The Marketing Plan

Objectives

In the marketing plan you should state what you want to achieve in the first year and three years in terms of turnover and or units produced if applicable. Predicting longer than three years assumes too many things will be constant and therefore has less influence. Any expansion to enable the forecast should also be included.

Company Summary

If you have an existing company, enter the participants and details of the company here, if you intend setting up a company then describe the directors and responsibilities. In this section, you should describe the ownership of the company, the proprietary ideas any proprietary processes you intend using, how long the company has been in existence and any financial figures for this term.

Products

Describe in this section of the marketing plan all details of the products you will be producing now and planned for the future. Alternatively, if services a description of the services and costs, charges etc.

Market Analysis

This section will contain information about the present market for the products you will be producing including current growth, the different segments of the market and your target market. This information should be entered into the marketing plan as the situation is at present. This is sometimes difficult to get present market figures but the Internet can be very helpful, even a Goggle search, restricted to your area of operations can give an idea. If market growth figures are available from an authoritative source use them in your prediction.

Take these figures from an authorities report or web site; in some cases, the information is available on the net at a charge, usually a report. There are some cases where reliable information on the market size is not available. In this case, use a calculated estimate, stating in the plan how you came to the figures.

This estimate can be as simple as estimating the possible number of clients/customer that you could have. Possibly this is linked to a certain age group, sex, type of company, some kind of demographic. It is also possibly restricted to a catchment area. Once you have the possible clients or customers, the think about a reasonable percentage of this market that you could gain, be it 2% or 50%, from this you have an idea of the amount of customers you are targeting.

There are companies such as AGB Nielson who can provide market sector and product information for virtually any product/service and location but these reports are very expensive and usually geared to larger companies who have television exposure.

Target Market and Strategy

Here you should put your marketing strategy for obtaining the sales figures you will be showing later in the document. Based on the market size in the above section you can initially estimate the size of market you can achieve.

You should also include how you will gain the market and as importantly, how you will keep it. For an internet, business this can be accompanies by a sample page showing why your approach is different.

We will look at Market strategy in another section.

Industry Analysis

This section of the marketing plan describes the particular industry you will be operating in with any peculiarities, normal profitability and probably some information regarding the historic growth. If your offering is unique, at least in your geographic location, then please make sure you are unique before stating anything in documentation.

Competition and Buying Patterns

The investors will want to know about the Competition you face and the advantages of your product over the competition. It may be a good idea to insert some form of diagram such as a SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats). Below is a typical layout for this type of analysis.

Market Strategy

What is the strategy to get your share of the market?

This will show how you become recognised in the market, how you put your product or service in front of your prospective clients or customers. With any marketing plan or business plan, particularly if it is being prepared for financial institutions, read through it and ask How and Why to every sentence, if the sentence or the next sentence does not answer how and why, then you need to expand on the plan. If you don't know how and why then you should learn or take advice from someone with experience..

Sales Strategy

How are you going to supply the market you are informing about the product or service, this may also be covered by distribution, using agents, even drop shipping if the business is on the net.

One of the most confused areas in business is the distinction between sales and marketing, truly there can be gray areas which overlap between the two. Simply put I would suggest the Marketing develops the interest in the product or service and often puts it in front of the customer or client. Sales starts when the buyer decides he or she wants to purchase.