market need in business plan example

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How to Write a Market Analysis for a Business Plan

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A lot of preparation goes into starting a business before you can open your doors to the public or launch your online store. One of your first steps should be to write a business plan . A business plan will serve as your roadmap when building your business.

Within your business plan, there’s an important section you should pay careful attention to: your market analysis. Your market analysis helps you understand your target market and how you can thrive within it.

Simply put, your market analysis shows that you’ve done your research. It also contributes to your marketing strategy by defining your target customer and researching their buying habits. Overall, a market analysis will yield invaluable data if you have limited knowledge about your market, the market has fierce competition, and if you require a business loan. In this guide, we'll explore how to conduct your own market analysis.

How to conduct a market analysis: A step-by-step guide

In your market analysis, you can expect to cover the following:

Industry outlook

Target market

Market value

Competition

Barriers to entry

Let’s dive into an in-depth look into each section:

Step 1: Define your objective

Before you begin your market analysis, it’s important to define your objective for writing a market analysis. Are you writing it for internal purposes or for external purposes?

If you were doing a market analysis for internal purposes, you might be brainstorming new products to launch or adjusting your marketing tactics. An example of an external purpose might be that you need a market analysis to get approved for a business loan .

The comprehensiveness of your market analysis will depend on your objective. If you’re preparing for a new product launch, you might focus more heavily on researching the competition. A market analysis for a loan approval would require heavy data and research into market size and growth, share potential, and pricing.

Step 2: Provide an industry outlook

An industry outlook is a general direction of where your industry is heading. Lenders want to know whether you’re targeting a growing industry or declining industry. For example, if you’re looking to sell VCRs in 2020, it’s unlikely that your business will succeed.

Starting your market analysis with an industry outlook offers a preliminary view of the market and what to expect in your market analysis. When writing this section, you'll want to include:

Market size

Are you chasing big markets or are you targeting very niche markets? If you’re targeting a niche market, are there enough customers to support your business and buy your product?

Product life cycle

If you develop a product, what will its life cycle look like? Lenders want an overview of how your product will come into fruition after it’s developed and launched. In this section, you can discuss your product’s:

Research and development

Projected growth

How do you see your company performing over time? Calculating your year-over-year growth will help you and lenders see how your business has grown thus far. Calculating your projected growth shows how your business will fare in future projected market conditions.

Step 3: Determine your target market

This section of your market analysis is dedicated to your potential customer. Who is your ideal target customer? How can you cater your product to serve them specifically?

Don’t make the mistake of wanting to sell your product to everybody. Your target customer should be specific. For example, if you’re selling mittens, you wouldn’t want to market to warmer climates like Hawaii. You should target customers who live in colder regions. The more nuanced your target market is, the more information you’ll have to inform your business and marketing strategy.

With that in mind, your target market section should include the following points:

Demographics

This is where you leave nothing to mystery about your ideal customer. You want to know every aspect of your customer so you can best serve them. Dedicate time to researching the following demographics:

Income level

Create a customer persona

Creating a customer persona can help you better understand your customer. It can be easier to market to a person than data on paper. You can give this persona a name, background, and job. Mold this persona into your target customer.

What are your customer’s pain points? How do these pain points influence how they buy products? What matters most to them? Why do they choose one brand over another?

Research and supporting material

Information without data are just claims. To add credibility to your market analysis, you need to include data. Some methods for collecting data include:

Target group surveys

Focus groups

Reading reviews

Feedback surveys

You can also consult resources online. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau can help you find demographics in calculating your market share. The U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Small Business Administration also offer general data that can help you research your target industry.

Step 4: Calculate market value

You can use either top-down analysis or bottom-up analysis to calculate an estimate of your market value.

A top-down analysis tends to be the easier option of the two. It requires for you to calculate the entire market and then estimate how much of a share you expect your business to get. For example, let’s assume your target market consists of 100,000 people. If you’re optimistic and manage to get 1% of that market, you can expect to make 1,000 sales.

A bottom-up analysis is more data-driven and requires more research. You calculate the individual factors of your business and then estimate how high you can scale them to arrive at a projected market share. Some factors to consider when doing a bottom-up analysis include:

Where products are sold

Who your competition is

The price per unit

How many consumers you expect to reach

The average amount a customer would buy over time

While a bottom-up analysis requires more data than a top-down analysis, you can usually arrive at a more accurate calculation.

Step 5: Get to know your competition

Before you start a business, you need to research the level of competition within your market. Are there certain companies getting the lion’s share of the market? How can you position yourself to stand out from the competition?

There are two types of competitors that you should be aware of: direct competitors and indirect competitors.

Direct competitors are other businesses who sell the same product as you. If you and the company across town both sell apples, you are direct competitors.

An indirect competitor sells a different but similar product to yours. If that company across town sells oranges instead, they are an indirect competitor. Apples and oranges are different but they still target a similar market: people who eat fruits.

Also, here are some questions you want to answer when writing this section of your market analysis:

What are your competitor’s strengths?

What are your competitor’s weaknesses?

How can you cover your competitor’s weaknesses in your own business?

How can you solve the same problems better or differently than your competitors?

How can you leverage technology to better serve your customers?

How big of a threat are your competitors if you open your business?

Step 6: Identify your barriers

Writing a market analysis can help you identify some glaring barriers to starting your business. Researching these barriers will help you avoid any costly legal or business mistakes down the line. Some entry barriers to address in your marketing analysis include:

Technology: How rapid is technology advancing and can it render your product obsolete within the next five years?

Branding: You need to establish your brand identity to stand out in a saturated market.

Cost of entry: Startup costs, like renting a space and hiring employees, are expensive. Also, specialty equipment often comes with hefty price tags. (Consider researching equipment financing to help finance these purchases.)

Location: You need to secure a prime location if you’re opening a physical store.

Competition: A market with fierce competition can be a steep uphill battle (like attempting to go toe-to-toe with Apple or Amazon).

Step 7: Know the regulations

When starting a business, it’s your responsibility to research governmental and state business regulations within your market. Some regulations to keep in mind include (but aren’t limited to):

Employment and labor laws

Advertising

Environmental regulations

If you’re a newer entrepreneur and this is your first business, this part can be daunting so you might want to consult with a business attorney. A legal professional will help you identify the legal requirements specific to your business. You can also check online legal help sites like LegalZoom or Rocket Lawyer.

Tips when writing your market analysis

We wouldn’t be surprised if you feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information needed in a market analysis. Keep in mind, though, this research is key to launching a successful business. You don’t want to cut corners, but here are a few tips to help you out when writing your market analysis:

Use visual aids

Nobody likes 30 pages of nothing but text. Using visual aids can break up those text blocks, making your market analysis more visually appealing. When discussing statistics and metrics, charts and graphs will help you better communicate your data.

Include a summary

If you’ve ever read an article from an academic journal, you’ll notice that writers include an abstract that offers the reader a preview.

Use this same tactic when writing your market analysis. It will prime the reader of your market highlights before they dive into the hard data.

Get to the point

It’s better to keep your market analysis concise than to stuff it with fluff and repetition. You’ll want to present your data, analyze it, and then tie it back into how your business can thrive within your target market.

Revisit your market analysis regularly

Markets are always changing and it's important that your business changes with your target market. Revisiting your market analysis ensures that your business operations align with changing market conditions. The best businesses are the ones that can adapt.

Why should you write a market analysis?

Your market analysis helps you look at factors within your market to determine if it’s a good fit for your business model. A market analysis will help you:

1. Learn how to analyze the market need

Markets are always shifting and it’s a good idea to identify current and projected market conditions. These trends will help you understand the size of your market and whether there are paying customers waiting for you. Doing a market analysis helps you confirm that your target market is a lucrative market.

2. Learn about your customers

The best way to serve your customer is to understand them. A market analysis will examine your customer’s buying habits, pain points, and desires. This information will aid you in developing a business that addresses those points.

3. Get approved for a business loan

Starting a business, especially if it’s your first one, requires startup funding. A good first step is to apply for a business loan with your bank or other financial institution.

A thorough market analysis shows that you’re professional, prepared, and worth the investment from lenders. This preparation inspires confidence within the lender that you can build a business and repay the loan.

4. Beat the competition

Your research will offer valuable insight and certain advantages that the competition might not have. For example, thoroughly understanding your customer’s pain points and desires will help you develop a superior product or service than your competitors. If your business is already up and running, an updated market analysis can upgrade your marketing strategy or help you launch a new product.

Final thoughts

There is a saying that the first step to cutting down a tree is to sharpen an axe. In other words, preparation is the key to success. In business, preparation increases the chances that your business will succeed, even in a competitive market.

The market analysis section of your business plan separates the entrepreneurs who have done their homework from those who haven’t. Now that you’ve learned how to write a market analysis, it’s time for you to sharpen your axe and grow a successful business. And keep in mind, if you need help crafting your business plan, you can always turn to business plan software or a free template to help you stay organized.

This article originally appeared on JustBusiness, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.

On a similar note...

Examples of Market Needs in a Marketing Plan

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Examples of Market Segmentation

Pros & cons of differentiation strategy, what is sales segmentation.

• Hispanic Marketing Strategies
• What Does "Marketplace Needs" Mean?

Creating your marketing plan should be a top priority. The top priority for a marketing plan is identifying the largest group of potential buyers for your products or services. Within that group exists smaller segments, and it has unique needs that you might decide to run specific marketing campaigns for. Learn to identify market needs by reviewing these examples.

Size of Market

You need to know how big your potential market is. This is the group of people who are likely to buy your product or service. Unless you are in a very specific niche, you want to find a large group of buyers. For example, if you want to sell a new weight-loss program, you may have a large market of 50,000 people in your area that are between the ages of 25 and 65 who are trying to lose weight.

If your weight-loss program required surgery, you are looking at group that's smaller than the 50,000 who have a medical need, as prescribed by their doctor. This group size in the same geographical region might only be 5,000.

Understand Your Customer Profile

In order to determine the size, you need to understand who your ideal customer is. As described in the weight-loss example, knowing if someone is trying to lose a few pounds to look better in a bikini is different from a diabetic who must lose 25 pounds to prevent serious medical repercussions. The client who wants to look better at the beach is looking for products based on fulfilling her ego, whereas the person who has a medical condition is looking for products based on fear of loss. You can't market the same way to both.

Personal Similarities in Market

Often, the group you're targeting has similarities when you look at the personal lives of those in that group. This includes marital status, education levels, type of career, as well as family size and income levels. A life insurance agent knows that a married couple with young children is more likely to buy life insurance, compared to a single man who's still in college. But somebody who engages in an extreme sports program is more likely to go bungee-cord jumping than a married man.

Although your buyers aren't clones of each other, they might seem very similar to each other in some ways, so that you might feel some familiarity when you're speaking to a new prospect.

Consider Cultural Components

A marketing plan should consider the geographic and cultural elements of your target group. These could have a significant difference on how what the buyers want to buy or even how they buy it. For example, a bridal shop in a small Midwestern farm town might not have the price points that a Beverly Hills bridal shop has because of the difference not only in affluence but also in cultural perspectives. Someone from a small town might be more fiscally pragmatic even if he has the money to spend on what he wants.

Special Interests or Needs

Marketing plans have become more dynamic with the expansion of social media and digital marketing. As a business owner, you can learn about the size of your market, based on very specific information. Essentially you can segment your market to enable you to develop marketing campaigns that target specific buyers. For example, if you own a pet store that caters to parrot owners, you probably don't want to target cat owners.

A cell phone accessory store that sells Apple products exclusively doesn't want to waste marketing dollars on Android users and vice versa. Narrow your niche to be more successful.

• Inc: How to Write a Great Business Plan: Market Opportunities
• Entrepreneur: The Ingredients of a Marketing Plan
• Forbes: Entrepreneurs #GettingBuzz SEP 30, 2013 @ 02:26 PM 3,896,851 2 Free Issues of Forbes Marketing Plan Template: Exactly What To Include

With more than 15 years of small business ownership including owning a State Farm agency in Southern California, Kimberlee understands the needs of business owners first hand. When not writing, Kimberlee enjoys chasing waterfalls with her son in Hawaii.

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How to Identify an Underserved Need in the Market

• 11 Aug 2020

If you’ve decided to pursue entrepreneurship, coming up with a viable business idea is the first step. It’s not enough for your idea to be interesting—it should also fill a market need in an innovative way.

Think of a few of your favorite products. What needs do they fill that competing products don’t? It’s in this intersection between a market need and competitors’ gaps that your entrepreneurial opportunities lie.

The Importance of Identifying Market Needs

Successful companies thrive due to a deep understanding of their target customers. This knowledge enables them to both craft products that directly fill customers’ needs and effectively tailor their marketing efforts to highlight differentiators.

As a business owner, you can harness this strategy to ensure your product fits available market opportunities in an innovative way.

Discovering underserved markets can also strengthen your marketing strategy by providing a clear picture of the need your product fulfills and what sets it apart from competitors’.

Here are five tips for identifying underserved needs in the market to lay a strong foundation for your business.

Access your free e-book today.

5 Steps to Find a Need in the Market

1. understand the jobs to be done theory.

A good starting place for identifying underserved needs is by examining the market through the lens of the jobs to be done framework.

The framework, centered on the jobs to be done theory developed by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, states that customers don’t purchase products based solely on their attributes, but rather, “hire” products to do “jobs” they need to get done.

One example of a job to be done that Christensen presents in the online course Disruptive Strategy features a fast-food chain selling milkshakes. The chain noticed the majority of its milkshakes were sold before 8:30 a.m., and that customers typically didn’t purchase any additional items. Rather than focusing on the attributes of the consumer to explain their buying behaviors (What is it about these people that makes them buy only milkshakes in the morning?), the chain examined the job its milkshakes were being hired to do.

After interviewing several milkshake customers, the job became clear: people needed something to keep them full and entertained during their morning commutes. They were hiring milkshakes to fulfill that purpose.

When thinking of market needs, try not to dwell on what products people want. Instead, focus on jobs that need to be done.

Related: How to Come Up With an Innovative Business Idea

2. Be Introspective

When brainstorming jobs to be done, you can be your first resource.

Identify jobs you try to get done every day. These can range from “pick up my kids from school” to “stop my stir-fry from sticking to the pan” to “pass the time while waiting at the laundromat.” Your list will likely be long—people hire countless products and services to do an enormous number of jobs every day.

Notice what sticks out to you. Is there a job you try to get done, but you aren’t satisfied with the product you’ve hired to do it? For instance, maybe the mattress you’ve hired to help you get a good night’s sleep isn’t doing the job well. Perhaps there’s a job you’ve been avoiding because you haven’t found the right product or service to hire, such as cleaning your gutters.

Asking yourself about personal jobs to be done can lay a foundation for later discovering jobs that others need done.

3. Conduct Interviews

The next step in discovering an unmet market need is interviewing other people. If you have an idea already, you can focus these interviews on your target demographic. If not, talk to people from a range of age, gender, race, socioeconomic, and location demographics to ensure you hear a variety of perspectives and identify potential customers.

Seek to understand your interviewees’ jobs to be done and which of them aren’t being fulfilled as well as they could be. Ask them about their motivations behind certain choices. For instance: Why do they purchase milkshakes before 8:30 a.m. every day?

Your interviews can affirm or deny any hypotheses you came up with during your introspection and serve as litmus tests. Are you the only person whose spatula isn’t stopping stir-fry from sticking to the pan? Are there other parents out there who need a better product to keep their kids occupied in waiting rooms? You won’t know until you ask.

Related: Innovation in a Disrupted World: How to Discover New and Emerging Jobs to Be Done

4. Identify and Examine Competitors

After asking questions of yourself and others, select an idea or two that seems promising. You’ve discovered a job to be done—now it’s time for thorough competitive analysis to determine whether an existing company is meeting it.

Research businesses that are currently offering solutions to the job you’ve identified. Returning to Christensen’s milkshake example, you can confidently list all other fast-food chains that sell milkshakes as competitors.

There’s also a class of often-overlooked competitors: those that can be hired to do the job that aren’t a one-to-one match to your product. For the milkshake example, Christensen lists bananas, doughnuts, coffee, bagels, and candy bars as other products that could be hired to do the job of keeping someone full and entertained during their morning commute. Be sure to approach the job to be done creatively, and come up with a list of alternative items the consumer could hire to get the job done.

Next, research the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor, again focusing on how well they get the job done. For instance, hiring a bagel to eat during your morning commute would keep you full and occupied, but has the potential to get messy quickly, especially if there’s cream cheese involved. You could instead hire a milkshake because it’s served in a cup, leaving your hands clean. This step may require more market research, including interviewing people in your target markets who have purchased rival products or services.

Analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors can pay off when the gap they collectively leave is revealed. This is how you know the market need is currently underserved and leaves the door open for your venture to solve it.

5. Be Ever-Observant

As Christensen says in Disruptive Strategy , jobs to be done persist over time. By staying observant, you can adapt your products to evolve with current events and disruptive technological advancements to continue meeting market needs.

Additionally, keep an eye out for emerging jobs to be done that your business could solve. Take, for example, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic . This global event has sparked a set of novel jobs to be done, ranging from the need to engage with others over video to the need for glasses that don’t fog up when wearing a face covering.

Stay observant as technologies shift and new jobs to be done arise so you can continue to serve customer needs.

Filling the Market’s Need

Christensen’s jobs to be done theory can act as a helpful framework for discovering underserved market needs. By identifying and tailoring your products and services to a job to be done, you can start your entrepreneurial journey on the right track and avoid disruption .

