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How to Write the Competitor Analysis Section of the Business Plan

Writing The Business Plan: Section 4

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.

The competitor analysis section can be the most difficult section to compile when writing a business plan because before you can analyze your competitors, you have to investigate them. Here's how to write the competitor analysis section of the business plan.

First, Find Out Who Your Competitors Are

If you're planning to start a small business that's going to operate locally, chances are you already know which businesses you're going to be competing with. But if not, you can easily find out by doing an internet search for local businesses, looking in the online or printed local phone book, or even driving around the target market area.

Your local business may also have non-local competitors that you need to be aware of.

If you're selling office supplies, for instance, you may also have to compete with big-box retailers within a driving distance of several hours and companies that offer office supplies online. You want to make sure that you identify all your possible competitors at this stage.

Then Find Out About Them

You need to know:

what markets or market segments your competitors serve;
what benefits your competitors offer;
why customers buy from them;
as much as possible about their products and/or services, pricing, and promotion.

Gathering Information for Your Competitor Analysis

A visit is still the most obvious starting point - either to the brick and mortar store or to the company's website. Go there, once or several times, and look around. Watch how customers are treated. Check out the prices.

You can also learn a fair bit about your competitors from talking to their customers and/or clients - if you know who they are. Other good "live" sources of information about competitors include a company's vendors or suppliers and a company's employees. They may or may not be willing to talk to you, but it's worth seeking them out and asking.

And watch for trade shows that your competitors may be attending. Businesses are there to disseminate information about and sell their products or services; attending and visiting their booths can be an excellent way to find out about your competition.

You'll also want to search for the publicly available information about your competitors. Online publications, newspapers, and magazines may all have information about the company you're investigating for your competitive analysis. Press releases may be particularly useful.

Once you've compiled the information about your competitors, you're ready to analyze it.

Analyzing the Competition

Just listing a bunch of information about your competition in the competitor analysis section of the business plan misses the point. It's the analysis of the information that's important.

Study the information you've gathered about each of your competitors and ask yourself this question: How are you going to compete with that company?

For many small businesses, the key to competing successfully is to identify a market niche where they can capture a specific target market whose needs are not being met.

Is there a particular segment of the market that your competition has overlooked?
Is there a service that customers or clients want that your competitor does not supply?

The goal of your competitor analysis is to identify and expand upon your competitive advantage - the benefits that your proposed business can offer the customer or client that your competition can't or won't supply.

Writing the Competitor Analysis Section

When you're writing the business plan, you'll write the competitor analysis section in the form of several paragraphs.

The first paragraph will outline the competitive environment, telling your readers who your proposed business's competitors are, how much of the market they control and any other relevant details about the competition.

The second and following paragraphs will detail your competitive advantage, explaining why and how your company will be able to compete with these competitors and establish yourself as a successful business.

Remember; you don't have to go into exhaustive detail here, but you do need to persuade the reader of your business plan that you are knowledgeable about the competition and that you have a clear, definitive plan that will enable your new business to successfully compete.

How to Write the Competitive Analysis of a Business Plan

Written by Dave Lavinsky

If you are writing a business plan, hopefully by this point you’ve conducted thorough market research to identify industry trends and identified the target market for your business. Now it’s time to conduct a competitor analysis. This section is included in virtually every simple business plan template , and the information you include will depend on several factors such as how many competitors there are, what they offer, and how large they are in comparison to your company.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here

What is a Competitive Analysis?

A competitive analysis is a type of market research that identifies your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, the strategies they are using to compete with you, and what makes your business unique. Before writing this section it’s important to have all the information you collected during your market research phase. This may include market data such as revenue figures, cost trends, and the size of the industry.

Why Do You Need the Competitive Analysis?

If you are planning to raise capital, the investor will require a business plan that includes the competitive analysis section. This section will also come in handy while writing a business plan template , if your company is considering increasing prices or adding new products and services. You can use the information you find to determine how well-positioned your business is to perform in the competitive landscape.

3 Steps to Writing a Competitive Analysis

The steps to developing the competitive analysis section of your business plan include:

Identify your competition.
Select the appropriate competitors to analyze.
Determine your competitive advantage.

1. Identify Your Competition

To start, you must align your definition of competition with that of investors. Investors define competition as to any service or product that a customer can use to fulfill the same need(s) as the company fulfills. This includes companies that offer similar products, substitute products, and other customer options (such as performing the service or building the product themselves). Under this broad definition, any business plan that claims there are no competitors greatly undermines the credibility of the management team.

When identifying competitors, companies often find themselves in a difficult position. On one hand, you may want to show that the business is unique (even under the investors’ broad definition) and list few or no competitors. However, this has a negative connotation. If no or few companies are in a market space, it implies that there may not be a large enough base of potential customers to support the company’s products and/or services.

2. Select the Appropriate Competitors to Analyze

Once your competition has been identified, you want to consider selecting the most appropriate competitors to analyze. Investors will expect that not all competitors are “apples-to-apples” (i.e., they do not offer identical products or services) and therefore will understand if you chose only companies that are closest in nature. So, you must detail both direct and, when applicable, indirect competitors.

Direct competitors are those that serve the same potential customers with similar products and services. If you sell your products or services online, your direct competitors would also include companies whose website ranks in the top 5 positions for your same target keyword on Google Search.

For example, if you are a home-based candle-making company , you would consider direct competitors to be other candle makers that offer similar products at similar prices. Online competitors would also include companies who rank for the following keywords: “homemade candles”, “handmade candles”, or “custom candles.”

Indirect competitors are those that serve the same target market with different products and services or a different target market with similar products and services.

In some cases, you can identify indirect competitors by looking at alternative channels of distribution. For example, a small business selling a product online may compete with a big-box retailer that sells similar products at a lower price.

After selecting the appropriate competitors, you must describe them. In doing so, you must also objectively analyze each of their strengths and weaknesses and the key drivers of competitive differentiation in the same market.

For each competitor, perform a SWOT Analysis and include the following information:

Competitor’s Name
Overview of Competitor (where are they located; how long have they been operating)
Competitor’s Product or Service
Competitor’s Pricing
Estimated Market Share
Location(s)
Potential Customers (Geographies & Segments)
Competitor’s Strengths
Competitor’s Weaknesses

By understanding what your competitors offer and how customers perceive them, you can determine your company’s competitive advantage against each competitor.

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3. Determine Your Competitive Advantage

Perhaps most importantly, you must describe your company’s competitive advantages over the other companies in the space, and ideally how the company’s business model creates barriers to entry. “Barriers to entry” are reasons why it would be difficult for new companies to enter into or compete in the same market.

For instance, you may have a patent that provides value to your customers and makes them less likely to switch suppliers, which protects your business from potential competitors. Or, you may have more resources than the competition and thus be able to provide superior customer service.

Below is a list of areas in which you might have a competitive advantage:

Size of the Company – Large companies have more resources and can usually offer lower prices than smaller businesses. This is a significant barrier to entry, as starting a small business and competing with a larger company may be difficult.
Product or Service Differentiation – If your product or service is unique in some way, this will make it less likely that customers will switch to a competitor.
Experience & Expertise – Experience and knowledge are valuable attributes that can help differentiate you from the competition.
Location – If you are located in an area where there is high demand for your product or service, this can be a barrier to entry because competitors will not want to open new locations.
Patents & Copyrights – Protecting intellectual property can prevent others from entering the same market and competing with your company.
Brand Recognition – Customers are loyal to brands they have come to trust, which protects the company from new competitors.
Customer Service – Providing excellent customer service can help you retain customers and prevent them from switching suppliers.
Lowest Cost Offerings – If you can offer a lower price than your competitors, this makes it more difficult for them to compete with you.
Technology – New technology that enables you to provide a better product or service than your competitors can be an advantage.
Strategic Partnerships & Alliances – Collaborating with a company that your customers want to work with can help keep them from switching.
Human Resources – If you have a highly skilled and talented workforce, it can be difficult for competitors to find and employ the same skills.
Operational Systems – Strong operational systems that lead to greater efficiencies can protect your business from the competition.
Marketing Strategy – Investing in strong marketing campaigns can make your business difficult to compete with.

For instance, you could say that your [enter any of the bullets from above] is better than your competitors because [insert reason].

The competitive landscape is one of the most important considerations in developing a business plan since it sets the stage by providing information on past and current competitors and their respective strengths and weaknesses. A strong understanding of the competitive landscape is needed before you can develop a strategy for differentiating your company from the competition. Follow the above competitive analysis example and you will be well-prepared to create a winning competitor analysis section of your business plan.

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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

How to Write the Market Analysis Section of a 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

Business Plan Conclusion: Summary & Recap

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How to create a competitive analysis (with examples)

Competitive analysis involves identifying your direct and indirect competitors using research to reveal their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own. In this guide, we’ll outline how to do a competitive analysis and explain how you can use this marketing strategy to improve your business.

Whether you’re running a business or playing in a football game, understanding your competition is crucial for success. While you may not be scoring touchdowns in the office, your goal is to score business deals with clients or win customers with your products. The method of preparation for athletes and business owners is similar—once you understand your strengths and weaknesses versus your competitors’, you can level up.

What is a competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis involves identifying your direct and indirect competitors using research to reveal their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own.

Direct competitors market the same product to the same audience as you, while indirect competitors market the same product to a different audience. After identifying your competitors, you can use the information you gather to see where you stand in the market landscape.

What to include in a competitive analysis

The purpose of this type of analysis is to get a competitive advantage in the market and improve your business strategy. Without a competitive analysis, it’s difficult to know what others are doing to win clients or customers in your target market. A competitive analysis report may include:

A description of your company’s target market

Details about your product or service versus the competitors’

Current and projected market share, sales, and revenues

Pricing comparison

Marketing and social media strategy analysis

Differences in customer ratings

You’ll compare each detail of your product or service versus the competition to assess strategy efficacy. By comparing success metrics across companies, you can make data-driven decisions.

How to do a competitive analysis

Follow these five steps to create your competitive analysis report and get a broad view of where you fit in the market. This process can help you analyze a handful of competitors at one time and better approach your target customers.

1. Create a competitor overview

In step one, select between five and 10 competitors to compare against your company. The competitors you choose should have similar product or service offerings and a similar business model to you. You should also choose a mix of both direct and indirect competitors so you can see how new markets might affect your company. Choosing both startup and seasoned competitors will further diversify your analysis.

Tip: To find competitors in your industry, use Google or Amazon to search for your product or service. The top results that emerge are likely your competitors. If you’re a startup or you serve a niche market, you may need to dive deeper into the rankings to find your direct competitors.

2. Conduct market research

Once you know the competitors you want to analyze, you’ll begin in-depth market research. This will be a mixture of primary and secondary research. Primary research comes directly from customers or the product itself, while secondary research is information that’s already compiled. Then, keep track of the data you collect in a user research template .

Primary market research may include:

Purchasing competitors’ products or services

Interviewing customers

Conducting online surveys of customers

Holding in-person focus groups

Secondary market research may include:

Examining competitors’ websites

Assessing the current economic situation

Identifying technological developments

Reading company records

Tip: Search engine analysis tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help you examine competitors’ websites and obtain crucial SEO information such as the keywords they’re targeting, the number of backlinks they have, and the overall health of their website.

3. Compare product features

The next step in your analysis involves a comparison of your product to your competitors’ products. This comparison should break down the products feature by feature. While every product has its own unique features, most products will likely include:

Service offered

Age of audience served

Number of features

Style and design

Ease of use

Type and number of warranties

Customer support offered

Product quality

Tip: If your features table gets too long, abbreviate this step by listing the features you believe are of most importance to your analysis. Important features may include cost, product benefits, and ease of use.

4. Compare product marketing

The next step in your analysis will look similar to the one before, except you’ll compare the marketing efforts of your competitors instead of the product features. Unlike the product features matrix you created, you’ll need to go deeper to unveil each company’s marketing plan .

