2. Overview
What is Marketing?
Marketing content in the business plan
Developing your Marketing Strategy & Marketing Plan
How will you take you product to market?
What does a marketing plan look like?
What mix of activities should you define in your marketing plan?
What should you look out for when investing?
Developing your sales activity
Definition of the sales process – for your marketplace
What sales methodologies can you consider?
How does a well defined sales process help the investment decision?
3. What is Marketing?
Finding profitable things Checking the product has;
to do
What product? Untapped potential
Where? Disruptive influence
Who? Competition that are not ready
When? A route to market
How much ? Barriers to entry
Entrepreneurs Investors
focus here focus here
4. Why is Marketing important?
To discover and define a need or problem a customer has
To research and quantify markets with potential customers
To promote the product in the eyes of your customer….to
generate demand
Good marketing is needed by all businesses…..and investors
5. Make sure you do some market
research
Talk to/survey potential customers
Research the web, dig deep
Analyse announcements from potential competitors
Gather information from independent sources
Don’t forget your experience, of the market, is valuable too
You will always learn something of value from research
Enables the building of a well defined target market.
6. Choosing the right attractive market
Markets where:
profit potential is high
No company is in market control
At right point in the life cycle
Growing
the right price (profitable) is possible
Route to market
Defining an attractive market is a key component of your
business plan.
You need evidence to validate your choice of market
Update your data regularly, the world changes all the time
Investors are often looking for a market in excess of $1Bn
before they get interested.
7. Product price position in market…
Formulation of price/value positioning
Examine similar products
Study/analyse competition
Look at customers behaviour and buying power
Define price that reflects the value delivered….not a cost of delivery
Who appropriates value out of the product…
Assess value to end customer (what will they pay?)
Value added by others
Customer vs Consumer
Consider costs of different levels of distribution
Direct sales, Distributors, Wholesalers, Retailers
Internet sales, Mail order
8. Understanding the competition
• The competition: SWOT analysis
Who are they?
Their size & market share?
What do you have that’s better?
Where are their weakness’, what are yours?
How can they be beaten?
Which customers are using the competition?
Where are there opportunities that you can win?
Your advantages and disadvantages?
For example, price, quality, performance, brand, customer loyalty.
Why will customers buy your product or service instead?
Investors deeply sceptical about markets with no
competition
9. Marketing strategy
(How will you deliver the business)
The Marketing Strategy is how the company will
Go to market and establish a position
Only
Build a brand identity
Target customers THREE!
Define products and prices
Leadership,
Promote products Differentiation
Sell through which channels or Focus
Define Objectives & Measure results Porter (1980)
Investors: If a company cannot clear define HOW they will deliver
the business – you should pass!
10. Strategy influencing factors
Many factors in your business influence your strategy
Reputation Brand recognition/reputation Good
& Trust will
Differentiation
Problem importance
Customer
& Sales channels
Market
Knowledge Future
Market/Application/problem knowledge
Team skills and experience Roadmap
Technology
&
Product h/w and/or s/w invention, patents
Skills
Financial stability, funding, profits
11. Developing your Marketing plan
(The strategy in action)
Marketing strategy is “HOW”, Marketing plan is
“WHAT,WHEN,WHO”.
A good marketing plan, inside the business plan, builds
confidence that you know HOW you will drive demand
The marketing plan is your strategy in action.
What mix of activities should be defined in the marketing plan
to achieve marketing objectives?
Create awareness of a problem or need
Build awareness of the solution (your product) and Brand recognition
Sales lead generation activities (and customer acquisition costs)
Key investor questions
How to win customers, cost of getting each customer, cycle time to
business
12. Marketing communications
(what you say and how you say it)
Various activities
Brand building, Logos, market positioning
Web presence – targeting who?
Social networking plan, blogs / Facebook / Twitter
More in skill session 3, Social Media for marketing, 1 st Nov
Product and/or Brand launch plans
Launch timing/location
analysts meetings, briefings before launch
press launches, stimulate articles
PR (Press release) activities
Sales tools, flyers, brochures, datasheets
Support sales demand
13. Developing your Sales strategy
The sales strategy is how the business objectives are
delivered in sales terms
Sales leads generated by Marketing activities or Sales activities
Selling brings in today's orders
To which targeted customers (your focus of efforts)
Who will you contact first?
Why should they buy?
How will they buy?
How will you support them?
Through which sales channels
Direct, Distributors, Tele sales, Web/internet, mail order
14. The sales “Hopper”
Sales leads
All businesses have a sales pipeline
(“Hopper”)
Depends on the nature of your business,
your sales cycle time
your success rate
Sales leads feed your pipe line to achieve your
sales targets.
The Marketing plan defines how leads will be
generated
Ongoing sales activity generates leads too
Sales orders
15. Selling is a process
In Business to Business selling
as opposed to retail sales
Rarely (maybe never) does anyone in business buy at the first
meeting.
Need to understand your customer(s) buying behaviour
Large companies / organisation structures take time
Counterparts have different roles & responsibilities
Personalities & Behaviours
Experience (of you and them)
Even web sales need to observe a sales process
Investors need to understand each companies sales process,
it affects cost of business, growth, profitability, risk, return….
16. Understanding the Sales Process
You need to define the sales process for your business
Closing
Prospecting
Supporting Relating
Advocating Discovery
Create solution
17. What do we do with this
process?
Need to understand each stage in the selling process
It’s all about them NOT you!
Define what key messages to convey at each stage
Prospecting Relating, etc
Marketing tools support each stage of the process
Assisting in transitions between stages
Track the process
use feedback to fine tune to suit your marketplace
How you will sell to customers needs to be defined in your
business plan
18. Conclusion: Focus on
What, When, Who, How
In your business plan Sales & Marketing section be clear and
specific about;
What you will do
How you will do it
When will you do it
Who will be responsible