Learn to break into the market and craft winning strategies. Explore our six-week online course Disruptive Strategy to discover how the jobs to be done theory can be applied to your organization.

This post was updated on February 17, 2023. It was originally published on August 11, 2020.

About the Author

How to Write the Market Analysis Section of a Business Plan

Written by Dave Lavinsky

What is the Market Analysis in a Business Plan?

The market analysis section of your business plan is where you discuss the size of the market in which you’re competing and market trends that might affect your future potential such as economic, political, social and/or technological shifts.

This helps you and readers understand if your market is big enough to support your business’ growth, and whether future conditions will help or hurt your business. For example, stating that your market size is $56 billion, has been growing by 10% for the last 10 years, and that trends are expected to further increase the market size bodes well for your company’s success.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here

What Should a Market Analysis Include?

You’ll want to address these issues in your market analysis:

• Size of Industry – How big is the overall industry?
• Projected Growth Rate of Industry – Is the industry growing or shrinking? How fast?
• Target Market – Who are you targeting with this product or service?
• Competition – How many businesses are currently in the same industry?

Learn how to write the full market analysis below.

How to Write a Market Analysis

Here’s how to write the market analysis section of a business plan.

• Describe each industry that you are competing in or will be targeting.
• Identify direct competition, but don’t forget about indirect competition – this may include companies selling different products to the same potential customer segments.
• Highlight strengths and weaknesses for both direct and indirect competitors, along with how your company stacks up against them based on what makes your company uniquely positioned to succeed.
• Include specific data, statistics, graphs, or charts if possible to make the market analysis more convincing to investors or lenders.

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Industry overview.

In your industry overview, you will define the market in which you are competing (e.g., restaurant, medical devices, etc.).

You will then detail the sub-segment or niche of that market if applicable (e.g., within restaurants there are fast food restaurants, fine dining, etc.).

Next, you will describe the key characteristics of your industry. For example, discuss how big the market is in terms of units and revenues. Let the reader know if the market is growing or declining (and at what rate), and what key industry trends are facing your market.

Use third-party market research as much as possible to validate the discussion of your industry.

Here is a list of additional items you may analyze for a complete industry overview:

• An overview of the current state of the industry . How big is it, how much does it produce or sell? What are its key differentiators from competitors? What is its target customer base like – demographic information and psychographics? How has the industry performed over time (global, domestic)?
• Analyze the macro-economic factors impacting your industry . This includes items such as economic growth opportunities, inflation, exchange rates, interest rates, labor market trends, and technological improvements. You want to make sure that all of these are trending in a positive direction for you while also being realistic about them. For example, if the economy is in shambles you might want to wait before entering the particular market.
• Analyze the political factors impacting your industry . This is an often-overlooked section of any business plan, but it can be important depending on what type of company you are starting. If you’re in a highly regulated industry (such as medical devices), this is something that you’ll want to include.
• Analyze the social factors impacting your industry . This includes analyzing society’s interest in your product or service, historical trends in buying patterns in your industry, and any effects on the industry due to changes in culture. For example, if there is a growing counter-culture trend against big oil companies you might want to position yourself differently than a company in this industry.
• Analyze the technological factors impacting your industry . This includes analyzing new technologies being developed in software, hardware, or applications that can be used to improve your product or service. It also includes emerging consumer trends and will be highly dependent on your business type. In a technology-related venture, you would analyze how these changes are impacting consumers. For an educational-related venture, you would analyze how these changes are impacting students, teachers, and/or administrators.

For each of these items, you want to provide some detail about them including their current state as well as what external factors have played a role in the recent past. You can also include many other important factors if they apply to your business including demographic trends, legal issues, environmental concerns, and sustainability issues.

When you are done analyzing all of these factors, wrap it up by summing them up in a statement that includes your view on the future of the industry. This should be positive to attract investors, potential customers, and partners.

If you’re having trouble thinking about all of these factors then it might be helpful to first develop a SWOT analysis for your business.

Once you have an understanding of the market, you’ll need to think about how you will position yourself within that potential market.

Picking Your Niche

You want to think about how large your market is for this venture. You also want to consider whether you’d like to pick a niche within the overall industry or launch yourself into the mainstream.

If you have an innovative product it can be easier to enter the mainstream market – but at the same time, you might face some additional competition if there are similar products available.

You can choose to specialize in a niche market where you’ll face less competition – but might be able to sell your services at a higher price point (this could make it easier for you to get potential customers).

Of course, if your product or service is unique then there should be no competition. But, what happens if it isn’t unique? Will you be able to differentiate yourself enough to create a competitive advantage or edge?

If you are planning on entering the mainstream market, think about whether there are different sub-niches within your specific market. For example, within the technology industry, you can choose to specialize in laptops or smartphones or tablets, or other categories. While it will be more difficult to be unique in a mainstream market, you will still be able to focus on one type or category of products.

How Will You Stand Out?

Many companies are able to stand out – whether by offering a product that is unique or by marketing their products in a way that consumers notice. For example, Steve Jobs was able to take a business idea like the iPhone and make it into something that people talked about (while competitors struggled to play catch up).

You want your venture to stand out – whether with an innovative product or service or through marketing strategies. This might include a unique brand, name, or logo. It might also include packaging that stands out from competitors.

Write down how you will achieve this goal of standing out in the marketplace. If it’s a product, then what features do you have that other products don’t? If it’s a service, then what is it about this service that will make people want to use your company rather than your competition?

You also need to think about marketing. How are you going to promote yourself or sell your product or service? You’ll need a marketing plan for this – which might include writing copy, creating an advertisement, setting up a website, and several other activities. This should include a description of each of these strategies.

If you’re struggling with the details of any of these sections, it might be helpful to research what other companies in your market are doing and how they’ve been successful. You can use this business information to inform your own strategies and plans.

Relevant Market Size & Competition

In the second stage of your analysis, you must determine the size and competition in your specific market.

Target Market Section

Your company’s relevant market size is the amount of money it could make each year if it owned a complete market share.

It’s simple.

To begin, estimate how many consumers you expect to be interested in purchasing your products or services each year.

To generate a more precise estimate, enter the monetary amount these potential customers may be ready to spend on your goods or services each year.

The size of your market is the product of these two figures. Calculate this market value here so that your readers can see how big your market opportunity is (particularly if you are seeking debt or equity funding).

You’ll also want to include an analysis of your market conditions. Is this a growing or declining market? How fast is it growing (or declining)? What are the general trends in the market? How has your market shifted over time?

Include all of this information in your own business plan to give your readers a clear understanding of the market landscape you’re competing in.

The Competition

Next, you’ll need to create a comprehensive list of the competitors in your market. This competitive analysis includes:

• Direct Competitors – Companies that offer a similar product or service
• Indirect Competitors – Companies that sell products or services that are complementary to yours but not directly related

To show how large each competitor is, you can use metrics such as revenue, employees, number of locations, etc. If you have limited information about the company on hand then you may want to do some additional research or contact them directly for more information. You should also include their website so readers can learn more if they desire (along with social media profiles).

Once you complete this list, take a step back and try to determine how much market share each competitor has. You can use different methods to do this such as market research, surveys, or conduct focus groups or interviews with target customers.

You should also take into account the barriers to entry that exist in your market. What would it take for a new company to enter the market and start competing with you? This could be anything from capital requirements to licensing and permits.

When you have all of this information, you’ll want to create a table like the one below:

Once you have this data, you can start developing strategies to compete with the other companies which will be used again later to help you develop your marketing strategy and plan. 

Writing a Market Analysis Tips

• Include an explanation of how you determined the size of the market and how much share competitors have.
• Include tables like the one above that show competitor size, barriers to entry, etc.
• Decide where you’re going to place this section in your business plan – before or after your SWOT analysis. You can use other sections as well such as your company summary or product/service description. Make sure you consider which information should come first for the reader to make the most sense.
• Brainstorm how you’re going to stand out in this competitive market.

Formatting the Market Analysis Section of Your Business Plan

Now that you understand the different components of the market analysis, let’s take a look at how you should structure this section in your business plan.

Your market analysis should be divided into two sections: the industry overview and market size & competition.

Each section should include detailed information about the topic and supporting evidence to back up your claims.

You’ll also want to make sure that all of your data is up-to-date. Be sure to include the date of the analysis in your business plan so readers know when it was conducted and if there have been any major changes since then.

In addition, you should also provide a short summary of what this section covers at the beginning of each paragraph or page. You can do this by using a title such as “Industry Overview” or another descriptive phrase that is easy to follow.

As with all sections in a business plan, make sure your market analysis is concise and includes only the most relevant information to keep your audience engaged until they reach your conclusion.

A strong market analysis can give your company a competitive edge over other businesses in its industry, which is why it’s essential to include this section in your business plan. By providing detailed information about the market you’re competing in, you can show your readers that you understand the industry and know how to capitalize on current and future trends.

Business Plan Market Analysis Examples

The following are examples of how to write the market analysis section of a business plan:

Business Plan Market Analysis Example #1 – Hosmer Sunglasses, a sunglasses manufacturer based in California

According to the Sunglass Association of America, the retail sales volume of Plano (non-prescription) sunglasses, clip-on sunglasses, and children’s sunglasses (hereinafter collectively referred to as “Sunwear”) totaled $2.9 billion last year. Premium-priced sunglasses are driving the Plano Sunwear market. Plano sunglasses priced at $100 or more accounted for more than 49% of all Sunwear sales among independent retail locations last year. 

The Sunglass Association of America has projected that the dollar volume for retail sales of Plano Sunwear will grow 1.7% next year. Plano sunglass vendors are also bullish about sales in this year and beyond as a result of the growth of technology, particularly the growth of laser surgery and e-commerce.

Business Plan Market Analysis Example #2 – Nailed It!, a family-owned restaurant in Omaha, NE

According to the Nebraska Restaurant Association, last year total restaurant sales in Nebraska grew by 4.3%, reaching a record high of $2.8 billion. Sales at full-service restaurants were particularly strong, growing 7% over 2012 figures. This steady increase is being driven by population growth throughout the state. The Average Annual Growth Rate (AGR) since 2009 is 2.89%.

This fast growth has also encouraged the opening of new restaurants, with 3,035 operating statewide as of this year. The restaurant industry employs more than 41,000 workers in Nebraska and contributes nearly $3 billion to the state economy every year.

Nebraska’s population continues to increase – reaching 1.9 million in 2012, a 1.5% growth rate. In addition to population, the state has experienced record low unemployment every year since 2009 – with an average of 4.7% in 2013 and 2014.

Business Plan Market Analysis Example #3 – American Insurance Company (AIC), a chain of insurance agencies in Maine

American Insurance Company (AIC) offers high-quality insurance at low prices through its chain of retail outlets in the state of Maine. Since its inception, AIC has created an extensive network of agents and brokers across the country with expanding online, call center and retail business operations.

AIC is entering a market that will more than double in size over the next 50 years according to some industry forecasts. The insurance industry is enjoying low inflation rates, steady income growth, and improving standards of living for most Americans during what has been a difficult period for much of American business. This makes this a good time to enter the insurance industry as it enjoys higher margins because customers are purchasing more coverage due to increased costs from medical care and higher liability claims.

American Insurance Company provides affordable homeowners, auto, and business insurance through high-quality fulfillment centers across America that have earned a reputation for top-notch customer service.

AIC will face significant competition from both direct and indirect competitors. The indirect competition will come from a variety of businesses, including banks, other insurance companies, and online retailers. The direct competition will come from other well-funded start-ups as well as incumbents in the industry. AIC’s competitive advantages include its low prices, high quality, and excellent customer service.

AIC plans to grow at a rate that is above average for the industry as a whole. The company has identified a market that is expected to grow by more than 100% in the next decade. This growth is due to several factors: the increase in the number of two-income households, the aging population, and the impending retirement of many baby boomers will lead to an increase in the number of people who are purchasing insurance.

AIC projects revenues of $20M in year one, which is equivalent to 100% growth over the previous year. AIC forecasts revenue growth of 40%-60% each year on average for 10 years. After that, revenue growth is expected to slow down significantly due to market saturation.

The following table illustrates these projections:

Competitive Landscape

Direct Competition: P&C Insurance Market Leaders

Indirect Competition: Banks, Other Insurance Companies, Retailers

Market Analysis Conclusion

When writing the market analysis section, it is important to provide specific data and forecasts about the industry that your company operates in. This information can help make your business plan more convincing to potential investors.

If it’s helpful, you should also discuss how your company stacks up against its competitors based on what makes it unique. In addition, you can identify any strengths or weaknesses that your company has compared to its competitors.

Based on this data, provide projections for how much revenue your company expects to generate over the next few years. Providing this information early on in the business plan will help convince investors that you know what you are talking about and your company is well-positioned to succeed.  

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Other Resources for Writing Your Business Plan

How to Write a Great Business Plan Executive Summary How to Expertly Write the Company Description in Your Business Plan The Customer Analysis Section of Your Business Plan Completing the Competitive Analysis Section of Your Business Plan The Management Team Section of Your Business Plan Financial Assumptions and Your Business Plan How to Create Financial Projections for Your Business Plan Everything You Need to Know about the Business Plan Appendix Best Business Plan Software Business Plan Conclusion: Summary & Recap  

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How to Write and Conduct a Market Analysis

3 min. read

Updated January 3, 2024

A market is the total sum of prospective buyers, individuals, or organizations that are willing and able to purchase a business’s potential offering. A market analysis is a detailed assessment of the market you intend to enter. It provides insight into the size and value of the market, potential customer segments, and their buying patterns.

In this section, we’ll be covering what information to include in your business plan after completing your research. If you’re struggling with the research itself, you should check out our market research resources for step-by-step guidance.

• How to write your market analysis

The information featured in your market analysis should focus on firmly defining who your customers are. Here are the two steps you need to take:

Define your target market

Finding your target market requires segmentation based on demographic and psychographic information until you reach the ideal customer. You need to address who they are and how you identified them.

Target market examples

A target market analysis is a key part of any business plan. Let’s walk you through some examples.

Determine your market size

Identifying your potential customers isn’t enough. You also need to prove that the size of the market can support your business. To do this, it’s helpful to define what’s available, serviceable, and can be obtained.

Optional information to include

The main purpose of the market analysis is to show who your customers are. While defining your target market may be enough, it can be helpful to include some of the following supporting details.

Show that you know your industry

Before starting a business, you should know the state of your industry and where it’s headed. This includes industry metrics you’ve collected, any barriers to entry, emerging trends, or common success factors.

Write a customer analysis

Conducting a customer analysis provides additional depth to your target audience. You’ll know them better and go beyond just segmentation.

Use a customer persona to describe your customers

It can be difficult for you, your employees, and potential investors to visualize who your customers are based solely on data. Creating a customer persona can bring them to life and support your target market choice.

• Why conduct a market analysis?

Conducting any sort of in-depth research can be a time-intensive process. However, the benefits far outweigh the investment—so much so that it’s recommended that you revisit your market analysis at least once a year in order to stay on top of emerging trends or changes in the market.

As part of your business plan, it demonstrates that you have a firm understanding of your customers. Here are the other benefits gained by completing a market analysis:

Reduce risk

If you really understand your potential customers and market conditions, you’ll have a better chance of developing a viable product or service. It also helps you explore if your idea will work or not. If you determine that the market size can’t sustain your business, there are too many barriers, high starting costs, intense competition, or some other factor that would lead to a higher chance of failure—you can pivot and avoid wasting your hard-earned time and money.

Better position your business

Researching the market landscape will help you strategically position your business. This may be done through pricing, specific features, production/distribution, or any other method to differentiate your business and make it more attractive to your target audience.

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Verify product/market fit

Part of positioning your business is determining if there is a sustainable market for your business. This starts with segmenting and identifying your ideal customers. It then involves a process of gathering feedback, gauging interest, and finding any sort of demonstrable traction. To learn more about finding product market fit, check out the market research section of our Starting a Business Guide.

Inform investors

Research is not only valuable for informing you as a business owner but in convincing investors and lenders that your idea is worth funding. In many ways, the fact that you spent time pulling together viable information is just as important as the information itself. It shows that you care about finding success as a business owner and are willing to put in the work, even at this early stage.

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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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How to Write a Business Plan: Target Market Analysis

The Business Plan and the Importance of Defining Your Target Market

Susan Ward wrote about small businesses for The Balance for 18 years. She has run an IT consulting firm and designed and presented courses on how to promote small businesses.

Conducting a Market Analysis

Polling your target market, writing the market analysis, online tools for market research, u.s. online market research sources, canadian online market research, local sources of market research, doing your own market research.

 Creative Commons CC0

The market analysis is basically the target market section of your business plan . It is a thorough examination of the ideal people to whom you intend to sell your products or services.  

Even if you intend on selling a product or service only in your community, you won't be selling that service to everyone who lives there. Knowing exactly what type(s) of people might be interested in buying your product or service and how many of them reside in your projected area or region is fundamental in creating your market analysis.

Once target market data has been established, you'll also work on sales projections within specific time frames, as well as how prospective sales might be affected by trends and policies.

Research is key and cornerstone of any solid  business plan .

Don't Skip This Step!

Don't skip market research; otherwise, you could end up starting a business that doesn't have a paying market.

Use these general terms as linchpins in research data for the market analysis section of your business plan, and to identify your target market:

But don't stop here. To succinctly define your target market, poll or survey members of your prospective clients or customers to ask specific questions directly related to your products or services. For instance, if you plan to sell computer-related services, ask questions relating to the number of computing devices your prospective customers own and how often they require servicing. If you plan on selling garden furniture and accessories, ask what kinds of garden furniture or accessories your potential customers have bought in the past, how often, and what they expect to buy within the next one, three, and five years.

