Marketing Plan - Products and Services
Product
In the Products and Services
section, you described your products and services
as you see them. Now describe them from your customers’
point of view.
Features
& Benefits
List
all of your major products or services.
For each product or service:
- Describe the most important features.
What is special about it?
- Describe the benefits. That is, what
will the product do for the customer?
There
is quite a bit of difference between features and
benefits, and think about them. For example, a feature
of a car is that it uses unleaded gas and has a
six speed transmission. The benefits are that the
car can accelerate rapidly and gets 25 mpg. You
build features into your product so that you can
sell the benefits.
What after-sale
services are you offering? Some examples are delivery,
warranty, service contracts, support, follow-up,
and refund policy.
Customers
Identify your targeted
customers – what are your customers like? What are
their age, gender, buying characteristics, and their
geographic locations, and any other characteristics
that are relevant to your sales or marketing efforts?
Of course, your
description will change depending on whether you
plan to sell to other businesses or directly to
consumers. If you sell a consumer product, but sell
it through a channel of distributors, wholesalers,
and retailers, you must carefully analyze both the
end consumer and the middleman businesses to which
you sell.
You may have more
than one customer group. Identify the most important
groups. Then, for each customer group, construct
what is called a demographic profile:
- Age
- Gender
- Where they live
- Average income level
- Social class and occupation
- Education
- Other (specific to your industry)
For business
customers, the demographic factors might be:
- Industry (or portion of an industry)
- Location
- Size of company
- Quality, technology, and price preferences
- Other (specific to your industry)
Back to more Business
Plan for a Startup Business
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