Example Reflection – Learning Launch

Challenge –

I am a business development executive for a building materials trading company based in Dubai  and the task assigned to me was to market the wholesale of a new range of low-priced building  material products. The traditional way to do so is through hiring outdoor sales executives. Due  to budget limitations set by the company as the products had very low margins hiring new sales  personnel was not feasible. The company had planned on targeting to the mass market through  lowest pricing strategy, hence price of products was regarded as the primary selling factor, just  the customers needed to get aware of the range of low-priced products available with us.  Another challenge was that the marketing initiative had to kick off as soon as possible as the  products were going to arrive in the company’s warehouse within a month’s time and by selling  quickly we would decrease inventory holding cost and aid in increasing inventory turnover.

Selection – The learning launch tool was the selection of our choice as it is the best way to run  quick tests to know about the validity of our key assumptions. Moreover, the results of the test  as confirming or disconfirming data would provide us with complete clarity on which areas to  continue development.

Application –

For our first learning launch our center of attention was on online marketing through web  development of an E-commerce platform which displayed all product information, pictures, and  prices with an option to even place orders online. In order to cut a considerable amount of time  a semi premade e-commerce website theme was selected with plans on later customizing the  website theme to better suit building material products. Since the company already had a data  base of all its customers it became easy to spread the website link through targeted emails.

E-commerce mobile application development was the objective of the second learning launch.  Same as the website a premade mobile application e commerce theme was selected in order to  save time and with plans on customizing the interface better if it performs well with the  customers. Then, targeted WhatsApp messages were sent to the company’s customer  broadcast list with the link to download the mobile application.

Insight –

After 10 days of testing the website and the mobile application in the market the key insight  found was that all the orders were received from the mobile application. In the building  materials market mobile phones are widely used among our customers to communicate with  sales personal and place orders through WhatsApp, hence our customers found using the  mobile app more natural easy to use to check product prices and even place orders as they  didn’t have to go through the inconvenience of opening the website on a laptop. Doing so  saved time and coast for further developmental efforts for one of approaches. Nonetheless,

search engine optimization for the website would be carried out in future be to get hold of  potential corporate customers or new clients outside the market.

Approach –

We found that the learning launch tool was the appropriate selection as the test gave us clarity  on which areas were required to focus our efforts at. In future I would even use the mind  mapping tool by asking a group customers to note thoughts that come to their mind when  purchasing building material products and to gather insights based on responses and generate  business developmental strategies to better cater to their needs.