Answers to these and other questions related to your market are to help you understand your market potential.

The goal of the information you collect is to help you project how much of your product or service you'll be able to sell. Review these important questions you need to try to answer using the data you collect:

• What proportion of your target market has used a product similar to yours before?
• How much of your product or service might your target market buy? (Estimate this in gross sales and/or in units of product/service sold.)
• What proportion of your target market might be repeat customers?
• How might your target market be affected by demographic shifts?
• How might your target market be affected by economic events (e.g. a local mill closing or a big-box retailer opening locally)?
• How might your target market be affected by larger socio-economic trends?
• How might your target market be affected by government policies (e.g. new bylaws or changes in taxes)?

One purpose of the market analysis is to ensure you have a viable business idea.

Find Your Buying Market

Use your market research to make sure people don't just like your business idea, but they're also willing to pay for it.

If you have information suggesting that you have a large enough market to sustain your business goals, write the market analysis in the form of several short paragraphs using appropriate headings for each. If you have several target markets, you may want to number each. 

Sections of your market analysis should include:

• Industry Description and Outlook
• Target Market
• Market Research Results
• Competitive Analysis

Remember to properly cite your sources of information within the body of your market analysis as you write it. You and other readers of your business plan, such as potential investors, will need to know the sources of the statistics or opinions that you've gathered.

There are several online resources to learn if your business idea is something worth pursing, including:

• Keyword searches can give you an overall sense of potential demand for your product or service based on the number of searches.
• Google Trends analysis can tell you how the number of searches has changed over time.
• Social media campaigns can give you an indication of the potential customer interest in your business idea.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has information on doing your market research and analysis , as well as a list of free small business data and trends resources you can use to conduct your research. Consider these sources for data collection:

• SBA  Business Data and Statistics  
• The U.S. Census Bureau maintains a huge database of demographic information that is searchable by state, county, city/town, or zip code using its census data tool . Community, housing, economic, and population surveys are also available.
• The U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has extensive statistics on the economy including consumer income/spending/consumption, business activity, GDP, and more, all of which are searchable by location.

The Government of Canada offers a guide on doing market research and tips for understanding the data you collect. Canadian data resources include:

• Statistics Canada  offers demographic and economic data.
• The  Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)  offers market research and consulting with industry experts.
• The Canada Business Network provides business information to entrepreneurs by province/territory, including market research data.

There are also a great many local resources for building target market information to explore, including:

• Local library
• Local Chamber of Commerce
• Board of Trade
• Economic Development Centre
• Local government agent's office
• Provincial business ministry
• Local phone book

All of these will have information helpful in defining your target market and providing insights into trends.

The above resources are secondary sources of information, in which others have collected and compiled the data. To get specific information about your business, consider conducting your own market research . For instance, you might want to design a questionnaire and survey your target market to learn more about their habits and preferences relating to your product or service.

Market research is time-consuming but is an important step in affording your business plan validity. If you don't have the time or the research skills to thoroughly define your target market yourself, hiring a person or firm to do the research for you can be a wise investment.​

Small Business Administration. " Market Research and Competitive Analysis. " Accessed Jan. 13, 2020.

How to do a market analysis for a business plan

A key part of any business plan is market analysis. This section needs to demonstrate both your expertise in your particular market and the attractiveness of the market from a financial standpoint.

This article first looks at what we mean exactly by market analysis before looking at how to make a good one for your business plan.

What is a market analysis?

A market analysis is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of a market. It looks into the size of the market both in volume and in value, the various customer segments and buying patterns, the competition, and the economic environment in terms of barriers to entry and regulation.

How to do a market analysis?

The objectives of the market analysis section of a business plan are to show to investors that:

• you know your market
• the market is large enough to build a sustainable business

In order to do that I recommend the following plan:

Demographics and Segmentation

Target market, market need, competition, barriers to entry.

The first step of the analysis consists in assessing the size of the market.

When assessing the size of the market, your approach will depend on the type of business you are selling to investors. If your business plan is for a small shop or a restaurant then you need to take a local approach and try to assess the market around your shop. If you are writing a business plan for a restaurant chain then you need to assess the market a national level.

Depending on your market you might also want to slice it into different segments. This is especially relevant if you or your competitors focus only on certain segments.

Volume & Value

There are two factors you need to look at when assessing the size of a market: the number of potential customers and the value of the market. It is very important to look at both numbers separately, let's take an example to understand why.

Imagine that you have the opportunity to open a shop either in Town A or in Town B:

Although Town B looks more competitive (10 competitors vs. 2 in Town A) and a smaller opportunity (market size of £100m vs. £200 in Town A), with 1,000 potential customers it is actually a more accessible market than Town A where you have only 2 potential customers.

Potential customer?

The definition of a potential customer will depend on your type of business. For example, if you are opening a small shop selling office furniture then your market will be all the companies within your delivery range. As in the example above it is likely that most companies would have only one person in charge of purchasing furniture hence you wouldn't take the size of these businesses in consideration when assessing the number of potential customers. You would however factor it when assessing the value of the market.

Market value

Estimating the market value is often more difficult than assessing the number of potential customers. The first thing to do is to see if the figure is publicly available as either published by a consultancy firm or by a state body. It is very likely that you will find at least a number on a national level.

If not then you can either buy some market research or try to estimate it yourself.

Methods for building an estimate

There are 2 methods that can be used to build estimates: the bottom-up approach or the top-down approach.

The bottom-up approach consists in building a global number starting with unitary values. In our case the number of potential clients multiplied by an average transaction value.

Let's keep our office furniture example and try to estimate the value of the 'desk' segment. We would first factor in the size of the businesses in our delivery range in order to come up with the size of the desks park. Then we would try to estimate the renewal rate of the park to get the volume of annual transactions. Finally, we would apply an average price to the annual volume of transactions to get to the estimated market value.

Here is a summary of the steps including where to find the information:

• Size of desks park = number of businesses in delivery area x number of employees (you might want to refine this number based on the sector as not all employees have desks)
• Renewal rate = 1 / useful life of a desk
• The volume of transactions = size of desks park x renewal rate
• Value of 1 transaction = average price of a desk
• Market value = volume of transactions x value of 1 transaction

You should be able to find most of the information for free in this example. You can get the number and size of businesses in your delivery area from the national statistics. Your accountant should be able to give you the useful life of a desk (but you should know it since it is your market!). You can compare the desk prices of other furniture stores in your area. As a side note here: it is always a good idea to ask your competitors for market data (just don't say you are going to compete with them).

That was the bottom-up approach, now let's look into the top-down approach.

The top-down approach consists of starting with a global number and reducing it pro-rata. In our case, we would start with the value of the UK office furniture market which AMA Research estimates to be around £650m and then do a pro-rata on this number using the number of businesses in our delivery area x their number of employees / total number of people employed in the UK. Once again the number of employees would only be a rough proxy given all business don't have the same furniture requirements.

When coming up with an estimate yourself it is always a good practice to test both the bottom up and top-down approaches and to compare the results. If the numbers are too far away then you probably missed something or used the wrong proxy.

Once you have estimated the market size you need to explain to your reader which segment(s) of the market you view as your target market.

The target market is the type of customers you target within the market. For example, if you are selling jewellery you can either be a generalist or decide to focus on the high end or the lower end of the market. This section is relevant when your market has clear segments with different drivers of demand. In my example of jewels, value for money would be one of the drivers of the lower end market whereas exclusivity and prestige would drive the high end.

Now it is time to focus on the more qualitative side of the market analysis by looking at what drives the demand.

This section is very important as it is where you show your potential investor that you have an intimate knowledge of your market. You know why they buy!

Here you need to get into the details of the drivers of demand for your product or services. One way to look at what a driver is to look at takeaway coffee. One of the drivers for coffee is consistency. The coffee one buys in a chain is not necessarily better than the one from the independent coffee shop next door. But if you are not from the area then you don't know what the independent coffee shop's coffee is worth it. Whereas you know that the coffee from the chain will taste just like in every other shop of this chain. Hence most people on the move buy coffee from chains rather than independent coffee shops.

From a tactical point of view, this section is also where you need to place your competitive edge without mentioning it explicitly. In the following sections of your business plan, you are going to talk about your competition and their strengths, weaknesses and market positioning before reaching the Strategy section in which you'll explain your own market positioning. What you want to do is prepare the reader to embrace your positioning and invest in your company.

To do so you need to highlight in this section some of the drivers that your competition has not been focussing on. A quick example for an independent coffee shop surrounded by coffee chains would be to say that on top of consistency, which is relevant for people on the move, another driver for coffee shop demand is the place itself as what coffee shops sell before most is a place for people to meet. You would then present your competition. And in the Strategy section explain that you will focus on locals looking for a place to meet rather than takeaway coffee and that your differentiating factor will be the authenticity and atmosphere of your local shop.

The aim of this section is to give a fair view of who you are competing against. You need to explain your competitors' positioning and describe their strengths and weaknesses. You should write this part in parallel with the Competitive Edge part of the Strategy section.

The idea here is to analyse your competitor's angle to the market in order to find a weakness that your company will be able to use in its own market positioning.

One way to carry the analysis is to benchmark your competitor against each of the key drivers of demand for your market (price, quality, add-on services, etc.) and present the results in a table.

Below is an example of a furniture shop in France. As you can see from the table all the actors on the market are currently focused on the low medium range of the market leaving the space free for a high end focused new player.

This section is all about answering two questions from your investors:

• what prevents someone from opening a shop in front of yours and take 50% of your business?
• having answered the previous question what makes you think you will be successful in trying to enter this market? (start-up only)

As you would have guess barriers to entry are great. Investors love them and there is one reason for this: it protects your business from new competition!

Here are a few examples of barriers to entry:

• Investment (a project that requires a substantial investment)
• Technology (sophisticated technology a website is not one, knowing how to process uranium is)
• Brand (the huge marketing costs required to get to a certain level of recognition)
• Regulation (licences and concessions in particular)
• Access to resources (exclusivity with suppliers, proprietary resources)
• Access to distribution channels (exclusivity with distributors, proprietary network)
• Location (a shop on Regent's Street)

The answer to the questions above will be highly dependent on your type of business, your management team and any relations it might have. Therefore it is hard for me to give any general tips about it.

If regulation is a barrier at entry in your sector then I would advise you to merge this section with the previous one. Otherwise, this section should be just a tick the box exercise where you explain the main regulations applicable to your business and which steps you are going to take to remain compliant.

Now you know how to do a market analysis for a business plan! I hope you found this article useful. If so please share it, and if not let us know what we need to improve.

Also on The Business Plan Shop

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• TAM SAM SOM, what it means and why it matters
• Business model vs business plan
• What is a business plan and how to create one?

Founder & CEO at The Business Plan Shop Ltd

Guillaume Le Brouster is a seasoned entrepreneur and financier.

Guillaume has been an entrepreneur for more than a decade and has first-hand experience of starting, running, and growing a successful business.

Prior to being a business owner, Guillaume worked in investment banking and private equity, where he spent most of his time creating complex financial forecasts, writing business plans, and analysing financial statements to make financing and investment decisions.

Guillaume holds a Master's Degree in Finance from ESCP Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Business & Management from Paris Dauphine University.

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Marketing Needs Explained With Examples

Understanding and meeting market needs is vital for businesses to develop effective marketing strategies and satisfy consumer demands. By analyzing customer requirements and consumer demands, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts to specific segments, increase their chances of success, and foster customer satisfaction. In this article, we will explore the importance of market needs and provide examples of how businesses can identify and address them.

Key Takeaways:

• Market needs play a crucial role in developing effective marketing strategies and satisfying consumer demands.
• Understanding your target audience’s needs is essential for identifying potential buyers and creating targeted marketing campaigns.
• By analyzing market size, customer profiles, personal similarities, cultural components, and special interests or needs, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts to specific segments and increase their chances of success.
• Identifying the size of the market through market research and analysis helps businesses estimate the potential number of buyers.
• Understanding customer profiles helps businesses tailor their marketing efforts to resonate with their target audience and address their unique requirements.

Identifying the Size of the Market

When it comes to identifying market needs, understanding the size of the potential market is key. Conducting market research and analysis allows businesses to gain insights into the number of people who are likely to be interested in their product or service. By segmenting the market based on factors such as geographical region, age range, and specific needs or preferences, businesses can estimate the size of their target audience and develop effective marketing strategies accordingly.

Market research involves gathering data about potential customers, competitors, and industry trends. This information provides businesses with valuable insights that can help them make informed decisions about the best ways to reach their target audience and meet their needs. Research methods may include surveys, focus groups, interviews, and analyzing existing data and reports.

Market analysis goes hand in hand with market research. By analyzing the data collected, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of the market landscape, including its size, trends, and opportunities. This analysis enables businesses to identify potential gaps in the market, evaluate competitors, and make strategic decisions to position themselves effectively.

Segmenting the Market for Better Targeting

Segmenting the market allows businesses to divide the overall market into smaller groups or segments based on common characteristics. This segmentation helps businesses target specific audiences more effectively, as it allows for more personalized marketing messages and strategies.

There are various factors that businesses can consider when segmenting the market. Geographic segmentation focuses on dividing the market based on geographical regions, such as countries, states, or cities. This approach recognizes that consumer needs and preferences can vary depending on their location.

Demographic segmentation looks at characteristics such as age, gender, income, occupation, and education level. By understanding the demographic profile of their target audience, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts to resonate with specific groups.

Psychographic segmentation considers consumer lifestyles, interests, values, and attitudes. This approach helps businesses understand the motivations and behaviors of their target audience, allowing for more targeted and persuasive marketing strategies.

By segmenting the market, businesses can gain a clearer picture of their target audience’s needs and preferences, enabling them to develop focused marketing campaigns and better align their products and services with the wants and desires of their customers.

Understanding the Customer Profile

In order to effectively meet market needs, businesses must have a thorough understanding of their customer profiles. This entails identifying the characteristics, preferences, and behaviors of their ideal customers. By considering factors such as age, gender, marital status, education level, career type, family size, and income level, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts to resonate with their target audience and address their unique requirements.

Characteristics:

• Marital Status
• Education Level
• Career Type
• Family Size
• Income Level

These characteristics provide valuable insights into the preferences and behaviors of customers, allowing businesses to develop effective marketing strategies that align with their target audience’s needs. By analyzing and segmenting the market based on customer profiles, businesses can create tailored campaigns that resonate with specific customer segments, increasing the likelihood of capturing their attention and driving engagement.

For example, a clothing retailer targeting young adults may focus on trendy and affordable fashion options, while a luxury car brand targeting high-income individuals may emphasize the exclusivity and status associated with their vehicles. Understanding the customer profile allows businesses to align their products, messaging, and marketing channels to effectively communicate with their target audience.

The image above visually represents the importance of understanding customer preferences in market segmentation. It highlights the different customer segments that can emerge based on various factors such as age, income level, and lifestyle choices. By identifying and catering to these segments, businesses can create targeted marketing campaigns to effectively reach their desired audience.

The table above demonstrates how market segmentation based on customer profiles can help businesses tailor their marketing strategies to meet specific customer preferences. By understanding the unique needs and desires of each customer segment, businesses can position their brand and offerings in a way that resonates with their target audience, increasing the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

By comprehensively understanding the customer profile, businesses can gain valuable insights into customer preferences and behaviors. This knowledge allows them to develop targeted and personalized marketing strategies that cater to specific customer segments, ultimately driving customer satisfaction, loyalty, and business growth.

Recognizing Personal Similarities in the Market

When targeting a specific group of people, it is essential to recognize the personal similarities that exist within that target market. Understanding these similarities can help businesses establish a sense of familiarity and connection with their audience, enabling effective communication and the ability to meet their specific needs.

Personal similarities in the market encompass various factors, including:

• Marital status
• Education level
• Career type
• Family size
• Income level

Although each buyer is unique, acknowledging and leveraging these personal similarities can provide businesses with valuable insights into their target group’s preferences and behaviors. By tailoring marketing efforts to resonate with these commonalities, businesses can create a stronger connection and increase the likelihood of success.

By recognizing and understanding personal similarities within the target market, businesses can refine their marketing strategies and create more tailored campaigns, ultimately increasing their chances of success.

Considering Cultural Components

Cultural components play a significant role in shaping market needs. Businesses must take into account the geographic elements and cultural perspectives of their target group in order to understand what buyers want to buy and how they prefer to make purchases. By recognizing and respecting these cultural differences, businesses can tailor their marketing strategies to effectively engage with their target audience.

Geographic Elements

The geographic location of a target market can profoundly influence consumer behavior and preferences. For example, customers in a small Midwestern farm town may have different price points and purchasing behaviors compared to those in affluent areas like Beverly Hills. By understanding the geographic influences on buyer preferences, businesses can adjust their marketing strategies to meet the unique needs of each location.

Cultural Perspectives

Cultural perspectives vary across different communities, ethnicities, and regions. These perspectives influence consumer behaviors, attitudes, and values. To successfully cater to market needs, businesses should consider cultural perspectives related to their target audience. By demonstrating cultural sensitivity, businesses can establish trust, foster connections, and develop marketing campaigns that resonate with consumers on a deeper level.

By considering both geographic elements and cultural perspectives, businesses can create marketing strategies that are tailored to the specific needs and preferences of their target audience. This understanding allows businesses to effectively communicate their value proposition and build long-term relationships with customers.

