Khula Retail Business Plan › Section 7 › Marketing & Sales Strategy

7.1 Strategic Marketing Objectives

Marketing investment at Khula Retail will be governed by clear,
measurable objectives rather than activity for its own sake. Three
strategic objectives govern marketing decisions over the planning
horizon:

1. Build catchment awareness from a standing start to 90% prompted
   recall within 12 months of launch — measured by quarterly catchment
   surveys.
2. Convert awareness into trial: 75% of catchment households to have
   shopped at least once within 9 months — measured by loyalty-card
   sign-ups and till-receipt analysis.
3. Convert trial into habitual loyalty: 50% of active customers to
   be loyalty-programme members generating 65%+ of revenue by end of Year
   2.

7.2 The Khula Marketing Mix

The marketing mix has been engineered for a hyper-local,
community-anchored business. Heavy reliance on national broadcast media
would be wasteful at this scale; instead, the mix prioritises
high-frequency, low-CPM (cost per mille) tactics that compound trust and
recall within the catchment.

Figure 7.

7.2.1 Pre-Launch (Months -3 to 0)

The pre-launch phase will be designed to generate genuine community
anticipation rather than generic marketing noise. Tactics include: (i)
construction-hoarding branded with a count-down to opening date; (ii)
door-drop of a high-quality opening-week voucher booklet to all
catchment households; (iii) a sponsored community event hosted in
conjunction with the local school’s parent-teacher association; (iv)
pre-registration for the loyalty programme via WhatsApp with a sign-up
bonus credited at first transaction; (v) targeted Meta and TikTok
geo-fenced advertising at the catchment perimeter.

7.2.2 Launch Window (Months 0–3)

The launch window concentrates on driving trial and capturing
first-visit data. The opening week will feature daily promotional
anchors — bread for R7.99, hot deli specials, family braai bundles, free
reusable bags above R250 spend — supported by community-radio
sponsorship and local newspaper full-page advertisements.
Mystery-shopping audits will commence in Week 2 to ensure that
operational standards keep pace with the marketing promise.

7.2.3 Steady-State (Months 4–12)

From Month 4, marketing transitions toward sustained engagement:
weekly WhatsApp promotional broadcasts to opted-in customers, in-store
sampling and demonstration days on Saturdays, monthly community
engagement initiatives (school sponsorship, food drive, senior citizens’
day), and the gradual escalation of the loyalty programme through tier
benefits and bonus point events.

7.2.4 Year 2 and Beyond

From Year 2, marketing investment shifts toward higher-leverage
activities: data-driven personalised communications via the loyalty
platform; brand-building activities supporting the planned second-store
opening; and gradually escalating performance marketing to support the
click-and-collect channel. The total marketing-to-revenue ratio is
forecast to step down from 6.6% in Year 1 to 4.7% by Year 5 as
efficiency compounds.

7.3 Loyalty Programme — Khula Plus

Khula Plus, scheduled for launch in Month 14, is the cornerstone of
the long-term customer-relationship strategy. The programme architecture
has been deliberately kept simple to maximise adoption among catchment
customers while permitting sophisticated back-end personalisation.

Table 16. Khula Plus loyalty programme architecture

7.4 Sales Process & In-Store Experience

Retail sales conversion is determined less by traditional “selling”
than by the cumulative quality of dozens of small operational
touch-points. Khula Market’s sales-process framework is therefore built
around six controllable in-store experience standards, each of which
will be auditable and trainable:

• Greeting standard: every customer to be acknowledged within 10
  seconds of entry.
• Stock standard: shelf gaps to be filled within 30 minutes; key
  SKU stock-out tolerance ≤2%.
• Cleanliness standard: hourly visual sweep; full clean cycle 06:00
  and 18:00 daily.
• Queue standard: maximum 3 customers per till queue; second till
  opened within 60 seconds of breach.
• Knowledge standard: every staff member able to locate any of the
  top-200 SKUs within 30 seconds.
• Departure standard: receipt offered with thanks and named
  acknowledgement.

Confidential — this business plan is provided to prospective investors and lenders for evaluation purposes only and may not be reproduced or distributed without the written consent of Khula Retail (Pty) Ltd.