Client: APPLIED GROUP

Project: Strategic marketing plan to support business expansion into two new areas, together with some day-to-day marketing support.

Background: Applied Group specialise in delivering complete digital enterprise solutions and services to a wide range of industries.

Description: The assignment includes carrying out research into existing marketing activities, evaluating their effectiveness and drawing up proposals for the future.

Our role: Word Association is looking at the client's current customer base as well as future prospects, major competitors and general market forces. Once this research is complete, the next stage will be to draw up a plan suggesting both tactical and strategic marketing efforts to be implemented during 2001.

The challenge: Sarah Thomas, the account director for Applied Group, said: "The company has a very wide range of products, particularly in its web-based technology division. We need to examine these carefully and look at the different markets so that we can identify where the main profit areas are, then recommend a strategy for moving forward in what is a highly competitive sector."

Feedback: Applied Group's managing director Shaun Clark said: "We approached Word Association because we felt they could help us to take a detached look at our marketing strategies and campaigns and enable us to adopt a more customer focused approach."