How to Write a Water Purification Business Plan [With Template]

What is a Water Purification Business Plan?

A water purification business plan is a comprehensive roadmap document containing the company’s goals and plans for achieving them. It’s an excellent tool for guiding operations and demonstrating your business idea’s revenue potential to investors and financial institutions.

More than a tool for securing funding, creating a business plan reveals five key elements critical to every entrepreneur’s success:

• The target-customer’s needs

• Potential opportunities and roadblocks

• Ignored or under-served water purification business niches

• Feasibility and viability of the business venture

People commonly mistake a business plan for a business model. In reality, the only common thread between them is their critical role in the success of a water purification startup.

A business model reveals how the business plans to create and deliver its services to customers and ultimately generate revenue. Conversely, a business plan contains the company’s goals and execution plans.

What Are The Key Components of a Water Purification Business Plan?

A business plan only serves as a valuable roadmap document when it has the right sections and captures vital details. 

Read on to discover the sections and details to include in a comprehensive business plan and how to arrange them in a way that makes sense and flows seamlessly. You can also use our water purification business plan template to create your own while reading through the article.

Snag your business plan template here.

1. Executive summary

The executive summary is essentially an abridged version of the entire document. It’s a one-pager that reveals the reason for writing the document and briefly explains what’s contained in the other sections.

This section is your opportunity to make an impression on the reader, whether it’s an investor or an employee. 

It should ignite investors' interest in your business and convince them to read the rest of the document. It should also communicate your company’s vision and mission to employees so they feel eager to contribute to its success.

To that end, use storytelling to explain why you’re starting the company and the goals you plan to achieve. Briefly describe your services, target market, value proposition, location, and funding need.

Also, provide details about the business owner and employees, including their names, certifications, experience, and the company’s vision and mission statement.

Pro tip: Write the executive summary last so it accurately summarizes the business plan. You can write placeholder text and review it after finishing the other sections.

2. Business overview

Also known as the company description, this section provides a detailed description of the business and its goals. 

It explains your vision and mission, why you started the business, and the unique characteristics that make you primed to succeed and upstage competitors.

Start this section with an elevator pitch that briefly explains your services. It could be something like this: X is a water purification company based in Y, that delivers clean drinking water and helps set up water filtration systems.

Then, list key information about your company, such as the following:

• Company name: List your registered company name.

• Chosen business entity: Mention the type of business you’ll be operating, whether it’s a sole proprietorship, partnership, or limited liability company.

• Competitive edge and value proposition: Briefly describe how you differ from other local water companies and how you plan to capture market share (reserve in-depth information for the market analysis section.)

3. Services

Here is where you list the most important part of your business—the water purification services you’ll offer customers in exchange for their money. This section also includes the niche you’ll specialize in and the innovative technologies you’ll use to facilitate quality service delivery.

To justify your choice of services, tie each to your expertise, current customer pain points, and available equipment. Next, reveal each service’s price and billing method—flat rate or hourly pricing.

Finally, list any services you intend to add to your service portfolio in the future. This will demonstrate your commitment to growing the business and convince investors and lenders to help fund it.

4. Market analysis

Market analysis involves thoroughly investigating the local water industry, your competitors, and your target customers. The goal is to gain a deep understanding of the market landscape and confirm the feasibility of your business idea.

Market research comprises the target market, industry outlook, and competitive analysis.

Water industry outlook analysis helps you identify market trends and ignored niches you can use to differentiate your company. Are potential customers in your service area abandoning tap water for bottled water? Is there a surge in demand for reverse osmosis and water filter systems? You can use data from trusted sources like water industry reports, the United States Census Bureau, and bottling company financial reports.

Target market analysis involves gathering data about potential customers, their current challenges, demographics, income levels, buying habits, and psychographics. These details will form the basis of your ideal customer profile and determine your messaging and marketing campaign’s targeting options.

Following target market analysis, analyze your top local competitors. Research the composition of their customer base by checking their websites, social media pages, and business listings. Also, pay attention to their marketing, preferred channels, and pricing strategies.

Then, using your insights from analyzing your competitors, perform a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. Highlight why customers will choose you over others.

“Why would somebody choose you? What makes you better than the other umpteen companies they can call very easily?” Hunter explains. “By identifying why you're better, whether that's your guarantees or warranties, whatever it may be, it not only helps you with your marketing message, but it also helps your team.”

5. Equipment

The necessary tools and equipment are basic for running a functioning water purification business. This section lets you list them alongside their estimated purchase and maintenance costs.

If you’re just starting out, list only the essential equipment for running a small-scale water purification company. You can purchase others as the company’s revenue increases.

Here are some examples of essential water purification equipment:

• Water filters

• Water softeners

• Wrenches

• Faucets

• Pipes and fittings

• Water treatment pumps

Check out other essential water purification tools and equipment.

