TECHNOPRENEURSHIP – ENGG 405 MODULE 10

Topic Outcome:

- Illustrate marketing and sales strategy to be applied for the venture idea

MARKETING AND SALES

Before starting your business, it's important to outline all the details in a business plan. Creating the
plan not only forces you take a good look at all aspects of your business, from financial, to target
market, and more, but also, it becomes the roadmap for your success.

One of the most important sections of a business plan is Marketing and Sales Strategies, which outlines
your plan for reaching and selling to your target market. While you want to have a wonderful product
or provide stellar service, it's all for nothing if you don't have customers and clients. Your marketing
plan is the key to effectively and affordably finding your buyers, making it a crucial section that lenders
and investors review before giving you startup money.

Marketing and Sales strategy planning is the heart of business planning. Startups need to have a low
cost or zero cost-marketing efforts, initially, to promote their products/services. Well-planned
marketing and sales activities is imperative for the success of the venture.

What to Include in the Marketing & Sales Strategies Section

The basics of the marketing and sales section have to do with knowing your market and competition,
and designing your product messaging, pricing, and other marketing strategies to maximize sales. It
involves the 5 P’s of marketing, as well as figuring out how you'll measure your marketing mix’s
success.

Here are the 5 P’s of marketing:

• Product – Describe the product or service offered to the customer by your home business,
including the physical attributes of your products or services, what they do, how they differ
from your competitors and what benefits they provide to your potential customers.

• Price – Outline your pricing strategies that will help you reach your target profit margin. How
you will price your product or service so that the price remains competitive while still allowing
you to make a good profit? When calculating price, make sure you take into consideration both
fixed expenses (those that don't change) and variable expenses (costs that aren't set), as well as
your time and expertise, to insure you're charging enough to make a profit. Also discuss if your
price will be lower or higher than your competition, and how you can justify the difference
(i.e. what do buyers get by paying more for your product?).

• Place (Distribution) – Indicate where your business will sell its products or services, and how
it will get those products or services to consumers. For example, will you sell online? Will you
consign your products into local stores? When you know what outlets our product and services
will be available, indicate how much you expect to sell in each location. For example, will 65
percent of your sales be done online and 35 percent through face-to-face appointments? Also
include any delivery terms and costs, and how those expenses will be covered (i.e. added to

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the sale of the item). Indicate if there any shipping or labeling requirements that need to be
considered and how you will meet those requirements. Finally, outline the transaction process
and your return policies.

• Promotion – What methods of promotion you will use to communicate the features and
benefits of your products or services to your target customers? Will you advertise? If so,
where? What percentage of advertising will be handled by each advertising option? How much
business do you anticipate each form of advertising will result in? How much is this all going
to cost? Also indicate if you plan to offer coupons or other incentives to get customers in the
door.

• People – Decide your sales strategy and the people who will provide sales and service that will
be used in marketing your products or services to the customer. Who are the people or sales
team that will be providing this service, and what kind of sales training will they receive? Do
you plan to offer any incentives to your customer service representatives and how do you plan
to measure customer satisfaction?

Important Considerations in Sales and Marketing Venture Idea

1. Sell the benefit, not a comparison.

How you market yourself is all about highlighting what makes you different. There are three major
ways to do that.
• Cost (you know how to price a product better than the competition)
• Quality (you’re better)
• A combination thereof (you offer the better value)

2. Listen to your customer.

The customer may at times defy logic, but they are always right. Listen to them.

3. Market your product before it’s ready.

It’s better to do preemptive awareness campaigning, even if it’s minimal, to let potential customers
know your product is coming. You can sell the benefit before the product has arrived. This way, when
the product is ready, so are customers.

4. Think outside the box.

Utilize a bevy of free, online marketing techniques that are both creative and effective. For example,
you can use online video marketing, social media, blog influencers, crowdsourcing, competitions,
content marketing, thought leadership, and more.

5.Test fast. Fail fast.

If you’re going to commit time and money to a marketing campaign, make sure you can measure the
results. Set up ways to track conversions that stem from each marketing campaign. Also, run multiple
types of marketing campaigns in distinct, small batches. This will allow you to compare marketing
channels and see which perform best. Toss out the ones that don’t work and keep those that do.

6. Advertise from multiple angles.

As mentioned above, it’s good to test multiple marketing channels and ideas to see what works best.
Often, it’s not any one thing but a combination of all of the above. When your customer hears you on

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the radio, sees you in a search engine result, and then finds you mentioned in a blog they like (content
marketing), they start to accept your brand as a solid, dependable, known entity. They may not have
the need for your product or service immediately, but when they do, it will be your name that comes
to mind instead of a competitor’s.

7. It’s always time for PR.

When you do traditional advertising, it’s your marketing material selling your product. When you do
PR, or have a member of the press or a media house that covers your industry talk about you, it’s brand
building and endorsement. Even little PR wins, like local news or blogs, add up. And, unlike most
traditional marketing, PR endures far beyond the dates of the advertising campaign. Good PR can do
a lot for your credibility and brand awareness.

