Marketing Mobile Applications to Students - Case Study Example

Business Plan for Marketing Mobile Applications to Students www.studapp.com Student Name: Student Number: Course: Institution: 5th May, 2016 Executive Summary The student population, globally, is a very ripe market for various products that they consume due to the necessity that arises out of the situation that surround them. The advancements in technology have necessitated the rise of consumption of mobile apps that are important in accomplishing various tasks. For instance, student life is full of completing tasks that require one to do analyses, collect data and so much more just so one can excel in their respective field of study. This business plan is aimed at outlining the efforts to come up with a marketing plan that includes an online platform, where a number of necessary mobile applications will be marketed to students from around Australia first, and then when the business breaks even, an expansion plan will be considered to include far-flung areas like other countries. The mission of this business is to enable students who come up with mobile apps to find a cheap channel through which they can market their apps and gain a meaningful market within the student fraternity in Australia as a whole. 1.0 Background Mobile telephony has brought along with it a very convenient way of doing things. With a growing number of mobile manufacturing companies allowing people to use different operating systems and platforms to come up with their own apps that they can use for their own purposes, comes various challenges for proper utility in different sectors. One very important area where applications come in handy is in the collecting and collating of data of various forms. This is important to students since their learning is enhanced through use of such data. Other applications that are important to students may include network engineering apps like the Packet Tracer for Android/ iOS that are used as a form of virtual reality, to help build virtual networks during learning sessions (Janitor, p. 45, 2010). Dropbox is also another mobile app that comes in handy when sharing files with friends and fellow students. With such apps, students get easier ways of completing various tasks that are required of them to accomplish. However, there are students who also engage in app development just for use by fellow students. They may not have the wherewithal to market their apps so that they can get to sell them and get some proceeds out of their hard work. The business will use a website to market the apps, and will charge a fraction or percentage of the cost of the product to market them. This business plan will assess various aspect of the business like feasibility in various areas like market, technical, human and financial. Just like any business, the capital and expenditure are very important features that cannot be taken lightly, hence the need for a financial analysis that considers wider perimeters than should. For instance, a projection of the business profits and break-even analysis is important to show whether the business will succeed eventually or even just the point when it is expected to break even and start operating independent of external funding, unless an expansion is needed. 2.0 Market Feasibility Mobile apps are among the top trending technological advancement in recent times. You can now find apps for completing various tasks. It is becoming difficult to find areas where mobile apps do not have an application. For this reason, students are finding it more appropriate to develop their own applications that can be very pivotal in supporting their activities around their schools. A general outlook paints the mobile apps industry as very much washed with a lot of competitors angling to find each and every segment so much so that it has become saturated with all sorts of apps. Becoming a Computer Technician (2016) reports that there are various needless mobile apps available for iPhone, so much so that some literally annoy users who need meaningful apps. 2.1 Android and iOS Platforms Having noted the above, it is prudent to bring to focus the feasibility of the market in terms of other issues like market segmentation, availability of scalable markets in the said segments and so on. Mobile apps market is dictated by various factors. For instance, the conventional market is tilted towards android and iOS based products because they are the most dominant operating systems. Going by statistics offered by Statistica (2015), Android and iOS indeed dominate the smart phone market, so it follows that they are most probably the biggest platform upon which most mobile apps are based (See diagram 1 in appendix). When narrowed down to basics, the biggest consumers of mobile apps are spread over a different age group. The consumption of mobile apps differs with age sets. For instance, more youths who need to keep up with the trends may be onto apps that show their fashion consciousness. For instance, it is highly likely to find a fashion conscious youth with apps that help them when shopping for goods online. The mobile apps market still has applications across industries. Following the aforementioned factors, this means that the chances of finding more students that use the apps for their schooling and in their private lives are possible. There are different uses for the mobile apps, since every waking day, students who develop apps come up with meaningful apps that are important to students. Godwin-Jones (2011) posits that there are more students developing mobile apps for their languages classes than any other time. He further notes that the rising use of tablets makes it a very prime area where more people angle to get some helpful app that will assist them learn a new language of their choice. Based on this premise alone, it is sufficiently correct to assume that the mobile apps market stretches beyond the market available among students. 