Small Business Blog

While there are many resources available on how to write a marketing plan, few of them offer practical, straightforward instructions. Some are too complex and off-putting, and others are simply too vague to be useful. Most small business owners and strategists are too short on time to decode lengthy explanations or figure out how to apply boilerplate formulas to their situations. What follows here is a step-by-step plan that will help you organize your ideas and information in the shortest amount of time possible. The information provided is designed specifically for small, emerging businesses and owners who are new to marketing plan development.

The caveat is this: the more effort you put into to analyzing the information that creates your marketing plan, the more useful it will be to you. Consider your plan a work-in-process, and be open to making adjustments as new information about your competitive situation becomes available. (continue reading…)

Before you sit down and begin working on your marketing plan, you already have an idea of what your objectives are: Generally, you want your sales and profitability to grow at least as fast as your industry is growing. To get the most out of your company and its products or services, you’ll have to create a list of objectives that is specific and defensible. (continue reading…)

Benchmarks are the standards set in a given category. As applied to business planning, benchmarking is the process of finding out which company sets the standard in a certain metric or category, what that standard is and how that standard is achieved. It can be more concisely defined as the process of studying, defining and understanding ‘best practices’ in the industry. By looking at what the competition does well, business owners and managers can identify areas where they can improve their own businesses and formulate realistic strategies to implement those improvements. (continue reading…)