example of business and product position in business plan

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10 Examples Of Products And Services In Business Plan

Creating a business plan is crucial for defining a company’s vision, target market, and strategy for growth. A key part of this process is detailing the products and services the business will offer. This section provides clarity to investors, partners, and stakeholders about the value the business brings to the market and how it plans to meet consumer needs. Here are ten examples of products and services that can be included in a business plan.

Examples of Products in a Business Plan

1. retail goods.

Retail products are tangible items sold directly to consumers. Examples include:

Clothing Line : A collection of apparel designed for specific demographics such as children, adults, or fashion-forward millennials.

Consumer Electronics : Gadgets like headphones, smartwatches, or home automation devices.

Specialty Foods : Unique or gourmet food items like organic snacks, gluten-free desserts, or handmade chocolates.

2. Manufactured Goods

These are products produced on a large scale, usually in a factory, and sold to businesses or end consumers.

Furniture : Custom-designed home or office furniture.

Industrial Equipment : Machinery and tools used in construction or manufacturing sectors.

Automotive Parts : Components and accessories for vehicles, such as tires or custom modifications.

3. Digital Products

Digital products are non-physical goods that are distributed online.

eBooks and Online Courses : Informational content sold through digital platforms, such as language learning courses or self-help books.

Software Solutions : SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings like project management tools, CRM systems, or financial planning software.

Mobile Applications : Apps developed for specific purposes, such as fitness tracking, meditation, or productivity enhancement.

4. Customized Products

These are products tailored to meet the specific needs or preferences of customers.

Personalized Gifts : Items such as custom-made jewelry, monogrammed accessories, or tailored clothing.

Customized Home Decor : Artwork, furniture, or household items designed according to customer specifications.

On-Demand Printing : Customized printing services for items like t-shirts, mugs, and phone cases.

5. Promotional Products

These are branded items used to promote a business or event.

Merchandise : T-shirts, caps, and bags with company logos for events or giveaways.

Branded Stationery : Notebooks, pens, and planners used as marketing collateral.

Event Souvenirs : Unique keepsakes for corporate events, conferences, or charity functions.

Examples of Services in a Business Plan

6. consulting services.

Providing professional advice and expertise to help businesses improve their operations.

Business Strategy Consulting : Helping companies develop strategic plans, market analyses, and competitive positioning.

Financial Consulting : Assisting with budgeting, tax planning, investment strategies, and financial risk management.

Human Resources Consulting : Providing guidance on hiring, employee retention, organizational development, and workplace culture.

7. Customer Support Services

These services focus on assisting customers with issues related to the business’s products or services.

Call Center Support : Providing telephone-based customer service for troubleshooting, inquiries, and order processing.

Live Chat Support : Real-time assistance provided via the company’s website or app to enhance customer experience.

Technical Support : Offering help with product installation, usage, and maintenance, especially for tech-based products.

8. Marketing and Advertising Services

Services aimed at promoting a business, its products, or its services.

Digital Marketing : SEO, content marketing, social media management, and email campaigns designed to attract and engage customers.

Public Relations : Creating and managing a business’s public image, including press releases, media relations, and crisis management.

Event Marketing : Organizing promotional events, trade shows, and product launches to build brand awareness and generate sales leads.

9. Subscription Services

Recurring services that provide value to customers over time.

Monthly Subscription Boxes : Regular delivery of curated items, such as beauty products, gourmet foods, or books.

Content Subscription : Access to premium digital content, such as articles, videos, and podcasts behind a paywall.

Software Subscriptions : Recurring access to software services, including cloud storage, antivirus protection, or design tools.

10. Logistics and Delivery Services

These services manage the movement and delivery of products to customers.

Warehousing and Inventory Management : Storage solutions that include managing inventory levels, packaging, and dispatch.

Last-Mile Delivery : Ensuring timely delivery of products to the final customer, often through partnerships with courier companies.

Supply Chain Management : Overseeing and optimizing the end-to-end process of sourcing, production, and delivery.

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Final Thoughts

Including a detailed description of products and services in a business plan is essential for communicating the value a company offers to its customers. By clearly outlining these elements, businesses can better position themselves to meet market needs and achieve growth objectives. Platforms like Alpha Book Publisher provide excellent opportunities for guest posts and backlinks, enhancing online presence and driving targeted traffic. This can be a strategic advantage for businesses and writers looking to expand their reach and establish themselves as industry leaders.

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What is product positioning? Examples, strategies, and template

Editor’s note> : This article was reviewed on 16 August 2024 by Daniel Schwarz and updated to include information such as how product positioning differs from brand positioning, what a product positioning statement is, specific product positioning strategies such as price-based positioning and how they compare to other strategies like quality-based positioning, and more.

The right positioning can transform a struggling product into one that flies off the shelves. That’s because positioning is about perception; calibrating the right perception of your product is paramount to conveying the value it brings over its competitors.

What is the definition of product positioning?

Product positioning is the act of defining where your product fits in the market relative to its competitors as perceived by your customers.

Let’s break down this definition of product positioning:

• “… where your product fits in the market …” — What is your product and what is it not?
• “… relative to its competitors …” — Who are your competitors and how does your product compare to theirs?
• “… as perceived by your customers …” — This last one is particularly important; product positioning is much more about the perception of your product than any kind of physical differentiation

Product positioning vs. differentiation

Product positioning is not differentiation. A product’s positioning must work with its differentiation, but they are not the same thing.

Here’s simplest way to describe the distinction between product positioning and differentiation:

• Differentiation is tangible
• Positioning is perceptual

In other words, a product’s differentiation is (more often than not) the tangible difference. For example, does your product offer better features than your competitors?

Let’s say you’re comparing the features available in a Toyota Camry versus a Ferrari:

As you can see, the Toyota is superior if you’re solely concerned about functionality and practicality.

Positioning, on the other hand, is perceptual. It has little to do with the actual features and functionality.

How is your product perceived? Is it seen as a luxury? High-end or budget? Is it seen as being of higher quality than your competitors? Or, is it perceived as fun and more innovative?

Let’s look again at the example of the Toyota and the Ferrari:

That’s product positioning — how your product is perceived by the market relative to your competitors.

Now that you’ve determined your product positioning, you can use it to differentiate your product. The two need to go hand-in-hand, but the crucial difference is that positioning is about perception, not physical differentiation.

Product positioning vs. brand positioning

Product positioning and brand positioning are two marketing strategies that can help your company differentiate itself from its competitors in the eyes of your customers.

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Product positioning can motivate your target customers to choose your products by framing the product’s qualities and benefits in a way that appeals to them specifically. This not only leads to more conversions, but also higher retention rates (i.e., less buyer’s remorse) as long as the product messaging meets reality.

Brand positioning is very similar and applies to your brand as a whole. The messaging should convey that your brand holds the same values as your target customers, as a result making them think highly and feel positively towards it, while also conveying how it stands out from its competitors.

So while you obviously want to convey how good your products are and how good your brand is, product positioning and brand positioning both go a step further by helping you to convey suitability — that is, how good your product is for your customers specifically, especially in the ways that rival products and brands aren’t.

Good products can be owned by bad brands and vice-versa, therefore crafting your product positioning and brand positioning are two different ventures, although you’ll likely do so at the same time, using the same research and research participants for both.

Quality-based vs. price-based positioning

Sometimes, quality isn’t as important as price (and vice versa). This is why Scoot and Singapore Airlines are two separate brands, despite being the same company. I probably don’t need to tell you which one markets itself as low-cost and which one markets its ranking as a 5-star airline.

In cases like this, where messaging is used to position multiple brands of the same company, each brand’s negative qualities (in the eyes of customers) are separated so as not to be associated with the other brands.

Quality-based positioning is more associated with brand positioning, whereas price-based positioning is more associated with product positioning. However, the concepts are closely related in many ways; for example, high quality is often associated with high price, which is why brands tend to target a specific quality.

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There are also many other types of positioning, which provides more ways to craft a message that appeals to your target audience. For example, other forms of product positioning include:

• Price (or value)-based positioning — Offering the best value or lowest price in comparison to competitors
• Lifestyle-based positioning — Aligning with what customers consider their “ideal selves”
• Benefit-based positioning — Think in terms of, “How many boxes does the product check?”
• Characteristics-based positioning — Providing the features/usability that customers are looking for

Why is product positioning important?

Product positioning is important because, while physical differentiation is good, decisions are often made based on how a product is perceived.

For example, purchasing a luxury car or handbag is emotional — not because of how it looks or its design or size, but because of how it’s perceived.

After all, nobody decides against buying a Ferrari because it doesn’t have a heads-up display or wireless charging ; they buy it (at exorbitant price points) because it’s a Ferrari!

The product and brand are positioned such that they carry a certain perception, one that is highly desirable regardless of actual physical features. Leveraging the power of perception can reduce the need for physical differentiation and enable you to demand a higher price point.

Defining your product positioning strategy

The following elements should influence your product positioning strategy.

Market analysis

The first and most important step to defining your product positioning strategy is understanding your market.

While there is no single way to conduct market analysis, some core questions you might explore include:

• Who are the core demographics in your market? Are they students? Affluent families? Retirees?
• What regulations and laws do you need to consider?
• What are the market trends? Is the market growing or shrinking? Perhaps undergoing a major transformation or a period of disruption?
• How much is the market impacted by external forces? What are the political, geographical, and economic impacts?
• What are the assumptions, risks, and uncertainties about the market and its future?

Competitive landscape

Product positioning is all about how your products are perceived in relation to their direct competitors. Therefore, it’s paramount to have a good understanding of your competitors.

Of course, you want to build a deep understanding of your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, and differentiation. Equally importantly, you want to analyze your competitors’ strategy and how they are positioned in the market.

Building a holistic picture of the competitive landscape can help you identify positions in the market that may be saturated or underserved. A great tool for this is perceptual mapping (more on that later) .

Target market segment

Defining your target market segment is core to product positioning. For example, let’s say you want to position your product as a luxury item, but your core target market are teenagers. Needless to say, few of them are likely to be able to afford your product.

Another example would be a B2B product aimed at early-stage startups versus one that targets large enterprises. The latter would be more focused on being perceived as safe, secure, and capable. The former would be more concerned with positioning itself as youthful and fun.

Company and brand values (and positioning)

Your product’s positioning will be heavily influenced by your company brand and its current positioning.

For example, Apple positions itself as innovative and creative and seeks to target that market. For a long time, Apple leveraged this reputation to differentiate itself from other computer brands and capture a customer base of creative professionals, from musicians to artists and the like.

As such, Apple’s products also live and breathe this ethos: they are aesthetically pleasing, often colorful, and carry a design that is unlike any of their competitors.

Product vision and value proposition

Finally, your product vision and value proposition play a key role in product positioning. Understanding the key differentiator — your moat — is core to defining what makes your product unique in the market. An effective product position will hone in on this and amplify it.

What is a product positioning statement?

A product positioning statement is a brief summary of a product’s distinctiveness, particularly in regards to the ways that customers would think of it as not only a good product but a good product for them . For example, if customers don’t care about the price of your product, then you wouldn’t make its low price the focus of the product’s messaging.

The goal of a product positioning statement is to clarify, for yourself and others, how to market to customers in terms of product messaging.

Writing a product positioning statement

To write a good product positioning statement, you first need to be clear about the types of product positioning on which you’re basing your product messaging. For example, you could emphasize price, lifestyle, benefits, characteristics, or anything else that’s relevant.

Product positioning statements are made up of just a few sentences, so as long as they’re clear, you shouldn’t have any issues writing a good one. If you’re having trouble getting started though, write about the product as if you’re the customer, then simply change the language from a first-person narrative to a third-person narrative.

For example, a customer might say, “I want a [cheap] product that helps me to be my [x] self. I want it to do [x] and [x], and it has to have an [x] feature”. To turn this into a product positioning statement, you’d instead say, “Our customer wants…”.

However, you first need to determine what your position is among your competitors. To do that, you’ll need to create what’s called a perceptual map.

What is a perceptual map?

One of my go-to tools for understanding the market to find the ideal product positioning is a perceptual map .

Perceptual mapping, also known as market mapping, is a diagrammatic technique used to visualize the relative positioning of competitive products. Typically in the form of a 2×2 matrix , perceptual maps seek to map out direct competitors’ positioning relative to each other.

Perceptual maps can help you identify gaps in the market, crowded positioning, and when it may be time to reposition:

The axis on a perceptual map will vary depending on your market, products, and customers.

For example, you might map your products based on whether they are perceived as:

• Cheap <> Expensive
• Low-quality <> High-quality
• Youthful <> Mature
• Fun <> Serious
• Small <> Large
• Common <> Rare

There’s no perfect science to creating a perceptual map. However, a perceptual map should be informed by research — namely, competitive analysis and customer research. Using this data, you will need to determine what attributes are important for your customers and how they perceive products in the market.

If you wish, you can also validate your perceptual map through perception-based questions as part of customer interviews.

Examples of successful product positioning

In her book Obviously Awesome , April Dunford shares a personal story about the impact that the right positioning can have.

Dunford was working at a startup for a B2B database product. The company was struggling with sales. Although the product was superior to its competitors, the company found that customers often did not understand the value the product would bring over their current database solution.

Finally, Dunford’s team met with a prospect who argued that the product was not a database at all, but a business intelligence tool.

By repositioning the product as a business intelligence tool, the sales team saw immediate results. Once prospects stopped comparing the product to their existing database, they began to understand the problem the product was designed to solve and the value it could bring.

As you can see, positioning your product correctly can be a game changer. Apple , Nike , Lush , and Patagonia are all examples of companies that have done product positioning exceptionally well.

Let’s dive a bit deeper into each product positioning example.

Apple (MacBook)

Apple positions itself toward creative individuals by leveraging its reputation as an innovative company. It dominates this position in the market so well that you would be hard-pressed to find a designer who doesn’t use a MacBook .

This positioning translates into all aspects of the MacBook — from the applications aimed at creative industries, such as Final Cut Pro for video editing and Logic Pro for music, to its sleek design and unique features that challenge the norm.

Nike positions itself as a brand for elite athletes. Its tagline, “Just Do It,” models its positioning to push the limits of human performance. The products themselves emphasize quality and are frequently the go-to choice for athletes.

Lush is famous for their handmade, animal- and chemical-free products. They position themselves as a sustainable and ethical company that does not do animal testing and creates products that are not only good for you but for the environment too. This translates to Lush’s unique shop designs and the products themselves.

For example, you will find no packaging in a Lush store besides being wrapped in recycled paper at payment. The products themselves are imperfect and fragile, often sporting blemishes. This doesn’t detract from the product; in fact, it plays nicely into its positioning, promoting the fact that products are handmade and chemical-free.

Patagonia made headlines a couple of years ago when they launched an ad campaign Black Friday titled “don’t buy this jacket.” The campaign was a lobby against fast fashion and to promote sustainability.

Patagonia’s company mission leads the company to participate in activist and sustainability work. This translates into their products and services, from 100-percent recycled material to their free repairs service.

Disney+ streaming service

Unlike Netflix, which appears to focus very little on product positioning these days, Disney+ caters to a family lifestyle, targeting looking for value — i.e., who would be happy to pay more since it benefits the whole family. So, their product positioning covers lifestyle, price (value), and benefits.

Product positioning template

Defining your product positioning strategy starts with critical consideration around the following elements:

• What is the long-term vision for your product?
• What is the frame of reference for the product?
• What industry does it belong to?
• In what category within your market/industry does it sit?
• Who are your direct competitors?
• What are their strengths?
• How are they perceived?
• Who is your target market segment?
• What are some key attributes of that segment that your product will tap into?
• What attributes are unique to your product?
• What is your product’s value proposition?
• How do you intend to differentiate your product?
• What is your company known for?
• What are the key attributes that your brand is associated with?

Download a customizable Google Sheets version of the product positioning template below:

Keep in mind that not all of these questions need to be answered in a positioning statement though. You can treat them more like thought exercises to help you figure out how to think about and position your product accurately in a way that appeals to your target audience.

Product positioning can make or break your product. If your position is poor in the market, your product will sink.

Remember that to obtain the right positioning, you need to have a good understanding of your market, customers, and competitors. A great tool to help you visualize this is known as perceptual mapping. It can help you identify saturated positions in the market and underserved ones, helping you find the ideal positioning for your product.

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Products & Services Section in a Business Plan (+ Examples)

• September 4, 2024
• Business Plan , How to Write

In this blog post, we’ll guide you through writing the products and services section of your business plan. We’ll cover how to describe what you’re selling and why it’s important in your business plan.

Whether you’re launching a new startup or creating a business plan for an existing business, this section is crucial for showing the value you bring to customers. Let’s get started!

Why do we include them in a business plan?

The products and services section of a business plan is more than just a list of what a company sells; it’s a vital narrative that tells the story of the business’s core offerings and their significance to the market.

This section is paramount for readers (especially potential investors) to grasp the essence of what the business is about, the unique problems it solves, or the specific needs it addresses.

A meticulously crafted products and services segment does much more than describe offerings. Indeed, it lays the groundwork for comprehensive marketing strategies , informs operational planning, and financial projections.

Moreover, understanding the business’s offerings in depth enables stakeholders to envision the company’s value proposition and competitive edge.

Where should you include them?

In a business plan, the Products and Services section is typically included within the business overview section.

This allows you to first introduce the business model and what it offers to customers. Only after this you can provide more details of the products and services.

The Products and Services section should clearly detail what you are selling, highlight the unique value proposition . It should also ideally explain how it meets the needs of your target market if it isn’t obvious. T

What to include: 2 Examples

Begin with a clear, engaging description of each product or service you offer. For services, describe the process, customer experience, and outcome. For products, discuss the materials, technology, and any unique features.

Services example: a Cryotherapy business plan

Products example: a Brewery business plan

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What is product positioning? Tips, templates, and examples

Last updated: March 2024

Your ability to articulate the key benefits of your product and the problem it solves is critical to business success. But you may find yourself in a company where product positioning strategy is not well-defined.

Maybe this is because there is unclear ownership or an ever-changing vision . Dig deeper and you may realize that you can lead a collaborative effort to fine-tune the positioning. Your colleagues in sales and marketing will likely be strong advocates of this work — effective positioning makes it possible to craft meaningful messages and create even more value for customers.

Explore any section below:

Product positioning in a nutshell

What is the best way to develop product positioning, what elements should your product positioning consider, what is a product positioning statement, what influences how a product is perceived, product positioning strategies.

Product positioning is a strategic exercise that defines where your product or service fits in the marketplace and why it is better than alternative solutions. The goal is to distill who your audience is, what they need, and how your product can uniquely help. Product positioning is the basis of your marketing story.

The outcome of product positioning is an internal document that informs external messaging — including how you will communicate product benefits to customers. Positioning helps ground your product marketing efforts in the real value you provide beyond features and functionality.

Define your positioning in Aha! Roadmaps — start a trial .

Product positioning is a cross-functional exercise. It typically involves product management and product marketing working closely together to define the core essence of your product. You will need to bring together your knowledge of the following areas:

Understand the customer

Your positioning strategy should succinctly capture who your customers are and what they need. Describe the attributes of your target customers, including demographic, behavioral, psychographic, and geographic details. You will also want to provide insights into the main problems the customer is trying to solve. Use your persona profiles to inform your positioning strategies and help the broader team build empathy with your customers.

Conduct market research

You need to know what alternatives customers have to your product so you can highlight what sets your offering apart. Research your direct and indirect competitors to understand how they serve your customers’ needs. Your market research should also include interacting directly with potential customers to gather ideas — for instance using surveys, focus groups, or empathy sessions . This will allow you to differentiate your product from the competition and help you explain to potential customers why your solution is the best option to solve their problems.

Assess the product

Your positioning must be built on the unique value your company and product provides. Conducting a SWOT analysis is a useful way to objectively analyze what your product or service is doing well and where it can do better. This ensures that your marketing messages aligns with the product experience, thus helping customers make informed decisions.

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Product positioning is made up of core building blocks that explain your product’s unique value. After you have completed your customer, market, and product assessments, you can define your product positioning, align the broader team around core messaging, and build a product marketing plan .

Here are the key elements that define your product positioning:

A template can help you capture the key positioning elements described above for your product or service. This product positioning template in Aha! software is a great way to work through ideas on a digital whiteboard with your team. It also offers expert tips for highlighting your product's benefits.

Start using this template now

Once your positioning is defined, create a brief product positioning statement that describes your target audience, what sets your product apart, and why customers should care about it. Here is an example of a positioning statement template:

For [group of users] that [need/want] , [company/product] is a [category/solution] that uniquely solves this by [benefit] .

It would be helpful to use an example company to talk through this. Let’s use Fredwin Cycling, a fictitious company that builds a cycling app. The target market is predominantly cycling enthusiasts who are interested in improving their fitness. Your customer and market research reveals that users are concerned about their health but are struggling to stick with an exercise program. Users want to stay motivated by connecting with like-minded friends. The product addresses this need by providing a social cycling community that promotes friendly competition and tracks workout performance.

Here is an example of a product positioning statement for Fredwin Cycling:

For cyclists who want to connect with other athletes, Fredwin Cycling is the leading social fitness application that uniquely brings the cycling community together by promoting healthy competition.

Your product positioning shapes how you want your product to be known in the market. But there are many different factors that can affect how your product is perceived. The major influence is what customers experience when they actually use your product and interact with your company. It is the summation of the Complete Product Experience (CPE) that determines what customers think and feel about your product.

There are seven core areas that contribute to the CPE:

Remember, every touchpoint with your company either reinforces or undermines your positioning. So while you should consciously plan how to position your product, you should think broadly about every aspect of the adoption process. Because your customers will decide what they really think about your product.

Customer perceptions of your product can be altered — positively or negatively — by any aspect of your CPE. Clearly defined product positioning will help you maintain a cohesive message about your product's unique value at each touchpoint. But while your product's value should be unique, your positioning strategy does not have to be completely original.

There are several standard types of product positioning strategies that companies use to differentiate their products. Here are some common types of product positioning:

The positioning strategy that is best suited for your product depends on your customers' needs, the results of your market research , and the goals you have as a business or product leader. But regardless of the strategy you choose, well-defined product positioning will show that you have honed in on what makes your product uniquely valuable — and that you know how to communicate this value to your customers.

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• How to set product strategy
• What is product-market fit?
• What is product differentiation?
• How to price your product
• What are product goals and initiatives?
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• What is product value?
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• Introduction to marketing strategy
• Introduction to marketing templates
• What is a marketing strategy?
• How to set marketing goals
• Marketing vs. advertising
• What is a creative brief?
• How to define buyer personas
• Understanding the buyer's journey
• What is competitive differentiation?
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• 2x2 prioritization matrix
• Business model
• Customer journey map
• Decision log
• Decision tree
• Fit gap analysis
• Gap analysis
• Lean canvas
• Marketing strategy
• MoSCoW model
• Opportunity canvas
• Porter's 5 forces
• Pricing and packaging research
• Pricing plan chart
• Pricing strategies (Kotler)
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• Product vision
• SAFe® framework
• Scrum framework
• Segment profile
• SMART goals
• Strategic roadmap
• Strategy mountain
• SWOT analysis
• The Aha! Framework
• Value proposition
• VMOST analysis
• Working backwards
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• How to do market research
• How to define customer personas
• How to research competitors
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• Asking the right questions to drive innovation
• Approaches table
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• PESTLE analysis
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• Product comparison chart
• Pros and cons
• Target audience
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• Why product teams need knowledge base software
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• What is idea management?
• 4 steps for product ideation
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• Product backlog vs. release backlog vs. sprint backlog
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• What is a market requirements document (MRD)?
• How to manage your product requirements document (PRD)
• What is a product feature?
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• How to prioritize product features
• Common product prioritization frameworks
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• Introduction to marketing plans
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What is Product Positioning? Guide, Templates & Examples to Design Your Strategy

By understanding the specific nuances of product positioning for new B2B high-tech products, founders, CEOs, product management, marketers, and product marketing can accelerate product/market fit and new product revenue, maximizing their return on innovation.

What is product positioning?

Product positioning is a critical aspect of marketing strategy for new products or services, especially for B2B technology and software products.

Given today's innovation speed and competitive landscape evolution in high-tech markets, it is essential to position innovations effectively to highlight their value, attract the right buyers and differentiate from competitors.

Product positioning is the process of placing your product in the minds of buyers relative to its alternatives, which may or may not be competitive products.

It involves identifying and highlighting your product's unique features, benefits, and value propositions and placing them in your target's minds in a way perceived as much-needed, credible, and differentiated.

What is the difference between product positioning and brand positioning strategy?

Brand positioning focuses on helping established or mature businesses build a mental space or perception about several company attributes, like what they do, who they help, and their strengths to build long-term advantage and defensible growth.

Product positioning is about positioning a new product (in the case of new startups) or a specific product offering (in the case of established, scale-up, or mature businesses). Product positioning is also more focused on the specific scenario the buyer and end-user face.

Although there are some similarities, we will focus this article on positioning for new B2B tech/saas products and innovations.

What is the difference between positioning, messaging and copywriting?

Positioning is strategic, defining the desired market perception of your product with a focus on differentiation and credibility, led by CXOs. It's your business or product North Star that defines the WHY, and WHO to sell to.

Messaging, also strategic, defines the WHAT to communicate to the market based on the WHY and WHO, usually crafted by marketing or product marketing leaders.

Copywriting is the HOW you communicate the messages. It is the tactical creation of clear and specific texts that convey the messages in the brand's voice and tone, typically done by copywriters and content writers. Each step builds on the last, from strategy to specific marketing assets.

Why is product positioning important in B2B technology and software markets?

The main difference in B2B technology buying decisions versus other products (like consumer or cheap products) is that they are high-risk decisions.

Technologies change quickly, providers are created and die every day, and products can require a steep learning curve, integration, and change management in the clients, putting the implementation projects at risk.

By building a strong market position, a high-tech product or business will help overcome market objections related to risk.

Great product positioning requires market research, competitor analysis, and segmentation to identify target market segments, customer needs, and preferences.

By understanding customer pain points and unique product features, CEOs and founders can inform product strategy and position their products in a way that resonates with potential customers.

A key component of new product positioning is developing a clear positioning statement that reflects the product’s unique value proposition, target audience, and competitive advantage.

This statement will become the guiding principle for your product, marketing, and sales teams, ensuring they align with the desired market perception you want for your product.

What do all B2B technology category leaders have in common?

• All have a strong, differentiated positioning. The market knows, gets, understands, and is aligned on what they do, to whom, why, and when to call them.
• All understand that positioning is a strategic CEO-led initiative for accelerating revenue and commanding a higher valuation.
• All recognize that breakaway differentiation requires a predictable shift in focus: from technology to product to market to company, always with a buyer-centric positioning strategy.

When is a positioning strategy most important?

• When a new product is developed, ready to launch
• When there is a lack of success in customer segment to date
• Erosion of market share or sales plateaus, like Crossing The Chasm .
• Introducing an existing product into a new application or use case
• Introducing an existing product into a new geographic region
• The competitive environment has shifted. This includes new competitors or loss of competitors, a major change in a competitor’s strategy, or when an alternative solution gains a toehold in the market.
• The market environment has changed. This includes new technologies arising, changes in economic forces, or when industry standards are stabilizing.

If any of those feel familiar, it is time to prioritize resources to rethink your product positioning strategy.

What are the indicators of a successful product positioning?

• Your company has a strong point of view that captures the market's attention. The market knows why to call you and when.
• Your market ecosystem knows and is aligned with your positioning (market alignment).
• Everyone is on the same page in your company (internal alignment).
• Sales engage at a decision-making level.
• Your solution commands a premium price. Sales don't complain mainly about pricing.
• There is buyer urgency: your solution is a “got-to-have” rather than a nice-to-have.
• Analysts and customers are adopting your language and publishing you.

