What are the marketing aspects of a business plan?
Sometimes we plan things and sometimes not and the results for both the cases make a difference. The things we plan before execution carries the right path unlike the things that done randomly. Planning is the first step for starting any work be it a daily schedule work or for any big organization.
WHAT IS A BUSINESS PLAN?
As the term speaks aloud what it actually stands for, but to display clarity to the mind of my readers, I will break the term and will explain each word individually.
BUSINESS PLAN =
BUSINESS + PLAN
BUSINESS- Using your old clothes, stitching to convert them into pieces of masks, packing them into big parcels, selling them in your society and getting money in return.
Is the example stated above can be considered as an example to describe business? Well let me tell you, any activity you do related to buying or selling whether it could be any materialistic thing or any idea of thoughts or expertise. It is a business.
A Teacher sharing their knowledge and skills with students and is gets paid is also a business.
Any products or services that are sold to earn a healthy livelihood come under the term BUSINESS.
PLAN – Plan is an outline of our ideas, which will give direction to reach at our destination. Planning works as a ray of light through which we can conquer the darkness easily and will be able to achieve our goals.
Before going to a trip, we make a list of what we will do, eat, wear, hang-around and much more.
Therefore, this is how we plan things and then will finally execute the actual strategies made and the resources available to us.
BUSINESS PLAN – To run a company or any organization be it a start up or a highly reputed firm, all have some objectives or mission to achieve. Without the objectives, an organization will not be able to implement the ideas.
When business keeps its mission at the end of the line and builds small footsteps to reach that mission and accomplishing the objective is considered as a Business plan.
Business needs some strategies:
· To generate profit
· Make the employees motivated
· Deal with the competitors
· Follow the trends in the market
· Prepare a budget for the executive
List down the resources needed and thousands of more activities are included in a Business plan.
As “Customers are the king of market”, to make those
customers feel satisfied with the company name, it is very important for the
organization to plan things properly before the execution because “ONCE A MISTAKE IS DONE, WE CANNOT MAKE A
WAY BACK FOR IT”.
Memorizing such a huge plan can create a mess in the mind, so a business plan is a written and descriptive format to show what your future stands for.
By making that plan you will be able to analyze the growth, as it will clearly show you:
“From where you have
started” to “Where you have reached”
and “How far you have to go”
WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIALS FOR A BUSINESS PLAN?
Depending upon the nature, size, resources of a business, the essentials for a business plan can differ from company to company, but I have picked some common parameters that every company have to follow and work on it to reach at the final step.
1. Conceptualize the idea of your business- Looking at the niche if your business, you have to define a broad objective for the same and then draw some aspects about the product, the resources required, capital invested, nature of your business and how you will work to make your business distinct from others.
2. Strategize and do market research – Once you are done with step 1, move to the 2ndstep. This is the most crucial step gives you first mover advantage, and will make you stay in the market for a long run. Market research will help you to get updated with all the latest trends and to know about the practices used by your competitors. Entering into the market is not difficult, anyone can start a business but earning the trust of your buyers and satisfying them with your products and services each time they make a purchase is the most difficult part. This will make you stable in the market and increase customer retention.
3. Deal with your finances- Finance includes all those activities that is related to money. It could be the cost incurred on the purchase of raw materials, cost invested for the machinery and technology up gradation, the amount of profit generated, salary of the employees. All these procedures come under finances of an organization, which should be highly taken care of. Unresolved finances can lead to many issues and can create a situation of debt for a company that can disturb the whole mechanism.
Business plans are challenging but once completed can add benefit to the company and can help in every aspect of a business.
MARKETING ASPECTS OF A BUSINESS PLAN
1. MARKET RESEARCH–Before getting started or if we are stuck at a point where we do not know in which direction to go, we can always start with market research, as it will give an idea about where we are going wrong that our company is not standing out in the market.
A market research keeps the company updated with the trends in the market, what is most liked b y the customer, how the competitors are working, what are the prices for the products and so on. Each detail should be marked and then worked upon to solve the discrepancies of the business plan.
2. UNDERSTANDING THE 7P’S- Market is not only about products but it is about the services as well. The price for product can be it but the services for every company is different on their own terms and make the brand unique from others.
Earlier when the marketing was done using traditional methods, only 4P’s were used namely:”PRODUCT, “PRICE”, “PLACE”, “PROMOTION”, but when service marketing entered to the market it changed the scenario. 3P’S were added to the concept namely: “PEOPLE”, “PROCESS”, “PHYSICAL EVIDENCE”. These 3 P’s added because the strategies used for services need some extra parameters to work on. These 7P’s are together known as the augmented marketing mix and helps the company to understand each aspect of business individually with criticality.
