Marketing research in business terms. Marketing section of the business plan

Marketing planning at the stage of drawing up a business plan is a necessary part of a successful product launch. Who is the main consumer of a product or service, how to inform a potential client, on what platforms to promote a product or service - these questions are answered by a marketing strategy. Read more about how to write a marketing business plan with an example in our article.

Marketing part of the business plan

After careful consideration of points such as business design, product description and sales market, the marketing strategy is gradually prescribed in the business plan. This section determines the cost of products, the sales market and promotion features. The advertising campaign itself is carried out immediately before the launch of the project.

Goals and objectives of the marketing strategy in the business plan

The goal of strategic marketing is to develop a program of action through which the business will subsequently receive profit, support from investors and partners, and an advantage over competitors.

Objectives of the marketing plan in the business plan:

• understand the mission of the project;
• determine goals for possible development;
• accurately draw a portrait of the buyer;
• create a unique selling proposition (USP);
• outline your marketing strategy by month;
• predict profits – and how much to spend on marketing;
• analyze the strengths and weaknesses of competitors;
• find possible partners.

Marketing Research Business Plan

The main condition of marketing research is truthfulness. You can use statistical data from open sources, but this does not guarantee the objectivity of the information. It's better to do your own analysis. (for example, a survey on social networks).

There are many methods and plans that can be used to create an objective picture of the market before launching a project. Here are the most popular ones.

Sherrington 5W Method: (What? Who? When? Where? Why?)

4P plan

Essentially close to the 5W method. 4-P involves analysis:

• product - full description of a product or service;
• price - what the price is made up of, calculation of the markup (optimally - 20-70%, depends on the product category), what is the maximum possible discount;
• promotion - how to promote a product or service;
• place - where the products will be sold, on what sites.

Stages of marketing planning

Marketing planning forms the pricing policy of a business and determines possible development paths.

How to calculate the budget for the marketing part of a business plan

• be proportionate to the overall financial plan;
• meet the goals of the advertising campaign (the goal at the start of a business is to attract customers and increase the client base);
• work on key areas of work with potential buyers, which means not being scattered.

For example, if you decide to promote a beauty salon on social networks, then, firstly, you cannot spend half of the budget included in the business plan on this in the hope of a quick payback; and secondly, you should not invest “on a residual basis” in Yandex.Direct: there is a risk of losing funds irrevocably without clear work in the direction of contextual advertising.

• direct advertising (non-Internet promotion: advertising on TV, in the media, on radio, banners and signboards);
• Internet (creation and content of a website, social networks, contextual advertising);
• production (production of brochures, catalogs and leaflets);
• trade marketing (promotions, events, master classes, meetings, holidays - for example, dedicated to national holidays);
• side expenses (catalogs, flags, balloons, notepads with the company logo).

At first glance, the costs of the marketing part of a business plan seem enormous. But there are several “life hacks” here:

1. Involve a partner with the same target audience in the promotional event. Expenses divided in half are not so scary.
2. Master storytelling. Bright, interesting, surprising stories will attract attention.
3. Monitor events, festivals and fairs close to your field and offer speaker services for a master class or lecture.
4. Use audio advertising and advertising in public transport: it is not so expensive if the audience is large (there are limitations here: specific and elite goods and services are unlikely to find potential customers in a minibus).
5. Organize a competition on social networks - this method of marketing at minimal cost gives a good increase in audience.

Many people can write a marketing business plan, but it requires time and careful analysis. An error in strategy planning can result in losses, wasted time and lost profits. If you doubt your own abilities, you should contact an experienced marketer or advertising agency. Specialists will help you implement the marketing part of your business plan, and you will have free time to develop your business. For the same purpose, we recommend outsourcing some of the routine tasks using the service. The first month is free.

An example of a marketing plan in a children's store business plan with calculations

This is the amount of expenses for the first month of work to promote the store, included in the marketing business plan. The second and subsequent months - monthly expenses (we leave advertising in transport, a banner at a bus stop - 10,000 rubles and expenses for promotion in social networks - 20,000 rubles) plus expenses for promotions (handouts for lectures, guests and master classes - about 4,000 rubles per month ) and updating the thematic photo zone (this, like meetings with parents, is a “trick” of the store: from 2000 rubles for posters or other design).

