Hosting Boot Camp - Recipe for Building Your Marketing Plan! #1

Building a marketing plan is like baking a cake, if you don’t have a good recipe more likely than not you will fall flat on your face. So lets look at the recipe for making that perfect cake, or in your case that business plan that will lead you to success.

Brian McDonald
Owner McDees-Specialties.com
Director of Member Support, iGrOOps.com
Director Client Services, GreenTreeHosting.com

First article in a series.

What are you baking? (What is your product or service?)

Before you start to bake you must decide what you are going to bake, well in business it is no different. You must define what business you are in; many a business has failed because they could not define what product or service they were offering to the market place. Here are a few questions to answer as you prepare your recipe for success!

Are you marketing a product or service?
What is that product or service?
What area are you offering that product or service to? (Define your market place.)
What is your price structure?
How will you be advertising you product or service?
What is your target audience for your product or service?
How tough is the competition?
Does anyone else offer the product or service in your area?
If yes are they successful?
What media are they using to advertise?
What is their price structure?
What audience are they targeting with their advertising?

Who wants cake? (What is the demand for your product or service?)

Mary Antoinette said “Let them eat cake”, but what the people of France wanted was bread, and meat. Talk about a marketing plan failure, she lost her head over it.

Today you might not lose your head but you can loose all you have invested in your business if the product or service you are offering is not wanted. Is the demand for your product or service big enough to warrant the costs of start-up, market research, development, design, packaging, marketing, production and delivery? You have to sit down and be realistic about all of your costs and compare them to the projected demand for your product or service. Do not be over optimistic on demand and do not low ball your costs, be realistic, even a little conservative, in the long run you will be better off.

Are your projected sales enough to offset costs?
Can you expand your market area, or customer demand?
Are there possible cross selling possibilities, can you affiliate with other businesses or products? What does your crystal ball tell you about your target market, will it grow, diminish or remain stable?

Develop the Plan, Follow the Plan and PLAN TO SUCCEED!

Thank you
Brian McDonald
Owner McDees-Specialties.com
Director of Member Support, iGrOOps.com
Director Client Services, GreenTreeHosting.com