Areas you’ll want to analyze include:

Social media

Website copy

Press releases

Product copy

As you analyze the above, ask questions to dig deeper into each company’s marketing strategies. The questions you should ask will vary by industry, but may include:

What story are they trying to tell?

What value do they bring to their customers?

What’s their company mission?

What’s their brand voice?

Tip: You can identify your competitors’ target demographic in this step by referencing their customer base, either from their website or from testimonials. This information can help you build customer personas. When you can picture who your competitor actively targets, you can better understand their marketing tactics.

5. Use a SWOT analysis

Competitive intelligence will make up a significant part of your competitor analysis framework, but once you’ve gathered your information, you can turn the focus back to your company. A SWOT analysis helps you identify your company’s strengths and weaknesses. It also helps turn weaknesses into opportunities and assess threats you face based on your competition.

During a SWOT analysis, ask yourself:

What do we do well?

What could we improve?

Are there market gaps in our services?

What new market trends are on the horizon?

Tip: Your research from the previous steps in the competitive analysis will help you answer these questions and fill in your SWOT analysis. You can visually present your findings in a SWOT matrix, which is a four-box chart divided by category.

6. Identify your place in the market landscape

The last step in your competitive analysis is to understand where you stand in the market landscape. To do this, you’ll create a graph with an X and Y axis. The two axes should represent the most important factors for being competitive in your market.

For example, the X-axis may represent customer satisfaction, while the Y-axis may represent presence in the market. You’ll then plot each competitor on the graph according to their (x,y) coordinates. You’ll also plot your company on this chart, which will give you an idea of where you stand in relation to your competitors.

This graph is included for informational purposes and does not represent Asana’s market landscape or any specific industry’s market landscape.

[inline illustration] Identify your place in the market landscape (infographic)

Tip: In this example, you’ll see three companies that have a greater market presence and greater customer satisfaction than yours, while two companies have a similar market presence but higher customer satisfaction. This data should jumpstart the problem-solving process because you now know which competitors are the biggest threats and you can see where you fall short.

Competitive analysis example

Imagine you work at a marketing startup that provides SEO for dentists, which is a niche industry and only has a few competitors. You decide to conduct a market analysis for your business. To do so, you would:

Step 1: Use Google to compile a list of your competitors.

Steps 2, 3, and 4: Use your competitors’ websites, as well as SEO analysis tools like Ahrefs, to deep-dive into the service offerings and marketing strategies of each company.

Step 5: Focusing back on your own company, you conduct a SWOT analysis to assess your own strategic goals and get a visual of your strengths and weaknesses.

Step 6: Finally, you create a graph of the market landscape and conclude that there are two companies beating your company in customer satisfaction and market presence.

After compiling this information into a table like the one below, you consider a unique strategy. To beat out your competitors, you can use localization. Instead of marketing to dentists nationwide like your competitors are doing, you decide to focus your marketing strategy on one region, state, or city. Once you’ve become the known SEO company for dentists in that city, you’ll branch out.

[inline illustration] Competitive analysis framework (example)

You won’t know what conclusions you can draw from your competitive analysis until you do the work and see the results. Whether you decide on a new pricing strategy, a way to level up your marketing, or a revamp of your product, understanding your competition can provide significant insight.

Drawbacks of competitive analysis

There are some drawbacks to competitive analysis you should consider before moving forward with your report. While these drawbacks are minor, understanding them can make you an even better manager or business owner.

Don’t forget to take action

You don’t just want to gather the information from your competitive analysis—you also want to take action on that information. The data itself will only show you where you fit into the market landscape. The key to competitive analysis is using it to problem solve and improve your company’s strategic plan .

Be wary of confirmation bias

Confirmation bias means interpreting information based on the beliefs you already hold. This is bad because it can cause you to hold on to false beliefs. To avoid bias, you should rely on all the data available to back up your decisions. In the example above, the business owner may believe they’re the best in the SEO dental market at social media. Because of this belief, when they do market research for social media, they may only collect enough information to confirm their own bias—even if their competitors are statistically better at social media. However, if they were to rely on all the data available, they could eliminate this bias.

Update your analysis regularly

A competitive analysis report represents a snapshot of the market landscape as it currently stands. This report can help you gain enough information to make changes to your company, but you shouldn’t refer to the document again unless you update the information regularly. Market trends are always changing, and although it’s tedious to update your report, doing so will ensure you get accurate insight into your competitors at all times.

Boost your marketing strategy with competitive analysis

Learning your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses will make you a better marketer. If you don’t know the competition you’re up against, you can’t beat them. Using competitive analysis can boost your marketing strategy and allow you to capture your target audience faster.

Competitive analysis must lead to action, which means following up on your findings with clear business goals and a strong business plan. Once you do your competitive analysis, you can use the templates below to put your plan into action.

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Home > Business Plan > Competition in a Business Plan

Competition in a Business Plan

… there is competition in the target market …

Who is the Competition?

By carrying out a competitor analysis a business will be able to identify its own strengths and weaknesses, and produce its own strategy. For example a review of competitor products and prices will enable a business to set a realistic market price for its own products. The competition section of the business plan aims to show who you are competing with, and why the benefits your product provides to customers are better then those of the competition; why customers will choose your product over your competitors.

Who are our competitors?
What are the competitors main products and services?
What threats does the competitor pose to our business?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors?
What are the objectives in the market place of the competitors?
What strategies are the competitors using?
What is the competitors market share?
What market segments do the competitors operate in?
What do customers think of the competition?
What does the trade think of the competitor?
What makes their product good?
Why do customers buy their product?
What problems do customers have with the product?
What is the competitors financial strength?
What resources do the competition have available?

The focus is on how well the customer benefits and needs are satisfied compared to competitors, and not on how the features of the product compare. For example, key customer benefits might include affordability, can be purchased online, or ease of use, but not a technical feature list.

Competition Presentation in the Business Plan

The business plan competitor section can be presented in a number of formats including a competitor matrix, but an informative way of presenting is using Harvey balls . Harvey balls allow you to grade each customer benefit from zero to four, and to show a comparison of these benefits to your main competitor products. The competitors might be individual identified companies, or a generic competitor such as ‘fast food restaurants’.

In the example below, the key benefits of the product are compared against three main competitors. Each row represents a key benefit to the customer, the first column represents your business, and the remaining three columns each represent a chosen competitor.

The investor will want to understand that your product has the potential to take a major share of the chosen target market by being shown that it is sufficiently competitive for a number of key customer benefits.

This is part of the financial projections and Contents of a Business Plan Guide , a series of posts on what each section of a simple business plan should include. The next post in this series will deal with the competitive advantages the business has in the chosen target market.

About the Author

Chartered accountant Michael Brown is the founder and CEO of Plan Projections. He has worked as an accountant and consultant for more than 25 years and has built financial models for all types of industries. He has been the CFO or controller of both small and medium sized companies and has run small businesses of his own. He has been a manager and an auditor with Deloitte, a big 4 accountancy firm, and holds a degree from Loughborough University.

The Best 20 Business Plan Competitions to Get Funding in (2024)

Free Business Plan Template

Radhika Agarwal

October 18, 2023

11 Min Read

Brilliant business ideas deserve 2 things for sure – Feedback and Funding.

And if you think you have a good business idea and have some bit of groundwork figured out, you may want to look into business plan competitions.

Now, what is a business plan competition? Why should you participate in one? How to find one that’s just right for your business?

We’ll discuss all of the above and more through this article.

What is a Business Plan Competition?

A business plan competition is an event that allows small businesses and startups to compete with each other, get feedback and advice on their business, and also can help you get your business funded.

Businesses are judged on several factors including execution, feasibility, innovation, etc.

How to Find a Business Plan Competition?

There are several business plan competitions listed on Google that you can look through. Different competitions have different eligibility criteria and guidelines. Go through all of that to know if it fits your business or not.

At the same time, it is important to check the credibility and check for any scams or illegitimate sites.

To make finding business plan competitions a little easier we have compiled a list of 20 popular and credible competitions that you can apply for.

Business Plan Competitions

Global Student Entrepreneur Awards
tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition
HATCH Pitch
Rice Business Plan Competition
New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition
MIT 100k Business Plan and Expo
FAU Business Plan Competition
NIBS Business Plan Competition
Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge
College of New Jersey’s Mayo Business Plan Competition
Next Founders Business Plan Competition
TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield
New Venture Challenge
New Venture Championship
Climatech & Energy Prize @MIT
Baylor Business New Venture Competition
13th IOT/WT World Cup

1. Global Student Entrepreneur Awards

To encourage students across the globe to become entrepreneurs GSEA organizes this competition for students from all disciplines and countries. The main aim of the awards is to draw people towards entrepreneurship, shape their ideas, and become a catalyst for their business’s growth.

Eligibility

The student must enroll in a part-time or full-time undergraduate or graduate course.

The student should own or work as a founder or co-founder of the startup.

Only one person from the startup can represent it.

The person should either be 30 or under 30 years of age.

The startup should be running for at least 6 months from the date of application.

The startup should either generate $500 or get $1000 as investments at the time of application.

The startup shouldn’t have reached the final round of the competition in previous years.

For more details check out their website.

The competition is held at several locations across the world over months during a school year. The finals among the Top 4 teams are held at Goldman Sachs New York.

First Prize: $25,000
Second Prize: $10,000
Third Prize: $5,000

Lodging and travel expenses are covered and additional prizes are handed out at the event.

2. tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition

The tecBRIDGE competition is divided into two parts, with one for college students across 14 colleges and universities and a non-collegiate one for early-stage entrepreneurs.

( For Collegiate )

At least one member as a college student

The product must identify commercial solutions through technical processes.

( For Non-Collegiate )

The startup must gross less than $250k in revenue from its start date up to the last tax filing date.

It is held in Northeastern Pennsylvania every year. The businesses that win have to establish their headquarters there as well.

Prizes worth $100,000 are shared amongst the winning teams.

3. HATCH Pitch

Through the Hatch Pitch program, you get access to mentorship courses, discounted spaces, funds, education programs, financial consulting, and so on.

The product/ Service was launched within 2 years.

Founders should retain some part of the ownership.

Must actively participate actively in Hatch Pitch coaching.

Must receive less than $5 million in funds from third-party investors.

The competition is held at Entrepreneur space in Dallas.

Access to high-level incubators and mentorship.

4. Rice Business Plan Competition

The Rice University business plan competition is specially designed for college students to present their ideas to investors , get mentorship and help shape their ideas and business journey better.

Students managed or created businesses.

Consists of at least 2 college students, and one student pursuing a graduate degree.

Have raised less than $250k in equity capital.

Have generated less than $100k in any 12-month period.

Houston at Rice University, graduate school of business, hosts this event.

In 2021, the winners were awarded investments worth $1.6 Million , cash prizes, etc.

5. New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition

New York Public library sponsors this competition to help entrepreneurs from around the world. They give wings to their ideas.

Must live in Manhattan, Staten Island, or The Bronx.

Your business should be in any of the above places as well.

The idea or business model is in the startup phase and shouldn’t have earned more than $10,000.

The competition is held in New York.

A grand prize worth $15000 and a Runner Up prize worth $7500 .

6. MIT 100k Business Plan and Expo

MIT organizes this competition to promote innovation in the university as well as the world. It consists of 3 competitions throughout the year namely Pitch, Accelerate, and Launch.

Each team should enter one idea.

Participants must have original work ideas

Should disclose the received funding.

Hosted in Cambridge MA MIT campus from October to May through the academic year.

Pitch: $5000 jury award and $2000 audience choice award.
Accelerate: 20 finalists get industry-specific mentorship programs with a budget of $1000 each. The top 10 finalists compete for the Audience Choice award worth $10,000. The top 3 finalists immediately get into the finals of the launch.
Launch: The winner gets a whopping amount of $100,000 while the runner gets $25000 .

Official Website MIT 100k

7. FAU Business Plan Competition

The Florida Atlantic University Business Plan Competition is for graduate and undergraduate students spanning all continents.