Marketing analysis is the most time-consuming and most important when drawing up a business plan. After conducting marketing research, a conclusion is made about the feasibility of promoting the product to the market.

To draw up a marketing plan, you need to determine the goals and objectives of marketing.

The objectives of marketing research within the framework of an investment project can be:

1. Analysis of the needs of the end user and demand provided by the solvency of potential customers. Analysis of the market in which the company’s products are planned to be promoted, justification based on the data obtained for the enterprise’s production program and sales plan.
2. Study and analysis of positive and negative factors that may affect changes in demand.
3. Determining indicators of the quality and competitiveness of goods and services, ways to improve these indicators.
4. Determination and implementation of sales systems and stimulation of demand for products. This includes the definition of marketing strategy, pricing strategy and policy, as well as strategy, tactics and methods of promoting goods to the market.
5. Assessing the effectiveness of the company's sales and marketing policies and the degree of implementation of its goals.

The main task of marketing research for developing a business plan is to identify unmet demand and obtain data for drawing up sales and production plans. In the process of this work, potential clients can be identified with whom agreements of intent are concluded and who guarantee that the company’s products are in demand on the market.

Drawing up a marketing plan is carried out in six stages:

1. Market and product characteristics are determined:

• market segment;
• customer needs;
• the route of the product to the consumer;
• product competitiveness;
• stage of the product life cycle;
• ways to improve the product;
• degree of legal protection of the product;
• ease of copying of products by competitors.

The most common strategies are:

• minimizing costs, which allows you to reduce the price as much as possible and achieve a competitive advantage at the initial stage of entering the market;
• differentiation, when our products have unique differences, and this makes them stand out from the crowd of competitive offers;
• targeting a specific market segment, depending on demographic, social or geographical criteria with further expansion.

3. Analysis of the competitive environment:

• the main competitors of the company that operate in your market and industry leaders are identified;
• by all possible means, maximum information is obtained about them, especially about their financial situation, number of employees, production volumes;
• the strengths and weaknesses of competitors are determined;
• A comparative analysis of our products and competitors is carried out regarding quality indicators, pricing, service and maintenance, and sales channels.

In addition, the likelihood of competitors entering your market, the complexity and obstacles they face in order to do so, and the ease of reproduction of your products by competitors are determined. For ease of use, all collected data can be presented in the form of a table.

4. Pricing strategy. The success of your enterprise or its failure largely depends on it.

There are four main pricing strategies:

• high price, high quality strategy – if demand and your production capabilities allow;
• low quality at low price - to reach a wide mass of the population and work on volume;
• low quality at a high price - suitable for monopolists;
• high quality at a low price - seasonal sales, promotions, market capture.

Pricing strategies are not a constant parameter and can change at different stages of the company's development and product life cycle.

5. The next step is to look at issues related to determining the company’s pricing policy:

• How long will it take from the moment the finished product is delivered to the warehouse until the client pays for it and transfers the product into his ownership?
• On what terms is payment for products made?
• How can you encourage a client to pay for a product on time (penalties, discounts for prepayment)?
• What systems of discounts and benefits can be introduced for wholesale buyers and regular customers?

These are just basic questions, the answers to which will help shape the pricing policy of the enterprise. Skillful manipulation of prices and discounts can increase sales volumes and create a circle of regular customers.

6. The final stage of the marketing plan is to determine the strategy for promoting the product to the market.

How do consumers and customers learn about us and our products? This could be advertising through the media or the Internet, print publications, or sending emails to the target audience.

The choice of promotion method depends on financial capabilities and the feasibility of using certain methods, which requires an understanding of customer needs, as well as knowledge of the geography of the sales market.

A marketing plan is drawn up to determine the feasibility of producing a product and promoting it to a specific market for a specific target group of consumers.

