to clone it or
make another version, it will be already too late and useless. And this has
been proved right in other countries.
2.3
About the market
- The UAE demographics show that more or less
than 80% of the population are expatriates. They are from all around the world
and especially Arabs and Asians. All working professionals are entitled for a
return ticket annually, and that makes traveling industry in the country safe
and sound even in the worst global crisis.
- Along with “sponsorship” system used in the
UAE, international airlines can’t operate in the market or deal directly with
the mass unless they have a local travel agency as a representative. These
agencies carry out the booking and ticketing processes on their behalf.
- Addition to that, the mass are totally used
to browsing the Internet to search for something, as well as to the concept of
having similar shops collected in one place.
- Virtually all the organizations here have
their own websites or at least have a web address to be provided with business
emails. End users are used to find in these websites all the info they are
looking for and a lot of online purchases are occurring.
3.0
Target Market
Our
target market is split into travel agencies who will be intensively addressed
through sales strategies, and their costumers who will be the focus of
promotion and communications activities.
3.1
Travel Agencies
- Sponsors and representative agencies of
international airlines (e.g.: Air France, Swiss Air, Lufthansa, etc.)
- Travel agencies associated with local
airways. (e.g.: Etihad airways, Emirates airlines, etc.)
- Agencies that offer leisure travel packages,
local touristic tours, and business frequent flying solutions.
3.1.1
Demographics
- Their operation has high and low seasons;
high seasons are June to September, December and local holidays.
- They lack advertising for one of two
reasons: Either their revenues is not that big to fund advertising campaigns,
or because people use to go to the nearest travel agency regardless better
offers or service quality.
- Their offices are scattered all over the
cities, there is no travel agencies in the malls (attraction points) and there
is no agencies offices adjacent to each others.
3.1.2
Needs
- They need to increase sales and market share
and gain reputation.
- They need cheep communication channel to
reach their costumers.
- They need to increase the footfall on their
websites where they display and update all their offers and travel packages.
- They
need to reach new costumers and conquer new markets.
3.2
End users
- Expat families going home country for
vacation.
- Expat or Emirati families travel for
leisure.
- Businessmen frequently travel for business
purposes.
- Tourist groups coming to the UAE for
shopping festivals or sport events.
- Foreign businessmen coming to attend
exhibitions, meetings, trainings or business gatherings.
- Companies and organizations booking for
their employees annual ticket, or booking for their managerial staff business
trips.
3.2.1
Demographics
- Expats working professionals: age group
24-55, mostly couples, families with young kids or male singles.
- Expat and Emiratis leisure travelers:
couples or families, parent’s median income for expats 240,000DHS per annum,
and for Emiratis 600,000DHS per annum.
- Shopping and sports tourists: age group
25-40, male and female, not families and no children, shorts stays, mostly
Arabs from neighboring countries.
- Administration management and accountants:
they search for the lowest fares, facilitated payment plans and last-minute
booking abilities.
3.2.2
Needs
- They need to have the option of comparing
and finding the best offers and packages.
- They need a one-stop-shop to know about
almost all the agencies in the country.
- They need a friendly user online website
where they can know all of that from their desktops at work or their home
computers.
- They need to get the best service to be able
to travel and have a good experience doing that.
4.0
SWOT Analysis
4.1
Strengths
- User-friendly interface that allows users to
quickly grasp the promos of different agencies or to simply click on their
logos to directly browse their websites.
- The company has all the required market
knowledge and in-house professionals for needed technical support.
- The company has a wide range of supporting
services (website design, web developing, logo design and corporate guideline
design, etc.)
- It’s a website on the Internet so it covers
everywhere.
- Product price is remarkably low and
affordable.
4.2
Weaknesses
- It might be hard to relate the agencies
increase in sales to the using of the website.
- Sales to costumers depends on the ability of
the salesmen to convince marketing managers to rent the advertising space.
- Sales has to be completed in a short time
otherwise it will look empty and lame, then no one will use it.
4.3
Opportunities
- New categories can be covered making growth
easy to happen.
- The product is new to the market and it
satisfies customers and their customers’ needs.
- It can be cloned in other countries in the
region where our company has a presence and market knowledge.
4.4
Threats
- Potential competition from yellow pages if
they changed their strategy.
- Continuous turnover in management and
marketing chiefs; new ones may need to be convinced again with the importance
of the product.
- Agencies may be afraid that it will not work
out, or that not all the agencies (at least the important ones) will participate.
5.0
Marketing Strategy
The
main focus of the marketing strategy is to offer organizations an affordable
communication channel to reach the mass.
5.1
Marketing Objectives
- Create the buzz around the website and make
it no.1 shortcut searching site to find and compare different companies.
- We aim to maintain an ongoing technical
support for our clients, so the after sales positive experience will make them
sign for another year.
- As well making other potential markets aware
and interested in our services and have the will to contracting with us when we
start their business-related webpage.
5.2
The 4 Ps
5.2.1
Price
- The renting price for 1 pixel is 0.2DHS per
month, 2.4DHS yearly.