Undergraduate or graduate participants.

The competition is held at Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, Florida.

First Prize: $5000 and Second Prize: $500

8. NIBS Business Plan Competition

The NIBS competition helps you discuss and give a boost to your ideas. It also helps you get industry experts guidance.

Entrants of legal age to have contracts as per the rules of their country of residence.

Should not hold any employment apart from their own company.

The plan must stand for a startup business and not an acquisition.

It is held in the USA.

There’s a cash prize for the first three places as well as an opportunity to get an incubator program for the winners.

9. Get Seeded

Get Seed is a two-part funding program for students in launching their businesses.

At least one student from a higher education institution in Utah is a must.

Should be enrolled for nine credit hours during that semester.

Utilization of funds to take the idea further.

Salt Lake City in Utah hosts the business plan competition.

A micro-grant worth $500 and a seeded grant from $501 to $1500

10. Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge

This competition was designed for startups focusing on digital and health technology.

Legally formed entities

The company must have less than 50 people.

Annual sales under $5 million.

The product should have been launched within 3 years.

Your country should not have USA’s trade restrictions imposed.

You can submit your ideas from anywhere.

Five finalists win $5000 and 2 winners receive $20,000 .

Official Website

11. College of New Jersey’s Mayo Business Plan Competition

This competition is held for students to appreciate new challenges.

The teams must consist of two and bot more than four students from the College of New Jersey.

The College of New Jersey hosts this event.

The winners get mentorship and guidance programs.

Check Official Website

12. Next Founders Business Plan Competition

This competition focuses on startups with an innovative approach to solving social problems and global needs.

It is for Canadian entrepreneurs with scalable, high-potential ventures.

The University of Toronto.

Up to 25,000 CAD$ in cash for funding your startup.

13. TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield

TechCrunch sponsors this competition which comprises two levels.

The companies must have a functional prototype of their product or service to present to the committee.

Different locations.

The winner gets $50,000 and two runner-ups get $5000 each.

Check Competition Website

14. New Venture Challenge

This competition is held at the University of Chicago. Three evaluation points for participants are – Innovation, Product Market Fit , and presentation.

The eligibility information is available on their website.

Chicago, IL.

1st Place: $50,000 ; 2nd Place: $25,000 ; 3rd Place: $15,000 . In addition to that, the winners get access to mentorship and resources.

15. New Venture Championship

This competition is for those with a good business idea. Even if you don’t have a business plan, you can participate as the competition provides optional plan writing services.

The team should have 2-5 members.

Should have at least one graduate student.

The students should be pursuing their undergraduate or graduate degrees.

Eugene, Oregon.

Teams have a chance to win cash prizes ranging from $3000 to $25,000 with additional benefits like mentorship and rented office spaces.

16. Climatech & Energy Prize @MIT

This competition is ideal for companies with a core focus on energy, climate change, and the environment.

The team must have more than 2 members.

At least 50% of part-time or full-time university students.

Cambridge, MA hosts this competition

The winner gets a sizable sum of $1,00,000 .

17. U.Pitch

This competition gives entrants a chance to present their ideas to people from different levels and spectrums in the business space and get an opportunity for investments and mentorship programs.

Undergraduate or graduate program students.

Functioning Business

Age up to or below 30

San Francisco, California hosts this competition.

Prizes worth $10,000 are given.

18. CodeLaunch

It is a seed accelerator competition for entrepreneurs who have technology startups.

The detailed eligibility criteria can be found on their website.

St. Louis, Missouri hosts these competitions, usually.

The winner gets seed fund capital and access to other additional resources.

19. Baylor Business New Venture Competition

Baylor launched this competition to help entrepreneurs discuss their ideas and get advice from judges.

An undergraduate student at Baylor University and McLennan Community College.

Baylor University, Waco, Texas hosts this competition.

The first prize winner receives $6000 . The other finalists win prizes ranging from $1500-$2000 .

20. 13th IOT/WT World Cup

The innovation world cup was started to give startups a chance to display their ideas and business. The competition aims to attract venture capitalists, investors, and potential business partners .

The startup should have a concept of innovative technologies.

You should have a functional prototype of the product.

Cleveland, Ohio hosts this event.

You get a chance at winning prizes worth $500,000 and connect with leading tech companies in your field.

Even if you don’t receive funds, there’s a lot of chance to network, get exposure, and get your ideas validated. Especially, if you are someone who’s new in the business space business plan competitions are a great way to learn the ropes of the trade.

So, go ahead, write your business plan , look up the details, and register for a competition that fits your business the best!

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How to Win a Business Plan Competition

8 min. read

Updated May 10, 2024

Have you considered business plan competitions as part of your startup strategy? I’ve personally seen startups get more than a million dollars in investment at the annual Rice University Business Plan Competition, held every April. I’ve also seen startups raise tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars of grant money at competitions hosted by the University of Oregon and the University of Texas. And I’ve read about startups getting good money from outside universities, in competitions held by business development organizations and businesses. And this is now worldwide, not just in the U.S.

As I write this, I just did a web search for business plan competitions, and came up with dozens of them coming up in 2022. I judged a University of Oregon business plan competition just last month.

I’ve never entered a business plan competition, but I’ve been judging them since 1997. I’ve done multiple stints at several of the majors. And I’ve developed some pointers and tips to help you win your next business plan competition.

1. Know the judging guidelines

As business plan competitions have grown and developed, most of them have fine-tuned the details of judging procedures and criteria. For example, many ask judges to choose which entrant is the best investment for outsiders. That’s different from which is the best business or which they would rather own or share in. The key point there is that criterion essentially dismisses good startups that don’t need outside investment to grow.

I’ve seen startups successfully tailor their plans and pitches to aim at outside investment rather than self funding. That, in my opinion, is the right way to adjust to the specific criteria.

You should also be aware of judging guidelines governing questions, comments, interruptions of pitches, plan and pitch length, and so forth. Some business plan competitions ask the judges to listen quietly to a pitch, without interrupting. Others encourage judges to interrupt at will, as they would in a real investment pitch. Startups have to know and plan accordingly.

2. Research who you are pitching to

In most of the business plan competitions I’ve seen, judges are a collection of venture capitalists, angel investors, entrepreneurs, and local business leaders. That’s predictable. The organizers of these competitions ask local people to participate, as volunteers, as judges. So they look for people who know the general territory of startups, business plans, pitches, and investment.

Different judges have different sets of expertise. I’ve seen attorneys, accountants, and medical doctors as judges, along with investors in general. Read their biographies before you finalize your pitch. Know what experience and background they have. This can help a lot as you deliver a pitch and field questions.

3. Refine your pitch deck and get feedback

Start with a good deck of slides . Understand what your slide deck is supposed to do: ideally, it’s a collection of useful and/or beautiful images that focus attention on what you are saying, add depth to what you are saying, and sets the structure to what you say. For example, as you discuss the problem your startup solves, you project a beautiful image that illustrates the problem you solve. You want your investors to focus on you and your words, not read words from your slides. Avoid the so-called “death by PowerPoint” meaning the boredom of a speaker reading slide bullet points to a captive audience.

We have a lot of information for you, on this site, about doing your slide presentation for a business pitch. All of that applies to the pitch component of a business plan competition. That includes How to Create a Pitch Deck , 15 Tips for a Successful Pitch , T he 11 Slides Your Need for a Pitch Deck , and others.

Practice makes perfect . Trite but true. In my experience, the best pitches are practiced a lot but not memorized. The slide images stand as placeholders to set the flow of topics. They provide visual emphasis. But the speakers use their own words and let it flow differently each time they do it. The best have been over the pitch a lot, with others listening and poking holes where they can. So they have a good guess on what questions might come up, and how they will respond to those questions when they do. You might look at this article on how to get feedback on your pitch .

4. Develop a memorable hook

You have just a few seconds to make that important first impression. Call that a hook. You want judges’ attention from the very beginning. Maybe you tell a story of a real person suffering the problem you want to solve. Ideally, in that case, your first slide is a picture of that problem. Maybe you share the vision of how this will help the world. That can start with an image too.

Hooks are hard to generalize, but it’s all about getting the judges to care. It’s most often about the problem a startup solves, the size of the need, the importance of the solution. But it might also be the ambitious goals, if you can make the judges care about that. Be creative. Put yourself in the place of an investor, sense business plan competition judges are usually thinking as investors. What makes this exciting to the investor? What’s the best thing to make them care from the beginning.

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5. Share any traction

Being able to show actual achieved traction is a huge advantage in a business plan competition. Most competitions invite startups at very early stages, often long before launch or even serious steps towards execution. The startup that already has traction is way ahead of the competition.

What makes traction depends on your type of business. Maybe it’s proven research, subscribers, customers, distributors, letters of intent, users, and so forth. Generally, there’s nothing stronger than actual paying customers.

6. Show realistic market potential and growth

Don’t ever think that in a business plan competition the biggest market wins. It’s so very much not that simple. Credibility and realism are critical. I’ve seen judges not choose a startup that was going to cure cancer, with a projected market of billions, because they just didn’t believe it. I’ve seen judges routinely reject unbelievable big numbers.

Yes, of course, bigger is better, but only within that framework of credibility. The method and assumptions and transparency of a projection is very important. The best market projections build from the bottom up, with believable assumptions about drivers: stores, channels, web views, traffic, sales funnels. Numbers should start at the base drivers and build up to the bigger numbers.

7. Prepare relatable stories

Stories are vital to business success and that includes in business plan competition. Your hook is a story. Your problem and solution are a story. How people find and buy that solution is another story. Business planning is in many ways telling stories first and then planning how to make them come true. The stories are vital to your success in a business plan competition. You hint at them in an elevator pitch, tell them in the business pitch, and show them and how they can come true in your business plan.

8. Keep things short and straightforward

Business plan competition judges are busy people. They have a lot of distractions. Boredom is your enemy. Time is the scarcest resource. Keep your pitches moving. Once you lose their attention, it is very hard to get that back. Stay on point. Move it forward fast.

In a pinch, use your slide deck to help. Click on the next slide. That should move you to the next topic.

9. Prove you are uniquely qualified

Most business plan contest judges are investors and most investors agree that choosing a startup is often more about the jockey than the horse. I’ve often seen judges reject a good plan with a good product and market but an unconvincing team. Show why your team background and qualifications make you uniquely qualified. Usually that means track records, industry experience, related credentials, accomplishments, market knowledge, product knowledge, and commitment. Simply put: why you?

10. Have your business plan prepared to share

Start with the obvious: Make sure you are aware of each business plan competition’s specific requirements for the plan itself. Most of them set down standards for how many pages. Some set just page count while others will distinguish between text pages and pages containing illustrations and/or financial projections. Many business plan contests also specify pagination and details for the executive summary.

Pay special attention to the summaries. Many judges will read just the summaries well and skim the rest, and then screen and grade plans based mainly on the summary information. Make sure you show the highlights first, and well. What highlights? That depends on your unique plan. For some, technology is most important. For others, it’s the market, or the team experience. You have to know what best sets you apart, and put that where judges will see it.

In a business plan competition, the quality of presentation in the plan — writing and formatting as well as content — is especially important. Be careful with text, diction, spelling, grammar, and formatting. Don’t let important information get lost in details. You are going to be graded on the quality of the document.

Get funding for your business

Finally, maybe as a conclusion, let’s remember that winning a business plan competition is one way to get funding for your business. Winnings can be very helpful. I’ve seen startups come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars and in a couple specific cases (at the Rice Business Plan Competition in Houston) more than a million dollars in angel investment by winning a business plan competition. And I’ve seen startups come up with tens of thousands of dollars as simple grants, no strings attached, as prizes for winning a business plan contest.

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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Business Planning

How To Win A Business Plan Contest

A well-developed business plan creates the foundation on which a successful startup will be able to establish itself, and is especially necessary when considering participation in a business plan contest or pitch event. When every factor is considered – market and industry, finance, marketing, operations, and etc. – success becomes a long-term plan as opposed to a hope for a stroke of startup luck. Along with a solid pitch and pitch deck, a business plan is a critical element in your journey to landing a successful seed funding round. Writing an investor-ready business plan can be difficult, but securing funding without a solid plan in place is pretty much impossible.

