Empowering Digital Entrepreneurs

Introduction:

In today’s fast-paced business world, entrepreneurs have chosen digital form of marketing which provides opportunities to the new marketers to get online support from investors and stakeholders for establishing their market footprint in the highly competitive marketing landscape. Some organisations provide financial support to the digital entrepreneurial business by making situation analysis and conducting an online campaign. This report is going to discuss the crowd-funding initiative taken by the London based online stock exchange, ‘The London Entrepreneurial Exchange’ (LEE), which is associated with helping entrepreneurial business through providing online finding assistance. , including business dissertation help. This report is going to discuss two important questions, of which the first one will make situational analyses of the overall crowd finding the vehicle of LEE in terms of analysing its opportunities, weakness, strength and threats. In the second question, this report will discuss how the online campaign and e-marketing conducted by LEE provide opportunities for the small and medium-sized business to strengthen its market footprint in the business world.

Complete a situational analysis of the crowd funding sector facilitating the opportunity of developing a crowd funding site 'The London Entrepreneurial Exchange’

Internal analysis:

Internal; analysis of crowd-funding is associated with determining its strength and weakness. According to Mollick and Robb (2016), lack of proper financial support is one of the most important issues that the entrepreneurs and small business face. Crowd-funding is the solution for mitigating these financial issues for the new entrepreneurs and small businesses.

By determining and analysing the strength of crowd finding it can be stated that, the crowd-funding site of LEE will be highly supportive for new entrepreneurs and small business to raise their venture capital. According to Sorenson et al. (2016), for establishing the business in the highly competitive market it is important to get sufficient money which will assist new businesses to improve their overall business process to attract the stakeholders and investors. On the other hand, crowd-funding vehicle of LEE can provide opportunities to entrepreneurs and small firms to raise their fund in a fast manner which will assist the marketer to grab the competitive advantage. On the contrary, Hervé and Schwienbacher (2018.) argued that crowd-funding in sometimes can be the highly time-taking process which makes new businesses to wait till years to get sufficient amount of money to establish their business. In this context, LEE needs to come up with the modern outlook of the crowd-funding site which will attract the investors and potential marketers to invest in small firms. Crowd-funding of LEE will assist the new businesses to represent their social proof and validation which are needed for any investors to research the company before investing in it.

One of the major weaknesses of crowd-funding that LEE cab face is its over-dependence on the investors and marketers to get proper financial support. Sometimes this dependency can increase the dominance of investors over the business decision and activities of small firms which can interfere with their business freedom. According to Brem et al. (2019), although crowdfunding provides economic support to the small firms, it will raise the interference of investors into the market decision and overall operation of the small firm which can make restrictions and obligation on free business activities of the employees. In this context, the LEE needs to design the crowd-funding site in such a manner which will grab the attention of many investors in the domestic and international marketers for gaining strong financial support from them which will assist the small firms to reduce the individual dominance of the investors. On the other hand, another weakness that the crowd-funding site of LEE can face is low amount money that can be collected through the crowd-funding investors which is not sufficient for operating the business successfully in the competitive market. In this context, LEE needs to focus on connecting to a large number of investors from different places of the country, which will assist the small firms to get opportunities to raise their capital to the sufficient amount.

External analysis:

In the external analysis, opportunities and threats of the crowd-funding site of LEE will be evaluated.

One of the major opportunities of the crowd-funding site of LEE is it will provide the opportunity to the small firms and businesses to get connected with potential marketers and investors. According to Giones and Brem (2019), in terms of establishing a new business, only getting financial assistance is not the sole need, rather the business needs to build a friendly relationship with the potential marketers and investors for making its brand awareness in the international market. On the other hand, the crowd-funding vehicle of LEE will not only provide the opportunity to the small firms building strong connection with investors rather it provides chances to investors and marketers to get the list of wide ranges of online business firms for selecting their preferable business into which they want to invest their money.

There are some threats that crowd-funding site of LEE can face. The crowd-funding process can take lots of time as well an effort which will make delay to operate the successful operation of the small business in the competitive market. On the contrary Kraus et al. (2016.) argued that sometimes crowd-funding that raises the venture capital in a fast manner is unable to raise the sufficient financial support that is needed to operate the business in the competitive market successfully. Therefore, LEE needs to form such crowd-funding vehicle which will be able to convince the investors to invest in the small business firm. In this context, the technical staffs of LEE need to modernise the overall design and applications of the site which will attract investors, clients and people.

