Formulating Your Business Plan

If you're stuck and not sure where to start then this article shows you ideas to begin and the format that your business plan needs to be in.

When you are starting at a blank piece of paper it's easy just to put the job to one side and forget about it already. This guide focuses on what's easy to prepare from the information that you already know and then format it in a standard template that you can use to refer to on a weekly or monthly basis.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The strengths and weaknesses are from your own internal analysis and are things that you have direct control over. So if you have a weakness you have indentified then it's up to you if you improve on that for example by getting a qualification in a certain area if you feel that lets your ability down.

Opportunities and threats are from the external environment and you have no direct control over but you can influence some of them especially in your own market place.

Market Research and Targeting

This can be a difficult area especially if your market focus is narrow or local as it's unlikely that any primary research has been undertaken or if it has it's unlikely to be in the public domain. You can obtain national research and trends by typing in "market research" + your industry into Google and see what's available. Some may be out of date but it will provide you with an idea of overall trends.

When deciding which customers you are going to target with your products or services try to be realistic. For example in web development don't say that every company needs a website because they don't. Perhaps it's just the local businesses that you can help out and you'll need to understand how these customers think. You can carry out your own questionnaire type research and go and stand in the street and ask passers by or visit local companies and ask them about the service you are about to offer.

Of course this is the wrong way around (as you should be satisfying a need you have already researched) but if it's a standard product or service that people are buying already and you are just introducing it into your market then that's fine. Just delve into peoples' minds on what they want and why they might just buy a service from you which includes the price they are willing to pay.

Marketing Your Business

Now you know your target market and their buying triggers you'll be able to think about how to "touch" them with promotional activities. Most brand type advertising is for awareness so that your company if front of mind when customers are thinking about the service you offer. But product or service based marketing is just specific to that one product.

You may begin advertising by offering an introductory offer or some form of promotion to get people interested when starting up. Once some people are purchasing your products you'll have a customer base that you can a) sell to again or sell different products to and b) get those customers talking to different prospects such as their friends and family. Using a member get member scheme can really help build a business and you are effectively employing your customers as a sales force.

The marketing mix is something to think about and is divided into product, price, promotion and place. The last is important for stores as everyone talks about location, location, location but the whole mix has to be right for customers to buy from you in the first place.

Action Plans

Once you have the basic information from the ideas you have generated through your analysis you should write down 6-8 actions you are going to take over the coming months. Those that do nothing and hope customers simply come to them will fail and it's those that take action that succeed well in any business.

With each action plan you should put down who is going to undertake each, when the deadline is and the monetary costs associated with each so that you can measure any return on investment.

Measurement

Most people only write a business plan once and then file it away somewhere and never look at it again but it's important to measure your success and failures so you can copy the successes time and again and look at why things might have not gone as planned. Really you should update your plan on a regular basis and add addtional actions and targets as your business grows.

You can get additional help from places like BusinessLink and the PrincessTrust - also every major bank has some form of business planning software to help formulate your ideas and get your plan constructed quickly and professionally.

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