An integral part of the process of starting a business is preparing a Marketing Plan. Whether the business will provide a service or sell a product, it will need customers in some form. Who those customers are, how they will be identified and located, and how they will be attracted to the business are crucial to the success of any small business. Unfortunately, it is also one part of a business start-up that is given less than its due in terms of time and effort spent to fully investigate the possibilities. In this chapter, a Business Marketing Worksheet is provided to assist you in thinking about your busi¬ness in terms of who the customers may be and how to reach them. In many ways, looking honestly at who your customers may be and how to attract them may be the most crucial part of starting your business, for if your understanding of this issue is ill-defined or unclear, your business will have a difficult time succeeding
In order to create your written Marketing Plan, simply follow the same process that you used in creating your Business Plan. Take the answers that you have supplied on the following worksheet and edit them into a narrative for each of the four sections of the worksheet:
- Target Market Analysis
- Competitive Analysis
- Sales and Pricing Analysis
- Marketing Strategy
By following this process, you should be able to create a clear and straightforward description of your own business’s marketing objectives and methods.
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