What are the questions your product positioning strategy must answer?

• In which market/product category will you compete? Should you create a category or lead an existing one?
• Why should others (investors, employees, customers, partners, thought leaders...) believe in and commit to this business opportunity?
• Which market and customer segment to target? In which order? What problem or pain do you solve for them?
• How do you differentiate your product from competitors or status quo in a way that matters to the target segment?
• What evidence will you use to make the declared positioning strategy credible to the market?

Positioning-to-market™: building an effective product positioning strategy

If you are familiar with our methods, the following process will resemble you to our 11-step go-to-market strategy framework , you're right.

We are working on this reduced version to put together the process of new product positioning and go-to-market strategy. We hope it helps you make the process more digestible.

As you can see, it's all about the value you're creating and communicating to your market.

This article will focus on steps 1, 2, and 5, which are the most commonly related to positioning strategy.

1. What are the elements of product positioning strategy?

Successful product positioning strategies are built at the intersection of 5 elements:

• Customer: Find out who your best-fit buyers are and what problems are relevant for them before considering what problem your product solves. Your strategy won't work if you’re different but irrelevant to your target buyers. What is critically important for your target customers? Where does your product fit in the market?
• Company (Strengths): Find the strengths and advantages that can make you a credible provider in the eyes of the buyer. What are your strengths (we call them crown jewels) that can be used to make your positioning more credible?
• Competition (Differentiation): Find what your competition is already offering . Most importantly, find the whitespace that nobody is serving to understand what makes your product different. Are the customer pains being underserved or over-served? How are you different from similar products in your niche, main competitors, or status quo? Think that your toughest competition might be behavioral change. That means you're creating a new category of product or market.
• Category: Sets the context to define your positioning angle according to your market category maturity, trends, conditions, and existing market beliefs. Also, to understand if you are creating a new market or category.
• Ecosystem: You can have a very well-crafted positioning spot, but without an ecosystem that helps you build that common understanding in the minds of your market, it won’t work. Actually, market ecosystems are what create categories (mental spaces). That’s why it is the first circle.

All these elements are grounded in deep research and understanding of your customer, your market and your competitors. With the raise of AI tools, you can streamline the market research process.

The market and industry context

The first step is to execute market research and understand the type of innovation you're launching and its location in The Technology Adoption Lifecycle curve.

Your market maturity highly influences positioning and go-to-market strategy decisions about your product:

• If you are creating an innovation that requires behavioral change, workflow change, or a lot of learning, you're making a new discontinuous market in an early market. In this case, you can position your innovation as a horizontal technology that targets multiple use cases and industries to discover your early customers and find your most lucrative market.
• Suppose you're creating a new product gaining traction from mainstream customers. In that case, you want to score your opportunities and find a beachhead segment or niche (Ideal Customer Profile) in which you can deliver the highest value proposition. This phase is about focusing your positioning, and you must be specific when defining all the e4C elements.

During this market research phase, you want to understand how market trends may impact your innovation.

Research the trends and revisit them when you're working on framing your product positioning.

Market trends and insights are an excellent way to frame the problem you solve and start your pitch. They grab your audience's attention by starting with something insightful and counterintuitive or a trend everyone knows and is relevant to frame your product with your storytelling.

For example, if you are launching software that helps your target audience save money in 2022 or early 2023 in the USA, you could use the economic downturn as a starting point to frame your solution.

Another way to start is by sharing an insight or point of view that makes your target think.

This step also includes understanding current market perceptions, how people are categorizing (the mental box in your customer's minds, like "CRM" or "email marketing platform") products like yours, and terms that are driving confusion.

Strategizing relevancy: target customer research

The second element is understanding your target market and their motivations to buy profoundly.

For each potential target audience, interview 12 to 15 people and create a customer scenario with the patterns that you find.

Your scenario worksheet, for each type of buyer, should include:

You can also use tools like Wynter to research and get insights from your targets to complement your interviews.

We've created a visual example of a target scenario worksheet for the AI Meetings assistant tool fathom.video :

1. Define the high-level scenario and workflow of the end user and the problem you're analyzing:

2. Define what is broken for them. Their pains, their struggles, their frustrations, and the penalties of doing it this way:

3. Define how your innovation or product attempts to solve the issues :

4. Find out objections to buy and hesitations to understand the risk perception of your prospective customers. Then define whole product or business model attributes to overcome them. The next image follows fathom.video example to understand customer hesitations to buy and the solutions.

Strategizing credibility: strengths

Your strengths will make your position more credible and potentially challenging to copy.

Technology is easy to copy, but your knowledge, experience, insights, or customer base are almost impossible to replicate.

During this step, you must build a SWOT analysis and consider how your strengths and weaknesses can impact your positioning strategy.

You can think about strengths in different ways:

• If you're a mature company, you can use your track record, customer base, IPs, or expertise as a part of your positioning strategy for your new product. You already have company strengths.
• If you are a founder starting a new idea or innovation, you want to use your experience and knowledge as proof that product/innovation can make a change.

To go to market with a new innovation, it's okay if you can't prove strengths, as your early adopters don't care much about that. You can build your strengths as you gain more traction in the market.

Strategizing differentiation: competitor whitespaces

You now understand your target customer's scenario, market context, and strengths.

By performing competitive research, you'll find whitespaces like different problems nobody has solved for your audience, different ways of solving them, or demonstrate better strengths than your competitors.

Your main competitor may or may not be an existing solution. It could be a current end-user behavior or status quo.

If you're in an early market, your main competitor is probably the status quo. The less risky decision for prospective buyers is to remain the same, even if this sounds counterintuitive. Most people don't want to change or risk trying an emerging innovation that requires workflow change.

That privilege is reserved for innovators and early adopters (16% of the population).

Narrowing down your position or repositioning: scoring target segments

Your product innovation and go-to-market resources are limited. If you spread them by targeting multiple audiences, you will run out of money or resources before you find a profitable market. Imagine building features for diverse end-users, multiple marketing assets, value propositions, distribution channels... that's not an optimized go-to-market strategy.

The sooner you find a niche you can win, the sooner you can communicate that win as a competitive strength to drive credibility and go after a new segment from a stronger market and financial position.

Suppose you're in an early market with a horizontal product or technology, exploring multiple potential target customers or segments.

You can use this opportunity scoring template to find who can be the beachhead segment that will allow you to win and jump into adjacent segments by following the bowling pin strategy.

The next image showcases the product positioning example of Stripe. They started narrowly by targeting e-commerce with an online payments API.

As they penetrated further and developed their product, they jumped and conquered into adjacent segments using the strengths and credibility build with the previous segments, expanding their customer base and becoming the absolute leader and de-facto standard. "The payment platform for the internet".

2.Communicating your desired market position: messaging

Once you have done all the strategizing work, it is time to put it in words and a document that you'll use to share with your team to drive alignment and communicate a clear strategic direction. You'll also update it as you learn from the market feedback loops.

This positioning platform is a set of marketing messages you will use to communicate your positioning strategy internally and externally.

Copy and paste the next outline to create a product positioning template:

• Definition of your market category — The mental "box" of types of products that people put you into. If you’re launching a type of product that requires a lot of change and nobody has ever seen before, you are creating a new category.
• Target — Segment + use case/application + industry priorities. Who has the authority to buy, and who influences the buying decision?
• Your angle or point of view — Sets the mindset in the audience to continue listening to you. What do you see in the market/industry that nobody else sees? What is broken in the market/industry? What is a market condition or trend that everyone believes and understands?
• Main problem or pain/challenge you solve — What do you help your customers achieve, and what pain/friction does your product address? Why should I act?
• Top competitors — Competitive solutions [mature markets] or an established behavior/status quo [new markets]
• Product Messages — How do you do it?
• Risk-Reduction Messages — What makes you a low-risk choice? Check our version of the whole product concept , The Brand Differentiation Wheel™.
• Differentiators [intangibles and tangibles] — Why you? What makes your product unique? If your competitor offers the same thing, it’s not a differentiator. Differentiators can be intangibles when in the mainstream.
• Product benefits — What are the outcomes your product provides?
• Sense of buying urgency — Why should I act now? What triggers the decision to buy because it is a terrible loss that needs a solution right now? What is a market or macroeconomic condition that may trigger the decision?
• Credibility statements — Why should I trust you?

How to write a positioning statement?

A positioning statement is a great team alignment tool. It guides your product development, marketing strategy, and sales process by defining your market, competitive advantage, and the unique position of your product.

All this can be summarized in this product positioning statement template:

Product positioning example: the ConvertKit case

Convertkit is a real-world example of effective positioning to establish market leadership in a crowded mainstream category.

They started when the marketing platforms and email automation categories were already crowded and dominated by companies like Mailchimp, Active Campaign, and 100+ other tools in the same category.

Instead of competing with the hundreds of platforms and the existing market leader (Mailchimp), they discovered a lucrative underserved segment.

They focused all their efforts on building a complete product and differentiated value proposition for that segment.

Convertkit's positioning statement example:

ConvertKit is the current market leader in marketing platforms for creators by using the magic formula:

SEGMENTATION + DIFFERENTIATION = MARKET LEADERSHIP

Testing your messaging

You don't want to launch a press release or communicate the general availability of an untested product that nobody wants or understands.

Test or validate to get direct feedback from your audience and understand how they view your product before it hits the market. You might even get your first customers.

Here are some real-world ways to test them:

• Create a website/landing page and test it with Wynter .
• Create a sales pitch and share it live with players in your market ecosystem (see step 3).
• If you have a customer base, find who can be early adopters. If they might be interested, pitch them and see how they react.

That being said, the best way to test how you communicate your product's position is, well, sell your product!

Through this audience testing and feedback, you'll:

• Understand where your product fits in your audience's minds.
• Understand the features that might make your product unique.
• Learn what your audience thinks your product can solve.
• Iterate and improve your product positioning efforts.

All this testing is a market feedback loop that comes after and just after you have performed the initial market and audience research steps.

Adapt your positioning strategy to the behavioral changes of your market

Positioning is not one point in time but a dynamic exercise because the types of buyers you'll find in a tech market make decisions based on different criteria.

Business leaders' approach to evaluating your product will switch as your market matures. You'll find new motivations to buy, which means they perceive the way value changes:

• Innovators (2.5%): want to explore new things or new technologies.
• Early adopters (13.5%): want a competitive advantage and stand out from peers
• The early majority(34%): wants to increase productivity, typically by solving a persistent problem.
• The late majority (34% of markets): wants cost reduction
• Laggards (16%): want to stick with the status quo

That means your value and how you communicate it must also change to keep in alignment with your market.

Because you don't know the type of buyer reading your website, you must provide all messages to position your product (and, when mature, your brand) as a highly differentiated, relevant, trusted, and low-risk solution.

3. Activating your desired product position in your prospects' mind with an ecosystem strategy

Your product or brand position exists in people's minds, not your words. You can't position your product; the market does it — influenced by the top 10% ecosystem players. You need them.

That's why helping your market make that mental space for your product with education and awareness is a must step in your product positioning efforts.

Every market has a set of ecosystem or infrastructure players between your product/brand and your potential new customers. 10% of these ecosystem players influence the other 90%.

These ecosystem players are the ones influencing the creation of mental positions and perceptions, mainly through WOM.

New product positioning done right includes a marketing plan to create your desired market position by educating your ecosystem players.

The next pyramid is a real-world example of the ecosystem map in the Incident Management software space in the USA in 2023:

Build relationships with the top 10% of players in the ecosystem, address their concerns about your product, and nurture them with custom messages they can share with the rest of the market.

Once you have your draft of your positioning strategy, follow these steps to introduce your product and start building your position:

• Map your market infrastructure of players. Follow the pyramid and define the layers and individuals that compose your market infrastructure. Use Linked, Google, and Sparktoro as your tools for this step.
• Research each player.
• Create an outreach and content strategy for each layer in the pyramid. Use this Miro board to facilitate a team working session.
• Assign an owner to develop a relationship.
• Ask for feedback from the players. Fix their concerns and get back with your fixes in terms of product and messaging.
• Keep the relationship warm. As you develop the relationship, you may want to co-author papers/posts, co-speak at events, go live with them, and contribute to industry reports...

The following image is an example of product positioning activation.

By securing a podcast interview hosted by a 3rd party thought leader in the market ecosystem of our client, the CEO was able to communicate their positioning strategy.

It helped them gain credibility and authority because they were invited by an objective, unbiased 3rd party player with no intention to sell.

‍Understanding the market ecosystem forces and building relations with the top 10% of influencers is critical to increasing Word-of-mouth and building your market position.

‍ Building this WOM system reduces customer acquisition costs, positions your product in the market, builds credibility and brand awareness, and optimizes market pull.

Want more detail about the process of product positioning?

Watch our webinar on positioning for B2B high-tech 👇👇👇

Let's summarize!

Product positioning is crucial to the success of new B2B technology and software products. It helps differentiate your new product from the competition and communicate its uniqueness to your target audience.

Take the time to evaluate positioning possibilities for your innovation, perform thorough market and audience research, identify whitespace, and develop a desired positioning strategy and activation plan to be seen as a credible, relevant, and differentiated provider by your target customers.

Email us to let us know what you think about the Positioning-to-market™ framework! Is it easier to follow than the 11-step go-to-market strategy? What do you like and what you don't?

Thanks for reading my thoughts! I bring 16 years of experience selling and marketing B2B tech products. I define myself as a thinker on the impact of human behavior on innovation adoption, marketing strategy, go-to-market, and business leadership in B2B high-tech. Armed with this knowledge, I help B2B high-tech leaders accelerate traction by aligning their strategy with what buyers want as coach, speaker, and workshop leader.

Related Articles

16 Examples of Positioning Statements & How to Craft Your Own

Published: June 05, 2024

Picture this: You launch a new product after you’ve spent countless hours, weeks, months, or even years determining what sets it apart from the competition and building a brand identity.

Sadly, it falls flat because you don’t have a positioning statement to guide your sales reps, marketers, and service and support teams to prove your value to your target audience.

Whether this has happened to you or not, I’m here to help. In this post, I’ll explain what a positioning statement is, outline exactly how to write a positioning statement (with advice from experts), and go over some real-life positioning statement examples to inspire you.

Table of Contents

What is a positioning statement?

What is the purpose of a positioning statement.

• Positioning Statement vs Mission Statement

Value Proposition vs. Positioning Statement

The core elements of strategic market positioning, how to write a positioning statement, positioning statement examples.

A positioning statement is a brief description of a product or service and an explanation of how it fulfills a particular need of the target market. The goal of a positioning statement is to align marketing efforts with a company's brand and value proposition.

A positioning statement is an internal tools that help marketers appeal to their buyer personas in a relevant way. They're a must-have for any positioning strategy because they create a clear vision for your brand .

Having a clear and concise positioning statement is important because it gives potential consumers the ability to understand your business at first glance. Buyers want to know how your product and purpose differentiate you from the rest of the market, without buying the product first.

Here’s what Mike Sadowski , Founder and CEO of Brand24 , told me when I asked him about positioning statements: “I once asked myself, ‘What is the real purpose of a positioning statement?’ My answer: to communicate to people for whom I create my brand that it's tailored perfectly for them, addressing all levels of their needs...I view the positioning statement as a message that convinces people that our brand and product are precisely what they desire.”

10 Positioning Statement Templates

Everything you need to create a stand-out positioning statement.

• Defining a positioning statement
• 6 tips for writing a positioning statement
• 10 industry specific positioning statement templates

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The purpose of a positioning statement is to convey a brand's value proposition to its ideal customers. It also frames the brand's identity, goals, and distinguishing features within the context of the buyer’s experience.

To craft your positioning statement, you'll need to get clear on a few key facets of your business:

• Who you serve
• What value you offer
• How you position your offer
• Why you're in business
• What makes you different from the competition

Next, I'll talk about how a positioning statement differs from some other common guiding principles in a business marketing strategy.

Fill out the form to access free positioning statement templates.

Positioning statement vs. mission statement.

A mission statement is the purpose your business serves in the market — it's an inherent part of the organization that guides every business function. When considering the “what, why, and how” of your business, a mission statement answers the question “why” while the positioning statement answers the “what.”

(If you’re curious about what the "how" looks like, here it is .)

Unlike a mission statement , your positioning statement isn't public-facing. You don’t want to give away any competitive intelligence to your competitors, so it’s used as a source of truth to guide other processes, like the messaging for your marketing campaigns or the talking points salespeople use during 1:1 conversations.

At its core, your business’s positioning statement summarizes the value that your brand, products, and services bring to the target market.

The value proposition and positioning statement are both key elements in a business' marketing strategy, however, there are differences between these two. A value proposition describes what sets your product or service apart from competitors. It gives an overview of the benefits a product or service offers.

A positioning statement is broader and it’s created after you've developed your business' value proposition. It also identifies the primary customer benefits — why someone needs your product or service.

Now that you understand the differences among some common business and marketing elements, here are the core elements of strategic marketing positioning that you'll need to know.

As I mentioned earlier, crafting your positioning statement starts with a good understanding of your company. This includes defining the following core elements:

• Target market
• Market category
• Customer pains
• Brand promise
• Brand identity and values

Target Audience

Your target audience is the "who" aspect of your positioning. Simply defined, it's the group of consumers you're targeting with your product or services.

They say that "the riches are in the niches." To me this means that, even if anyone can use your product or service, you should still be targeting specific buyers to maintain integrity and differentiation within your brand.

In my opinion, the best and most foolproof way to define a solid target audience is to create a buyer persona (a representation of your ideal customer).

Product Positioning

Product positioning should lead with the product's benefits rather than its features . A smart way to do this is to imagine your customer’s life before and after using your solution. Then, tell the story of what happens to them when they make that decision. That’s the benefit you’ll include in your product positioning.

Market Category

A market includes buyers and sellers. A category defines a specific segment of that market. Market categories can be as broad as "grocery store" and as niche as "vegetarian health food store." Market categories usually start out broad and get more niche as the businesses occupying that market expand their product and service offerings to the consumers in the market.

Whether your market category is developed or you're part of an emerging or niche market, I recommend defining who all potential buyers are, where they search for goods and services, and who has their attention. You'll want to define what your competition offers and how you can position your brand apart from those competitors .

Customer Pains

Customer pains are the problems or issues your target audience is experiencing that could be solved with products or services available in your market category. Your product or service should aim to address customer pains and offer a solution.

Brand Promise

Your brand promise is ultimately what the target audience or buyer persona stands to gain from using your product or service. It's what success looks like to them if their pain or problem is resolved.

Brand Identity

Brand identity is the personality of your business and includes both visible factors (such as logo design) and invisible ones (such as values or voice). Brand identity is one aspect of strategic market positioning that will set you apart from competitors and help you gain recognition from your target audience.

Values guide how your business makes decisions within the context of your brand. They create the culture of your organization and leave a favorable impression on your target audience. They are the intangible methods with which you execute your mission and vision.

Featured Resource : 50 Examples of Company Values

Once you have a solid understanding of these core elements, you can begin crafting the positioning statement.

My Pro Tip: I recommend developing your business’ value proposition before writing your positioning statement. When you know the unique value you bring, it’s much easier to craft a statement that speaks directly to your target audience and describes how your product or service is the best solution for their pain points.

• Create a vision board.
• Keep it brief.
• Make the statement unique and memorable.
• Remain true to your business’s core values.
• Include what the brand delivers to consumers.
• Differentiate your business from the competition.
• Keep it simple.
• Consult a colleague.

When writing and evaluating your positioning statement, keep the following tips in mind:

1. Create a vision board.

Positioning statements are written documents. Since they don’t include images, video, or other visuals, it can be challenging to communicate what your business is, who it serves, and why that matters in just a few sentences.

To bypass the initial blank page syndrome , create a vision board instead. A Columbia University study found that visual characteristics can trigger emotional responses , which can help you understand your target audience and what speaks to them.

To leverage this response, look for images that represent your customer in the environment where they need your product or service the most. Notice the emotions in the images, who is around your ideal customer in the image, and what they’re doing in the image to solve the problem.

Image Source

Creating a vision board that represents your target audience when they need your product the most can help make your positioning statement come to life.

2. Make it brief.

You have a short time to capture attention, so a brief positioning statement is much more likely to be read than a longer one.

Your brand’s positioning statement should be concise and to the point. Aim for no more than three to five sentences, if possible.

The wordier that your statement gets, the less factual it becomes. It then risks becoming more aspirational instead of what your business is, with more elements that are more inflated than grounded in truth.

Pro Tip: Fluff and unnecessary details are your worst enemy when it comes to being brief. Stay focused on the value your product or service provides, and get rid of anything else that distracts from that.

Heather Johnson , MedTech Marketing Consultant and President at OutWord Bound Communications , shared her advice with me, and it’s a great exercise for keeping it brief: “Keep asking “so what” until you get to the root of those answers. For example, a small business wants to acquire and retain more customers without spending tons of time fiddling with technology; your XYZ platform makes it happen by…”

3. Make it unique and memorable.

This statement should be unique to your company and the problems you aim to solve. When crafting your positioning statement, be sure to emphasize the distinctive qualities of your brand.

Buyers should be able to see the special value that your business can offer or solve for. Many markets are already saturated with products or services that are similar to your offering, so your statement should be able to capture their attention against the noise.

Pro Tip: I think Shelley Grieshop , Creative Writer at Totally Promotional , tip about exploiting personal history is a great way to make your positioning statement unique and memorable.

She said, “Select one thing your company does or offers that is uniquely related to your personal history and demographics. Exploit that tidbit in your marketing strategy and all communications to show your individuality and establish brand recognition. The bottom line: Your story is your value.”

4. Remain true to your business’s core values.

The positioning statement isn’t the time to get fancy and pitch a new angle for the business. Your brand’s positioning statement should accurately reflect the core values of your business.

Clear core values in your positioning statement also send messages to your internal team. They help new employees with better alignment. Besides letting consumers know your stances, core values help existing team members stay on the right track and continue to deliver on your brand’s promises.

Pro Tip: Clarity and authenticity are William Hogsett ’s, CEO of Seota Digital Marketing , best practices for high-quality positioning statements. He says authenticity builds trust and credibility, so your positioning statement should be authentic and reflect your brand’s core values and strengths.

He said: “Incorporate elements of your brand’s story, mission, and personality into the statement to create a compelling narrative that resonates with your audience on an emotional level.”

5. Include what the brand delivers to consumers.

Your brand offering is a vital part of your positioning statement. It’s the main reason that customers are seeking you out, so when crafting your own, you need to cover these two bases:

• Who does your company serve?
• How does your company serve this group?

Succinctly state who your customer is and how you will help them in your positioning statement.

Pro Tip: Sai Sathish , B2B Marketing Leader and Founder at ConsaInsights , told me that considering your audience’s perspective is crucial. He says it’s easy to get carried away with what you think the best thing is about your brand when it should really be about what the best thing is for your audience.

He said: “I have had many instances where I thought my positioning statement was the most revolutionary one and would impress people in one go, but they failed miserably. So don’t brainstorm on how to highlight your company’s great aspects — simply back-calculate. Understand what they would like to hear and find that about your company and present it to them.”

6. Differentiate your business from the competition.

An effective positioning statement should articulate what differentiates a brand from its competition. Highlight your company’s unique qualities and how those qualities help serve your customers. You can even consider a niche marketing strategy .

Does your brand have cause-related campaigns? Differentiate your brand by highlighting your goals to give back.

Does your brand serve a previously underrepresented target audience? Let them know clearly and proudly that you fill that gap. If you’re not sure how to separate your product offer from your competitors, these competitive analysis templates can help you out.

There are so many different ways to stand out against the crowd, you just have to survey your competitors and see how you do it better .

Pro Tip : Bhavik Sarkhedi , CMO of Write Right , says that “[When creating a positioning statement] It’s crucial to articulate not only what your brand offers, but also how it differs from the competition.”

He adds, “Ask yourself: What can we offer that no one else can? Why should the customer choose us over others? This focused approach ensures that your brand’s message is clear and compelling, making it easier for customers to see the value in choosing your brand.”

7. Keep it simple.

In almost any circumstance, your team should be able to align key business decisions with your brand’s positioning statement because its simple and easy-to-understand nature .

The more complicated your statement becomes, the less convincing or engaging it will be. Make sure your business’ value and offering is unmistakable and buyers will understand and seek to learn more about it in their buyer’s journey.

8. Consult a colleague.

Just because positioning statements aren’t public-facing doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be easy to understand. Investors, new hires, and external agencies who work closely with your businesses will need to use this document, too.

After spending several hours perfecting every word, you might think what you’ve written is wonderful (and I’m not saying it isn’t) when it’s actually filled with jargon, acronyms, and features that aren’t clear to someone outside your company.

When you’re in your final stages, reach out to a colleague. Someone not directly involved with the writing process can give you a fresh and objective perspective to help identify any issues you’ve overlooked. A third party might even have an easier time placing themselves in your audience’s shoes.

My Pro Tip: You want helpful and actionable feedback, so I recommend telling your colleagues exactly what you’re looking for. For example, you could ask them to read for:

• Clarity - Does your positioning statement clearly communicate value?
• Consistency - Does your positioning statement align with your known brand image and values?
• Relevance - Is your positioning statement relevant to your target audience’s pain points?
• Impact - Does your positioning statement leave the reader interested in learning more?

Positioning Statement Template

For [your target market] who [target market need], [your brand name] provides [main benefit that differentiates your offering from competitors] because [reason why target market should believe your differentiation statement.]

You can use the template above to form a positioning statement for your startup or small business . Add the details of your target market, company, and the main points that make your product or service stand out from competitors. You can also download 10 more position statement templates for free below.

Download Now: 10 Free Positioning Statement Prompts

Each business is unique, and it's alright if your statement doesn't fit the template exactly, but I suggest including the main points below:

• A description of the target market.
• A description of the target market needs.
• How your business will meet their needs.
• What differentiates your product or service from the competition.
• Why consumers in your target market should believe your brand's claims.

You might need a little more inspiration before taking pen to paper and creating your own positioning statement. Here are some examples to get your creative juices flowing.

I mentioned above that your positioning statement is a crucial part of your business and a guiding source of truth. So, for the most part, it’s away from the public eye and you’ll rarely find a business’ exact positioning statement floating around on the internet.

Because of that, I’ve used our positioning statement template to craft a few example statements for recognizable brands using the information we know about them.

Below are examples of positioning statements of well-known brands to give you a feel for how to create one for your business.

HubSpot Positioning Statement:

"Since 2006, HubSpot has been on a mission to make the world more inbound. Today, over 100,000 customers in more than 120 countries use HubSpot's award-winning software, services, and support to transform the way they attract, engage, and delight customers. Composed of HubSpot's CRM, Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub, and Operations Hub, HubSpot gives companies the tools they need to grow better."

Why I Like This Positioning Statement:

It starts with a clearly defined mission and track record to capture the attention of prospects. Then, HubSpot’s positioning statement notes its trustworthiness and variety of products to better service businesses looking to grow and scale for the future.

• Connects with the target audience by showing global businesses its breadth of scalable solutions.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique wa y by showcasing that these products are made to scale.
• Highlights core values by emphasizing its focus on customer success and innovation.
• Offers a clear and focused message by leaning into its value proposition and services.

2. Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola Positioning Statement:

"For quality beverage seekers, Coca-Cola offers a wide range of the most refreshing options. Each creates a great experience for customers when they enjoy a Coca-Cola brand drink. Unlike other beverage options, Coca-Cola products inspire happiness and make a positive difference in customers' lives, and the brand is intensely focused on the needs of consumers and customers."