3.0 Technical Feasibility Mobile telephony in itself is a very dynamic industry. This calls for a very pragmatic implementation of the marketing business. The use of a website to market apps is a very difficult idea to implement since much of it is exploited. For this reason, the business will focus on the special segment of trying to reach mainly the student population in colleges and high schools. The mobile apps that will be marketed are technically only those geared towards the betterment of the lives of students. This means that the market is cleverly cut out to include very controlled segments. The channels for distribution will therefore be online. The logistics involved will include using the website to direct traffic to other websites through use of technologies like RSS feeds and Web 2.0. Constantinides and Fountain (2008) attribute the success of Web 2.0 and RSS to their capacity to provide prospective market segments with an inexhaustible amount of information within a very short time. 3.1 PayPal On our part, the business will work in synergy with app developers to integrate payment options within our website and other applications so that ease of payment is realized. Be that as it may, the business will make it policy to have suppliers of developed apps offer a consistently updated database of apps so that our customers do not complain of ill-stocked databases that feature apps that are not up to date. Bourreau and Verdier (2010) state that online payment companies like PayPal and Payoneer facilitate the movement of money for various important transactions that enable both buyers and sellers to access goods and services in a manner that is more convenient. 3.2 AdSense The most useful channel through which a website can get meaningful rates and traffic would be through use of accounts like Google’s AdSense. As a bigger company that pays people to advertise in their websites, Google AdSense pays websites depending on how much traffic they can generate for them. This will also be a point through which the website will generate traffic besides the traditional traffic generated from social websites. According to O’Reilly (2008), AdSense takes the angle of Web 2.0 but helps by turning the free technology to a paying one. Web 2.0 platforms are important in enabling one to direct traffic to certain websites. Therefore, using such technology, our business will integrate both of them to ensure a richer experience that keeps customers satisfied with high quality products from various developers. In all, the integration of various platforms and the tweaking of this website to suit the marketing needs of app developers will be done in line with accepted policies from all the developers. As is the norm, most developers release products to match the market needs, but for various reasons. This means that there are chances that some apps may be out for pilot studies, while others will be final products that are developed for monetary benefit. Harman et al. (2012) combine the efficacy of marketing platforms with direct use by real time users as the best way to check for probable markets besides personal testing by developers. 4.0 Human Feasibility The smooth running of any business needs a steady supply of human resources to keep all the departments running. Ulrich (2012) declares that human resource is the cog that turns the wheel of a business. Without human resources, businesses would grind to a halt soon as they start. It is human effort that ensures a steady production of goods and services that can be sensibly enjoyed by consumers. In the case of this business, there may be a minimal need for a big workforce since it is based on advertising products through a website. While this is so, websites need a number of human resources, both from within the business and without, to help in the smooth running of activities. Tsekouropoulos et al (2013) credit the rising number of people who do shopping online to the decreasing need for employees when running SMEs from online points like websites. A marketing website may not need any workers to help in delivering any products. However, the website administrator will have to be the main figure behind the running of this website. At the initial stages of development, the business will be run by the owners that are my partner and I. This means that we will take time to manage the resources that are within our organization. However, as time goes by, and we find it necessary to expand, we shall appoint various employees in different areas to keep up with the growing business. This is a fact we are sure of since the mobile telephony industry is growing by the day, and the mobile apps sector is becoming more relevant in each and every way possible. Having mentioned this, it is prudent to note that our business, based on products that are consumed mainly by students, relies heavily on the need to have a consistent flow of apps to help satiate the demand from students across Australia. 