You have a business plan to write - where do you start? The marketing plan is arguably the first thing any Venture Capitalist or investor will read. Even if you are not planning on raising capital, you will need a marketing plan to act as a guidebook while navigating the tough competitive waters.
The first thing to develop for any marketing plan is an understanding of market size. If you are lucky enough to be able to afford a published report, you can pull this data directly from its pages. There are many analysts available, with data-rich reports. Before you purchase one, however, I suggest comparing past year projections made by the analyst with actuals. Some analysts in the high tech fields have been as much as 300% off!!
Recommended analysts include the Del Oro group for any high tech networking markets (the most accurate), Frost and Sullivan for an extensive list of markets, Ovum, Gartner/Dataquest, RHK for telecommunications,The Home Builders Association for real-estate and building, and Cahners/In-Stat for consumer electronics.
If you are not able to afford the often high prices associated with these reports, I suggest "fishing" through the free information available on the web. I usually start with the press releases issued by the analysts, that give "teaser" data. Next, I make a thorough search of all trade magazines and check the articles and editorials that discuss the market. I map out the data points I have, and create a credible model.
The 10-k reports and financial data of the market leading companies in your space are also great sources of information. If you know a company has 50% market share and their reporting shows that they sold 10M widgets for the year, then the total available market (abbreviated as TAM) is 20M widgets.
Create a spreadsheet of your data points, and examine each to make sure it makes sense. Sometimes linear regression analysis for the future projects is a good idea.
You should show the prior two years actual data, plus at least five years of projection data.
Be sure to segment your markets, and show numbers for each segment. For instance, if you are an ice cream company, it would make sense to size the market for each of these segments; sherbert, low fat ice cream, premium or gourmet ice cream, and ice cream products such as popsicles and fudge bars.
Present this data in a easy to read format. When showing market share, a simple pie chart is the best approach. Bar charts work very well when presenting the actual numbers and forecast data.
Don't just present this data, include justifications for any trends you see and point out any seasonality to your data. If sales always spike around Christmas time, mention this fact.
If the aging baby boomer market is expected to drive demand for your product, state that and explain why.
A good subheading for this section is Market Drivers - here you can include all these explanations and any data you can find to justify the explanations.
Write and rewrite these pages until you can find no holes in your analysis, and no unanswered questions.
Stay tuned for part two of writing your marketing plan........... coming soon.
