The Beginning Is...The Business Plan
The Beginning Is...The Business Plan. A business plan is crucial to business success. The business summary should give a brief description of the entire business and comprise: objectives/goals and a detailed marketing plan to include the target market, the competition, online advertising, pricing, shipping/delivery and payment methods.
The Beginning Is...The Business Plan
You're fidgety and excited and so you should be! You have just got a fantastic idea for a profitable internet business. It is, perhaps, an original idea that has not been marketed online before. You may have come up with a new twist on the run-of-the mill stuff out there on the world wide web.
Whatever it is that has influenced you to start your Online Business, it is vital that you make a sound business plan before beginning. There is little room for fits and starts and trial and errors if you really want to succeed on the Internet - competition is much too fierce here. There are some basic things that should be included in your business plan.
The business summary is an integral part of the overall business plan and should start with a brief description of the entire business. After this, list the objectives or the goals that you want to accomplish through the business.
Next, and perhaps most importantly, you should develop your marketing plan. The marketing plan should address all the specifics of the business.
When developing the marketing strategy, you should consider the following:
1.The TARGET MARKET.
This is the customers that you expect to see visiting your site. For example, will your product appeal more to college students or to those who have retired?
2. The COMPETITION for your product.
Choose a product that will be seen as unique and useful. Visit sites that offer the same or similar products. Find out the cost, and how these products are being marketed. Research the pros and cons of these business methods and try to improve your product based on these flaws of your competitors.
3. The various methods for ADVERTISING ONLINE.
Do research on search engines and learn how they work as each one is different. Make sure that you learn how to submit your site to search engines. Be prepared to allocate a small amount of money on advertising; the profits gained from the advertisements will make your investment worth it.
4. Think about PRICING.
Again, look at the competition and see what similar products are selling for. Pricing can play a significant role in the success of your product. Selling a product well below the average market price may lead customers to think that there may be a problem with the product, or that it is inferior in quality. On the other hand, pricing items too high could also deter customers from purchasing.
5. Determine the SHIPPING METHOD.
Make sure that you know how products will be shipped so that shipping details are clearly posted on your website. When shipping things of great value, you should consider providing shipping insurance. Consider also shipping outside the country that you live in.
6. The different METHODS OF PAYMENT to accept.
If your business does not accept credit cards, you should be prepared to give up half, if not more, of your sales. Should you decide to accept credit cards, you can choose to use a Merchant Account or a third party credit card processing center. Both will help you get started; the third party processing center will handle all of the business so you don’t have to. Decide which you will use. It is essential to have a secure server when taking credit cards. You must also decide if you will accept checks or money orders.
These few things will help jump-start your Online Business to become a great success and also provide you with peace of mind knowing that you have thoroughly thought about, and planned for, the opening of your online business.
How To Write Killer Business Plans
Keep your eye on the Executive Summary. The first thing your potential funding audience needs to be reading is your executive summary. There is a saying in the film industry that no great script is written, only rewritten, and in a way that's how you need to treat your executive summary. It's the most essential part of your plan because it acts like a shop window to the plan inside, and it needs to draw the potential investor in.
The first thing your potential funding audience needs to be reading is your executive summary. There is a saying in the film industry that no great script is written, only rewritten, and in a way that's how you need to treat your executive summary. It's the most essential part of your plan because it acts like a shop window to the plan inside, and it needs to draw the potential investor in.
Why use 5 words when you can use 3? Why be vague when you can be direct? It's got to punch above its weight class and have impact, so don't be afraid of rewriting it until you know it off by heart.
Start with a paragraph about each important part of the overall plan, and avoid repetition. In the very first paragraphs, spell out what it is that your business does, who does it, and why it does it, and how it makes money doing it, along with the funding requirements and repayment / exit plan.
The more exact you can be, the better. To Finish first, first you've got to Finish.
Knowing when to end your plan is almost an art form in itself, and whilst it's no bad idea to have a living breathing document for internal purposes, failure to bring things to a conclusion is a real turnoff for external investors. Over half think that business plans are too long, and therefore lose interest, or simply have other pressing engagements they must deal with before they'll ever get to the end of yours.
The flip side of this is also true: Too short and the investor will be given the impression that you haven't given this enough thought or done enough research, or worst case scenario will have insufficient information to form a sensible investment decision. Uncertainty is the seed of doubt, and doubt is definitely not a basis for risking investment dollars.
Like the tale of Goldilocks the plan needs to be "just right", and while each business will vary significantly, some where between 12 and 25 pages seems to be the plan porridge that gets eaten all up!
Demonstrate a Need not Greed.
Somewhere along the way you have to show that you've done some market research, and that you've thought about what this truly means in respect of your business.
The point here is to think about the niche or zone or subsector you operate in. For example the world car market is billions of dollars, but if you're setting up a hand car-wash in your local town then this is not the size of your market.
Think about relevance and about the customer's reality. While you might have the ambition for hand car-wash world domination, take the first step first, then the second. Show how the customer has a need or desire for your product. Don't assume the investor will know. Spell it out.
Explain how you will fulfil that need with your products and services. Cover how the customer will find you, or how you will get your message across to them. Discuss the frequency of that need. Some sales people call this the itch cycle. Every so often you've just got to scratch it.
For example, everyone who has a car has a need to have it serviced at least once a year. Everyone who likes ketchup will want some more when it runs out.
Factor these buy cycles into your research.