The marketing and sales strategy section of your business plan should clearly outline how you are going to get your customers from the market to buy products or services to ultimately get more sales.
The main goal of writing this section is to tell your readers how the company’s long-term approach in selling products and services will be successful and continue to grow.
This section is also known as a marketing and sales plan.
Marketing and sales strategy section is placed below the product and services section. It’s built upon the market analysis section.
Many argue regarding the need of a business plan for entrepreneurs or business owners. Therefore, knowing the benefits of a business plan is the most important thing before getting into how to write the marketing and sales strategy section of a business plan.
A business plan helps you to determine where you are standing now and how you are going to achieve your business goal.
Similarly, it helps an investor or lender or any other party willing to invest or fund your business, to understand your whole business, the product or services you offer, how you are going to achieve your target and what rate of return you offer in your business.
Therefore, a business plan is a must. If you don’t want any investment or fund, then it can be a road map for you to get success.
Now let us know how to write the marketing and sales strategy section of your business plan.
How to write Marketing and sales strategy section of a business plan
Many people think that marketing is advertising of products and services. But in reality, it’s much more.
To build a marketing and sales strategy you need to have a deep understanding of your business, competitor’s business, customers and the target market.
In your marketing and sales strategy, you should focus to list down the uniqueness of your product or services to solve customer’s problem, pricing strategy, sales and distribution channel plan, advertising, promotional plan and what are the unique key features of your product and services that will keep it alive in the market.
In other words, the marketing and sales strategy section outlines your plan to reach and sell products in your target market. It will help you to find buyers.
To start with, you should prepare answers to questionnaires that your readers such as investors and lenders will be interested to know.
If you are writing for your own benefits, then ask yourself the questions before preparing it. You can write a business plan to become the road map for success.
A good marketing and sales plan will help you to answer all your key questions about marketing and selling a product. It will work as a reference document to execute marketing strategy.
Therefore to write an effective marketing and sales strategy, you should list down all the questionnaires related to marketing and sales your investor, lender or reader wants to get answered.
By putting answers to these questions in your plan, you can let them know each and every aspects of your marketing and sales strategy. It also helps you to have a clear understanding of your marketing strategy.
Below we have prepared sample questionnaires that can help you write your marketing and sales strategy for your business plan.
Answers to these types of questions will help you write the marketing strategy in a clear and concise manner. Here is the list of questionnaires;
- What target market are you trying to reach?
- What problem are customers facing and how are you going to solve those problems?
- How will your product or services make a difference in someone’s life?
- What impacts the purchasing decisions of your customers?
- Why is your product or service unique?
- What is the cost of your product or service?
- What are the features of your product or services and how it differs from your competitor?
- What are the benefits you are offering and what problem will be solved?
- Why will customers shift to your product and services?
- How much the consumer is willing to pay? To know it, you have to do research for similar products and services in the industry and set prices accordingly.
- What will be your pricing? While deciding you should know that price should be competitive and generate profits.
- How much profit margin will you have?
- How are you going to increase your margin in case of increase in cost?
- How are you going to move with the pricing war?
- How do you know what price to charge for the product?
- How your pricing strategy has taken consumer interest into account?
- What is the return on investment are you expecting?
- How are you going to reach your customers?
- Is your market changing?
- What distribution channel are you going to use? Is there any alternative way to reach your customer based on your product and services?
- How much are you going to incur for the cost associated with distribution of product or services?
- What will be your terms and conditions for delivery?
- How long will it take to deliver a product or service?
- How are you going to manage packaging, inventory and regulatory requirements?
- What will be your payment terms? Are you going to offer discounts to customers?
- What is your return policy?
- What will be your warranty period and terms and conditions?
- How are you going to offer after sales service?
- How are you going to involve salespeople? How are you going to train them?
- What incentive are you going to offer to salespeople?
- What message do you want your customer to receive about the product and/or services? Also known as unique selling propositions (USP). USP is a statement that outlines what differentiates you from everyone else in the market. It’s a sentence that describes the essence of your business and tells your customer why you are the best. For example USP of Domino’s Pizza is “We deliver hot, fresh pizza in 30 minutes or less, or it’s free.”
- How are you going to deliver your unique selling propositions (USP) to customers?
- What is your advertising approach?
- Which media will be more effective to reach the market? Website, print publication, television and banner advertising are few options you can try. You need to find the most effective media to advertise your product and services. You can also try partnering with other businesses and try to get market by attending trade shows. Advertising strategy depends upon the product and services you offer.
- How are you going to use social media and email marketing to reach customers?
- How are you going to offer free samples, coupons and products for demonstration?
- How are you going to use e-commerce platforms to sell products?
- What is your marketing goal for the coming years?
Answers to these questions should be written in a clear and concise manner.
Include 5 P’s in your marketing and sales plan
The 5 P’s are;
- Product,
- Price,
- Place,
- Promotion, and
- People
Answers to above questions should be written by keeping these five heads in mind to let everyone know your marketing and sales strategy in detail.
For instance, in the case of a product, you can include answers to questions like what are products or services you offer. What are the unique features of the product? How will your products be different from competitors? What problem will they solve for customers?
The most effective way to write your marketing strategy is to follow the SMART acronym;
- Specific – specifically outline your objective
- Measurable – your success should be measurable
- Achievable – objective should be attainable
- Realistic – your goals should be realistic
- Timely – you should be clear about the time frame to achieve your goal and objective.
We suggest you use charts, graphs and images to illustrate your facts better and make it easier for your readers to absorb.
There is no defined format to write your marketing and sales strategy in a business plan. You can write it in any format. However try to answer most of the investor’s and reader’s questions by summarising the key components of your marketing and sales plan. You can also write marketing and sales plans as a reference tool to keep your goal on track.