Once you finally get the perfect business plan written, what’s next? For those who are far enough along in their business, submitting the plan directly to investors might be a wise step. For those who aren’t quite ready to approach VCs yet, but could use a financial boost to get things going, participating in business plan contests can be a tremendous help. Not only do these competitions often provide significant rewards for the winners, but they also often draw the attention of angels, VCs, and even corporations looking to invest in or partner with the next billion-dollar startup.

Unfortunately, where there is honey there are bees – business plan contests often attract some of the brightest minds, and the higher the reward, the more competition you can expect. In this post, we’ll explore everything you need to know to find a great business plan contest, enter it with confidence, and win against other participating startups!

The Benefits of Winning A Business Plan Contest

Business plan competitions are beneficial platforms that allow entrepreneurs to showcase their idea, product, or startup to a group of judges. Often, these competitions involve pitching the idea or startup to judges over one or more rounds. Once each competing startup has presented, judges vote on which business (or businesses) will receive the offered reward.

While business plan competitions highly benefit winning startups, they offer immense benefits to investors who attend them also – access to early-stage businesses that they can invest in before others have the opportunity. Furthermore, these competitions work to even out the playing field for entrepreneurs who otherwise may not have access to investors – winning a business plan contest could be the difference between funding your business’ launch or failing before you even get the chance to begin.

The most obvious benefit of winning a business plan contest is winning the offered reward. The reward value of these contests can vary from small amounts to extremely large amounts. For example, the Panasci Business Plan Competition by Syracuse University offers around $35,000 in total rewards, while the Rice Business Plan Competition offers over $1.2 million in seed funding to its winners and runner-ups. Winning the right competition can impact your business greatly; providing you with the app funding required to progress your business from the app idea phase to launch and beyond. There is something that should be considered though – some business plan competitions may come with specific conditions that must be met to receive the funding; such as headquartering the business in a certain location, offering up an equity percentage, or being involved in a startup incubator for some length of time.

High-profile angels and VCs often attend larger business plan competitions, and even participants that don’t win the contest may attract the attention of an investor. In some cases, teams that don’t win may end up with larger investments than those that the judges selected for first place. Investors aren’t always looking for the same things in a startup; your idea might not be of much interest to the judges, but may be exactly what an attending investor was looking for! These investors aren’t only good for the funds they bring – some of them may provide a critical mentorship component to your startup; helping to advise your team for greater success down the line.

Lastly, one of the least recognized but most effective benefits of participating in a business plan competition is having your business plan and startup critically reviewed by experienced judges, entrepreneurs, and investors. Even if you don’t win, the insight provided by the panel of judges will offer different perspectives regarding your startup. Ultimately, by applying this insight, you can further position your startup for success when participating in future events.

Finding The Right Business Plan Contest

The unique beauty of business plan contests is that they are relatively ubiquitous – and today, more competitions are popping up than ever before. A variety of organizations, educational institutions, and even individuals organize business plan competitions to seek out investable and fundable business ideas. In general, most business plan contests can be grouped into two categories:

University Competitions: Many major universities organize some type of business plan contest through their business school. Eligibility may vary from contest to contest, but these contests are typically only available to those connected to the business program – students, alumni, and in some cases, even on-staff professionals. Due to these eligibility requirements, competition is generally limited – which means that participants have a much larger chance of winning when compared to contests with less regulation. Furthermore, universities know that any successful startups launched through these contests will give their business program a major boost in visibility and credibility. As a result, universities often go a step above to support winners of these programs – providing additional on-campus resources or even access to alumni professionals that can help them advance their businesses.
Sponsored Contests: Sponsored business plans are those that are planned and hosted by an organization, corporation, individual or other entity. Specifically, these organizers ‘sponsor’ the competition – organizing the event, involving investors and judges, and securing rewards to incentivize winners and participants. Sometimes, these competitions may be sponsored by companies within a specific sector such as biotech, healthcare, urban transit, architecture, and etc.; while other times they may be part of a larger startup incubator or accelerator program.

Business plan and pitch deck competitions take place several times each year in most major cities – and even in many less popular upcoming startup regions. If you are a student or alumni, check with your university to see if they have a business plan competition in place – if not, maybe you can help them organize one! For those who are not eligible to join a university-sponsored competition, a simple Google search will provide you with several options. Search for “industry name + business plan contest” or “city + business plan contest” to see what upcoming business plan contest events you may be eligible to participate in.

Winning Big At Your First Business Plan Contest

Participating in a business plan contest can be extremely valuable, but the real goal is to win – and to win big! The key to winning a business plan competition of any type is to know what the judges are looking for and to position your startup, business plan, and pitch to exceed their expectations.

Judging The Judges

In general, whether you win a business plan contest or not will hinge upon how your business idea is perceived by the panel of judges, and how they perceive you as an entrepreneur and presenter. It is worth noting that judges often come from various backgrounds with varied experiences; what may be a top consideration for one judge may make little difference to another. However, most judges compare businesses on at least the following three factors:

Originality: Successful business ideas need to be original in nature and able to improve upon an existing solution, solve a wide-scale problem, or effectively meet the current market demand. Businesses that simply spin-off from other successful ideas are not looked upon favorably by judges or investors – since they usually have little advantage to compete against already established players. To win a business plan contest, it is essential that your idea is fresh, scalable, sustainable and eventually, profitable.
Ability To Generate Profit: Even the most creative ideas need to be able to turn a profit at some point. Understandably, most investors aren’t interested in funding businesses that won’t provide them with a return in the long-run. In order to gain interest in your business during a contest, your business plan should show exactly how your business will provide a return for investors in the long-term. While some investors may be interested in other aspects of a business, such as their social consciousness or involvement, the majority of investors are looking for opportunities to grow their portfolio by investing in businesses that are capable of generating strong profits.
Effective Presentation : It’s not always the best idea that wins a business plan competition. A perfect business plan and an exciting idea means very little if an entrepreneur can not properly convey their message during their presentation. In most contests, participants are given a set time limit (such as 10 minutes) to present – and expressing all the necessary information within this time period can be rather difficult. Judges look for confident entrepreneurs who can articulate their business enough to convey the efficacy and scalability of their idea properly. The knowledge an entrepreneur needs to possess doesn’t end with just the text presented in their business plan or pitch deck . Most often, there is a Q&A portion during these events in which the entrepreneur will be required to answer specific questions by judges and investors. The inability to answer these questions properly and confidently can quickly dissuade an investor from investing, or can cause a judge to give a lower score than they would have otherwise.

Preparing For Business Plan Contest Success

Success at these events is often linked to how well an entrepreneur has prepared themselves beforehand. One thing is certain – your competitors will be prepared; and if you aren’t, it will be embarrassingly noticeable. Unfortunately, in a business plan contest, there is no way to mask unpreparedness, especially among an audience of experienced entrepreneurs and investors. To best prepare for an upcoming business plan competition, consider the following tips:

Sell A Strong Team: There is one thing that’s more important than having a great business plan – having a strong and experienced team that can actually execute it. Management teams are what bind all the elements of a business plan together; combining the skills necessary to put the plan into action successfully. It is vital that your team encompasses a broad range of skills and that each team member has a specific job that will lead to the startup’s success.
Present The Problem First : Startups that win (in contests and in general) are those that truly solve an existing problem – whether the problem is shared by a mass group of people, or by a niche audience. There’s a lot of “cool tech” out there, but even simple ideas can solve major problems. Taxis have existed for decades, but a simple idea like ride-sharing changed the way the world views personal transportation. Prepare a pitch that is challenge/solution heavy by focusing on what the problem is, why individuals experience the issue, why current solutions don’t solve the challenges effectively, and why your product/service is the right solution for the problem.
Know Your Funding Requirements : Investors don’t want their funds to just sit in an account; they want to know that there is a plan in place to use these funds and effectively scale a startup from its current position. Have a funding plan in place – know how much funding is required, what actions need to be completed to successfully progress the business, and how each dollar will be spent to meet your launch or growth objectives.
Be The Expert : If there is any gap in your business plan, it will be uncovered during the Q&A stage. Investors and judges are highly experienced in asking the right questions to get a full picture of your startup and to gauge whether you are well-informed about your business, market and the issue that you are attempting to solve. It’s not a good sign when an investor or judge knows more about your business than you do. Ensure that your business plan is all-encompassing with vital information, and that you can answer any necessary questions without needing to reference your business plan. During the Q&A session, you should be able to answer questions proficiently, confidently, and with enough expertise to prove that you know exactly what you are talking about.
Listen, Learn and Apply : You can’t win every business plan or pitch contest, but you can definitely take the insights given during one competition and use it to propel your potential for success in future contests. It’s not everyday that you’re able to receive critical feedback from a group of investors, and when you can, you should take advantage of it as much as possible. Even if you don’t win anything in a business plan competition, the insights gained can be used to catapult your business to the next level.

Writing A Business Plan That Wins

Even if everything else is perfect – if you want to win, you must begin with a well-thought-out, perfectly articulated, and investor-ready business plan that tells your startup’s story in an effective manner. There are many factors to consider when writing a business plan from proper market analysis to financial projections – and any weak point in your plan will decrease your chances of winning. If you need more advice on writing a business plan, contact one of our experts today for a free business plan consultation!

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15+ Best Business Plan Examples for Entrepreneurs & Startups

Written by: Jennifer Gaskin Jun 09, 2021

15+ Business Plan Examples to Win Your Next Round of Funding Blog Header

Not having a solid plan makes it unlikely for you to achieve the goals you seek, whether it’s getting your to-do list done or launching a successful organization.

In the early stages of a company, that means developing things like pitch decks, business plans, one-sheeters and more. With Venngage’s Business Plan Builder , you can easily organize your business plan into a visually appealing format that can help you win over investors, lenders or partners.

Learn more about how to create a business plan so you can hit the ground running after reading through this list for inspirational business plan templates .

15+ Best business plan examples for entrepreneurs and startups

Simple business plan example, startup business plan example, small business plan example, nonprofit business plan example, strategic business plan example, market analysis business plan example, sales business plan example, organization and management business plan example, marketing and sales strategy business plan example, apple business plan example, airbnb business plan example, sequoia capital business plan example.

While your business plan should be supported by thorough and exhaustive research into your market and competitors, the resulting document does not have to be overwhelming for the reader. In fact, if you can boil your business plan down to a few key pages, all the better.

Simple business plan outline:

Table of contents : List all sections and sub-sections within the business plan.
Business review : Include an overview of the business’s purpose, history, and key objectives.
The market : Analyze the target market, including customer demographics and market needs.
The competition : Evaluate the main competitors and their strengths and weaknesses in the market.

The simple, bold visual aesthetic of this business plan template pairs well with the straightforward approach to the content and various elements of the business plan itself.

Use Venngage’s My Brand Kit to automatically add your brand colors and fonts to your business plan with just a few clicks.

An essential startup business plan should include a clear and compelling value proposition, market analysis, competitive analysis, target audience identification, financial projections, and a well-defined marketing and operational strategy.

For a typical startup, the need to appear disruptive in the industry is important. After all, if you’re not offering anything truly new, why would an investor turn their attention toward your organization. That means establishing a problem and the ways in which you solve it right away.

Startup business plan outline:

The problem : Identify the specific issue or pain point your startup aims to solve.
Target market & opportunity : Define your customers and the potential market size.
The solution : Describe the product or service that addresses the identified problem.
Traction and validation/roadmap : Outline the progress made so far and the future milestones and goals.

Whether it’s a full-scale business plan or, in this case, a pitch deck, the ideal way for a startup to make a splash with its plans is to be bold. This successful business plan example is memorable and aspirational.

In the Venngage editor, you can upload images of your business. Add these images to your plans and reports to make them uniquely your own.

