Positioning Strategy

Aufirst tutor service which is new tutor Service Company founded in 2017 has position strategy in guarantee excellent satisfaction feedback from customers which can increase the number of clients through word-of-mouth and building brand awareness. Aufirst slogan is “Education is valuable and fun”, so Aufirst main service is focusing on providing fun and English courses program and consulting on students’ assignments with friendly atmosphere, which we set the goal to satisfied students with outstanding outcome. However, since Aufirst is not widely well-known in Gold Coast area, it needs to put more effort in promoting in through social media platform as well as advertising in universities in order to increase in market share of tutoring service.

Position Attributes

Aufirst core principle is to provide best service for company’s clients so the company needs to enhance the weaknesses. To achieve the position strategy, Aufirst tutor service are needed to be acknowledged widely and attracted international students effectively. To increase benefit by initiate SMART EDU English program in long term, the company should create differentiate perceptions among customers by analysing following two attributes:

1. Value for money

Aufirst tutor service should enhance the promotion of SMART EDU to be more acknowledgeable by oversea students by creating bundle service including test service and provide free online test and trial class. Therefore, SMART EDU program will become cost worthy compare to other companies since we provide small classroom and guarantee that each student will equally receive same standard of knowledge by the tutors at reasonable price. Moreover, students who absent the class can attend online class with the tutors individually and our tutors also monitors each students’ process frequently.   

2. Increase customers’ awareness and recognition

It is very important for Aufirst to increase market share in Gold Coast area since the number of international students are soaring. Moreover, Aufirst should introduce campaign to attract international students to apply for SMART EDU course. Consequently, it can help the company to be achieve as one of well-known tutor service in Gold Coast.

Figure 1:  Perceptual Map Aufirst

Marketing Mix Strategies

Product/Service

Aufirst core service is to provide English courses and assignment assistance service.  Our service is still on the process to be recognise and well-known by potential customers. However, since target market are mostly in younger generation with high expectation of guarantee, SMART EDU is designed to assist students who struggle to understand academic English in completing assignments in University. This program is also suitable for students who need to entry in well-known universities in Gold Coast. Since Australian government may require for tougher English requirement for international students otherwise, they may force to take 20-week intensive English course (Cosoleto, 2019). Thus, SMART EDU is the option for them to study English course without expense a lot money.

SMART EDU English course main features are flexible learning schedule and one-on-one online tutor service for students who absent the class and students who need additional lesson revision. In addition, students who enrol this course at fundamental level can take pathway exam in the middle of the course so we can evaluate the result and consider whether to pass the course without taking full course. These product attributes might be advantage for students to save money and thoroughly receive the overall acknowledge provided by our English course. Moreover, Aufirst will provide refund in case of we cannot guarantee satisfying results. Thus, Aufirst can gain more consumers awareness by promoting how valuable they can gain from apply the course and convince them to take the trial lesson since our service cost is very reasonable compare to other English language institutions. Even though, the target market is mainly international students, Aufirst needs to focus on promoting the service to parents as they are the main source of income for international students by and we must develop and retrieve feedback regularly in order to meet with their satisfaction. Solomon, Hughes, Chitty, Marshall and Stuart (2014) defined that customer satisfaction is the outcome of psychological process when customers compares pre-purchase expectations and post-purchase perception.

Defining the product attributes

Product Attributes		Resulting Consumer Benefit
·         One-on-One   Online Class ·         Flexible course ·         Free Trial course		·         Add value by guarantee satisfy results ·         No need to pay for expensive and unnecessary course ·         Attract consumer for this service

Price

The tutoring service institutions in Gold Coast area are now very intense. Aufirst must ensure to pricing this service to be benefit for consumers as well as to maintain the company in this industry. Since our company is relatively new in this competition and our main products are related to English tutoring service which highly similar to our main competitors, Aufirst needs to approach the competition pricing strategy as we need to  the market share from our competitors so we must pricing the service a little lower while providing more service guarantee. Competition pricing strategy is quite suitable for small business to remain competitive by not harming company’s profits (Develop a pricing strategy, 2019). Meanwhile, Aufirst may need to apply discount or any promotion such as free test and no service charge regularly in order to motivate new customers to apply for our service as well as to keep existing customers to purchase our service. Moreover, this strategy can increase brand awareness indirectly. To implement the discount strategy, our company must not devalue our service by provide too much discount since it can decrease company’s reputation among the customers as they might think our service is not well worthy. Thus, Aufirst will implement only 15% discount after initiating SMART EDU service for 6 months after launching this service and provide bundle price with other services in order to increase sale and reach company objective in seeking new customers. However, online application may receive any little more benefit due to company need to increase the volume of web search. Eventually, Aufirst need to secure customers’ confidence by keeping the service as per our promise.  

Promotion

Our promotion strategy includes flyers advertisement, social media means, attending in education exhibition, and online website can introduce our product/ service to our target market effectively and efficiently.  As mentioned earlier, Aufirst slogan is “Education is valuable and fun” so we need to deliver this message in reach to our potential customers.

1. Face to Face Marketing

One effective way to implement is face to face promotion. Aufirst’s staffs will need to hand out print advertisement such as flyers and brochures and provide them for students within universities and accommodation in universities’ area. The timing to promote in the universities should be around one to two months before the beginning of semesters which normally begin around February, July, and October each year and it is the good timing since students are seeking for tutoring service to be prepared before. Thus, this should be good opportunity for Aufirst to create public awareness. In the other hands, Students who brought flyers to apply with us will be provide discount shopping coupon. This strategy can help company to increase number of course application as well as benefit for company in terms of public relation and brand equity. Decker (2019) described that consistently promoting positive experience with the brand can lead to increase of brand value.

