Do Business Well

It’s important to note, however, that marketing is not the same thing as selling or promoting. Those are separate tasks. Selling and promoting are essentially the implementation of your marketing plan. That is, once you have identified your customer prospects and determined how best to reach them, you then have to go out and make it happen. You make it happen through selling and promoting, which are covered in a separate section of the business plan—and of this book.

Clearly, you can’t do an effective job of selling and promotion unless you have identified who you’re selling to and how you can best reach the prospects to make your sales pitch. That up-front work requires the orderly accomplishment of several tasks, which are described in this chapter and become the basis of the marketing section of your business plan.

This seems like a straightforward question. You’re sellingresidential hardware or books or temporary personnel servicesor lawn care.

Asked another way—what are your customers buying? — this question might prompt a more detailed answer. A hardware store owner might say that customers are buying the best possible selection of hardware at the lowest possible prices. A temporary personnel firm might say it provides the most reliable and best-trained temporary secretaries at the most reasonable prices among competitors.

The only problem with such answers, though, is that competitors are saying similar things. A potential customer has no real way to distinguish you from the competition except to sample you both and make comparisons.

Such answers aren’t unusual from entrepreneurs, since most invariably emphasize how wonderful their product or service is. After all, many companies originate as the result of a skill or hobby or work experience that involved a product or service. The founders understandably take pride in their ability to provide what they believe to be the best version of that product or service in the marketplace. In building a business, however, you need to sell benefits rather than products to your customers. You do that by identifying the benefits they will receive from your product or service. Mass-market consumer advertising promises all kinds of benefits. Eating high-fiber cereal or margarine will help you live longer. Using mouthwash will make you more popular. Buying a personal computer will make you more productive.

The marketing section of your business plan, then, should be focused on the benefits rather than on the features of your company’s product or service.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
What Are You Selling?

• I Made My Own Advertising Work part 1
• Previewing the Business Plan: The Best Type for You
• I Made My Own Advertising Work part 3
• How Will You Promote Your Product or Service?
• Online Advertising Strategies and Placement
• Planning a House
• Fine Architecture Revealed
• Are you struggle at the startup, do you know importance of a business plan?
• What Evidence Do You Have of Success?
• Product/Service Issues: What Are You Selling? part 3

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