All businesses start out small at first, but that doesn’t mean their communications have to be small. One of the best ways to get investors, lenders and talent on board is to show that you’ve done your due diligence.

Small business plan outline:

Table of contents : List down of all the sections and sub-sections in the business plan.
Business overview : Include a quick overview of what your business is all about, including your mission and goals.
The market : Analyzes who your customers are, what they need, and how big the market is.
The competition : Look into your main competitors and what they’re good at (and not so good at).
Sales and marketing plan : Lay out your game plan for attracting and keeping customers.
Operating plan : Explain how you’ll run the day-to-day operations and manage the business.

In this small business plan example, the content is spread over many pages, which is useful in making lengthy, in-depth research feel less like a chore than packing everyone on as few pages as possible.

Organizations that set out to solve problems rather than earning profits also benefit from creating compelling business plans that stir an emotional response in potential donors, benefactors, potential staff members or even media.

Nonprofit business plan outline:

Table of contents : Lists all sections and sub-sections of your nonprofit business plan.
Introduction : Provide an overview of your mission and purpose.
Goal : State the specific objectives your nonprofit organization aims to achieve.
Impact & strategy : Explain how you plan to create positive change and the methods you will use.

Simplicity is the goal for nonprofits when it comes to business plans, particularly in their early days. Explain the crisis at hand and exactly how your organization will make a difference, which will help donors visualize how their money will be used to help.

Business plans are also helpful for companies that have been around for a while. Whether they’re considering new products to launch or looking for new opportunities, companies can approach business plans from the strategy side of the equation as well.

Strategic business plan outline:

The problem, issue, or job at hand : Define the specific challenge or task the strategic plan addresses.
Approach & methodology : Describe the methods and strategies that will be used to tackle the problem or achieve the objective.

Strategic business plans or strategy infographics should be highly focused on a single area or problem to be solved rather than taking a holistic approach to the entire business. Expanding scope too much can make a strategy seem too difficult to implement.

Easily share your business plan with Venngage’s multiple download options, including PNG, PNG HD, and as an interactive PDF.

One-page business plan example

For organizations with a simple business model, often a one-page business plan is all that’s needed. This is possible in any industry, but the most common are traditional ones like retail, where few complex concepts need to be explained.

This one-page strategic business plan example could be easily replicated for an organization that offers goods or services across multiple channels or one with three core business areas. It’s a good business plan example for companies whose plans can be easily boiled down to a few bullet points per area.

Especially when entering a saturated market, understanding the landscape and players is crucial to understanding how your organization can fit it—and stand out. That’s why centering your business plan around a market analysis is often a good idea.

Market analysis business plan outline:

Table of contents : Lists all sections and sub-sections of the market analysis business plan.
Executive summary : Provide a brief overview of the key points of the market analysis.
Business overview : Summarize your business’s mission, vision and core activities.
The market : Analyze the target market, including customer demographics and market trends.
The competition : Review the main competitors and their market positioning.
Sales & marketing plan : Outline strategies for reaching and engaging customers.
Operating plan : Details the day-to-day operations and management structure.

In this example, the majority of the content and about half the pages are focused on the market analysis, including competitors, trends, pricing, demographics and more. This successful business plan example ensures the artwork and style used perfectly matches the company’s aesthetic, which further reinforces its position in the market.

You can find more memorable business plan templates to customize in the Venngage editor. Browse Venngage’s business plan templates to find plans that work for you and start editing.

Company description business plan example

Depending on the market, focusing on your company story and what makes you different can drive your narrative home with potential investors. By focusing your business plan on a company description, you center yourself and your organization in the minds of your audience.

Company description business plan outline:

Executive summary : Briefly summarize the key components and objectives of the company description section.
Approach & direction : Outline the company’s strategy, goals and the direction it intends to take in achieving them.

This abbreviated plan is a good business plan example. It uses most of the content to tell the organization’s story. In addition to background about the company, potential investors or clients can see how this design firm’s process is different from their rivals.

With Venngage Business , you can collaborate with team members in real-time to create a business plan that will be effective when presenting to investors.

Five-year business plan example

For most startups or young companies, showing potential investors or partners exactly how and when the company will become profitable is a key aspect of presenting a business plan. Whether it’s woven into a larger presentation or stands alone, you should be sure to include your five-year business plan so investors know you’re looking far beyond the present.

With Venngage’s Business Plan Builder , you can customize a schedule like this to quickly illustrate for investors or partners what your revenue targets are for the first three to five years your company is in operation.

The lifeblood of any company is the sales team. These are the energetic folks who bring in new business, develop leads and turn prospects into customers. Focusing your energy on creating a sales business plan would prove to investors that you understand what will make your company money.

Sales business plan outline:

Table of contents : List all sections and subsections within the sales business plan.
Target market : Identify the specific segment or segments of customers the sales efforts will focus on.
Customer profile : Provide detailed descriptions of the ideal customers, including demographics, preferences and needs.
Action plan : Outline the specific steps and strategies to be taken to reach and engage the target market and achieve sales objectives.

In this example sales business plan, several facets of ideal buyers are detailed. These include a perfect customer profile that helps to convey to your audience that customer relationships will be at the heart of your operation.

You can include business infographics in your plan to visualize your goals. And with Venngage’s gallery of images and icons, you can customize the template to better reflect your business ethos.

Company mergers and shakeups are also major reasons for organizations to require strong business planning. Creating new departments, deciding which staff to retain and charting a course forward can be even more complex than starting a business from scratch.

Organization and management business plan outline:

Table of contents : List all sections and subsections within the organization and management business plan.
About us : Provide an overview of the organization, its mission, vision and values.
Project summary : Summarize the key details and objectives of the project.
Project timeline : Outline the milestones and schedule for completing the project.

This organization and management business plan focuses on how the company can optimize operations through a few key organizational projects.

Executive summary for business plan example

Executive summaries give your business plan a strong human touch, and they set the tone for what’s to follow. That could mean having your executive leadership team write a personal note or singling out some huge achievements of which you’re particularly proud in a business plan infographic .

Executive summary business plan outline:

Table of contents : Lists all sections and subsections within the executive summary business plan.
Executive summary : Provide a concise overview of the entire business plan, highlighting key points and objectives.
Statement of problem : Clearly define the specific issue or challenge the business aims to address.
Approach & methodology : Outline the methods and strategies that will be employed to solve the stated problem or achieve the desired goals.

In this executive summary for a business plan, a brief note is accompanied by a few notable achievements that signal the organization and leadership team’s authority in the industry.

Marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin, and clever companies know how they play off each other. That’s why centering your business plan around your marketing and sales strategy can pay dividends when it comes time to find investors and potential partners.

Marketing and sales strategy business plan outline:

Table of contents : List all sections and subsections within the marketing and sales strategy business plan.
Positioning : Describe how the business intends to position its products or services in the market to stand out from competitors.
Value prop : Highlight the unique value proposition that the business offers to its target customers, including its benefits and advantages.
Marketing strategy : Outline the overall approach and tactics that will be used to promote the products or services and attract customers.

This marketing and sales business plan example is the picture of a sleek, modern aesthetic, which is appropriate across many industries and will speak volumes to numbers-obsesses sales and marketing leaders.

Do business plans really help? Well, here’s some math for you; in 1981, Apple had just gone public and was in the midst of marketing an absolute flop , the Apple III computer. The company’s market cap, or total estimated market value, could hit $3 trillion this year.

Did this Apple business plan make the difference? No, it’s not possible to attribute the success of Apple entirely to this business plan from July 1981, but this ancient artifact goes to show that even the most groundbreaking companies need to take an honest stock of their situation.

Apple’s 1981 business plan example pdf covers everything from the market landscape for computing to the products that founder Steve Jobs expects to roll out over the next few years, and the advanced analysis contained in the document shows how strategic Jobs and other Apple executives were in those early days.

Inviting strangers to stay in your house for the weekend seemed like a crazy concept before Airbnb became one of the world’s biggest companies. Like all disruptive startups, Airbnb had to create a robust, active system from nothing.

Airbnb business plan outline:

Problem : Identify the specific challenge or need in the accommodation industry that the Airbnb business aims to address.
Solution : Describe how Airbnb’s platform provides a solution to the identified problem by connecting hosts with guests.
Market validation : Demonstrate through research or evidence that there is demand for Airbnb’s services.
Market size : Estimate the total addressable market for Airbnb’s accommodation services.
Product : Detail the features and functionalities of the Airbnb platform for both hosts and guests.
Business model : Explain how Airbnb generates revenue and sustains its operations.
Market adoption : Discuss the rate at which Airbnb’s services are being embraced by hosts and guests.
Competition : Identify other players in the accommodation industry offering similar services to Airbnb.
Competitive advantages : Highlight the unique strengths or advantages that set Airbnb apart from its competitors.

As this Airbnb business plan pitch deck example shows, for companies that are introducing entirely new concepts, it’s helpful not to get too into the weeds. Explain the problem simply and boil down the essence of your solution into a few words; in this case, “A web platform where users can rent out their space” perfectly sums up this popular company.

Sequoia Capital is one of the most successful venture capital firms in the world, backing startups that now have a combined stock market value of more than $1 trillion, according to a Forbes analysis .

For young companies and startups that want to play in the big leagues, tailoring your pitch to something that would appeal to a company like Sequoia Capital is a good idea. That’s why the company has a standard business plan format it recommends .

Sequoia capital business plan outline:

Company purpose : Clarify the core reason for the business and its overarching goals.
Problems : Identify specific challenges or pain points that the business aims to solve.
Solution : Describe how the business addresses the identified problems with its products or services.
Market potential : Assess the size and growth opportunities within the target market for the business.
Competition : Analyze existing competitors and their strengths and weaknesses in the market.
Business model : Outline how the business plans to generate revenue and sustain its operations.
Our team : Introduce the key members of the team and their relevant expertise and experience.
Financials : Provide projections and forecasts for the financial performance of the business.
Vision : Articulate the long-term aspirations and goals that the business seeks to achieve.

Using Sequoia Capital’s business plan example means being simple and clear with your content, like the above deck. Note how no slide contains much copy, and even when all slides appear on the screen at once, the text is legible.

Use Venngage to design business plans that will impress investors

Not every business plan, pitch deck or one-sheeter will net you billions in investment dollars, but every entrepreneur should be adept at crafting impressive, authoritative and informative business plans.

Whether you use one of the inspirational templates shared here or you want to go old school and mimic Apple’s 1981 business plan, using Venngage’s Business Plan Builder helps you bring your company’s vision to life.

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FREE 10+ Competition Business Plan Samples in PDF | DOC

When you are going to develop a business plan that includes a competition section in it, all of the companies and organizations must be able to define what a competition is correctly, select various competitors for analysis, and even explain its advantages and disadvantages. Companies are obliged to align their definition of competition especially when they involve themselves with investors. Some of these investors know competition as a service or a product that can be used to fulfill the needs. This condition usually includes or engages firms who are offering the same type of product, substitute products, and even other customer options like rebranding. Any specific business plans that claim that there are no existing competitors undermine the credibility of the management team.

Competition Business Plan

10+ competition business plan samples, 1. competition business plan, 2. launch competition business plan, 3. college competition business plan, 4. innovation competition student business plan, 5. sample competition business plan, 6. official competition business plan, 7. business plan competition checklist, 8. world wide competition business plan, 9. executive competition business plan, 10. standard competition business plan, 11. startup company competition business plan, how to identify competition, what are some of the questions that you have to answer when conducting a competition analysis, what type of information are you going to include in your plan for each competitor.

The competition section in a business plan is usually considered to be the most difficult section when you are on the process of writing a business plan. It is due to the fact that before you are going to analyze your competitors, you still have to undergo investigation on them. You can really learn a lot from the competitive advantage, market opportunity, and your position in your business by simply looking at the competition. It is important to basically know who are your competitors, how they operate, and what are the benchmarks that you need to hit to be able to achieve success in your business. This will also serve as an analysis in which most of your investors would want to see.

