140 | HOW TO WRITE A BUSINESS PLAN
Introduction
Decisions you make about marketing and
personnel can spell the difference between
your future success or failure. This
chapter helps you answer these important
questions about your business:
• Who is your competition and how are
you different?
• Who are your potential customers and
how can you contact them?
• Exactly what steps will you take to
reach your sales projections?
• How can you hire the right people for
your business?
• How can you make sure that your
employees work effectively?
Marketing Plan
Marketing is a broad term that covers many
specific issues. Your marketing plan will
cover areas ranging all the way from deter-
mining how your business fits into the
national and local economies to deciding
what color your logo should be. The
market plan you’ll develop in this section
will outline the specific steps you’ll take
to generate the sales dollars you forecast
earlier.
Review Chapter 3 Work
In Chapter 3, you were deciding whether
or not you chose the right business. As part
of that work, you made some important
assumptions that will influence your
marketing plan:- Problem Statement. This identifies the
problem you’ll solve for your customer
and provides the underlying reason
people will frequent your business. - Business Description. This states exactly
what your business does for your
customers. After all, if you don’t
provide a valuable product or service,
you won’t have many customers. - Taste, Trends, and Technology: How
Will the Future Affect Your Business?
This covers the developments you
expect for the next few years and
how they will affect your business.
Even a “perfect” business can become
obsolete overnight due to future
developments. - Sales Revenue Forecast. This shows
your estimates of future sales revenue
for your business. To finish your
marketing plan, you’ll need to spell out
the specific actions you will take to
achieve your forecast sales revenues.
Take a moment before proceeding
any further and reread your work from
Chapter 3 to decide if it still represents an
accurate statement of how you view your
business. If the statements are not accurate
and complete, stop here and rewrite them.
Make sure they correspond to your current
thinking.