When defining your business for the first time or when revisiting your business plan, try starting with the Marketing plan portion. You will find that the requirements for all the other aspects of your business plan will be more easily defined once the price, place, promotion, and products are completely understood by you.

Over the next few blog posts I will talk about the 5 ways to use your marketing requirements to build your business plan.

Tip #1 Know your market

• Who are they?
• What is important to them?
• What are their struggles and challenges?

Take the time to truly understand who they are, where they live, how old they are, what education they may have, etc. The more you know about them the easier it will be to communicate your message to them . This will also help you to understand where they are going to look for services like yours so you can define your marketing  and operational costs.

Knowing where to reach them will help with defining where you need to be located and how you will need to treat your clients as they come into your purchasing cycle. If you are a store front, it may be that you need a special brand to entice people to come in off the street and feel really comfortable being in your business. If it is a virtual business it may be that you need a website that has some very special programs to help serve your clients. Operations of these locations may require employees or a virtual assistant to interact with your clients and fill the hours that you cannot be on site.

Stay tuned for Tip #2 next week.