From the course: Creating a Business Plan

Build a go-to-market strategy

From the course: Creating a Business Plan

Build a go-to-market strategy

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- Your business plan has to spell out your go-to-market strategy, both in terms of building awareness for your product or service as well as how you're going to deliver it. How are you going to reach your customers? What are the channels you're going to use? Again, to market to them as well as to deliver to them? Are you going to go direct? Are you going to go through distribution? How are you going to build awareness for your product or service? Will it be through partnership? Or licensing? Understand the economics of each of those channels. For example, distributors take a cut of what you sell. However, the benefit you get is they have distribution, and they can get you to market more effectively. Now, if you go direct to consumers with your product, you're not paying a distributor's cut but that doesn't mean it's free. You still have the expense of doing more marketing and getting the product out there yourself. These ideas of how you're going to get to market are ultimately going to flow into your financial plan. A couple of examples. For consumer packaged goods, so cereal in a grocery store, they advertise directly to the consumer through TV, and radio, and print media. However, when they distribute, it's not direct. They distribute through a distribution channel. They go through the grocery store. Another example is books. Books go through multiple channels, both in terms of getting the word out and delivering the product. In terms of getting the word out, they can do it direct through the website. So for my book, we built a specific website and we're marketing to consumers there. We're also marketing to them through distribution channels, like Amazon. It'll be marketed to them through retail, in physical outlets, like Barnes & Noble, and also through distributors to retail. So there are distributors who will take the book and market it to independent bookstores. Now in terms of getting it in front of them for awareness purposes, there are the author websites, there are Amazon suggestions, there are publisher sites, there are reviews and periodicals, sometimes there's live presentations. So there are multiple channels to get that product in front of the consumer, as well as multiple channels to get the product in their hands. So as you're writing your business plan, make sure you articulate both types of channels and understand the economics involved in each one.

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