The bread and butter of a business depend on how well it markets itself. And when a company reaches a point where it has to raise investment, stakes become high, and writing a phenomenal marketing plan section becomes more crucial than ever.
This guide will help you discover how to write a perfect marketing section under a business plan that will become a critical deciding factor for investors to fund your business.
Let’s get started.
Sections Under Marketing Plan
There are four sections to write under the business plan to carve out a stellar marketing section. They are stated below in sequence.
Target Market
It’s impossible to sell your product or service to everyone, and for this purpose, you need to narrow it down to a segment you can serve by defining your target market.
Ask yourself the following questions to determine your target market:
● Who is your customer?
● Where do they live?
● What are some specific characteristics in your mind of your customer (e.g., what's his age, job, gender, marital status, etc.?)
Pondering these questions will help you select initial people to whom you can sell your product or render your service.
If you’re already an established business and have a customer base, answer the above questions, and your target market section will come to life automatically.
Presenting a buyer’s persona would also prove resourceful. Here’s one example of how you can include your ideal buyer persona in your marketing plan.
Icon Source: Reshot
Moreover, if you only sell to businesses, it would be very tempting for the investors to know who your primary customers are. By applying the Pareto 80/20 rule, you can list 20 percent of your customers that drive 80 percent of your revenue.
Competition
Every business in the world has competitors. If there’s a Pepsi, there has to have Coca-Cola too.
For this reason, you must jot down your major competitors under your marketing section to let investors know about the competition in your industry.
This is also your chance to showcase your unique selling points that competitors can never dream of copying. To appropriately outrank your competitors, answer the following questions:
● Do you have strategic partnerships, technology expertise, intellectual property rights, patents, unique business processes, or a strong network?
● What difficult-to-copy advantage do you have over your competitors?
● What is your unique selling point?
After contemplating these questions, writing this section is easier as you build strong reasons to outshine your rivals.
Moreover, presenting a SWOT analysis quadrant here will further uplift your business. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Here’s how you can expect to include SWOT analysis in your marketing plan:
Industry and Its Trends
Another section under the marketing plan is to state your industry and its trends. At this point, you need to engage your in-house researcher to facilitate finding some industry trends. You can also hire a professional business plan writer for this task, as research is often considered a hectic task.
To find industry trends, Google will prove to be your best friend. However, one thing to note is that you must always use trends from a reputable resource. One such resource is Statista, where you can find studies and trends relevant to your industry.
You can also use Google Trends to find trends relevant to your industry. Here’s what happens if I search “Marketing Plan” in Google Trends. It shows trends based on keywords.
It shows the keyword’s interest over time. You can input the keywords about your product and view the interest of people relevant to your product.
Ask yourself:
What are the best keywords people will use in Google search to find your product?
The centric idea behind enlisting the industry trends is to let investors know that you perform business in a viable industry that will only grow. This will help them make an informed decision about whether or not to invest in your business.
Acquisition Methods
You have defined your target market, determined your competition, and researched your industry well. It’s time to decide how to reach your customers.
This is where you will state the marketing channels you have formed to drive traffic to your website or your local shop to make sales.
Answer the following questions to write your customer acquisition strategy:
● How will you reach your first customers? (Or how did you reach your first batch of customers?)
● What is your strategy to reach and close customers at scale? (How do you attract, educate, qualify, close and provide after-sale service for your customer?)
● Do you have a presence on social media?
● Do you sell online through your website?
● Do you perform search engine optimization (SEO) for your website? (If yes, what are your monthly visitors through SEO?)
● Do you use Facebook, Google, or other advertising methods?
● Do you collect emails and perform email marketing?
● Do you have copywriters to perform direct response marketing?
● What are the main distribution channels you use to sell your product?
Answering these targeted questions will help you sort out this section. This is vital to let investors know you have well-designed channels to acquire customers. You may also write the results you have obtained by implementing these channels.
For example, the number of sales made using Facebook ads.
Conclusion
Writing a marketing plan section with investor foresight is crucial, significantly when only 0.5% of the startups raise venture capital. This is your opportunity to stand out by following the above roadmap and writing a compelling marketing section to raise funds.
The key is to write answers to the above-selected questions. Doing this simple but effective exercise will automatically get your marketing plan prepared. Combine it with the business and financial sections, and you're then ready to raise investment and take your venture to new heights.