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Marketing Plan Details to Include in Your Funding Pitch Explained

Leslie Gilmour

6 min. read

Updated November 22, 2024

So you have a great business idea, and you only need a financial boost to make it happen? 

There are many investors looking for an opportunity to fund a startup and grow their money, and if you want to convince them that your business idea is one of a kind and worth their investment, you need to prepare a business plan and craft a perfect pitch. 

Your funding campaign needs to be carefully planned because your potential investors will scrutinize your business proposal and all the available market data, try to understand your business model, and assess the likelihood of scoring a big return. 

What marketing details to include in your business pitch?

Every single detail in your pitch deck matters, and since reaching your target audience plays an important role in attracting business opportunities, potential investors want to see that you’ve done your homework properly and that you have a stellar marketing strategy in place. 

Here are marketing plan details that you should include in your funding pitch. 

1. A gripping story

Your pitch is practically a marketing document, and its role is to grab your potential investors’ attention and make a great first impression. 

Successful marketing starts with storytelling, and its purpose is to hook both your target audience and your investor. Given that every pitch usually contains a lot of numbers, trends, and predictions, if not presented properly, such a narrative can easily turn into a snoozefest. 

Storytelling is a tremendously powerful vehicle that will allow you to step away from crunching numbers and shine the light on the bigger picture. 

Start by describing your journey and telling what particular problems prompted you to come up with your business idea. Mention your success, setbacks, and turning points that have defined your company. Finally, talk about where you’re headed and what you want to achieve. 

Provide context and some background information to make your story flow. 

2. Market and industry research 

Conducting market research is crucial for collecting valuable information about the size of your target market, identifying trends, offering you insight into your customers’ behaviors, needs, and challenges, telling you more about who your competitors are, and giving you a sense of direction. 

Your potential investor has to know to whom your business will cater and who your target audience is. Otherwise, your entire business plan will come off as a shot in the dark. 

That’s why identifying your ideal customer and creating customer personas will show that you know what you’re doing and that there won’t be any guesswork in your business efforts. 

An analysis of your competitors and their marketing strategies is another aspect that you should mention in your funding pitch. Since you’ll be competing with them for the attention of your shared target audience, monitoring their strategies and marketing activities will give you a competitive edge. 

3. A unique selling proposition

Also known as a unique value proposition, this element is the cornerstone of your entire marketing strategy. 

Without a compelling and memorable USP, it will be hard for your new business to cut through the noise in a competitive marketplace and differentiate itself from other companies offering the same or similar products and services. 

Think about what it is that makes your solution or its features unique, as well as why your potential customers should pick you over your competitors. 

Your unique selling proposition will be the foundation of your marketing efforts, and it’s what your brand narrative will rely on.

Apart from capturing your target audience’s attention, a successful USP is also critical for creating an irresistible funding pitch. 

Bear in mind that your potential investors are busy entrepreneurs who don’t have time to analyze every pitch they get. According to a study, venture capitalists spend an average of 3 minutes and 44 seconds on a pitch deck. Hence, you need a strong and powerful USP that will specify what problems your product or service solves at a glance and resonates with your audience. 

4. Branding 

Every business, regardless of its size, needs to develop a strong and positive brand. 

Branding refers to different marketing activities that have the purpose of shaping and influencing the way your audience perceives your company and your products or services. Branding should also reflect your company’s core values and beliefs and help you connect with your customers on a deeper, emotional level. 

When we’re talking about branding, the first thing that comes to mind is a logo, but your brand is so much more than this visual symbol. It’s the entire experience and every touchpoint a customer has with your company. 

A brand is essentially the personality of your business. It’s what potential investors will take into consideration when they’re deciding whether to pour money into your business idea. 

5. Goals and a budget

Setting your marketing goals is important because it will define what you want to accomplish with your marketing activities and efforts. Make sure to set goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based: or, in short, SMART. 

This way, your potential investor will be able to keep track of your progress and understand how long it will take until they start seeing the first results. 

Your marketing budget should also be outlined in your pitch. 

Having enough resources for search engine optimization, social media marketing, building a website, creating and printing promotional materials, running paid advertising campaigns, and hiring marketing specialists will determine the success of your efforts.  

If you aren’t sure how much all this will cost, a general estimate says that it’s best to allocate 7% to 8% of your expected annual turnover for marketing activities. 

Selling your potential investors on your business idea is a challenging endeavor, and it will work only if you demonstrate that you truly understand budgeting, business finance, and key metrics of your business. Think about getting advice from an experienced accountant, as they regularly prepare funding applications and they know how this process works. 

6. Customer experience 

Happy customers are the key to the success of your business, which is why customer experience has become a critical brand differentiator. That’s why having a CX strategy in place is a must if you want to convince your potential investor that you will leave nothing to chance. 

This part of your pitch should include an outline of the activities for building loyalty with your customers. Some of them include regular communication via different channels such as email, social media, blog posts, or IMs, after-sale follow-ups, leveraging feedback and complaints to additionally improve your service, as well as training your staff about the basic principles of customer service. 

Given that 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience, it’s obvious that this strategy can significantly contribute to growing your revenue. 

Having your marketing plan prepared can help strengthen your pitch

Crafting a funding pitch means being able to explain your product or service in detail and get across how it will make the investors money. 

That’s where marketing comes in to show them you have thought everything through, achieved product/market fit, and created a viable strategy for attracting customers and differentiating your business in a crowded marketplace. 

Include these aspects in your funding pitch and catch the eye of potential investors willing to back up your idea and make it happen. 

Leslie Gilmour

Leslie started in digital marketing as the result of hiking the 800 km Camino de Santiago in 2006 — he built a website about his experience. He is the owner and MD of Cube Digital a content marketing and SEO agency based in Dublin, Ireland, where he loves helping businesses create highly successful growth plans.