You must know:

• how much will it cost to promote your product;
• what opportunities do you have to attract consumers with promotions and discounts;
• price parameters of products;
• how your products are superior to competitors;
• disadvantages of your sales and marketing system.

After conducting a full marketing analysis and drawing up a marketing plan, it is concluded that products and services are in demand in the market and there are all opportunities to enter it with your product. You can proceed to planning the production program and drawing up a production plan.

SOSTAC is a widely used tool for marketing and business planning. It is among the most popular marketing models that have stood the test of time.

In this article, you will learn how to develop a marketing plan to promote a company using the SOSTAC model.

Created back in the 1990s by author and speaker PR Smith, the SOSTAC® framework has earned a good reputation among authorities. It is used as a basis by business representatives of various sizes, including start-up entrepreneurs or international organizations around the world.

The SOSTAC marketing plan addresses six key areas, namely:

Stage 1. Analysis of the current situation

The first stage of marketing planning is to analyze the current situation. This is an overview of your project - who you are, what you do and how your online sales happen. External and internal factors affecting your business are also considered.

This section is intended to paint a general picture of your project. To do this, consider the following questions:

• Who are your clients today (make a portrait of your target audience and their avatars).
• : What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities or threats to the entire organization?
• Conduct a competitor analysis. Who are your competitors? How do they create competition (eg price, product, customer service, reputation)? What are your key differentiators?
• Make a list of all the customer acquisition channels you use and how successful each one is for your organization. What works well and what doesn't?

Below we will take a closer look at an example of target audience analysis.

The target audience

This section should analyze who your target audience is. This is important to clearly represent your existing customers and understand who you are actually targeting. If you work in a competitive environment, think about what is your unique proposition (), if you have one?

Customer personalization helps you see your existing customers and understand their motivations for purchasing. Creation will also help you overcome barriers to new clients. To create a series of avatars, collate and analyze existing data from your CRM system and order history, and then build a profile picture of your existing customers based on this.

For online trading, information you may want to consider from your CRM system data may include:

• Male/female gender - what is the percentage?
• Age profile - what is the average age and is there scope for developing age group categories?
• Location/Address Data - The percentage of customers living in and outside your region.
• Purchase history. Create a clearer picture of purchase history, average order, brand preference trends, and products ordered by size, for example.
• Payment method for the purchase (for example, credit or debit card upon receipt).
• The route taken for the purchase. Have you made purchases through a search engine, email newsletter, affiliate site, or contextual advertising?
• Frequency. How often are purchases made?

Based on these data, we move on to the second stage. We need to turn this data into more personal information that can be relevant to your organization.

Creating Customer Avatars

For example, we have collected data about the target audience and now consider two avatars for a fictitious online t-shirt store:

Avatar A - Sergey:

Sergey is a professional, he is 28 years old, he rents an apartment in Moscow, he is a bachelor with a high level of income. He is very passionate about football. He loves to show his support for the football club by purchasing a new fan's shirt from the online store every year.

It is more convenient for Sergei to place orders online and communicate using social networks, where he follows the latest news in the world of football and the launches of football products. Since the World Cup provides an opportunity to introduce a collection of international fans' shirts, this allows Company X to contact Sergey and offer him an international fan's shirt in addition to his favorite club shirt.

Scenario for interaction of avatar A with an online store:

Sergei read the latest news about the World Cup on his favorite football blog. He noticed that the blog was offering an exclusive promotion - you can order any World Cup T-shirt from company X and save 10% by following the link to www.vash-magazin.ru/worldcup. Sergey follows the link and ends up on the website of company X, which provides him with a selection of T-shirts available to order with an exclusive 10% discount. He selects a T-shirt in his size and completes the purchase using his credit card.

Avatar B - Katya:

Katya is a professional, she is 33 years old, she is in a relationship. Katya loves to keep up with the latest fashion trends, and it is convenient for her to place orders in her favorite online store. Her boyfriend is a big football fan, he loves to keep up with football fashion and buy new fan T-shirts with the image of his favorite team. Katya may face the hype surrounding the World Cup. This will encourage her to shop at Company X for her boyfriend. She will purchase merchandise featuring the team they will be supporting during the tournament.