3. SWOT analysis- SWOT stands for “STRENGTH”, “WEAKNESS”, “OPPORTUNITY”, “THREAT”.
Analysis of these four aspects will help the company understand the concepts in a thorough way:
Strengths can help the company to give motivation to work harder and brings integrity among the department of the organization in order to achieve the ultimate objectives.
Weakness will help to understand the mistakes and will compel the marketers to work hard to overcome their weakness
Opportunities will help to give chance to the company to prove themselves in the best way they can.
Threats will make the company aware of the challenges they will be going to face and motivate them to work on future aspects of the organization.
4. PEST analysis- PEST analysis is done to understand the external environment of the business and protect the company from the losses.
PEST stands for “POLITICAL”, “ECONOMIC”, “SOCIAL”, “and TECHNOLOGICAL”.
Political environment will influence the company as there are many political crises prevailing in the market. Political environment can affect the market in any way good or bad. Heavy taxes and GST is imposed on the imports and exports of the goods, fluctuations can arise due to the exchange rates etc.
Economic environment will influence the company as the GDP rates can disturb the economy and hence the prices in the market. Stock markets fluctuates the income at the high level and this could have an impact on the market and will make or break the profits and losses of the business.
Social environment can have an impact on the stability and growth of the organization. A company works for its customers and believe in the satisfaction of their potential users, the company can contribute some amount out of their profits to the society in which they are surviving. They should be thankful to the society to give them the space to work on.
Technological environment can affect the company either positively or negatively depending upon the awareness of the employees. In this fast moving scenario, everything changes in a blink and market moves along with the trends. If the research is proper and the employees can catch the technological advancements they can make themselves stand apart but if the company is still unaware and is using outdated methods of technology, no one will give preference to the products and services provided.
5. STP- STP stands for “Segmentation”,
“Targeting” and “Positioning”.
These 3 factors are the game changers for any business to understand the market in a broader way and can find out the demographics of the customers that can add benefit to the firm. Listing these one by one can give more clarity to the concept:
Segmentation – The Company must segment the market into small parts to understand the crux. Segmentation is the core to understand the market properly. Market is very big and to make every person happy and satisfied can be challenging. In order to get the detailed perspective of the customers, it is very important to understand every perspective of market.
Customers are segmented based on age, sex, income and many other factors.
Targeting- Once the market is segmented, the time to target the customers has reached.
Targeting is the process of hitting a group or a community of people who seems to be favorable to the company. Wasting our time on such a huge population can take us nowhere but if we can find out a group who is most likely to get attracted with the company’s product, price and prefer the company over others, working on the satisfaction for those customers will maintain stability of the firm and increase customer retention.
Positioning- Positioning is the final step for occupying the potential customers for the success of the firm.
This is explained by using an example: If you want to buy a pair of shoes and you are fond of the brand “ADIDAS”. You like the color contrast given by the company in their shoes, the quality of the material used, the cost and packaging of the shoes. So you will end up buying the shoes from the brand ADIDAS only because the company have created trust on the minds of their target audience.
Positioning is all about holding your target audience and placing the name of your brand in their minds.
6. USING PROMOTIONAL TOOLS- Marketing aspects can never end without the use of promotional tools.
Promotion of a product attracts the attention of the customer and can help them to make a decision for purchasing or not purchasing the product.
Company incurs a lot of amount on the promotion of their products. This method is used if a new product is launched in the market, to make customers aware about the usage and quality of the product, various promotional tools are placed.
· ADVERTISING is the tool that is used for promotion from a long time, is still in frame, and opted by many companies. We can see advertisements on televisions, mobile, newspapers, and magazines and there are many platforms where ads run in order to promote the product.
· SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS-As the time has converted to digital marketing and social media is very popular among the population. Billions of people are engaged on social media, so promoting your product on social media can give you a high paid advantage over others. You can strategize and can adopt your unique way of promoting the product.
· PUBLIC RELATIONS- Maintaining good public relations can initially help you as a promotional tool because if the relation is healthy, that means people trust you and trust is the basic for building relation with your customers. For ex- When a seller sold the product to the public but was very aggressive and impatient during selling, public will not end up going back to that shop, which is not a good signal for the organization. Dealing with the customers in a polite way and give preference to their needs should be the motive of the company.
There are many more tools to promote and deliver the best services to the customers.