Analysis Section

The objective of our team’s research and local study was to explore ways in which Salamat Cookies could expand their small business and connect with their targeted audience. In order to meet this goal we considered multiple aspects of the current business plan that could potentially grow and develop. More specifically we studied effective ways to delegate, video content, viral marketing, ways to improve flow of orders and search engine optimization.

Using Delegation to Advance Business

Our team was interested in understanding the significance of delegation in a small business and effective ways to lead a team into expansion. We analyzed the benefits of effective delegation and considered how Salamat Cookies could incorporate delegation in their business

The Benefits of Effective Delegation

Higher Profitability

We first sought out to determine how effective delegation impacted a small business such as Salamat Cookies. In the article Delegating For Small Business Successful the authors conducted a study and concluded that “The delegating owners reaped significantly higher sales and profits than those owners who repeatedly performed tasks themselves, particularly the routine paperwork” (Cuba and Millbourn,1982, p. 7). This shows our team that Salamat Cookies could potentially benefit from a financial standpoint if correctly delegating tasks.

Taking Advantage of Employees Strengths

We continued to consider other ways in which delegation was useful for a business owner. We found in the article Delegation- A Must for Small Business that delegation allowed for managers to take advantage of different skills their employees possessed. The article states “Effective delegation allows mistakes to be made in a low-risk and controlled environment, thus enabling learning and expanded abilities and capabilities to go hand in hand” (Rimler and Humphreys,1976, p. 2). Believing that a manager is competent in every aspect of a business is misleading and relying on employees allows tasks to be done correctly.

Increased time for Larger Goals

Another benefit of delegating tasks that was stressed in multiple articles was the idea that managers would acquire more time to focus on larger goals. The article Delegating For Small Business Successful states that delegation is necessary “to prevent the leader from being drowned in a sea of minor activities whereby the owner’s conceptual and creative contributions are lost” (Cuba and Millbourn,1982, p. 2). Learning to delegate small tasks leaves the manager with more time to spend on the larger goals.

Ways to Effectively Delegate

Selecting Diligent Workers

Through our research we found that key for effective delegation requires having a capable and trusting team. This idea is specified in the article Delegation- A Must for Small Business. The authors state that “For the manager to perform the job he is supposed to be doing, and thus concern himself with the most significant issues relating to the organization, he must choose good men, according to specific criteria, and assign them subordinate responsibilities” (Rimler and Humphreys,1982, p. 2). The selection of employees must be done properly to ensure the success of the business.

Keeping Close Contact

While research has made it clear that delegation is essential for Salamat Cookie to find success completely detaching from different aspects of your business is not advisable. The article Helping Managers to More Effectively Delegate Authority touches on this when the authors state “Plan carefully and consistently about provision of supervision and/or guidance to include checking-in, attainment of milestones and two-way feedback. We do not want to micro-manage the effort, yet we need to carefully consider a schedule of progress points, measurements and deadlines pursuant to the particular task at hand” (Lyons, 2016, p. 3). This suggests that a manager should still have some involvement in the different tasks.

Delegation Advice For Salamat Cookies

These are specific ways in which Salamat Cookies can improve their delegation skills and work more efficiently as a team.

Consider adding more workers to team
Create positions with specific responsibilities
Share business goals with team members
Take advantage of each employees strengths
Form clear and precise expectations for team member

Expanding Salamat Cookies’ Community through Social Media

The team sought out information on what forms of social media content may be beneficial in expanding Salamat Cookies’ business and community. We found that Salamat Cookies can use short video content to achieve this goal.

Utilizing Video Content in Social Media to Grab Attention

Social media has been a major aspect of connecting with consumers and creating a community for businesses in our current age. We know that Salamat Cookies is actively using social media to conduct business and connect with customers, but we wanted to know what form of content would be most beneficial for expanding your community.

Cisco, a major technology company, found that, “Video made up 73% of global internet traffic in 2016” (King, 2018, p. 7). In addition to this statistic that finds video content to make up a majority of online traffic, an article from Forbes states that video may be the best form of content for businesses to make. The author writes, “66 percent of consumers prefer watching a video to reading about a product” (Hyder, 2020, para. 2). This suggests that continuing to use video content to market Salamat Cookies is the best way to expand the business and community.

Creating Short Form Video Content to Appeal to A Larger Audience

After identifying that video content would be the best way for Salamat Cookies to expand their online community, we wanted to find out what length of video content would be the most effective. Short form video content has become a major part of social media today through platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.. In “Research on the Influence of Content Features of Short Video Marketing on Consumer purchase intentions,” the data indicates that “In the consumer purchasing decision process, the intervention of short video has revolutionized the stages of information search and evaluation of alternatives. Compared with traditional video marketing, the information of goods or services can be more effectively conveyed to the consumer in short video because its content is more refined and incisive” (Xiao, Wang and Wang, 2019, p. 417). For your goal of expanding your community, short form video content may be the best way to effectively connect with your audience.