Scenario of interaction between avatar B and an online store:

Katya received an email from one of her preferred online stores. This letter includes a marketing promotion for Company X - an advertisement offering to order a World Cup T-shirt using a promotional code. She decides that this would be a great gift for her boyfriend and goes to the website www.vash-magazin.ru. She's not sure which team T-shirt she should order, so she calls customer service. She explains her situation to the sales consultant and places her order for the fan's T-shirt over the phone.

In this way, you represent your customers in detail and can prepare appropriate advertising campaigns for them. To begin with, you can create 2-3 customer avatars for each group of similar products.

Stage 2. Setting goals

The second stage of your marketing plan system should focus on your goal. Once you have defined your goal, it is important to make it as precise and unambiguous as possible. To do this, the goal must meet the following points:

• Specificity. What specific indicator are you planning to work on within the given goal?
• Measurability. How do you plan to measure effectiveness? Will it be monitored through quantitative or qualitative analysis, for example?
• Reachability. Can you, in principle, achieve such a goal in the foreseeable future?
• Relevant and realistic. In this case, when developing a marketing plan, we mean the possibility of achieving this goal using marketing tools, and not development, for example.
• Time limit. Have you set a specific time period for the task to be completed?

For example, if we return to our fictitious online t-shirt store, we can create the following goals:

• Goal 1. Engagement: Increase the number of existing customers served through the online store by 50% by July 2017.
• Goal 2. Attraction: increase brand awareness in the period from April 2017 to July 2017, measure the parameter through Google analytics.
• Goal 3: Engagement: Increase email frequency from one email per quarter to one email per week from May 2017 to July 2017.

Stage 3. Strategies for achieving goals

Strategy talks about how you are going to achieve your goals. This is a general idea of ​​achieving goals.

Using an online T-shirt store as an example, we will determine what questions need to be answered in the strategy block of your marketing plan.

Goal 1 is to increase brand awareness between April 2017 and July 2017, measured through Google analytics.

It is necessary to increase the brand presence in certain online channels that target the audience of football fans.

• What is the most cost-effective route to market?
• Are there our key customers in these channels?
• Where can we get more customer attention?

Study your competitors, understand what online marketing tools they do and don't use, and take advantage of first movers.

Goal 2 is to increase the number of existing customers served through an online account by 50% by July 2017.

Analyze your existing customer base and how they interact with your online store.

Goal 3 is to increase the frequency of emails from one email per quarter to one email per week from May 2017 to July 2017.

• How does the company currently interact with subscribers?
• Who are your competitors and how do they send out mailings?

The answers to questions like these will help you determine a strategy for achieving your goals.

Stage 4. Tactics for achieving goals

Tactics contain the specific tools you plan to use to achieve the goals of your marketing plan. When you write your strategy, you will describe each tactic in more detail, as well as specific KPIs for each tactic.

In the example of a T-shirt store, let's assume that we have chosen three tactics to implement these strategies: SEO, Contextual Advertising and E-mail Marketing.

Tactic 1 – SEO

When analyzing competitors, it was revealed that one of the key disadvantages of company X is its small marketing budget. However, website search engine optimization does provide the company with a field of competition.

To understand the positive impact SEO can have in increasing brand awareness among your target market, it is necessary to conduct keyword research.

Tactic 2 - Pay per click - contextual advertising

As with SEO, keyword research will give you an idea of ​​how much budget you'll need for PPC advertising. Most of your competitors don't use a lot of search terms in their advertising, so this is where you can benefit. It also helps increase brand awareness.

Tactic 3 – Email Marketing

It is necessary to develop an email marketing strategy so that your existing customer base receives regular messages. The tactics that will be used will include options for what should be included in the content of the emails to ensure that you get enough clicks to the site and conversions to purchases.
This tactic will involve leveraging your existing customer base and encouraging them to recruit friends and colleagues to join your weekly newsletters.

Stage 5: Actions

The fifth stage of your marketing planning system focuses on how to put your plans into action. The action section covers what must be done in each of the tactics listed in the previous section of the SOSTAC plan to realize its goals.