While its product offering is beverages, Coca-Cola leads its positioning statement with the positive experience it wants to offer. It appeals to emotions and tells us consumers that we’re buying from a company that wants to better our lives — even with something as simple as a cold drink. It:

• Connects with the target audience by focusing on beverage consumers looking for quality and satisfaction.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by focusing on positive impact and using phrases like "inspire happiness" and "make a positive difference."
• Highlights core values with a focus on quality products and customer experience.
• Offers a clear and focused message that is easy to understand and highlights benefits without feeling salesy.

3. White Dog Distilling

White Dog Distilling Positioning Statement:

"Founded in 2016 by the husband/wife team of Carlo and Alecia Catucci, White Dog Distilling stands for passion, spirit, and the journey from grain to glass. Bolstered by Carlo's background in physics and Alecia's culinary and product development experience, they set forth with one goal in mind: to produce high-quality distilled spirits that could appeal to both novice spirit drinkers and longtime aficionados alike."

White Dog leads its positioning statement with the quality it delivers to customers. Offering locally sourced and sustainable ingredients attracts customers looking for good value versus price, with delicious taste. I think the statement also makes the brand accessible to those who aren’t well-versed in spirits.

• Connects with the target audience by using the founders' story to connect with both novice and expert customers.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by focusing on quality, craft, and innovation.
• Highlights core values by showing how and why it's committed to using quality materials and processes.
• Offers a clear and focused message by using the value proposition as the center, then highlighting how the founders create that value.

4. Alaska Airlines

Alaska Airlines Positioning Statement:

"We are creating an airline people love. Each day, we're guided by our core values of own safety , do the right thing , be kindhearted , deliver performance , and be remarkable at work and in our communities. Alaska Airlines also fosters a diverse and inclusive culture and is an Equal Opportunity Employer."

Alaska Airlines leads its positioning statement with love and heart. It introduces prospects to the brand feeling as though they’re more than typical transactions. Instead, it focuses on each customer as a unique individual who's worth delivering great service and inclusive experiences to.

• Connects with the target audience with values that emphasize community, diversity, and inclusivity.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by putting customers and their experience in the spotlight.
• Highlights core values that matter to customers, like safety, ethics, kindness, and reliability.
• Offers a clear and focused message by reinforcing its brand identity instead of creating a new set of benchmarks or expectations in the positioning statement.

5. Organic Bath Co.

Organic Bath Co. Positioning Statement:

"If you're seeking clean and healthy ingredients in your body care routine, Organic Bath Co. offers a line of organic and natural skincare products that you can feel good about using. Trust in Organic Bath Co. for clean uncomplicated ingredients that will leave you feeling rejuvenated and cared for."

I found that Organic Bath Co.’s positioning statement successfully conveys its focus on quality ingredients, health, and the value of rest. Prospects could be looking for a soap brand that not only has organic and safe ingredients, but also encourages its customers to indulge themselves in the relaxing experience of using its product line.

• Connects with the target audience by finding a priority (clean, natural ingredients) and showing how the product meets that need.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by emphasizing the feeling it gives customers as well as how the brand makes its products.
• Highlights core values by focusing not only on company values , but the core values its target audience feels are most important.
• Offers a clear and focused message by starting with what its audience is looking for, then sharing how the product meets those needs.

Amazon Positioning Statement:

"For consumers who want to purchase a wide range of products online with quick delivery, Amazon is a one-stop online shopping site. Amazon sets itself apart from other online retailers with its customer obsession, passion for innovation, and commitment to operational excellence."

I like that Amazon cuts straight to the chase with its positioning statement. It clearly outlines that its store is a quick way for its customers to find everything they need, to better help the customer achieve their goals.

• Connects with the target audience by speaking to the needs of busy customers who prioritize convenience.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by emphasizing its commitment to customers, experience, and operational excellence.
• Highlights core values by selecting the most relevant brand values and weaving them into the positioning statement.
• Offers a clear and focused message by summarizing the value proposition of the platform.

IMPACT's Positioning Statement:

"Empower your business to thrive with IMPACT. Our They Ask, You Answer approach and consulting services in content marketing, video sales, website strategy, design, and more help you take ownership of your digital sales and marketing. Find out how you can achieve remarkable results and become a trusted voice in your industry with IMPACT."

I think IMPACT ’s positioning statement expertly explains how it goes against the grain to better serve its customers in the market, by eliminating the cycle of dependency. This approach is unique and will attract many prospects to want to learn more about its solutions.

• Connects with the target audience by speaking directly to business owners and marketers who are seeking a solution to marketing dependencies.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by clearly outlining what it does and how it accomplishes goals with clients.
• Highlights core values like empowerment, innovation, and trust with a quick explanation of the process and desired outcomes.
• Offers a clear and focused message by packing the most useful terms and ideas into one powerful paragraph.

8. Bandwagon Fan Club

Bandwagon Fan Club Positioning Statement:

"Experience the future of fandom with Bandwagon Fan Club. Our Proof of Experience™ blockchain technology connects sports and entertainment lovers directly with their favorite artists, teams, and entertainers. Choose Bandwagon Fan Club to create, own, and preserve history with cutting-edge technology."

When a product is tough to understand, doubt can creep in and possibly turn customers away. I can see how that could happen with Bandwagon Fan Club since it uses newer technology, but I was impressed by its direct and clear positioning statement. It explains exactly how its technology connects fans directly to their favorite performers and teams and narrows in on the end value.

• Connects with the target audience by centering on the people who will want this product — sports and entertainment super fans.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way with exclusive technology mentions.
• Highlights core values by emphasizing its customer focus and innovation.
• Offers a clear and focused message — that fans can use this technology to own a unique piece of event history.

9. Gro Intelligence

Gro Intelligence Positioning Statement:

"Develop a holistic data-driven understanding of your impact as a business in the agriculture or climate science industries with Gro Intelligence. We offer live data, machine learning, and domain expertise to provide honest answers where ecology meets economy."

This positioning statement starts with the problem it solves — helping businesses see their impact with data. Then, it explains the technology it uses to show that impact, which builds trust with those potential customers. I like that it:

• Connects with the target audience by targeting businesses in the agriculture and climate sciences industries.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by naming the technologies it uses to collect data insights.
• Highlights core values with terms like honest, holistic, economy, and ecology. This word choice quickly communicates what is most important to this brand.
• Offers a clear and focused message by focusing on product benefits and how the brand delivers those benefits.

Nike Positioning Statement:

"For athletes in need of high-quality, fashionable athletic wear, Nike offers customers top-performing sports apparel and shoes made of the highest quality materials. Its products are the most advanced in the athletic apparel industry because of Nike's commitment to innovation and investment in the latest technologies."

Nike’s positioning statement does an excellent job of speaking to its target audience by clearly outlining its range of products to better serve athletes. I also like that it uses inclusive language to define what an athlete is, letting hobbyists and professionals alike know that they can derive value from its product line.

• Connects with the target audience by identifying who uses these products and what they need.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way through emphasis on innovation and technology in athletic gear production.
• Highlights core values by combining how this brand differentiates itself with a diverse range of customer needs.
• Offers a clear and focused message that is straightforward and covers the most important qualities of its products.

11. Thrive Market

Thrive Market Positioning Statement:

"Thrive Market is an online, membership-based market making the highest-quality, healthy, and sustainable products available for every budget, lifestyle, and geography."

Short and to the point, Thrive Market lets prospects know exactly what it has to offer in a single sentence. Prospects won’t have to guess what type of product they can find from it, and they also know that their line must be extremely versatile, too.

• Connects with the target audience by leading with health and sustainability.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by highlighting the membership aspect of its offer.
• Highlights core values by emphasizing quality, health, budget, lifestyle, and location.
• Offers a clear and focused message with a single-sentence positioning statement that is both well-defined and easy to understand.

12. Gig Wage

Gig Wage Positioning Statement:

"Gig Wage uses proprietary technology for payroll services and compliance to offer control and flexibility to contractor-dependent businesses. This platform is specifically for the 1099 economy to manage, pay, and support happy independent workers."

This statement narrows its focus to a collection of employers that need a solution for 1099 workers. Then, it covers what it offers to solve a set of common problems for that audience.

• Connects with the target audience by talking about the needs of both employees and independent contractors.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by emphasizing proprietary technology and how that tech can help.
• Highlights core values with a focus on a desired outcome — happy independent workers.
• Offers a clear and focused message . Some positioning statements need to include industry-specific terms that not everyone is familiar with. But this statement pairs those terms with simple language that makes it easy for anyone to read.

Mural Positioning Statement:

"For organizations who need visual collaboration at scale, Mural helps you bring imagination to work from anywhere with agile and design thinking methodologies, sales and consulting, and research and design, all in one platform. Join a growing network of global enterprises, consultancies, schools, and nonprofits using Mural to innovate."

Leading with the primary value your business offers is a smart strategy. This positioning statement quickly lets consumers know you can use this product to visually collaborate from a range of locations. It also offers proof that you can trust this product because it's used by a diverse network of businesses.

• Connects with the target audience by making the need for visual collaboration a priority, then sharing what kinds of companies are already using this tool.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by highlighting specific ways businesses and individual users can get value from this product .
• Highlights core values with terms like innovate, collaboration, and imagination. This emphasizes those values for this brand and for companies who want to make those core values a priority.
• Offers a clear and focused message by focusing the first sentence on what the product is and how to use it, then using the second sentence to show who is already using the product.

Apple Positioning Statement:

"For individuals who want the best personal computer or mobile device, Apple leads the technology industry with the most innovative products. Apple emphasizes technological research and advancement and takes an innovative approach to business best practices — it considers the impact our products and processes have on its customers and the planet."

This positioning statement for Apple appeals to people of all different backgrounds. It inspires them to expect quality products made with intent to innovate in a way that helps people and the environment. I think it's also a great example of how to gain a prospects' trust by emphasizing industry authority.

• Connects with the target audience by aligning itself with people who want "the best." It also emphasizes the brand's leadership in the industry.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way with emphasis on innovative approaches to research and technological advancement.
• Highlights core values by mentioning the customer and environmental impact its products and processes have.
• Offers a clear and focused message that quickly communicates the most important aspects of the brand and products.

15. McDonald's

McDonald's Positioning Statement:

"McDonald's is a leader in the fast-food industry, with quick, friendly service and consistency across thousands of convenient locations. McDonald's' dedication to improving operations and customer satisfaction sets it apart from other fast-food restaurants."

McDonald’s doesn’t narrow its target audience, but instead panders to individuals of all sorts looking for a fast and satisfying service. It also leads with its position as an industry leader to gain prospect trust.

• Connects with the target audience by highlighting the qualities a person might seek in a fast food restaurant. This strategy is effective because it appeals to a broad audience in a specific situation.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by mentioning how its operations and customer satisfaction goals differ from a set of competitors. It doesn't compare itself to every restaurant, only fast-food spots.
• Highlights core values by leading the positioning statement with speed, service, convenience, and consistency.
• Offers a clear and focused message in just two simple sentences, this statement shares what is most important to this brand in a compelling way.

16. Beautycounter

Beautycounter Positioning Statement:

"One by one, we are leading a movement to a future where all beauty is clean beauty. We are powered by people, and our collective mission is to get safer products into the hands of everyone. Formulate, advocate, and educate—that’s our motto for creating products that truly perform while holding ourselves to unparalleled standards of safety. Why? It’s really this simple: beauty should be good for you."

Unlike other beauty brands that strive to fix or perfect customers’ complexions without much focus on ingredients, Beautycounter takes the unique stance that beauty should be good for more than your looks. I think its unique focus on cleaner, safer ingredients will attract customers looking to maintain their complexions instead of a temporary fix.

• Connects with the target audience by advocating for cleaner, safer products on behalf of beauty lovers.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by communicating higher-than-average safety standards.
• Highlights core values like education and safety, and supporting people looking for clean beauty products.
• Offers a clear and focused message by outlining a clear and easy-to-understand goal, then sharing how it plans to meet that goal.

Craft a Positioning Statement for Your Business

Competition online makes crafting a great positioning statement more important than ever, but I see this as a unique opportunity to make your business stand out, boast your unique value, and connect with your audience.

If you leverage the tips and insights from the experts I spoke to, you can create a positioning statement that paints a clear roadmap for business growth.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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What Is Product Positioning? Definition and Template

Product positioning is a marketing strategy that influences how consumers view products. Learn how to position products and download a free template in this guide.

Product positioning is a marketing strategy that influences how consumers view a product. It’s about communicating how a product can better solve consumer needs than its competitors.

In this post, learn the full definition of product positioning, how to develop positioning strategies, and download a free positioning template.

What is product positioning?

Product positioning is a form of marketing that presents the benefits of a product to a defined target audience . Through market research and product analysis, marketers use the product positioning process to determine how to talk about a product and who they should talk to.

A product positioning strategy will also highlight which product benefits are most relevant to potential customers. Knowing this information helps streamline marketing efforts and messaging . It also helps differentiate your product or service in the marketplace.

Product positioning is an effective way to define a product and customer base, but you can produce multiple definitions and audiences. For example, a product might be positioned as the most convenient option for one target audience while being promoted as the highest-quality choice to another set of consumers.

Product positioning statement

A product positioning statement concisely describes a product’s unique value to a specific audience. It includes a target market, key product benefits, and competitive advantages.

A well-written positioning statement acts as an internal guide for marketing and sales, keeping communications consistent.

Here’s what a product positioning statement for an eco-friendly cleaning product might look like:

Product vs. brand vs. market positioning

Positioning is a key concept across your business, not just for individual products. Here’s how brand and market position differ from product positioning:

Brand positioning

Instead of defining a space for a product, brand positioning looks at how elements of your brand affect consumer interactions. It’s about defining what your brand stands for, its values, and how it’s different from competitors.

Another way of understanding brand position is to consider what consumers associate with your business. For instance, when you think of Tesla, you might associate it with innovation and sustainability. Or Nike with accessible performance. For instance:

• Apple positions itself as the world leader in user experience.
• McDonald’s is synonymous with affordable, fast, and satisfying meals.
• Red Bull’s brand says adventure, excitement, and energy.
• Rolex is positioned to communicate prestige and exclusivity.

💡 Brand positioning focuses on a business’s strengths and ignores its flaws . The high price point of Apple devices and the questionable nutritional value of McDonald’s recipes aren’t addressed by the brand positioning statement.

Market positioning

Market positioning , meanwhile, is a broader look at how a vertical or an entire business interacts with a market sector. Beyond product and brand considerations, market positioning analysis will help decide product lines, pricing, acquisitions, partnerships, and the platforms and sales channels through which your business reaches potential customers.

Product positioning examples

You can see product positioning at work in advertising, marketing content, sponsorships, taglines, packaging, pricing, and other business-to-consumer channels.

Experimenting with those channels can help you validate your position. Let’s say market research reveals that a product—a hypoallergenic baby lotion—is popular among new mothers. To better position this product for its consumers, we need to know what new mothers appreciate about the lotion.

To find out, we could speak directly to the target audience using our social media channels .

Or, we could create content that promotes different features of the lotion—perhaps its low price or commitment to natural ingredients. Then, we can run an A/B test to discover which features are most discussed. 

This approach allowed Shopify entrepreneurs Need/Want to hone positioning for several products, including its Smart Bedding:

Smart Bedding: An example of effective product positioning

Need/Want, a company that began with a single product, has effectively utilized product positioning to build a portfolio of several small businesses.

Its journey began with Smart Bedding , a product designed to solve the problem of unmade beds.

To validate their product positioning, Need/Want turned to Facebook ads . It created several ads, each with a different tag line that referenced a benefit or its unique bedding design. For example, one ad positioned Smart Bedding as a luxury item, while another presented it as a practical solution to an everyday problem.

Each ad was shown to a different audience segment. When the campaign was completed, the ad that read “Never make your bed again” outperformed the others significantly. This allowed Need/Want to validate their product’s position as a practical, time-saving solution to a consumer need. 

How small businesses can position products to compete

Even without the deep pockets of large corporations, small businesses can find a competitive edge by using an effective product positioning strategy. Here are four steps to consider when strategizing.

1. Understand your customers

Instead of investing in expensive focus groups, small business owners can use ecommerce analytics to find customer insights. Data on customer habits can provide a real-world basis for future product positioning strategies.

At this point, you can also look at other data points to create a persona of your target customers—things like their browsing habits and online behavior. You can study the queries your website visitors enter into search engines or analyze stand-out aspects of your niche’s most popular products and SKUs .

Building customer personas guides your positioning strategies and fosters a team-wide understanding of the people who buy your products.

2. Explore the market landscape

To position your product, you need to understand how shoppers choose between your products and competitor offerings. Market research will reveal alternative options and identify what makes your items unique.

Researching direct and indirect competitors can shed light on how other businesses cater to customer needs. Additionally, engaging directly with potential customers through surveys or social selling may show how your brand compares to others.

3. Evaluate your product (SWOT analysis)

What are the distinct advantages of your product? To fully grasp them, it’s beneficial to undertake a comprehensive SWOT analysis . The SWOT method—which can be applied to your products, brand, or business—allows you to delve into your product’s strongest features and find areas for refinement.

💡 Download our free SWOT analysis template .

Leverage the customer personas you built in step one and the potential market opportunities uncovered during step two to find a unique space for your product in the minds of your customers.

This step is connected to the concept of a unique value proposition —the promise you make to your customer to solve their problem or meet their need through your product or service:

4. Write a positioning statement and plan your marketing

With personas, market fit, and product strengths defined, you have everything needed to write a product positioning statement.

With an agreed statement, you can build a product marketing plan to fulfill your value proposition. 

Remember, a big marketing budget isn’t a prerequisite for effective positioning. As long as you understand your target customer and can craft a narrative about your product’s benefits, there are many budget-friendly ways to promote your catalog.

Positioning templates

Positioning templates are tools to guide your thought process during product or brand positioning discussions. They provide a structured format to help you identify a target audience, define your unique selling proposition, and articulate how you differ from competitors.

Here are three common types of positioning templates:

1. Product positioning matrix

A positioning matrix is a chart to visually represent where your product stands compared to your competitors. It’s based on two or more key factors that are important to your customers. To create a positioning matrix:

• Identify two product attributes that your customers care about. For example, this could be price and quality.
• Draw a two-dimensional chart with one attribute on each axis.
• Plot your and your competitors’ products on the chart.

2. Perceptual maps

Perceptual maps are similar to positioning matrices. However, these charts are based on customer perceptions rather than objective data. To create a perceptual map:

• Identify two key attributes that your customers care about
• Survey your customers to rate your product and your competitors’ products on these attributes
• Plot the average scores for each product on a two-dimensional chart

3. Brand positioning template

A brand positioning template uses the same framework to visualize the uniqueness of your brand, by plotting your business and its competitors against various brand elements.

You can compare where brands lie in terms of specific elements such as pricing, color schemes, or sales channels. Or, you can consider more abstract factors like a brand’s moral values. When completed, a brand template will reveal where the market is crowded and the areas you can pursue to make your brand stand out.

Start with this simple free brand positioning template to help position your brand. It will identify unoccupied spots in your niche. To use the template, place your business and its competitors on the chart for a visual representation of your market.

Get your free brand positioning template

Stand out from the competition and make your product the go-to choice with this brand positioning analysis.

Pole position

Product positioning can give your product space to breathe in a crowded marketplace. Even the smallest businesses can use product positioning to compete with national brands.

It’s the art of understanding your customers, studying your competitors, and finding the problem for which your product provides the best solution.

Product positioning FAQ

What is positioning, and why is it important, what are the 4 main components of product positioning.

• Target market: Identifying the target market and understanding their needs, wants, and preferences.
• Unique selling proposition (USP): Developing a unique selling proposition that clearly distinguishes the product from its competitors.
• Brand identity: Creating an identity that resonates with the target market and builds loyalty.
• Communication strategy: Developing a communication strategy that effectively conveys the brand’s message.

What is product positioning apex?

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Strategy Studies

The ultimate guide to product positioning.

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In today’s competitive business landscape, effective product positioning can make or break a company’s success. It’s not just about having a great product; it’s about how you present it to your target audience. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive deep into the world of product positioning, exploring strategies, techniques, and real-world examples to help you master this essential aspect of marketing.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Product positioning is the art and science of shaping how your target audience perceives your product in comparison to competitors’ offerings. It goes beyond the tangible features and benefits; it’s about creating a unique and compelling identity for your product in the minds of consumers.

Why Product Positioning Matters

The impact on brand identity.

Effective product positioning is closely tied to brand identity. It defines who you are as a company and what you stand for. When done right, it can establish a strong emotional connection with your audience, fostering brand loyalty and trust.

Competitive Advantage

In a crowded marketplace, standing out is crucial. Your product’s positioning can give you a competitive edge by highlighting what makes you different and better than the rest.

Key Elements of Effective Product Positioning

Identifying your target audience.

Understanding your audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points is fundamental. Tailor your positioning to resonate with them on a personal level.

Defining Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

What sets your product apart? Your USP is the answer to this question. It should be clear, concise, and compelling.

Analyzing Market Trends

Stay ahead of the curve by keeping an eye on industry trends. Adapt your positioning to align with emerging market dynamics.

Crafting Your Positioning Statement

Creating a memorable tagline.

A memorable tagline can encapsulate your product’s essence in a few words. Think of Nike’s “Just Do It.”

Incorporating Emotional Appeal

Emotions drive consumer decisions. Craft a positioning statement that triggers the right emotions in your audience.

Choosing the Right Market Segment

Market segmentation strategies.

Divide your target market into segments based on demographics, psychographics, or behavior. This allows for more precise positioning.

Evaluating Market Size and Growth Potential

Prioritize segments that offer growth opportunities and align with your product’s strengths.

Competitor Analysis

Identifying your competitors.

Know your competitors inside out. Study their strengths and weaknesses to position yourself strategically.

SWOT Analysis

Conduct a SWOT analysis to assess your product’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the market.

Positioning Strategies

Cost leadership.

Position your product as the most cost-effective solution in the market.

Product Differentiation

Highlight unique features or qualities that set your product apart from competitors.

Niche Marketing

Target a specific niche within your market, catering to their unique needs.

Market Leader vs. Market Follower

Choose whether to be a leader, setting industry trends, or a follower, capitalizing on existing trends.

Implementing Your Positioning Strategy

Communicating your positioning.

Consistently convey your positioning through all marketing channels, from your website to social media.

Consistency Across All Touchpoints

Ensure a unified brand message across every customer interaction.

Measuring and Adapting

Key performance indicators (kpis).

Track KPIs like market share, customer satisfaction, and brand recognition to gauge the effectiveness of your positioning.

Gathering Customer Feedback

Listen to your customers. Their feedback can provide valuable insights for refining your positioning.

Real-World Success Stories

Apple inc.: the art of premium positioning.

Explore how Apple positioned itself as a premium brand, commanding customer loyalty and higher price points.

Tesla: Disrupting the Auto Industry

Learn how Tesla disrupted the traditional automotive industry through innovative positioning and sustainability.

Challenges and Pitfalls

Avoiding common mistakes.

Identify and steer clear of common pitfalls in product positioning, such as vague messaging or inconsistent branding.

Rebranding and Repositioning

Discover when and how to reposition your product to stay relevant in evolving markets.

The Future of Product Positioning

Evolving consumer preferences.

Stay ahead of evolving consumer preferences and adapt your positioning strategy accordingly.

Digital Marketing Trends

Embrace digital marketing trends like personalization and AI to enhance your product positioning efforts.

In conclusion, product positioning is a dynamic process that requires constant attention and adaptation. When executed effectively, it can elevate your brand, drive customer loyalty, and boost your bottom line. Remember that successful positioning is an ongoing journey, not a destination.

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Ian has marketed for some of the world's best-known brands like Hewlett-Packard, Ryder, Force Factor, and CIT Bank. His content has been downloaded 50,000+ times and viewed by over 90% of the Fortune 500. His marketing has been featured in Forbes, Inc. Magazine, Adweek, Business Insider, Seeking Alpha, Tech Crunch, Y Combinator, and Lifehacker. With over 10 startups under his belt, Ian's been described as a serial entrepreneur— a badge he wears with pride. Ian's a published author and musician and when he's not obsessively testing the next marketing idea, he can be found hanging out with family and friends north of Boston.

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Product positioning: Key elements and strategies for success

Reading time: about 7 min

• Product development

Whether you’re a small startup or an enterprise organization and whether you’re launching your first or fiftieth product, there is always a long list of to-dos and priorities to get your big idea to market. How will you sell your product? What digital assets do you need to create to promote it? How will it be produced and distributed? Who do you need to hire to help you to keep demand high and customers happy? 

It can be tempting to want to address all of these questions from the get-go. Many startup CEOs rush messaging and brand buildout in the name of driving quick demand and leads. However, your priority should be establishing where your product fits in the market, how it’s different from existing products, and why your customers should care or look into your product. 

This is called product positioning, and it’s the most critical step for long-term success. Let’s take a deeper look at how to position your product in the market. 

What is product positioning? 

A simple product positioning definition is where your product or service fits in the marketplace. It outlines all of the features that make your product unique and communicates how and why it’s better than other products or solutions.

Think of product positioning as your product’s foundation—this messaging will drive the rest of your go-to-market plan, from the content your marketing team creates to how your sales team speaks to prospective customers. Without it, your marketing plan will fail when pressure-tested against your competition. Effective product positioning considers your target audience and their needs and how your product can directly and effectively address those needs. 

However, product positioning can also be applied to products without an existing market. Apple mastermind Steve Jobs famously said:

“People don't know what they want until you show it to them…. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.” 

When creating a new product category or market, your product positioning will establish how you convince your customers of a need they didn’t even know they had. 

What should your product positioning consider?

No matter your product, the positioning of your product should include these seven elements.

This is your “why”—why does your product exist? How do you see your customers using it to improve their lives or solve a problem? Defining your mission will also help you think more clearly about how you will bring it to life in the market. 

Market category

Your market category is your competition zone. What kind of product are you selling? If you’re delving into an emerging market or creating an entirely new market category, this is your opportunity to put your stake in the ground and define it. 

Customer pain points 

What are your customers’ primary pain points? Does your product address one or many? How can you more clearly position your product as a solution to these challenges? 

Company and product differentiators

Often, if a problem is big enough, someone has tried to address it before. The key is to clearly define why your product provides a better solution to the problem—and more importantly, how. In a saturated marketplace, it’s critical to differentiate your product from the competition. 

Brand identity

Think about today’s most recognizable brands. The Nike swoop. The green Starbucks mermaid. The Target bullseye. In each of these cases, the company name doesn’t need to be present for you to identify the brand—and likely, the logo itself evokes some kind of opinion or emotion in you. This is the ultimate test of a strong brand. To create one, think about the tangible and symbolic things you’d like to be known for. This process requires introspection and vision. 

Speaking of vision, it’s easier to identify why you created a product in the first place. It’s more challenging to define your vision for the product’s evolution or future. Considering this as part of your product positioning will help you more clearly define your product’s immediate value—and its potential for growth. 

Product positioning statement

Once you’ve considered all of the above elements, you’re armed with all the context you need to draft a solid product positioning statement. From a strategic perspective, this is the core of all of the marketing materials and messaging to come. Concretely describe your product and its value to your target audience. 

Here is an example of a product positioning template: 

This product was created for [audience] that [need/want] [emotion or solution]. Our [company/product] is a [category/solution] that uniquely solves this by [features/benefits]. 

Once all stakeholders agree on this statement, you can also draft a creative customer-facing tagline. 

