What is a Business Plan
A business plan is a formal written document containing the goals of a business, the methods for attaining those goals, and the time-frame for the achievement of the goals. It also describes the nature of the business, background information on the organisation, the organisation's financial projections, and the strategies it intends to implement to achieve the stated targets. In its entirety, this document serves as a road-map (a plan) that provides direction to the business.
A business Plan is a must
A written business plan is often required by financial institution to obtain a bank loan or other kind of financing such grant body. Existent templates and guides, such as the ones offered by Girlfridayz online store can be used to facilitate producing a business plan.
Audience
Business plans may be internally or externally focused. Externally-focused plans draft goals that are important to outside stakeholders, particularly financial stakeholders. These plans typically have detailed information about the organisation or the team making effort to reach its goals.
For private businesses, external stakeholders include investors and customers, for non-profits businesses, external stakeholders refer to donors and clients, for government agencies, external stakeholders are the tax-payers, higher-level government agencies, and international lending bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, various economic agencies of the United Kingdom, and online banks.
Internally-focused business plans target intermediate goals required to reach the external goals. They may cover the development of a new product, a new service, a new IT system, a restructuring of finance, the refurbishing of a factory or a restructuring of the organisation. Our Business Plan at Girlfridayz is what you call internally-focus.
An internally-focused business plan is often developed in conjunction with a balanced sheet or a list of critical success factors. This allows the success of the plan to be measured using non-financial measures.
Business plans that identify and target internal goals, but provide only general guidance on how they will be met are called strategic plans.
Operational plans describe the goals of an internal organisation, working group or department. Project plans, sometimes known as project frameworks, describe the goals of a particular project. They may also address the project's place within the organisation's larger strategic goals.
Content
Business plans are decision-making tools. The content and format of the business plan are determined by the goals and audience. For example, a business plan for a non-profit might discuss the fit between the business plan and the organisation's mission.
Banks are quite concerned about defaults, so a business plan for a bank loan will build a convincing case for the organisation's ability to repay the loan. Venture capitalists are primarily concerned about initial investment, feasibility, and exit valuation. A business plan for a project requiring equity financing will need to explain why current resources, upcoming growth opportunities, and sustainable competitive advantage will lead to a high exit valuation.
Preparing a business plan draws on a wide range of knowledge from many different business disciplines: finance, human resource management, intellectual property management, supply chain management, operations management, and marketing, among others. It can be helpful to view the business plan as a collection of sub-plans, one for each of the main business disciplines.
A wise person said good business plan can help to make a good business credible, understandable, and attractive to someone who is unfamiliar with the business. Writing a good business plan can't guarantee success, but it can go a long way toward reducing the odds of failure.
Presentation
The format of a business plan depends on its presentation context. It is common for businesses, especially start-ups, to have three or four formats for the same business plan.
An elevator pitch is a short summary of the plan's executive summary. This is often used as a teaser to awaken the interest of potential investors, customers, or strategic partners. It is called an elevator pitch as it is supposed to be content that can be explained to someone else quickly in an elevator pitch. The elevator pitch should be between 30 and 60 seconds.
A pitch deck is a slide show and oral presentation that is meant to trigger discussion and interest potential investors in reading the written presentation. The content of the presentation is usually limited to the executive summary and a few key graphs showing financial trends and key decision-making benchmarks. If a new product is being proposed and time permits, a demonstration of the product may be included.
A written presentation for external stakeholders is a detailed, well written, and pleasingly formatted plan targeted at external stakeholders.
An internal operational plan is a detailed plan describing planning details that are needed by management but may not be of interest to external stakeholders. Such plans have a somewhat higher degree of candour and informality than the version targeted at external stakeholders and others.
Start up business Plan - For Startup business
Typical questions addressed by a business plan for a start-up Business
What problem does the company's product or service solve? What niche will it fill?
What is the company's solution to the problem?
Who are the company's customers, and how will the company market and sell its products to them?
What is the size of the market for this solution?
What is the business model for the business (how will it make money)?
Who are the competitors and how will the company maintain a competitive advantage?
How does the company plan to manage its operations as it grows?
Who will run the company and what makes them qualified to do so?
What are the risks and threats confronting the business, and what can be done to mitigate them?
What are the company's capital and resource requirements?
What are the company's historical and projected financial statements?
These are just a few question you should answer. Our business Plan template plus guide can help you with these questions and more information such legal implication, environmental implication, break even analysis, pricing strategy, marketing strategy, income forecast and more.
The typical structure of a business can be found in our business plan template and more
Typical structure for a business plan for a start-up business
cover page and table of contents
executive summary
mission statement
business description
business environment analysis
SWOT analysis
industry background
competitor analysis
market analysis
marketing plan
operations plan
management summary
financial plan
achievements and milestones
What is a Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is a comprehensive document or blueprint that outlines the advertising and marketing efforts for the coming year. It describes business activities involved in accomplishing specific marketing objectives within a set time frame.