Addressing Special Interests or Needs

In today’s digital age, businesses have the opportunity to harness the power of social media and digital marketing to specifically target and cater to the unique needs of their buyers. By segmenting the market and developing marketing campaigns that are tailored to specific interests or requirements, businesses can effectively reach their target audience and increase their chances of success.

For example, let’s take a pet store that specializes in parrot products. It would be wasteful to spend marketing dollars targeting cat owners. By utilizing social media platforms and online advertising tools, this pet store can identify parrot owners and enthusiasts and create targeted campaigns to capture their attention.

Similarly, consider a cell phone accessory store that exclusively sells Apple products. It wouldn’t make sense for them to spend resources marketing to Android users. By leveraging social media marketing strategies and audience segmentation, this store can focus their efforts on reaching iPhone users who are more likely to be interested in their products.

It’s important for businesses to understand their target audience’s specific interests or needs and invest in social media marketing and digital marketing strategies that are aligned with those requirements. By doing so, businesses can maximize their return on investment and greatly improve their chances of attracting and converting their ideal customers.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Targeting Specific Buyers

Social media marketing offers several advantages when it comes to targeting specific buyers. Here are some key benefits:

• Segmentation: Social media platforms enable businesses to segment their target audience based on demographic, geographic, and psychographic factors. This allows businesses to create highly tailored marketing campaigns that speak directly to the interests and needs of specific buyer groups.
• Precision Targeting: With social media advertising tools, businesses can target their ads with precision, ensuring they are seen by the right people at the right time. This minimizes wasted ad spend on audiences who are unlikely to convert into customers.
• Engagement and Interaction: Social media platforms provide opportunities for businesses to engage and interact with their target audience. By actively responding to comments, messages, and inquiries, businesses can build trust and establish strong relationships with potential buyers.
• Data Insights: Social media analytics provide valuable data and insights about audience behavior, preferences, and engagement. This data can be used to refine marketing strategies and improve campaign effectiveness over time.
• Cost-Effective Marketing: Compared to traditional advertising methods, social media marketing can be more cost-effective, allowing businesses with limited budgets to reach their target audience without breaking the bank.

By leveraging the power of social media marketing and targeting specific buyers, businesses can optimize their marketing efforts, increase brand visibility, and ultimately drive more revenue.

Differentiating Needs and Wants

When developing effective marketing strategies, it is crucial to differentiate between needs and wants. Needs are the essential requirements for survival, while wants are desires that go beyond basic necessities and are influenced by culture and personal preferences.

Understanding the distinction between needs and wants allows businesses to tailor their products and marketing efforts to fulfill the specific desires of their target audience. By appealing to both needs and wants, businesses can increase the likelihood of sales and customer satisfaction.

The Difference Between Needs and Wants

Needs are the fundamental requirements that individuals must have to survive and thrive. These can include things like food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare. On the other hand, wants are driven by individual preferences and desires that are not necessary for survival but contribute to a person’s overall well-being and happiness.

For example, a person needs a reliable mode of transportation to commute to work, but they might want a luxury car to fulfill their desire for status and comfort. By understanding these distinctions, businesses can focus their marketing strategies on fulfilling both the needs and wants of their target audience.

Tailoring Marketing Strategies to Needs and Wants

Effective marketing strategies should address both the needs and wants of consumers. By understanding their target audience’s needs, businesses can develop products and services that fulfill essential requirements. This can be achieved by conducting thorough market research and customer analysis.

Furthermore, businesses should also consider the wants of their target audience. Wants are influenced by culture, personal preferences, and individual desires. By aligning their marketing strategies with these wants, businesses can create more appealing and desirable products that cater to the emotional and psychological needs of their customers.

For instance, a clothing retailer might offer a basic line of affordable clothing, fulfilling the need for functional attire. However, to appeal to the wants of their fashion-conscious customers, they might also introduce a high-end collection that satisfies the desire for style and luxury.

Understanding Customer Motivations

To effectively differentiate between needs and wants, businesses must have a deep understanding of customer motivations. By analyzing consumer behavior and conducting market research, businesses can identify the underlying motives that drive purchasing decisions.

For example, a customer may buy a laptop because they need it for work or studies (a need). However, they might also be motivated to choose a specific brand or model because it aligns with their desired lifestyle or reflects their personality (a want). By identifying these motivations, businesses can tailor their marketing strategies to address both the functional and emotional aspects of their target audience’s decision-making process.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a psychological theory that explains the different levels of needs that individuals have. By understanding this hierarchy, businesses can gain insights into consumer behavior and align their marketing strategies to meet the specific needs of their target audience.

The hierarchy consists of five levels:

• Physiological Needs: These are the most basic needs for survival, including food, water, shelter, and sleep. Businesses that cater to these needs include grocery stores, restaurants, and housing providers.
• Safety Needs: Once physiological needs are met, individuals seek safety and security. This includes job security, financial stability, and protection from physical harm. Insurance companies and home security providers target these needs.
• Social Needs: People have a strong desire for social connection, belonging, and friendship. Meeting these needs involves creating a sense of community and fostering relationships. Social media platforms and community-based organizations address these needs.
• Esteem Needs: Esteem needs encompass the desire for recognition, status, and respect from others. Businesses that cater to these needs include luxury brands, exclusive memberships, and professional development programs.
• Self-Actualization Needs: At the highest level of the hierarchy, individuals seek personal growth, fulfillment, and self-actualization. Companies offering self-help books, educational programs, and personal development services address these needs.

By understanding which level of needs their target audience is seeking to fulfill, businesses can create more relevant and compelling offerings. For example, a fitness company might emphasize how their product helps individuals meet their physiological and self-actualization needs by promoting health and personal growth. Similarly, a luxury car brand might focus on fulfilling esteem needs by highlighting the status and prestige associated with their vehicles.

Examples of Needs and Wants

Understanding whether a customer has a need or a want is crucial for tailoring the sales approach. By recognizing these differences, businesses can adjust their sales pitches and product offerings to meet the specific desires of their target customers, increasing the chances of success.

For example, a newly married couple looking for their first home has a basic need for shelter. They require a safe and comfortable place to live that meets their budget and location preferences. On the other hand, an established couple seeking a second or third vacation home has a want that goes beyond basic necessities. They desire a luxurious getaway property that provides relaxation and enjoyment.

Recognizing these differences in needs and wants allows businesses to customize their approach and marketing strategies to cater to their target customers. By understanding the specific desires and preferences of the target audience, businesses can craft compelling sales pitches and highlight the benefits that directly address their customers’ wants. By aligning their product offerings with these wants, businesses can increase customer satisfaction and drive sales.

By distinguishing between needs and wants, businesses can strategically position their products and services, appealing to the emotional and psychological desires of their target customers. This approach not only increases the chances of sales but also enhances customer satisfaction, leading to repeat business and positive word-of-mouth referrals.

Importance of Knowing Wants and Needs in Marketing

Knowing the wants and needs of your target audience is crucial for the success of your marketing strategies. By conducting thorough marketing research and gaining a deep understanding of your customers’ preferences , you can tailor your products, messaging, and overall marketing efforts to effectively meet their specific needs and desires.

With the right knowledge, you can differentiate your business from competitors and create targeted campaigns that truly resonate with your audience. By aligning your offerings with their wants and needs, you have the potential to increase customer satisfaction and drive higher sales .

Marketing research provides valuable insights into your target market, allowing you to identify trends, preferences, and behaviors that can inform your marketing strategy. By understanding your customers’ needs, you can craft compelling messages and create products that truly meet their expectations.

Customer preferences are ever-evolving, and it’s essential to stay updated on their changing needs and desires. By leveraging marketing research, businesses can gather valuable data and insights to inform their marketing strategies and stay ahead of the competition.

Furthermore, understanding customer preferences encompasses more than just knowing what products or services they want. It also involves comprehending their emotional and psychological desires, the problems they need solving, and the aspirations they hope to achieve. This holistic view of customer preferences enables you to develop marketing strategies that connect with your audience on a deeper level, establishing trust and loyalty.

To ensure you are meeting your customers’ wants and needs effectively, keep an open line of communication with your target audience. Engage with them through surveys, feedback forms, and social media channels to gather real-time insights into their preferences and satisfaction levels. This ongoing dialogue allows you to adapt your marketing strategy and offerings as needed to meet their evolving needs.

Table: Examples of Marketing Strategies Aligned with Customer Preferences

Understanding your customers’ wants and needs plays a pivotal role in driving the success of your marketing efforts. By leveraging marketing research and continually staying attuned to their preferences , you can create tailored strategies that effectively engage and satisfy your target audience, ultimately leading to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and business growth.

Understanding market needs is crucial for businesses to develop effective marketing strategies and satisfy consumer demands. By analyzing market size, customer profiles, personal similarities, cultural components, and special interests or needs, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts to specific segments and increase the likelihood of success.

By differentiating between customer needs and wants, businesses can align their sales approaches with the specific desires of their target customers. This allows them to create more relevant and compelling offerings that resonate with their audience, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Ultimately, meeting market needs not only drives customer satisfaction but also leads to business growth. By focusing on customer needs, businesses can develop marketing strategies that are customer-centric and result in long-term success in the market.

What is the significance of market needs in marketing?

Market needs are crucial for developing effective marketing strategies and satisfying consumer demands. Understanding the needs of your target audience allows businesses to tailor their marketing efforts to specific segments and increase their chances of success.

How can I identify the size of the market?

To identify the size of the market, you can conduct market research and analysis. This involves segmenting the market based on factors such as geographical region, age range, and specific needs or preferences to estimate the size of your target audience.

Why is understanding the customer profile important?

Understanding the customer profile involves identifying the characteristics, preferences, and behaviors of your ideal customers. By considering factors such as age, gender, marital status, education level, career type, family size, and income level, you can tailor your marketing efforts to resonate with your target audience and address their unique requirements.

How can recognizing personal similarities benefit businesses?

Recognizing personal similarities within your target audience can help establish a sense of familiarity and connection, making it easier to communicate effectively and meet their specific needs. By identifying shared personal factors such as marital status, education level, career type, family size, and income level, you can better tailor your marketing efforts.

Why is it important to consider cultural components in marketing?

Cultural components, such as geographic and cultural elements, influence buyer preferences and purchasing behaviors. By understanding these factors within your target group, you can tailor your marketing strategies accordingly to better align with their wants and needs.

How can addressing special interests or needs impact marketing efforts?

By targeting specific buyers and addressing their unique interests or needs, businesses can use social media and digital marketing to effectively reach their target audience. This segmentation allows for more targeted campaigns, increasing the chances of success.

What is the distinction between needs and wants in marketing?

Needs refer to the essential requirements for survival, while wants are desires that go beyond basic necessities and are influenced by culture and personal preferences. Understanding the difference allows businesses to tailor their products and marketing efforts, fulfilling the desires of their target audience.

How does Maslow’s hierarchy of needs relate to consumer behavior?

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs provides a framework for understanding consumer behavior and the different levels of needs that individuals have. By aligning products and marketing strategies with the specific level of needs your target audience is seeking to fulfill, businesses can create more relevant and compelling offerings.

How can I differentiate between needs and wants when targeting customers?

Recognizing whether your customers have a need or a want is essential for tailoring your sales approach. Identifying basic needs versus desires that go beyond necessities allows businesses to adjust their product offerings and sales pitches to meet the specific desires of their target customers.

Why is it important to know the wants and needs of your target audience?

Knowing the wants and needs of your target audience is crucial for developing effective marketing strategies. By conducting thorough market research and understanding customer preferences, you can tailor your products, messaging, and marketing efforts to fulfill the specific desires and requirements of your target market.

How can meeting market needs lead to customer satisfaction and business growth?

By understanding market needs and tailoring marketing strategies accordingly, businesses can increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and sales. Meeting the specific desires and requirements of your target audience sets you apart from competitors and creates a more personalized experience for your customers, leading to business growth.

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How to Write a Market Analysis for a Business Plan?

Free Market Analysis Kit

• April 11, 2024

13 Min Read

Market analysis is the foundation upon which the success of your business relies.

Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur planning to enter a new geographical market or an emerging startup struggling to place together your business plan—a thorough understanding of the market, customers, and competitors is essential for a business to thrive successfully. 

Now, writing a market analysis for your business plan is quite a challenge. But with this step-by-step guide, we have made the entire process quite simple and easy to follow. 

Also, get tips to write this section and our curated market analysis example for a business plan. 

Ready to dive in? Let’s get started.

What is Market Analysis?

Market analysis is a detailed analysis of your business’s target market and the competitive landscape within a specific industry. It is an important section of your business plan offering a thorough insight into the state of the industry, the potential target market, and your business’s competition.

A well-targeted market analysis forms the base upon which the foundation of your business relies. It assures the readers that you have a thorough understanding of the market you are about to enter.

Why should you Conduct Market Research?

Wondering how market analysis will contribute to the success of your business? Well, check these benefits of conducting a comprehensive market analysis for your business:

1. Reduces the risk

Instead of operating on instincts and gut feelings, market research enables you to make decisions based on data and analysis. When you know with surety what works and what doesn’t, you will make decisions that are more likely to succeed than fail.

To summarize, having an in-depth market analysis will reduce the risks associated with starting a business in a thriving marketplace.

2. Identifies emerging trends

A market analysis identifies emerging market trends and patterns and thereby helps you stay at the top of the competition. Not only the trends, but you can also identify challenges that may potentially arise in your business and design a pivot plan.

3. Assist in product development

A detailed analysis of the target market, industry, and competitors helps you create the product that the customer will be willing to buy. The analysis will not only assist in product development, but also with pricing, marketing, and sales strategies to ensure thriving business conditions.

4. Optimize your target market

Your business is not for everyone and the sooner you realize this the better. A target market analysis helps in understanding who your potential customers are and accordingly strategize your marketing efforts to attract them.

5. Establishes evaluation benchmarks

Market analysis benefits your business by offering evaluation metrics and KPIs. Such metrics help in measuring a company’s performance and its edge over the competitors.

Lastly, a thorough market analysis is quintessential if you are planning to secure funds. As a matter of fact, it is non-negotiable.

Now that you know how important having a market analysis section is, let’s learn a detailed way of conducting such analysis.

How to Simplify Your Market Analysis?

Market analysis is a broad concept covering a wide range of details. There’s no denying that it is a tiring task requiring extremely dedicated efforts.

From understanding the purpose of research to undertaking surveys, gathering data, and converting it into worthy analysis—the research itself is a lot for an individual to cover.

Upmetrics market analysis tool kit includes a variety of guidebooks and templates that will help you with target customer analysis , surveys, and competitor surveys.

The documents will guide you in a strategic direction to conduct qualitative research and analysis. They are well-crafted and quite simple to follow even for someone with no prior experience at market analysis.

Got it? No more side talking, let’s get straight to what you are here for.

How to Conduct a Market Analysis?

Conducting thorough market research and analysis could be a hassle, but not with this easy-to-follow 7-step guide. Let’s get over it.

1. Determine your objective

When you write a business plan , market analysis is going to be one prominent component.

However, it is important to know the clear objective of conducting such analysis before you kickstart.

For instance, are you planning to acquire funding from investors or are you conducting this research to test the viability of your business idea? Are you looking to add a new product segment to your business or are you looking to expand in other states and countries?

That being said, the purpose of your market analysis will determine the extent and scope of research essential for your business.

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2. Conduct an Industry Analysis

In this part of your analysis, you will highlight the state of the current industry and show where it seems to be moving. Investors would want to know if the industry is growing or declining, so present accordingly.

This section should include metrics for market size, projected growth, average market growth rate,  product life cycle, and market trends.

Ensure that you gather data from highly authoritative sites like the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Bureau of Economic Analysis, and industry publications to make your analysis.

To make this section enriching and meaningful, begin with a macro industry overview and then drill down to your specific market and business offering as thorough details as possible.

3. Identify your target audience

This section of your market analysis is dedicated to your potential target customers.

And, although your product might be suitable for everyone, there is a high possibility that not all of them will be your customers due to many reasons.

It is therefore better to target a specific category of customers to grow your business effectively and efficiently.

Now, you can begin by creating a buyer’s persona of your ideal customer describing their demographic and psychographic details. This includes talking about the age, gender, location, income, occupation, needs, pain points, problems, and spending capacity of your target customer.

You can conduct surveys, interviews, and focus groups, and gather data from high-end sources to get essential details for a customer profile.

However, make sure that you dig into details to make this section resourceful for business planning and strategizing.

4. Analyze your competitors

Competitive analysis is the most important aspect of your market analysis highlighting the state of the competitive landscape, potential business competitors, and your competitive edge in the market.

Now, a business may have direct as well as indirect competitors. And while indirect competition won’t affect your business directly, it definitely would have an impact on your market share.

To begin this section, identify your top competitors and list them down.

Conduct a SWOT analysis of your top competitors and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses against your business.

Identify their USPs, study their market strategies, understand how they pose a threat to your business, and ideate strategies to leverage their weaknesses.

Don’t undervalue or overestimate your competitors. Instead, focus on offering a realistic state of competition to the readers.

Additionally, readers also want to know your strengths and how you will leverage a competitive edge over your competitors. Ensure that this section highlights your edge in terms of pricing, product, market share, target customer, or anything else.

Want to create a SWOT analysis for your business?

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5. Calculate your market share

The analysis section of your business plan must also include details of your market share.

If your estimated market share is not big enough, chances are your business idea might not be profitable enough to pursue further.

Now, you can use these proven metrics to forecast your market share:

TAM (Total available market)

It represents the total demand available in the market. In other words, it is the maximum amount of sales or revenue the market has to offer.

