Small Business Marketing Plan
A Home Business Article Contributed by Jenni Mckinney
Preliminaries in Your Small Business Plan
Before you begin your pages on marketing, you will need to set up the structure of your small business plan. The cover page should detail specific contact information, including name of business, names of founders, address of business and of founders, and all pertinent telephone, fax, and email numbers. The second page should be a table of contents.
The First Three Sections of Your Small Business Plan
The third page is really the first page of the body of the small business plan, and it should begin an executive summary. This provides a condensed narrative of the entire business plan -- it's a plan in a nutshell, if you will, and can range from a few paragraphs to a few pages. This section should give an overview of your business. The next section should be a business description, and should begin by listing the biographies and relevant work experiences of all the founders of the company.
Also on this page should be the specific legal entity that you have decided to structure the business as, whether it's a sole proprietor, partnership, corporation, etc. Finally, this section should have a few paragraphs detailing how the business idea was first conceived and by whom, and the history of the business up to the current point (if applicable), along with a description of how the company has grown since inception.
The third section should detail the offerings of the business, be they goods or services. How and to whom will these offerings be offered? What will they cost? How will they make a profit? When you complete these first three sections, you are ready to begin your fourth section on marketing.
Market Research in Your Small Business Plan
Market research is a billion dollar industry in the United States alone, and if you are a small business owner, you will probably not have enough financial resources at this time to hire a marketing research firm. But don't give up hope! There are several ways you can do some market research on your own and thereby benefit your small business plan. The first way is to open your trusty telephone book to the yellow pages, and search out the industry in which your small business will operate.
What are some of the common advertising props used? What types of things are not used that you think would make a difference in the customer's decision? Another way to do some market research is to visit your local library or college library and look up books, magazines, and other resources on trends and market predictions, census data and market studies.
Third, you can conduct door-to-door surveys asking the community to comment on what they like or dislike most about businesses similar to yours. Finally, attend business meetings hosted by your local Chamber of Commerce and network among other small business owners to find out what types of marketing ventures they have been successful at and which things to avoid.
After you have a significant amount of data, you will go back to your business plan and summarize the things you learned, indicating how this will help your business compete.