Creating Content that Catches Consumers’ Attention

In addition to researching the length that would best benefit Salamat Cookies, we also sought to identify the best form of video content to create. We found that a majority of people surveyed would be interested in learning more about a business after watching a video showing the different products they offer. Our data indicated that consumers would also be interested in a business after watching a video of the products being made.

We also decided to look at the social media trends of another cookie business, Insomnia Cookies. The business has over 200,000 followers on Instagram and 14.3 thousand followers on TikTok. After analyzing their video content, we found that their most successful posts were videos demonstrating the types of cookies they offer. An Instagram reel showing off their chocolate covered strawberry cookies gathered over 108,000 views, and a TikTok of their Dippers and Cookie Butter gained 121.4 thousand views (Insomnia Cookies, 2021). Based on both the industry trends and our local survey, short video content of the cookies and how they are made would be the most effective in increasing your community.

Direct Ways to Expand Business and Community through Social Media

A list of ways Salamat Cookies can specifically use social media to expand their business and connection with the community.

Continue utilizing videos to grab consumer attention
Create more video content that is 30 seconds or less
Utilize TikTok and Instagram Reels to create this content
Focus on creating more content showing off the cookies and how they are made

After completing our local survey, we also found that a majority of people prefer short form content to long form content. The data from Figure 1 shows that 69.7% of people surveyed are willing to spend 30 seconds or less of their time watching video content from an unfamiliar business. When trying to expand your community, creating video content that is short in length is the key to holding their attention.

Amount of Time People Are Willing to Watch a Video

Figure 1-Video Content

Utilizing Viral Marketing to Expand Small Business

The team has sought out ways by utilizing research and a local study to understand factors that impact viral marketing. Salamat cookies can utilize viral marketing strategies to expand the small business as well as market to younger audience groups.

Importance of Viral Marketing As a Concept

Although Salamat Cookies utilizes social media platforms effectively, it does not utilize viral marketing. We found that people are more likely impacted by “word-to-mouth” marketing than traditional means of marketing via television, radio, or newspaper especially with the rise of social media, a new branch of marketing emerged called viral marketing. Viral marketing was defined as “a method of conducting online marketing which overlaps remarkably with social media marketing, due to centrality of "word of mouth" to it.“(Bostanshirin, 2014, p. 4). Therefore, viral marketing is a virtual version of traditional word of mouth marketing.

Factors Impacting Viral Marketing Application for Salamat Cookies

Viral marketing is impacted by many factors such as purchasing intentions, emotions, and cultural awareness. Purchasing intentions has been defined as “buying actions that might be carried out by consumers after exposure to stimuli.” (Satrio, 2020). Meaning the motivation behind purchasing products. Thus, what motivates individuals to purchase products?

Purchasing intentions can be difficult to achieve since it requires “the emergence of a need for a product, product introduction, and information evaluation are things that can lead to a consumer purchase intention” (Satiro, 2020, p. 4). So, Salamat cookies will need to cause the need for their product, a genuine product introduction. How will this need emerge? By utilizing emotions as the text states that “consumers do not look for products/services that meet rational needs and processes, but for objects that are central to symbolic, psychological and cultural meanings, sources of feelings, relationships, and emotions.”(Satrio, 2020, p. 4). This can be done by utilizing the current “Stop Asian Hate” movement to support local Asian business. This can also be done by emphasizing the business’s slogan, “Bringing people together one cookie at a time”.

Lastly, a factor that can impact viral marketing strategies for Salamat Cookies is cultural awareness which has been defined as "the ability of a person to look outside himself and be aware of cultural values.”(Satrio, 2020, p. 4). This concept can be utilized for our project since our product is a twist of cultural and ethnic foods that come from the Filipino culture. This can be utilized by explaining what inspired the different flavors and their origins in the Filipino culture.

Advice for Salamat Cookies to Utilizing Viral Marketing

We offer Salamat Cookies a list of ways they can utilize viral marketing in their business.

Emphasize the business’s slogan.
Explanation of different flavors’ inspiration.
Market product as central to symbolic, psychological and cultural meanings.
Increasing cultural awareness via emphasizing the cultural meaning behind the name of the brand.

Figure 2

As our team conducted a local study we were interested in the ways individuals were likely to hear about a small business. Figure 2 shows the results from participants. The majority of people found Social Media and Word of Mouth to be key factors in hearing about a small business.

Flow of Orders

To ultimately increase the flow of expansion in the small business Salamat Cookies, our team dug into the logistics of improving the order tracking system. Through utilization of an order tracking system, Salamat Cookies and their team will be able to stay more organized and ultimately improve their work flow.

Improving the Flow of Orders

To catalyze expansion within Salamat Cookies, the team found improving the system of order tracking would greatly impact the business in a positive manner. In the article Order Tracking Systems for Your Business, the authors include “different systems offer different benefits, but broadly some of the perks you can expect from order tracking are a perception of professionalism, cost efficiency, and additional benefits for customers and suppliers” (is4profit team, 2015). Salamat Cookies can grow as a company in these aspects considering they progress into more professional order tracking methods and systems.

