Sales and Marketing Plan

[Callsign]

Business marketing plan, is not needed for any start-up business. It is only need after you reach 250K turnaround yearly. Don't waste your sales time to create something that you may not use in 6 months.

[clarkeson]

thats good advice

[robert05]

Can't see how you can set an arbitary figure (250k) for all businesses? Besides which high turnover doesnt equate to profit or cash, all things written down in a business plan. So maybe that hoary old saying (fail to plan is to plan to fail) may come true, you could be in deep doo-doo before hitting some barrier to get yer business plan done. :-)

robert

[Brian Turner]

I've never had a business or marketing plan - but recently I've come to realise that if I had planned better in certain areas, and kept to a budget in these areas, I would have kept myself from purchasing decisions that lost me money.

[rtroxel]

I've never had a business or marketing plan

Really? How do you know when you've made a profit?

Anyway, here is how my current venture relates to your criteria:

1. What is my USP?

I don't really have one. I'm an investor. I use the Web to look for investment opportunities - mostly in businesses that I understand, like, well, Web technology.

2. Target Market
Who are your customers?

I don't have any. I've never been good dealing with clients.

3. Market Research

I read a lot of prospectuses (prospecti?) of publicly-traded companies. I also examine the services of various Web enterprises, but I examine them completely - their products, services, privacy policies, affiliate programs, etc.

4. Who are your competitors?

I don't have any. There are just other investors.

5. Advertising and promotion

For the most part, I don't advertise or promote. Spent a lot of money on Google last year to promote my site. I was hoping to attract other investors to share their knowledge (bad idea, probably). Also, I was hoping to make a few dollars from various affiliate programs, including Amazon.

These days I belong to several forums, and I try to learn from the various visitors there.

6. Marketing Tools

Don't really have any, except for the forums I belong to. For example, if you run a Google search on my name, Platinax pops up in the #7 spot. (Good work, Brian!) Rick Contrata's DevNIC appears in the #3 position. (Thanks, Rick.) Amazon appears in the #1 and #2 positions. (But they've cut they're commissions in half!)

[rtroxel]

I've never had a business or marketing plan

Actually, it looks like you have a plan. You're buying up forums and domain names in pursuit of building a community, which might result in some profitable marketing niches. Yes? Meanwhile, you're also an SEO consultant. At this point, you might start making some spreadsheets, with maybe 5-year projections, risk v. return, etc. In other words, you're spending x amount of time and money on maintaining forums for the next five years, so at what point will these efforts show results?

"Just my 2c."

[Brian Turner]

I think that's very much the gist of it - my plans as mental projections that I need to keep flexible - but the point I really need to start doing is precisely what you're stating - creating clear goals and targets to make a return on investment, rather than just playing by ear all the time.

[e-stonia]

Customer often doesn't know what they need. Especially when it comes to IT. So, you need to explain them what they need.

[IncrediBILL]

Sometimes you have to ignore all the business plan stuff as some markets simply have no unit of measure. Trust me on this as something I'm embarking on couldn't be measured at all and I employed a couple of people that specialize in the field.

If you're a bleeding edge leader, sometimes you just have to go with your gut, make it or break it, and take the risk, that's the sign of a true entrepreneur.

Otherwise, you're living by how others measure your potential for success which is in fact a formula for disaster.

Don't get me wrong, do your market research, but if certain people tell you it won't work and they aren't your target customer make sure you interview a sufficient amount of target customers before tossing in the towel or jumping in with both feet.

[acoach2]

Great post!

If you could only pick 2 of the 6 points as being the most important to work on, what would you choose. I'd pick 2 & 5

acoach2