From product positioning to go-to-market: Strategies and templates for growth

There’s no one right way to capture the key elements of your product positioning. Many templates exist, and each can help you manage the process, provide a holistic look at every element of your new product positioning, and visualize how each piece relates to each other. A shared template can also make it easier for the necessary stakeholders to collaborate on different pieces of your product positioning puzzle. Let’s take a look at a few helpful models: 

Product positioning template 

A basic product positioning template allows you to more clearly define each of the seven elements above. Organizing this information in a single template helps you proactively identify any correlations or discrepancies in your product positioning. 

Tip: After gathering insights into each element of your product positioning, this template can also be used to share and evangelize your research across the larger organization. 

Ansoff matrix

Some elements of your product positioning exercise are easy to define. Others require a bit more collaboration or research. For these steps, an Ansoff growth matrix can help you determine exactly where your product fits into the marketplace, as well as risks and opportunities for growth. This simple 2x2 matrix can also add structure and rigor to future decisions as product offerings and company grow. 

Tip: Use an Ansoff growth matrix to define the more meaty elements of your product positioning, namely your market segment, customer pain points, and product differentiators. 

Business model canvas 

Big ideas often start as inspired conversations, or scattered, lengthy pages of notes. This is a great starting point, but you need to map out what your business or product will look like in practice to bring clarity to your concept and prioritize your efforts. 

A business model canvas is primarily used to map out larger business plans but is also effective in establishing and defining your product positioning. The canvas is a one-page document that succinctly summarizes a testable hypothesis of how your business (or product) should work or be defined—and all the imperatives to bring that vision to life. The canvas is a digestible grid that includes many of the elements listed above in a digestible grid but goes a step further to outline larger business considerations like revenue streams and pricing models. 

Tip: You can use an abbreviated version of this model to define your product positioning, then expand on it as you establish your go-to-market plan. 

Strategy mapping template

While it’s important to solidify your product positioning before anything else, it’s also important to have a clear vision of what comes next. A strategy mapping template helps bridge the gap between strategy planning and execution. When working on your product positioning, you can use this map to gather input, differentiate your value proposition, and establish what kind of work needs to be done. 

Tip: Use this model to ensure your defined product positioning is incorporated and considered in every step of your larger strategic business plan. 

Positioning yourself for success 

When it comes to successfully bringing a product to market, there are no shortcuts—and some steps are more business-critical than others. No matter your product, focusing on messaging and brand identity is paramount. The message is the strategy because every member of your org will need to carry it forward to drive any sort of sustainable demand. 

About Lucidchart

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

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How to describe your product and service in a business plan like a pro

It’s deceiving.

You’d think that this part of a business plan does exactly what it says on the tin–describe your product & service offering– right ?

And yes, you are partially right. 

But there’s a very specific way in which this description should be written to make sure that your business has the best chance of succeeding – in real life and under the eagle eye of a potential backer (if you’re preparing a business plan for external financing purposes).

Keep reading to find out the secret sauce to writing a winning product and service description:

WHAT is the Product and Service Description in a Business Plan?

This business plan section is also known as:

• Product and/or Service Overview

HOW Do You Write a Product and Service Description in a Business Plan?

So, what should a good product/service overview contain?

Here are some items to consider including into this section:

1.     Portfolio:

The range of products and/or services that a business offers to potential and current customers.

2.     Features and benefits (value proposition):

Explain what the product/service does and how it works.

3.     Problem and solution (value proposition cont.):

The problem(s) the product or service solves. Every business needs to solve a problem that its customers face. Explain what the problem is and how the product or service solves it.

4.     Innovation:

If the company is doing something new and different, explain why the world needs the innovation.

5.     Proprietary advantages:

Any proprietary features that contribute to a competitive advantage. This could include: intellectual property (e.g., copyright, trademark, patent filings, trade secret), exclusive agreements with suppliers or vendors, exclusive licenses (e.g., for a product, service or technology), company’s own research and development activities.

6.     Development stage:

Current stage of development of the product / service (e.g., idea, development, testing, prototype, already on the market).

7.     Product life-cycle:

Estimate the life span of the product or service.

Specify whether the product or service under consideration is a short-lived fad or has a long-term potential.

8.     Future:

Mention plans for changes and new additions to the current portfolio of products / services.

Describe any plans to move into new markets in the future (e.g., serving different types or sizes of customers, industries, geographic areas).

Make your best guess at when the business will be ready to address these markets and what it needs to do first to be ready.

9.     Limitations:

If applicable, explain any risks or limitations associated with the product (e.g., liability issues like guarantees or returns), along with any legal advice received regarding these issues.

10.  Visual aids:

Use photos, images, diagrams and other graphics to help the reader visualize and learn about the products / services.

If the business is tackling several distinct problems through different products / services, describe the solutions individually .

However, for a large line of products / services, there is no need to list each one, just identifying the general categories will suffice.

How LONG Is the Product and Service Chapter of a Business Plan?

This part of a business plan can be very short, just a couple of paragraphs, or it can spread over multiple pages, depending on how many products/services you offer and how much explanation they require.

If your products or services are particularly complex , technical , innovative , or proprietary , you will want to provide more information and spend considerable time describing them.

This is especially true if you are seeking funding for a new product or service, particularly one that is not immediately understandable to the business plan readers, and if potential funders are likely to be motivated by the specifics.

In any case, when describing a product or service, provide just enough information to paint a clear picture of what it is and does . A brief explanation of what you will be making, selling or doing is appropriate here.

Excessive detail makes this section cumbersome for a reader to wade through. Reserve detailed descriptions (e.g., production processes) for the Appendix.

In any case, it is a good idea to first summarize the value proposition of each product or service into a one short sentence, and only then continue with a more detailed description of the product or service.

If any images or graphics are available that would contribute to the understanding of the product or service, the writers of a business plan should use them.

Otherwise, include any product or service details , such as technical specifications, drawings, photos, patent documents and other support information, in the Appendix section of the business plan document.

TOP 4 TIPS for Writing a Product and Service Overview

Tip #1: features v. benefits.

Don’t just list the features of the product / service.

Instead, describe the specific benefits it will offer to customers – from their perspective.

Make it clear what your customers will gain through buying your product or service. Include information about the specific benefits of your product or service – from your customers’ perspective.

Features are not the same thing as benefits. And you need to understand both.

Confused? Let’s clarify:

What Is the Difference Between Features and Benefits?

Tip #2: Problem v. Solution

If at all possible, present the information in the Problem >> Solution format.

Start by describing the key problem that your customers have, immediately followed by the solution with which you will address this need for your target market.

Tip #3: Competitive Advantage

You should also comment on your ability to meet consumers’ key problems or unmet needs in a way that brings your product or service advantages over the competition.

For example:

• If you have a common business, such as a restaurant:

Explain why your customers need your particular restaurant. Do you offer lower prices? More convenient hours? A better location? A different concept, such as a vegan ice-cream pop up store? A specialty that is not otherwise available in your area, such as a Peruvian ceviche or Hungarian goulash?

• If your company is doing something new and innovative :

What is it about the existing solutions that is subpar? Maybe you are improving on a mediocre product category, such as creating better medical uniforms for healthcare workers (e.g., more flattering cut, trendy designs, sustainable materials). Or perhaps your new blockchain solution has the potential to entirely eliminate the middle-men in an entire industry.

Although the subject of competitive advantage regarding the business as a whole will be fully explored in the Market and Competitor Analysis part of a business plan, it is advisable to touch on it here also – in the context of the company’s products and service.

Tip #4: Validating the Problem and Solution

Speaking of which, when you are doing market research and analysis for your business plan, remember to validate the problem and solution your product or service is addressing.

There is a plethora of minor issues out there that people are perfectly fine with just tolerating. To build a solid business, though, you need a problem that a sufficient number of people are motivated to solve. That is, that they recognize it as a problem that’s worth paying you to solve. Even if they didn’t realize it was solvable until they were presented with your solution.

So, how do you get evidence that prospects are willing to pay for your solution?

Validation of Problem

Describe what you’ve done so far to confirm that the problem you are focused on is a real problem for your customers.

• Existing Business:

For an established business, this is probably just a matter of recapping your success in the marketplace. Your customers have already voted with their wallets.

• New Business:

For a startup, it is important to survey and have conversations with as many potential customers as possible about where they are having problems, how they solve them today, and validate that they are interested enough in addressing those problems to pay for a good solution.

Validation of Solution

Describe how you have tested your ideas with existing or potential customers to confirm that there is a good market for the products or services you plan to offer. Summarize the positive customer feedback or market traction that you have achieved with your solution so far.

For an established business, the answers probably lie in your paying customer base – their existence itself, combined with their repeat business, word-of-mouth referrals, follow-up customer surveys, and other indicators of customer satisfaction.

For a new business, you can start validating your solution immediately by trying it out with potential customers, even informally or at no charge, to get their opinion. If your product or service does not exist yet, talk to prospects about what you plan to offer and measure their feedback.

In summary, this section should answer the million dollar question:

What makes you think that people will buy, be satisfied with, and recommend your products or services?

Related Questions

What are products and services.

Products and services are items that businesses offer for sale to a market. While services are intangible, meaning that they do not exist in a physical form, products are of tangible nature, in other words – you can touch them.

What is a Product Line?

Product line is a group of related products that are all produced or sold by one entity and typically marketed under one brand name.

What is a Service Line?

Service line is a group of related services that are all produced or sold by one entity and typically marketed under one brand name.

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The 7 Best Business Plan Examples (2024)

As an aspiring entrepreneur gearing up to start your own business , you likely know the importance of drafting a business plan. However, you might not be entirely sure where to begin or what specific details to include. That’s where examining business plan examples can be beneficial. Sample business plans serve as real-world templates to help you craft your own plan with confidence. They also provide insight into the key sections that make up a business plan, as well as demonstrate how to structure and present your ideas effectively.

Example business plan

To understand how to write a business plan, let’s study an example structured using a seven-part template. Here’s a quick overview of those parts:

• Executive summary: A quick overview of your business and the contents of your business plan.
• Company description: More info about your company, its goals and mission, and why you started it in the first place.
• Market analysis: Research about the market and industry your business will operate in, including a competitive analysis about the companies you’ll be up against.
• Products and services: A detailed description of what you’ll be selling to your customers.
• Marketing plan: A strategic outline of how you plan to market and promote your business before, during, and after your company launches into the market.
• Logistics and operations plan: An explanation of the systems, processes, and tools that are needed to run your business in the background.
• Financial plan: A map of your short-term (and even long-term) financial goals and the costs to run the business. If you’re looking for funding, this is the place to discuss your request and needs.

7 business plan examples (section by section)

In this section, you’ll find hypothetical and real-world examples of each aspect of a business plan to show you how the whole thing comes together. 

• Executive summary

Your executive summary offers a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. You’ll want to include a brief description of your company, market research, competitor analysis, and financial information. 

In this free business plan template, the executive summary is three paragraphs and occupies nearly half the page:

• Company description

You might go more in-depth with your company description and include the following sections:

• Nature of the business. Mention the general category of business you fall under. Are you a manufacturer, wholesaler, or retailer of your products?
• Background information. Talk about your past experiences and skills, and how you’ve combined them to fill in the market. 
• Business structure. This section outlines how you registered your company —as a corporation, sole proprietorship, LLC, or other business type.
• Industry. Which business sector do you operate in? The answer might be technology, merchandising, or another industry.
• Team. Whether you’re the sole full-time employee of your business or you have contractors to support your daily workflow, this is your chance to put them under the spotlight.

You can also repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your About page, Instagram page, or other properties that ask for a boilerplate description of your business. Hair extensions brand Luxy Hair has a blurb on it’s About page that could easily be repurposed as a company description for its business plan. 

• Market analysis

Market analysis comprises research on product supply and demand, your target market, the competitive landscape, and industry trends. You might do a SWOT analysis to learn where you stand and identify market gaps that you could exploit to establish your footing. Here’s an example of a SWOT analysis for a hypothetical ecommerce business: 

You’ll also want to run a competitive analysis as part of the market analysis component of your business plan. This will show you who you’re up against and give you ideas on how to gain an edge over the competition. 

• Products and services

This part of your business plan describes your product or service, how it will be priced, and the ways it will compete against similar offerings in the market. Don’t go into too much detail here—a few lines are enough to introduce your item to the reader.

• Marketing plan

Potential investors will want to know how you’ll get the word out about your business. So it’s essential to build a marketing plan that highlights the promotion and customer acquisition strategies you’re planning to adopt. 

Most marketing plans focus on the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. However, it’s easier when you break it down by the different marketing channels . Mention how you intend to promote your business using blogs, email, social media, and word-of-mouth marketing. 

Here’s an example of a hypothetical marketing plan for a real estate website:

Logistics and operations

This section of your business plan provides information about your production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory.

Financial plan

The financial plan (a.k.a. financial statement) offers a breakdown of your sales, revenue, expenses, profit, and other financial metrics. You’ll want to include all the numbers and concrete data to project your current and projected financial state.

In this business plan example, the financial statement for ecommerce brand Nature’s Candy includes forecasted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.

It then goes deeper into the financials, citing:

• Funding needs
• Project cash-flow statement
• Project profit-and-loss statement
• Projected balance sheet

You can use Shopify’s financial plan template to create your own income statement, cash-flow statement, and balance sheet. 

Types of business plans (and what to write for each)

A one-page business plan is a pared down version of a standard business plan that’s easy for potential investors and partners to understand. You’ll want to include all of these sections, but make sure they’re abbreviated and summarized:

• Logistics and operations plan
• Financials 

A startup business plan is meant to secure outside funding for a new business. Typically, there’s a big focus on the financials, as well as other sections that help determine the viability of your business idea—market analysis, for example. Shopify has a great business plan template for startups that include all the below points:

• Market research: in depth
• Financials: in depth

Your internal business plan acts as the enforcer of your company’s vision. It reminds your team of the long-term objective and keeps them strategically aligned toward the same goal. Be sure to include:

• Market research

Feasibility 

A feasibility business plan is essentially a feasibility study that helps you evaluate whether your product or idea is worthy of a full business plan. Include the following sections:

A strategic (or growth) business plan lays out your long-term vision and goals. This means your predictions stretch further into the future, and you aim for greater growth and revenue. While crafting this document, you use all the parts of a usual business plan but add more to each one:

• Products and services: for launch and expansion
• Market analysis: detailed analysis
• Marketing plan: detailed strategy
• Logistics and operations plan: detailed plan
• Financials: detailed projections

Free business plan templates

Now that you’re familiar with what’s included and how to format a business plan, let’s go over a few templates you can fill out or draw inspiration from.

Bplans’ free business plan template

Bplans’ free business plan template focuses a lot on the financial side of running a business. It has many pages just for your financial plan and statements. Once you fill it out, you’ll see exactly where your business stands financially and what you need to do to keep it on track or make it better.

PandaDoc’s free business plan template

PandaDoc’s free business plan template is detailed and guides you through every section, so you don’t have to figure everything out on your own. Filling it out, you’ll grasp the ins and outs of your business and how each part fits together. It’s also handy because it connects to PandaDoc’s e-signature for easy signing, ideal for businesses with partners or a board.

Miro’s Business Model Canvas Template

Miro’s Business Model Canvas Template helps you map out the essentials of your business, like partnerships, core activities, and what makes you different. It’s a collaborative tool for you and your team to learn how everything in your business is linked.

Better business planning equals better business outcomes

Building a business plan is key to establishing a clear direction and strategy for your venture. With a solid plan in hand, you’ll know what steps to take for achieving each of your business goals. Kickstart your business planning and set yourself up for success with a defined roadmap—utilizing the sample business plans above to inform your approach.

Business plan FAQ

What are the 3 main points of a business plan.

• Concept. Explain what your business does and the main idea behind it. This is where you tell people what you plan to achieve with your business.
• Contents. Explain what you’re selling or offering. Point out who you’re selling to and who else is selling something similar. This part concerns your products or services, who will buy them, and who you’re up against.
• Cash flow. Explain how money will move in and out of your business. Discuss the money you need to start and keep the business going, the costs of running your business, and how much money you expect to make.

How do I write a simple business plan?

To create a simple business plan, start with an executive summary that details your business vision and objectives. Follow this with a concise description of your company’s structure, your market analysis, and information about your products or services. Conclude your plan with financial projections that outline your expected revenue, expenses, and profitability.

What is the best format to write a business plan?

The optimal format for a business plan arranges your plan in a clear and structured way, helping potential investors get a quick grasp of what your business is about and what you aim to achieve. Always start with a summary of your plan and finish with the financial details or any extra information at the end.

Want to learn more?

• Question: Are You a Business Owner or an Entrepreneur?
• Bootstrapping a Business: 10 Tips to Help You Succeed
• Entrepreneurial Mindset: 20 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur
• 101+ Best Small Business Software Programs 

Are you an agency specialized in UX, digital marketing, or growth? Join our Partner Program

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How to nail your product positioning: the ultimate guide

You've built an amazing product to delight your customers and impact business objectives—but what makes your product different from every other product out there?

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Product positioning is about placing your product in your customers’ minds by highlighting a unique element that sets your product apart from others in the market. 

If you want your product to stand out from the crowd and become the customer's go-to choice, you need to nail your product positioning. Keep reading to find out how.

Do you want to nail your product positioning?

Use Hotjar tools to gather insights directly from customers and accurately position your product in the market.

What is product positioning? 

Product positioning is the process of defining where your product fits in the market and why it's the best solution for your customers. It helps you manage customer perceptions and communicate how you want users to think and feel about your product.

Your product positioning highlights your product's value and sets the context for understanding why customers should care —so it’s best to take a user-led approach for positioning your product to create a solid image in your customers' minds. 

But first, let's understand why product teams should pay attention to product positioning in the first place:

Why is product positioning integral to product performance?

Good product positioning is the difference between a thriving product loved by customers and one that offers excellent features but struggles to make an impact. Without this distinction, it'll be challenging to present a product story and brand message that your customers can relate to .  

Here are a few more reasons product positioning is so important:

Stand out in a competitive market

Strong product positioning is unique, and it highlights the problems your product solves and why it's the best solution in the market. This differentiates your product from similar ones in the market and helps customers make the right decision—and purchase your product.

Create a unique product image in the customers' minds

Positioning your product the right way influences how customers think and feel about it and ensures they understand it’s the perfect solution to address their needs.

Put your brand front of mind

Good product positioning is not just about telling customers why your product is great; it’s about making sure your product is the first thing they think of while thinking about your product category. 

For example, what do you think when someone says, "soft drink?" If it's Coca-Cola, that's because their positioning has put them at the forefront of consumers’ minds within that industry. 

Your product might not have the history and marketing budget of Coca-Cola, but that doesn’t mean you can’t occupy that sort of position within your niche.

Ensure consistency in brand messaging

You can’t position your product as 'affordable' through one marketing channel and 'premium' through another. Customers will understand your brand and believe in it only when you're consistent with your messaging across all channels —online, offline, word-of-mouth, etc. 

Strong product positioning gives customers no doubt what your product is all about. Clear messaging also helps people within your business understand the brand identity and keep it in mind whenever they communicate about the product.

Now that you understand the key role product positioning plays in product and business success, let's look at some product positioning strategies you can use for achieving it.

5 product positioning strategies

Like any other marketing and product activity, you need a solid strategy to introduce your product to your target market and position it the right way.

But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel: there are many strategies for positioning your product, whether you decide to build it around the types of users you’re aiming to attract or around specific product features that set you apart in your market.

Let’s look at five strategies for positioning your product in the market:

1. Features and characteristics

Every product team gets excited about introducing the next cool feature to customers. But customers don’t care about your features: they care about the benefits of the features and how they solve problems .

With this in mind, one of the most popular product positioning strategies is picking a significant and unique product feature or characteristic and using its benefit as the positioning differentiator for the product .  

For example, L'Oreal positions itself as an ethical and natural choice for beauty and self-care. They mention key features, like ammonia-free hair-coloring products, but these features work in service towards creating the impression of a critical benefit : with L’Oreal products, you don’t need to worry about a chemical that might damage your hair.

2. Product user

The product-user strategy associates the product with a user or a spokesperson who represents how the target customers want to see themselves. This type of positioning is aspirational: your customer wants to be the type of person who uses your product.  

Nike’s Air Jordans have traded on the iconography, reputation, and cultural associations of Michael Jordan to become the company’s most profitable product, generating $4.5 billion in revenue in 2020 alone. 

Nike understands that the key demographic for Air Jordans—sneaker-buying men aged 15–45—see Jordan as an aspirational figure: an individual who reached the pinnacle of success in his sport through hard work and determination. Not only is this a desirable message for the target market—but it’s also entirely consistent with the company’s overall messaging.

Associating a brand with a particular user—whether that’s an iconic celebrity, a popular influencer, or just a representative idea of the target demographic—can say a lot about your product without even having to delve into features and benefits. 

3. Quality and pricing

Most customers want quality products in exchange for their hard-earned cash. So one strategy is to position your product as representing superior quality , with the expectation that this quality comes at a high price point. Luxury brands like Prada and Gucci are great examples of this.

Alternatively, other brands position their products as affordable with less emphasis on quality . The low-cost supermarket chain Aldi is a good example of a company that’s found widespread success pursuing this positioning strategy.

4. Product use and application

This might sound similar to the feature and characteristic positioning method, but here you’d focus on use rather than the features and benefits, making the product a popular choice for a well-defined use case.  

For example, a particular brand of protein powder is used to increase performance at the gym and has sufficient protein intake. With a feature-based positioning strategy, the brand could position the product around the lack of preservatives (a feature) and its associated health benefits. 

But, it’s unlikely anybody will use something as specific as protein powder outside of its intended use case—muscle-building activities at the gym as part of a particular lifestyle. So, it makes more sense to talk about the context of how it’s used and the reason people are using it. This way they’re signaling to target consumers that this protein powder will meet their specific needs.

5. Competitors

Sad as it may be, making a better product than your competitors is usually not enough to generate sales. Your customers need to believe you're a better choice.

So, in competitive markets, you can also position your product as a better alternative to a significant competitor by highlighting how different your product is and why it should be your customer's first choice. 

For example, Amazon Prime and Netflix are streaming services for movies and TV series, but Amazon offers Prime Music and Prime 2-day delivery. This way, Amazon Prime has positioned itself differently from Netflix through add-on benefits its competitor can’t offer.

6-step framework for effective product positioning

You can’t nail product positioning in one go and then forget about it.

Product positioning is an ongoing and evolving process that needs to adapt in response to changes in your industry and your customers' needs.

Let's look at a six-step framework you can follow to achieve the right positioning for your product.

1. Understand why your target audience uses your product 

Your customers are using your product over your competitors for a reason.

If you can identify why that is and investigate what exactly makes them use and stick to your product, you can use that insight as the basis for positioning your product.

The why could be factors like pricing, a specific feature, customer service, associations with the product, or ease of use. The better you understand why customers use your product, the more customer-led your positioning can be to make your place in the market more prominent. Here are a few ways to perform this research:

Use on-site surveys on high-traffic product pages. Ask questions like "Why do you use this product?", "How would you rate this product on a scale of 1–10?", "Which feature or product element do you use the most?", and "How would you feel if you couldn't use this product anymore?" Answers to these questions will give you authentic feedback and insight into what your customers think and feel about your product as existing users.

Study product reviews by past and current customers to identify what they like about the product. Feedback can be sourced from video reviews, product demos, customer interview recordings, and customer service chats.

Ask your customer service executives to ask a "what do you like most about the product" question at the end of every ticket. You can also implement this on a live chat feature or feedback widget on your product's website.

Pro tip: making customer-informed, data-backed product decisions is better than trusting your gut.

Use Hotjar Surveys to hear what your customers love about your product in their own words, and use what you learn to inform your product positioning statement.

You can also place Hotjar's Incoming Feedback widget—a real-time suggestion box—on your product pages to gather customer feedback without disrupting their product experience. 

Voice of the customer (VoC) data helps you identify which product elements customers like and dislike, which you can use to better understand your customers and create solid product positioning.

2. Analyze your competitors

Once you understand your audience, you want to position your product as a better solution than your competitors. But you can't do that unless you know the competitor's product and how they're positioning it.

Conduct market research to analyze your competitors' new and old products to understand how they're helping customers, which features they have, and what benefits they offer . 

Identify whether you have any distinct features that can set you apart. If not, iterate on your product and focus on being more customer-centric than your competitors, so you have something that sets you apart in the market.

3. Identify your unique selling proposition

Once you understand what gaps you can fill in the market to meet customer needs, it’s time to identify your unique selling proposition (USP). 

Your USP is the one thing that sets you apart from your competitors and acts as a big draw for your product. Find a unique product angle, a unique feature, or any purpose, use, application, or factor that sets you apart from your competitors. 

For example, Gilette and Dollar Shave Club are both popular grooming companies. But Gilette entered the market with their razors first and became a recognized brand. Soon, Dollar Shave Club came up with a similar product but positioned it as affordable by using pricing as their USP. 

4. Communicate your product positioning internally

More than conveying your product positioning to your users, you need to ensure your team members are crystal clear about it. 

Everyone from employees to stakeholders needs to understand the product positioning you want to achieve, how it will look, how the product messaging will change, and what it means for their day-to-day product-related activities.

Here are a few tips for doing this:

Create a product positioning document

Your product positioning statement is just one aspect of how you want to place yourself in front of your customers; other values, benefits, and features define what your product stands for. 

A product positioning document helps communicate how your organization should look at your product, and how exactly they should convey it to your customers to create a solid product image in their minds.  

The document defines everything around messaging, including what words should be used to talk about your product and to communicate the value of its various features with customers. 

The more detailed this document is, the better your existing and new colleagues and team members will understand how your product should be represented to ensure consistency in messaging and perception.

Establish a cross-functional collaboration workflow

Product positioning is not a one-person job. 

The product management team understands the customer, ideates the product, and recognizes what customers love about it. But they work with the entire company to develop the desired product positioning , then the marketing and communication teams relay this positioning to the customers. 

Working towards a shared goal and vision requires a cross-functional collaboration workflow, which will ultimately help you nail product positioning and provide customer delight. 

5. Establish and implement a positioning strategy

With your organization onboard with your positioning vision, you need an air-tight positioning strategy to take you from how your customers currently feel about your product to how you want them to feel about it.

For this, you need to create and put an effective product positioning strategy into action. Here's what you should do:

Define your product positioning statement

This short description says what your product is, who it’s for, and why exactly customers should care about it. Here, you can use the research done in the first three steps of the framework to develop a statement for your product. Use this formula: 

(Product name) is a (product category) that helps (target customers) achieve (differentiating benefit your product offers) to avoid or solve (users' needs).

Example: Slack is the collaboration hub that brings the right people, information, and tools together to get work done.

Prepare a marketing strategy to communicate your revised product positioning

You need to communicate your product positioning to your audience and potential customers through every channel —ads, social media, emails, customer interaction, calls, etc. This can be as subtle as a plug for your product in your blog posts to tell users how your product helps solve a problem, or as explicit as a sticky promotional banner across the entire site.

Remember to tailor and align your messaging and communication with your product positioning to see positive results. 

6. Keep your product positioning up to date

Your product will evolve as you grow, and customer behavior and buying trends will change with time. So, can you sustain your business on product positioning you decided based on past customer needs and last year’s market research? Probably not.

Iterate on your product positioning to ensure it stays relevant and differentiates your product in the market.

Regularly ask yourself these questions to ensure you're leading with the right product positioning:

Is your current product positioning statement still relevant for your customers and market?

Have you introduced any new product features or new products altogether which offer a new benefit to your customers?

