Know-How Exchange : Customer Behavior

In general, I always start a marketing or business plan by sticking an outline containing the main subjects as headings in a Word file and then work on filling in the blanks. Here is a decent outline for a marketing plan - https://www.quickmba.com/marketing/plan/

You likely will find that some (if not most) of the basic data you would want exists in the heads of the people within the company. Most people who do start-ups have a general feel for the market before trying to start up a business.

Some you will not have, so you will need to work at finding or figuring it out.

Samples from other businesses will only show you what THEY did, not what you should do. The hard part of writing a marketing plan is NOT the mechanical "writing" part, but the thinking part.

So start with a SWOT analysis: identify your strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats facing the business. Consider the competition and include them in the SWOT analysis.

Then hone in on your primary target audience. Who are the people who will be most likely to buy from you? What are they doing now? What unmet needs do they have? How are you going to reach them (so they know you exist)? What are their core values, attitudes, current habits and practices? What sites do they visit? Where do they live? Etc.

Once you have these elements in place, develop your Positioning Statement. How do you want them to think about you? What place in their mind do you want to occupy?

And then, when you have the Positioning Statement clearly articulated and agreed by everyone in the business, you can begin to lay out the strategic marketing plan. It will cover such items as Naming, Product Line, Pricing, Packaging, Advertising, Promotion, Publicity, Sales/Distribution, etc.

Then you expand the strategic marketing plan into an operational plan and put some numbers against what you plan to do. You'll probably have to do this in an iterative fashion so you can adjust to make good business sense and still accomplish some reasonable objectives.

Hope this helps. If you need more, there are several experts here on the Know-How Exchange who have created dozens/hundreds of marketing plans. Most of them would probably be interested in a project to create one for you too. (It's a major undertaking if you do it right. And if you don't do it right, why bother at all?)

The final product doesn't need to be a big thick book with lots of tables and graphs. It just needs to explain what you're going to do to generate awareness (and conversions), what it will cost, and what the value will be. The problem is that there are so many things to consider to make that happen.

Your first step should be to carefully look at the financials so that you know where your revenue will come from. Then, tailor your marketing strategy and business plan to recognize where the maximize revenue will come from and where the opportunities realistically are. The potential revenue streams should drive the marketing strategy.

Re: the comments from chocolateincluded

The basic point is backward. The revenue streams will most likely come from the markets you target with your marketing strategy.

If you only market in France, for example, it's unlikely you'll generate much revenue from Australia. And if you market mostly to teens, its unlikely you'll generate much revenue from seniors. Etc.

If you already have a business and can identify the main sources of revenue, it usually makes sense to skew marketing efforts toward the segments that comprise the bulk of your revenue. But if you are starting a business and/or don't know where the revenue is coming from, then it's up to you to market to the audience you believe will be most profitable for you. (You may want to do some market research to identify who that audience is, rather than taking a chance, guessing incorrectly and pouring a lot of resources into a dry hole.)