1. Social Media and promotion

Social media means is one of the most important medians to help Aufirst to promote and provide more relaxing environment between purchasers and company as consumers might not feel like being forced to buy products or services. Hose (2019) informed that social network has create more personal level to customers rather than seeing company as to “try selling something”. Meanwhile, company target market is mainly younger generation so this means of promotion can reach them easily. According to Emarketer (as cited in Moshin, 2019), 90.4% of Millennials (age 23 to 38) are active usage of social media. Therefore, Aufirst must post the promotion on social media such as Facebook, WeChat (mainly for Chinese Clients) and Instagram before the beginning of each semesters.

2. Education events

Meanwhile, attending events such as universities’ orientation and education exhibition can help Aufirst to be recognition for public. Moreover, attending annual education event can be the other way of public relation for Aufirst service and it could create more connection for Aufirst to cooperate with others service providers.

3. Customer service and Support

Aufirst is launching the customer service through our website with 24/7 customer service teams to support the existing customers and new customers including promotion update, counselling service and retrieve customers feedback. To communicate with customers through this channel, clients will receive feedback within 24 hours so this also can increase online product sale since satisfaction of provided positive feedback can motivate customers to purchase other services.

Table 2: Aufirst schedule of promotion

Place:

Distribution channel for Aufirst service can be initiate through our online website, at our office and exhibition booths which our clients can purchase our service since this direct selling can get insight information about customer needs and requirements. Moreover, by using direct distribution channels can be benefited for Aufirst to control and calculate service pricing and also can slightly adjust the service program as per most of clients’ requirements. Nevertheless, this strategy might not really helpful in order to increase significant number of application due to direct selling may require lots of human resources to direct communication with customers. Therefore, Aufirst should employ agencies mainly from Asia Pacific region to advertise the study courses in the next phrase so our service will be purchased by students before they actually started the course in Australia. However, the company needs to select the agency that can positively increase the application and trustfully keep customers’ personal information. Acutt (2012) explained that product/service can be distribute through third party in order to increase the number of sell but it needs to be very careful to choose distributors since it can be harmful to our budget if the agency cannot persuade clients to purchase the service.Place

Example of distribution model

Distribution model 1: Service provider to consumer

Distribution model 2: Service provider to Agency to consumer

Evaluation and Control

To evaluate and control the result of new marketing plan, Aufirst must consider the methods in order to achieve and develop its goal. There are 2 evaluation methods related to Aufirst’ goals which are students’ application report and measuring brand awareness through survey. The application statistic number is responsible by marketing team and sale team and it should be measuring through collect number of applicants in every three months so Aufirst can identify the number of students whether it is increasing or decreasing and the results will eventually be provided for sale manager and marketing manager to develop new strategy for marketing plan.

The other goal to evaluate is to increase brand awareness. To measure brand awareness, it can be measured through many channels such as surveys, website traffic checking, search volume data and Social media (Smith, 2018).  Aufirst need to measure the feedback from clients as well as the volume of website search after launching service and measure it every 6 month so the company can analyse this information and develop the strategy to reach the awareness by 10% as planned.

EVALUATION OF GOALS

Implementation & Schedule

This following Gantt chart is illustrated the plan for Aufirst to introduce SMART EDU English program which will launch by February 2020 since the universities start trimester 1 and there are many international students enrol in this trimester. However, there are few operations that Aufirst needs to imply before launching and after launching the service.Implementation & Schedule

Prior to introduce the service, company needs to brainstorming with many involved teams to come up with new service. Aufirst employ market strategy teams to do research and analyse the competitors’ service price so company can create more compatible price for our service as well as to design the sale promotion on new service. During this time, Aufirst must develop our price strategy that can cover the all expense needed for promoting the service. Providing means of advertisement and brand awareness such as brochures, social media post and website are also important before launching and remain essential after launching service. 

After launching the service starting from February, Aufirst will need to consider the procedure to monitor the number of students who apply for this course and also employ the more brand recognition strategy or provide more promotion plan if the company doesn’t reach its goals.

Aufirst’s Gantt chart

Conclusion and Recommendations

Aufirst tutor service is now implementing brand awareness strategy to create more opportunity for company in the marketplace since the company is still relatively new compare with the other competitors in Queensland region. Since Aufirst initiates the service called “SMART EDU” , the company will attract more international students in Gen Y and Z who would like to gain more knowledge on academic English, as well as they can choose the class that flexible to their schedule which our course as well as online study option. Moreover, Aufirst can guarantee satisfaction the service we provided with service team that can assist customers all around the clock and this can help increase brand awareness among customers and increase opportunity for company to expand the target market by word-of-mouth. Moreover, to evaluate all goals, company is also required to implement methods in order to monitor number of application as well as brand recognition for opportunity to increase sale.  

There are recommendations that Aufirst should implement the future. First of all, it should introduce the new consultation service regarding to other aspects such as accommodation and career service within 2-3 years so Aufirst can increase profit as international students will not need to contact many companies for all those services. Secondly, Aufirst needs to corporate with more overseas agency. Through this way, the company can expand the target market as well as to provide convenience way for customers to purchase our service.

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