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Entrepreneurial Marketing – Microsoft
Entrepreneurial marketing can be viewed as an essential part in the entrepreneurship field and marketing. Recently, it has risen to macroeconomic relevance for its ability in growing small businesses into multinational corporations. Microsoft is one of the leading companies in using this field. Understanding what Entrepreneurial Marketing requires having a grasp of what marketing and entrepreneurship entail. Marketing has been defined as the processes of “creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging of offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large” (Hills 1). Entrepreneurs use these processes in their goals, meaning they have relevance to its definition.
Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, is focused on identifying sources of opportunity, evaluating and exploiting them with new products or availing existing ones to new markets. Entrepreneurial marketing blends marketing and entrepreneurship, and attempts to achieve a higher level of specification for the owners. Therefore, Entrepreneurial Marketing is defined as a process that focuses in pursuing identified opportunities, launching new products to new markets and growing ventures to create consumer value through the establishment of relationships, innovation, creativity, flexibility, as well as immersing the market (Hills 1). Simply stated, it means trying to develop a certain market within an industry using innovations.
Entrepreneurial Marketing is made up of several components, some of which are in marketing and entrepreneurship. The first one is flexibility and passion towards the consumers, which determines how businesses relate with the customers. Entrepreneurial Marketing is heavily reliant on customer orientation. The other component is establishing long-term relationships and networking, which helps the business in retaining customers as it expands. The next component is a commitment to market research and immersion. This involves daily contribution to understanding of customers and the market. It also uses innovative opportunities and marketing planning (Hills 1). To understand how Entrepreneurial Marketing plays out to grow businesses, it is worth to look at the case of Microsoft.
Microsoft is one of the multinational corporations that have benefited from entrepreneurship marketing. The company grew into one of the biggest technology firms worldwide. Although many corporations do use entrepreneurship marketing, none does it the same way as Microsoft. While other companies seek to employ talented and skilled employees to innovate new products for the market, Microsoft offers a series of programs in which young people are nurtured, from when they are still students to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. Microsoft goes ahead to help such young technologists to establish startups, which are then grown into successful businesses. This has allowed the company to establish a path through which it engages entrepreneurs who create new goods for the communities (Popp and Meyer 209).
An example of these programs is BizSpark, which is a global establishment offering support to startups in software development or software-as-a-service by offering support, facilities and visibility. After three years later, many companies totaling up to 40,000 from more than 100 countries joined. It helps these startups in connecting with the global communities. This way, the company is able to deliver new products under other names with its own being part of it.
To grow this program into such an enormous success globally, Microsoft used entrepreneurship marketing through activities such as communicating, establishing relationships, market research and networking. After launching the program, Microsoft had to do a lot of communicating to attract young entrepreneurs. Some of the activities concerning the programs launched were done by the marketing projects manager. For instance, the marketing projects manager was responsible for launching the program, managing the campaigns, advertisements, designing the banners and creating the media plans. All these were forms of communication to reach out to consumers of the products, which is part of entrepreneurship marketing.
The other activity that Microsoft engaged in is establishing relationships with other companies and clients of this program, who are the new entrepreneurs. The company entered into partnership with other companies such as European Business Angel Network (EBAN), National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), TechStars and the Indus Stars (TiE) within different regions of the world where it wanted the program to reach. With these partners, Microsoft is able to reach more clients for the program (Anderson 1). This also entails networking where businesses connect to learn and help each other. Majority of business owners cite that relationship and networking were key factors to success.
The other activity that Microsoft has used for entrepreneurship marketing is market research and immersion. Numerous and extensive researches have been conducted on these programs to get them to their current position (Popp and Meyer 209). Microsoft conducted research concerning what startups need in order to grow significantly. The research found that offering such businesses facilities and technology, increased their chances of growing (Anderson 2). Microsoft identified an opportunity to provide people with most valued tools for taking their businesses to the next level.
In conclusion,
entrepreneurship marketing helps businesses in growing from startups into successful
corporations. Microsoft realized the power of providing technology to such
products and exploited an opportunity. Even though its missions are not focused
on enormous profits, by helping the startups grow, many products are developed
with the company’s name. As aforementioned, entrepreneurship marketing
focuses on identifying new opportunities and growing new ventures, which is what
Microsoft has been doing for the last three years with the B izSpark.
Work Cited:
Anderson, Dennis. Invigorating the Economy through Entrepreneurship. Technet.microsoft.com, 2014. Web. April 1, 2014.
Hills, Gerry. Entrepreneurial Marketing for your Business. Bradley University, peoriamagazines.com, February 2012. Web. April 1, 2014.
Popp, Karl, and Ralf Meyer. Profit from Software Ecosystems: Business Models, Ecosystems and Partnerships in the Software Industry. Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2010. Print.