Part 5: Marketing and Sales Strategies

Overall Marketing Strategy

Summary of marketing strategy.

Market Penetration Strategy

Strategy for growing your business. This growth strategy might include: an internal strategy such as how to increase your human resources, an acquisition strategy such as buying another business, a franchise strategy for branching out, a horizontal strategy where you would provide the same type of products to different users, or a vertical strategy where you would continue providing the same products but would offer them at different levels of the distribution chain.

Growth Strategy

Detail how you plan to grow your business once it is off the ground. This entails more than just demonstrating how your revenue will grow. The growth strategy section of your plan is about explaining your plan for bringing your product to new customers and new markets, and perhaps even introducing new products. Sections may include new client bases, new products, franchising, online strategy, marketing, decreasing costs, and acquisitions.

The obvious objective in outlining your growth strategy is to show how these moves will increase sales.

Channels of Distribution Strategy

Choices for distribution channels could include: original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), an internal sales force, distributors, or retailers.

Marketing and Sales Strategies

Marketing is the process of creating customers, and customers are the lifeblood of your business. In this section, the first thing you want to do is define your marketing strategy. There is no single way to approach a marketing strategy; your strategy should be part of an ongoing self-evaluation process and unique to your company. However, there are steps you can follow which will help you think through the strategy you would like to use.

Distribution Costs

What are the costs associated with distribution?

Distribution Methods

How is your product or service going to get to the customer? For instance, will you distribute your product or service through a Web site, through the mail, through sales representatives, or through retail?

What distribution channel is going to be used?

Delivery Terms

What are the delivery terms?

How will the distribution methods affect production time frames or delivery? (How long will it take to get your product or service to your customer?)

Transaction Process

What system will be used for processing orders, shipping, and billing?

What methods of payment will customers be able to use?

What credit terms will customers be offered? If you will offer discounts for early payment or impose penalties for late payment, they should be mentioned in this part of your marketing plan.

What is your return policy?

What warranties will the customer be offered? Describe these or any other service guarantees.

What after-sale support will you offer customers and what will you charge (if anything) for this support?

Is there a system for customer feedback so customer satisfaction (or the lack of it) can be tracked and addressed?

Advertising

Advertising and Promotion Strategy

How are you going to reach your customers? Usually, some combination of the following works the best: promotions, advertising, public relations, personal selling, and printed materials such as brochures, catalogs, flyers, etc.

The best approach to advertising is to think of it in terms of media and which media will be most effective in reaching your target market. Then you can make decisions about how much of your annual advertising budget you’re going to spend on each medium.

What percentage of your annual advertising budget will you invest in each of the following:

• the Internet
• television
• radio
• newspapers
• magazines
• telephone books/directories
• billboards
• bench/bus/subway ads
• direct mail
• Cooperative advertising with wholesalers, retailers or other businesses?

Include not only the cost of the advertising but your projections about how much business the advertising will bring in.

Sales Promotion

If it’s appropriate to your business, you may want to incorporate sales promotion activites into your advertising and promotion plan, such as:

• offering free samples
• coupons
• point of purchase displays
• product demonstrations

Marketing Materials

Every business will include some of these in their promotion plans. The most common marketing material is the business card, but brochures, pamphlets and service sheets are also common.

Publicity

Another avenue of promotion that every business should use. Describe how you plan to generate publicity. While press releases spring to mind, that’s only one way to get people spreading the word about your business. Consider:

• product launches
• special events, including community involvement
• writing articles
• getting and using testimonials

Global Web Site

If your business has or will have a Web site, describe how your Web site fits into your advertising and promotion plan.

Tradeshows

Tradeshows can be incredibly effective promotion and sales opportunities – if you pick the right ones and go equipped to put your promotion plan into action. What tradeshows are available to attend?

Other Promotional Activities

These include email campaigns, social marketing, community or industry event, etc.

Once you have defined your marketing strategy, you can then define your sales strategy. How do you plan to actually sell your product?

Overall Sales Strategy

Summary of sales strategy

Sales Force Strategy

If you are going to have a sales force, do you plan to use internal or independent representatives? How many salespeople will you recruit for your sales force? What type of recruitment strategies will you use? How will you train your sales force? What about compensation for your sales force?

Sales Activities

When you are defining your sales strategy, it is important that you break it down into activities. For instance, you need to identify your prospects. Once you have made a list of your prospects, you need to prioritize it. Next, identify the number of sales calls you will make over a certain period of time. From there, you need to determine the average number of sales calls you will need to make per sale, the average dollar size per sale, and the average dollar size per vendor.

Action Plan

The action plan lists and prioritizes all the marketing strategies and activities you have identified.

For example, list each month across a spreadsheet. List each marketing activity as rows going down. Include activities targeted to current clients, your target market, and new business outside your target market. Then indicate which activities you will do during each month, along with budget and notes about any new marketing collateral you might need to create to successfully complete these tasks. This plan gives you a bird’s eye view of all of your marketing activities, so that you know what you need to do, by when.