- Minimum rent area is 50x25 pixels = 250DHS
per month.
- Maximum rent area is 200x100 pixels =
4000DHS per month.
- On cash payment: For signing two years plan
customer will get 10% discount, three years plan 15% discount, five years plan
20% discount (that’s one whole year from the five)
- Customers can enjoy one-month allowance to
delay payment only if it’s bigger than 2000DHS.
5.2.2
Product
- The website will have 1000(W) x 800(H)
pixels space = 800,000 pixels2.
- The website will start with travel agencies
and soon after the launching different categories will be added.
- The website will come as the first result on
search engines using a combination between paying fees to search engines and a
coding technique especially developed for that.
- It will be called as simple and easy as:
uaeaccess.com
- A hyperlink to the customers’ websites will
open it on a new tab in order not to lose our website on the end-user browsing
page.
- The website will be html based so no need
for downloading flash player or any other specific program to run it.
- It will not have any ad banners to keep all
the focus on the content.
5.2.3 Place and Distribution
- The website will cover the business of the
whole seven Emirates in the UAE.
- It’s online, so everyone and everywhere can
have access to it at anytime.
- Special edition will be developed as
application for smart phones, so it can get mobile as well.
- Sales to travel agencies will use direct
meetings and presentations, this way a salesman can take his time to display
the benefits of the product and convince the costumer to sign with us.
5.2.4
Promotion
All what we need from our promotion activities
is to make uaeaccess.com stick to all the minds. No expensive advertising or
press ads are required though, and we will not use any selling line as well –
just the website address. The communications channels must answer that: how can
we make it memorable or top of the mind?
- We’ll use smart trendy channels to inform
the mass about the website like Facebook and Twitter, so users will see it
every time they use their favorable sites.
- Simple bookmark with uaeaccess.com on it to
be distributed in malls and with free magazines.
- Doorknob-hanger flyer to be distributed
directly to homes and residential apartments.
- Branded mouse pads to be distributed to
office buildings.
- Direct mailer to be sent to all companies
and organizations in the country through their P O Boxes.
6.0
Sales Strategy
- The main goal of sales strategy is to sell
the whole webpage for travel agencies within the first quarter, and start
selling two other categories by the second quarter of the year.
- Sales will be carried out in waves, the
first for the top agencies in the field, the second for the high to medium
agencies, and the third for the medium ranked agencies. (Top and medium in the
market regarding revenue and market share)
- Each wave will consist of a number of sales
visits. Salesmen will visit customers at the same time, and they shall
communicate their news with each others; news will give more credibility in
front of customers.
- Starting with the top level of the field,
salesmen will offer the first ten a totally free of charges six month renting
for the biggest space on the site (cost of promotion 10x6x40000 = 240,000DHS).
This will encourage the big agencies to sign or at least try the website, on
the other hand will give the website weight that big players subscribed to it,
and then this will be used to attract other agencies as well.
- To get 10 top ranked agencies will encourage
medium and high ranked agencies to take part in the website.
6.1
Sales Objectives
Our
main sales objective is to complete the sales of four web pages within the
first year with sales revenue of 1,92M DHS per one webpage.
- Total sales revenue for first year 4x1.92M =
7.69M DHS.
|
Expense Forecast
|
|
|
Expenditures
|
DHS (1st
year)
|
|
Website design (in-house 1000hrs of10DHS)
|
10,000
|
|
Website developer support (in-house
1000hrsx10DHS)
|
10,000
|
|
Printed materials
|
6,000
|
|
Promotional materials
|
550,000
|
|
Distribution companies for promotional items
|
40,000
|
|
Online ads for one year
|
26,000
|
|
Salaries and wages
|
44,000
|
|
Other overheads
|
60,000
|
|
Promotional cost for first ten top companies
(4x240,000)
|
960,000
|
|
TOTAL
|
1,732,000
|
From the above rough calculations, the product
will be a success for the first half of the year, and of a big success by its
end. Though the threats have to be addressed carefully, our talented sales
personnel will be able to implement the marketing and sales strategies
effectively. This product is not the core business of Ratio-ME, and our company
doesn’t depend on it, that why we will be carrying out the processes of
marketing the product without fear of big losses.
7.0 References
(1) Kotler, P, Keller,
KL, Ang, SH, Leong SM and Tan, CT (2008) Marketing Management: An Asian
Perspective, 5th edition, Prentice Hall.
(2) http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
(3) The Wall
Street Journal – Online Version, How
Selling Pixels May Yield a Million Bucks, http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113261806930503580-6ouqX6NSpgTBkHu4ln_7CpHXbBk_20061122.html?mod=blogs
(4) Demographics of the United Arab Emirates, wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Arab_Emirates
(5) Yellow Pages search for travel agencies, http://www.yellowpages.ae/category/travel-agents/MzQzOTBfX18gX19fXyBf/
(6) www.ratio-me.com
by Tony Habib
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