SAM (Serviceable available market)

It represents the segment of TAM that you can obtain with your solution within your limitations. These limitations can be geographical location, business model, type of product, etc.

SOM (Serviceable obtainable market)

It represents the segment of SAM that you can realistically capture after considering your competitors, customer preferences, production capabilities, etc.

SOM is your estimated market share. Once you have calculated it, you can actualize it via suitable pricing strategies.Apart from this method, you can also use other approaches like top-down, bottom-up, and triangulation to estimate your market share.

However, whatever method you use, ensure that the projections are realistic and attainable.

6. Know the regulations and restrictions

Before entering a new market or starting a new business , you need to know the regulations and restrictions in your industry.

Understanding these can help you stay out of legal pitfalls and inspire confidence in prospective investors.

Some of the regulations you need to know are:

• Government policies
• Tax regulations
• Trade policies
• Employment laws
• Environmental regulations
• Security and privacy
• Protection of intellectual properties

Include these details in your market analysis section to help readers understand the risk value and federal regulations associated with your business.

7. Organize and implement the data

After completing your research, it’s now time to make sense of all the data you’ve gathered.

There is no strict structure when it comes to organizing your market analysis. However, ensure that your analysis includes specific sections for objective, target market, and competition.

Focus on creating an easy-to-digest and visually appealing analysis section to help the readers gather essential essence.

Now, it’s a waste if you are not putting all this research to some use. Identify the business areas where you can implement your research be it product development, exploring the new market, or business operations, and develop strategies accordingly.

All in all lay the foundation of a successful business with a thorough and insightful market analysis. And, you can do it by having an organized market analysis section in your business plan.

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Tips to Write Your Market Analysis

After conducting thorough market research, it is important to present that information strategically in a business plan to help the readers get meaningful insights.

Well, here are a few tips to help you write the market analysis for a business plan.

1. Stay in context

Remember the objective of your market analysis and stick to it. Keeping the context in mind, identify what essential information to present and back them up with high-end sources.

Also, tie your data with essential analysis to show how your business would survive and thrive in the market.

2. Add visual graphics

No one prefers shifting through pages of pure text content. Graphics and visuals make your market analysis easy to absorb and understand. You are more likely to capture readers with visual attractiveness rather than risk their attention with pure textual content.

3. Offer an engaging summary

Offer readers a quick overview of your detailed market analysis by including a summarizing text. A summary will help readers gather a macro perspective before diving deep into hard facts and figures.

4. Avoid fluff and repetition

Ensure that everything you present in your market analysis section holds a meaning. Avoid adding inessential and fluff information.

To best identify whether or not the information is essential for the reader, ask this simple question: Will the reader learn something about my business’s market or its customers from this information?

If not, the information is most likely inessential. And, those were some quick tips to ensure effective market analysis for your business plan.

Market Analysis in a Business Plan Example

Before we conclude, check out this market analysis example from Upmetrics’ sample yoga studio business plan.

Business Name: Lotus Harmony

Location: Green Valley

Core Objective for Market Analysis

Our goal for the market analysis at Lotus Harmony is straightforward: to deeply understand what the Green Valley community seeks in yoga and wellness. We’ll closely look at local demand and the competitive scene, shaping our services to precisely meet community needs. This approach promises to make Lotus Harmony a distinct and beloved wellness destination in our neighborhood.

Industry Overview of the Green Valley Yoga Market

Market Size:

Green Valley is home to nearly 1M yoga enthusiasts, predominantly aged 25-45. This demographic suggests a robust market for yoga and wellness, ripe for a studio that offers diverse and inclusive programs.

Projected Growth:

The yoga community is expected to grow by 5% annually over the next five years. This growth is driven by an increasing interest in holistic health, presenting a fertile ground for a new yoga studio to thrive.

Market Trends:

A rising trend is the demand for comprehensive wellness services, including mindfulness and nutrition, alongside traditional yoga. Specialized classes like prenatal yoga are also gaining popularity, signaling opportunities for niche offerings.

By tapping into these insights, a new yoga studio in Green Valley can strategically position itself as a premier wellness destination, catering to the evolving needs of the community.

Target Market Analysis for Lotus Harmony

Lotus Harmony Yoga Studio’s ideal customers are mainly Urban Millennials and Gen Z (ages 18-35) who prioritize:

• Wellness and mindfulness as part of their lifestyle.
• Affordable, holistic health experiences blending physical and mental well-being.
• Convenience with flexible class schedules and online access.
• Community and sustainability, preferring spaces that offer personal growth and eco-consciousness.
• A welcoming atmosphere that supports inclusivity and connection.

Competitive Landscape for Lotus Harmony

Lotus Harmony’s success relies on understanding consumer preferences and income, securing prime locations, attracting patrons, and offering quality services. Competing with gyms, wellness centers, and home fitness, it positions itself as a holistic wellness choice, aiming to stand out in Green Valley’s wellness scene.

Market Share for Lotus Harmony

Regulatory Requirements for Lotus Harmony

Here are a few aspects of legal compliance essential for Lotus Harmony:

• Business Registration and Licensing
• Zoning and Land Use Permits
• Health and Safety Compliance
• Professional Liability Insurance
• Instructor Certifications
• Building Safety Certificates
• Accessibility Compliance
• Tax Registration

Final Thoughts

It takes an extremely dedicated effort to undertake market research and craft it into a compelling analysis. However, it’s a worthy business planning effort that will set a cornerstone of success for your business.

Don’t worry. You don’t need to spend days figuring out what and how to write your market analysis. Upmetrics, an AI-powered business planning app , will help you write your overall business plan in less than an hour.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 4 c's of marketing analysis.

The 4 C’s of marketing analysis are customer, cost, convenience, and communication which would together determine whether the company would succeed or fail in the long run.

Is SWOT analysis a market analysis?

SWOT analysis is a small but important tool for market research that would determine the success of a business or its edge over other businesses based on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

How long does a market analysis take?

Market analysis can take anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks, given that secondary sources of data are easily available. However, for complex large-scale projects, analysis can take up to months to complete.

What are the three core components of a market analysis?

The three most crucial components of a market analysis are the study of market size and market share, target market determination, and competitor analysis.

About the Author

Upmetrics Team

Upmetrics is the #1 business planning software that helps entrepreneurs and business owners create investment-ready business plans using AI. We regularly share business planning insights on our blog. Check out the Upmetrics blog for such interesting reads. Read more

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What is a Marketing Plan & How to Write One [+Examples]

Published: December 27, 2023

For a while now, you've been spearheading your organization's content marketing efforts, and your team's performance has convinced management to adopt the content marketing strategies you’ve suggested.

Now, your boss wants you to write and present a content marketing plan, but you‘ve never done something like that before. You don't even know where to start.

Fortunately, we've curated the best content marketing plans to help you write a concrete plan that's rooted in data and produces results. But first, we'll discuss what a marketing plan is and how some of the best marketing plans include strategies that serve their respective businesses.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a strategic roadmap that businesses use to organize, execute, and track their marketing strategy over a given period. Marketing plans can include different marketing strategies for various marketing teams across the company, all working toward the same business goals.

The purpose of a marketing plan is to write down strategies in an organized manner. This will help keep you on track and measure the success of your campaigns.

Writing a marketing plan will help you think of each campaign‘s mission, buyer personas, budget, tactics, and deliverables. With all this information in one place, you’ll have an easier time staying on track with a campaign. You'll also discover what works and what doesn't. Thus, measuring the success of your strategy.

Featured Resource: Free Marketing Plan Template

Looking to develop a marketing plan for your business? Click here to download HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template to get started .

To learn more about how to create your marketing plan, keep reading or jump to the section you’re looking for:

How to Write a Marketing Plan

Types of marketing plans, marketing plan examples, marketing plan faqs, sample marketing plan.

If you're pressed for time or resources, you might not be thinking about a marketing plan. However, a marketing plan is an important part of your business plan.

Marketing Plan vs. Business Plan

A marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics.

A business plan is also a strategic document. But this plan covers all aspects of a company's operations, including finance, operations, and more. It can also help your business decide how to distribute resources and make decisions as your business grows.

I like to think of a marketing plan as a subset of a business plan; it shows how marketing strategies and objectives can support overall business goals.

Keep in mind that there's a difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy.

Free Marketing Plan Template

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

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Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

A marketing strategy describes how a business will accomplish a particular goal or mission. This includes which campaigns, content, channels, and marketing software they'll use to execute that mission and track its success.

For example, while a greater plan or department might handle social media marketing, you might consider your work on Facebook as an individual marketing strategy.

A marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies. It's the framework from which all of your marketing strategies are created and helps you connect each strategy back to a larger marketing operation and business goal.

For example, suppose your company is launching a new software product, and it wants customers to sign up. The marketing department needs to develop a marketing plan that'll help introduce this product to the industry and drive the desired signups.

The department decides to launch a blog dedicated to this industry, a new YouTube video series to establish expertise, and an account on Twitter to join the conversation around this subject. All this serves to attract an audience and convert this audience into software users.

To summarize, the business's marketing plan is dedicated to introducing a new software product to the marketplace and driving signups for that product. The business will execute that plan with three marketing strategies : a new industry blog, a YouTube video series, and a Twitter account.

Of course, the business might consider these three things as one giant marketing strategy, each with its specific content strategies. How granular you want your marketing plan to get is up to you. Nonetheless, every marketing plan goes through a particular set of steps in its creation.

Learn what they are below.

• State your business's mission.
• Determine the KPIs for this mission.
• Identify your buyer personas.
• Describe your content initiatives and strategies.
• Clearly define your plan's omissions.
• Define your marketing budget.
• Identify your competition.
• Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

1. State your business's mission.

Your first step in writing a marketing plan is to state your mission. Although this mission is specific to your marketing department, it should serve your business‘s main mission statement.

From my experience, you want to be specific, but not too specific. You have plenty of space left in this marketing plan to elaborate on how you'll acquire new customers and accomplish this mission.

Need help building your mission statement? Download this guide for examples and templates and write the ideal mission statement.

2. Determine the KPIs for this mission.

Every good marketing plan describes how the department will track its mission‘s progress. To do so, you need to decide on your key performance indicators (KPIs) .

KPIs are individual metrics that measure the various elements of a marketing campaign. These units help you establish short-term goals within your mission and communicate your progress to business leaders.

Let's take our example of a marketing mission from the above step. If part of our mission is “to attract an audience of travelers,” we might track website visits using organic page views. In this case, “organic page views” is one KPI, and we can see our number of page views grow over time.

These KPIs will come into the conversation again in step 4.

3. Identify your buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a description of who you want to attract. This can include age, sex, location, family size, and job title. Each buyer persona should directly reflect your business's current and potential customers. So, all business leaders must agree on your buyer personas.

Create your buyer personas with this free guide and set of buyer persona templates.

4. Describe your content initiatives and strategies.

Here's where you'll include the main points of your marketing and content strategy. Because there's a laundry list of content types and channels available to you today, you must choose wisely and explain how you'll use your content and channels in this section of your marketing plan.

When I write this section , I like to stipulate:

• Which types of content I'll create. These might include blog posts, YouTube videos, infographics, and ebooks.
• How much of it I'll create. I typically describe content volume in daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly intervals. It all depends on my workflow and the short-term goals for my content.
• The goals (and KPIs) I'll use to track each type. KPIs can include organic traffic, social media traffic, email traffic, and referral traffic. Your goals should also include which pages you want to drive that traffic to, such as product pages, blog pages, or landing pages.
• The channels on which I'll distribute my content. Popular channels include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.
• Any paid advertising that will take place on these channels.

Build out your marketing plan with this free template.

Fill out this form to access the template., 5. clearly define your plan's omissions..

A marketing plan explains the marketing team's focus. It also explains what the marketing team will not focus on.

If there are other aspects of your business that you aren't serving in this particular plan, include them in this section. These omissions help to justify your mission, buyer personas, KPIs, and content. You can’t please everyone in a single marketing campaign, and if your team isn't on the hook for something, you need to make it known.

In my experience, this section is particularly important for stakeholders to help them understand why certain decisions were made.

6. Define your marketing budget.

Whether it's freelance fees, sponsorships, or a new full-time marketing hire, use these costs to develop a marketing budget and outline each expense in this section of your marketing plan.

You can establish your marketing budget with this kit of 8 free marketing budget templates .

7. Identify your competition.

Part of marketing is knowing whom you're marketing against. Research the key players in your industry and consider profiling each one.

Keep in mind not every competitor will pose the same challenges to your business. For example, while one competitor might be ranking highly on search engines for keywords you want your website to rank for, another competitor might have a heavy footprint on a social network where you plan to launch an account.

Easily track and analyze your competitors with t his collection of ten free competitive analysis templates .

8. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

With your marketing plan fully fleshed out, it's time to explain who’s doing what. I don't like to delve too deeply into my employees’ day-to-day projects, but I know which teams and team leaders are in charge of specific content types, channels, KPIs, and more.

Now that you know why you need to build an effective marketing plan, it’s time to get to work. Starting a plan from scratch can be overwhelming if you haven't done it before. That’s why there are many helpful resources that can support your first steps. We’ll share some of the best guides and templates that can help you build effective results-driven plans for your marketing strategies.

Ready to make your own marketing plan? Get started using this free template.

Depending on the company you work with, you might want to create various marketing plans. We compiled different samples to suit your needs:

1. Quarterly or Annual Marketing Plans

These plans highlight the strategies or campaigns you'll take on in a certain period.

Forbes published a marketing plan template that has amassed almost 4 million views. To help you sculpt a marketing roadmap with true vision, their template will teach you how to fill out the 15 key sections of a marketing plan, which are:

• Executive Summary
• Target Customers
• Unique Selling Proposition
• Pricing & Positioning Strategy
• Distribution Plan
• Your Offers
• Marketing Materials
• Promotions Strategy
• Online Marketing Strategy
• Conversion Strategy
• Joint Ventures & Partnerships
• Referral Strategy
• Strategy for Increasing Transaction Prices
• Retention Strategy
• Financial Projections

If you're truly lost on where to start with a marketing plan, I highly recommend using this guide to help you define your target audience, figure out how to reach them, and ensure that audience becomes loyal customers.

2. Social Media Marketing Plan

This type of plan highlights the channels, tactics, and campaigns you intend to accomplish specifically on social media. A specific subtype is a paid marketing plan, which highlights paid strategies, such as native advertising, PPC, or paid social media promotions.

Shane Snow's Marketing Plan for His Book Dream Team is a great example of a social media marketing plan:

When Shane Snow started promoting his new book, "Dream Team," he knew he had to leverage a data-driven content strategy framework. So, he chose his favorite one: the content strategy waterfall. The content strategy waterfall is defined by Economic Times as a model used to create a system with a linear and sequential approach.

Snow wrote a blog post about how the waterfall‘s content strategy helped him launch his new book successfully. After reading it, you can use his tactics to inform your own marketing plan. More specifically, you’ll learn how he:

• Applied his business objectives to decide which marketing metrics to track.
• Used his ultimate business goal of earning $200,000 in sales or 10,000 purchases to estimate the conversion rate of each stage of his funnel.
• Created buyer personas to figure out which channels his audience would prefer to consume his content.
• Used his average post view on each of his marketing channels to estimate how much content he had to create and how often he had to post on social media.
• Calculated how much earned and paid media could cut down the amount of content he had to create and post.
• Designed his process and workflow, built his team, and assigned members to tasks.
• Analyzed content performance metrics to refine his overall content strategy.

I use Snow's marketing plan to think more creatively about my content promotion and distribution plan. I like that it's linear and builds on the step before it, creating an air-tight strategy that doesn't leave any details out.

3. Content Marketing Plan

This plan could highlight different strategies, tactics, and campaigns in which you'll use content to promote your business or product.

HubSpot's Comprehensive Guide for Content Marketing Strategy is a strong example of a content marketing plan:

At HubSpot, we‘ve built our marketing team from two business school graduates working from a coffee table to a powerhouse of hundreds of employees. Along the way, we’ve learned countless lessons that shaped our current content marketing strategy. So, we decided to illustrate our insights in a blog post to teach marketers how to develop a successful content marketing strategy, regardless of their team's size.

In this comprehensive guide for modern marketers, you'll learn:

• What exactly content marketing is.
• Why your business needs a content marketing strategy.
• Who should lead your content marketing efforts?
• How to structure your content marketing team based on your company's size.
• How to hire the right people for each role on your team.
• What marketing tools and technology you'll need to succeed.
• What type of content your team should create, and which employees should be responsible for creating them.
• The importance of distributing your content through search engines, social media, email, and paid ads.
• And finally, the recommended metrics each of your teams should measure and report to optimize your content marketing program.

This is a fantastic resource for content teams of any size — whether you're a team of one or 100. It includes how to hire and structure a content marketing team, what marketing tools you'll need, what type of content you should create, and even recommends what metrics to track for analyzing campaigns. If you're aiming to establish or boost your online presence, leveraging tools like HubSpot's drag-and-drop website builder can be extremely beneficial. It helps you create a captivating digital footprint that sets the foundation for your content marketing endeavors.

4. New Product Launch Marketing Plan

This will be a roadmap for the strategies and tactics you‘ll implement to promote a new product. And if you’re searching for an example, look no further than Chief Outsiders' Go-To-Market Plan for a New Product :

After reading this plan, you'll learn how to:

• Validate a product
• Write strategic objectives
• Identify your market
• Compile a competitive landscape
• Create a value proposition for a new product
• Consider sales and service in your marketing plan

If you're looking for a marketing plan for a new product, the Chief Outsiders template is a great place to start. Marketing plans for a new product will be more specific because they target one product versus its entire marketing strategy.