Are there any new products in the market similar to yours? Are they doing something differently?

Have the market demand or customer needs changed?

Is there a better way to communicate your product positioning?

Are you getting good results with your current strategy? Compare your past and present metrics like sales, customer retention, conversion rate, referrals, social media engagement, and signups to get data-driven insights.

The answers to the above questions will tell you if you need to revisit your product positioning strategy and make it more relevant for customers. 

The idea is to tell the customers what they need to know about your product so they'll believe in it and purchase it.

4 ways Hotjar can help with product positioning

Product positioning is a crucial factor for product success, and achieving it means getting closer to product-market fit —and getting more sales. However, gathering customer data for analysis and ensuring your product messaging is consistent—and that every step you take validates your positioning statement—can be tiresome.

This is where tools like Hotjar can help make the process more efficient, accurate, and seamless. Here's how:

1. Use Surveys to get feedback on your positioning statement

You've taken all the steps to establish your product positioning statement, and your entire company is on board with it. But are your customers? 

Use Hotjar Surveys to gather feedback on your product positioning statement, and understand if your customers relate to it by reading their point of view and suggestions. You can include open-ended and closed-ended questions or rating polls to know what they think about your product positioning. Ask questions like:

How do you rate our positioning statement on the homepage on a scale of 1–10?

Do you think our positioning statement aligns with how we’re presenting our products?

What do you think makes our product different from others in the market?

You can then use this feedback to position your product more precisely and make it more relatable and effective for your future customers.

2. Use Heatmaps and Session Recordings to identify customer pain points

Product positioning places your product in the right place, in front of the right users, with the information they need to convert into customers. But if they convert and aren't satisfied when they use your product, they will leave.

This is why product iteration and improvements are necessary to ensure you're addressing your customers' needs and are truly building the product they were promised through your positioning.

Heatmaps are visual representations of how users—in aggregate—view elements on your website pages. They show you which features might work (or not work) for your customers and can help you plan your product positioning based on how users move on the page.

Session Recordings show you how customers interact with your product by showing you a replay of where they click, how they navigate, what they scroll past, and any blockers or pain points they encounter. Watching recordings helps you understand the product experience from the customer's point of view. 

Analyzing heatmaps and recordings will help you identify what customers are struggling with in your product, and will highlight opportunities for improvement. You can also determine which product elements are most useful to your customers so you can prioritize and focus on them while positioning your product.

3. Use the Incoming Feedback widget to capture feedback in the wild

How about letting the Voice of the Customer (VOC) guide you through the product and tell you which elements they like and don’t?

Hotjar's Incoming Feedback widget places a suggestion box on your product pages to get feedback from your customers in context as they use your site. It doesn’t disturb their product experience and brings valuable insights to understand your customers better.

These insights come directly from customers while your product is freshest in their mind—as they’re experiencing it—and can help you make data-driven, customer-led product decisions to strengthen your positioning and create a distinct place for your products in the minds of customers.

Use the Hotjar-Slack integration to communicate and improve positioning internally

Product positioning is an integral part of how your product is perceived by the market and determines what your customers think about it. Buy-in from stakeholders is necessary at every step to ensure you're on the same page and able to handle any concerns or misalignments.

Use the Hotjar and Slack integration to communicate with your stakeholders and collaborate on customer feedback as soon as you receive it. 

This will help you get instant approval or give you the time to manage opposition in the best way to deal with the customer feedback in alignment with your product positioning. 

In the end, this integration will help you communicate with customers more consistently and better position your products in the market.

Final thoughts

Nailing your product positioning and communicating what makes you different from other similar products is challenging—but not impossible.

A good way to nail your product positioning is by thinking about your customer more than your product or brand. This will help you position your product based on what your customers love and make customer-led decisions to improve your product.

Through good product positioning, you can create awareness about your brand with the values you stand for, and the product features, benefits, use case, or personalities you want to be known for. This will eventually help you manage customer perceptions and create a stellar product image in the customers’ minds. 

But remember, positioning your product is never 100% complete. You need to constantly iterate on your product and evaluate your positioning to ensure it's relevant with changing times.

Do you want to refine your product positioning?

Frequently asked questions about product positioning, when should you change product positioning.

To understand whether you should change the product positioning, ask yourself these questions:

Has the market demand or customer needs changed?

Revisit your product positioning strategy to introduce changes or stick to your current one based on your answers.

What are some best practices for developing your product positioning statement?

Best practices for nailing your product positioning include: 

Understand your target market to the core, and identify what they love about your product the most, how it’s useful to them, what problems it solves for them, etc.

Use data to analyze what differentiates your product from your competitors.

Ensure your team understands and is on board with the product positioning statement. 

Iterate on your product positioning statement as your product, the market, and customers evolve.

How can you identify a problem with your product positioning?

Here are some indications that you might have a problem with your product positioning:

Customers don't have a clear idea about how you can help them.

Their idea of your product is largely different from what you want it to be.

Your positioning isn't resulting in sales, more revenue, customer retention, and positive numbers on other growth metrics.

Customers have a confused opinion about your product, its purpose, and its solutions.

Customers don't believe your product can help solve the solutions you're advocating in your product positioning.

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• Building Your Business
• Becoming an Owner
• Business Plans

The Products and Services Section in a Business Plan

How to Write the Business Plan Products and Services Section

• The Products and Services Section
• What to Include
• Tips on Writing the Section

The products and services section of your business plan is more than just a list of what your business is going to provide. This section of your business plan should include details about how you'll price products and services, how you'll fulfill orders, and other details that investors need to hear before you can get funding .

Additionally, it should outline the unique selling points of your offerings and explain how they stand out from competitors. Providing information on awards received, potential suppliers, and manufacturing processes can also strengthen this section and build investor confidence. Learn more with the guide below.

Key Takeaways

• Business plans include details about the products and services you'll offer, including exactly how you plan to market, sell, and deliver on customer orders.
• The best business plans are clear and concise.
• The products and services section of your plan should show why your product or service is needed.
• The products and services section should also convey the expertise and experience you have to succeed.

Why You Need a Products and Services Section in a Business Plan

The business plan products and services section is the centerpiece of your plan. While other sections of your business plan are important, the products and services section is the essence of your business and the point around which every other part of the business plan is built .

What to Include in a Products and Services Section

The products and services section of your business plan outlines your product or service, why it's needed by your market, and how it will compete with other businesses selling the same or similar products and services.

Your products and services section should include a description of the products or services you are offering or plan to offer (including future products or services). You should explain how your products and services will be priced and a comparison of the products or services your competitors offer in relation to yours.

You should also include the sales literature you plan to use. Detail your marketing materials, and clarify the role your website will play in your sales efforts.

The products and services section will include a paragraph or so on how orders from your customers will be processed or fulfilled, as well as any needs you have to create or deliver your products, such as partnerships, up-to-date computer equipment, or manufacturing processes. If your process depends on intellectual property or legal issues, such as trademarks , then those need to be addressed.

Tips on Writing the Products and Services Section

This section of your business plan should excite those you're hoping will fund your business or work with you. To that end, here are a few tips to create a products and services section that appeals to the reader.

Indicate Why Your Product or Service Is Needed

Especially if you're venturing into a new concept or invention, or a place where there is no current market, you need to explain the need for your product or service.

Highlight the Features of Your Product or Service

A crucial part of business success is the ability to set yourself apart from other businesses that sell the same or similar products and services. What features, such as price point or level of service, do you offer that are unique to you?

Focus on Benefits

Unique features are important, but even more vital is how those features provide value to consumers. Translate your features (i.e., faster or cheaper) into benefits (i.e., get it now or save money). The goal is to highlight how your product or service will fix a problem or improve a client or customer's life.

Be Clear and Concise

Don't let your business plan get bogged down in too much description and information. Use bullets or numbered lists to quickly and easily highlight important information.

Show Off Expertise, Experience, and Accolades

You not only want to describe your products and services but also share why you're the best person to provide them. Include anything in your education or experience that makes you an expert in this business. If you have testimonials, awards, or endorsements, share those. Finally, if you've applied for a patent, copyright, or trademark, include that as well.

Be the Expert, But Use Layman's Terms

You should know your product, service, and industry well, but don't expect your potential funders and partners to have the same level of knowledge. Assume the reader doesn't know as much as you when you explain what you're offering.

Avoid acronyms and jargon when outlining your products and services.

Indicate What's Special About Your Products or Services

Will you be offering a special guarantee or refund policy? Do you have a quicker or more unique way of delivering your product or service? 

Speak to Your Customer

While you don't want to write an advertorial, you do want to be customer-oriented when you write your products and services section.

Examples of a Products and Services Section

The Small Business Administration offers business plan examples that you can draw from to help guide your writing. Here's an example of a products section for someone creating "Wooden Grain Toys."

Wooden Grain Toys will sell wooden toys made from solid hardwoods (maple, beech, birch, cherry, and oak) and steel rivets. The toys are handcrafted and designed for small children to easily use. Our line currently includes the following nine models:

• All-Purpose Pick-Up Truck w/movable doors and tailgate
• Dump Truck w/functioning dumping mechanism and box
• Biplane (two-seater) w/movable propeller
• Steam engine with coal tender - additional cars available separately: caboose, flat car w/logs, box car, tank car, coal car
• Flat-Bed Truck w/logs

Wooden Grain Toys will offer its products for the following prices:

• All-Purpose Pick-Up Truck w/movable doors and tailgate - $25
• Dump Truck w/functioning dumping mechanism and box - $30
• Biplane (two-seater) w/movable propeller - $20
• Additional train cars (single car) - $5
• Additional train cars (three cars) - $12
• City Bus - $12
• Tow Truck - $18
• Flat-Bed Truck w/logs - $35
• Sports Car - $20
• Sedan - $20

What is the products and services section in a business plan?

A products and services section of a business plan clarifies exactly what your business will produce , how much it'll sell for, and other details along those lines.

What are examples of products and services?

A product or service can be anything a business creates to turn a profit. Some businesses have both products and services. For example, a restaurant's services include cooking for and serving customers. The restaurant's products are the dishes and drinks it creates.

Small Business Administration. " Write your business plan ."

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Blog Business 15+ Best Business Plan Examples for Entrepreneurs & Startups

15+ Best Business Plan Examples for Entrepreneurs & Startups

Written by: Jennifer Gaskin Jun 09, 2021

Not having a solid plan makes it unlikely for you to achieve the goals you seek, whether it’s getting your to-do list done or launching a successful organization.

In the early stages of a company, that means developing things like pitch decks, business plans, one-sheeters and more. With Venngage’s Business Plan Builder , you can easily organize your business plan into a visually appealing format that can help you win over investors, lenders or partners.

Learn more about how to create a business plan so you can hit the ground running after reading through this list for inspirational business plan templates .

15+ Best business plan examples for entrepreneurs and startups

Simple business plan example, startup business plan example, small business plan example, nonprofit business plan example, strategic business plan example, market analysis business plan example, sales business plan example, organization and management business plan example, marketing and sales strategy business plan example, apple business plan example, airbnb business plan example, sequoia capital business plan example.

While your business plan should be supported by thorough and exhaustive research into your market and competitors, the resulting document does not have to be overwhelming for the reader. In fact, if you can boil your business plan down to a few key pages, all the better.

Simple business plan outline:

• Table of contents : List all sections and sub-sections within the business plan.
• Business review : Include an overview of the business’s purpose, history, and key objectives.
• The market : Analyze the target market, including customer demographics and market needs.
• The competition : Evaluate the main competitors and their strengths and weaknesses in the market.

The simple, bold visual aesthetic of this  business plan template  pairs well with the straightforward approach to the content and various elements of the business plan itself.

Use Venngage’s My Brand Kit  to automatically add your brand colors and fonts to your business plan with just a few clicks.

An essential startup business plan should include a clear and compelling value proposition, market analysis, competitive analysis, target audience identification, financial projections, and a well-defined marketing and operational strategy.

For a typical startup, the need to appear disruptive in the industry is important. After all, if you’re not offering anything truly new, why would an investor turn their attention toward your organization. That means establishing a problem and the ways in which you solve it right away.

Startup business plan outline:

• The problem : Identify the specific issue or pain point your startup aims to solve.
• Target market & opportunity : Define your customers and the potential market size.
• The solution : Describe the product or service that addresses the identified problem.
• Traction and validation/roadmap : Outline the progress made so far and the future milestones and goals.

Whether it’s a full-scale business plan or, in this case, a pitch deck, the ideal way for a startup to make a splash with its plans is to be bold. This successful business plan example is memorable and aspirational.

In the Venngage editor, you can upload images of your business. Add these images to your plans and reports to make them uniquely your own.

All businesses start out small at first, but that doesn’t mean their communications have to be small. One of the best ways to get investors, lenders and talent on board is to show that you’ve done your due diligence.

Small business plan outline:

• Table of contents : List down of all the sections and sub-sections in the business plan.
• Business overview : Include a quick overview of what your business is all about, including your mission and goals.
• The market : Analyzes who your customers are, what they need, and how big the market is.
• The competition : Look into your main competitors and what they’re good at (and not so good at).
• Sales and marketing plan : Lay out your game plan for attracting and keeping customers.
• Operating plan : Explain how you’ll run the day-to-day operations and manage the business.

In this small business plan example, the content is spread over many pages, which is useful in making lengthy, in-depth research feel less like a chore than packing everyone on as few pages as possible.

Organizations that set out to solve problems rather than earning profits also benefit from creating compelling business plans that stir an emotional response in potential donors, benefactors, potential staff members or even media.

Nonprofit business plan outline:

• Table of contents : Lists all sections and sub-sections of your nonprofit business plan.
• Introduction : Provide an overview of your mission and purpose.
• Goal : State the specific objectives your nonprofit organization aims to achieve.
• Impact & strategy : Explain how you plan to create positive change and the methods you will use.

Simplicity is the goal for nonprofits when it comes to business plans, particularly in their early days. Explain the crisis at hand and exactly how your organization will make a difference, which will help donors visualize how their money will be used to help.

Business plans are also helpful for companies that have been around for a while. Whether they’re considering new products to launch or looking for new opportunities, companies can approach business plans from the strategy side of the equation as well.

Strategic business plan outline:

• The problem, issue, or job at hand : Define the specific challenge or task the strategic plan addresses.
• Approach & methodology : Describe the methods and strategies that will be used to tackle the problem or achieve the objective.

Strategic business plans or strategy infographics should be highly focused on a single area or problem to be solved rather than taking a holistic approach to the entire business. Expanding scope too much can make a strategy seem too difficult to implement.

Easily share your business plan with Venngage’s multiple download options, including PNG, PNG HD, and as an interactive PDF.

One-page business plan example

For organizations with a simple business model, often a one-page business plan is all that’s needed. This is possible in any industry, but the most common are traditional ones like retail, where few complex concepts need to be explained.

This one-page strategic business plan example could be easily replicated for an organization that offers goods or services across multiple channels or one with three core business areas. It’s a good business plan example for companies whose plans can be easily boiled down to a few bullet points per area.

Especially when entering a saturated market, understanding the landscape and players is crucial to understanding how your organization can fit it—and stand out. That’s why centering your business plan around a market analysis is often a good idea.

Market analysis business plan outline:

• Table of contents : Lists all sections and sub-sections of the market analysis business plan.
• Executive summary : Provide a brief overview of the key points of the market analysis.
• Business overview : Summarize your business’s mission, vision and core activities.
• The market : Analyze the target market, including customer demographics and market trends.
• The competition : Review the main competitors and their market positioning.
• Sales & marketing plan : Outline strategies for reaching and engaging customers.
• Operating plan : Details the day-to-day operations and management structure.

In this example, the majority of the content and about half the pages are focused on the market analysis, including competitors, trends, pricing, demographics and more. This successful business plan example ensures the artwork and style used perfectly matches the company’s aesthetic, which further reinforces its position in the market.

You can find more memorable business plan templates to customize in the Venngage editor. Browse Venngage’s  business plan templates  to find plans that work for you and start editing.

Company description business plan example

Depending on the market, focusing on your company story and what makes you different can drive your narrative home with potential investors. By focusing your business plan on a company description, you center yourself and your organization in the minds of your audience.

Company description business plan outline:

• Executive summary : Briefly summarize the key components and objectives of the company description section.
• Approach & direction : Outline the company’s strategy, goals and the direction it intends to take in achieving them.

This abbreviated plan is a good business plan example. It uses most of the content to tell the organization’s story. In addition to background about the company, potential investors or clients can see how this design firm’s process is different from their rivals.

With Venngage Business , you can collaborate with team members in real-time to create a business plan that will be effective when presenting to investors.

Five-year business plan example

For most startups or young companies, showing potential investors or partners exactly how and when the company will become profitable is a key aspect of presenting a business plan. Whether it’s woven into a larger presentation or stands alone, you should be sure to include your five-year business plan so investors know you’re looking far beyond the present.

With Venngage’s Business Plan Builder , you can customize a schedule like this to quickly illustrate for investors or partners what your revenue targets are for the first three to five years your company is in operation.

The lifeblood of any company is the sales team. These are the energetic folks who bring in new business, develop leads and turn prospects into customers. Focusing your energy on creating a sales business plan would prove to investors that you understand what will make your company money.

Sales business plan outline:

• Table of contents : List all sections and subsections within the sales business plan.
• Target market : Identify the specific segment or segments of customers the sales efforts will focus on.
• Customer profile : Provide detailed descriptions of the ideal customers, including demographics, preferences and needs.
• Action plan : Outline the specific steps and strategies to be taken to reach and engage the target market and achieve sales objectives.

In this example sales business plan, several facets of ideal buyers are detailed. These include a perfect customer profile that helps to convey to your audience that customer relationships will be at the heart of your operation.

You can include business infographics in your plan to visualize your goals. And with Venngage’s gallery of images and icons, you can customize the template to better reflect your business ethos.

Company mergers and shakeups are also major reasons for organizations to require strong business planning. Creating new departments, deciding which staff to retain and charting a course forward can be even more complex than starting a business from scratch.

Organization and management business plan outline:

• Table of contents : List all sections and subsections within the organization and management business plan.
• About us : Provide an overview of the organization, its mission, vision and values.
• Project summary : Summarize the key details and objectives of the project.
• Project timeline : Outline the milestones and schedule for completing the project.

This organization and management business plan focuses on how the company can optimize operations through a few key organizational projects.

Executive summary for business plan example

Executive summaries give your business plan a strong human touch, and they set the tone for what’s to follow. That could mean having your executive leadership team write a personal note or singling out some huge achievements of which you’re particularly proud in a business plan infographic .

Executive summary business plan outline:

• Table of contents : Lists all sections and subsections within the executive summary business plan.
• Executive summary : Provide a concise overview of the entire business plan, highlighting key points and objectives.
• Statement of problem : Clearly define the specific issue or challenge the business aims to address.
• Approach & methodology : Outline the methods and strategies that will be employed to solve the stated problem or achieve the desired goals.

In this executive summary for a business plan, a brief note is accompanied by a few notable achievements that signal the organization and leadership team’s authority in the industry.

Marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin, and clever companies know how they play off each other. That’s why centering your business plan around your marketing and sales strategy can pay dividends when it comes time to find investors and potential partners.

Marketing and sales strategy business plan outline:

• Table of contents : List all sections and subsections within the marketing and sales strategy business plan.
• Positioning : Describe how the business intends to position its products or services in the market to stand out from competitors.
• Value prop : Highlight the unique value proposition that the business offers to its target customers, including its benefits and advantages.
• Marketing strategy : Outline the overall approach and tactics that will be used to promote the products or services and attract customers.

This marketing and sales business plan example is the picture of a sleek, modern aesthetic, which is appropriate across many industries and will speak volumes to numbers-obsesses sales and marketing leaders.

Do business plans really help? Well, here’s some math for you; in 1981, Apple had just gone public and was in the midst of marketing an absolute flop , the Apple III computer.  The company’s market cap, or total estimated market value,  could hit $3 trillion this year.

Did this Apple business plan make the difference? No, it’s not possible to attribute the success of Apple entirely to this business plan from July 1981, but this ancient artifact goes to show that even the most groundbreaking companies need to take an honest stock of their situation.

Apple’s 1981 business plan example pdf covers everything from the market landscape for computing to the products that founder Steve Jobs expects to roll out over the next few years, and the advanced analysis contained in the document shows how strategic Jobs and other Apple executives were in those early days.

Inviting strangers to stay in your house for the weekend seemed like a crazy concept before Airbnb became one of the world’s biggest companies. Like all disruptive startups, Airbnb had to create a robust, active system from nothing.

Airbnb business plan outline:

• Problem : Identify the specific challenge or need in the accommodation industry that the Airbnb business aims to address.
• Solution : Describe how Airbnb’s platform provides a solution to the identified problem by connecting hosts with guests.
• Market validation : Demonstrate through research or evidence that there is demand for Airbnb’s services.
• Market size : Estimate the total addressable market for Airbnb’s accommodation services.
• Product : Detail the features and functionalities of the Airbnb platform for both hosts and guests.
• Business model : Explain how Airbnb generates revenue and sustains its operations.
• Market adoption : Discuss the rate at which Airbnb’s services are being embraced by hosts and guests.
• Competition : Identify other players in the accommodation industry offering similar services to Airbnb.
• Competitive advantages : Highlight the unique strengths or advantages that set Airbnb apart from its competitors.

As this Airbnb business plan pitch deck example shows, for companies that are introducing entirely new concepts, it’s helpful not to get too into the weeds. Explain the problem simply and boil down the essence of your solution into a few words; in this case, “A web platform where users can rent out their space” perfectly sums up this popular company.

Sequoia Capital is one of the most successful venture capital firms in the world, backing startups that now have a combined stock market value of more than $1 trillion, according to a Forbes analysis .

For young companies and startups that want to play in the big leagues, tailoring your pitch to something that would appeal to a company like Sequoia Capital is a good idea. That’s why the company has a standard business plan format it recommends .

Sequoia capital business plan outline:

• Company purpose : Clarify the core reason for the business and its overarching goals.
• Problems : Identify specific challenges or pain points that the business aims to solve.
• Solution : Describe how the business addresses the identified problems with its products or services.
• Market potential : Assess the size and growth opportunities within the target market for the business.
• Competition : Analyze existing competitors and their strengths and weaknesses in the market.
• Business model : Outline how the business plans to generate revenue and sustain its operations.
• Our team : Introduce the key members of the team and their relevant expertise and experience.
• Financials : Provide projections and forecasts for the financial performance of the business.
• Vision : Articulate the long-term aspirations and goals that the business seeks to achieve.

Using Sequoia Capital’s business plan example means being simple and clear with your content, like the above deck. Note how no slide contains much copy, and even when all slides appear on the screen at once, the text is legible.

Use Venngage to design business plans that will impress investors

Not every business plan, pitch deck or one-sheeter will net you billions in investment dollars, but every entrepreneur should be adept at crafting impressive, authoritative and informative business plans.

Whether you use one of the inspirational templates shared here or you want to go old school and mimic Apple’s 1981 business plan, using Venngage’s Business Plan Builder helps you bring your company’s vision to life.

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Product Positioning

What is product positioning.

Product positioning is the process of deciding and communicating how you want your market to think and feel about your product. Successful product positioning requires your team to articulate:

• How your product can solve your customer’s problem
• Why it is a better solution than its competitors

Why Is Product Positioning Important?

Very few products will represent the ideal solution for everyone. Trying to build a marketing story so broad that it appeals to everyone will likely result in messaging that fails to resonate with anyone. Product teams need to understand the segment of the market most likely to find their product appealing. They also need to be able to articulate the value of their product in a way that will resonate specifically with that audience.

If a business wants to market a line of clothing to upper-income consumers, for example, it will be a mistake to try positioning those products as affordable. A better approach might be positioning the company’s apparel brand as the choice of key influencers among the upscale demographic.

Note: You can develop more than one position for the same product. The goal of positioning is to present your product as attractively as possible for a specific market segment. If your product appeals to several demographics, you will want to develop a positioning plan for each segment. Each message will likely be different.

How Can I Position My Product?

Before we discuss a few best practices for this exercise, it’s important to address a common misconception that many marketing and product teams have about product positioning. Ultimately, a business does not get to determine the position its product holds in the market. Only the market itself can do that.

As marketing experts Al Ries and Jack Trout explain in their book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind , a product’s position lives in the minds of its customers and the general public. It represents all of the experiences people have had with a product and its company, and the emotional reaction they have when they see the product, hears its name, sees its logo, or hear a reference.

But even knowing that it will ultimately be up to your market how they view your product, you should still engage in the positioning exercise. Your goal here is to figure out the most compelling way to present your product to your target customers. Here are a few steps to get you started:

Step 1: Get to Know Your Persona

The first step in developing an effective positioning plan for your product is to gain a deep understanding of the people you hope will buy it.

You need to learn more than just the age range of these people, or the geographic regions where they live. Additionally, you will need to know how these people view the world, what their common goals and dreams are, their fears and concerns, who influences them, etc.

You can learn this information through surveys, by speaking directly and at length with small groups of your ideal personas, and via market research. Your goal here is to develop a strong sense of who your persona is as a person. It is the only way you can craft messages and present your product to connect with these people emotionally in a positive way.

Step 2: Analyze Your Competitors

As we pointed out in the introduction, positioning your product successfully requires both that you find the right message about your product for the right market segment and that you articulate to that segment what makes your product better than the rest of the field.

The Milk Duds team examined its competitors and found one area where they could dominate. Their caramel-covered chocolates took longer to eat than a typical chocolate bar or smaller treats like M&Ms’ candy-covered peanuts. Then they created a unique position that resonated with candy buyers: You’ll have a longer-lasting candy experience with Milk Duds.

Step 3: Decide How You Want Your Persona to Feel About Your Product

The next step is the most difficult. You will need to apply what you’ve learned about your persona, and about any potential openings in your market, to identify a unique space for your product to occupy in customers’ minds.

Product positioning requires more than simply articulating the unique value proposition of your product. It also requires that you find a way to connect on an emotional level with your prospective users and buyers. You must ensure that they have a strong, positive feeling about your brand when they encounter it.

If you don’t take proactive steps to influence those emotional reactions in your users, they might develop their reactions—and those might be negative.

An Example of Brilliant Product Positioning

In their book, Ries and Trout discuss many real-world examples of products that have had tremendous success positioning (and re-positioning) themselves in the minds of consumers. Let’s look at one here.

The Milk Duds Example

At one point in its history, the Milk Duds candy brand was struggling to survive. Its parent company couldn’t compete with the more successful chocolate bars on the market. Few stores would even carry Milk Duds—and most of its sales were to movie theaters.

Then the company’s marketing and product teams hit on a brilliant idea. Milk Duds last longer than other candies. They made more sense as a movie theater treat because moviegoers could enjoy their snack longer during the film than if they bought a Hershey’s chocolate bar. This message of a long-lasting treat resonated far beyond movie theaters. Eventually, it made Milk Duds one of the most successful candy products on the market.

What they did and why it worked:

The team behind Milk Duds found a new way to position their product for customers, one that no other candy provider was trying to earn: The long-lasting candy bar. The company didn’t change any aspect of the product itself. They found a new position for their brand to occupy in the minds and hearts of candy-buyers.

Related Terms

product strategy / user research / product vision / user persona / buyer persona / unique selling proposition

Learn More Product Strategy Best Practices

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How to Write a Business Plan in 9 Steps (+ Template and Examples)

Every successful business has one thing in common, a good and well-executed business plan. A business plan is more than a document, it is a complete guide that outlines the goals your business wants to achieve, including its financial goals . It helps you analyze results, make strategic decisions, show your business operations and growth.