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Think of this question: what kind of businesses are most likely to jump in when you are going to create a new market? That is competition. Do not ever think that there is no competition at all. In order to identify your competition, you have to do a competitive analysis in your business plan. Here’s how:

Define your business use – you should first decide on which business uses you are going to apply: internal management plan or formal business plan. An internal management plan usually serves as a vehicle for understanding what competition is and in developing strategic positioning. You must look on both the strengths and weaknesses as this will lead you to having a solid strategy. A formal business plan allows you to describe what a competition is to assure you that you will be aware when it comes to that specific matter and you are in position to take advantage of the various opportunities.
Establish a competitive position – you have to be aware of how your business actually works, like in terms of what it offers on a chosen target market . There are several tactics that you can use which includes messaging, distribution, and pricing . Your goal is positioning and assessing yourself what you are doing better. You may also ask yourself if how you manage your strengths and weaknesses.
Establish regular competitive review channels – you should be able to know your business needs . The competition section in your business plan will guide you in making the right decisions for you to measure its value using the decisions it causes.
Who are your competitors?
What are your competitors’ products and services?
What threats does the competitor show?
What are their strengths and weaknesses?
What are their objectives in the market place?
What strategies are they using?
What market segments are they operating?
What makes their product good?
Why do customers buy their product?
What are their available resources?

It includes competitor’s name, overview of the competitor, products or services offered, pricing, revenue , location, customer segments, their key strengths, and key weaknesses.

There are a lot of business plans that show off their business ventures. When you are positioned properly, it may be a positive sign due to the fact that it simply implies that the market size is big. If you want to see more samples and format, check out some competition business plan samples and templates provided in the article for your reference.

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10 Marketing Plan Examples to Elevate Your Marketing Efforts

Sudarshan Somanathan

Head of Content

May 23, 2024

Yogi Berra , the baseball player, once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you will end up someplace else.” Having a true north star to navigate toward is as critical to a sportsperson as it is to a business.

Once you know your objectives, it’s time to make a plan to achieve it. Today’s business teams make a wide range of plans across project management, tech architecture, talent management, and more.

In this blog post, we explore one of the most critical business plans for market success: The marketing plan.

What is a Marketing Plan?

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A marketing plan is an operational document that outlines your goals, strategies, tactics, activities, and measurable outcomes.

A good marketing plan is:

Detailed enough to be clear, overwhelming nitty-gritty to be distracted by
Simple in language and presentation
Goal-oriented with clear action items to achieve set goals
Practical with milestones and checkpoints

A good marketing plan is one that typically has seven key elements:

Market research : Researching the market size, industry standards, market dynamics, competition, and products
Target audience : Analyzing the customer base, including their age, gender, language, interests, preferences, behaviors, and stage of life
Goals : Setting measurable marketing goals that align with the business goals around brand awareness, lead generation, conversion, engagement, and advocacy
Marketing strategy : Developing the right mix of marketing channels, campaigns, and metrics
Budget : Allocating resources for each marketing activity, placing existing budgets in channels that produce maximum return on investment
Brand messaging : Creating intelligent, educated content that builds a solid relationship with prospects, consistently reflecting the organization’s philosophy
Monitoring and evaluation : Testing and analyzing the marketing strategies to identify the ones that are working and adjusting the plan accordingly

Types of Marketing Plans

There are dozens of different kinds of marketing plans that teams make each day. The social media team might make a calendar for their activities, the analytics teams might build a dashboard tracking success metrics, and the content team might have a schedule for their output.

A content marketing plan covers the ideation, creation, distribution, repurposing, and measurement of content-related efforts. A good content marketing plan includes:

Topics/ideas that the team is going to create content about
The format in which content will be created, such as blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, etc.
The channel in which it will be published, such as blog, website, social channels, etc.
Expected metrics for readership, engagement, and conversions, as applicable

If you’re new to this space, begin with any of these customizable content calendar templates .

Unlike a content marketing plan which is built around topics and ideas, a social media marketing plan is about creating conCtent that is suitable for specific social channels. A robust social media marketing plan includes:

Paid and organic campaign strategies
Platform-specific content ideas
Repurposing strategies for existing content
Engagement and performance metrics

If a social media marketing plan focuses on social channels, email marketing focuses on emails. This plan includes the comprehensive ways in which your organization would use email to pursue its marketing objectives.

An email marketing plan includes:

Types of emails, such as promotional, educational, or newsletters
Databases of prospects in various stages of the funnel and the corresponding messages they need to receive
Frequency and time of email delivery
Tone, style, and design of the email messages themselves
Measures of success and benchmarks

This is a specialized marketing plan designed to optimize the ranking of your content on the search engine results page, which will, in turn, drive more traffic to the site. SEO marketing plans include:

Keyword research and potential visibility
On-page optimization tactics
Link-building strategies and other off-page optimization techniques

Traditional marketing plan generally refers to non-digital advertising channels, such as television, radio, print, and outdoor. This marketing plan is complementary to the digital marketing plan, creating a cohesive strategy for the brand.

Especially in developing economies, where users are more exposed to traditional media for entertainment and information, this marketing plan plays a crucial role in success.

Traditional marketing plans include:

Channels chosen for marketing and advertising
Projected expenses and budgets for each channel
Communication and messaging for each channel
Tracking mechanisms, like a dedicated phone number or email ID to evaluate performance

Common among startups and technology businesses, growth marketing leverages data to drive interest, inquiry, and engagement in the business. A typical growth marketing plan contains:

Full funnel tactics from awareness to advocacy
KPIs, such as growth rate, retention rate, churn, customer lifetime value, and satisfaction metrics
Activities that power growth, such as events or webinars
Resources to execute campaigns, such as ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, etc.

Traditionally, this might be called a brand ambassadorship plan involving celebrity endorsements. In the social media space, the influencer marketing plan refers to an organization’s strategy to engage popular online personalities to explain, educate, and endorse their products or services.

A good influencer marketing plan needs to be careful and thoughtful. Here’s what that entails.

List of influencers whose content and philosophy align with your brand
Process of trying, using, and recommending your product
Remuneration and related disclosure to the influencer’s audience
Framework to measure ROI on influencer marketing activities

A good product launch inspires potential users to consider, or even try, the new product you have on offer. To achieve this, the launch marketing plan will include:

Product positioning, with details about how it compares with existing competition
Educational material, such as brochures, demos, testimonials from beta users, etc.
Go-to-market strategy, including pricing, ad campaigns, partnerships, etc.
Pre-launch (research, prep, designing value proposition), launch (press releases, ads, events) and post-launch activities (data analysis, optimizations)

Now that you’ve seen some of the most commonly used marketing plan types, let’s explore how you can use them.

10 Marketing Plan Examples To Try On Your Next Campaign

Like how no man is an island, no idea is either. Every idea is an improvement (directly or indirectly) on something that already exists. Every idea you have is inspired by something else. Your own ideas will inspire someone too.

So, let’s look at how some of the most successful businesses make marketing plans and learn a thing or two from them.

In 2019, the US city of Louisiana set on a mission to “increase visitation to and awareness of the Greater Baton Rouge area.” To pursue this mission, they collaborated with Simpleview, a tourism marketing firm.

Simpleview’s marketing plan includes qualitative and quantitative research, pointed advice, and recommendations. Some of the stand-out elements in this plan are:

Context around past tourist numbers and plans
SWOT analysis
Profile of target audiences
Goals, strategies, and corresponding tactics

As a fellow marketer, you can learn several things from this marketing plan. Primarily:

Comprehensiveness : Including research and analysis to demonstrate understanding before making recommendations.

Frameworks : SWOT analysis, audience persona, and goal setting.

Inverted pyramid planning : Beginning with the business goal, then breaking it down into 360-degree strategies and on-ground tactics, creating a simple yet powerful process.

Activity calendar : A tentative schedule of events to execute the plan under discussion.

Safe Haven Shelter is a nonprofit organization working on housing. They had four specific goals:

Goal I: Build Industry Authority
Goal II: Build Brand Awareness
Goal III: Build Brand Loyalty in Established Audiences
Goal IV: Build Event & Fundraising Campaign Brands

To achieve these, they put together a marketing plan that breaks the goals into objectives, against which there are specific action steps. In addition, it also includes a mention of the target audience, key themes and messages, and finally metrics.

Granularity : Safe Haven’s marketing plan begins with the big goals but goes into granular details of the action items, metrics, and accountable stakeholders. This helps connect the high-level plan to on-ground action.

Transparency : This plan continues from the previous year’s plan, openly accepting delays and disturbances to certain campaigns.

Guardrails : “Tell Safe Haven’s story in a way that connects to the larger problems facing society. The world needs to change; what role is Safe Haven playing in shaping that change?”

This quote guides the marketing plan, keeping all stakeholders focused on telling that story.

The University of Illinois wanted to boost enrollment for its undergraduate courses in 2021. In pursuit of this goal, the admission department created a detailed marketing plan.

The University of Illinois marketing plan contains:

Context, research, and key insights
Audience persona and behavioral influences
Marketing programs across content, digital, direct mail, brochures, email, events, social media, text messaging and eventually the website

Insights : The plan includes a detailed section establishing context, including audience persona and admissions funnel stages. It offers a unique view of customer behavior that is fundamental to designing an effective strategy.

Full funnel plan: This plan outlines the kind of messages one receives based on what stage of the funnel they’re in.

About three months into the global pandemic that changed life as we knew it, Coca-Cola was reinventing itself for the new world.

While this summary of a talk by Chief Financial Officer John Murphy isn’t a marketing plan by definition, it offers great insight into crisis communications and business leadership.

Coca-Cola promises to:

Eliminate under-performing “zombie” brands
Consolidate offering to a smaller, more relevant portfolio
Prioritize hygiene through touchless solutions and away-from-home channels
Focus on top-selling products to keep the attention of the consumer
Redesign packaging to create fit-for-purpose products for online sales

Proactiveness : Coca-Cola acknowledges the impact of the pandemic and proactively speaks to shareholders about strategy.

Setting expectations : “A few markets will be more on a V-shape recovery, whereas a number of markets will be either U or a form of L, and I think it’s too early to be able to profess what those varying shapes will look like.”

This establishes realistic expectations in the minds of the reader.

Focus : Instead of discussing the details of challenges or revenue shrinkage, Coca-Cola focuses on opportunities, and the brand is grabbing them with both hands. This reassures the shareholders that together, they’ll emerge stronger.

Before we get into the details, this plan is admittedly 20 years old. In fact, that offers some unique perspectives that marketers can gain and use in their plans.

This strategic marketing plan by OpenOffice contains:

Community, market, product, and competitive analysis
Market segmentation
Proposals and ideas around community, product, price, distribution, and promotion

Community : “Previous versions have had restricted circulation within the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project; this version launches the consultation process with the whole OpenOffice.org Community, aiming for a formal submission to the Community Council at the end of 2004.”

As an open source product relying heavily on the community, this marketing plan is inclusive and collaborative—an approach that could inspire other similar user-generated or community-built products.

Disruption : This marketing plan includes a section for disruptive marketing ideas, including targeting customers who look unattractive to competition and to compete against “non-consumption.”

Plan for the plan : The appendix contains a description of the process that the marketing team used to devise this plan.

Typically, marketing plans for towns and cities revolve around tourism. This one of the city of Lakeland, Tennessee is different, looking to attract more families to become residents and driving growth in residential and commercial sectors.

This marketing plan for Lakeland, Tennessee includes:

Major business objectives and supporting goals
Strategic messages: E.g.: “Lakeland is business-friendly and poised for economic growth”
Target audiences, such as real estate developers, organizations, and individuals
Distribution channels
Key performance indicators
Strategic initiatives

Challenges : “For many years, Lakeland has chosen to remain a “bedroom community”, offering its residents low or no property taxes, low crime, and strict development guidelines.”

This part of the report outlines historical challenges honestly and transparently in order to drive future changes.

