How to write a sales and marketing plan for your new startup? [Ultimate Guide]

Launching a startup seems easy and fun when we suddenly purchase a domain, begin to build a website, and design a logo. All seems fine, all is really perfect! However, all are stuck when not a single customer buys your sweet product or service. Or you cannot find a single customer for your startup.

If you have the question “ What is the best startup sales and marketing strategy?” in your mind, here I am with my 6 years of startup experience (several years in China, 2 years at Whelp, still at Pickvisa.com , and my own startups I launched before, but failed :) Why? I'll tell you in my posts and articles) to tell you how to build an ultimate sales and marketing plan for your startup to launch the revenue machine.

We all start by searching on Google and fortunately, we see dozens of blogs about sales and marketing plans. But, in this age of ChatGPT, which one is based on true events? Who genuinely shared their experience? Hard to reveal. Right?

I found the real one. The best example is shown on BDC's website as the name "BDC business plan template for entrepreneurs ". In this business plan, there is a headline: Sales and Marketing. If you could answer properly to these questions in this section, you almost have a sales and marketing plan.

• Why is it important?

You cannot find a customer if you do not know who you are looking for. If you do not have a sales and marketing plan, it means you do not know your customer.

You cannot just randomly reach out to people and say “Hey this is my product and I want you to buy it”. It won’t definitely work. Because there are 8 billion people around the globe, it is physically impossible to reach all of them one by one and there is no time, you have infinite time so you can do it. You must find your customers from this crowd. I love this phrase:

“ Opening a business without a marketing plan would be like starting a car trip without a map, a GPS, or the address of the location you’re trying to reach ”

You need the niche market. It means a group of people who are your potential customers.?

1. How to find our potential customers?

Before finding a customer for your startup, firstly you must know these 2 terms:

• ICP - ideal customer profile. This could be a company or an individual with special characteristics. As its name refers, this is a profile of your ideal customer.??
• Buyer persona - is a person who will pay for your product or service regardless of the company, or industry. This is the human who pays the invoice.?

Sometimes, these two are the same. For example, you want to sell a car toy to a kid. Your ICP is the kid, you want this kid to play with your product. However, this kid is not your customer, because the kid will not pay the money to you, but the parents will. So, parents are your buyers.?

Another example, is you want to sell a real car. This time parents of this kid met your ICP and BP.?

You always must consider both of them in your marketing plan.?

• How to build ICP and buyer-persona?

An easy way to do this is just to think about who could possibly buy your product. For startups, it could seem hard but it is not. Here is the key, ask yourself:

“Whose problem does my product or service solve? What is the problem? Who has this problem?”

For example, you build a new platform that automates the customer services process. Who has customer service?

• A company
• What type of company?
• Large enterprises
• For example?
• AT&T
• Why?
• It has 217 million subscribers and it is physically impossible to provide them with customer service at a time. So automation is needed.?
• Have you asked them whether they have this issue or not?

So do this brainstorming and write down each specific characteristic of this prospect. It will be your customer profile keep it as an example, and search the companies with the same characteristics.

That’s perfect!

Who is the person inside of AT&T that will have a sales conversation, who will pay money to you? Just reach out to this company and ask them. They will tell you who is responsible for this. Then write down the characteristics (position, age, authority level, background etc.) of this person as a buyer persona.

So you found who you will sell your product or service to.

Now let’s talk about your offer. What do you offer to your customers and at what price?

I will write a new article about how to determine the price and pricing strategy and how to be compatible in the market and marketing research.

Now, you have customers and a price.

1. Where reach out to your customers?

You with your product in your pocket decide to sell it to your customer, today. Where to sell? I fully focus on startups, especially tech startups like SaaS, TaaS, or PaaS, etc. So their customers are on the internet, on social media channels. My favorite channel for B2B is LinkedIn and suggest it to everyone. Why?

• Every member of LinkedIn is there for business, not for fun. So everyone has one goal: to find people that are worth to work with.?
• LinkedIn has a vast user base spread across the globe, enabling you to connect with professionals from various countries and cultures.
• LinkedIn is a hub for B2B marketing. You can target specific industries, job roles, and companies through advertising and content sharing.

For B2B only LinkedIn is perfect. You can reach out to people directly and also run some campaigns as a backup for sales. Add LinkedIn as a connection channel. Here is an example of how I did it for a startup:

Here is the explanation of the table:

1. You can find the number of companies based on your ICP. As you already know the characteristics of your ICP you just search on LinkedIn for these characteristics and find out how many companies are out there as your prospects.?
2. This startup has a subscription-based business model. So each company has an average of 8 employees that will subscribe to the service. In total, it could be 218K subscribers.
3. And monthly price of the subscription is $12, which means if the startup could sell to all these companies, it can generate $31M per annum.

