What sections of a marketing plan are most important for a micro-business start-up?

The most important part of a marketing plan for any business, but especially a start-up, is determining the business's position in the marketplace. Positioning is often considered merely a marketing chore, but it is central to a business's strategic, financial and marketing planning. Without it, everything else is just a collection of numbers, opinions and tactics.

Therefore let us look at positioning and what it means. Generally, positioning is the strategic thinking process that determines what will make your business different from competitors. Perhaps the product or service is different, or the method of delivery, or the value that is added to it. All but the largest businesses must have a differentiating factor.

This is especially important for micro-businesses because they do not have the resources to compete on processes alone. Therefore, their unique selling proposition often becomes the main platform for their business strategies. For example, a large department store, which has very large distribution and sales systems in place, can try to be all things to all customers. But a very small retailer cannot do the same. Instead, it must pick one area of a market that it can serve, a target, and concentrate on that alone by positioning itself as a specialist of some sort. All its operations support that position.

Strategic positioning is a visioning process that shouldn't be ignored in favour of more tangible marketing chores. It should be the overriding reason for performing more routine tasks like market research. It will also become the basis of a company's business plan.