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TIME FOR COMPLETION: APPROXIMATELY 20-30 HOURS
The Marketing Plan gives a complete picture of your marketing goals, strategies and tactics. Creating this plan helps answer any questions that will help your product reach your potential customers. Some of the processes that you will go through when writing a Marketing Plan include setting goals, creating your company’s brand, and choosing the marketing strategies that you will use to generate potential customers.
What’s in It?
A Marketing Plan contains many different parts. The first section of the Marketing Plan includes sales goals, marketing goals, and creating a detailed sales forecast that shows how you will reach your goals. Then, you will use your research from previous sections of the plan to summarize your market position, and create a list of your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This information is then used to create your marketing strategy. This includes a branding strategy, a list of distribution channels, a pricing and marketing strategy, and a customer service plan. Your branding strategy includes your current and ideal customer profile, your core message, your company name, and tag line.
Why’s it Important?
You may have a great product or service, but no product sells itself. In order to be successful, you need to create a well thought-out strategy for how to generate potential customers and sales. Investors will analyze this section carefully to determine several things:
- Are your sales and marketing goals attainable?
- Is your budget large enough to fund your marketing strategies?
- Is your sales forecast calculated realistically?
If these attributes check out and your branding, positioning, and other marketing fundamentals are concrete, you stand to gain confidence from investors.
