Know-How Exchange : Strategy

WOW, Tracey, you are really special! You're like the first person to ask a question on here in some time that didn't start with "give me ideas for a name" and "I won't give you any data about my business, but please tell me how to run it for free." You actually gave us a concise flavor for your problem and have a plan to do some work! Very well done!

What you are describing needs to happen are activities in developing a marketing plan. I will outline a marketing plan and briefly describe the activities in each section:

MARKET ASSESSMENT: Determine the size of the market and define the groups of customers or segments within that market. Define the needs in each segment. Determine motivations, likes, influences, and so forth. These will become important as you define how to reach the target segments

COMPETITIVE ASSESSMENT: Detail your competitors and their product/service offering and how well they satisfy each segments's needs. Do a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) for your company and identify the competitor strengths and weaknesses. Determine for each segment how you can take advantage of the competitors' weaknesses, make your weaknesses into strenghts, counter the competitors' strengths, and promote your strengths. Prioritize the segments by how much value you can deliver to the customers in each segment.

MARKETING STRATEGY: This involves setting of the four P's - price, promotions, product, and positioning. It also covers branding, as it applies.

PRODUCT/SERVICE OFFERING: Based on the above, define the right product and service offerings to best meet the segment needs versus the competition. Determine your competitive advantages in terms of features and define the benefits the customers derive from those features.

MARKETING CAMPAIGN: Put together the mix of promotions - advertising, press releases, etc - to highlight your advantages versus the competition. Use media outlets and methods that match your customers' influences. Put together collateral material and training material for the sales force. Create an action plan with dates and people responsible for each action to execute your marketing campaign. Include measurements, metrics, and review points to keep everything on track.

Tracey, this is pretty brief, but gives you the idea. For more information, see https://www.quickmba.com/marketing/plan/

I hope this helps! It's a pleasure helping someone who asks well thought out questions and expects to have to do some work as a result. I'm sure you will be successful.

Wayde

My recommendation: Start from the ground up .. fully understand the markets you in (their buying behaviour, size, trends etc), understand your positioning in the market, understand how you are actually positioned.

From that standpoint you can start to figure out which direction you should be moving in.

Then you can sensibly run a customer satisfaction survey, and get feedback on wht you have learnt from your analysis to back you up.