This is a real number but it is just an estimation to know your scope.

You can tell your investor how much money you plan to generate as revenue based on this data.        

For startups that business model is based on B2C. Frankly, I do not have an experience in this field. However, you can find out the channel based on the characteristics of your buyer persona, and what channel they spend their time most at.

In addition to this, cold calling and cold emailing are still attention-worthy channels to reach out to your customers. Most probably, when you reach out to someone on LinkedIn, they will definitely share their email to continue the conversation.?

Sometimes, the company members do not answer you on LinkedIn because they may receive dozens of messages per day, they may miss your message or they consciously ignore your message. In this case, contacting via email is the best way. If you have the phone number of the company you can call them directly and ask who you can talk to regarding this matter.

I want to add some small parts with big impacts here. Do not forget:

• To craft your LinkedIn messages or email content
• To plan the next steps, what if a prospect accepts your offer or answers your messages
• To list the main differentiators from your competitors
• To write an attract attention plan. Plan a plan to grab your customers' attention
• To write a positioning strategy. How do you want your customers to remember you?
• To make a roadmap of how you deliver your products or services to your customers
• To have promotions, discounts, free trials, and special offers
• To have a retention plan to keep your customer for a long time

You know your customer, you have a product or service to sell and you know how to reach out to them and where. But, it doesn’t end here. You have direct or indirect competitors in the market who do the same thing. You must know what makes your startup different than others, your strengths, weaknesses, etc. We call it SWOT analysis. Sounds fancy right?

I heard a lot, “My startup is perfect, my service is unique and we are absolutely bombastic in this market, we do not have competitors, or they all are nothing bla bla bla things” However, after a while, your competitors go up, you go down because of stubborn approach to your startup. The startup doesn’t work like this. I made the same mistakes, and that’s why my several startups failed.

1. What is SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool you can use to identify and evaluate your startup's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It provides a comprehensive view of both internal and external factors that can impact your startup’s current and future state. This analysis helps you develop strategies and make informed decisions.

Here's a breakdown of each component of a SWOT analysis:

• Strengths: These are the internal attributes and resources that give your startup an advantage over its competitors. They could include things like a strong brand reputation, a skilled workforce, proprietary technology, efficient processes, and a loyal customer base.
• Weaknesses: These are internal factors that put your startup at a disadvantage compared to its competitors. Weaknesses might involve outdated technology, inadequate resources, poor customer service, or lack of innovation.
• Opportunities: These are external factors that your startup can capitalize on to improve its position. Opportunities might include emerging markets, changing consumer preferences, technological advancements, or gaps in the competition.
• Threats: These are external factors that could potentially harm your startup's performance. Threats might include increased competition, economic downturns, changing regulations, or shifts in consumer behavior.

The process of conducting a SWOT analysis involves:

• Gathering Information: Collect data and insights about your startup's internal processes, performance, resources, and external factors like market trends, competitors, and regulatory changes.
• Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses: Assess your startup's internal capabilities and limitations. What are you good at, and where do you struggle?
• Identifying Opportunities and Threats: Analyze external factors that could impact your startup positively or negatively.
• Matching Internal Factors with External Factors: Pair your strengths with opportunities to develop strategies that leverage your advantages. Similarly, address weaknesses that could be exacerbated by potential threats.
• Strategy Formulation: Based on the analysis, develop strategies that capitalize on strengths and opportunities, while also mitigating weaknesses and addressing threats.
• Implementation and Monitoring: Put the strategies into action and continually monitor their effectiveness. As situations change, your strategies may need to be adjusted.

Do not ignore this part. ?

My favorite part. Setting goals.

1. How to set goals?

This is important but a little hard, because sometimes setting unrealistic goals ruins motivation and puts much more pressure on you and your team. How to set a goal. There is a SMART way to do this but I really do not use this, I may apply it subconsciously. Here is the way of setting a sales goal:

I shared the table above as a forecast for the revenue. This is not a goal. A goal should be something like this:

• By the end of 2023, we aim to have 100 customers and have $12k profit.

Let’s remember Brain Tracy’s quote: A dream without a goal is a wish. A goal without a plan is just a dream.

Butttt, a big but here. Some numbers are not dependent on us. For example, how could we make 100 customers? Here is the right way to do it:

You want 100 customers, for 100 customers you must reach out to 2000 prospects. This is the golden rule of sale. The average close rate is 5%. Try it you will see it. This is what you can do. You can reach out to 2000 prospects. So goal be like:

• Reach out to 2,000 prospects on LinkedIn by the end of 2023

Another issue here, you must be determined to close the deals, not only reaching out to prospects to hit the goal.

