How to write the Marketing section of your Business Plan
- Business Rescue Business Growth
- Comments: 0
Whether your small business is a start-up, in the early growth phase or well established, marketing is essential. From the get-go it’s crucial that your business engages its customers, marketing can help you to do this and so much more. In your Business Plan you need to give details of your marketing from customer personas to pricing policy and your chosen marketing channels. In this month’s blog we focus on the marketing section, giving you tips and tricks to help you write this essential building block of your Business Plan.
Why include Marketing in your Business Plan?
So, you might be asking why it’s necessary to include details about marketing in your Business Plan. To put it simply, marketing is crucial for your business because it communicates key messages and information about what your business offers, its value and what sets it apart from competitors. This is all key data that will be of great interest to investors and anyone interested in partnering with your business.
Writing the marketing section will also help you to focus on what you need to do for your business and help you develop a strategy, establish objectives and create tactics to get you there. So it’s a vital tool for business owners as well as investors.
Time spent writing the marketing section of your Business Plan will pay dividends. Over the next few minutes you’ll read all about what you need to focus on to make this section work for your plan and your business.
If you need help to build a Business Plan or have any questions about the Marketing section, get in touch with Maria at Be Rescued.
A small business owner’s guide to writing the marketing section of a Business Plan
The second component in the body of your Business Plan, Marketing, should give detail on the following:
Your customer personas
In marketing everything starts with the customer and in your Business Plan you need to define exactly which customers your business is targeting in a customer persona.
A customer persona is one of the most important business documents. Getting to know your customers and understanding their needs is crucial to success.
You will most likely have more than one customer persona. Give a detailed description of your current customers/ideal customers. What are their pain points, what are their needs, age, demographics, buying power, location, shopping behaviour, likes/dislikes, wants etc.
If you are targeting businesses, make a note of things like annual turnover, company size etc. But remember, whether they are B2C or B2B, you are still selling to people, so, for example, if you specialise in printers, you are more likely to sell to an Office Manager.
Detail your customer profile/s in this part of the plan to show that you understand your market.
Your solution to a problem or need
You may well have heard about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This outlines a hierarchy of motivational needs that influence human behaviour - physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. This model is used in marketing.
Look at your personas. Does your product or service address a customer need?
What problem does your business solve?
People will buy from you because you can help them or solve a problem. Look at your personas and say - ‘what’s in it for them?’
Explain the problem your business solves and the solution it offers clearly and without jargon save for the technical specifications. This will be crucial to your marketing messages.
Your products/services features and benefits
List the features and benefits of your products/services here. But first, it might seem obvious but be clear about the difference between the two.
A feature is a part or component of your product or service whereas the benefit is the positive effect it has on your customer.
Remember that customers will be more interested in the benefits than the features. It’s the age-old advertising saying, ‘Don’t just sell the sausage, sell the sizzle!’
Clearly show here how your product benefits customers and tailor to each persona. This will be of great interest to any investors reading your plan and will help you to hone your marketing messages.
Your competitors’ profiles
It really pays to profile your competitors as well as your customers. This will demonstrate that you are aware of your market and are commercially savvy.
It might help to do this in the form of a competitor analysis. Look at each business, their products/services and marketing strategies and compare to yours. Keep this brief and highlight key points.
Potential investors reading your Business Plan will be looking for points of difference as this makes investing in your business a more attractive proposition. So say if your business offers something of benefit to customers that the others don’t.
If you need help producing a competitor analysis for your business, Maria at Be Rescued can help. Contact Maria for advice.
Testing your products/services and your market
Before you start trading or you introduce something new, you need to evaluate the viability of your product or service. There are a number of ways you can do this:
- Product testing
- Send out samples
- Build a prototype or test service
- Run your product or service by a focus group
- Get feedback from family and friends (be aware that they might not be honest to avoid hurting your feelings) and target market.
Whichever method you choose, explain your logic here and give details of any test results.
Your pricing policy
In a nutshell, your pricing policy is how you decide on the way your products or services are priced.
The way you price your offering shows your market position. For example, are you mid-market or luxury?
You need to consider a variety of elements when determining your pricing policy. The first is to look at the costs of manufacturing and delivering to the customer - you want your pricing to deliver profit. You also need to consider whether your customers can afford your prices so refer back to your personas.
Outline the key aspects of your pricing policy in this section. Business owners often find pricing one of the most difficult things to do. Maria at Be Rescued can help you set your prices. Contact Maria.
Dealing with any complaints
You are sure to have more positive comments about your business than negative. However, at some point you will have to deal with complaints and it’s crucial that you have a strategy in place to satisfy customers and protect your business.
Briefly detail your Complaints Procedure. Do you have a timeframe for dealing with complaints? Are staff empowered to offer solutions that will turn a negative experience into a positive one? Do your staff know when to escalate a complaint to a more senior staff member? Are complaints recorded so that improvements can be made in response to feedback?
Remember all feedback is good feedback and complaints can be valuable. Investors like to see that you take complaints seriously and can learn valuable lessons for your business.
Your customer care and engagement
Every single interaction a customer has with your business counts towards them making a decision on whether or not to buy from you, so make every single one count.
Customer touchpoints include your website, social media accounts, newsletters and, of course, direct contact with staff in your business.
Highlight key aspects of your customer care policy and how you drive customer engagement. Show how your employees approach customer service, for example, that you have a timeframe for responding to customer enquiries and that you record and monitor comments and complaints.
Your marketing including PR, social media and advertising
This is your opportunity to explain your approach to your marketing activity.
You don’t have to include your entire plan but you can outline your target audience and give brief details of your strategy, objectives and tactics.
List the marketing channels you’ve chosen and give the reason in relation to your personas. This could be that you will utilise channels across the marketing mix with a particular emphasis on social media, e-mail campaigns, local events, regional PR and your website including blogs.
Say who is responsible for planning and implementing marketing activity and how you will evaluate its success.
Use this section to demonstrate how you will get the word out about your business to attract prospects and convert them to customers.
Your market environment
In all likelihood you will have produced a SWOT analysis for the Executive Summary of your Business Plan. This is when you look at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats for your business.
The SWOT is a vital tool for marketing. There are also other tools including Blue Ocean Strategic approach to creating a market for example.
But in short, you want to push your strengths in marketing activity across your selected channels.
You might identify a niche where you have an advantage.
Show how you will use your market environment to inform marketing activity.
Does your product or service meet an opportunity?
If your product or service meets an opportunity as revealed in your SWOT, outline it here.
Have you uncovered a gap in the market? This is very appealing to investors and will set your business apart in marketing activity.
Marketing is a blueprint for success
Use the marketing section of your Business Plan to demonstrate that you mean business. It will show that you understand your customers, know your position in the market and so much more.
Key takeaways
The marketing section of your Business Plan is a vital tool. It will help you to crystalise your marketing strategy, define your objectives and develop your tactics. The marketing section will also highlight information about your business that is of great interest to investors and might even help you to seal the deal.
At Be Rescued, we specialise in Business Planning so do contact us if you need any help developing a plan for your business. We’re here to support small business owners.