Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

1. Perform a SWOT Analysis

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     Determine your company's strengths. Strengths are things your company does well or positive traits about your organization. Convenient store locations and a knowledgeable sales staff are strengths.

   • 2

     Determine your company's weaknesses. Weaknesses are things your company does poorly and may include other deficiencies. A lousy website, a bad reputation and unfriendly sales staff are examples of weaknesses.

   • 3

     Identify opportunities. Opportunities are social or financial trends happening outside the company that could prove to be beneficial. For example high unemployment rates create opportunities for resume writers. View your weaknesses as opportunities for improvement.

   • 4

     Identify threats. Threats are outside trends affecting all competitors in the market. Growing unemployment rates threaten day care centers. Laid-off parents may not have the money to pay for services and they are available to tend to children themselves.

   Develop a Detailed Plan

   • 1

     Identify potentially lucrative customers. Target individuals that will be attracted to your strengths while you downplay weaknesses. Be specific. Large and broad target groups are harder to reach effectively. Define your market using any appropriate traits. Income, stage of life, ethnicity and personality traits are common identifiers.

   • 2

     Research your target market. Learn what magazines they read, what they do in their spare time, where they live and what they like. Find out how many individuals are in your target market. Ensure the group is large enough to be profitable and small enough to reach easily.

   • 3

     Develop an advertising campaign to reach your target. Use your research to select cost-effective marketing channels. Consider specialty publications, billboards, internet marketing, e-mail blasts, direct mailers, radio and television.

   • 4

     Create a marketing time line. Decide when to run ads and conduct other promotion efforts so your marketing campaign has the most impact.

   • 5

     Create an evaluation system for your plan. This ensures you don't waste time, effort and money on tactics that do not work. Response rates, resulting sales and returning customer rates are all examples of evaluation standards.

   • 6

     Enrich your plan with other sales techniques. Consider incentive programs for your sales staff, point-of-purchase demonstrations, pricing strategies and loyalty programs.

   • 7

     Modify your plan. Adjust your sales and marketing plan constantly. Always be open to developing new strategies and eliminating plan elements that fall flat.

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Thanks for this great information. This really helps...

 

Abhijit.........

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A good marketing strategy is really required for marketing of any product or services in the market. First of all marketer must check the competition and according to that he should make any marketing plan. Compare your product facilities and services with other best competitors, and then focus more on the facilities which other competitors don’t provide.

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Great insights, Bytrade! Particularly, for item number 5, "Create an evaluation system for your plan." This would obviously require an expert's advise on how to come up with an evaluation system that works, but initially, you as a business planner, have to have a solid aim to what you want to be evaluated. It happens only too often that during evaluation, a lot of things get adjusted and could somehow be an overwhelming process.

I personally believe, that while you keep things fluid and open to adjustments, it would pay better if you control what you allow to influence your market plan.

 

Cheers,

Emma

 

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Emma Ames, Pepper Virtual Assistant, http://www.peppervirtualassistant.com/

Good analysis .

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A good plan always required a deep research and analysis. Your SWOT analysis is really helpful for you in making your good business plan. I like your point no 7. Space for modification should always be there in your plan as some points become visible after implementation of a plan, which require to be changed.  

 

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