To achieve the goals above, we have identified three tactics. Now we list examples of actions necessary to implement each tactic.

This is not an exhaustive list, but provides examples and a brief description of what to consider:

Actions for Tactic 1: SEO

• Keyword analysis. What keywords are we targeting?
• Page optimization. We must optimize site pages for key queries to ensure better ranking in Yandex and Google.
• Content - regular blog posts on the topic of the site.
• Creating a link mass. Create a target group of sites where you could post information about your project with a link to it.

Actions for tactic 2: Contextual advertising

• Keyword analysis. What queries can drive profitable traffic?
• Budget.
• Landing pages. What pages will people land on when they enter certain queries?

Actions for Tactic 3: Email Marketing

• Create email scripts for various actions on the site (subscription, purchase)
• Creating reporting to analyze subscriber engagement in the newsletter
• Analysis of mailing profitability

Stage 6. Monitoring the results

The final stage of planning is to ensure that you can review and evaluate your performance in the future based on the goals you set in stage two.

Consider which tactics to set that are tied to your goals and set up weekly or monthly reporting to ensure you're on track to achieve your goals.

The marketing section, which reveals the proposed development paths of the enterprise, occupies not the last place in the structure of the business plan. It’s not enough to catch a creative business idea in time; you need to find ways to implement it and turn it into reality. That's what a marketing business plan is for.

It is designed to show ways to increase profits and track the current state of affairs in the company. This includes forecasting quantitative sales of products, price categories, influx of new customers, development of advertising campaigns and much more. The basis for these calculations is marketing research. It has already been said that marketing research can be quantitative and qualitative. Some allow you to assess the market capacity, others offer methods of alternative solutions for promoting a product on the market.

The marketing section of a business plan should answer a number of questions:

• What is the image of a potential buyer of your product - social class, income level, behavior patterns?
• How do you assess your value in your chosen market segment?
• Will war be declared on competitors?
• What is the estimated net sales revenue?
• Will there be systems of discounts and benefits?
• Which channels of distribution of goods are preferable?
• Are the measures taken to promote products effective?
• Is advertising funded enough?
• Etc.

The marketing section of a business plan includes several points

Marketing Goals and Strategies

The very first point of the plan, setting the tone and indicating the final goal. Here the general target strategy of the enterprise is formulated, then a detailed plan for its distribution is drawn up for each type of product. Particular emphasis is placed on concepts such as assortment, competition and consumer market. These concepts are interrelated; the range directly depends on the needs of customers and the omissions of competitors.

Pricing

Prices are always based on three pillars - costs, demand

or competition. In the first case, the entrepreneur determines the initial price of the product, taking into account costs, overhead and service, then adds the desired percentage of profit. In the second case, the price is calculated taking into account the average market value. In the third case, the price may be either higher or lower than market value, depending on the willingness of consumers to pay their bills.

Product distribution scheme

Distribution and sales of products are based on: transport, storage and contacts with the consumer. Products from the manufacturer are sent through distribution channels to the consumer. Here it is necessary to determine sales methods, select suitable channels, set operating hours and think through other details. Separately, you need to estimate the number of personnel required, storage conditions for your products (if necessary), and transportation.

Sales promotion methods

Promotion methods include various promotions designed to attract attention to your products. This can be either a system of discounts and benefits, or competent design of shop windows and advertising brochures. Actually, this includes advertising, business meetings and promotions of all types and directions.

Organization of after-sales customer service

Customer service and warranty. These can be service centers in stores, small repair shops, or craftsmen who come to a client’s home on call. Service is required to install purchased equipment, equipment, or to eliminate technical problems. Your task is to decide on the type of set of services, its cost and quality. Outline channels for obtaining spare parts for the product. Also, after-sales service includes the organization of a telephone technical support service.

Think over an advertising campaign, determine costs, consumer tastes and, according to the research, select the most suitable set of advertising tools and projects designed to introduce your product and assure the public that it is your product they simply need.

Forming public opinion about the company and products