Critical success factors:

Critical success factors will assist to determine whether the crowd founding site of LEE will be able to meet its objectives. There are two critical factors such as constraints factors and enabling factors. Constraint factors will hinder the operation and development of this site and enabling factors will support the overall operation of this site.

Enabling factors:

There are several enabling factors that LEE needs to consider while operating the functions of its crowd-funding site. The first enabling factors are the economic growth of UK which will assist the LEE to conduct the successful operation of the crowd-funding site to select potential investors in front of local market in terms of providing financial assistance to new businesses. Another enabling factor is the high number of internet users in the UK which will enhance the chances of new investors, marketer and business to get connected through this crowd-funding site. Government support towards digital entrepreneurship in the UK is an important enabling factor which will raise chances of this LEE crowd-funding site to get economic and legal support fir operating successful functions.

Constraining factors

One of the most common constraining factors for Crowd-funding site is political instability. After Brexit, it is difficult for the online stock enhances companies to grab proper crowd-funding from the European countries which were the main source of investment into new business. On the other hand, rising competition in the entrepreneurial business can create difficulties for the crowd-funding site if LEE to collect sufficient financial support as potential investors focus on investing into well-known companies rather than the new businesses.

Develop an e-marketing and social media campaign to launch such a site focusing on a performance model approach as there is a limited Marketing budget of £10,000 to cater for this launch

Objectives:

LEE is going to conduct a twelve-month campaign, which has the following objectives:

Reach:

The overall campaign activity set by LEE is going to reach potential investors, marketers, clients and suppliers in the domestic and international market through using the online site. The online campaign has information regarding many new business and entrepreneurs who are willing to extend their business activities.

Achieve:

LEE campaign will achieve the goal of collecting sufficient financial support for assisting the new entrepreneurs and small firms through

Connecting to investors, stakeholders and clients from different corner of the world

Setting the priority task for the campaign to collect money for assisting small firms and new businesses to operate their smooth operations

Analysing the overall strength and weakness of the small firms to understand the strategies that can be developed for assisting these firms

Attract:

LEE online campaign will assist the small firms to attract investors, marketers and potential businesses to invest a considerable amount for providing opportunities to the new firms for establishing their market footprint into the market.

Receive funding:

Through conducting the online campaign for launching such an effective digital site, LEE can assist new businesses to get opportunities to connect with the potential investors to grab financial support. This campaign will assist the small firms, new entrepreneurs and businesses to convince the investors to invest money into these businesses which will help the marketers to operate their business into domestic as well as in the international; market. The estimated fund that is expected to be collected through this campaign is £10,000.

Tools used in campaigns:

Through the above-mentioned table, it can be stated that LEE is going to use some software such as Adwords, Podcast ads, Native advertisements and Display ads, which will assist LEE to make the online promotion of new firms and business. Through these tools, LEE can make the campaign more useful to connect to the investors which will support the new businesses to extend their operation.

Campaign schedule:

Following schedule has been conducted by LEE for running the campaign successfully

Pre-campaign:

In this stage, LEE has set the objectives for the campaign

The marketers of LEE determine the overall budget for the campaign

The marketers of LEE select the list of new business that can get financial support from the investors

Campaign:

During the campaign, LEE will communicate with both the investors and new entrepreneurs to understand their terms and condition for making the overall settlements. Through conducting the marketing campaign, LEE can highlight the uniqueness of new business in front of the potential investors to grab their attention.

Post-campaign:

Post-campaign activity is analysing the budget of the overall campaign which will assist the LEE to determine the overall spending

Marketers of LEE will determine te overall fund which will be collected for assisting new business.

Conclusion:

From the above-mentioned discussion, it can be concluded that digital entrepreneurship business is associated with operating marketing operating which assist the, to grab the competitive advantage in the international market. Through crowd-funding it is possible to help new businesses through seeking financial support from the investors through using the online network. Moreover, through conducting online campaign marketers can promote the uniqueness and brand image of new business which assists this business to get financial and social support from the investors and potential marketers.

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