8. Give customers a place to talk to/about you.

Good or bad, you want to know what your customers are saying. If you don’t provide your customers
with a place to complain or praise you, it makes it look like their thoughts and opinions don’t matter.
Remember, even if a customer comes to you and is furious, that’s a great opportunity for you to
publicly show how willing you are to right a wrong, or make a customer feel valued -- which is PR
gold.

9. We look forward to seeing you again.

Reward loyalty or interest.

Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategies

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a step-by-step plan created to successfully launch a product to

market. A good GTM strategy generally identifies a target audience, includes a marketing plan, and
outlines a sales strategy. While each product and market will be different, a GTM strategy should
identify a market problem and position the product as a solution.

In simpler terms, a GTM strategy is the way in which a company brings a product to market. It’s a
handy roadmap that measures the viability of a solution's success and predicts its performance based
on market research, prior examples, and competitive data.

It's also worth noting that go-to-market strategies aren't exclusive to physical products. You can create
a GTM plan for a new service, a new branch of your company, or even an entirely new business.

Why do you need a go-to-market strategy?

Even the brightest ideas can fail when they're not executed effectively — it’s a well-known fact that
90% of startups burn out, often within their first year.

Creating a go-to-market plan can prevent many of the mistakes and oversights that can tank new
product launches. Poor product-market fit and oversaturation can dampen a launch — even if the
product is well-designed and innovative.

While a go-to-market strategy isn't guaranteed to prevent failure, it can help you manage expectations
and work out any kinks before you invest in bringing a product to market.

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What's the purpose of a go-to-market strategy?

When effectively executed, the GTM strategy will align all stakeholders and establish a timeline to
ensure each stakeholder meets the defined milestones and outcomes, creating an attainable path to
market success.

Overall, go-to-market strategies are used to create the following benefits within an organization:
• A clearly defined plan and direction for all stakeholders.
• Reduced time to market for products and services.
• Increased chances of a successful product or service launch.
• Decreased likelihood of extra costs generated by failed product or service launches.
• Enhanced ability to react to changes and customer desires.
• Improved management of challenges.
• An established path for growth.
• Ensured creation of an effective customer experience.
• Guaranteed regulatory compliance.

While go-to-market strategies are often associated with product launches, they can also be used to
describe the specific steps a company needs to take in order to guide customer interactions for
established products.

To create an effective GTM strategy, organizations must possess an understanding of the work
environment and the target market. New and existing workflows should be clearly defined and a
system should be established to manage the GTM strategy.

Core components

A go-to-market strategy often includes five core components:

1. Market definition: Which markets will be targeted to sell the product or service?
2. Customers: Who is the target audience within these markets?
3. Distribution model: How will the product or service be delivered to the customer?
4. Product messaging and positioning: What is being sold and what is its unique value or
primary difference when compared to other products or services in the market?
5. Price: How much should the product or service cost for each customer group?

The market definition identifies the specific markets -- or groups of people that have the ability and
willingness to pay -- for a specific product or service. The markets should be specific and clearly
defined, but they should also involve a large enough audience to meet the income and profit objectives
of the product or service. If multiple markets are being targeted, then one should be prioritized over
the others and this primary target should be clearly communicated.

The customers component takes the information and research gathered to define the market and uses
it to increase specificity and determine the target audience for the product or service. The company
will need to decide whether it has existing customers that might be sales prospects or whether it needs
to seek an entirely new set of target customers. The company developing a GTM strategy and
improving its customer acquisition process should also focus on who the buyer will be. For example,
in a business-to-business(B2B) GTM strategy, the buyer could be the IT manager, a line-of-business
(LOB) manager or a member of the C-suite.

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The distribution model component defines the channels or the paths taken by the product or service
to reach the end customer. Indirect channels often become a part of a product vendor's go-to-market
plan. An indirect channel of distribution involves the product passing through extra steps between the
manufacturer and the customer. For example, a product in an indirect channel may pass from the
manufacturer to a distributor and then the wholesaler before it reaches the retail store.
Some questions to ask when defining channels include:
• How will customers go about buying the product or service?
• How and where will the product or service be distributed?
• If it's a physical product that will be distributed in a store, how will it get there?
• If it's a software product, how will the customer download it?
• Is the product or service on the organization's e-commerce site or is it sold online through a
third party?

The product messaging and positioning component involves defining what the product or service is,
what it does, how the target client will be made aware of the product and how leads will be generated,
from both the current customer base and within the defined markets. The product message should
answer how the offer addresses a specific need within the market and why customers should believe
that it fulfills the need.

The final component, price, should not be based on the costs of manufacturing or developing the
product or service. Instead, the price should support the value proposition and market position of the
product or service.

References:

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/writing-a-business-plan-1794231

https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/gtm-strategy

https://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/definition/go-to-market-strategy-GTM-strategy

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