Importance of Tracking Software

Having an organized order tracking system will help keep the business more progressive and overall running more smoothly. “As customers and suppliers can check themselves where their order is, your business will be perceived as transparent, trustworthy and professional” (is4profit team, 2015). Not only is the act of actually receiving cookies important, but it is also the process and consumer satisfaction that matters immensely as well.

Salamat Cookies and Improved Software

Salamat Cookies’ currently uses a Google Docs sheet to keep track of orders and the logistics of customers coming in. If we can begin using a more organized software and have a team-member assigned to learn, regulate and keep up with this software, our team believes this will create a huge impact in the overall growth and organization of Salamat Cookies flow of orders.

Expansion via Order Tracking Organization

Order Tracking can contribute significantly to the functioning of a new and expanding business and we suggest that Salamat Cookies consider the following steps

Select Order Tracking System
Assign specific person to regulate
Improve overall organization of tracking orders

Search Optimization

For Salamat Cookies, we considered the potential in search engines and optimizing search results to benefit the business. Search engine optimization can improve online traffic for Salamat Cookies, which in turn can lead to greater sales.

The Power of Optimization

Initially, we were curious as to the prospective impact search engines could have for Salamat Cookies. In a digital age where digital marketing is becoming increasingly essential for a business’ marketing strategy, search engines are the portal through which potential customers can connect with a business. In an experiment conducted by Jakub Zilincan, visitor traffic started with ~50% (~1250 people) from organic searches in May of 2012 (2015, p. 507). Zilincan then reveals that, “[by] September, organic traffic started to gather its momentum, and, a month after visitors from organic search, accounted for ~70% [~7000 people] of all traffic” (2015, p. 507). This illustrates the growth in both traffic and exposure search engine optimization can grant to Salamat Cookies’ online presence.

On & Off Elements

Search engine optimization starts with the website and social connections a business has. These are split respectively into two categories: on-page and off-page elements. The nature of these elements lends a supportive backbone separated, but working in tandem with, keywords and search queries. Factors such as website load times, text and URL length, and the quality and quantity of backlinks are on-page optimization elements that can be improved to further optimize a business’ website (Ziakis et al., 2019, p. 5-8). Making sure that the website itself is streamlined both technically and organizationally are fundamental to increasing traffic. Turning away from on-page elements, how can off-page (social) elements be optimized as well?

Social Presence

Off-page optimization elements are those that lie within the social realm of marketing. One of the most prolific facets of off-page elements is social media. Salamat Cookies has a good handle on its social platforms. Going forward, we sought to find the best way of handling content on social media. Tafesse & Wien advise that social media be centered around customer engagement, but warn that being active on social media is not the same (2018, p. 14). In their paper, Implementing social media marketing strategically: an empirical assessment, they state that, “active presence fails to contribute to social media performance [suggesting] that active presence by itself may be incapable of driving social media performance” (Tafesse & Wien, 2018, p. 14), as active presence rated β = .06 in their PLS-SEM bootstrapping procedure. Thus it is at the benefit of Salamat Cookies that their social media platforms be used actively in connecting with its customers, not merely being active.

Keywords

From a user’s perspective, keywords form the structure on which they guide their use of search engines. Optimizing specific keywords for Salamat Cookies can thus make the company much more visible to potential customers. The article Search engine optimization makes the point that “[i]t is impossible to make a search engine optimization for every word on a page; therefore, it is important to select five to ten [main] keywords, which most accurately represent the content (Zilincan, 2015, p. 506). Salamat Cookies has a unique brand and as such its keywords should reflect this, but keyword optimization doesn’t just stop there.

Using Google’s AdWords can give insight and guidance to what additional keywords can be used. Mustafa, Nawaz, and Lali suggest using words/phrases with low competition and to make use of long tail keywords as they make up 70% of total search queries (2015, p. 5084). This is reasoned in their stating that “[l]ong tail keywords serve better than single phrase because they catch people later in the buying/conversion cycle (or when they’re more ready to purchase)” (Mustafa, Nawaz, & Lali, 2015, p. 5084). Thus these keyword strategies are key to keeping Salamat from entering saturated markets in search engine results.

Putting these concepts into practice, Zilican ran a tangential experiment with English keywords for his website. They state that “[t]hanks to [Search Engine Optimization], 95% of the keywords we were focusing on are currently being displayed on the first search result page (rank<10) and 45% even ranked in the first position” (2015, p. 510). This shows that together low competition keywords and keywords unique and close to the brand maximize search engine optimization alongside on/off-page elements. Salamat Cookies can make search engines work for them not only to drive online traffic but also to attract customers that are more willing to add Salamat’s number of cookies sold.

Search Engine Optimization Advice

The following are ways in which Salamat Cookies can effectively optimize their website and social platforms for search engines:

Streamline any on-page elements (such as JS, CSS, HTML script)
Ensure social media content is engaging, not merely showing activity
Link unique, relevant keywords to website & social media
Utilize long tail keywords to improve search results & avoid saturated search market