5. Growth Marketing Plan

Growth marketing plans use experimentation and data to drive results, like we see in Venture Harbour’s Growth Marketing Plan Template :

Venture Harbour's growth marketing plan is a data-driven and experiment-led alternative to the more traditional marketing plan. Their template has five steps intended for refinement with every test-measure-learn cycle. The five steps are:

• Experiments

I recommend this plan if you want to experiment with different platforms and campaigns. Experimentation always feels risky and unfamiliar, but this plan creates a framework for accountability and strategy.

• Louisville Tourism
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Visit Oxnard
• Safe Haven Family Shelter
• Wright County Economic Development
• The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County
• Cabarrus County Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Visit Billings

1. Louisville Tourism

It also divides its target market into growth and seed categories to allow for more focused strategies. For example, the plan recognizes Millennials in Chicago, Atlanta, and Nashville as the core of it's growth market, whereas people in Boston, Austin, and New York represent seed markets where potential growth opportunities exist. Then, the plan outlines objectives and tactics for reaching each market.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

• The plan starts with a letter from the President & CEO of the company, who sets the stage for the plan by providing a high-level preview of the incoming developments for Louisville's tourism industry
• The focus on Louisville as "Bourbon City" effectively leverages its unique cultural and culinary attributes to present a strong brand
• Incorporates a variety of data points from Google Analytics, Arrivalist, and visitor profiles to to define their target audience with a data-informed approach

2. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

For example, students who become prospects as freshman and sophomore will receive emails that focus on getting the most out of high school and college prep classes. Once these students become juniors and seniors — thus entering the consideration stage — the emails will focus more on the college application process and other exploratory content.

• The plan incorporates competitive analysis, evaluation surveys, and other research to determine the makeup of its target audience
• The plan lists each marketing program (e.g., direct mail, social media, email etc.) and supplements it with examples on the next page
• Each marketing program has its own objectives, tactics, and KPIs for measuring success

3. Visit Oxnard

This marketing plan by Visit Oxnard, a convention and visitors bureau, is packed with all the information one needs in a marketing plan: target markets, key performance indicators, selling points, personas, marketing tactics by channel, and much more.

It also articulates the organization’s strategic plans for the upcoming fiscal year, especially as it grapples with the aftereffects of the pandemic. Lastly, it has impeccable visual appeal, with color-coded sections and strong branding elements.

• States clear and actionable goals for the coming year
• Includes data and other research that shows how their team made their decisions
• Outlines how the team will measure the success of their plan

4. Safe Haven Family Shelter

This marketing plan by a nonprofit organization is an excellent example to follow if your plan will be presented to internal stakeholders at all levels of your organization. It includes SMART marketing goals , deadlines, action steps, long-term objectives, target audiences, core marketing messages , and metrics.

The plan is detailed, yet scannable. By the end of it, one can walk away with a strong understanding of the organization’s strategic direction for its upcoming marketing efforts.

• Confirms ongoing marketing strategies and objectives while introducing new initiatives
• Uses colors, fonts, and formatting to emphasize key parts of the plan
• Closes with long-term goals, key themes, and other overarching topics to set the stage for the future

5. Wright County Economic Development

Wright County Economic Development’s plan drew our attention because of its simplicity, making it good inspiration for those who’d like to outline their plan in broad strokes without frills or filler.

It includes key information such as marketing partners, goals, initiatives, and costs. The sections are easy to scan and contain plenty of information for those who’d like to dig into the details. Most important, it includes a detailed breakdown of projected costs per marketing initiative — which is critical information to include for upper-level managers and other stakeholders.

• Begins with a quick paragraph stating why the recommended changes are important
• Uses clear graphics and bullet points to emphasize key points
• Includes specific budget data to support decision-making

6. The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County

This marketing plan presentation by a cultural council is a great example of how to effectively use data in your plan, address audiences who are new to the industry, and offer extensive detail into specific marketing strategies.

For instance, an entire slide is dedicated to the county’s cultural tourism trends, and at the beginning of the presentation, the organization explains what an arts and culture agency is in the first place.

That’s a critical piece of information to include for those who might not know. If you’re addressing audiences outside your industry, consider defining terms at the beginning, like this organization did.

• Uses quality design and images to support the goals and priorities in the text
• Separate pages for each big idea or new strategy
• Includes sections for awards and accomplishments to show how the marketing plan supports wider business goals
• Defines strategies and tactics for each channel for easy skimming

7. Cabarrus County Convention & Visitors Bureau

Cabarrus County’s convention and visitors bureau takes a slightly different approach with its marketing plan, formatting it like a magazine for stakeholders to flip through. It offers information on the county’s target audience, channels, goals, KPIs, and public relations strategies and initiatives.

We especially love that the plan includes contact information for the bureau’s staff members, so that it’s easy for stakeholders to contact the appropriate person for a specific query.

• Uses infographics to expand on specific concepts, like how visitors benefit a community
• Highlights the team members responsible for each initiative with a photo to emphasize accountability and community
• Closes with an event calendar for transparency into key dates for events

8. Visit Billings

Visit Billing’s comprehensive marketing plan is like Cabarrus County’s in that it follows a magazine format. With sections for each planned strategy, it offers a wealth of information and depth for internal stakeholders and potential investors.

We especially love its content strategy section, where it details the organization’s prior efforts and current objectives for each content platform.

At the end, it includes strategic goals and budgets — a good move to imitate if your primary audience would not need this information highlighted at the forefront.

• Includes a section on the buyer journey, which offers clarity on the reasoning for marketing plan decisions
• Design includes call-outs for special topics that could impact the marketing audience, such as safety concerns or "staycations"
• Clear headings make it easy to scan this comprehensive report and make note of sections a reader may want to return to for more detail

What is a typical marketing plan?

In my experience, most marketing plans outline the following aspects of a business's marketing:

• Target audience

Each marketing plan should include one or more goals, the path your team will take to meet those goals, and how you plan to measure success.

For example, if I were a tech startup that's launching a new mobile app, my marketing plan would include:

• Target audience or buyer personas for the app
• Outline of how app features meet audience needs
• Competitive analysis
• Goals for conversion funnel and user acquisition
• Marketing strategies and tactics for user acquisition

Featured resource : Free Marketing Plan Template

What should a good marketing plan include?

A good marketing plan will create a clear roadmap for your unique marketing team. This means that the best marketing plan for your business will be distinct to your team and business needs.

That said, most marketing plans will include sections for one or more of the following:

• Clear analysis of the target market
• A detailed description of the product or service
• Strategic marketing mix details (such as product, price, place, promotion)
• Measurable goals with defined timelines

This can help you build the best marketing plan for your business.

A good marketing plan should also include a product or service's unique value proposition, a comprehensive marketing strategy including online and offline channels, and a defined budget.

Featured resource : Value Proposition Templates

What are the most important parts of a marketing plan?

When you‘re planning a road trip, you need a map to help define your route, step-by-step directions, and an estimate of the time it will take to get to your destination. It’s literally how you get there that matters.

Like a road map, a marketing plan is only useful if it helps you get to where you want to go. So, no one part is more than the other.

That said, you can use the list below to make sure that you've added or at least considered each of the following in your marketing plan:

• Marketing goals
• Executive summary
• Target market analysis
• Marketing strategies

What questions should I ask when making a marketing plan?

Questions are a useful tool for when you‘re stuck or want to make sure you’ve included important details.

Try using one or more of these questions as a starting point when you create your marketing plan:

• Who is my target audience?
• What are their needs, motivations, and pain points?
• How does our product or service solve their problems?
• How will I reach and engage them?
• Who are my competitors? Are they direct or indirect competitors?
• What are the unique selling points of my product or service?
• What marketing channels are best for the brand?
• What is our budget and timeline?
• How will I measure the success of marketing efforts?

How much does a marketing plan cost?

Creating a marketing plan is mostly free. But the cost of executing a marketing plan will depend on your specific plan.

Marketing plan costs vary by business, industry, and plan scope. Whether your team handles marketing in-house or hires external consultants can also make a difference. Total costs can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands. This is why most marketing plans will include a budget.

Featured resource : Free Marketing Budget Templates

What is a marketing plan template?

A marketing plan template is a pre-designed structure or framework that helps you outline your marketing plan.

It offers a starting point that you can customize for your specific business needs and goals. For example, our template includes easy-to-edit sections for:

• Business summary
• Business initiatives
• Target market
• Market strategy
• Marketing channels
• Marketing technology

Let’s create a sample plan together, step by step.

Follow along with HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template .

1. Create an overview or primary objective.

Our business mission is to provide [service, product, solution] to help [audience] reach their [financial, educational, business related] goals without compromising their [your audience’s valuable asset: free time, mental health, budget, etc.]. We want to improve our social media presence while nurturing our relationships with collaborators and clients.

For example, if I wanted to focus on social media growth, my KPIs might look like this:

We want to achieve a minimum of [followers] with an engagement rate of [X] on [social media platform].

The goal is to achieve an increase of [Y] on recurring clients and new meaningful connections outside the platform by the end of the year.

Use the following categories to create a target audience for your campaign.

• Profession:
• Background:
• Pain points:
• Social media platforms that they use:
• Streaming platforms that they prefer:

For more useful strategies, consider creating a buyer persona in our Make My Persona tool .

Our content pillars will be: [X, Y, Z].

Content pillars should be based on topics your audience needs to know. If your ideal clients are female entrepreneurs, then your content pillars can be: marketing, being a woman in business, remote working, and productivity hacks for entrepreneurs.

Then, determine any omissions.

This marketing plan won’t be focusing on the following areas of improvement: [A, B, C].

5. Define your marketing budget.

Our marketing strategy will use a total of [Y] monthly. This will include anything from freelance collaborations to advertising.

6. Identify your competitors.

I like to work through the following questions to clearly indicate who my competitors are:

• Which platforms do they use the most?
• How does their branding differentiate?
• How do they talk to their audiences?
• What valuable assets do customers talk about? And if they are receiving any negative feedback, what is it about?

7. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

Create responsible parties for each portion of the plan.

Marketing will manage the content plan, implementation, and community interaction to reach the KPIs.

• Social media manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Content strategist: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Community manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]

Sales will follow the line of the marketing work while creating and implementing an outreach strategy.

• Sales strategists: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Sales executives: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]

Customer Service will nurture clients’ relationships to ensure that they have what they want. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Project Managers will track the progress and team communication during the project. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Get started on your marketing plan.

These marketing plans serve as initial resources to get your content marketing plan started. But, to truly deliver what your audience wants and needs, you'll likely need to test some different ideas out, measure their success, and then refine your goals as you go.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in April 2019, but was updated for comprehensiveness. This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure t o learn more about how we use AI.

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Business Plan Section 5: Market Analysis

Find out the 9 components to include in the market analysis portion of your business plan, plus 6 sources for market analysis information.

This is the part of your business plan where you really get to shine and show off that awesome idea you have. Of course, your product or service is the best! Now, let’s talk about how you know it’s a hit. Be prepared to show you know your market AND that it’s big enough for you to build a sustainable, successful business .

In writing up your market analysis, you’ll get to demonstrate the knowledge you’ve gained about the industry, the target market you’re planning to sell to, your competition, and how you plan to make yourself stand out.

A market analysis is just that: a look at what the relevant business environment is and where you fit in. It should give a potential lender, investor, or employee no doubt that there is a solid niche for what you’re offering, and you are definitely the person to fill it. It’s both quantitative, spelling out sales projections and other pertinent figures, and qualitative, giving a thoughtful overview of how you fit in with the competition. It needs to look into the potential size of the market, the possible customers you’ll target, and what kind of difficulties you might face as you try to become successful. Let’s break down how to do that.

What Goes Into A Business Plan Market Analysis?

Industry description and outlook.

Describe the industry with enough background so that someone who isn’t familiar with it can understand what it’s like, what the challenges are, and what the outlook is. Talk about its size, how it’s growing, and what the outlook is for the future.

Target Market

Who have you identified as your ideal client or customer ? Include demographic information on the group you’re targeting, including age, gender and income level. This is the place to talk about the size of your potential market, how much it might spend, and how you’ll reach potential customers. For example, if women aged 18 to 54 are your target market, you need to know how many of them there are in your market. Are there 500 or 500,000? It’s imperative to know. Similarly, if your product or service is geared toward a high-end clientele, you need to make sure you’re located in an area that can support it.

Market Need

What factors influence the need for your product or service? Did the need exist before or are you trying to create it? Why will customers want to do business with you, possibly choosing you over someone else? This is where you can briefly introduce the competitive edge you have, although you’ll get into that in more depth in following sections. Focus on how the product or service you’re offering satisfies what’s needed in the market.

Market Growth

While no one can predict the future, it’s important to get a possible idea of what business may be like down the road and make sales projections. Have the number of people in your target market been increasing or decreasing over the last several years? By how much per year? To make an intelligent forecast, you have to start with current conditions, then project changes over the next three to five years.

Market Trends

You need to take a look at trends the same way you look at population and demographics. Is there a shift to more natural or organic ingredients that might impact your business? How might energy prices figure in? The easy availability of the internet and smartphone technology? The questions will be different for every type of business, but it’s important to think about the types of changes that could affect your specific market. In this section, you can cite experts from the research you’ve done-a market expert, market research firm, trade association, or credible journalist.

Market Research Testing

Talk about what kind of testing and information gathering you’ve done to figure out where you stand in the market. Who have you spoken to about the viability of your product? Why are you confident of its success? Again, if you can, cite experts to back up your information.

Competitive Analysis

There’s no way to succeed unless you’ve examined your competition. It might be helpful to try analyzing your position in the market by performing a SWOT analysis. You need to figure out their strengths and the weaknesses you can exploit as you work to build your own business. You do need to be brutally honest here, and also look at what the potential roadblocks are-anything that might potentially stand in your way as you try to meet your goals and grow your business.

Barriers to Entry

Lenders and investors need to have a reasonable assurance they’ll be paid back, so they’ll want to know what would stop someone else from swooping in, doing what you do, and grabbing half the available business. Do you have technical knowledge that’s difficult to get? A specialized product no one else can manufacture? A service that takes years to perfect? It’s possible your industry has strict regulations and licensing requirements. All of these help protect you from new competition, and they’re all selling points for you.

Regulations

As we touched on above, you should cover regulations as a barrier to entry. If your field is covered by regulations, you do need to talk about how they apply to your business and how you’ll comply with them.

Six Sources for Market Analysis Information

The Market Analysis section of your business plan is far more than a theoretical exercise. Doing an analysis of the market really gives YOU the information you need to figure out whether your plans are viable, and tweak them in the early stages before you go wrong.

So, where do you start? Research is the key here, and there are several sources available.

1. The Internet

Some of the first information you need is about population and demographics: who your potential customers are, how many there are, and where they live or work. The U.S. Census Bureau has an impressive amount of these statistics available. USA.gov’s small business site is another good source for links to the U.S. Departments of Labor and Commerce, among others.

2. Local Chamber of Commerce

A lot of local information can be gotten from the chamber of commerce in the area where you plan to operate. Often, they can provide details into what the general business climate is like, and get even more specific about how many and what type of businesses are operating in their jurisdiction.

3. Other Resources

When actual statistical information isn’t available, you’ll often be able to put together a good picture of the market from a variety of other sources. Real estate agents can be a source of information on demographics and population trends in an area. Catalogs and marketing materials from your competition are useful. Many industry associations have a great amount of relevant information to use in putting your analysis together. Trade publications and annual reports from public corporations in your industry also contain a wealth of relevant information.

4. Customer Mindset

Take yourself out of the equation as the owner and stand in your customer’s shoes when you look at the business. As a customer, what problems do you have that need to be solved? What would you like to be able to do better, faster, or cheaper that you can’t do now? How does the competition work to solve those issues? How could this business solve them better?

5. the Competition

If you have a clothing store, visit others in your area. If you’d like to open a pizzeria, try pies from surrounding restaurants. If you’re a salon owner, park across the street and see what the store traffic is like and how customers look when they come out. Check out websites for pricing and other marketing information. Follow their Facebook pages. If you can’t be a customer of the competition, ask your customers and suppliers about them. Always be aware of what’s going on in the market.

6. Traditional Market Research

While you can gather a lot of data online, your best information will come from potential customers themselves. Send out surveys, ask for input and feedback, and conduct focus groups. You can do this yourself or hire a market research firm to do it for you.

What to Do With All That Data

Now that you’ve gathered the statistics and information and you’ve done the math to know there’s a need and customer base for your product or service, you have to show it off to your best advantage. You can start the market analysis section with a simple summary that describes your target customers and explains why you have chosen this as your market. You can also summarize how you see the market growing, and highlight one or two projections for the future.

If your information is dense with numbers and statistics, someone who reads your business plan will probably find it easier to understand if you present it as a chart or graph. You can generate them fairly easily with tools built into Google docs and free infographic apps and software .

Don’t assume that your readers have an understanding of your market, but don’t belabor simple points, either. You want to include pertinent, important information, but you don’t want to drown the reader in facts. Be concise and compelling with the market analysis, and remember that a good graphic can cover a lot of text, and help you make your point. It’s great to say you project sales to increase by 250% over the next five years, but it makes an even bigger wow when you show it in a graphic.

Always relate the data back to your business. Statistics about the market don’t mean much unless you describe how and where you fit in. As you talk about the needs of your target market, remember to focus on how you are uniquely positioned to fill them.

