When you are writing a business plan, the Marketing and Sales Strategies section is an important part of your formal business plan. This part of writing a business plan essentially involves developing a marketing and sales strategy for your business.
What to Include in the Marketing & Sales Strategies Section
When you are writing a business plan, the Marketing and Sales Strategies section should include:
- How you will promote your business
- How you will get your product or service to your customers
- The costs to promote and distribute you products or services
- How you will measure the effectiveness of the methods you plan to use.
Writing a Marketing Plan
Once you've completed the Market Analysis section of your business plan, you'll know more about your customers, your competition and your company. That information should make writing the Sales and Marketing Strategy section of your business plan all the easier.
Depending on how detailed your marketing plan is, you may include the marketing plan in its entirety while you are writing this section of your business plan or you may just want to include highlights of your marketing plan.
If you are writing a business plan and only including highlights of your marketing plan, you'll want to make sure that the marketing plan is complete in case an investor requests the entire document. If your marketing plan is not overly long, you may also want to include it in the Appendix when you're writing your business plan.
Why this is an Important Step in Writing a Business Plan
Those who are considering lending your small business money or investing will want to know how you intend to reach your target market and attain the market share you feel you can attain, which you've already discussed in the Market Analysis section of your business plan. Your marketing plan will help them understand that.
Essentially your marketing plan needs to discuss your marketing mix - how the 5 P's of marketing will be implemented in your small business and what roles each will play.
The 5 P's of Marketing