After listing the tools and equipment, create a subsection describing how you plan to protect them from loss and damage. You can mention getting equipment, having an insurance policy to safeguard against damage and loss, and having inventory management software to monitor the equipment’s availability and location.

When picking relevant software, you can use an inventory-only application. However, that would mean purchasing multiple tools for other business processes, ballooning your operating expenses.

For improved efficiency and lower operating fees, consider using field service management software with an Inventory Management platform and multiple features to automate other essential business processes.

A great example of such software is ServiceTitan’s Inventory Management platform, which integrates with other tools for managing service scheduling, customer interactions, price books, invoicing, etc. This allows the platform to maximize efficiency across the board.

With the platform’s integration with ServiceTitan’s Field Service App, the system automatically updates replenishment schedules to accommodate any item techs added to customer invoices. It also allows techs to start a requisition order from the field.

Additionally, ServiceTitan’s Inventory Management platform notifies users to start a purchase order whenever a replenishment is initiated, which they can send directly to vendors. This seamless inventory process helps water purification companies improve customer satisfaction.

Finally, ServiceTitan’s Inventory Management platform has an Item Overview section highlighting the location, quantity, and total value of each material and equipment item. This information helps business owners maintain optimum stock levels and ensures technicians always have the required tools.

This helps you avoid resource waste and downtime, allowing you to complete more projects in less time and boosting profits.

6. Marketing plan

Although delivering quality services and exceptional customer service are important, running a thriving business is impossible without a system to attract customers and promote your services. That’s why it’s crucial to write a marketing plan.

A marketing plan details your plan for communicating your services’ value and benefits to potential customers. It includes strategies, goals, channels, and a measurement plan.

Dedicate the first portion of your marketing plan to restating the ideal customer profile you created earlier. This will remind you of your target market and guide your decisions.

Next, select the marketing strategies and channels you wish to use to promote your services. Ensure a mix of offline and digital channels to cover all bases—to build local brand awareness and reach people searching for water companies online.

Some examples of channels you can explore include the following:

• Social media marketing

• Email marketing

• Flyer distribution

• Direct mail

• Search engine optimization

You should also optimize your website with local-intent keywords like “water company near me” and fill up your Google Business Profile with positive reviews to boost your local rankings. This helps you leverage social signals to convert prospects and boost your local ranking.

Experts like Crystal Williams, owner of Lemon Seed Marketing, stress the importance of discovering what makes your company unique, and using it as the foundation for your marketing campaigns. 

For example, she helped McWilliams and Son Heating and AC triple annual sales using the value proposition of delivering services on the weekends and evenings.

“So, we launched 7-7-7,” she says. “The campaign talks about 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week, no overtime charges. It’s in all of my branding. As one example, I launched a radio campaign around ‘no matter if it’s 3 o’clock on a Tuesday or 3 o’clock on a Saturday, give us a call, same great rate.’ The (unique selling proposition) is 7-7-7.”

The last portion of your marketing plan should contain each campaign’s key performance indicators (KPI) and the tracking plan and tool you intend to use. You can either get a tool for each channel or use Home Services Marketing—ServiceTitan’s comprehensive marketing platform.

The platform delivers valuable insights into each campaign’s performance, using revenue rather than vanity metrics like clicks and calls. This helps you reallocate resources to maximize marketing spend.

ServiceTitan’s Home Services Marketing platform also has a Local Services Ads integration that collates leads from Google directly into your call booking screen. This seamless integration enables you to follow up on leads who don’t convert on the first call.

Furthermore, the integration allows users to add a calendar booking widget to their Local Services Ads.

This way, customers can book an appointment without having to call, creating a frictionless booking process that boosts conversions.

Finally, ServiceTitan has the Marketing Pro platform, which has multiple tools catering to every marketing channel. Such tools include the following:

• Email: Lets you create and track email nurture campaigns using multiple templates. It also has a campaign builder you can use to segment your audience and send them hyper-relevant content.

• Direct Mail: Creates, sends, and tracks direct mail campaigns. It also lets you send content tailored to different customer segments.

• Reputation: Automates customer review requests, allowing you to collect multiple customer reviews quickly. It also has a central hub that collates reviews from multiple platforms, allowing you to respond to reviews and address customer complaints.

• Ads Optimizer: Uses ServiceTitan conversion data to train Google’s large language model (LLM) to display your ads to high-quality leads—people likely to need your services. This optimizes your ads for revenue rather than clicks.

• Ads: Connects with your Google Analytics and Google Ads platform and uses DNI (dynamic number insertion) to attribute each customer call to the source campaign.

Speaking about ServiceTitan’s multiple marketing tools and their valuable data, Chris Hunter says, “If you're using ServiceTitan, pull up your marketing dashboard, and let's look at the data.”

“What's the data telling us about our marketing? What's working, what's not? What should we double down on? What should we not? I think the data tells a pretty compelling story.”