If you want to start a business or already have one and need to pitch it to investors for funding, writing a good business plan improves your chances of attracting financiers. As a startup, if you want to secure loans from financial institutions, part of the requirements involve submitting your business plan.

Writing a business plan does not have to be a complicated or time-consuming process. In this article, you will learn the step-by-step process for writing a successful business plan.

You will also learn what you need a business plan for, tips and strategies for writing a convincing business plan, business plan examples and templates that will save you tons of time, and the alternatives to the traditional business plan.

Let’s get started.

What Do You Need A Business Plan For?

Businesses create business plans for different purposes such as to secure funds, monitor business growth, measure your marketing strategies, and measure your business success.

1. Secure Funds

One of the primary reasons for writing a business plan is to secure funds, either from financial institutions/agencies or investors.

For you to effectively acquire funds, your business plan must contain the key elements of your business plan . For example, your business plan should include your growth plans, goals you want to achieve, and milestones you have recorded.

A business plan can also attract new business partners that are willing to contribute financially and intellectually. If you are writing a business plan to a bank, your project must show your traction , that is, the proof that you can pay back any loan borrowed.

Also, if you are writing to an investor, your plan must contain evidence that you can effectively utilize the funds you want them to invest in your business. Here, you are using your business plan to persuade a group or an individual that your business is a source of a good investment.

2. Monitor Business Growth

A business plan can help you track cash flows in your business. It steers your business to greater heights. A business plan capable of tracking business growth should contain:

• The business goals
• Methods to achieve the goals
• Time-frame for attaining those goals

A good business plan should guide you through every step in achieving your goals. It can also track the allocation of assets to every aspect of the business. You can tell when you are spending more than you should on a project.

You can compare a business plan to a written GPS. It helps you manage your business and hints at the right time to expand your business.

3. Measure Business Success

A business plan can help you measure your business success rate. Some small-scale businesses are thriving better than more prominent companies because of their track record of success.

Right from the onset of your business operation, set goals and work towards them. Write a plan to guide you through your procedures. Use your plan to measure how much you have achieved and how much is left to attain.

You can also weigh your success by monitoring the position of your brand relative to competitors. On the other hand, a business plan can also show you why you have not achieved a goal. It can tell if you have elapsed the time frame you set to attain a goal.

4. Document Your Marketing Strategies

You can use a business plan to document your marketing plans. Every business should have an effective marketing plan.

Competition mandates every business owner to go the extraordinary mile to remain relevant in the market. Your business plan should contain your marketing strategies that work. You can measure the success rate of your marketing plans.

In your business plan, your marketing strategy must answer the questions:

• How do you want to reach your target audience?
• How do you plan to retain your customers?
• What is/are your pricing plans?
• What is your budget for marketing?

How to Write a Business Plan Step-by-Step

1. create your executive summary.

The executive summary is a snapshot of your business or a high-level overview of your business purposes and plans . Although the executive summary is the first section in your business plan, most people write it last. The length of the executive summary is not more than two pages.

Generally, there are nine sections in a business plan, the executive summary should condense essential ideas from the other eight sections.

A good executive summary should do the following:

• A Snapshot of Growth Potential. Briefly inform the reader about your company and why it will be successful)
• Contain your Mission Statement which explains what the main objective or focus of your business is.
• Product Description and Differentiation. Brief description of your products or services and why it is different from other solutions in the market.
• The Team. Basic information about your company’s leadership team and employees
• Business Concept. A solid description of what your business does.
• Target Market. The customers you plan to sell to.
• Marketing Strategy. Your plans on reaching and selling to your customers
• Current Financial State. Brief information about what revenue your business currently generates.
• Projected Financial State. Brief information about what you foresee your business revenue to be in the future.

The executive summary is the make-or-break section of your business plan. If your summary cannot in less than two pages cannot clearly describe how your business will solve a particular problem of your target audience and make a profit, your business plan is set on a faulty foundation.

Avoid using the executive summary to hype your business, instead, focus on helping the reader understand the what and how of your plan.

View the executive summary as an opportunity to introduce your vision for your company. You know your executive summary is powerful when it can answer these key questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• What sector or industry are you in?
• What are your products and services?
• What is the future of your industry?
• Is your company scaleable?
• Who are the owners and leaders of your company? What are their backgrounds and experience levels?
• What is the motivation for starting your company?
• What are the next steps?

Writing the executive summary last although it is the most important section of your business plan is an excellent idea. The reason why is because it is a high-level overview of your business plan. It is the section that determines whether potential investors and lenders will read further or not.

The executive summary can be a stand-alone document that covers everything in your business plan. It is not uncommon for investors to request only the executive summary when evaluating your business. If the information in the executive summary impresses them, they will ask for the complete business plan.

If you are writing your business plan for your planning purposes, you do not need to write the executive summary.

2. Add Your Company Overview

The company overview or description is the next section in your business plan after the executive summary. It describes what your business does.

Adding your company overview can be tricky especially when your business is still in the planning stages. Existing businesses can easily summarize their current operations but may encounter difficulties trying to explain what they plan to become.

Your company overview should contain the following:

• What products and services you will provide
• Geographical markets and locations your company have a presence
• What you need to run your business
• Who your target audience or customers are
• Who will service your customers
• Your company’s purpose, mission, and vision
• Information about your company’s founders
• Who the founders are
• Notable achievements of your company so far

When creating a company overview, you have to focus on three basics: identifying your industry, identifying your customer, and explaining the problem you solve.

If you are stuck when creating your company overview, try to answer some of these questions that pertain to you.

• Who are you targeting? (The answer is not everyone)
• What pain point does your product or service solve for your customers that they will be willing to spend money on resolving?
• How does your product or service overcome that pain point?
• Where is the location of your business?
• What products, equipment, and services do you need to run your business?
• How is your company’s product or service different from your competition in the eyes of your customers?
• How many employees do you need and what skills do you require them to have?

After answering some or all of these questions, you will get more than enough information you need to write your company overview or description section. When writing this section, describe what your company does for your customers.

The company description or overview section contains three elements: mission statement, history, and objectives.

• Mission Statement

The mission statement refers to the reason why your business or company is existing. It goes beyond what you do or sell, it is about the ‘why’. A good mission statement should be emotional and inspirational.

Your mission statement should follow the KISS rule (Keep It Simple, Stupid). For example, Shopify’s mission statement is “Make commerce better for everyone.”

When describing your company’s history, make it simple and avoid the temptation of tying it to a defensive narrative. Write it in the manner you would a profile. Your company’s history should include the following information:

• Founding Date
• Major Milestones
• Location(s)
• Flagship Products or Services
• Number of Employees
• Executive Leadership Roles

When you fill in this information, you use it to write one or two paragraphs about your company’s history.

Business Objectives

Your business objective must be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.) Failure to clearly identify your business objectives does not inspire confidence and makes it hard for your team members to work towards a common purpose.

3. Perform Market and Competitive Analyses to Proof a Big Enough Business Opportunity

The third step in writing a business plan is the market and competitive analysis section. Every business, no matter the size, needs to perform comprehensive market and competitive analyses before it enters into a market.

Performing market and competitive analyses are critical for the success of your business. It helps you avoid entering the right market with the wrong product, or vice versa. Anyone reading your business plans, especially financiers and financial institutions will want to see proof that there is a big enough business opportunity you are targeting.

This section is where you describe the market and industry you want to operate in and show the big opportunities in the market that your business can leverage to make a profit. If you noticed any unique trends when doing your research, show them in this section.

Market analysis alone is not enough, you have to add competitive analysis to strengthen this section. There are already businesses in the industry or market, how do you plan to take a share of the market from them?

You have to clearly illustrate the competitive landscape in your business plan. Are there areas your competitors are doing well? Are there areas where they are not doing so well? Show it.

Make it clear in this section why you are moving into the industry and what weaknesses are present there that you plan to explain. How are your competitors going to react to your market entry? How do you plan to get customers? Do you plan on taking your competitors' competitors, tap into other sources for customers, or both?

Illustrate the competitive landscape as well. What are your competitors doing well and not so well?

Answering these questions and thoughts will aid your market and competitive analysis of the opportunities in your space. Depending on how sophisticated your industry is, or the expectations of your financiers, you may need to carry out a more comprehensive market and competitive analysis to prove that big business opportunity.

Instead of looking at the market and competitive analyses as one entity, separating them will make the research even more comprehensive.

Market Analysis

Market analysis, boarding speaking, refers to research a business carried out on its industry, market, and competitors. It helps businesses gain a good understanding of their target market and the outlook of their industry. Before starting a company, it is vital to carry out market research to find out if the market is viable.

The market analysis section is a key part of the business plan. It is the section where you identify who your best clients or customers are. You cannot omit this section, without it your business plan is incomplete.

A good market analysis will tell your readers how you fit into the existing market and what makes you stand out. This section requires in-depth research, it will probably be the most time-consuming part of the business plan to write.

• Market Research

To create a compelling market analysis that will win over investors and financial institutions, you have to carry out thorough market research . Your market research should be targeted at your primary target market for your products or services. Here is what you want to find out about your target market.

• Your target market’s needs or pain points
• The existing solutions for their pain points
• Geographic Location
• Demographics

The purpose of carrying out a marketing analysis is to get all the information you need to show that you have a solid and thorough understanding of your target audience.

Only after you have fully understood the people you plan to sell your products or services to, can you evaluate correctly if your target market will be interested in your products or services.

You can easily convince interested parties to invest in your business if you can show them you thoroughly understand the market and show them that there is a market for your products or services.

How to Quantify Your Target Market

One of the goals of your marketing research is to understand who your ideal customers are and their purchasing power. To quantify your target market, you have to determine the following:

• Your Potential Customers: They are the people you plan to target. For example, if you sell accounting software for small businesses , then anyone who runs an enterprise or large business is unlikely to be your customers. Also, individuals who do not have a business will most likely not be interested in your product.
• Total Households: If you are selling household products such as heating and air conditioning systems, determining the number of total households is more important than finding out the total population in the area you want to sell to. The logic is simple, people buy the product but it is the household that uses it.
• Median Income: You need to know the median income of your target market. If you target a market that cannot afford to buy your products and services, your business will not last long.
• Income by Demographics: If your potential customers belong to a certain age group or gender, determining income levels by demographics is necessary. For example, if you sell men's clothes, your target audience is men.

What Does a Good Market Analysis Entail?

Your business does not exist on its own, it can only flourish within an industry and alongside competitors. Market analysis takes into consideration your industry, target market, and competitors. Understanding these three entities will drastically improve your company’s chances of success.

You can view your market analysis as an examination of the market you want to break into and an education on the emerging trends and themes in that market. Good market analyses include the following:

• Industry Description. You find out about the history of your industry, the current and future market size, and who the largest players/companies are in your industry.
• Overview of Target Market. You research your target market and its characteristics. Who are you targeting? Note, it cannot be everyone, it has to be a specific group. You also have to find out all information possible about your customers that can help you understand how and why they make buying decisions.
• Size of Target Market: You need to know the size of your target market, how frequently they buy, and the expected quantity they buy so you do not risk overproducing and having lots of bad inventory. Researching the size of your target market will help you determine if it is big enough for sustained business or not.
• Growth Potential: Before picking a target market, you want to be sure there are lots of potential for future growth. You want to avoid going for an industry that is declining slowly or rapidly with almost zero growth potential.
• Market Share Potential: Does your business stand a good chance of taking a good share of the market?
• Market Pricing and Promotional Strategies: Your market analysis should give you an idea of the price point you can expect to charge for your products and services. Researching your target market will also give you ideas of pricing strategies you can implement to break into the market or to enjoy maximum profits.
• Potential Barriers to Entry: One of the biggest benefits of conducting market analysis is that it shows you every potential barrier to entry your business will likely encounter. It is a good idea to discuss potential barriers to entry such as changing technology. It informs readers of your business plan that you understand the market.
• Research on Competitors: You need to know the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and how you can exploit them for the benefit of your business. Find patterns and trends among your competitors that make them successful, discover what works and what doesn’t, and see what you can do better.

The market analysis section is not just for talking about your target market, industry, and competitors. You also have to explain how your company can fill the hole you have identified in the market.

Here are some questions you can answer that can help you position your product or service in a positive light to your readers.

• Is your product or service of superior quality?
• What additional features do you offer that your competitors do not offer?
• Are you targeting a ‘new’ market?

Basically, your market analysis should include an analysis of what already exists in the market and an explanation of how your company fits into the market.

Competitive Analysis

In the competitive analysis section, y ou have to understand who your direct and indirect competitions are, and how successful they are in the marketplace. It is the section where you assess the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, the advantage(s) they possess in the market and show the unique features or qualities that make you different from your competitors.

Many businesses do market analysis and competitive analysis together. However, to fully understand what the competitive analysis entails, it is essential to separate it from the market analysis.

Competitive analysis for your business can also include analysis on how to overcome barriers to entry in your target market.

The primary goal of conducting a competitive analysis is to distinguish your business from your competitors. A strong competitive analysis is essential if you want to convince potential funding sources to invest in your business. You have to show potential investors and lenders that your business has what it takes to compete in the marketplace successfully.

Competitive analysis will s how you what the strengths of your competition are and what they are doing to maintain that advantage.

When doing your competitive research, you first have to identify your competitor and then get all the information you can about them. The idea of spending time to identify your competitor and learn everything about them may seem daunting but it is well worth it.

Find answers to the following questions after you have identified who your competitors are.

• What are your successful competitors doing?
• Why is what they are doing working?
• Can your business do it better?
• What are the weaknesses of your successful competitors?
• What are they not doing well?
• Can your business turn its weaknesses into strengths?
• How good is your competitors’ customer service?
• Where do your competitors invest in advertising?
• What sales and pricing strategies are they using?
• What marketing strategies are they using?
• What kind of press coverage do they get?
• What are their customers saying about your competitors (both the positive and negative)?

If your competitors have a website, it is a good idea to visit their websites for more competitors’ research. Check their “About Us” page for more information.

If you are presenting your business plan to investors, you need to clearly distinguish yourself from your competitors. Investors can easily tell when you have not properly researched your competitors.

Take time to think about what unique qualities or features set you apart from your competitors. If you do not have any direct competition offering your product to the market, it does not mean you leave out the competitor analysis section blank. Instead research on other companies that are providing a similar product, or whose product is solving the problem your product solves.

The next step is to create a table listing the top competitors you want to include in your business plan. Ensure you list your business as the last and on the right. What you just created is known as the competitor analysis table.

Direct vs Indirect Competition

You cannot know if your product or service will be a fit for your target market if you have not understood your business and the competitive landscape.

There is no market you want to target where you will not encounter competition, even if your product is innovative. Including competitive analysis in your business plan is essential.

If you are entering an established market, you need to explain how you plan to differentiate your products from the available options in the market. Also, include a list of few companies that you view as your direct competitors The competition you face in an established market is your direct competition.

In situations where you are entering a market with no direct competition, it does not mean there is no competition there. Consider your indirect competition that offers substitutes for the products or services you offer.

For example, if you sell an innovative SaaS product, let us say a project management software , a company offering time management software is your indirect competition.

There is an easy way to find out who your indirect competitors are in the absence of no direct competitors. You simply have to research how your potential customers are solving the problems that your product or service seeks to solve. That is your direct competition.

Factors that Differentiate Your Business from the Competition

There are three main factors that any business can use to differentiate itself from its competition. They are cost leadership, product differentiation, and market segmentation.

1. Cost Leadership

A strategy you can impose to maximize your profits and gain an edge over your competitors. It involves offering lower prices than what the majority of your competitors are offering.

A common practice among businesses looking to enter into a market where there are dominant players is to use free trials or pricing to attract as many customers as possible to their offer.

2. Product Differentiation

Your product or service should have a unique selling proposition (USP) that your competitors do not have or do not stress in their marketing.

Part of the marketing strategy should involve making your products unique and different from your competitors. It does not have to be different from your competitors, it can be the addition to a feature or benefit that your competitors do not currently have.

3. Market Segmentation

As a new business seeking to break into an industry, you will gain more success from focusing on a specific niche or target market, and not the whole industry.

If your competitors are focused on a general need or target market, you can differentiate yourself from them by having a small and hyper-targeted audience. For example, if your competitors are selling men’s clothes in their online stores , you can sell hoodies for men.

4. Define Your Business and Management Structure

The next step in your business plan is your business and management structure. It is the section where you describe the legal structure of your business and the team running it.

Your business is only as good as the management team that runs it, while the management team can only strive when there is a proper business and management structure in place.

If your company is a sole proprietor or a limited liability company (LLC), a general or limited partnership, or a C or an S corporation, state it clearly in this section.

Use an organizational chart to show the management structure in your business. Clearly show who is in charge of what area in your company. It is where you show how each key manager or team leader’s unique experience can contribute immensely to the success of your company. You can also opt to add the resumes and CVs of the key players in your company.

The business and management structure section should show who the owner is, and other owners of the businesses (if the business has other owners). For businesses or companies with multiple owners, include the percent ownership of the various owners and clearly show the extent of each others’ involvement in the company.

Investors want to know who is behind the company and the team running it to determine if it has the right management to achieve its set goals.

Management Team

The management team section is where you show that you have the right team in place to successfully execute the business operations and ideas. Take time to create the management structure for your business. Think about all the important roles and responsibilities that you need managers for to grow your business.

Include brief bios of each key team member and ensure you highlight only the relevant information that is needed. If your team members have background industry experience or have held top positions for other companies and achieved success while filling that role, highlight it in this section.

A common mistake that many startups make is assigning C-level titles such as (CMO and CEO) to everyone on their team. It is unrealistic for a small business to have those titles. While it may look good on paper for the ego of your team members, it can prevent investors from investing in your business.

Instead of building an unrealistic management structure that does not fit your business reality, it is best to allow business titles to grow as the business grows. Starting everyone at the top leaves no room for future change or growth, which is bad for productivity.

Your management team does not have to be complete before you start writing your business plan. You can have a complete business plan even when there are managerial positions that are empty and need filling.

If you have management gaps in your team, simply show the gaps and indicate you are searching for the right candidates for the role(s). Investors do not expect you to have a full management team when you are just starting your business.

Key Questions to Answer When Structuring Your Management Team

• Who are the key leaders?
• What experiences, skills, and educational backgrounds do you expect your key leaders to have?
• Do your key leaders have industry experience?
• What positions will they fill and what duties will they perform in those positions?
• What level of authority do the key leaders have and what are their responsibilities?
• What is the salary for the various management positions that will attract the ideal candidates?

Additional Tips for Writing the Management Structure Section

1. Avoid Adding ‘Ghost’ Names to Your Management Team

There is always that temptation to include a ‘ghost’ name to your management team to attract and influence investors to invest in your business. Although the presence of these celebrity management team members may attract the attention of investors, it can cause your business to lose any credibility if you get found out.

Seasoned investors will investigate further the members of your management team before committing fully to your business If they find out that the celebrity name used does not play any actual role in your business, they will not invest and may write you off as dishonest.

2. Focus on Credentials But Pay Extra Attention to the Roles

Investors want to know the experience that your key team members have to determine if they can successfully reach the company’s growth and financial goals.

While it is an excellent boost for your key management team to have the right credentials, you also want to pay extra attention to the roles they will play in your company.

Organizational Chart

Adding an organizational chart in this section of your business plan is not necessary, you can do it in your business plan’s appendix.

If you are exploring funding options, it is not uncommon to get asked for your organizational chart. The function of an organizational chart goes beyond raising money, you can also use it as a useful planning tool for your business.

An organizational chart can help you identify how best to structure your management team for maximum productivity and point you towards key roles you need to fill in the future.

You can use the organizational chart to show your company’s internal management structure such as the roles and responsibilities of your management team, and relationships that exist between them.

5. Describe Your Product and Service Offering

In your business plan, you have to describe what you sell or the service you plan to offer. It is the next step after defining your business and management structure. The products and services section is where you sell the benefits of your business.

Here you have to explain how your product or service will benefit your customers and describe your product lifecycle. It is also the section where you write down your plans for intellectual property like patent filings and copyrighting.

The research and development that you are undertaking for your product or service need to be explained in detail in this section. However, do not get too technical, sell the general idea and its benefits.

If you have any diagrams or intricate designs of your product or service, do not include them in the products and services section. Instead, leave them for the addendum page. Also, if you are leaving out diagrams or designs for the addendum, ensure you add this phrase “For more detail, visit the addendum Page #.”

Your product and service section in your business plan should include the following:

• A detailed explanation that clearly shows how your product or service works.
• The pricing model for your product or service.
• Your business’ sales and distribution strategy.
• The ideal customers that want your product or service.
• The benefits of your products and services.
• Reason(s) why your product or service is a better alternative to what your competitors are currently offering in the market.
• Plans for filling the orders you receive
• If you have current or pending patents, copyrights, and trademarks for your product or service, you can also discuss them in this section.

What to Focus On When Describing the Benefits, Lifecycle, and Production Process of Your Products or Services

In the products and services section, you have to distill the benefits, lifecycle, and production process of your products and services.

When describing the benefits of your products or services, here are some key factors to focus on.

• Unique features
• Translating the unique features into benefits
• The emotional, psychological, and practical payoffs to attract customers
• Intellectual property rights or any patents

When describing the product life cycle of your products or services, here are some key factors to focus on.

• Upsells, cross-sells, and down-sells
• Time between purchases
• Plans for research and development.

When describing the production process for your products or services, you need to think about the following:

• The creation of new or existing products and services.
• The sources for the raw materials or components you need for production.
• Assembling the products
• Maintaining quality control
• Supply-chain logistics (receiving the raw materials and delivering the finished products)
• The day-to-day management of the production processes, bookkeeping, and inventory.

Tips for Writing the Products or Services Section of Your Business Plan

1. Avoid Technical Descriptions and Industry Buzzwords

The products and services section of your business plan should clearly describe the products and services that your company provides. However, it is not a section to include technical jargons that anyone outside your industry will not understand.

A good practice is to remove highly detailed or technical descriptions in favor of simple terms. Industry buzzwords are not necessary, if there are simpler terms you can use, then use them. If you plan to use your business plan to source funds, making the product or service section so technical will do you no favors.

2. Describe How Your Products or Services Differ from Your Competitors

When potential investors look at your business plan, they want to know how the products and services you are offering differ from that of your competition. Differentiating your products or services from your competition in a way that makes your solution more attractive is critical.

If you are going the innovative path and there is no market currently for your product or service, you need to describe in this section why the market needs your product or service.

For example, overnight delivery was a niche business that only a few companies were participating in. Federal Express (FedEx) had to show in its business plan that there was a large opportunity for that service and they justified why the market needed that service.

3. Long or Short Products or Services Section

Should your products or services section be short? Does the long products or services section attract more investors?

There are no straightforward answers to these questions. Whether your products or services section should be long or relatively short depends on the nature of your business.

If your business is product-focused, then automatically you need to use more space to describe the details of your products. However, if the product your business sells is a commodity item that relies on competitive pricing or other pricing strategies, you do not have to use up so much space to provide significant details about the product.

Likewise, if you are selling a commodity that is available in numerous outlets, then you do not have to spend time on writing a long products or services section.

The key to the success of your business is most likely the effectiveness of your marketing strategies compared to your competitors. Use more space to address that section.

If you are creating a new product or service that the market does not know about, your products or services section can be lengthy. The reason why is because you need to explain everything about the product or service such as the nature of the product, its use case, and values.

A short products or services section for an innovative product or service will not give the readers enough information to properly evaluate your business.

4. Describe Your Relationships with Vendors or Suppliers

Your business will rely on vendors or suppliers to supply raw materials or the components needed to make your products. In your products and services section, describe your relationships with your vendors and suppliers fully.

Avoid the mistake of relying on only one supplier or vendor. If that supplier or vendor fails to supply or goes out of business, you can easily face supply problems and struggle to meet your demands. Plan to set up multiple vendor or supplier relationships for better business stability.

5. Your Primary Goal Is to Convince Your Readers

The primary goal of your business plan is to convince your readers that your business is viable and to create a guide for your business to follow. It applies to the products and services section.

When drafting this section, think like the reader. See your reader as someone who has no idea about your products and services. You are using the products and services section to provide the needed information to help your reader understand your products and services. As a result, you have to be clear and to the point.

While you want to educate your readers about your products or services, you also do not want to bore them with lots of technical details. Show your products and services and not your fancy choice of words.

Your products and services section should provide the answer to the “what” question for your business. You and your management team may run the business, but it is your products and services that are the lifeblood of the business.

Key Questions to Answer When Writing your Products and Services Section

Answering these questions can help you write your products and services section quickly and in a way that will appeal to your readers.

• Are your products existing on the market or are they still in the development stage?
• What is your timeline for adding new products and services to the market?
• What are the positives that make your products and services different from your competitors?
• Do your products and services have any competitive advantage that your competitors’ products and services do not currently have?
• Do your products or services have any competitive disadvantages that you need to overcome to compete with your competitors? If your answer is yes, state how you plan to overcome them,
• How much does it cost to produce your products or services? How much do you plan to sell it for?
• What is the price for your products and services compared to your competitors? Is pricing an issue?
• What are your operating costs and will it be low enough for you to compete with your competitors and still take home a reasonable profit margin?
• What is your plan for acquiring your products? Are you involved in the production of your products or services?
• Are you the manufacturer and produce all the components you need to create your products? Do you assemble your products by using components supplied by other manufacturers? Do you purchase your products directly from suppliers or wholesalers?
• Do you have a steady supply of products that you need to start your business? (If your business is yet to kick-off)
• How do you plan to distribute your products or services to the market?

You can also hint at the marketing or promotion plans you have for your products or services such as how you plan to build awareness or retain customers. The next section is where you can go fully into details about your business’s marketing and sales plan.

6. Show and Explain Your Marketing and Sales Plan

Providing great products and services is wonderful, but it means nothing if you do not have a marketing and sales plan to inform your customers about them. Your marketing and sales plan is critical to the success of your business.

The sales and marketing section is where you show and offer a detailed explanation of your marketing and sales plan and how you plan to execute it. It covers your pricing plan, proposed advertising and promotion activities, activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success, and the benefits of your products and services.

There are several ways you can approach your marketing and sales strategy. Ideally, your marketing and sales strategy has to fit the unique needs of your business.

In this section, you describe how the plans your business has for attracting and retaining customers, and the exact process for making a sale happen. It is essential to thoroughly describe your complete marketing and sales plans because you are still going to reference this section when you are making financial projections for your business.

Outline Your Business’ Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The sales and marketing section is where you outline your business’s unique selling proposition (USP). When you are developing your unique selling proposition, think about the strongest reasons why people should buy from you over your competition. That reason(s) is most likely a good fit to serve as your unique selling proposition (USP).

Target Market and Target Audience

Plans on how to get your products or services to your target market and how to get your target audience to buy them go into this section. You also highlight the strengths of your business here, particularly what sets them apart from your competition.

Before you start writing your marketing and sales plan, you need to have properly defined your target audience and fleshed out your buyer persona. If you do not first understand the individual you are marketing to, your marketing and sales plan will lack any substance and easily fall.

Creating a Smart Marketing and Sales Plan

Marketing your products and services is an investment that requires you to spend money. Like any other investment, you have to generate a good return on investment (ROI) to justify using that marketing and sales plan. Good marketing and sales plans bring in high sales and profits to your company.

Avoid spending money on unproductive marketing channels. Do your research and find out the best marketing and sales plan that works best for your company.

Your marketing and sales plan can be broken into different parts: your positioning statement, pricing, promotion, packaging, advertising, public relations, content marketing, social media, and strategic alliances.