Content
A marketing plan includes a description of the current marketing position of a business, a discussion of the target market and a description of the marketing mix that a business will use to achieve their marketing goals.
A marketing plan has a formal structure, but can be used as a formal or informal document which makes it very flexible. It contains some historical data, future predictions, and methods or strategies to achieve the marketing objectives.
Marketing plans start with the identification of customer needs through a market research and how the business can satisfy these needs while generating an acceptable return. This includes processes such as market situation analysis, action programs, budgets, sales forecasts, strategies and projected financial statements.
A marketing plan can also be described as a technique that helps a business to decide on the best use of its resources to achieve corporate objectives. It can also contain a full analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a company, its organization and its products.
The marketing plan shows the step or actions that will be utilised in order to achieve the plan goals. For example, a marketing plan may include a strategy to increase the business's market share by fifteen percent.
The marketing plan would then outline the objectives that need to be achieved in order to reach the fifteen percent increase in the business market share. The marketing plan can be used to describe the methods of applying a company's marketing resources to fulfil marketing objectives.
Marketing planning segments the markets, identifies the market position, forecast the market size, and plans a viable market share within each market segment. Marketing planning can also be used to prepare a detailed case for introducing a new product, revamping current marketing strategies for an existing product or put together a company marketing plan to be included in the company corporate or business plan.
Importance of a marketing plan
A marketing plan should be based on where a company needs to be at some point in the future. These are some of the most important things that companies need when developing a marketing plan:
Market research: Gathering and classifying data about the market the organisation is currently in. Examining the market dynamics, patterns, customers, and the current sales volume for the industry as a whole.
Competition: The marketing plan should identify the organisation's competition. The plan should describe how the organisation competitive advantage beat its competition and what it will do to become a market leader.
Market plan strategies: Developing the marketing and promotion strategies that the organisation will use. Such strategies may include advertising, direct marketing, training programs, trade shows, website, etc.
Marketing plan budget: Strategies identified in the marketing plan should be within the budget. Top managers need to revise what they hope to accomplish with the marketing plan, review their current financial situation, and then allocate funding for the marketing plan.
Marketing goals: The marketing plan should include attainable marketing goals. For example, one goal might be to increase the current client base by 100 over a three-month period.
Marketing Mix: The marketing plan should evaluate the appropriate marketing mix. This includes setting up the marketing 4 P's the product, price, place, and promotion. These four elements are modified until the best combination have been found that will cater the needs of the product's customer that would result to the maximum profitability of the company.
Monitoring of the marketing plan results: The marketing plan should include the process of analysing the current position of the organisation. The organisation needs to identify the strategies that are working and those that are not working.
Purpose
One of the main purposes of developing a marketing plan is to set the company on a specific path in marketing. The marketing goals normally aligns itself to the broader company objectives. For example, a new company looking to grow their business will generally have a marketing plan that emphasizes strategies to increase their customer base.
Acquiring marketing share, increasing customer awareness, and building a favourable business image are some of the objectives that can be related to marketing planning.
The marketing plan helps layout the necessary budget and resources needed to achieve the goals stated in the marketing plan. The marketing plan shows what the company is intended to accomplish within the budget and make it possible for company executives to assess potential return on the investment of marketing Pound.
Different aspects of the marketing plan relate to accountability. The marketing plan is a general responsibility from company leaders and the marketing staff to take the company in a specific direction.
After the strategies are laid out and the tasks are developed, each task is assigned to a person or a team for implementation. The assigned roles allows companies to keep track of their milestones and communicate with the teams during the implementation process.
Having a marketing plan helps company leaders to develop and keep an eye on the expectations for their functional areas. For example, if a company's marketing plan goal is to increase sales growth then the company leaders may have to increase their sales staff in stores to help generate more sales.
The marketing plan offers a unique opportunity for a productive discussion between employees and leaders of an organisation. It provides good communication within the company. The marketing plan allows the marketing team to examine their past decisions and understand their results in order to better prepare for the future. It also lets the marketing team to observe and study the environment that they are operating in.
Before completing your Business and Marketing Plan which are a must for any businesses you need to complete a content strategy and we have what we call the holy grail in our online store. Our marketing content strategy template the 5W1H (Who, What, Why, Where, When and How)
The content strategy help you structure your business idea, your business plan and marketing plan it is your companion for greater structure business planning and business and marketing goals setting to achieve. It is our best seller as well as our business and marketing plan templates + guides and you cannot get more in-depth templates anywhere else than Girlfridayz online store. If you are serious about your business and want to increase your revenue or acquire funding these are the templates for you.
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