Campus Cleaners Marketing Plan

Executive Summary

Campus Cleaners is a growing, family-owned corporation in the first year of business in Shreveport Louisiana. Campus Cleaners sells a laundry delivery service for college students that attend Louisiana State University at Shreveport. Campus Cleaners staff face an expansion challenge, as Campus Cleaners popularity begins to increase, with the decision on where to open a new storefront. The family wants to stay local with several community colleges being an option. However, many of the employees urge them to expand to larger universities to optimize their profits. An evaluation of Campus Cleaners strengths and weaknesses and opportunities locally/state-wide has served as the foundation for this marketing plan and strategic analysis. The plan focuses on the company’s growth strategy, suggesting places to expand and ways to target more consumers in the area they have already. Since Campus Cleaners markets their service as a consumer end-user it is considered a business-to-consumer marketer.

Environmental Analysis

Campus Cleaners was an idea from a brainstorming session in class on the topic of college student’s annoyances. The problem was that many students didn’t have time for laundry or just didn’t like to do it. Richard Perez is the founder and owner of the company, which opened in August of 2018 in Shreveport, Louisiana. The company just started its business but has seen good sales and an open for a brand new market in laundry, in which the consumer never has to wash, dry, or fold their laundry anymore. With their quick success in the Louisiana State at Shreveport market, Campus Cleaners is ready to expand in the near future to other schools.

A. The Market Environment

Competitive Forces. The competition in the laundry delivery service is unknown Campus Cleaners as of now is one of a mind in that field. However, the competition of the company is local laundromats and apartment/dorm laundry rooms. Currently, dorm and apartment laundry rooms hold a majority of the consumer's market share. However, with new students coming in every year 60-percent of college students are unprepared for the transition from home life to college life which includes knowing how to properly do laundry. Lastly, the target consumers are on average spending 10 to 15 dollars on laundry per which is pricy to many.

The flat rate of the company’s laundry services gives students assurance for their budgets with the bonus of having laundry delivered personally. As Campus Cleaners continue to swallow up consumers it is unknown if another laundry delivery service will enter the market.

Economic Forces. Nationwide the economy is healthy with consumer spending accounting for two-thirds of United States economy. Taking that into account the rule of thumb for small businesses that are earning less than $5 million in revenue yearly should spend around 7-8% of revenue on marketing to branch out the brand and value of their product/service. Campus Cleaners is closer to a start-up than a small business, which would recommend for 2-5 % of revenue on marketing. After analyzing the economy nationwide Campus Cleaners can make the decision on what percent of their revenue should be spent on marketing the value of the service.

Political Forces. There are political impacts currently that would influence or halt the current day to day operations of Campus Cleaners in Louisiana or nation-wide if considering to expand out of the state.

Legal and regulatory forces. With many Universities requiring freshman to live on campus for their two semesters, many students have referred to on-campus laundry rooms. This requirement helps Campus Cleaners because many of the laundry rooms are far away, expensive, and unsafe for a risk of theft. The idea of the company was to take these hassles out of the consumer's life which this regulation will enforce. The legal hand of the company has seen no legislation on delivery services of personal clothes, which has to be kept an eye on because of how new the market is for the company and service.

Technological forces. Campus Cleaners has adapted to the new technological trends of the time and is what it based its product off of. As the rise of the smartphone emerged in the late 2000's college campuses have been plagued with them with 85 percent of students nation-wide owning their personal smartphone. Similarly, with the reliance on the internet and personal computer increasing the past 10 years today 88 percent of college students own a laptop. The students rely on these devices day to day and almost always have one of them on their person at all times. The company has incorporated this new technological era to the laundry service to connect better the students. The website is key to scheduling pickups and tracking laundry 24/7.

Sociocultural forces. Today's society, college students have near to no time for laundry and rather use their free time for leisure, not for the wash. The focal point in successful services today in age are to make consumers life's easier or free up their time by taking nuances out of their day. Such services like UBEReats take the inconvenience out of going out to pick up food by providing a delivery medium. A laundry delivery services that take the inconvenience of washing, drying, and folding clothes out of students minds fits with these social trends and more: automotive services, delivery services, move from a hands-on society to an online society, for example.

B. Target Market(s)

By focusing on a commitment to their original service and quality control, Campus Cleaners has quickly implanted its own original niche differentiation strategy in an already uniform market for laundry services. The ability to differentiate itself from other services through its delivery service has been the reason for quick revenue growth over the past couple of months. Campus Cleaners target market contains only College students that are attending Louisiana State at Shreveport. The service that has made the company so quickly successful is the laundry pick-up, wash, dry, and drop off service that can be tailored to every single student through the various pick-up and drop-off times. Most of the consumers use the service to free up their days to have more time for studying, leisure, and class. The laundry service has met initial consumer needs from its establishment. However, many have asked about custom laundry instructions such as time of wash, the temperature of wash, length of dry, and ironing. As these needs increase Campus Cleaners will need to figure out a way to service them. As of today, the possibility of custom instructions is not viable to the company due to the number of loads coming in daily. Campus Cleaners main focuses are primarily on the current needs of the consumers and creating more value for the service through marketing.

C. Marketing Objectives and Performance

Campus Cleaners sales department set up informational meetings on campus and at the University Apartment complex every semester at LSU Shreveport. The representatives refer the students to the website where registration and monthly or annually payments will be made upfront. Students then will receive their laundry bag with a personal barcode on it for tracking and updates through the website. From there the consumers can choose from various times daily, except on Sunday, for laundry drop-offs and pick-ups. The Campus Cleaners trucks will meet outside various apartment complexes at state times for drop-offs and pickups respectively. Since the company is relatively new but is showing success Campus Cleaners will pursue a strategy to market its service to more students at LSUS and beyond to optimize growth.

