Introduction
The positioning map for Educare.com can be placed into two dimensions that define the market of consulting and educational services: efficiency and customer-centric approach. The rationale behind this choice lies in the fact that the problems that customers, mainly teenagers, and their parents, address the organization with, are very specific, such as anger, despair, and sadness. Therefore, these issues require unique solutions that can be provided if the company is focused on a customer. To compete with other organizations that guide young people, Educare.com needs to stand out by ensuring each customer to be oriented on the personal issues, background, and demands of a person.
Secondly, the efficiency of services is required to achieve stable results and expand the customer base. Teenagers that are primary customers of a company heavily rely on communication with acquaintances (Bep et al. 26). Thus, clients can help to spread the word about consulting services if the guidance for teenagers is of high quality and efficiency. If appropriately implemented, the perceptual mapping of Educare.com guarantees the company to sustain the competition and to have a stable customer base and opportunities for future expansion.
Main body
The marketing mix strategy of Educare.com will support the launch of the operations in the target market. The product of the company is primarily consulting services on a healthy lifestyle, behavior management, education, and employment for teenagers. Other supporting materials, such as guidance tutorials, are provided as well. The price of services is established based on the benchmarking of competitors’ prices and the cost of similar professional services. However, the additional value may be included in the cost depending on the demand for services and tailored solutions that might be required for a client.
The place where Educare.com operates is an online website with various features. In addition to this place, the services may be created offline built on partnerships with educational organizations and other entities that may bring benefits to Educare.com. Promotion channels highlight the value of services and a customer-centric approach to create brand awareness with the help of advertising, SMM, and creative communication methods. The main reason for creating the specific marketing mix is the additional value that flexible, tailored consulting services bring that have a high cost.
The branding strategy of Educare.com includes a mix of short- and long-term activities because the company requires an image of an organization that provides efficient, customer-oriented, and unique solutions for issues that teenagers face. The brand’s purpose is to establish close emotional connections with target audiences and provide tailored services that help an adolescent to deal with various issues and overcome problems with the support of professionals. It is essential to test the functions on offline and online platforms to determine where Educare.com would get the best results in terms of customer acquisition, engagement, and retention, and move towards this direction.
To ensure that the branding strategy is competitive against similar organizations, the monitoring system of competitors might be established to learn the best practices that can draw the attention of teenagers and their parents. Furthermore, the branding strategy will integrate brand advocacy encouraging employees and customers to build a more powerful image that helps to acquire new customers for long-term development.
The promotion mix is spread across online advertising, direct mailing, PR, and interactive marketing. It is essential to establish a positive image for target audiences because adolescents are susceptible to the information that they release to professionals, do not trust people, and ask for help immediately. The central platform for promotion is social networks; social media marketing is used to establish a close and trustworthy connection with young people.
Educare.com website will act as the first source of information about the company. As the company needs to gain brand awareness and a client base, it is required to put financial resources in promotion activities that give massive coverage. Communication methods will help to execute three main promotion objectives: to inform, to persuade, and to remind. First, Educare.com services will be advertised via educational newspapers and magazines in the area where the company operates. Second, online advertising will be used to reach massive audiences in different locations. Finally, public relations activities and interactive marketing will be used to provide educational services on a free basis to collect information about clients and allow them to try the services and guidance of Educare.com.
Conclusion
It is necessary to build inbound tactics and use customer relationship management (CRM) tools to gather information about customers, their historical data to provide tailored services. The inbound strategy may significantly increase revenues and the number of customers by encouraging clients to use referrals. CRM will be used to offer personalized discounts on services to teenagers across various platforms, such as a website and an application.
Moreover, the client data will be gathered to improve communication and consulting methods that are used. Educare.com will implement social and mobile CRM to analyze audiences’ behavior and get insights that will help representatives of the company to target prospects through the channel they prefer. Inbound tools will also help employees of the company to track the data, schedules, meetings, and references on a unified platform to ease the operations.
Overall, Educare.com will use various tools to ensure that the services of the company are efficient and customer-centric and to improve activities that will help the clients to get a healthy lifestyle and the company to grow.
Work Cited
Bep, Uink, et al. “Disadvantaged youth report less negative emotion to minor stressors when with peers: An experience sampling study.” International Journal of Behavioral Development, vol. 41, no. 1, 2016. Web.