7. Management summary

Pay attention to this section and make it as detailed as possible since labor will form a major part of your budget. You can also use this section to demonstrate your team’s ability to run the company profitably.

For starters, list the management team—the heads of different units, board members (if any), and the founder. Reveal their respective positions' qualifications, experience, and certifications to inspire confidence in investors and lenders.

Below each unit head’s name and details, mention all the employees reporting to them, alongside their details—name, qualifications, certifications, and experience.

Then, sketch an organizational structure to reveal accountability, responsibility, and authority lines. If you’re a one-person operation, predict what your organizational structure will look like when you start hiring employees.

Regardless of your company’s growth stage, ServiceTitan's Field Reporting and Scheduling platforms can help you boost efficiency and streamline operations.

The Field Reporting software provides insights into business performance using default and custom reports that you can schedule to hit your inbox at specific times—yearly, quarterly, monthly, or weekly.

The cloud-based software also has scorecards that reveal each technician's and CSR's performance, using memberships sold, calls converted, customer satisfaction ratings, completed jobs, and revenue. This allows you to train struggling employees and identify potential areas for improvement.

ServiceTitan’s Service Scheduling software allows dispatchers to set up recurring jobs based on a service contract’s terms. Dispatchers can also pick an arrival window or create a custom window.

This automates the scheduling process and helps customers know exactly when to expect technicians, allowing them to plan their day to accommodate the appointment efficiently.

ServiceTitan’s Scheduling software also has an analytics dashboard that provides valuable scheduling performance data insights such as job booking sources, appointments by service type, and more.

This allows you to pinpoint scheduling bottlenecks and optimize your technician workload to maximize efficiency and increase profitability. For example, since switching to ServiceTitan, Aqua Clear Water Systems have reported a 30 percent increase in revenue every year.

According to Lydia Brewster, warehouse operations manager at the company, “ServiceTitan is cutting edge.” 

“ServiceTitan's always growing. Do you want your business to be stuck to an old model or do you want to become the new generation? Nothing stays the same in business—everything always changes. I have software that changes and grows with me.”

8. Financials

Finance plays a key role in a business. You need it to cover startup and operational expenses, scale your company, and remain operational. That’s why this section is critical.

Before writing this section, open a business bank account and credit card to make filing taxes easy and build up your credit rating for accessing funding.

Once that’s done, list everything you’ll spend on and the costs. This includes equipment purchases, rent, labor wages, utilities, marketing costs, etc.

The next section should contain three- to five-year financial projections with the following key components:

• Balance sheet

• Projected cash flow and balance sheet

• Break-even analysis

• Profit and loss projections

Consider using ServiceTitan’s Customer Payments and Contractor Payroll platforms to streamline your financial accounting process.

The Contractor Payroll platform lets you manage your payroll from one central location and create custom payment structures that account for benefits, commissions, overtime, and bonuses. This ensures you compensate every employee fairly without the risk of errors associated with traditional and manual payroll systems.

ServiceTitan’s Customer Payments platform empowers techs to collect credit, check, and cash payments from the field. Back-office staff can then access every payment while ServiceTitan’s system automatically reconciles the electronic and cash payments and deposits them into your bank account in 24 hours.

This makes it easy to maintain accurate accounts and access useful profitability data insights to guide key business decisions, such as resource allocation.

Why Write a Business Plan for a Water Purification Company?

Writing a business plan can benefit water purification companies. A recent study published in the International Review of Management and Marketing shows that businesses that operate with a plan are more likely to succeed, as it helps them identify issues and respond to evolving market conditions.

Chris Hunter has firsthand experience of the benefits of having a business plan and running his business with and without it.

“We didn't have a plan,” Hunter says, “It was just, ‘Let's just keep doing what we're doing and hope we get better.’ It was just a bunch of hope.”

“The first year after we [created a business plan], we went from single-digit profitability to double-digit profitability, just because we had a plan.” 

Here are the key benefits of writing a business plan for your water purification company:

• Attracts funding: A comprehensive business plan proves your idea’s viability to funding partners, who usually prefer seeing a plan grounded in financial projections and market analysis data.

• Facilitates goal-setting: Writing a business plan helps you both visualize where you want to be within a specific time frame and craft a plan to make that vision a reality.

• Helps identify potential roadblocks: You can identify roadblocks ahead of time by writing a business plan. This helps you create a plan to overcome them.

• Provides answers to key questions: A business plan helps you decide how to differentiate your services and understand your target market.

Over to You

These details prepare you to write a comprehensive business plan enriched with insights and information you can use to scale. Use our template to start writing your business plan immediately.

Consider investing in ServiceTitan’s water treatment company software to streamline key processes, maximize employee productivity, and grow your company’s profits.

ServiceTitan is an all-in-one software trade companies use to automate essential business operations like marketing, scheduling, invoicing, and financial reporting. Join thousands of contractors nationwide who use the platform to grow their profits.