Ultimate Express shoe Company deals with shoes for both male and female. It was founded

in 2006 by a team five ladies. Our management structure comprise of the CEO Charity

Mutugi, , Director of Finance, Jacqueline Kariithi , Director of Human Resource, Edna

Kiplagat, Director of Marketing, Laura Jeruto , Director of operations, Selfine Abwao and

other stakeholders

Background

Ultimate Express is the leading and largest credible company dealing with unique high

quality shoes. It is currently located in Nairobi along Ronald Ngala Street near Nakumatt. It

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has branches in Nakuru and Mombasa. We also have outlet distribution services to other

retail shops nationwide.

Our company has continued to receive national recognition for the quality of its services

since 2006 till now due to the commitment to the human element of customer service and

remaining unwavering with all the staff and business processes based in Kenya. As an

organization, we are driven by dedication to our work, pursuit of opportunity and

commitment. We are specialists in footwear in that we encompass the entire supply chain in

all dimensions of our business.

Colour choice

Our colour choice is blue and pink. Having this choice has brought nuance to our message

out there to our customers. Pink being a bright colour is attention grabbing and we used blue

to tone it from being brash. Blue is also an implication of professionalism and interagency.

Pink has been used to create a situation of attraction .These colours will create diversity and

inclusivity of our customers.

Mission

We are driven by dedication to our work, the pursuit of opportunity and commitment to the

best.

Vision

To be a benchmark in the market, with brands that are admired and favoured in all sectors.

This business vision has enabled us to deliver the best shoes in the market.

Values

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We are committed when it comes to our work in executing respect for people, integrity,

entrepreneurship and business longevity.

Logo

Our logo will display our company's unique identity, and through the colours our customers

will identify with the company's core brand. It will also be our shorthand way of referring to

the company in advertising and marketing our shoes.

Marketing Analysis: target Market

We will push this ahead on to making our products known to majority of people through

newspaper and television advertisements, pop ups in various websites. We will have a

monthly magazine which will update our consumers. Our Communication and web

designers’ team will provide both online updates.

We will also use various social media platforms; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube.

The use of celebrities will be our main focus to win on our audience interest. We will dress

them up in our latest shoes, take pictures and video clips which will be posted on our social

media platforms. We intend to give free gifts on purchase of every pair of shoe and

promotions. “Information processing refers to events that interact to create something new,”

(Joel, 2009).

Steps in Developing Effective Communication

Target Audience

Our focus is both the male and female gender of the middle class. Our shoes will range from

shillings 500-3500 for affordability. We will sell velvet shoes, leather shoes, loafers, official

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shoes, wedges and high heels. Different colours of shoes will also be available. We will have

shoe numbers 4 to 18 in stock for all our customers, 18 years and above.

Communication Objectives (SMART)

We look forward on making weekly profits of about shillings 40% of our sales. We also look

forward to ensure our customers get quality shoes. Deliveries by the various shoe suppliers

will be done on time to avoid stock shortage. Our employees are required to record stock in

and out weekly. Our technology team should provide daily post updates.

Designing the Communication

The message to be delivered will get attention through attraction. Creating a website that

will attract strangers by posting trending shoes. “First, the internet is not only concerned with

the production and distribution of messages, but is at least equally concerned with processing,

exchange and storage,” (John, 1956). We tend on getting both the contacts and emails of our

customers in order to keep them updated.

Selecting Communication Channels

“A channel is both the route travelled by the message and the means of transportation,”

(Leah, 1975)for communication to work effectively. We value both personal communication

and non-personal communication.

Establish Budget

We look forward to having a monthly budget of 10.1 million. Leasing expenses for all

premises will cost 100,000 shillings. Payment of wages will amount to about 2 million. Cost

on new stock will cost 3 million. Celebrity endorsement, promotions, advertisements and

miscellaneous costs will total up to 5 million monthly.

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Decide Media Mix

We will use direct marketing. Advertising will work both face to face and online. Sales

promotion will be used. Events will also be held in various places which will be sponsored by

the company and investors “The internet has turned what used to be controlled, one way

message into a real time dialogue with millions,” (Hartley, J. 2011).

Promotion Mix Strategies

Pull strategy is our main strategy. We focus on bringing goods which are preferred by most

of our customers. Push strategy will be used to sell our goods still in stock. Clearance sales

will work hand in hand in the push strategy.