Your Positioning Statement

Your positioning statement is the first part of your marketing and sales plan. It refers to the way you present your company to your customers.

Are you the premium solution, the low-price solution, or are you the intermediary between the two extremes in the market? What do you offer that your competitors do not that can give you leverage in the market?

Before you start writing your positioning statement, you need to spend some time evaluating the current market conditions. Here are some questions that can help you to evaluate the market

• What are the unique features or benefits that you offer that your competitors lack?
• What are your customers’ primary needs and wants?
• Why should a customer choose you over your competition? How do you plan to differentiate yourself from the competition?
• How does your company’s solution compare with other solutions in the market?

After answering these questions, then you can start writing your positioning statement. Your positioning statement does not have to be in-depth or too long.

All you need to explain with your positioning statement are two focus areas. The first is the position of your company within the competitive landscape. The other focus area is the core value proposition that sets your company apart from other alternatives that your ideal customer might consider.

Here is a simple template you can use to develop a positioning statement.

For [description of target market] who [need of target market], [product or service] [how it meets the need]. Unlike [top competition], it [most essential distinguishing feature].

For example, let’s create the positioning statement for fictional accounting software and QuickBooks alternative , TBooks.

“For small business owners who need accounting services, TBooks is an accounting software that helps small businesses handle their small business bookkeeping basics quickly and easily. Unlike Wave, TBooks gives small businesses access to live sessions with top accountants.”

You can edit this positioning statement sample and fill it with your business details.

After writing your positioning statement, the next step is the pricing of your offerings. The overall positioning strategy you set in your positioning statement will often determine how you price your products or services.

Pricing is a powerful tool that sends a strong message to your customers. Failure to get your pricing strategy right can make or mar your business. If you are targeting a low-income audience, setting a premium price can result in low sales.

You can use pricing to communicate your positioning to your customers. For example, if you are offering a product at a premium price, you are sending a message to your customers that the product belongs to the premium category.

Basic Rules to Follow When Pricing Your Offering

Setting a price for your offering involves more than just putting a price tag on it. Deciding on the right pricing for your offering requires following some basic rules. They include covering your costs, primary and secondary profit center pricing, and matching the market rate.

• Covering Your Costs: The price you set for your products or service should be more than it costs you to produce and deliver them. Every business has the same goal, to make a profit. Depending on the strategy you want to use, there are exceptions to this rule. However, the vast majority of businesses follow this rule.
• Primary and Secondary Profit Center Pricing: When a company sets its price above the cost of production, it is making that product its primary profit center. A company can also decide not to make its initial price its primary profit center by selling below or at even with its production cost. It rather depends on the support product or even maintenance that is associated with the initial purchase to make its profit. The initial price thus became its secondary profit center.
• Matching the Market Rate: A good rule to follow when pricing your products or services is to match your pricing with consumer demand and expectations. If you price your products or services beyond the price your customer perceives as the ideal price range, you may end up with no customers. Pricing your products too low below what your customer perceives as the ideal price range may lead to them undervaluing your offering.

Pricing Strategy

Your pricing strategy influences the price of your offering. There are several pricing strategies available for you to choose from when examining the right pricing strategy for your business. They include cost-plus pricing, market-based pricing, value pricing, and more.

• Cost-plus Pricing: This strategy is one of the simplest and oldest pricing strategies. Here you consider the cost of producing a unit of your product and then add a profit to it to arrive at your market price. It is an effective pricing strategy for manufacturers because it helps them cover their initial costs. Another name for the cost-plus pricing strategy is the markup pricing strategy.
• Market-based Pricing: This pricing strategy analyses the market including competitors’ pricing and then sets a price based on what the market is expecting. With this pricing strategy, you can either set your price at the low-end or high-end of the market.
• Value Pricing: This pricing strategy involves setting a price based on the value you are providing to your customer. When adopting a value-based pricing strategy, you have to set a price that your customers are willing to pay. Service-based businesses such as small business insurance providers , luxury goods sellers, and the fashion industry use this pricing strategy.

After carefully sorting out your positioning statement and pricing, the next item to look at is your promotional strategy. Your promotional strategy explains how you plan on communicating with your customers and prospects.

As a business, you must measure all your costs, including the cost of your promotions. You also want to measure how much sales your promotions bring for your business to determine its usefulness. Promotional strategies or programs that do not lead to profit need to be removed.

There are different types of promotional strategies you can adopt for your business, they include advertising, public relations, and content marketing.

Advertising

Your business plan should include your advertising plan which can be found in the marketing and sales plan section. You need to include an overview of your advertising plans such as the areas you plan to spend money on to advertise your business and offers.

Ensure that you make it clear in this section if your business will be advertising online or using the more traditional offline media, or the combination of both online and offline media. You can also include the advertising medium you want to use to raise awareness about your business and offers.

Some common online advertising mediums you can use include social media ads, landing pages, sales pages, SEO, Pay-Per-Click, emails, Google Ads, and others. Some common traditional and offline advertising mediums include word of mouth, radios, direct mail, televisions, flyers, billboards, posters, and others.

A key component of your advertising strategy is how you plan to measure the effectiveness and success of your advertising campaign. There is no point in sticking with an advertising plan or medium that does not produce results for your business in the long run.

Public Relations

A great way to reach your customers is to get the media to cover your business or product. Publicity, especially good ones, should be a part of your marketing and sales plan. In this section, show your plans for getting prominent reviews of your product from reputable publications and sources.

Your business needs that exposure to grow. If public relations is a crucial part of your promotional strategy, provide details about your public relations plan here.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a popular promotional strategy used by businesses to inform and attract their customers. It is about teaching and educating your prospects on various topics of interest in your niche, it does not just involve informing them about the benefits and features of the products and services you have,

Businesses publish content usually for free where they provide useful information, tips, and advice so that their target market can be made aware of the importance of their products and services. Content marketing strategies seek to nurture prospects into buyers over time by simply providing value.

Your company can create a blog where it will be publishing content for its target market. You will need to use the best website builder such as Wix and Squarespace and the best web hosting services such as Bluehost, Hostinger, and other Bluehost alternatives to create a functional blog or website.

If content marketing is a crucial part of your promotional strategy (as it should be), detail your plans under promotions.

Including high-quality images of the packaging of your product in your business plan is a lovely idea. You can add the images of the packaging of that product in the marketing and sales plan section. If you are not selling a product, then you do not need to include any worry about the physical packaging of your product.

When organizing the packaging section of your business plan, you can answer the following questions to make maximum use of this section.

• Is your choice of packaging consistent with your positioning strategy?
• What key value proposition does your packaging communicate? (It should reflect the key value proposition of your business)
• How does your packaging compare to that of your competitors?

Social Media

Your 21st-century business needs to have a good social media presence. Not having one is leaving out opportunities for growth and reaching out to your prospect.

You do not have to join the thousands of social media platforms out there. What you need to do is join the ones that your customers are active on and be active there.

Businesses use social media to provide information about their products such as promotions, discounts, the benefits of their products, and content on their blogs.

Social media is also a platform for engaging with your customers and getting feedback about your products or services. Make no mistake, more and more of your prospects are using social media channels to find more information about companies.

You need to consider the social media channels you want to prioritize your business (prioritize the ones your customers are active in) and your branding plans in this section.

Strategic Alliances

If your company plans to work closely with other companies as part of your sales and marketing plan, include it in this section. Prove details about those partnerships in your business plan if you have already established them.

Strategic alliances can be beneficial for all parties involved including your company. Working closely with another company in the form of a partnership can provide access to a different target market segment for your company.

The company you are partnering with may also gain access to your target market or simply offer a new product or service (that of your company) to its customers.

Mutually beneficial partnerships can cover the weaknesses of one company with the strength of another. You should consider strategic alliances with companies that sell complimentary products to yours. For example, if you provide printers, you can partner with a company that produces ink since the customers that buy printers from you will also need inks for printing.

Steps Involved in Creating a Marketing and Sales Plan

1. Focus on Your Target Market

Identify who your customers are, the market you want to target. Then determine the best ways to get your products or services to your potential customers.

2. Evaluate Your Competition

One of the goals of having a marketing plan is to distinguish yourself from your competition. You cannot stand out from them without first knowing them in and out.

You can know your competitors by gathering information about their products, pricing, service, and advertising campaigns.

These questions can help you know your competition.

• What makes your competition successful?
• What are their weaknesses?
• What are customers saying about your competition?

3. Consider Your Brand

Customers' perception of your brand has a strong impact on your sales. Your marketing and sales plan should seek to bolster the image of your brand. Before you start marketing your business, think about the message you want to pass across about your business and your products and services.

4. Focus on Benefits

The majority of your customers do not view your product in terms of features, what they want to know is the benefits and solutions your product offers. Think about the problems your product solves and the benefits it delivers, and use it to create the right sales and marketing message.

Your marketing plan should focus on what you want your customer to get instead of what you provide. Identify those benefits in your marketing and sales plan.

5. Focus on Differentiation

Your marketing and sales plan should look for a unique angle they can take that differentiates your business from the competition, even if the products offered are similar. Some good areas of differentiation you can use are your benefits, pricing, and features.

Key Questions to Answer When Writing Your Marketing and Sales Plan

• What is your company’s budget for sales and marketing campaigns?
• What key metrics will you use to determine if your marketing plans are successful?
• What are your alternatives if your initial marketing efforts do not succeed?
• Who are the sales representatives you need to promote your products or services?
• What are the marketing and sales channels you plan to use? How do you plan to get your products in front of your ideal customers?
• Where will you sell your products?

You may want to include samples of marketing materials you plan to use such as print ads, website descriptions, and social media ads. While it is not compulsory to include these samples, it can help you better communicate your marketing and sales plan and objectives.

The purpose of the marketing and sales section is to answer this question “How will you reach your customers?” If you cannot convincingly provide an answer to this question, you need to rework your marketing and sales section.

7. Clearly Show Your Funding Request

If you are writing your business plan to ask for funding from investors or financial institutions, the funding request section is where you will outline your funding requirements. The funding request section should answer the question ‘How much money will your business need in the near future (3 to 5 years)?’

A good funding request section will clearly outline and explain the amount of funding your business needs over the next five years. You need to know the amount of money your business needs to make an accurate funding request.

Also, when writing your funding request, provide details of how the funds will be used over the period. Specify if you want to use the funds to buy raw materials or machinery, pay salaries, pay for advertisements, and cover specific bills such as rent and electricity.

In addition to explaining what you want to use the funds requested for, you need to clearly state the projected return on investment (ROI) . Investors and creditors want to know if your business can generate profit for them if they put funds into it.

Ensure you do not inflate the figures and stay as realistic as possible. Investors and financial institutions you are seeking funds from will do their research before investing money in your business.

If you are not sure of an exact number to request from, you can use some range of numbers as rough estimates. Add a best-case scenario and a work-case scenario to your funding request. Also, include a description of your strategic future financial plans such as selling your business or paying off debts.

Funding Request: Debt or Equity?

When making your funding request, specify the type of funding you want. Do you want debt or equity? Draw out the terms that will be applicable for the funding, and the length of time the funding request will cover.

Case for Equity

If your new business has not yet started generating profits, you are most likely preparing to sell equity in your business to raise capital at the early stage. Equity here refers to ownership. In this case, you are selling a portion of your company to raise capital.

Although this method of raising capital for your business does not put your business in debt, keep in mind that an equity owner may expect to play a key role in company decisions even if he does not hold a major stake in the company.

Most equity sales for startups are usually private transactions . If you are making a funding request by offering equity in exchange for funding, let the investor know that they will be paid a dividend (a share of the company’s profit). Also, let the investor know the process for selling their equity in your business.

Case for Debt

You may decide not to offer equity in exchange for funds, instead, you make a funding request with the promise to pay back the money borrowed at the agreed time frame.

When making a funding request with an agreement to pay back, note that you will have to repay your creditors both the principal amount borrowed and the interest on it. Financial institutions offer this type of funding for businesses.

Large companies combine both equity and debt in their capital structure. When drafting your business plan, decide if you want to offer both or one over the other.

Before you sell equity in exchange for funding in your business, consider if you are willing to accept not being in total control of your business. Also, before you seek loans in your funding request section, ensure that the terms of repayment are favorable.

You should set a clear timeline in your funding request so that potential investors and creditors can know what you are expecting. Some investors and creditors may agree to your funding request and then delay payment for longer than 30 days, meanwhile, your business needs an immediate cash injection to operate efficiently.

Additional Tips for Writing the Funding Request Section of your Business Plan

The funding request section is not necessary for every business, it is only needed by businesses who plan to use their business plan to secure funding.

If you are adding the funding request section to your business plan, provide an itemized summary of how you plan to use the funds requested. Hiring a lawyer, accountant, or other professionals may be necessary for the proper development of this section.

You should also gather and use financial statements that add credibility and support to your funding requests. Ensure that the financial statements you use should include your projected financial data such as projected cash flows, forecast statements, and expenditure budgets.

If you are an existing business, include all historical financial statements such as cash flow statements, balance sheets and income statements .

Provide monthly and quarterly financial statements for a year. If your business has records that date back beyond the one-year mark, add the yearly statements of those years. These documents are for the appendix section of your business plan.

8. Detail Your Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projections

If you used the funding request section in your business plan, supplement it with a financial plan, metrics, and projections. This section paints a picture of the past performance of your business and then goes ahead to make an informed projection about its future.

The goal of this section is to convince readers that your business is going to be a financial success. It outlines your business plan to generate enough profit to repay the loan (with interest if applicable) and to generate a decent return on investment for investors.

If you have an existing business already in operation, use this section to demonstrate stability through finance. This section should include your cash flow statements, balance sheets, and income statements covering the last three to five years. If your business has some acceptable collateral that you can use to acquire loans, list it in the financial plan, metrics, and projection section.

Apart from current financial statements, this section should also contain a prospective financial outlook that spans the next five years. Include forecasted income statements, cash flow statements, balance sheets, and capital expenditure budget.

If your business is new and is not yet generating profit, use clear and realistic projections to show the potentials of your business.

When drafting this section, research industry norms and the performance of comparable businesses. Your financial projections should cover at least five years. State the logic behind your financial projections. Remember you can always make adjustments to this section as the variables change.

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section create a baseline which your business can either exceed or fail to reach. If your business fails to reach your projections in this section, you need to understand why it failed.

Investors and loan managers spend a lot of time going through the financial plan, metrics, and projection section compared to other parts of the business plan. Ensure you spend time creating credible financial analyses for your business in this section.

Many entrepreneurs find this section daunting to write. You do not need a business degree to create a solid financial forecast for your business. Business finances, especially for startups, are not as complicated as they seem. There are several online tools and templates that make writing this section so much easier.

Use Graphs and Charts

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section is a great place to use graphs and charts to tell the financial story of your business. Charts and images make it easier to communicate your finances.

Accuracy in this section is key, ensure you carefully analyze your past financial statements properly before making financial projects.

Address the Risk Factors and Show Realistic Financial Projections

Keep your financial plan, metrics, and projection realistic. It is okay to be optimistic in your financial projection, however, you have to justify it.

You should also address the various risk factors associated with your business in this section. Investors want to know the potential risks involved, show them. You should also show your plans for mitigating those risks.

What You Should In The Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projection Section of Your Business Plan

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section of your business plan should have monthly sales and revenue forecasts for the first year. It should also include annual projections that cover 3 to 5 years.

A three-year projection is a basic requirement to have in your business plan. However, some investors may request a five-year forecast.

Your business plan should include the following financial statements: sales forecast, personnel plan, income statement, income statement, cash flow statement, balance sheet, and an exit strategy.

1. Sales Forecast

Sales forecast refers to your projections about the number of sales your business is going to record over the next few years. It is typically broken into several rows, with each row assigned to a core product or service that your business is offering.

One common mistake people make in their business plan is to break down the sales forecast section into long details. A sales forecast should forecast the high-level details.

For example, if you are forecasting sales for a payroll software provider, you could break down your forecast into target market segments or subscription categories.

Your sales forecast section should also have a corresponding row for each sales row to cover the direct cost or Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). The objective of these rows is to show the expenses that your business incurs in making and delivering your product or service.

Note that your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) should only cover those direct costs incurred when making your products. Other indirect expenses such as insurance, salaries, payroll tax, and rent should not be included.

For example, the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for a restaurant is the cost of ingredients while for a consulting company it will be the cost of paper and other presentation materials.

2. Personnel Plan

The personnel plan section is where you provide details about the payment plan for your employees. For a small business, you can easily list every position in your company and how much you plan to pay in the personnel plan.

However, for larger businesses, you have to break the personnel plan into functional groups such as sales and marketing.

The personnel plan will also include the cost of an employee beyond salary, commonly referred to as the employee burden. These costs include insurance, payroll taxes , and other essential costs incurred monthly as a result of having employees on your payroll.

3. Income Statement

The income statement section shows if your business is making a profit or taking a loss. Another name for the income statement is the profit and loss (P&L). It takes data from your sales forecast and personnel plan and adds other ongoing expenses you incur while running your business.

Every business plan should have an income statement. It subtracts your business expenses from its earnings to show if your business is generating profit or incurring losses.

The income statement has the following items: sales, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), gross margin, operating expenses, total operating expenses, operating income , total expenses, and net profit.

• Sales refer to the revenue your business generates from selling its products or services. Other names for sales are income or revenue.
• Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) refers to the total cost of selling your products. Other names for COGS are direct costs or cost of sales. Manufacturing businesses use the Costs of Goods Manufactured (COGM) .
• Gross Margin is the figure you get when you subtract your COGS from your sales. In your income statement, you can express it as a percentage of total sales (Gross margin / Sales = Gross Margin Percent).
• Operating Expenses refer to all the expenses you incur from running your business. It exempts the COGS because it stands alone as a core part of your income statement. You also have to exclude taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Your operating expenses include salaries, marketing expenses, research and development (R&D) expenses, and other expenses.
• Total Operating Expenses refers to the sum of all your operating expenses including those exemptions named above under operating expenses.
• Operating Income refers to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. It is simply known as the acronym EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). Calculating your operating income is simple, all you need to do is to subtract your COGS and total operating expenses from your sales.
• Total Expenses refer to the sum of your operating expenses and your business’ interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
• Net profit shows whether your business has made a profit or taken a loss during a given timeframe.

4. Cash Flow Statement

The cash flow statement tracks the money you have in the bank at any given point. It is often confused with the income statement or the profit and loss statement. They are both different types of financial statements. The income statement calculates your profits and losses while the cash flow statement shows you how much you have in the bank.

5. Balance Sheet

The balance sheet is a financial statement that provides an overview of the financial health of your business. It contains information about the assets and liabilities of your company, and owner’s or shareholders’ equity.

You can get the net worth of your company by subtracting your company’s liabilities from its assets.

6. Exit Strategy

The exit strategy refers to a probable plan for selling your business either to the public in an IPO or to another company. It is the last thing you include in the financial plan, metrics, and projection section.

You can choose to omit the exit strategy from your business plan if you plan to maintain full ownership of your business and do not plan on seeking angel investment or virtual capitalist (VC) funding.

Investors may want to know what your exit plan is. They invest in your business to get a good return on investment.

Your exit strategy does not have to include long and boring details. Ensure you identify some interested parties who may be interested in buying the company if it becomes a success.

Key Questions to Answer with Your Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projection

Your financial plan, metrics, and projection section helps investors, creditors, or your internal managers to understand what your expenses are, the amount of cash you need, and what it takes to make your company profitable. It also shows what you will be doing with any funding.

You do not need to show actual financial data if you do not have one. Adding forecasts and projections to your financial statements is added proof that your strategy is feasible and shows investors you have planned properly.

Here are some key questions to answer to help you develop this section.

• What is your sales forecast for the next year?
• When will your company achieve a positive cash flow?
• What are the core expenses you need to operate?
• How much money do you need upfront to operate or grow your company?
• How will you use the loans or investments?

9. Add an Appendix to Your Business Plan

Adding an appendix to your business plan is optional. It is a useful place to put any charts, tables, legal notes, definitions, permits, résumés, and other critical information that do not fit into other sections of your business plan.

The appendix section is where you would want to include details of a patent or patent-pending if you have one. You can always add illustrations or images of your products here. It is the last section of your business plan.

When writing your business plan, there are details you cut short or remove to prevent the entire section from becoming too lengthy. There are also details you want to include in the business plan but are not a good fit for any of the previous sections. You can add that additional information to the appendix section.

Businesses also use the appendix section to include supporting documents or other materials specially requested by investors or lenders.

You can include just about any information that supports the assumptions and statements you made in the business plan under the appendix. It is the one place in the business plan where unrelated data and information can coexist amicably.

If your appendix section is lengthy, try organizing it by adding a table of contents at the beginning of the appendix section. It is also advisable to group similar information to make it easier for the reader to access them.

A well-organized appendix section makes it easier to share your information clearly and concisely. Add footnotes throughout the rest of the business plan or make references in the plan to the documents in the appendix.

The appendix section is usually only necessary if you are seeking funding from investors or lenders, or hoping to attract partners.

People reading business plans do not want to spend time going through a heap of backup information, numbers, and charts. Keep these documents or information in the Appendix section in case the reader wants to dig deeper.

Common Items to Include in the Appendix Section of Your Business Plan

The appendix section includes documents that supplement or support the information or claims given in other sections of the business plans. Common items you can include in the appendix section include:

• Additional data about the process of manufacturing or creation
• Additional description of products or services such as product schematics
• Additional financial documents or projections
• Articles of incorporation and status
• Backup for market research or competitive analysis
• Bank statements
• Business registries
• Client testimonials (if your business is already running)
• Copies of insurances
• Credit histories (personal or/and business)
• Deeds and permits
• Equipment leases
• Examples of marketing and advertising collateral
• Industry associations and memberships
• Images of product
• Intellectual property
• Key customer contracts
• Legal documents and other contracts
• Letters of reference
• Links to references
• Market research data
• Organizational charts
• Photographs of potential facilities
• Professional licenses pertaining to your legal structure or type of business
• Purchase orders
• Resumes of the founder(s) and key managers
• State and federal identification numbers or codes
• Trademarks or patents’ registrations

Avoid using the appendix section as a place to dump any document or information you feel like adding. Only add documents or information that you support or increase the credibility of your business plan.

Tips and Strategies for Writing a Convincing Business Plan

To achieve a perfect business plan, you need to consider some key tips and strategies. These tips will raise the efficiency of your business plan above average.

1. Know Your Audience

When writing a business plan, you need to know your audience . Business owners write business plans for different reasons. Your business plan has to be specific. For example, you can write business plans to potential investors, banks, and even fellow board members of the company.

The audience you are writing to determines the structure of the business plan. As a business owner, you have to know your audience. Not everyone will be your audience. Knowing your audience will help you to narrow the scope of your business plan.

Consider what your audience wants to see in your projects, the likely questions they might ask, and what interests them.

• A business plan used to address a company's board members will center on its employment schemes, internal affairs, projects, stakeholders, etc.
• A business plan for financial institutions will talk about the size of your market and the chances for you to pay back any loans you demand.
• A business plan for investors will show proof that you can return the investment capital within a specific time. In addition, it discusses your financial projections, tractions, and market size.

2. Get Inspiration from People

Writing a business plan from scratch as an entrepreneur can be daunting. That is why you need the right inspiration to push you to write one. You can gain inspiration from the successful business plans of other businesses. Look at their business plans, the style they use, the structure of the project, etc.

To make your business plan easier to create, search companies related to your business to get an exact copy of what you need to create an effective business plan. You can also make references while citing examples in your business plans.

When drafting your business plan, get as much help from others as you possibly can. By getting inspiration from people, you can create something better than what they have.

3. Avoid Being Over Optimistic

Many business owners make use of strong adjectives to qualify their content. One of the big mistakes entrepreneurs make when preparing a business plan is promising too much.

The use of superlatives and over-optimistic claims can prepare the audience for more than you can offer. In the end, you disappoint the confidence they have in you.

In most cases, the best option is to be realistic with your claims and statistics. Most of the investors can sense a bit of incompetency from the overuse of superlatives. As a new entrepreneur, do not be tempted to over-promise to get the interests of investors.

The concept of entrepreneurship centers on risks, nothing is certain when you make future analyses. What separates the best is the ability to do careful research and work towards achieving that, not promising more than you can achieve.

To make an excellent first impression as an entrepreneur, replace superlatives with compelling data-driven content. In this way, you are more specific than someone promising a huge ROI from an investment.

4. Keep it Simple and Short

When writing business plans, ensure you keep them simple throughout. Irrespective of the purpose of the business plan, your goal is to convince the audience.

One way to achieve this goal is to make them understand your proposal. Therefore, it would be best if you avoid the use of complex grammar to express yourself. It would be a huge turn-off if the people you want to convince are not familiar with your use of words.

Another thing to note is the length of your business plan. It would be best if you made it as brief as possible.

You hardly see investors or agencies that read through an extremely long document. In that case, if your first few pages can’t convince them, then you have lost it. The more pages you write, the higher the chances of you derailing from the essential contents.

To ensure your business plan has a high conversion rate, you need to dispose of every unnecessary information. For example, if you have a strategy that you are not sure of, it would be best to leave it out of the plan.

5. Make an Outline and Follow Through

A perfect business plan must have touched every part needed to convince the audience. Business owners get easily tempted to concentrate more on their products than on other sections. Doing this can be detrimental to the efficiency of the business plan.

For example, imagine you talking about a product but omitting or providing very little information about the target audience. You will leave your clients confused.

To ensure that your business plan communicates your full business model to readers, you have to input all the necessary information in it. One of the best ways to achieve this is to design a structure and stick to it.

This structure is what guides you throughout the writing. To make your work easier, you can assign an estimated word count or page limit to every section to avoid making it too bulky for easy reading. As a guide, the necessary things your business plan must contain are:

• Table of contents
• Introduction
• Product or service description
• Target audience
• Market size
• Competition analysis
• Financial projections

Some specific businesses can include some other essential sections, but these are the key sections that must be in every business plan.

6. Ask a Professional to Proofread

When writing a business plan, you must tie all loose ends to get a perfect result. When you are done with writing, call a professional to go through the document for you. You are bound to make mistakes, and the way to correct them is to get external help.

You should get a professional in your field who can relate to every section of your business plan. It would be easier for the professional to notice the inner flaws in the document than an editor with no knowledge of your business.

In addition to getting a professional to proofread, get an editor to proofread and edit your document. The editor will help you identify grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and inappropriate writing styles.

Writing a business plan can be daunting, but you can surmount that obstacle and get the best out of it with these tips.

Business Plan Examples and Templates That’ll Save You Tons of Time

1. hubspot's one-page business plan.

The one-page business plan template by HubSpot is the perfect guide for businesses of any size, irrespective of their business strategy. Although the template is condensed into a page, your final business plan should not be a page long! The template is designed to ask helpful questions that can help you develop your business plan.

Hubspot’s one-page business plan template is divided into nine fields:

• Business opportunity
• Company description
• Industry analysis
• Target market
• Implementation timeline
• Marketing plan
• Financial summary
• Funding required

2. Bplan’s Free Business Plan Template

Bplans' free business plan template is investor-approved. It is a rich template used by prestigious educational institutions such as Babson College and Princeton University to teach entrepreneurs how to create a business plan.

The template has six sections: the executive summary, opportunity, execution, company, financial plan, and appendix. There is a step-by-step guide for writing every little detail in the business plan. Follow the instructions each step of the way and you will create a business plan that impresses investors or lenders easily.

3. HubSpot's Downloadable Business Plan Template

HubSpot’s downloadable business plan template is a more comprehensive option compared to the one-page business template by HubSpot. This free and downloadable business plan template is designed for entrepreneurs.