5.0 Financial Feasibility Most start-ups are based on ideas that are easily implementable without high overheads, especially if they are ideas that are based off of the backbone of technology such as web-based marketing. As such, there are very many channels that can offer auxiliary services, seeing as marketing may need delivery and such after sales services. It is important to note that our business mainly deals in marketing products that are already developed apps, from different developers based all over campuses in Australia (Osterwalder & Pigneur, p. 13, 2013). This means that the initial investment, true to the word, may not need to be very high as we can raise varying amounts over time to help sustain a website, and for various allowances that we can use ourselves. In addition, a running capital or expenditures account is necessary to ensure that we keep our website functioning at its optimal capacities. Other considerations may include maintaining a well scheduled backup plan that can take effect if and when the website crushes and needs an option for the time being while maintenance is being carried out on it. De Reuver et al (2013) place alternative domains as important for use when maintaining the main website. This may appear impractical at the beginning, but studies show that websites can deflect traffic to auxiliary ones during maintenance. This is a very good way of ensuring that the business keeps running even when challenges like DDoS attacks are made against the business website. To this end, our finances will initially come from personal savings. However, crowd funding from friends and relatives is also a very feasible option, meaning we can get to run a raffle where tickets will be bought as a means of attracting a certain amount for the start-up. The following is a breakdown of the financial feasibility study as carried out by the team: Required Funds Project Start up Costs Planning and Strategy $1000 User experience $250 - $1750 Digital Design and Web Development $1500 - $10000 SEO and Website Copyrighting $1000 - $3000 Total Start up Costs $3750 - $14750 Sources of Finances Financing Equity Contributions Management Investment $10000 Total Equity Financing $10000 Banks and Lenders Banks and Lenders $5000 Total Debt Financing $5000 Total Financing $15000 6.0 Conclusion Website based marketing businesses experience challenges just like many others do. However, this is one unique business in that it only caters to students. The extra customers may be allowed to use the service, but the main target market is students. This means that there is bound to be a certain trend that develops earlier on in the business, and inventories like balance sheets and cash flows will have to predict a very definite period within which the business can declare to have broken even. A break even analysis will then be carried out to see whether the business can survive its first few years. The period within which we expect the break even analysis to predict profits should not be more than six months, since colleges and high schools close down during summer. 7.0 Bibliography Becoming a Computer Technician, (2016). The 20 Most Outrageous/ Useless iPhone Apps. Becoming a Computer Technician. Accessed on 11th May, 2016 at http://becomingacomputertechnician.com/the-20-most-outrageoususeless-iphone-apps Bourreau, M. and Verdier, M., 2010. Cooperation for innovation in payment systems: The case of mobile payments. Constantinides, E. and Fountain, S.J., 2008. Web 2.0: Conceptual foundations and marketing issues. Journal of direct, data and digital marketing practice, 9(3), pp.231-244. Godwin-Jones, R., 2011. Emerging technologies: Mobile apps for language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 15(2), pp.2-11. Harman, M., Jia, Y. and Zhang, Y., 2012, June. App store mining and analysis: MSR for app stores. In Proceedings of the 9th IEEE Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (pp. 108-111). IEEE Press. Janitor, Jozef, František Jakab, and Karol Kniewald. "Visual learning tools for teaching/learning computer networks: Cisco networking academy and packet tracer." Networking and Services (ICNS), 2010 Sixth International Conference on. IEEE, 2010. O'reilly, T., 2007. What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. Communications & strategies, (1), p.17. Osterwalder, A. and Pigneur, Y., 2013. Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers. John Wiley & Sons. Tsekouropoulos, G., Andreopoulou, Z., Koliouska, C., Koutroumanidis, T. and Batzios, C., 2013. Internet functions in marketing: multicriteria ranking of agricultural SMEs websites in Greece. AGRÁRINFORMATIKA/JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL INFORMATICS, 4(2), pp.22-36. Ulrich, D., 2013. Human resource champions: The next agenda for adding value and delivering results. Harvard Business Press. 8.0 Appendix Diagram 1 Source: http://www.statista.com/statistics/262157/market-share-held-by-mobile-operating-systems-in-india/ Read More