Goals

To raise awareness based on our brand and interact with people on different social media

sites. We believe this will result to them recommending to their friends. Our target is to

reach 50% of our target audience to buy our products. Increasing our daily tweet count from

two to five. Website traffic will fuel our campaign. We will target more people to visit our

site. We look forward to having people engage on our blog through clicking our social media

widgets. We seek to o offer strategic consultation to our customers concerning our products,

creating results and providing time conscious services. Continuous monitoring our websites

to provide daily updates and encourage our customers to share our ideas. Providing reliable

customer services to customers encourages interactions between company and customers (D.

Evans, 2012).

Campaign social media strategy

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The campaign will run for 10 months from April to January 2017. The slogan will be

‘pamoja tungare’. Which will inform the public of our products. We will use PSA’s and

online advertisements to inform the public of our products. We will have celebrities perform

in concerts. We will seek to avail video announcements for upcoming events, coupons for

wear classes. Editorial calendars will help us monitor our social media. We will use a spread

sheets for us to plan out our month, outlining what to post daily. We have created an effective

online profile with our logo, to link with our customers. A brief bio of our company will be

included on all our social media platforms. We seek to fill the curiosity gap by use of

formulaic headlines lines such as “She wears a classy shoe from ultimate on valentines, and

see what happens, so unbelievable and cool” as a strategy to catch the majority of our clients

and potential customers.

(Crittenden, 2011) recommends the 80/20 principle: 80% or your activity is “being friendly”

through retweets, comments and other participation. The remaining 20% is your chance to

add new content. In this way, we will actively participate and engage with our clients rather

than sticking to own promotions. We look to employ a full time social media manager who

will be responsible for supervising our day-to-day social media activities in order to analyse

results to figure out where social media efforts should be concentrated. According to (C.

Pahrmann 2012), “Consistent participation is absolutely necessary for success and it takes

time to build a loyal fan base and reputation.”We look forward to giving mega content in our

articles. To reduce the amount of time spent curating third party content but increase our

ability to share a wider range of original content.

Communication

Gronroos (2004) said that marketing communications now need to embrace a wider remit to

move beyond the product information model and become an integral part of an organization’s

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overall communications. Ultimate express aims at using communication social media

channels Facebook will help determine the growth of our company by tracking our posts

performance. And quickly determine what kinds of posts perform well. Determining which

shoe company is competing with us. Textual and pictorial posting will be availed. We will

post new trends of shoes to make the consumers updated. Tagging people will help

maximize consumers to see posts.

Linked in. Effective communication we will get users to follow our company page to get

them exposed to our posts. Our company page admin will analyze LinkedIn in order

determine the most engaging posts, the demographics of followers, and performance of

competitor brands' pages.

We will use Twitter to communicate to our consumers because it will give us an opportunity

to respond quickly and effectively to consumer complaints in a public space. Also Twitter

will act as a channel for brand maintenance and community. Our shoe company advertising

tools on Twitter will be promoted Tweets which can include calls to action, links to branded

content, attached images that double as display ads. While you tube channel will be used for

communicating by posting our company’s videos and latest arrivals of our products.

Collaboration

The use of wikis will build awareness to the audience by providing the latest information that

will establish interest of our audience. Bringing new ideas to promote products will increase

the demand from the audience. Blogs can be used to share the company’s new ideas and to

keep our customers connected at a personal level. We will build collaboration with our

consumers through interacting with them in social media and also keeping in touch with other

companies that are related to us.

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Education

Customers need to know all details about the products. Coming up with booklets or reports

will analyze the business field. Customers can compare products to the alternatives, the

knowledge will make them more comfortable with making a purchase. One can have other

booklets on even broader subjects for example if a company sells shoes, it could have a

broader pamphlet just about home construction shopping budgeting. Giving this kind of

broader knowledge gains your customers’ trust.

Entertainment

Companies tend to increase fragmentation in terms of entertainment to reach different

consumers. Through entertainment marketers are able to reach their target audience. Besides

persuading your target audience to buy your products, its only right that you provide entertain

and engage them. Videos are the most memorable communication tool available in marketing

arsenal.

When it comes to Facebook, it can really help in offering sales promotions and one of the

ways is through creating a Facebook page. For instance, as a group we have created a

Facebook account and Facebook page called Ultimate Express Shoe Company that reflects

our company logo and information that describes our brand with attractive photos that shows

what our company offers.

Moreover, through this, we are able to engage our followers by sharing our promotions,

updates with them to connect with our audience through friendly conversation and giving

feedback. This is facilitated by responding to comments, private messages and emails seen to

us as we have provided our email address to our audience.Also, we will provide promotional

post ads to the users’ news feed that would direct anyone who clicks straight to our website.

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In the social media world, Twitter falls into the category of micro blogging tools because of

the short, disconnected messages it distributes. The best way to use twitter to your advantage

in the business world, is first by defining your brand. Our twitter account will be the first to

give an impression about our company. Therefore we will put up our logo, tweet, and direct

message in order to engage with other users and focus on getting information out in the

Twitter world. When signing up we put our use name as @ultimateexpressorg. This is how

other users will identify us.

