Sales and Marketing Plan

[Brian Turner]

When planning to start up a business, one of the recommended practices is for you to complete a Sales & Marketing Plan.

This plan is intended to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your businesses, and help decide if it is actually viable or not.

What sort of Sales and Marketing plan you actually write up is up to you, but as a general recommendation, you should probably consider the following options:


1. What is my USP?

USP means Unique Selling Point. This could be your product or service, your qualifications or experience, or options such as location and flexibility.

Generally, you need to be able to offer something to the marketplace that is a little different, and can be expressed via your products into the marketplace.


2. Target Market

Who are your customers? Where are your customers? How do you intend to reach them?

You need to be able to assure yourself that you can reliably and properly identify your targeted customers, and ensure you can reach them.


3. Market Research

Do you know what your targeted customers actually want? Have you checked?

How can you justify to a third party that you believe you know these things? Do you have reports and documentation on the issue?


4. Who are your competitors?

Who is competing in the same area as you? What are their prices? How do you compare? How do you intend to compete with them?


5. Advertising and promotion

How are you going to ensure that your customers can find you? What will it cost to reach your customers? What media and advertising formats are you planning to use?


6. Marketing Tools

What resources have you got and what resources do you need to market your business?

[bizal]

or Give BIZAL a call

[peterjhale]

Thanks for your contribution bizal


Anyhow, whenever writing a business plan or marketing plan (in my eyes are the same thing) think about your customer 10000000%

The raw definition of marketing is to "identify and satisfy customer needs"

It really is that easy.

Finding niches can be done on forums and the like (what are people asking for - how can you satisfy that need with a product or service? and why will people buy from you)

I tell you this: that if you carefully carve this out and find your niche then you will be very rich.

[MaxForce]

Hi

I have a question. How would you know if the niche is sufficient to be profitable enough, i.e. how do you quantify the niche? Especially if the niche is not exploited yet or not exploited to the point of market saturation?

[rcslimited]

Market research. Get in touch with the proposed 'niche', extrapolate information from them from one to one interviews/questionnaires, focus meetings, find out how much theyre willing to pay, if theyre ready for your product, test the demand and the only accurate way you can do this would be through research. Many people jump straight into 'niches' and find out there aint nothing there to exploit :-) As the thread started with a marketing plan, your research should be included within this plan, or at least should have been carried out to substantiate any projections/plans/strategies you come up with in your marketing plan.

[Brian Turner]

Originally Posted by MaxForce

Hi

I have a question. How would you know if the niche is sufficient to be profitable enough, i.e. how do you quantify the niche? Especially if the niche is not exploited yet or not exploited to the point of market saturation?

Ideally, I'd suggest that you already have some experience with the niche, or related to marketing the niche.

[etechsupport]

Well, I think it is also important to research on following marketing factors when you plan to start up a business.

1. Who is the competition and what market share do they hold?

2. What is our marketing strategy? Our marketing objectives?

3. What buyer problems does our product/service solve?

4. What marketing decisions have been made about the internal marketing elements (product, price, promotion and distribution)?

5. What external environmental factors are influencing the marketing of our product/service?

Though all points are important including point of Brian, I think point no. 3 is most important. If you come up with a product/service focused on customers need and implement technical advancement as to solve the problem of your mainstream customers, that is going to be the real reward for you in market place.

[Babylon]

Originally Posted by MaxForce

Hi

I have a question. How would you know if the niche is sufficient to be profitable enough, i.e. how do you quantify the niche? Especially if the niche is not exploited yet or not exploited to the point of market saturation?

Hi there old chap,

Happy new year!. It is hard to quantify the profitability of a niche hence the reason for a scientifically based market research.

One other point to remember is that sometimes potential customers may not understand the benefits of new products, which can make the research useless. To give you a true story, IBM didn't want to partner Xerox when Xerox came up with the idea for a photocopier. Following the approach by Xerox, IBM commissioned a market research using a top agency but the people interviewed didn't really grasp the benefits of a photocopier in an office. Based on this IBM rejected the approach from Xerox. Thankfully, Xerox persevered and launched the product on their own . Can you imagine an office these days without a photocopier (Xerox)?

Regards,

[rtroxel]

Based on this IBM rejected the approach from Xerox. Thankfully, Xerox persevered and launched the product on their own . Can you imagine an office these days without a photocopier (Xerox)?

From what I've read, in the late 1970s, IBM told Bill Gates that there is no money to be made in software. The money is made in selling computers, they said. Consequently, they did lease Gates' DOS operating system, but gave him permission to market it elsewhere. We all know what happened next.

No, I don't think IBM has always been a "forward-looking" company.

[MaxForce]

Exactly the point Babylon!
Lets assume you were Xerox back then.
Would you still have proceeded with the idea despite no market existence back then and the rejection of a top company and the doubt cast by the top market research agency???
How are we to know if there is a niche???