The template is a comprehensive guide and checklist for business owners just starting their businesses. It tells you everything you need to fill in each section of the business plan and how to do it.

There are nine sections in this business plan template: an executive summary, company and business description, product and services line, market analysis, marketing plan, sales plan, legal notes, financial considerations, and appendix.

4. Business Plan by My Own Business Institute

My Own Business Institute (MOBI) which is a part of Santa Clara University's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship offers a free business plan template. You can either copy the free business template from the link provided above or download it as a Word document.

The comprehensive template consists of a whopping 15 sections.

• The Business Profile
• The Vision and the People
• Home-Based Business and Freelance Business Opportunities
• Organization
• Licenses and Permits
• Business Insurance
• Communication Tools
• Acquisitions
• Location and Leasing
• Accounting and Cash Flow
• Opening and Marketing
• Managing Employees
• Expanding and Handling Problems

There are lots of helpful tips on how to fill each section in the free business plan template by MOBI.

5. Score's Business Plan Template for Startups

Score is an American nonprofit organization that helps entrepreneurs build successful companies. This business plan template for startups by Score is available for free download. The business plan template asks a whooping 150 generic questions that help entrepreneurs from different fields to set up the perfect business plan.

The business plan template for startups contains clear instructions and worksheets, all you have to do is answer the questions and fill the worksheets.

There are nine sections in the business plan template: executive summary, company description, products and services, marketing plan, operational plan, management and organization, startup expenses and capitalization, financial plan, and appendices.

The ‘refining the plan’ resource contains instructions that help you modify your business plan to suit your specific needs, industry, and target audience. After you have completed Score’s business plan template, you can work with a SCORE mentor for expert advice in business planning.

6. Minimalist Architecture Business Plan Template by Venngage

The minimalist architecture business plan template is a simple template by Venngage that you can customize to suit your business needs .

There are five sections in the template: an executive summary, statement of problem, approach and methodology, qualifications, and schedule and benchmark. The business plan template has instructions that guide users on what to fill in each section.

7. Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template

The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers two free business plan templates, filled with practical real-life examples that you can model to create your business plan. Both free business plan templates are written by fictional business owners: Rebecca who owns a consulting firm, and Andrew who owns a toy company.

There are five sections in the two SBA’s free business plan templates.

• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• Service Line
• Marketing and Sales

8. The $100 Startup's One-Page Business Plan

The one-page business plan by the $100 startup is a simple business plan template for entrepreneurs who do not want to create a long and complicated plan . You can include more details in the appendices for funders who want more information beyond what you can put in the one-page business plan.

There are five sections in the one-page business plan such as overview, ka-ching, hustling, success, and obstacles or challenges or open questions. You can answer all the questions using one or two sentences.

9. PandaDoc’s Free Business Plan Template

The free business plan template by PandaDoc is a comprehensive 15-page document that describes the information you should include in every section.

There are 11 sections in PandaDoc’s free business plan template.

• Executive summary
• Business description
• Products and services
• Operations plan
• Management organization
• Financial plan
• Conclusion / Call to action
• Confidentiality statement

You have to sign up for its 14-day free trial to access the template. You will find different business plan templates on PandaDoc once you sign up (including templates for general businesses and specific businesses such as bakeries, startups, restaurants, salons, hotels, and coffee shops)

PandaDoc allows you to customize its business plan templates to fit the needs of your business. After editing the template, you can send it to interested parties and track opens and views through PandaDoc.

10. Invoiceberry Templates for Word, Open Office, Excel, or PPT

InvoiceBerry is a U.K based online invoicing and tracking platform that offers free business plan templates in .docx, .odt, .xlsx, and .pptx formats for freelancers and small businesses.

Before you can download the free business plan template, it will ask you to give it your email address. After you complete the little task, it will send the download link to your inbox for you to download. It also provides a business plan checklist in .xlsx file format that ensures you add the right information to the business plan.

Alternatives to the Traditional Business Plan

A business plan is very important in mapping out how one expects their business to grow over a set number of years, particularly when they need external investment in their business. However, many investors do not have the time to watch you present your business plan. It is a long and boring read.

Luckily, there are three alternatives to the traditional business plan (the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and Startup Pitch Deck). These alternatives are less laborious and easier and quicker to present to investors.

Business Model Canvas (BMC)

The business model canvas is a business tool used to present all the important components of setting up a business, such as customers, route to market, value proposition, and finance in a single sheet. It provides a very focused blueprint that defines your business initially which you can later expand on if needed.

The sheet is divided mainly into company, industry, and consumer models that are interconnected in how they find problems and proffer solutions.

Segments of the Business Model Canvas

The business model canvas was developed by founder Alexander Osterwalder to answer important business questions. It contains nine segments.

• Key Partners: Who will be occupying important executive positions in your business? What do they bring to the table? Will there be a third party involved with the company?
• Key Activities: What important activities will production entail? What activities will be carried out to ensure the smooth running of the company?
• The Product’s Value Propositions: What does your product do? How will it be different from other products?
• Customer Segments: What demography of consumers are you targeting? What are the habits of these consumers? Who are the MVPs of your target consumers?
• Customer Relationships: How will the team support and work with its customer base? How do you intend to build and maintain trust with the customer?
• Key Resources: What type of personnel and tools will be needed? What size of the budget will they need access to?
• Channels: How do you plan to create awareness of your products? How do you intend to transport your product to the customer?
• Cost Structure: What is the estimated cost of production? How much will distribution cost?
• Revenue Streams: For what value are customers willing to pay? How do they prefer to pay for the product? Are there any external revenues attached apart from the main source? How do the revenue streams contribute to the overall revenue?

Lean Canvas

The lean canvas is a problem-oriented alternative to the standard business model canvas. It was proposed by Ash Maurya, creator of Lean Stack as a development of the business model generation. It uses a more problem-focused approach and it majorly targets entrepreneurs and startup businesses.

Lean Canvas uses the same 9 blocks concept as the business model canvas, however, they have been modified slightly to suit the needs and purpose of a small startup. The key partners, key activities, customer relationships, and key resources are replaced by new segments which are:

• Problem: Simple and straightforward number of problems you have identified, ideally three.
• Solution: The solutions to each problem.
• Unfair Advantage: Something you possess that can't be easily bought or replicated.
• Key Metrics: Important numbers that will tell how your business is doing.

Startup Pitch Deck

While the business model canvas compresses into a factual sheet, startup pitch decks expand flamboyantly.

Pitch decks, through slides, convey your business plan, often through graphs and images used to emphasize estimations and observations in your presentation. Entrepreneurs often use pitch decks to fully convince their target audience of their plans before discussing funding arrangements.

Considering the likelihood of it being used in a small time frame, a good startup pitch deck should ideally contain 20 slides or less to have enough time to answer questions from the audience.

Unlike the standard and lean business model canvases, a pitch deck doesn't have a set template on how to present your business plan but there are still important components to it. These components often mirror those of the business model canvas except that they are in slide form and contain more details.

Using Airbnb (one of the most successful start-ups in recent history) for reference, the important components of a good slide are listed below.

• Cover/Introduction Slide: Here, you should include your company's name and mission statement. Your mission statement should be a very catchy tagline. Also, include personal information and contact details to provide an easy link for potential investors.
• Problem Slide: This slide requires you to create a connection with the audience or the investor that you are pitching. For example in their pitch, Airbnb summarized the most important problems it would solve in three brief points – pricing of hotels, disconnection from city culture, and connection problems for local bookings.
• Solution Slide: This slide includes your core value proposition. List simple and direct solutions to the problems you have mentioned
• Customer Analysis: Here you will provide information on the customers you will be offering your service to. The identity of your customers plays an important part in fundraising as well as the long-run viability of the business.
• Market Validation: Use competitive analysis to show numbers that prove the presence of a market for your product, industry behavior in the present and the long run, as well as the percentage of the market you aim to attract. It shows that you understand your competitors and customers and convinces investors of the opportunities presented in the market.
• Business Model: Your business model is the hook of your presentation. It may vary in complexity but it should generally include a pricing system informed by your market analysis. The goal of the slide is to confirm your business model is easy to implement.
• Marketing Strategy: This slide should summarize a few customer acquisition methods that you plan to use to grow the business.
• Competitive Advantage: What this slide will do is provide information on what will set you apart and make you a more attractive option to customers. It could be the possession of technology that is not widely known in the market.
• Team Slide: Here you will give a brief description of your team. Include your key management personnel here and their specific roles in the company. Include their educational background, job history, and skillsets. Also, talk about their accomplishments in their careers so far to build investors' confidence in members of your team.
• Traction Slide: This validates the company’s business model by showing growth through early sales and support. The slide aims to reduce any lingering fears in potential investors by showing realistic periodic milestones and profit margins. It can include current sales, growth, valuable customers, pre-orders, or data from surveys outlining current consumer interest.
• Funding Slide: This slide is popularly referred to as ‘the ask'. Here you will include important details like how much is needed to get your business off the ground and how the funding will be spent to help the company reach its goals.
• Appendix Slides: Your pitch deck appendix should always be included alongside a standard pitch presentation. It consists of additional slides you could not show in the pitch deck but you need to complement your presentation.

It is important to support your calculations with pictorial renditions. Infographics, such as pie charts or bar graphs, will be more effective in presenting the information than just listing numbers. For example, a six-month graph that shows rising profit margins will easily look more impressive than merely writing it.

Lastly, since a pitch deck is primarily used to secure meetings and you may be sharing your pitch with several investors, it is advisable to keep a separate public version that doesn't include financials. Only disclose the one with projections once you have secured a link with an investor.

Advantages of the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and Startup Pitch Deck over the Traditional Business Plan

• Time-Saving: Writing a detailed traditional business plan could take weeks or months. On the other hand, all three alternatives can be done in a few days or even one night of brainstorming if you have a comprehensive understanding of your business.
• Easier to Understand: Since the information presented is almost entirely factual, it puts focus on what is most important in running the business. They cut away the excess pages of fillers in a traditional business plan and allow investors to see what is driving the business and what is getting in the way.
• Easy to Update: Businesses typically present their business plans to many potential investors before they secure funding. What this means is that you may regularly have to amend your presentation to update statistics or adjust to audience-specific needs. For a traditional business plan, this could mean rewriting a whole section of your plan. For the three alternatives, updating is much easier because they are not voluminous.
• Guide for a More In-depth Business Plan: All three alternatives have the added benefit of being able to double as a sketch of your business plan if the need to create one arises in the future.

Business Plan FAQ

Business plans are important for any entrepreneur who is looking for a framework to run their company over some time or seeking external support. Although they are essential for new businesses, every company should ideally have a business plan to track their growth from time to time.  They can be used by startups seeking investments or loans to convey their business ideas or an employee to convince his boss of the feasibility of starting a new project. They can also be used by companies seeking to recruit high-profile employee targets into key positions or trying to secure partnerships with other firms.

Business plans often vary depending on your target audience, the scope, and the goals for the plan. Startup plans are the most common among the different types of business plans.  A start-up plan is used by a new business to present all the necessary information to help get the business up and running. They are usually used by entrepreneurs who are seeking funding from investors or bank loans. The established company alternative to a start-up plan is a feasibility plan. A feasibility plan is often used by an established company looking for new business opportunities. They are used to show the upsides of creating a new product for a consumer base. Because the audience is usually company people, it requires less company analysis. The third type of business plan is the lean business plan. A lean business plan is a brief, straight-to-the-point breakdown of your ideas and analysis for your business. It does not contain details of your proposal and can be written on one page. Finally, you have the what-if plan. As it implies, a what-if plan is a preparation for the worst-case scenario. You must always be prepared for the possibility of your original plan being rejected. A good what-if plan will serve as a good plan B to the original.

A good business plan has 10 key components. They include an executive plan, product analysis, desired customer base, company analysis, industry analysis, marketing strategy, sales strategy, financial projection, funding, and appendix. Executive Plan Your business should begin with your executive plan. An executive plan will provide early insight into what you are planning to achieve with your business. It should include your mission statement and highlight some of the important points which you will explain later. Product Analysis The next component of your business plan is your product analysis. A key part of this section is explaining the type of item or service you are going to offer as well as the market problems your product will solve. Desired Consumer Base Your product analysis should be supplemented with a detailed breakdown of your desired consumer base. Investors are always interested in knowing the economic power of your market as well as potential MVP customers. Company Analysis The next component of your business plan is your company analysis. Here, you explain how you want to run your business. It will include your operational strategy, an insight into the workforce needed to keep the company running, and important executive positions. It will also provide a calculation of expected operational costs.  Industry Analysis A good business plan should also contain well laid out industry analysis. It is important to convince potential investors you know the companies you will be competing with, as well as your plans to gain an edge on the competition. Marketing Strategy Your business plan should also include your marketing strategy. This is how you intend to spread awareness of your product. It should include a detailed explanation of the company brand as well as your advertising methods. Sales Strategy Your sales strategy comes after the market strategy. Here you give an overview of your company's pricing strategy and how you aim to maximize profits. You can also explain how your prices will adapt to market behaviors. Financial Projection The financial projection is the next component of your business plan. It explains your company's expected running cost and revenue earned during the tenure of the business plan. Financial projection gives a clear idea of how your company will develop in the future. Funding The next component of your business plan is funding. You have to detail how much external investment you need to get your business idea off the ground here. Appendix The last component of your plan is the appendix. This is where you put licenses, graphs, or key information that does not fit in any of the other components.

The business model canvas is a business management tool used to quickly define your business idea and model. It is often used when investors need you to pitch your business idea during a brief window.

A pitch deck is similar to a business model canvas except that it makes use of slides in its presentation. A pitch is not primarily used to secure funding, rather its main purpose is to entice potential investors by selling a very optimistic outlook on the business.

Business plan competitions help you evaluate the strength of your business plan. By participating in business plan competitions, you are improving your experience. The experience provides you with a degree of validation while practicing important skills. The main motivation for entering into the competitions is often to secure funding by finishing in podium positions. There is also the chance that you may catch the eye of a casual observer outside of the competition. These competitions also provide good networking opportunities. You could meet mentors who will take a keen interest in guiding you in your business journey. You also have the opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs whose ideas can complement yours.

Exlore Further

• 12 Key Elements of a Business Plan (Top Components Explained)
• 13 Sources of Business Finance For Companies & Sole Traders
• 5 Common Types of Business Structures (+ Pros & Cons)
• How to Buy a Business in 8 Steps (+ Due Diligence Checklist)

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Martin luenendonk.

Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.

This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.

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A beginner’s guide to product positioning

Last updated

12 May 2023

Reviewed by

No matter how amazing your product is, if your target audience doesn’t understand how your product meets their needs or solves their problems, you aren’t going to make many sales.

To avoid this fate, your company must use clear product positioning to help your brand stand out in a crowded market. It’s also a great way to become a well-known, well-loved expert in your field.

Effective product positioning helps your team create engaging, compelling brand messages. These can go company-wide, from your CEO’s elevator pitches to detailed marketing copy.

If your company’s sales are stagnating, it’s time to put your customer’s needs first. Hone in on a product positioning statement. We promise this is well worth your time and investment.

• What is product positioning?

Product positioning is a business strategy to determine where your product fits within your target market. You can also compare your competitors’ products to ensure yours is unique. Completing a product positioning exercise should help you answer these questions:

What is our target audience?

What do our customers need?

How does our product solve this problem?

Why will people choose our solution over others?

Here, you’ll gain valuable insights and a customer-centric understanding that will translate into ultra-powerful messaging, features, and branding. Your company can use these to meet your target audience’s top desires. 

Product positioning goes beyond listing your product specs and features. Your positioning should build a compelling, emotional story that leads your customers to a happy ending: Using your product to solve their problem. 

• What is a product positioning statement?

A product positioning statement is a simple sentence that communicates crucial information about your company’s value to a target market. 

In most cases, a product positioning statement describes: 

Your target audience

Their needs and wants

How your product solves this problem

Why your customers want it

Here’s an example: 

For [target audience] that wants [specific need/problem], [company/product] is a [explanation/solution] that offers [benefit].

Customer research and a thorough market understanding will provide a better insight into your target audience's needs. It’ll also help you craft a product positioning statement. 

Let’s look at how to achieve effective product positioning.

What do your users really want?

Just upload your customer research and ask your insights hub - like magic.

• The three essential components of product positioning

Your team needs to complete these exercises to create an effective product positioning strategy: 

Define your customers

To effectively position your product as the must-have solution in your particular niche, you need an in-depth understanding of your customers.

This includes: 

Demographics

Preferences

Spending behaviors

Pain points along 

Alternative solutions they’re currently trying 

Creating personas is a helpful way to connect the dots between these insights.

Fill marketplace gaps

Chances are, you aren’t the only company offering a competitive solution to your audience’s problems. Past startup attempts and current successful businesses allow you to learn from your peers. Research what is and isn’t working for your users and competitors.

For the best results, conduct research with potential customers using surveys or focus groups . This is a great way to gain valuable intel about the industry gaps your product can fill.

Building empathy

Even if your product perfectly solves your customer’s problems, you will likely miss out on sales if they don’t relate to your brand’s story. 

Whatever industry you operate in, your customers want to be the champion of their story, so your products are merely just a tool to get them to their end goal. 

Because of this, your team needs to use your customer research to create emotionally resonant, compelling copy that pinpoints your audience’s feelings and directs them toward victory. Showing your customers that you understand their perspective can lead to greater sales and loyalty. 

• 8 product positioning strategies

Many successful businesses use product positioning, so we’re going to look at their strategies. Check out these examples and see which you can adapt to your niche:

Quality-based product positioning

Does your company create high-quality or expensive luxury products? If so, marketing your brand on quality and social status can help you stand out from your competitors. 

Designer watch brand Rolex uses this product positioning strategy. It offers a luxury watch experience at a high cost to the customers willing to pay for the quality.

Performance-based product positioning

Performance-based companies demonstrate the clear advantages of using their products. 

Bounty is a strong example of this positioning strategy. The company compares its paper towel products to competitors in live demos, showing how much more efficient and cost-effective its products are. These eye-catching adverts show a clear advantage of purchasing Bounty. 

Variety-based product positioning

If your company offers a wide selection of product variations, you may benefit from a variety-based product positioning strategy. 

Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is the perfect example of this strategy. The company is known for offering a seemingly endless number of ice cream flavors for customers to choose from.

Aesthetic-based product positioning

Does your product help customers achieve a particular look or aesthetic? If so, an aesthetic-based product positioning strategy will help your brand attract loyal customers. 

Nike uses this strategy to its advantage when marketing products like Air Force and Air Max shoes, giving them a competitive edge over other footwear brands.

Efficiency-based product positioning

If your company offers a product that saves customers time and money, an efficiency-based product positioning strategy may work for you. 

Clickup and Monday.com reduce wasted time and costs while making teams more efficient. 

The companies use data to clearly articulate how many hours per week you save when you increase team productivity. That’s solid marketing!

Sustainability-based product positioning

Green, environmentally conscious initiatives are increasingly popular in modern business with growing climate concerns and needs. 

Brands like Patagonia use this product positioning strategy to build trust and a sense of joint responsibility with their customers. In 2022, the owner donated 98% of shares and future profits to fight climate change.

Reliability-based product positioning

For many customers, knowing they can return and get a familiar product experience is incredibly important. That’s why reliability-based product positioning is critical. 

Companies like McDonald’s use reliability-based product positioning to build a stronger sense of familiarity and brand loyalty. A Big Mac is a Big Mac, no matter which McDonald’s franchise you order it from!

DIY-based product positioning

Do-it-yourself (DIY) is growing in popularity, especially with how-to videos on Youtube and Wikihow guiding you.

If your product allows your customers to construct something, a DIY-based product positioning strategy may be a good company approach. 

Furniture brand IKEA is well-known for encouraging its customers to build their own furniture. It’s a great example of how this product positioning can help your brand stand out.

• How to build an effective product positioning strategy

With these excellent examples at your fingertips, you’re now ready to develop a product positioning strategy that works for your business:

Study your customers

Conducting thorough customer research is essential for product positioning success. In-depth user research replaces assumptions with valid data. 

Simply asking your target audience key questions about their wants and needs can ensure your product solves their problem and matches their requirements. This is far better than developing a product and discovering later that your customers didn’t need it in the first place!

Developing focused questions, launching surveys , and conducting focus groups means your team will produce data to enhance your product’s positioning in the market.

Your customers are an incredibly valuable resource to capitalize on, so don’t skip this step. User research insights are worth their weight in gold for building a sustainable business.

Tell a compelling story

Storytelling is an incredibly effective tool for positioning your product, especially when you paint your customer as a hero. 

You may be tempted to market your product or brand as the hero swooping in to save the day, but this positioning often doesn’t land as well with customers. 

Instead, build a compelling story about your product. Focusing on the accomplishments of your customers is one of the best ways to build long-term brand loyalty while positioning your company as an expert in the industry.

We recommend using customer research data to dig deep into your target audience’s underlying emotions and motivations. Once you tap into these insights, you can use them in your marketing and messaging.

Focus on your unique selling point (USP)

As your team works to create a compelling brand and product story, your unique selling point is an important aspect to consider. This lets you clearly state why someone should choose you over a competitor.

Marketing your USP is a classic example of operating as a generalist versus a specialist. Does your company want to offer a product for a broader audience or focus on a smaller group of customers that may be more loyal? 

If the second option speaks to you and your team, you should create and market your product with a strong USP. 

Key questions to ask around USP are:

Who needs us most, and where is the demand? 

Why are we unique, and what makes them choose us over others? 

Should we focus on a niche or serve a few target markets? 

Which target market is most sustainable for growth? 

How will we dominate our chosen niche? 

Perhaps you’re unsure what makes your product stand out from your competitors. Ask your top customers for feedback . You can use their insights to find other potential customers with the same needs and wants to expand your offerings to. 

Write a positioning statement

With the help of your customer research insights and story narrative, it’s time to write a product positioning statement. This will become the mantra of your business, helping you fulfill the company's vision. 

It’s a concise statement that your company should be able to understand and repeat. The product positioning statement clearly communicates your offerings, and you can use it to foster a sense of unity and focus within your organization.

Using the formula from earlier, here’s an example product positioning statement for Dovetail. You can use this as an exercise to complete your own:

For [modern companies] that want [to better understand their customers], [Dovetail] is an [easy-to-use software] that offers [a clear way to organize and analyze customer insights].

Test, test, and test again

Product positioning is a dynamic, adaptable process that serves your company as it grows and pivots. Adjusting your product positioning strategy over time to better serve your business is essential.

Whether your team is fresh off a product redesign or is looking to expand into a new market, speaking to your target audience is essential. Collecting feedback will guide your decisions through data as the product evolves. 

Your team should continually conduct customer research. Those valuable insights are the bread and butter of effective market research . 

Product positioning reduces development expenditures on unwanted features and helps you create winning products that stick around in the marketplace. 

• Become a product positioning pro with Dovetail

Feeling ready to tackle product positioning head-on?

Using customer insight software like Dovetail , your team can get in-depth information about your target audience’s needs, wants, and preferences. These valuable insights will make product positioning easier and more effective, giving your users a highly desirable platform.

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Do you share your interview findings with others?

Do you interview customers?

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How to Develop a Positioning Statement for Your Business

4 min. read

Updated May 10, 2024

Positioning is the essence of marketing strategy, and some would say of all business strategy.

It’s about how your business is different from the others. It’s about what your business does for people that other businesses don’t do.

• The positioning statement template

I’m not sure where this classic positioning statement template started, or whom to credit, but I’ve found it very useful for years of developing business plans.

“For [target market description] who [target market need], [how our business offering meets the need]. Unlike [key competition], it [most distinguishing feature].”

Here’s an example of that template in action for a social media consulting service, with the components separated:

“For [small business owners who want social media marketing but don’t have time to do it themselves], our social media services [do it for them without taking their time and effort]. Unlike [most social media consulting], [we don’t just advise; we do the work].”

Another example for a healthy fast food restaurant:

“For [busy people who want healthy foods but need fast meals], [we offer organic healthy fast foods]. Unlike [most fast foods offerings], we [offer fresh local ingredients, organic, grilled not fried, with a lot of vegetables and vegetarian options, and free-range meats].”

The examples show how the positioning statement sets the business and its offering apart from others. It implies strategic focus and a strategic match between target market, market need, and business offering. It’s a great tool to help you view your own business strategically, and to explain your strategy to outsiders when necessary.

• Positioning diagrams

I also like to explain positioning graphically with diagrams, like this simple one from Philip Kotler’s iconic textbook, “Marketing Management,” that shows positioning related to breakfast:

The diagram illustrates simple positioning related to breakfast. Breakfast can be slow or quick, and expensive or inexpensive. Pancakes might compete with hot cereal for slow and inexpensive, but bacon and eggs are different because they are slow and expensive. The instant breakfast doesn’t compete with bacon and eggs. That’s positioning.

To do your own positioning diagram, start with creative thinking about how you can divide your market in terms of variables that make strategic sense. In the example below I decided to organize the automobile market according to two factors: economical versus expensive, and practical versus fun. If I were looking to position specific cars with this, I’d put a luxury SUV on one extreme as practical and expensive; and a Mini-Cooper on another, as economical but fun.

I hope you can see how this kind of positioning diagram can lead to strategic thinking. What kinds of cars compete against the Mini-Cooper? What kinds of cars compete in the luxury SUV area? I hope you can also see how the positioning will help set marketing strategy, marketing messaging, and so forth.

We could take this diagram and develop a formal positioning statement for the Mini-Cooper:

For people who like fun-to-drive sporty cars but can’t afford to spend what a Porsche costs, the Mini-Cooper S offers a small car with great cornering and good acceleration that costs only about $30,000.

You may notice that the positioning diagram example here is a lot like the competitive matrix that appears in many business plans. That similarity is not an accident. The competitive matrix that appears in many plans and pitches is a direct descendent of the positioning diagram that Philip Kotler first popularized in the 1970s and 1980s.

What I wrote in an earlier discussion of the competitive matrix also applies here, with positioning:

“Don’t, please, discount [this] as an internal tool to help with strategy development and specifics of designing products. For this use, you don’t worry about showing how what you have is better; you use it to look for holes in the market, and needs that aren’t covered, so you can lead product development toward solutions that are better business opportunities.”

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• Place it in your plan where it achieves your goal

So which do you include in your business plan: competitive matrix, positioning statement, positioning diagram, or two or even three of these components? As with so many elements of a good business plan, this depends on the exact goal of your plan and the nature of your business.

If your plan is to serve as background information for raising angel investment, then you’ll need a pitch deck ; and either your positioning diagram or your competitive matrix will be one slide in the deck. Don’t give your investors both.

If you use the more trendy competitive matrix, include it in the part of the presentation that you’re using to explain and develop your product, product positioning, or marketing. Put it close to your relevant information, and be flexible, because the flow of a pitch depends on the specifics. If you use the more traditional positioning diagram, keep it close to strategy or marketing strategy.

Within the plan itself, in that case, include the formal verbal positioning statement as part of marketing strategy. Done right, it’s concise and communicates strategy very well. Set it aside as a “positioning statement.” That specific phrase will be meaningful to people who have studied marketing.

If you’re doing a lean business plan, use the positioning statement and the positioning diagram to help with strategy development. It fits into strategy or tactics, and concrete specific actions to react to your competitive positioning could easily be milestones.

Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software , a co-founder of Borland International, and a recognized expert in business planning. He has an MBA from Stanford and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame. Today, Tim dedicates most of his time to blogging, teaching and evangelizing for business planning.

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