Business Plan 101: Target Markets and Positioning Your Company

Inspired by the actual original iPhone marketing documents, the fifth page of the business plan, Target Market, Positioning, & Main Differential Attributes, is covered in this week's Business 101: How To Effectively Write a Business Plan.

It will teach you the importance of the Target Market, Positioning, & Main Differential Attributes page, what information should be included, and a visually appealing example of a successful Target Market, Positioning, & Main Differential Attributes page I created.

This page specifically was inspired by the actual Apple, Inc marketing and product launch materials of the original iPhone, which is regarded as one of the best product launches in history.

Why reinvent the wheel when you can use the best product and marketing launch as the template for your page.

I was lucky enough to have accessed this information at the right time and saved it offline. As it is nearly impossible to find any leaked Apple documents, especially the holy grail on them all the original iPhone.

The Target Market, Positioning, & Main Differential Attributes is really where you differentiate yourself in the eyes of potential investors.

Most business plans potential investors see will have the same first four page: Executive Summary, Company Description, Market Description, and Market/Competitor Analysis. However, most business plans are lacking specific and actionable information about the Target Market, Positioning, & Main Differential Attributes of their proposed business concept.

This is where you separate yourself from the pack.

If Apple spent all this time and resources to create and include a Target Market, Positioning, & Main Differential Attributes page in their marketing and product launch documents for the original iPhone, don't you think it would be a good idea if you did to?

The Target Market, Positioning, & Main Differential Attributes page includes three main sections.

The Target Market portion of this page details the main market segments of customer your business will target.

This is one of the most important parts of this whole starting a business process. You need to know and understand the target markets you will be marketing to religiously. The markets you wish to target should include the below characteristics so that a comprehensive understanding of the target markets is formed. Without this understanding, it is hard to convince your potential investors on the success of your future business and marketing efforts.

As you can see, target segments need to include both macro and micro trends about the potential customers. If you use all these information and display it in a visually appealing way like the successful example I created below, you are on the right track to creating a successful Target Market, Positioning, & Main Differential Attributes page.

As you can see, I broke down Full Tank Petroleum's target market into four main pillars: Convenience, Value, Premium, and On-Demand.

Each target market has five (5) main characteristics that help define the potential target markets to potential investors. This really helped the investors understand who I would be targeting and with what type of delivery service. It also streamlined marketing and branding efforts dramatically.

By having identified these four target markets, you can easily tailor your marketing and branding messages to match the target markets in a way that would make them react positively do your message. No more wasted marketing dollars on campaigns that reach the wrong customers. Put in the work with your target markets and it will make your life a whole lot easily down the road. Your future self thanks you.

The next main segment of the Target Market, Positioning, & Main Differential Attributes page is Positioning.

Positioning refers to how your brand/company product or service offering compares to other competitors in the marketplace.

How does you brand compare to the competition on price, convenience, value? Is your company going to be targeting a niche? How do the other competitors in your space compare? Who are the leaders? Whose value has commodatized and plateaued?

I cannot stress enough how important it is to figure out the positioning of your company in the early stages on this business plan process. It is so crucial down the line when you are developing price, distribution, and plan strategies to make sure that these plans correlate which you brand's positioning statement.

Here is an example of a positioning map for the marine fueling industry.

You can see how easy it would be for potential investors to understand how the current marine fueling industry looks. I used brand strength (how long and how valuable is the different competing brands) and brand stature (how the brand is looked upon in the marketplace) to distinguish between the different competitors in the space.

Land-based gasoline stations are commodatized because they have been around the longest and is each brand doesn't really matter to the customers. They just see a gas station to fill up their boat.

Holiday Marina, All Seasons Marina, and Lake Norman marina are identified as leaders because they are the most popular fueling option and each marina has different attributes that customers like. Some only offer gas, some offer alcohol and food. Some have entertainment and restaurants.

Full Tank Petroleum is classified as a niche brand because there is no marine fueling service currently and FTP is establishing a new market for Lake Norman customers. Once the market of marine delivery services has more competitors the brand will most likely move from niche to leader.

The third main section covered in the Target Market, Positioning, & Main Differential Attributes page is Main Differential Attributes.

Main Differential Attributes refers to the main characteristics that make your business different than others in the marketplace.

What is it about your business concept that is so special, so unique that potential investors will give you their money to make it happen.

For my business, Full Tank Petroleum, I focused on the main differential attributes of the business concept that correlated with the Target Markets I displayed. this helps reiterate in the potential investors heads that you are bringing value and/or solving a problem that directly links to these Target Markets.

As you can see, I used a lot of the same "hot words" in these Main Differential Attributes as I did in the Target Market section. This was on purpose and is a result of a lot of research into these different target markets. You will find your "buzz words" during your research just try and make sure to effectively and efficiently display this information so that the investors can make the connection.

The last section of the Target Market, Positioning, & Main Differential Attributes page is just a short recap of the entire page to give the potential investors some text to reiterate the points you visually have made.

As you can see, I used text to effectively and efficiently bring together the information displayed on this page in only four sentences. Try to use this section to answer any questions the potential investors have before they even have the chance to do it.

When you combine this text section with the other three main sections: Target Market, Positioning, and Main Differential Attributes, you business plan will look similar to this:

As you can see my example above, this Target Market, Positioning, and Main Differential Attributes is visually appealing and display useful, relevant information to potential investors in an easy to read format.

I hope this provided some value in a more visually-appealing manner than other business plan content series.

Good luck creating your business plan. It has never been a better time to start a business :)

If you want to check out how to create the first four (4) pages of your business plan go here:

Page Four, Market & Competitor Analysis, go here: https://steemit.com/business/@chiefmappster/business-plan-101-how-to-write-a-market-and-competitor-analysis-page

Page Three, Market Description, go here: https://steemit.com/money/@chiefmappster/business-plan-101-market-description

Page Two, Company Description, go here: https://steemit.com/howto/@chiefmappster/business-plan-101-company-description

Page One, Executive Summary, go here: https://steemit.com/howto/@chiefmappster/business-plan-101-executive-summary

Thank you as always for your time and attention.

Namaste

@chiefmappster