Don’t hesitate to break down your target market into smaller segments, especially if each is likely to respond to a different message about your product or service. You may have one market that consists of homes and another of small businesses. Perhaps you sell to both wholesale and retail customers. Talk about this in the market analysis, and describe briefly how you’ll approach each. (You will have more of an opportunity to do this in detail later in the plan.) Segmentation can help you target specific messages to specific areas, focusing in on the existing needs and how you fill them.

Remember to tailor your information to the purpose at hand. If your business plan is for internal use, you may not have to go into as much detail about the market since you and your team may already know it well. Remember, however, that the very act of doing the research may help you learn things you didn’t know, so don’t skimp on doing the work. This is a great opportunity to get information from outside that might affect your business.

It’s not about your ability to do professional-level market research; a plan intended for a bank or other lender needs to show your understanding of where your business fits into the grand scheme of things. Yes, you need to detail the information, but your main goal is to show how you’ve incorporated that knowledge into making solid decisions about the direction of your company. Use this section of your business plan to explain your understanding of your industry, your market and your individual business so that lenders and investors feel comfortable with your possibility for success.

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How to Write a Marketing Plan

By Joe Weller | March 28, 2024

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A  marketing plan is a guide for achieving marketing initiatives on a set timeline. It includes analysis of a company's target audience, competitors, and market sector. Teams can build an organized strategy with that information to reach their goals.  

Inside this article you’ll find a detailed, step-by-step guide to writing a marketing plan, with a free, downloadable  marketing starter kit for beginners .

A  marketing plan includes analysis of the target audience, the competitors, and the market so that teams can determine the best strategy for achieving their goals. The plan’s length and detail depend on the company's size and the scope of the marketing project. A marketing plan is useful for all types of marketing, including digital, social media, new product, small business, B2C, and B2B. Follow the steps below to write a comprehensive marketing plan. 

1. Prepare for Success 

Before you begin writing your marketing plan, set yourself up for success by conducting thorough market research and assembling a team with diverse skills in marketing strategy, content creation, digital marketing, and data analysis. Be sure to consult all your team members as you progress through these steps. It might also be helpful to assign leaders to complete different sections of the plan, depending on their areas of expertise. For example, you might assign the market analysis section to a team member with strong analytical skills and experience in data analysis.  

2. Use a Marketing Plan Template

Download a free marketing plan template to ensure consistency and thoroughness in your final marketing plan.

For more template options, see this collection of  free marketing plan templates and examples.   

3. Identify Your Target Customers

To identify target customers for your marketing plan, collect information about their location, demographics (such as age, gender, and income), interests, values, and purchasing behaviors. This knowledge enables you to focus your marketing goals and tactics to meet their specific needs and preferences.

A  customer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer that provides valuable insights for strategic decision-making. Use one of these  customer persona templates  to craft a detailed profile of your ideal customer.   

4. Conduct a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is an important part of any marketing plan, because it helps identify a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in relation to the market environment. To start, divide a page into four quadrants and label each as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Next, brainstorm with your team to fill in each section. Be as honest and specific as possible, considering factors such as market trends, competition, and your own resources and capabilities. This information will allow the team to capitalize on strengths, prepare for challenges, and make sound strategic decisions throughout the marketing plan. 

See this collection of  marketing plan SWOT analysis templates  for additional guidance.   

5. Conduct a Market Analysis 

A  market analysis is an assessment of a market's size, growth, trends, customer segments, and competitor dynamics. Include it in your marketing plan to provide critical insights for strategic decision-making, helping to tailor products to customer needs, differentiate from competitors, and identify new opportunities. 

To conduct a market analysis for your marketing plan, determine each of the following factors:    

• Market Size: This is the total potential sales that a particular product or service can achieve within a defined market. Determine the market size by estimating the number of potential buyers for a particular service and multiplying that by the estimated number of purchases over a specific timeframe. (Number of Target Customers) x (Number of Purchases in a Given Time) = Market Size Imagine your company sells wireless headphones, and you estimate that the average consumer purchases a new pair every two years. If your market includes 1 million target customers, and assuming each customer buys one pair of headphones every two years, the calculation for annual market size would be as follows: (1 million target customers) x (0.5 purchases per year) = 500,000 pairs of wireless headphones per year   
• Market Growth Rate:  This measures the change in a market’s size over a specific time period and is typically expressed as a percentage. To determine the market growth rate, use the following formula: [(Current Market Size − Previous Market Size​) ÷ Previous Market Size] × 100% = Growth Rate For example, if the market for wireless headphones was worth $1 billion last year and is worth $1.1 billion this year, the market growth rate would be as follows: [($1.1 Billion – $1 Billion) ÷  $1 Billion] x 100% = 10%  

Market Share:  This is the percentage of total sales in an industry generated by a particular company over a period of time. It provides a benchmark for assessing performance relative to competitors. Use this formula for calculating market share: (Company’s Revenue ÷ Total Industry Revenue) x 100% = Market Share  

Tip:  Keep in mind that the market size, share, and growth rate are all estimates. It’s impossible to be exact. To obtain the most accurate numbers, review the latest industry reports and seek insight from experts.  

• Market Demand:  This is the amount of a product or service a consumer is willing to purchase and how much they are willing to pay for it. To determine market demand in a market analysis, begin by conducting comprehensive research on consumer behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns related to your product or service. Use tools such as surveys, SEO analytics, and interviews to gather data on potential customer interest and willingness to pay, and analyze competitor pricing and offerings.  
• Market Trends:  This is the growth or decline direction of a product or service’s price over a specific timeframe. To identify a market trend, monitor industry developments, consumer behavior, and technological advancements over time. Review industry reports and expert analyses to understand broader market movements and future projections. Summarize these observations and include them in your plan to highlight the direction in which the market is heading.        

Market Segments:  The broader market includes specific groups, categorized by shared characteristics. Generally, there are four types of market segments: geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral. In your marketing plan, detail how you'll target each segment by adapting your strategies to their unique characteristics. This targeted approach ensures more effective engagement with each segment.   

• Competitor Analysis:  A competitor analysis involves examining your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, market positioning, product offerings, and marketing strategies. Describe how you'll conduct a comprehensive evaluation of key competitors by analyzing their market share, pricing, distribution channels, and promotional tactics. For more guidance, try downloading this competitor analysis template. Use it to identify areas where your rivals succeed and why. Their strengths indicate areas for improvement, while their weaknesses indicate opportunities.  

6. List Your SMART Goals 

Include SMART goals in your marketing plan to ensure that objectives are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound, providing a clear direction for strategic actions and performance evaluation. Start by identifying key performance areas that align with your overall business strategy. Then, for each goal, apply the SMART framework. 

Here are two examples of SMART marketing goals:   

• By Q4 end, increase search results page (SERP) position from 14th to the top three for keywords pertaining to our brand and lead to more organic traffic. 
• Increase social media following, reach, and engagement by 25 percent in six months and 50 percent in one year.

Learn more about SMART goals and find a customizable SMART goals worksheet  in this comprehensive  guide to writing SMART goals . 

7. Create a Marketing Strategy

A  marketing strategy is the plan for achieving your SMART goals.   

“A marketing plan should include strategic and tactical elements,” says Gayle Kalvert, Founder and CEO at  Creo Collective , a full-service marketing agency. “From a strategic standpoint, it is critical that the marketing plan aligns to the overall goals of the organization. Tactically, what initiatives will the marketing team execute, and why? Tactics with no strategy lead to spotty results and poor-quality leads.”

Use one of these  marketing strategy templates to get started. A successful marketing strategy will include the following elements: 

7a. Customer Buying Cycle

The  customer buying cycle is the path a potential customer follows from first having exposure to a product or service to becoming an advocate for it. Understanding this process allows marketers to effectively target communications and strategies at each stage in their marketing plan. 

Pro Tip: “Consider your persona’s buyer's journey and ensure marketing has a role at each stage of the journey, especially after the close,” says Kalvert. “That is when customers can become advocates, sources of referral, and great subjects for marketing content for future buyers.”

7b. Unique Selling Proposition

A  unique selling proposition (USP) is a specific benefit or advantage that sets your product or service apart from the competitors. By including a USP in a marketing plan, you help ensure that the team communicates why customers should choose your offering over others. 

For example, Google’s USP is its powerful and accurate search algorithm that delivers relevant search results faster and more efficiently than its competitors.

7c. Branding 

Branding is the development of a unique identity, image, and experience for a company. Marketers convey a brand through messaging, tone, logo, colors, and web design. The marketing strategy needs to align with the company’s brand in order to maintain consistency in messaging and experience, which ultimately builds customer trust.

7d. Marketing Mix A marketing mix refers to the set of actions that a company takes to promote its brand or product in the market, typically encapsulated by the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. Go through each of these steps when including the marketing mix in your strategy:  

• Product: Describe the product and the problem it solves for your target customers. What makes your product or service different from the competition? Why is it special? 
• Price: Explain how much your target customer is willing to pay for the product or service based on its real and perceived value. What do your competitors charge for a similar product? Will you run any seasonal promotions or discounts? 
• Place:  Describe where your product or service will be available for purchase by your target customers. Will you sell it online, through retail partners, or both? How will you manage logistics and supply chain to ensure your product is accessible to your target market?
• Promotion:  Detail the strategies you will use to communicate your product’s value to consumers. This includes advertising, public relations, social media marketing, email campaigns, sales promotions, and direct marketing tactics.    

7e. Channels 

Identify the specific mediums and platforms — or  channels — where you’ll share your message to your target audience. These should include distribution channels, communication channels, and engagement channels. 

As you list them, explain how they will be used to effectively reach and engage with your target audience. For example, if you’re marketing a new fitness app, one distribution channel would be a direct download from the App Store to reach fitness enthusiasts directly on their smartphones. An engagement channel could be an in-app community feature for users where they can share progress.

Here is a brief list of popular marketing channels:  

• Affiliate marketing
• Email marketing
• Social media
• Website marketing

7f. Tactics Tactics are the specific actions you will take to reach the goals outlined in your strategy. They cover everything from the creation and distribution of marketing materials to the scheduling of campaigns to the platforms used for advertising and engagement.  Detail the specific actions and tools you will use to execute your marketing strategy, along with timelines, responsibilities, and budget allocations for each activity. This includes specifying the exact steps for product promotion, customer engagement, content creation, digital marketing efforts, and any other methods chosen to reach and convert your target audience. “Equally as important as using data is to build in time and resources to be flexible,” says Kalvert. “The marketing landscape is evolving at such a rapid pace. Tactics that worked last year may not work this year. Be open to experimenting with new tactics and adjusting your approach based on feedback and results.”

8. Determine the Budget 

Start by estimating the costs associated with each tactic and channel outlined in your strategy, taking into account factors such as content creation, platform fees, and personnel costs. Next, prioritize spending based on the expected ROI for each tactic. Finally, document the budget in a clear, detailed format within your marketing plan, including an itemized list of costs for each tactic, total expenditure, and a contingency fund.

For more resources and help estimating marketing project costs, take a look at this collection of helpful free  marketing plan budget templates . 

9. Create a Calendar

Create a calendar to schedule and track deliverables. Include time for brainstorming, planning, executing, and analyzing results. List objectives, start dates, end dates, due dates, and responsible parties. Keep the calendar in a central location so that team members can easily access it.

10. List Marketing Tools and Technology

List any marketing tools or technologies your team will use to help achieve their goals. These can include email marketing software, blogging software, social media management software, or any other programs you plan to use.

11. Identify Metrics and KPIs

Identify the metrics for measuring and tracking your marketing goals. Metrics and KPIs eliminate ambiguity so that you can accurately measure progress. Select indicators that directly reflect the success of your marketing objectives, such as conversion rates, website traffic, lead generation, and customer acquisition costs.

12. Write an Executive Summary

Once you’ve completed all the sections in your marketing plan document, return to the first section to write the executive summary. Completing this section last ensures that you have a thorough understanding of all key elements before summarizing them. 

Concisely highlight the main objectives, target market, and key strategies of the plan, providing a snapshot of the market analysis and expected outcomes. Outline the budget, resources required, and the metrics for measuring success. This section serves as a compelling overview, enticing stakeholders to delve into the plan.

For more detailed information on executive summaries, see this guide to  writing an effective executive summary. You can also download a helpful template from this collection of  free executive summary templates

Marketing Starter Kit for Beginners

Download Marketing Starter Kit for Beginners

Get everything you need for creating a marketing plan with this free, downloadable marketing plan starter kit. The kit includes an executive summary template, a customer persona worksheet, a SWOT analysis template, a competitor analysis template, a SMART goals worksheet, a marketing strategy template, and a calendar template with a budget tracker, all in one easy-to-download file.

In this kit, you’ll find the following:  

• An executive summary template for Microsoft Word to help you introduce the content of your marketing plan.    
• A customer persona worksheet for Microsoft Word to collect information about your ideal customer.  
• A SWOT analysis template for Microsoft Word to guide strategic decision-making based on the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 
• A competitor analysis template for Microsoft Word to help you compare and evaluate your competitors. 
• A SMART goals worksheet for Microsoft Word to ensure each marketing objective follows SMART guidelines. 
• A marketing strategy template for Microsoft Word to outline the plan for achieving your goals. 
• A calendar template with budget tracker for Excel where you can organize, track, and manage marketing deliverables and their costs. 
• A marketing plan template for Microsoft Word to ensure consistency and thoroughness in your final marketing plan.

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The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

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What are market trends in a business plan?

Table of Contents

What are market trends?

Why do i need market trends in my business plan, how to keep up with market trends, what market trends to monitor frequently, customer behaviours, technological advances, industry regulations, how to write the market trends in your business plan, using countingup to streamline your business.

Market trends in a business plan are key pieces of information that share where your company sits in the wider picture of your industry. Your business plan should prove why your business is viable, show where you fit in the market and what customers you serve. Examining what the market looks like is a smart business move when starting out.

This article on market trends in a business plan will cover:

• What are market trends
• Why market trends are necessary in my business plan

Market trends are the direction changes of a specific industry and can be influenced by customer behaviours or developing technology. 

Take the mobile phone industry for example, as technology has improved over the last twenty years consumers have moved from bulky handsets to slimmer smartphones, that can do everything a computer can and more. Consumers have even gone back to the fashion of flip phones now that technology has allowed a bigger screen that can be folded to save space. This is a good example where both technology and customer demand has influenced the direction of the industry,

Acknowledging these trends when running a business ensures that you stay on the same path as the industry itself, moving with customer needs and adapting your business as the sector and technology evolve. Ignoring market trends in the long term could mean you are left behind by customers, as they may move to businesses that meet their needs more. 

Your market trend research should be part of wider market analysis in your business plan. Understanding where you fit in a sector and what separates your company from competitors will help you shape everything from your product to pricing and marketing plans.

It’s important to focus on trends in this process so you can understand what appeals to your target audience. By analysing the market landscape and trends, you will be able to serve your customers better. It will also feed into your marketing messaging and content creation strategy later on.

A market and trend analysis should be both quantitative (using numbers and statistics such as projections and financial forecasts) and qualitative (based on experience or observation). Trends will fit into both categories of research and you should be able to find data and non-numerical information to support your examination of trends when writing your business plan. 

It’s important to remember that a business plan is not set in stone. It can be a document that you regularly update to reflect changes in your industry and company.

Keeping pace in a fast-changing market is not easy – after all, you’ve got a business to run. Using social media and subscribing to relevant industry emails make it simpler to get the information you need. Doing this will allow you to stay on top of market trends to include in your initial business plan and for more long-term future planning. 

Follow influencers in your industry to see what they talk about and how they create content for the audience that you serve. This will give you an idea of what resonates with your target customers when it comes to content and the form of content the influencer tends to use (video, written blogs, imagery etc.).

Read relevant publications in your sector to find out what is making headlines. Magazines or online blogs that share up-to-date opinions and thought leadership (influential content) will help you stay on the pulse of what is currently important to the industry.

Reading detailed reports and research can be time-consuming but will give you a good overview of the industry’s current state and any new developments. You can then update your business plan to follow the trends that arise from any data you’ve seen. 

Some common areas will affect the running of your business, the trends in your business plan and the whole market landscape. Keeping on top of the following aspects and regularly checking in on them will ensure your business develops as the market does.

Your customer can make or break your business. If you don’t cater to their needs and wants, your business will not be on the radar of your target audience. 

Let’s take an example – if your target customer is under 45, and you primarily do business online, you will need to ensure your website is optimised for mobile. This is because consumer behaviours have changed in recent years, and most searches are now conducted via mobile . If you don’t pick up on this development, your business risks being left behind when competitors optimise for mobile and you don’t.

Like our previous example, customer behaviour often changes with advances in technology. As mobile phones, and then smartphones, have become more able to operate as a computer, consumers have moved to using their phones out of convenience. 

Keep on top of developments that are relevant to your business and make sure you can move with, and not against, the technology changes.

Every now and again, there will be a law change or new regulation that rocks many industries – such as GDPR in 2018. Staying up to date with regulations that could affect the way you run and market your business will save you weighty fines (especially in the case of data protection).

There may be more frequent regulation updates if you operate in an industry that requires you to follow safety guidelines or best practices, such as those that an electrician or builder will have to follow. 

Ensuring that you are up to date on precautions and rules, as well as renewing any professional certifications you need to operate, will ensure your business plan reflects the changing face of your industry.