Also since twitter is our platform for passing and receiving information, it can also be an

online venue where our customers can make orders, ask questions about our products and so

on. This is the same platform our company will use to tell our customers where and for what

price they can get our shoes. Also by identifying people with the need for or products we can

present ours to them with the intention of satisfying their needs.

Aaron Lee in his article on 4 Twitter Search Tricks That Will Get Your Business More

Followers recommends checking out who’s retweeting your content, since they’re apparently

already interested in what you’re saying. You can also find people tweeting about topics

related to your company, in your area, and more. Add them to your lists, and then you’ll be

ready to reply if they ever Tweet with direct interest in your product (Schreiber, 2014).

Having profile picture in LinkedIn helps customers defines our company. Our company will

use a Compelling Intro Message so as to brand the company and Connect with people.

LinkedIn enables our company to market for example; using Mail which is delivered right to

your connection’s inbox.

YouTube is a place to host and share videos. It is used by a company for products

advertising. Videos are effective in communicating a brand because the audience feel

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engaged.  YouTube is an excellent place to upload client testimonials. For they are more

convincing.

YouTube can be used to drive views to our website by using redirects whereby the URL

changes and sends the viewer to our website after clicking. Also you tube can be used to

drive views through serving pop-under whereby a new window appears under a current

window . It can be used to call to action through encouraging people to like, rate, and

comment and share videos

ROI

(Guy & Steven , 2011) Observes that reach is the potential audience for a message based on

total follower count which measures the spread of a social media conversation. Hence, reach

can help you understand the context for your content, how far is the content is disseminated

and how big the audience for the message. So basically, Reach is a measure of potential

audience size. Picking important engagement numbers like clicks, retweets, and replies helps

contextualize the reach engagement and participation. For instance, coca cola through the

promotion of share a coke has been disseminated to all over the world especially in Africa

and this has established a global market. Has been facilitated by the online advertisements

and social media share of posts, ratings, comment, clicks and updates.

Also clicks can be measure through the web traffic that they result to. This is because it

facilitates meaningful connections with the customers and users as it encourage them to

interact which builds relationships that will always reference you as a common interest,

reinforcing their love for the company's brand. For instance, Coca Cola Company has really

been effective in using clicks on their social media platforms to drive their brands and

conversations.

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Social media ROI is defined as a measure of the efficiency of a social media marketing

campaign.” According to D. Evans, (2012) the general formula provided for calculating out

your social media ROI is given as follows: Social media ROI = (SM return – SM investment)

or ROI = (Net profit – Amount Invested)

Companies have measured their ROI through revenue generation by sending a sales email

about their best selling product or service to generate revenue, Customer acquisition refers to

gaining new consumers. Acquiring new customers involves persuading consumers to

purchase a company’s products and services. Companies have measured their ROI through

customer’s acquisition by being proactive to address their potential customer's needs via

social media, they use images to engage a picture to attract some new fans, hosting a

competition to boost their followers and engagement, with their customers in personal build

relationships T.Weinberg, (2010)

Conclusion

We believe through team work and corporation we will be in a position to reach out to our

customers and meet our target profits. Our priority is on hard work and commitment which is

basically our communication theme and message .United we will stand and divided we fall.

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References

Hartley, J. (2011). Commuication,Culture and Media Studies. Canada: Routledge.

Joel, B. (2009). Lifestyle Woman's Interest. Magzter, 2, 23-89.

John, D. (1956). Finest quality clothing shoes and accesories. Albuquerque, 3, 23-97.

Leah, M. (1975). St.Loius Business Journal, 56, 67-98.

Mattelart, A. (1996). The Invention of Communication. London : University of Minesota.

Gronroos, C. (2004) the relationship marketing process: communication,

interaction,dialogue, value. Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing.

Stern, L. and El-Ansary, A. (1995) Marketing Channels, 5th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice Hal

S. Asur, B.A Huberman,(2010), Predicting the Future with Social Media, Agent Technology

Publishers, USA.

R.Hanna, A.Rohm &V.l Crittenden, (2011), we are all connected; the power of the Social

Media Ecosystem, University press: New York

D.Evans, (2012), Social Media Marketing; An hour a day, The Mc. Graw Hill Companies

INC.: New York.

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D.Evans, (2012), Social Media Marketing; An hour a day, The Mc. Graw Hill Companies

INC.: New York

T.Weinberg, (2010), Social Media Marketing; Palgrave Macmillan: London

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