Measurable outcomes : Lakeland, Tennessee ties marketing plan to direct revenues in the form of property and sales taxes. It also includes resident satisfaction metrics to ensure the qualitative results are there too.

The cosmetics industry is extremely competitive with branding and marketing playing the role of a key differentiator. So, Lush’s marketing plan is an interesting study in communication and brand management.

Focus : Use of the BCG matrix is a clever way to understand the value and potential of each product and prioritize marketing efforts.

Values : Placing the vision, mission statement, purpose, and values of the brand front and centre to make direct emotional connection with the prospective customer. The brand also doesn’t shy away from being disruptive and provocative.

Tools and frameworks : The plan includes a value matrix, SWOT analysis, situational analysis and other such marketing frameworks to guide the documentation of the plan.

Brand-centric strategy : Lush’s marketing plan outlines the strategies, messaging, and tactics that are perfectly aligned with the larger brand purpose. For instance, this plan uses the slogan, “go natural” that follows the global “go naked” messages.

The office of public affairs in 1988 made a comprehensive marketing plan for BART , the Bay Area Rapid Transit system.

Before you disregard that as too old, allow us to show you why it’s still relevant and inspirational.

Note : Very interesting information about public transportation in the 1980s, if you’re a history buff!

Long-term outlook : Part one of the plan is for five years, including service planning, pricing, research and promotional activities.

Marketing philosophy : “Every employee at BART should be considered to be a marketer,” says the report, establishing marketing as not just a handful of campaigns but a reflection in talk and behavior.

Content marketing : The plan says, “develop BART field guide for teachers taking children on field trips as a companion to “Mark Twain Going Places” film and video—excellent example of relevant and engaging content marketing.

Despite the 35 years since this plan was made, it serves as a great marketing plan example because it gets the fundamentals strong. It focuses on the purpose and message without losing sight of the goals.

In fact, BART continues to be one of the most creative advertisers in the US today, winning multiple awards. Below is an ad from a campaign this year.

Northwest Territories Tourism (NWTT) is a not for-profit organization and destination marketing organization. They regularly present their marketing plans to board of directors, funders, and other stakeholders. Today, we discuss the plan for 2024.

The NWTT marketing plan includes:

Overview of the marketing environment, including industry and market trends
Risk mitigation strategies
Strategic priorities and corresponding activities

Risk planning : While most organizations perform SWOT analysis of some sort, specific focus on risk is rare in a marketing plan. NWTT identifies various kinds of risks and outlines clear strategies to overcome them.

Visualization : NWTT maps out the entire marketing landscape for simple understanding. It clarifies overlapping responsibilities and encourages teams to work together to achieve common goals.

Note : The visuals and infographics are an absolute inspiration if you seek to persuade your managers or sponsors to fund your plan.

Public Health England (PHE) takes tools and techniques from the business world and repurposes them for public good. This way, it supports government agendas, such as childhood obesity and mental health.

This new marketing strategy helps integrate digital technologies and campaigns for deeper engagement and behavior change. The PHE social media marketing plan includes:

Definition of the challenges and opportunities
Insights and lessons from past campaigns
Principles that guide marketing activities
Campaign ideas and execution plans

Cumulative growth : This plan draws from past successes and accomplishments to guide future marketing efforts. For instance, the plan is doubling down on partnerships to expand reach, which worked very well in the past.

Focus : PHE is tasked with bringing about behavior change, a challenge almost unsurmountable. PHE overcomes this by focusing on communication and designing campaign slogans that resonate with the diverse target groups.

Digital assets : In addition to advertising and content, PHE is also building mobile apps and digital products that support behavior change. For example, the Breastfeeding Friend Facebook bot provides midwife-approved answers to feeding mothers 24×7!

These are just the top ten plans that we could find on the Internet. In fact, many of them tend to be government bodies and departments because they are mandated to publish their marketing plans from time to time.

If you could use a few more examples, here you go:

Public Health England 2013-14 marketing plan : A great this-day-that-year exercise
City of Grand Haven marketing plan : Aimed at creating redevelopment opportunities
Travel Texas strategic marketing plan : Granular details of activities across various channels

The above examples demonstrate the diverse ways in which you can approach your marketing plan. However, if there is one thing you absolutely can not afford to miss, it’s data and analytics.

Utilization of Analytics and Performance Indicators in Crafting Your Marketing Plan

If marketing is a creative endeavor, analytics is the part that ensures its funding. In essence, marketing analytics monitors and measures the impact of marketing plans so teams can ensure maximum return on investment.

Some of the most common ways in which analytics strengthens marketing plans are:

With data and insights, analytics helps marketers create campaigns that are most likely to succeed. For instance, if you know that most of your inquiries come from Instagram, you can invest in creating an Instagram store for in-platform sales.

Analytics helps identify the target market that has maximum value potential and target them accurately.

Unlike the days of yore, teams no longer make five year plans. Like agile software teams, marketers make plans in small sprints. Analytics offers the ability to measure outcomes for each sprint and optimize accordingly.

Facebook or Instagram ads? Search ads or SEO? Billboard or Twitter hashtag? Analytics helps project the potential outcomes of each of these and prioritize them effectively.

Every online marketing tool offers a wide range of metrics. For your plan to be meaningful, focus only on those that matter. Typically, this might include any of the following.

Organic and paid traffic
Customer acquisition costs
Customer lifetime value
Returns on spend
Break-even and other cost-related metrics
Market penetration numbers

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably anxious about creating a great marketing plan for yourself. So, before we part ways today, we want to leave you with a simple primer on creating your own marketing plan.

How to Create an Effective Marketing Plan

Depending on the goals, objectives, scope, timeline, and activities involved, your marketing planning process can vary widely. Here are the foundational steps to help you get off the blank page.

There are several marketing planning software available in the market to help you plan and organize your activities. Choose one that best fits your needs. For instance, you can simply fire up a Google Doc and write your plans.

If you have a mature marketing practice, you can use a project management software like ClickUp to document the plan, collaborate with stakeholders, schedule activities, create tasks, manage performance and more.

What’s more? A tool like ClickUp with a free marketing plan template can make your life easier each time you’re making plans.

ClickUp’s Marketing Project Management platform

Bonus : ClickUp’s Marketing Action Plan Template simplifies the process by allowing you to plan, create, and execute marketing plans all in one place.

A good marketing plan rests on the foundation of thorough research. Some of the most commonly used marketing research techniques are:

SWOT analysis : Study of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This New Product SWOT analysis template from ClickUp is a great starting point.

Market segmentation : Organizing the market/audience into groups based on their demographics, preferences, behaviors etc. Segmentation helps in planning and targeting marketing campaigns.

Pricing strategies : Understanding the market, competition, and affordability of the prospect to create the right pricing strategy.

The lynchpin of any good marketing plan is clear objectives set initially. Make sure your marketing KPIs are:

SMART i.e., Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound
Clear and easily understandable to all team members
Accessible throughout the time that the marketing plan is applicable
Aligned with business goals

ClickUp Goals are designed to enable all of the above and more. Create task/activity targets. Set numerical, monetary, or True/False targets. Let progress roll up, and visualize progress percentages across multiple Goals in one view.

This is the plan part of your marketing plan. Make a list of all the marketing initiatives you intend to do to achieve your goals. Include:

Campaign messaging
Content and other assets you will create (good content marketing software might help with this)
Stakeholders and their responsibilities
Metrics for each activity

Then schedule them on a timeline to ensure that it is all reasonably achievable. Use any of ClickUp’s marketing plan templates to accelerate this process.

Bonus : Here are some marketing tools for small businesses that you can use to make your plans.

Include as much information as possible in your marketing plan so that when it’s time to execute, everyone knows what needs to be done.

ClickUp Docs offers a collaborative and easy-to-use writing space to consolidate data, visuals, text, and other embeds effortlessly.

Edit together in real-time. Add highlights, headings, checklists, and more. Once done, you can directly create tasks from your ClickUp Docs for easier marketing project management .

Everyone needs a tl;dr version. So, write an executive summary with salient points from the longer marketing plan. If that’s a bit much, use ClickUp Brain to automatically create a summary and insert it right within Docs. Et voila!

Based on your goals and projects, set up dashboards for the metrics you need to track. You can also use ClickUp Dashboards for tracking key performance indicators, project metrics, and productivity in the marketing teams.

As and when you execute the plan, you’ll encounter new learnings and insights. Use them to optimize the plan. For example, if your search engine advertising is performing better than your social media investments, reallocate budgets.

Create Winning Marketing Plans With ClickUp

Marketing is one of the most powerful and accountable functions in any organization. In an average startup, marketing is one of the top three expenses. To make the most of the budgets and stand up to its reputation, marketers need a plan.

ClickUp for marketers is stacked with every feature you’d ever need to make a successful marketing plan. Use ClickUp Docs to write down your plan.

Use ClickUp Goals to track targets and progress. With ClickUp tasks, manage and schedule your marketing activities. See results on the ClickUp Dashboard and optimize as you go along. Customize and adapt a digital marketing plan template for your needs.

Sounds like the perfect marketing planning tool? See for yourself. Try ClickUp for free .

FAQs About Marketing Plans

A marketing plan is an operational document that outlines your goals, strategies, tactics, activities, and measurable outcomes.

Take the example of Visit Baton Rouge. Simpleview’s marketing plan includes qualitative and quantitative research, pointed advice, and recommendations. Some of the stand-out elements in this plan are:

Choose a marketing planning tool
Do your research
List your plans
Document the details
Write a summary
Set up dashboards
Evaluate and optimize

To write a clear and comprehensive marketing plan, include the following elements.

Marketing strategy : Developing the right mix of channels, campaigns, and metrics
Monitoring and evaluation : Testing and analyzing the marketing strategies to identify the ones working and adjusting the plan accordingly

Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.

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Protein ice cream company wins 2024 Rice Business Plan Competition

Ice cream company Protein Pints took home the grand prize at the 2024 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) April 6 as the best student ventures from top universities across the world competed for prizes in front of nearly 350 angel, venture capital and corporate investors and members of the business community.

During his acceptance speech, Founder and CEO of Protein Pints Paul Reiss said, “The love and support that we’ve been shown during our time here at Rice, and the relationships and the friends that we’ve made, is something that I know I and every other student here is going to remember for the rest of our lives.”

Hosted annually by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business , the RBPC is the world’s largest and richest student startup competition.

The RBPC offers real-world opportunities to learn what’s required to successfully launch a new business. In addition to the substantial cash, investment and in-kind prizes, the heart of the competition is the mentoring from investors and experienced entrepreneurs. RBPC alumni have raised more than $6.1 billion in capital and 288 are in business or have had successful exits.

The winners were announced at the conclusion of the three-day pitching, mentoring and networking event, which included an elevator pitch competition, practice round, semifinals, wildcard and final round. At the award celebration, more than 80 prizes were announced totaling $1.5 million in investment and non-dilutive cash prizes. Every team took home cash.

“We award the competitors $1 million in prizes, prizes that serve as foundational capital to launch their startup,” said RBPC Director Catherine Santamaria in her welcome speech at the awards gala April 6.

“That’s a large number of prizes, but the biggest thing our startups leave with is a feeling of generosity and community from this room. This community is always ready and willing to help our founders and support our vision for the competition by investing time, money and resources in these student innovators.”

The 42 competing startups represented 35 universities from four countries. They were chosen from more than 450 applicants to compete in one of five categories: energy, clean tech and sustainability; life sciences and health care solutions; consumer products and services; hard tech; and digital enterprise. Learn more about all of the startups here .

The seven finalists based on the judges’ overall scores were:

Protein Pints, Michigan State University — first place and the $150,000 GOOSE Capital Investment Grand Prize.

Protein Pints is a high-protein, low-sugar, ice cream product designed for people who would benefit from having access to a functional ice cream and/or better tasting and more enjoyable protein options.

Somnair, Johns Hopkins University — second place and the $100,000 Investment Prize, sponsored by David Anderson, Jon Finger, Anderson Family Fund, Finger Interests, Greg Novak and Tracy Druce.

