How to Write a Business Plan: Marketing Strategy

Posted: July 21, 2010 by Stacey Abler/ Last modified: July 21, 2010

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The marketing strategy part of the business plan covers how the business will sell its products and services to its target markets. The marketing strategy should be well defined keeping in mind the overall marketing budget that the company has allotted towards the sales process.

Larger businesses may need to write a completely separate marketing plan for their business. For most small business owners, a business plan that incorporates marketing strategy will be enough to give the business direction.

Master the 4 P’s: Product, Promotion, Place and Price

The 4 P’s of marketing are very popular as they cover the basics of the marketing plan.

Product: Describe the products and services that will be sold by the company. If the plan is being given to investors, this part of the plan will include pictures and mock-ups of the products to adequately describe the product offerings.

Promotion: The second P is promotion. This section describes how the business plans to promote the products and services of the business. This may include a combination of public relations, traditional advertising, social media and event marketing such as trade shows.

Place: This refers to the distribution strategy of the business. How will the business get the products from their suppliers to their customers? Will the business utilize a sales force? A website? Storefronts? All three? Specifics should be given about each sales channel that will be utilized by the business.

Price: The price refers to the pricing of the products and services as well as the profit margin that will be achieved. If the company is utilizing distributors to sell the product, it will include any guidelines on minimum prices and sales prices.

Make Marketing Goals SMART

All business goals, including marketing goals, should be SMART goals. This means that the goals will be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.

Specific: Goals should always be specific. Instead of saying “Increase company sales”, a specific goal would be “Increase sales of product line XYZ by 25% by year-end.”

Measurable: Goals should always be measurable. If there is no way to measure the goal, it is impossible to know if the goal has been achieved. Stating that sales should increase by 30% is a measurable goal as management can easily calculate sales to determine if the goal was reached.

Attainable: Goals should be attainable by the company given its resources. Setting a goal to overtake Dell is probably not attainable for a mom and pop shop. Goals can be ambitious but make sure they can also be attained.

Realistic: Working hand in hand with attainable is realistic. All goals should be realistic. Many managers make the mistake of setting goals that are not realistic. If sales last year increased by 10% to $200,000, aiming to increase to $800,000 this year is likely not a realistic goal.

Timely: All goals should have a timeline attached to them. You must know when to measure the goal to determine if it has been met. With our first goal, we set to increase sales by 30% by year-end. This gives us a time to see if the goal has been met.

Create Marketing Action Plan

Now that we have our goals and know what promotional methods we want to use, we can create a marketing action plan. This is the part of the plan that directs the staff in exactly what needs to be done to accomplish the goals that have been set.

For instance, if a promotional strategy is to advertise in ABC Magazine to increase sales of XYZ product line by 10%, then our marketing action plan would include who will create the ad (internal or external) as well as when it will be created. Next will be when it has to be delivered to the magazine. The ad will also need to include a special code to track sales that originated from the magazine advertisement.

Many companies will create a marketing calendar for their action plan that will break-down when things need to be done in order to meet the marketing goals of the company. This can also be color-coded to identify the responsible employee or department for each part of the action plan.

Laying out the action plan can also help to develop the marketing budget as well as it is easily identifiable as far as which parts of the plan will require funds to implement.

This leads us directly to the financial statement part of the business plan which will be covered in the next segment.