A Startup Marketing Plan Example

What Old School MBA Marketing Proposes

What you learn about marketing when you endeavor a marketing degree of any kind teaches you how to begin a business plan from a strategic and theoretical perspective which is a good place to begin. This Blueprint will help you to consider many possible areas of market influence that should not be over looked. This is only a  starting point and highly objective, but doesn’t even begin to account for the many real world details and considerations that can come into play. Here is a typical old school or MBA marketing plan which I will compare with a real world plan in my next article.

I) Controlling Summary
A global view summary of your marketing plan.

II) Your Goals
A description of your product to market and sales figures and strategic goals.

III) Entrance Analysis

A) Company Analysis
Goals, Focus, Culture, Strengths, Weaknesses, Market share
B) Customer Analysis
Number, Type, Value drivers, Decision process, Concentration of customer base for particular products
C) Competitor Analysis
Market position, Strengths, Weaknesses, Market shares, Collaborators, Subsidiaries, joint ventures, and distributors, etc.
D) Environmental Analysis
PEST analysis: Political and legal environment, Economic environment, Social and cultural environment, Technological environment
SWOT Analysis (organizes the environmental factors into: company internal characteristics can be strengths or weaknesses, and the external environment creates opportunity and threats).

IV) Market Segmentation
Segmentation of your market looks like this:
Segment 1 (Description, Percent of sales, What they want, How they use product, Support requirements, How to reach them, Price sensitivity).
Segment 2, Segment 3, and so on.

V) Proposed Marketing Strategies
List and discuss alternative proposals considered before reaching your main strategy.

VI) Chosen Marketing Strategy
Why did you select your chosen strategy? How did the marketing mix (4 P’s) of product, price, place (distribution), and promotion affect your decision?

A) Product strategy includes a product’s advantages and how to leverage them. These include: Brand name, Quality, Scope of product line, Warranty, and Packaging.
B) Price strategy includes expected volumes, and choices on these pricing variables: List price, Discounts, Bundling, Payment terms and financing options, Leasing options.
C) Distribution (Place) strategy include: Distribution channels (direct, retail, distributors & intermediates), Channel Motivation (distributor margins for example), Distributor evaluation criteria, Locations, Logistics (transportation, warehousing, and order fulfillment).
D) Promotion Strategies include: Advertising (how much and which media channels), Public relations, Promotional programs, Budget (know your break-even point additional spending), Forecast promotional program results.

VII) Short & Long-Term Forecast
Your strategy’s immediate results, long-term result forecast, and anything needed to complete them. You can include revenue and expense forecasts and the results of a breaking-even.

VIII) Plan Conclusion: Summarize your whole business plan.

IX) Appendix Charts and Graphs
Show how you determined your market size, net profit potential level, break-even analyses, etc.
This is a great start for your business plan, but as you will see does not mention certain things. We will explore those in the next post.

Marketing Plan Examples Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog