29A - Venture Concept NO.2

Opportunity

• Social media marketing to small businesses 
• Local Restaurants
• Local Farms
• Small insurance companies

Having a good product is important, but will not sell your audience. Businesses need to maintain strong relationships and convey their message with customers to survive. Marketing assists firms to sell their product and convey their message to customers. I understand the importance of companies having brand awareness and how if a business markets itself well it will portray itself as more credible. 

Many small businesses or start up companies have a good product. However, they do not know how to market their product or service well. I have seen great ideas and businesses fail to succeed and meet expectations all because of bad marketing. It is difficult for small businesses to market themselves, it takes a lot of time. The market is always changing and peoples preferences are never the same. Running a business and keeping up with marketing trends is to much work for a small business.

Marketing business' on social media is a new trend that has gained a lot of success. While, it does help businesses succeed not all companies know how to use it or at least use it professionally. Millions of people are on social media today. Being able to engage with customers on platforms that have millions of people is a great opportunity.

Social media marketing is relatively new and is always changing with new trends. The opportunity to market for small business' is a big opportunity and will last for a good amount of time I believe. My customers may be on social media platforms but are not using it to their best benefit.

Running ads on social media platforms can be costly and if not used right is like throwing money away. Businesses such as Facebook do not care if your ad does well or not. They just want your money.

Innovation 

• Creating and Curating Social Media Post 
• Selling Social Media Weekly Plan to Small Businesses
• Cost friendly ads

Small business' that I see to have great opportunity on social media are restaurants. My service would have a local restaurant plan. Food is visual and Instagram is a great social platform for customers to visualize your product. I would set up a daily Instagram post for restaurants. An Instagram plan for a restaurant or related business cost $35 a week. This come out to be $5 a post. I would also use Facebook and possibly Twitter depending on the circumstances. Facebook is a great way to promote an event taking place or a special deal a restaurant is having. It is also a good place to tell a story. Facebook post also bring traffic to the restaurants website where customers will be to engage even more with your product. These Facebook post will cost $8 per post. 

As a food and resource economics major I would also market for small farms. Small farms are very important but are over looked. For local farms I will communicate to customers on how they can purchase products that are produced my local farms. Shoppers today may not know how to buy food that is local. On social media I will be able to better communicate what products are local. I can also point out why people should maybe buy local rather than big over produced food companies a farms. I will talk about things such as health and prices. Marketing on social media will allow people to know what they are putting in their body. 

Venture Concept. 

• Better Communication
• Customer Engagement
• Allowing a better understanding of the target market
• Competing with bigger marketing corporations 
• Having a personal B2B partnership 
• lowering marketing expenses 

Businesses will buy my product so that that they will be able to better communicate with their customers and have a better understanding of who their target market is. Many small businesses go out and close because they spend to much money on advertisements that do not work. My marketing business will not lose money for companies but allow them to gain more. 

Investing in my service will also give businesses more time to spend on things they are good at. For example, if you are good at making pizza you should be focusing on making pizza and posting an social media. Not knowing how to use social media properly can actually hurt your business and can potentially convey the wrong message. People who want the right message to be out will buy my service. 

It will not be hard for me to get people to switch. In my interviews I have received great feedback. It is a service that people are interested in and need. The only concern some have is price. I will have to prove that their money spent in me will actually grow their revenue.
My business will have close relationships with the businesses we are working with and get to know the owners on a personal level. My company will have a few employees in the being. To start off I have a photographer, editor and a market planner.
There will be competition but it is not impossible to enter the market. Big marketing agencies do not work with more local companies. Instead they work with other big corporations. Also, I will be competing with companies who might have a marketing employee. My service will be cheaper than having a full time employee.
My goal is to make a business money not lose money. Ads should be spent to make money. I will make sure a business invest the right amount of money in marketing. My business will be cost effective and have good short and long term effects. Spending to much money in advertisements is a major reason why firms do not survive. My service will be more organic and get customers to engage more with the business.
The Tree Minor elements

• Unfair advantage is the experience of working social media internships. I also have good connections with people in the restaurant business and agriculture. 
• Next is not just B2B but B2C
• I expect myself to have more business knowledge in the next 5 years. I will have stronger business connections and have a a better understanding of how the market works

2.) Summary of  feedback: My structure was good and well organized. Cost is very important. Customers want to know what a product or service is going to cost. Social media has a lot of assumptions and some people do not know the business side of it.

3.) What I did: I made sure I highlighted the cost more. In my venture concept I made it more clear that my business was going to be more cost effective than other media businesses. Running ads on social media can be expensive. I explained how there are cheap ways to market that are more organic  and effective.