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Overall Marketing Plan – Part 10 of the 2009 Business Plan Series

February 25, 2009 :: Steve Fisher

When writing the business plan, the Marketing Plan section explains how you’re going to get your customers to buy your products and/or services. This is an OVERALL view of the Marketing Plan section of the business plan.  I will be explored in depth in future posts. The Marketing Plan separated into four distinct areas and they are:

1.) Market Profile and Approach
Market Profile is the discussion of the types of customers in your initial markets. This sets the stage for how and why you will market to them in various ways. You should talk about how many potential customers exist that you could sell to. You should discuss how big the market potential is and how much of that you think you can capture. Be sure to be able to back up your numbers and not say things like “1% of a $1 billion market”. That won’t work and no one will take it seriously.

2.) Market Penetration Strategy
how you will use your unique value or selling propositions to create a compelling story that sells your customer on your business. The whole point is to discuss how fast and how deep you can get in there and market to acquire new customers.

3.) Market Growth Strategy
Once you enter the market, you need to grow our current and future opportunities. This includes both retaining and acquiring customers through various growth strategies. These growth strategies can include expanding product and service offerings, expanding into new verticals or even expansion through new locations or franchising.

4.) Market Communication Strategy
As you continue executing your marketing strategy, you will need a solid communications strategy that includes public relations, product marketing, creating tactical selling tools and an online marketing strategy.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are developing a marketing plan on its own, rather than as part of a business plan, the marketing plan will also need to include a Target Market and a Competitive Analysis section.

Closing Thoughts

There are a few schools of thought on how to construct this kind of section. The approach outlined above took four key market areas and dove into their strategy. However, there are other resources that see the marketing plan include the Products and Services section that we discussed in a previous section. It also brings in the pricing strategy, the sales/distribution plan and advertising and promotions plan. While the last one on that list is a part of the Market Communications Strategy above, the other two (pricing and sales) could go into a sales plan that follows this marketing plan. Most importantly is that as you write these subsections always keep in mind how this ties into an overall selling strategy.

NEXT TIME:  Will connect the marketing dots to make sales in “Sales Strategy”.

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