Here is the hard part, the majority overlook it.

1. How to do budgeting?

There is always a way to do it in a cost-effective way. In this age, there are a lot of tools, mechanisms, and methods to build brand awareness and achieve sales goals in the early stage of startup. I totally agree to spend millions of dollars on marketing but if you raise a 10 million dollar investment. However with a limited budget, a few grands from your salary, and a few bucks from friends, you must carefully spend your money. Here is the cheapest & effective marketing strategy for your startup:

• Write SEO-friendly blogs on your website
• Networking on LinkedIn?
• Be active on social media channels

No cost at all. Do not forget to take note of your expenses in an Excel file.?Example:

The last 2 things to consider:

• Measurement of the success

Measure whatever you do and spend. Then compare with the last month or week to see whether your startup is in progress or regress. Some common metrics used to measure the success of marketing campaigns include:

• Website traffic: This metric tracks the number of people who visit your website.
• Leads: This metric tracks the number of people who have expressed interest in your product or service.
• Sales: This metric tracks the number of products or services that have been sold.
• Return on investment (ROI): This metric tracks the amount of money that you spend on a marketing campaign compared to the amount of money that has been generated by the campaign.

• Risk management

You need a contingency plan that is essential for your startup as it can help to mitigate the financial and operational impact of unexpected events.

There are many different types of contingency plans, and the specific plan that is put in place will depend on the specific risks that your startup faces. Some common types of contingency plans include:

• Marketing contingency plan: This plan outlines how the business will continue to market its products or services in the event of a disruption.
• Sales contingency plan: This plan outlines how the business will continue to sell its products or services in the event of a disruption.

It is also important to regularly review and update the contingency plan to ensure that it is still relevant and effective.

Here are some examples of contingency plans:

• If you sell products online might have a contingency plan in place in case of a website outage. The plan might include having a backup website that can be used in the event of an outage, or having a process in place to manually process orders.
• If you rely on a third-party supplier for a critical component might have a contingency plan in place in case the supplier experiences a disruption. The plan might include having a backup supplier, or having a way to produce the component itself.

By having a contingency plan in place, you can reduce the impact of unexpected events and protect the bottom line.

Here is the sales and marketing plan template example for your startup:

• Executive Summary

This sales and marketing plan outlines the strategies and tactics that will be used to achieve the company's sales and marketing goals. The plan is based on a thorough understanding of the target market, the competition, and the company's strengths and weaknesses.

• Situational Analysis

The situational analysis begins with an overview of the company's products or services, the target market, and the competition. The analysis also includes a SWOT analysis, which identifies the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

• Marketing Objectives

The marketing objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. The objectives for this plan are to:

• Increase brand awareness by 20%
• Generate 1000 new leads per month
• Close 200 new deals per month

• Marketing Strategies

The marketing strategies are the specific actions that will be taken to achieve the marketing objectives. The strategies for this plan include:

• Content marketing: Creating and distributing valuable content to attract and engage potential customers
• Social media marketing: Using social media platforms to connect with potential customers and build relationships
• Search engine optimization (SEO): Improving the website's ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) to attract more organic traffic
• Paid advertising: Using paid advertising to reach a wider audience and generate more leads

• Marketing Tactics

The marketing tactics are the specific activities that will be carried out under each marketing strategy. The tactics for this plan include:

• Content marketing: Writing blog posts, creating infographics, and publishing videos
• Social media marketing: Posting engaging content, running social media ads, and participating in social media conversations
• SEO: Optimizing the website's content, structure, and code for search engines
• Paid advertising: Running Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other paid advertising campaigns

• Budget

The budget for this plan is $100,000. The budget will be used to cover the costs of content creation, social media advertising, SEO, and paid advertising.

• Measurement and Evaluation

The plan will be measured and evaluated on a monthly basis. The metrics that will be used to measure the plan's success include:

• Brand awareness
• Lead generation
• Sales

• Contingency Plans

The plan includes contingency plans for unexpected events, such as a change in the target market or a decline in the economy. The contingency plans for this plan include:

• If the target market changes, the plan will be revised to reflect the new target market.
• If the economy declines, the plan will be revised to focus on cost-effective marketing strategies.

This is the ultimate guide to building a sales and marketing plan for your startup. I am also an editable file as a template. Please, copy it before editing. Let others take advantage of it.

This is the end of this article. Something to consider, before leaving the page:

What part of this article you will immediately apply for your startup?