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With the planning done to build and launch DaySupport, as the next step I want to plan some outline for marketing. 

The very first questions that I wanted to find answers for was,

1. Who is the target audience?
2. What should be the pricing strategy?
3. How do I want to package DaySupport?
4. Strategies to deal with the competition.
5. USP

After some serious brainstorming I figured the answers for these questions. 

Who is the target audience?

The target audience for DaySupport would be small and medium sized business owners and entrepreneurs who have a small customer base but want the core helpdesk features. 

They find Freshdesk and Zendesk expensive as the high cost of these products is not sustainable to their business. 

I drew this conclusion from a funny anecdote that happened to me a few years ago. 

I was running CloudNow Technologies at the time and Freshdesk was our customer. We were making $n from Freshdesk. 

For our customer support needs we were using Freshdesk so we were also customers of Freshdesk. To get all the features that we needed we had to subscribe to a higher plan and for this we had to pay twice the amount we earned from them. 

The product was amazing but it did not fit our pocket. But nevertheless we had to continue using it as there were not many options in the market. 

The idea of launching our own helpdesk application was struck down by the board. 

What should be the pricing strategy?

Getting the first few customers is going to be the most difficult. So I want to keep DaySupport at $0 with all the core features that one needs to provide excellent customer service. 

This will reduce the entry barrier as much as possible and also not burn a hole in the pockets of my target audience. 

Unlike Zendesk and Freshdesk I will not have multiple plans. I will have one plan with all the features and a trial plan. But for now DaySupport will be charged at $0. 

How do I want to package DaySupport?

From my previous experience of setting up helpdesk software and customer support teams, the following features are critical to successfully supporting one's customers.

Integrated ticketing across email, social and API

Feature to create tickets via email, social media platforms and APIs. 

Team collaboration

Team members can collaborate and work on tickets and also assign or reassign the tickets amongst themselves. 

Multiple products

Almost all of the current competitors of DaySupport do not offer this feature. They just offer one product or support channel. So I want to offer the feature to create multiple products or support channels. This will help small businesses who have to deal with multiple products. This will also be a big competitive advantage. 

Multiple SLA policies & business hours

With multiple products it is obvious to provide multiple sla policies. Like multiple products this will also be a big competitive advantage. The escalation policy will support both calendar hours and business hours. 

Easily track time spent by agents on tickets

Time in DaySupport can be tracked manually or automatically depending on calendar hours or business hours. 

APIs

REST API to integrate with third party applications to create view tickets. 

Email and phone support

I will offer email and phone support. In the longer run this will also be a competitive advantage. 

Reports

Another feature where I can provide solid value and competitive advantage against the competitors. I will provide agent level reports, product level reports etc so that our future customers can get all the reports and analysis without upgrading to an expensive plan. 

Add the USP features

Once the core helpdesk features are completed I will launch the application and then focus on adding the main USP that will set this helpdesk application apart from its competitors. 

Marketing channels

The target audience for DaySupport are most active on LinkedIn and Instagram and use Google extensively. 

The primary marketing channel would be content marketing. I will set up a blog for DaySupport and start publishing content that the target audience will find useful. 

To start with I am not going to focus much on technicalities like keyword analysis etc. The strategy here is to post good quality content that people find useful with minimal keywords. 

Later in the journey I will focus heavily on keyword analysis and other seo efforts. But in the beginning the idea is to publish high quality useful content consistently. 

Content marketing takes a long time to give results, hence I will start creating content much before the product launch. To ensure I do not spread my efforts thin I am going to focus only on publishing blog articles every week.