First off, whenever I hear a small company say "we source everything,"  I cringe a bit and say a short prayer for your staff. ( I say this only from personal experience)

 

 The first step, I would say, is to say "no" to the things that make less money per hour of work than do your core competencies. Try to swallow the world and you'll choke for sure. Find a few things you do well, and focus on these. Complexity in the product mix is a painful way to run a small to medium sized company. I recall doing consulting for a bag designing firm in the US that had over 300 SKUs, and most of these sold less than 200 units per year! I feel sorry for the guy who manages that inventory.

 

Regarding your core product line, water purification equipment, this sounds like a great core line from which you can expand. I like to think marketing boils down to answering a few simple questions: 1) Who likes my stuff? ( or How do I find out what stuff is most liked by a liberal-spending population I can access easily?) and 2) How to I get my stuff positioned in front of these people in the most expedient way which evokes a purchasing decision.

 

Since I'm not an expert in the water purification market, I'd recommend doing the following:

 

1)      A basic SWOT analysis – and be sure to answer these questions well: What need does your product or service meet? Why should the customers you want most pick you over the competition?

 

2)      A basic Porter's 5-forces analysis. Google search Porter’s 5-forces, and you should get a good idea.

 

3)      Read a few good books:

 

a.       The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott

 

b.      Competitive Advantage by Porter

c.       Guerilla Marketing – Levinson

d.      A used Marketing textbook from Kotler – he's the guru

e.       The World is Flat – Friedman

 

I hate to be just another expert to tell you to read (but that’s what you gotta do to stay ahead of the game in the long run). Here's a few more questions to ask that should help:

 

1)      What does the supply chain for my product look like relative to my target market?

2)      Where is this product in its product life cycle?

3)      What are the competitive forces? (Must read at least a summary of Porter) and what are the market trends?

4)      What is the profile of my ideal customer? What’s their lifestyle? How do I get my product in front of them during their normal day-to-day activities in a way that provokes a purchasing decision?

5)      How do I achieve 4) with the least time and cost RELATIVE TO RETURN. This is a critical concept. 

 

To give you real specific advice, I'd really need to see the performance of your current campaigns, and do a similar analysis to what I recommended.

Thanks and Best Regards,

 

R.C.Sukhtankar