Campus Cleaners markets its service as a community-specific basis. The process of obtaining a new client is the most stressful and time-consuming part for the company. The service is so new and the marketing that the sales department has been implementing has not been as successful as we hoped to inform students of the service it is offering to all. Campus Cleaners is profitable, however, 35 percent of its accounts payable are paid monthly with the remaining 65 percent being paid annually. The fear is that the 35 percent of the accounts will be dropped after the school year has ended in May-July. This leaves three months of the majority of the company's profits out of the picture. The need for an additional source of accounts may need to found to fund the operations of the company until the next school year. The Company has thought of branching out to local community colleges or even residential areas for the additional clients. Campus Cleaners marketing objectives are to inform more students in the LSUS community which will increase profits and revenue by 8 percent from the previous quarter.

SWOT Analysis

A. Strengths

1. Campus Cleaners is one of its kind in its market as of the moment. This results in less competition for potential consumers in the area for the time being. The service of delivery and folding laundry for the clients has responded well in the target market audience.
2. The use of technology in the process of the service has related to the target market well. Most clients use their phones and laptops daily and can now use them to check up on their order.
3. The ability to be flexible in payment plans has allowed many clients to have the freedom to decide whether to pay monthly or annually. Many students who are taking accelerated classes respond well to this due to the fact of how sparingly they will be on campus per year.
4. Flexible hours of service: There are many times throughout the day that clients can drop-off their laundry for service from 10 AM through 5 PM.

B. Weaknesses

1. Because Campus Cleaners is such a new service the business has yet to inform as much as the target audience as they hoped. The marketing aspect of their company needs to be able to grapple the whole market of Louisiana State Shreveport.
2. The main business of Campus Cleaners comes primarily on college students from August-May. Although the service isn't necessarily seasonal this leaves three month of layover that needs to be addressed to find some type of cash flow during the Summer season until the next school year.
3. The Perez Family has stressed that the business should stay local and solely focus on college students. The lack of creativity to grow to more markets outside the original target market and look into the residential side of the business can restrict the company's revenue potential and growth.
4. Campus Cleaners current laundry facility is beginning to be overwhelmed as more clients purchase the service. The company is quickly reaching the point where they will need to expand their facilities to satisfy the growing clients.
5. While the staff of Campus Cleaners is small and has great morale, as the market grows continually, it can impede its growth and satisfaction to customers.

C. Opportunities

1. LSUS has reached out to Campus Cleaners to partner with each other. This could open up a window to other University taking on Campus Cleaners as their exclusive laundry service.
2. The partnership with LSUS would allow for Campus Cleaners to have a free advertisement on the University website and throughout on campus physically.
3. Bossier Parish Community College students have shown interest in the service and are eager to see an expansion in the near future.

D. Threats

The main threat for Campus Cleaners is if local laundromats attempt to be copycats of the service and begin to personally deliver laundry as well. As there are no current signs of this, as Campus Cleaners continue to grow and gain popularity the company must keep an eye on a copycat entering the market.

Marketing Objectives

Campus Cleaners is a company in the business of helping college students. Other than continuing to focus on giving value in the service, Campus Cleaners should have an objective to increase their clients by 25 percent by the end of the school year and by 75 percent by the beginning of the 2019 school year. At least 50 percent of the target 75 should be coming from new markets such as new Universities and or Residential clients. The other 25 percent should come from the students attending LSUS. To accomplish its marketing objectives, Campus Cleaners should develop a marketing team to review and measure progress this coming month. These regular reviews will help the company focus on areas that are not performing the way they hoped to. The major objective for the company is to see if the markets are viable outside Louisiana State at Shreveport. Since 100 percent of its business is coming from this market, it is time to expand to other areas for revenue.

Marketing Strategies

A. Target Market(s)

Target market 1: Larger Universities in or outside the state with a larger number of students to optimize revenue and growth. Example: Louisiana State University is a big college located in Baton Rouge, LA with over 30,000 total enrollments. That is over 500 percent of the total number of enrolled at LSUS. Campus Cleaners would see extreme growth success if they marketed their products in Universities such as these.

Target Market 2: Residential homes and apartments are a new market that Campus Cleaners will look into to see if it is viable. Example: Populated cities like Shreveport have many of its 192,000 residents in apartments with no laundry rooms or expensive ones at that. Campus Cleaners will look in to tap into this market.

B. Marketing Mix

1. Products. Campus Cleaners markets solely a service for laundry in which the company will: pick-up, wash, dry, and drop-off client’s clothes. The client will receive a bag with a custom bag with purchase of the service and if lost will have to pay for a replacement.
2. Price. Campus Cleaners high-quality services are provided to all clients. The price of the service is a standard rate of $88 per month or $500 annually. The price of the service is not expected to decrease but as more demand and popularity increase Campus Cleaners may want to look into pricing their product as a specialty service.
3. Distribution. Campus Cleaners use direct distribution because the company sends their service directly to the customer when desired.
4. Promotion. Louisiana State at Shreveport provides most of Campus Cleaners clients. The majority of promotional expenditures will be to lock down this market. The focus should be on emailing all on-campus residents about the product and offering a free week of service.