Using your research on your target customers and the sector,  use the following steps to write up the market trends section of your business plan:

• Current market overview, including which company has the biggest share or most influence
• Where you fit in that market, what gives your business a competitive edge.
• Current trends that impact your business operation
• Any upcoming trends that may impact your business or the products/services you offer
• Outline any plans on how you will keep up with trends
• Upcoming regulatory changes

You can then follow this with your competitor research in your business plan, to give a full picture of your industry and where you fit in.

Now that you have the answers to questions like ‘what are market trends in a business plan’, you will be able to prepare a thorough market analysis to set up your new venture for success. 

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Market Analysis Business Plan

At first, you may think that a market analysis business plan is complex and formal. However, if you are already aware of the basics of its development and execution, then you can easily understand how easy it is to create this document.

• 10+ Retail SWOT Analysis Examples
• 8+ Executive Summary Marketing Plan Examples

Market analysis can be done in an efficient manner as long as you have all the firsthand details that you need, the equipment and tools that can help you within the entire market analysis, and the knowledge about the proper integration of analysis processes and results to your business plan.

Do not feel dissuaded in creating a market analysis business plan just because you think it is a critical document that you cannot create on your own or from scratch. If you are already planning to execute the steps that will help you draft a marketing analysis for your business, there are actually guidelines that will allow you to be more prepared in developing the document.

Do not worry on how to find these guides and other help that you need as we got you covered. Make sure to download the examples of market analysis business plans available in this post for references.

Market Analysis and Business Development Strategy Planning Example

Business Plan Template with Marketing Analysis Example

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What Makes a Market Analysis Business Plan an Important Part of Your General Business Plan?

It is already evident that customers play a vital role when it comes to the successes of the business. Hence, it is of utmost importance for you to continuously provide what they need and meet their expectations as well. However, this will not be possible if you do not know anything about them. This is where the benefits of planning, developing, and implementing a marketing analysis business plan come in. You may also see marketing plan examples .

A comparative market analysis , or any other kinds of market analysis business plan for this matter, is an essential process and document that will help you achieve efficiency and sustainability within the implementation of your marketing efforts, operational action plans, and business development strategies .

Listed below are a few of the reasons why it is recommended for you to include a market analysis business plan in your general business plan are as follows:

1. A market analysis business plan can help provide a thorough explanation of the market segmentation that you have considered as well as the focus that you allotted both for your current market and potential sales leads. With this, you can be more aware of the threats and opportunities that you can face in the future through a valuable market forecast. You may also like marketing strategy plan examples .

2. A market analysis business plan presents the needs, demands, and expectations of your target market. This helps a lot in terms of providing information that will guide you in the development of action plans that can meet the requirements for business sustainability and market relevance.

3. A market analysis business plan can showcase a more in-depth description of your audience. With the help of this document, you can specifically point out your target market, their locations, the things that are relevant and beneficial to their daily activities, and the factors that can affect their purchasing or buying decisions. You might be interested in define marketing plan and its purpose ?

4. A market analysis business plan can show not only the reaction of the market to your offers but also to those coming from the competitors. With this, you can analyze the difference of your products, services, and offers from that of your competition. This can help you a lot when there is a need to plot new market strategies, which can effectively get the attention and trust of your desired audience. You may also see business marketing plan examples .

Business Plan: Market Research and Analysis Example

Size: 600 KB

Supply Market Analyis and Business Plan Example

Size: 405 KB

How to Develop an Impressive Market Analysis Business Plan

Are you aware of what a market analysis – demand and supply is? Simply put, it presents the concept that there should be balance with regards the demands of the market and the supply that you provide them with. It is essential for you to know the market that you are catering to so you can successfully use your resources and present your offers. This can result to the improvement of your marketplace standing and operational efficiency.

Developing a market analysis business plan can be very helpful as this document can make it easier and faster for you to organize the call-to-actions that you need to execute and the tactics that you need to incorporate in your efforts and movements to achieve maximum results. You may also see strategic marketing plan examples .

Some of the guidelines that you can follow if you want to develop an impressive market analysis business plan include the following:

1. Know the market segments that you have a hold of and define the kinds or types of customers that are present in each segment. It is essential for you to know the groupings of your target customers so that you can point out the specific key factors that can affect their decisions when buying an item or acquiring services. You always have to be reminded that different market segments have different qualities and characteristics. You may also like apartment marketing plan examples .

Hence, there is a need for your market analysis business plan to provide particular strategies and tactics.

2. Be aware of the factors that can affect the implementation of your market analysis business plan. This includes the nature of the activities of your market segment, the description of the forces that can affect your competitive advantage, the communication and distribution channels that you will use, and the required simple action plans that you need to execute in a timely manner to achieve your goals and objectives.

3. Know the ways on how you can effectively get information of your market. Aside from surveys and questionnaires , there are still different tools and equipment that you can use to have a hand on the details that you need to analyze to come up with the strategies and general action plans that fit your business operations and marketing efforts.

Marketing Business Plan Example

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Market Analysis to Support Business Planning Example

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Business Plan: Market Research Report for Advanced Product Example

Size: 152 KB

Elements to Consider When Developing a Market Analysis Business Plan

Not all elements of a comparative market analysis are the same with that of a market analysis business plan. There are also differences when you compare the functions of each elements in both documents. Before you create a market analysis business plan, you have to make sure that you will make yourself knowledgeable of the things that you will work on so that you can achieve your desired final document.

Some of the most important elements that you need to consider if you have already decided to start the processes of developing a market analysis business plan are as follows:

1. Geographical and demographic conditions.

How many of your desired audience are within a particular market segment? Is the location of the marketplace convenient to your business and your operations? You have to know the number of people that you can reach through your marketing efforts as well as the areas in which specific activities are needed to be done. You may also see restaurant marketing plan examples .

In this manner, your market analysis business plan can present whether it is really reasonable to tap the particular market specified in the document.

2. Sales leads and potential customers.

Do not just focus on the current customers who provide you with their purchasing power. You always have to be innovative when creating a market analysis business plan as not all customers will forever be there to execute repeat business. Know how to analyze market segments that can be your next target. Doing this can give you a higher possibility of bigger sales and wider market reach. You may also like event marketing plan examples .

3. Market movement, purchasing power and buying habits.

The financial and sales aspect of the business should be prioritized when making a market analysis business plan. Analyzing a market whose activities does not align to the business offers will only waste your time, efforts, and resources. This is the reason why you first need to have an initial findings about your target or desired audience. With this, you can assess how they match your business operations and needs. You may also check out digital marketing plan examples .

4. Direct competition and their activities.

A market analysis business plan does not only rely on the evaluation and assessment of the consumers, customers, and/or clients. You also have to look into the activities of your direct competitors.

Doing this can help you become more aware on how their processes affect or impact their operations and brand. Hence, you can veer away from activities that can produce negative results and you can also give more focus on the strategies that can provide you with the most benefits. You might be interested in personal marketing plan examples .

Market Research and Analysis for a Business Plan Example

Transmedia Marketing Plan and Analysis for a Business Example

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Market Analysis and Business Plan Example

In Need of Tips for Creating a Market Analysis Business Plan?

Having the best products and/or services is not enough. If you cannot carry out the exact marketing message that you would like to disseminate in the marketplace, then you cannot expect the best returns from your audience. You may also see annual marketing plan examples .

More so, not knowing how you can connect to your audience or how you can incorporate the usage and benefits of your offers to their needs and activities will most likely lessen the potential successes of your business.

Developing a market analysis business plan is very important as it helps you focus on the environment rather than just internal functions and abilities. With this, you can thoroughly align and use your resources based on the expected results and reactions of your market. All the useful tips that can help you create an outstanding market analysis business plan are listed below. You may also like marketing strategy business plan examples .

1. You should have enough knowledge on how to do the market analysis for a business plan . Aside from the discussions and examples in this post, it will be best if you will still research and find resources that will help you understand the full concept of market analysis. The more you know about the development of this document, the easier it will be for you to put together necessary and relevant information.

2. Make sure that you will come up with a concise and well-defined industry description. You have to know the size and growth forecast of the marketplace where your business belongs. In this manner, you can point out the life cycle of market processes as well as the changes in trends that can affect the decision-making processes of your target audience. You may also check out importance of business plan .

3. Focus not only on your desired market size and the characteristics of your target market segment. You also have to look into the competition and other external factors that you cannot control. This can help you be prepared when facing threats and risks from elements that you do not have a hold of. You might be interested in simple marketing plan examples .

4. Present the market analysis business plan accordingly. Use clauses that can group all the discussion areas or parts that are intended to be together. Using proper headings and subheadings is also a great way to make the document more organized and presentable. If you need help in formatting the document, do not hesitate to use market analysis business plan template examples .

Do not skip the evaluation, review, and assessment of your market when making a business plan document. Knowing the quality standards that you incorporate in your operations and offers is one thing. Knowing how the market will react to your marketing message is another. For you to ensure that your practices and activities are relevant, you have to perform market analysis. Try developing your own market analysis business plan now.

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How to Write the Marketing Plan in Business Plan?

A marketing plan in business plan is one of the very important sections of a business plan. Marketing is done to spread awareness about your business and its product/service. 

What is a marketing plan?

Marketing plan vs marketing strategy, how to write a marketing plan for a business plan.

An effective marketing strategy helps you achieve early success. 

Use this article to write an effective marketing plan section in a business plan. 

A marketing section of a business plan gives you a roadmap to organize, execute and track the progress of your marketing efforts. 

Your marketing plan helps you align your marketing efforts with your business goals. It gives your marketing effort a direction and you can evaluate your efforts at any point.

Types of marketing plan 

A perfect type of marketing plan in business plan will depend on your business, your goals, and how soon you want to achieve them. 

We have outlined some marketing plans that most businesses need to use. Since this is the age of the internet, we have also included online marketing plans and digital marketing plans.

Want to write a business plan?

Hire our professional business plan writers to prepare your business plan!

Quarterly or Annual Marketing Plans 

These are your business marketing plans with a timeline. Every business has its quarterly, bi-yearly, and yearly goals. You will use these goals to monitor the effectiveness of your marketing efforts over time.

Paid Marketing Plans 

Paid marketing plans include online advertising, buying billboards, or marketing on vehicles. Pay Per Click marketing and social media marketing for your small business.

Social Media Marketing Plan 

Social media marketing plan for business plan can be done in two ways. You can hire a team and raise awareness about your business by sharing regular updates. 

You can also do paid marketing on social media. You will need to invest in buying ads on that social media platform and pay for a team of social media marketers.

You can also leverage these effective digital marketing channels for your business. 

Content Marketing Plan 

A content marketing plan is about attracting potential customers to your website with the help of SEO. You create value for your potential customer first and then by extension, market your business. It can be offline in the form of free workshops etc or online in the form of guides and resources.

Product Launch Marketing Plan 

A product lunch  sales and marketing plan in business plan  will help you decide on the marketing tools, tactics, and tracking you will do when launching a new product or service.

You can also hire WiseBusinessPlans Digital Marketing Services to run successful marketing campaigns for your business. 

The difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy is simple; a marketing plan is what methods, tools, and tactics you will use for marketing, and a market strategy in business plan is how you will implement your plan.

Learn how to develop an effective marketing strategy with this detailed guide. 

Access our free business plan examples now!

Follow these simple steps to write a marketing plan in business plan.

Business Mission

Write your business mission statement and translate it into the efforts the marketing department will make. 

For example, your business mission is to help people with home gardening. Your marketing department version will be to attract people who want to do home gardening.

These are performance indicators. These metrics will help you evaluate performance and progress. An example of KPIs for marketing is customer visits to your website, social media page, or brick-and-mortar store.

Create Buyer Personas

A buyer persona is a short description of your average customer. When you have no data, a buyer persona will describe the customer you want to attract.

Decide on Marketing Strategies and Content

Go through the marketing strategies you can use and select the one that will produce the best return on investment for your business. 

Similarly, think about the content type that is attractive to your target audience . For example, video format may attract your audience or you may need to share more about your business on social media to grab their attention.

Define Marketing Plan Scope

Define the scope and limits of your marketing plan. Clearly mention what your marketing team will do and will not do. 

This will help you save time, cost, and effort in wasted resources.

Set Marketing Budget 

You can only spend a set amount on marketing. Set your marketing budget and be creative in that budget to produce the best return. 

Your budget is directly related to your marketing goals. Set your marketing budget in a way that does not hamper marketing efforts. 

Know your Competition 

Knowing and profiling your customer helps you market better. See what are strong spots of competitors’ marketing plans, are and how they are attracting audiences to make a plan to compete effectively. 

Appoint your Team & their Responsibilities

Decide on job roles for your team. Set their KPIs, marketing channels they will manage, what content they will create, etc.

Bonus Tip: Here is a step by step guide on how to write a marketing plan executive summary with example and template.

Example of Marketing Plan in Business Plan PDF

See this example of a marketing plan in a business plan to understand how it is done. You can create your marketing plan in the same way.

In the marketing plan section, include details about your target market, competition analysis, marketing strategies, pricing, promotion, and distribution channels. It should outline your approach to reaching and engaging your target audience.

Conduct market research by analyzing your target audience, understanding their needs and preferences, studying your competitors, and identifying market trends. Use surveys, interviews, and industry reports to gather relevant data for your marketing plan.

Consider including a mix of marketing strategies such as digital marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, advertising, public relations, and networking. Choose strategies that align with your target audience and business goals.

Determine pricing by considering factors such as production costs, competitor pricing, market demand, and perceived value. Conduct a pricing analysis to ensure your prices are competitive and profitable for your business.

It is recommended to review and update your marketing plan regularly, at least annually or whenever there are significant changes in your business or market conditions. This allows you to adapt your strategies, stay relevant, and capitalize on new opportunities.

WiseBusinessPlans is the company that writes business plans

One comment.

It is a very useful guide. I was wondering If your site offers marketing plan writers for businesses. If any, kindly reply.

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Exxonmobil unveils thailand 2024 business plan.

• Catering to diverse needs with Mobil 1 ™ and Mobil Super ™
• Celebrate Mobil 1 ™ 50th Anniversary – The living proof of trust from consumers and motorsports partners worldwide

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4/4 From left to right: Manoch Munjitjuntra, director of ExxonMobil Marketing (Thailand) Limited and lubricant sales manager, Suda Ninvoraskul, managing director, Dr. Taweesak Bunluesin, public and government affairs manager, ExxonMobil Limited.

April 24th, 2024, Bangkok – ExxonMobil Marketing (Thailand) Limited  revealed its 2024 business plan for Thailand under the theme, “ Unrivaled quality, Journey with confidence, ” levering on the strength of “Quality Wins with Mobil™ lubricants, while offering Mobil Super™ to fulfill diverse consumer needs. This year, the company targeted 10% growth for its flagship product, Mobil 1™.

Today, there are more than 20 million personal vehicles on the roads of Thailand,1 ranging from personal cars for daily commutes to pickup trucks for heavy loads. Engine oil is a key element that enables the cars’ engines to function consistently. Therefore, good engine oil must effectively protect the engines, enhance their performance, extend lifespan, and improve fuel economy to enable all vehicles to function as intended in transporting goods and people.

Quality Wins – Mobil ™ ’s Vision and DNA

Manoch Munjitjuntra, director of ExxonMobil Marketing (Thailand) Limited and lubricant sales manager , said, “Mobil™ has been in Thailand for over 90 years. The word ‘quality’ is not just a standard but our way of work. Our commitment to ‘ Quality Wins ’ shows in every product we deliver. This year, under the theme, “ Unrivaled quality, Journey with confidence, ” we want to be the top-of-mind brand regarding quality and innovation. Customers can trust our products, which have proven successful.”

Driving Ultimate Performance with Mobil 1™ and Extending Proven Protection with Mobil Super™ 2

“With our commitment to quality and innovation, we applied the technology used in Mobil 1™ to the production of Mobil Super™ as well. While Mobil 1™ serves the drivers of high-performance cars, Mobil Super™ serves those who want to protect their engines from heavy usage, such as pickup trucks and SUVs. As part of our customer base expansion plan in 2024, we plan to utilize our products’ highlights to capture more customers.”

“We are targeting 10% growth for our flagship products, Mobil 1™, and expanding Mobil Super™ customer base through the network of more than 700 auto part shops and 1,400 car maintenance workshops and lubes centers, including Mobil 1 Center, B-Quik, and Auto1 network. We planned to add 30-50 service locations this year to become more accessible to our customers,” said Manoch

50 Years of Mobil 1 ™ Success is Proof of World-Class Innovation and Quality.

Mobil 1™ is the first full synthetic engine oil introduced in 1974. From then on, it continues to be widely recognized as the leader in the engine oil industry. Various leading racing teams, including Oracle Red Bull Racing, Porsche Racing, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing, and high-performance carmaker partners like Porsche, have trusted this flagship product.

Mobil™ is committed to developing future products to support modern engine technologies, electric vehicles, and the automotive industry.

“For 50 years, we have believed that ‘Quality Wins’ and ‘Quality’ are the driving forces that propel us to develop the best possible oil for our customers. We continue to maintain our quality standard and innovate for the future,” said Manoch

For special promotions, additional information, or inquiries, please visit http://www.mobil.co.th

For more information, please contact Public and Government Affairs Email : [email protected] 

• From the transportation statistics report, fiscal year 2019-2023  https://web.dlt.go.th/statistics/plugins/UploadiFive/uploads/6f6897ce35cd1d6a488eab4c29a548a0b5d0973421176078322eff0d7d61b5a5.pdf
• Based on Sequence IVB (Iron Wear) test results compared to API SP standards for Mobil Super All-in-one Protection 0W-20 and 5W-30 only.