Somnair is a Novel Non-Invasive Neurostimulation device for the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea.

Power2Polymers, RWTH Aachen University — third place and the $50,000 Rice University investment, provided by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and sponsored by Finger Interests, the Anderson Family Fund at the Greater Houston Community Foundation, Greg Novak and Tracy Druce.

Power2Polymers tackles the pressing issue of “forever chemicals,” which have been linked to over 6.5 million deaths in the U.S. alone, by offering safe alternatives free of forever chemicals.

Informuta, Tulane University — fourth place and the $5,000 prize, sponsored by Norton Rose Fulbright.

Informuta’s proprietary technology leverages DNA sequencing to predict if bacteria will respond to different antibiotics or, for the very first time, develop future resistance thus causing treatment failure.

Icorium Engineering Company, University of Kansas — fifth place and the $5,000 prize, sponsored by EY.

Icorium Engineering Company is a chemical engineering startup and University of Kansas spinout developing technologies to make sustainable, circular economies a reality for refrigerants and other complex chemical mixtures.

EndoShunt Medical, Harvard University — sixth place and the $5,000 prize, sponsored by Chevron Technology Ventures.

EndoShunt is transforming trauma surgery with a rapid, targeted blood flow control device.

D.Sole, Carnegie Mellon University — seventh place and the $5,000 prize, sponsored by Shell Ventures.

D. Sole is advancing the development of remote patient monitoring in podiatry with foot insoles designed for the early detection and monitoring of diabetic foot complications, such as ulcers and deformities.

The fourth through seventh place startups were also awarded an additional investment prize of $25,000 each provided by Rice Alliance and sponsored by David Anderson, Jon Finger, Anderson Family Fund, Finger Interests, Greg Novak and Tracy Druce, bringing their finalist prize totals up to $30,000.

Other significant prizes this year and the teams that won them include:

$200,000 Goose Capital Investment Prize — Osphim, RWTH Aachen University
$250,000 OWL Investment Prizes — MesaQuantum, Harvard University
$100,000 OWL Investment Prizes — Icorium Engineering Company, University of Kansas
$100,000 Houston Angel Network Investment Prize — Somnair, Johns Hopkins University
$100,000 The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Texas Angels Investment Prize — Protein Pints, Michigan State University
$60,000 nCourage Courageous Women Entrepreneur Investment Prize — MesaQuantum, Harvard University
$40,000 nCourage Courageous Women Entrepreneur Investment Prize — Icorium Engineering Company, University of Kansas
$40,000 Pearland EDC Spirit of Entrepreneurship Cash Prize — Informuta, Tulane University
$25,000 New Climate Ventures Sustainable Investment Prize — Oxylus Energy, Yale University
$25,000 Dream Big Ventures Latino Entrepreneur Investment Prize — Dendritic Health AI, Northwestern University
$25,000 NOV Energy Technology Innovation Cash Prize — LiQuidium, University of Houston
$25,000 Urban Capital Network Diversity Investment Prize in Partnership with South Loop Venture Investment Prize — TouchStone, University of California, Berkeley
$25,000 Southwest National Pediatric Device Consortium Pediatric Device Cash Prize — EndoShunt Medical, Harvard University
$25,000 Jacobs, Intuitive Machines and WRX Companies Rising Stars Space Technology and Commercial Aerospace Cash Prize — MesaQuantum, Harvard University

For more information about the 2024 Rice Business Plan Competition, visit rbpc.rice.edu .

This story was originally published on APNews.

About the MSU Innovation Center:

The MSU Innovation Center is dedicated to fostering innovation, research commercialization, and entrepreneurial activities from the research and discovery happening across our campus every day. We act as the primary interface for researchers aiming to see their research applied to solving real-world problems and making the world a better place to live. We aim to empower faculty, researchers, and students within our community of scholars by providing them with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities to bring their discoveries to the forefront. Through strategic collaborations with the private sector, we aim to amplify the impact of faculty research and drive economic growth while positively impacting society. We foster mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with the private sector through corporate-sponsored research collaborations, technology licensing discussions, and support for faculty entrepreneurs to support the establishment of startup companies.

Is your company interested in working with MSU’s Protein Pints Team? Click Here .

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How to Write and conduct a Competitive Analysis
FREE 10+ Competition Business Plan Samples in PDF
31+ SAMPLE Competition Business Plan in PDF
FREE 10+ Competition Business Plan Samples in PDF
FREE 10+ Competition Business Plan Samples in PDF
31+ SAMPLE Competition Business Plan in PDF

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International Business Plan Competition 2024
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Business Plan competition Finale 2017 in IIMC
2009 Business Plan Competition Opening Introduction

COMMENTS

How to Write and conduct a Competitive Analysis
Here are the steps you need to take: 1. Identify your competitors. The first step in conducting a comprehensive competitive analysis is to identify your competitors. Start by creating a list of both direct and indirect competitors within your industry or market segment. Direct competitors offer similar products or services, while indirect ...
The 20 Best Business Plan Competitions [Updated 2024]
MIT 100k Business Plan Competition and Expo. The MIT 100K was created in 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to foster entrepreneurship and innovation on campus and around the world. Consists of three distinct and increasingly intensive competitions throughout the school year: PITCH, ACCELERATE, and LAUNCH.
Writing a Business Plan: Competitor Analysis Section
When you're writing the business plan, you'll write the competitor analysis section in the form of several paragraphs. The first paragraph will outline the competitive environment, telling your readers who your proposed business's competitors are, how much of the market they control and any other relevant details about the competition. The ...
How to Write Competitive Analysis in a Business Plan (w/ Examples)
It will help you prepare a solid competitor analysis section in your business plan that actually highlights your strengths and opens room for better discussions (and funding). Let's begin. 1. Identify Your Direct and Indirect Competitors. First things first — identify all your business competitors and list them down.
Write the Competition Section: Business Plan Writing
Also, make sure that you have conducted a competitive analysis and processed data of at least 5 competition companies. Once you have everything you need, you can go through the following steps-. 1. Determining and Documenting Your Business Position. Regardless of your purpose, you will have to follow this step.
How to Write the Competitive Analysis of a Business Plan
The steps to developing the competitive analysis section of your business plan include: Identify your competition. Select the appropriate competitors to analyze. Determine your competitive advantage. 1. Identify Your Competition. To start, you must align your definition of competition with that of investors. Investors define competition as to ...
Conduct a Competitive Analysis (With Examples) [2024] • Asana
You decide to conduct a market analysis for your business. To do so, you would: Step 1: Use Google to compile a list of your competitors. Steps 2, 3, and 4: Use your competitors' websites, as well as SEO analysis tools like Ahrefs, to deep-dive into the service offerings and marketing strategies of each company.
Business Plan and Pitch Competition Guide
A pitch or business plan competition is an event where people with business ideas or who are running early-stage startups get the chance to present to a group of judges. ... Get started with our fill-in-the-blank business plan template. Download Template. Successfully pitch your business with LivePlan. With one tool you can craft and share your ...
How to Write a Great Business Plan: Competitive Analysis
This article is part of a series on how to write a great business plan. The Competitive Analysis section of your business plan is devoted to analyzing your competition--both your current ...
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Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow. A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It's also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. After completing your plan, you can ...
How To Write A Competitive Analysis For Your Business Plan
You realize your competition is sleeping on the job and you're ready to pounce on that opportunity to eat up some delicious market share. Your opportunities typically come in three flavors: 1. Areas your competition is currently weak. 2. Expansion of your customer's current needs. 3. Untapped markets.
Competition in a Business Plan
For example, key customer benefits might include affordability, can be purchased online, or ease of use, but not a technical feature list. Competition Presentation in the Business Plan. The business plan competitor section can be presented in a number of formats including a competitor matrix, but an informative way of presenting is using Harvey ...
What Is a Competitive Analysis? (How-To Guide) (2023)
Competitive analysis is a type of market research. It's the process of evaluating and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of competitors in your market. It involves gathering and analyzing data on competitors' products, pricing, marketing strategies, distribution channels, and customer base. Doing a competitive analysis helps you ...
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MIT 100k Business Plan and Expo. FAU Business Plan Competition. NIBS Business Plan Competition. Get Seeded. Pistoia Alliance President's Startup Challenge. College of New Jersey's Mayo Business Plan Competition. Next Founders Business Plan Competition. TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield. New Venture Challenge.
How to Create a Competitor Analysis Report (with Examples)
Here's a step-by-step guide on how to present a competitor analysis: Introduction: Start with a brief introduction to set the stage. Outline the purpose of the competitor analysis and its significance in the current market context. Competitor identification: Clearly list and identify the main competitors.
Business Competition: Definition, Types, & Examples
Direct competition is a linear way to look at the business world, and compare a company with other similar companies, in the same industry. An example is comparing Netflix with other streaming services. On the opposite hand, the indirect competition looks at the core asset, and potential long-term overlaps.
31+ SAMPLE Competition Business Plan in PDF
Step 4: Review and Execute the Competitive Business Plan. Review your entire competitive business plan carefully and ensure to fully include all the major points in your plan. If you notice that you overlook some sections that need sufficient points, we recommend that you edit and revise the overall document.
How to Win Any Business Plan Competition, From a 4-Time Winner
The strategy worked. In the past four years, the company has won four such competitions, ranging in size from 2017's UpPrize, which came with a $160,000 reward, all the way to a small $2,000 ...
How to Win a Business Plan Competition
The stories are vital to your success in a business plan competition. You hint at them in an elevator pitch, tell them in the business pitch, and show them and how they can come true in your business plan. 8. Keep things short and straightforward. Business plan competition judges are busy people.
How To Win A Business Plan Contest
For example, the Panasci Business Plan Competition by Syracuse University offers around $35,000 in total rewards, while the Rice Business Plan Competition offers over $1.2 million in seed funding to its winners and runner-ups. ... The key to winning a business plan competition of any type is to know what the judges are looking for and to ...
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The business plan examples in this article follow this example template: Executive summary. An introductory overview of your business. Company description. A more in-depth and detailed description of your business and why it exists. Market analysis. Research-based information about the industry and your target market.
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The competition: Evaluate the main competitors and their strengths and weaknesses in the market. EDIT THIS BUSINESS PLAN TEMPLATE ... EDIT THIS BUSINESS PLAN TEMPLATE Using Sequoia Capital's business plan example means being simple and clear with your content, like the above deck. Note how no slide contains much copy, and even when all slides ...
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Rice Business Plan Competition Win
Ice cream company Protein Pints took home the grand prize at the 2024 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) April 6 as the best student ventures from top universities across the world competed for prizes in front of nearly 350 angel, venture capital and corporate investors and members of the business community. During his acceptance speech, Founder and CEO of Protein Pints Paul Reiss said ...

How to Write the Competitor Analysis Section of the Business Plan

First, Find Out Who Your Competitors Are

Then Find Out About Them

Gathering Information for Your Competitor Analysis

Analyzing the Competition

Writing the Competitor Analysis Section

How to Write the Competitive Analysis of a Business Plan

What is a Competitive Analysis?

Why Do You Need the Competitive Analysis?

3 Steps to Writing a Competitive Analysis

1. Identify Your Competition

2. Select the Appropriate Competitors to Analyze

Finish Your Business Plan Today!

3. Determine Your Competitive Advantage

How to Finish Your Business Plan in 1 Day!

OR, Let Us Develop Your Plan For You

Other Resources for Writing Your Business Plan

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

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Featured Reads

How to create a competitive analysis (with examples)

What is a competitive analysis?

What to include in a competitive analysis

How to do a competitive analysis

1. Create a competitor overview

2. Conduct market research

3. Compare product features

4. Compare product marketing

5. Use a SWOT analysis

6. Identify your place in the market landscape

Competitive analysis example

Drawbacks of competitive analysis

Don’t forget to take action

Be wary of confirmation bias

Update your analysis regularly

Boost your marketing strategy with competitive analysis

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