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Thursday, July 7, 2016

PalmGate’s Sample of a Business Plan



MARKETING PLAN







FOR


[ENTER YOUR BUSINESS NAME HERE]
[ENTER THE PERIOD IN WHICH THIS PLAN IS VALID]







[MONTH, YEAR]



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
[Complete your Executive Summary last, and, as the name implies, this section merely summarizes each of the other sections of your marketing plan. Your Executive Summary will be helpful in giving yourself and other readers (e.g., employees, financiers, investors, advisors, etc.) an overview of your plan.]
SECTION 1: SITUATION ANALYSIS
This introductory section contains an overview of your situation as it exists today. It is a description of where you are at the moment with respect to product offer, customer size, target markets, sales volumes, profitability, staff levels and other business resources, the nature of the general environment – economic, social, technological or political.
There are a number of forces within the environment to consider such as;
  • Market forces (economic, political, legal, technological forces – include in video) likely to affect your business.
  • A detailed competitor analysis
  • Consumer behaviour and product use patterns
  • Situation of your company - the product range, finances, processes, technology, costs, and personnel.
  • Sales policy, distribution channels used, and publicity and promotional activities
  • A description of your target market and how you intend to position your products for competitive advantage,
  • Details of buying patterns i.e.
o   Who buys?
o   Why do they buy?
o   When do they buy?
o   Where do they buy?
o   How do they buy?
o   How much do they buy?
o   How often do they buy? 

This section brings in all of your previous activity in market research and environmental scanning, segmentation, targeting and positioning. It should also keep in mind current achievements as far as brand value.

SWOT Analysis
After a description of your situation, draw a SWOT diagram showing your key strengths which you wish to consolidate, the weaknesses you wish to eliminate, the opportunities in the environment that you wish to take advantage of, and the threats that you must avoid or counter.
SECTION 2: MARKETING OBJECTIVES
This section explains where you want to go as a business. It spells out the marketing objectives that you want to achieve. The key is to make your goals realistic and measurable so that you can easily evaluate your performance at the end of a specified period.

A SMART objective would be: ‘We intend to increase our market share by 10% in the next 1 year in the Kenyan market’.  This kind of objective is SMART because it is:
·         Specific- growth is expected on the variable – market share in the Kenyan market
·         Measurable – the growth is expected to be 10%
·         Attainable – this is achievable with the resources available
·         Realistic – the target has been set knowing the status of the business environment – competition levels, spending patterns, etc.
·         Time-bound – this goal will be achieved by the end of the year.
It is also at this point that you may need to make a sales forecast of how much you hope to sell over a certain period of time. To assist you in this exercise, use the forecast spreadsheet available as a downloadable tool from the resources site.
SECTION 3: MARKETING STRATEGY
The marketing strategy section will make up the bulk of your plan, because you need to give an overview of your marketing strategies and explain each of the corresponding tactics you'll employ to execute them.
This section of your marketing plan is based mainly on the marketing mix elements - 
Product strategy: List your products here and for each, the Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Having a strong unique selling proposition (USP) is of critical importance as it distinguishes your company from competitors.
Pricing strategy: In this section of your marketing plan, explain pricing strategy - will you sell your product at the same price as competitors, at a higher price than competitors or below the price of your competitors? Whichever option you choose, you must justify why. The pricing strategy needs to answer some key questions including:
·         What is the cost of your product or service? Make sure you include all your fixed and variable costs when you're calculating this; the cost of labor and materials are obvious, but you may also need to include freight costs, administrative costs, and/or selling costs, for example.
·         How does the pricing of your product or service compare to the market price of similar products or services?
·         Explain how the pricing of your product or service is competitive. For instance, if the price you plan to charge is lower, why are you able to do this? If it's higher, why would your customer be willing to pay more?
What kind of ROI (Return On Investment) are you expecting with this pricing strategy, and within what time frame?
Distribution strategy: Your distribution section details how customers will buy from you. For example, will customers purchase directly from you on your website? Will they buy from distributors or other retailers? Think through different ways in which you might be able to reach customers and document them in this section of your marketing plan.
Therefore at this point, outline all the different companies, people and/or technologies that will be involved in the process of getting your product or service to your customer.
Other areas you may need to address here are:
·         What are the costs associated with distribution?
·         What are the delivery terms?
·         What methods of payment will customers be able to use?
·         What credit terms will customers be offered? If you will offer discounts for early payment or impose penalties for late payment, they should be mentioned in this part of your marketing plan.
·         What types of salespeople will be involved (commissioned salespeople, product demonstrators, telephone solicitors, etc.)?Describe your expectations of these salespeople and how sales effectiveness will be measured.
·         Describe the incentives salespeople will be offered to encourage their achievements (such as getting new accounts, the most orders, etc.).
Process Strategy
Process strategy represents the buying experience the customer gets when they buy your product or service. For example, the way a meal is prepared, presented and served in a restaurant and how long all this takes may leave a customer quite delighted with the experience at the restaurant or unhappy. Or the reaction of a firm to a complaint by their customer may leave the customer either more frustrated or quite relieved that his problem has been resolved quickly and well. A poor process therefore can undermine the other elements of the marketing mix.
With respect to CafĂ© Paradise’s objective, since they are in the service industry, they must work out their process chart to show the process of delivering meals to corporate clients. For instance-the following process could be adopted:
·         By 10.00 am, each day each corporate staff who wishes to be served with a meal at lunch time, is given a slip to tick their preferred meal as per the menu for the day 
·         The slips are picked by 11.00am and delivered to the restaurant’s outside catering manager.
·         The meals are ready by 11.30am, and packing of the orders commences. Meals are packed using special material to preserve the meals well.
·         Pre-ordered for meals are then delivered to the clients by 1.00pm.
Promotion strategy 
The promotions section is one of the most important sections of your marketing plan and details how you will reach and communicate with your customers.
There are numerous promotional tactics, such as television/newspaper/radio ads, sales promotions, trade show marketing, press releases, online advertising, and event marketing.
In this section of your marketing plan, consider each of these alternatives and decide which ones will most effectively allow you to reach your target customers.
Other promotional activities to think about are:
·         Your Offers: Offers are special deals you put together to secure more new customers and drive past customers back to you. Offers may include free trials, money-back guarantees, packages (e.g., combining different products and/or services) and discount offers. Such activities, spread out throughout the year will generally cause your customer base to grow more rapidly.
·         Marketing Materials: Your marketing materials are the collateral you use to promote your business to current and prospective customers. Among others, they include your website, print brochures, business cards, and catalogs. Identify which marketing materials you have completed and which you need created or re-done in this section of your plan.
·         Online Marketing: Like it or not, most customers go online these days to find and/or review new products and/or services to purchase. As such, having the right online marketing strategy can help you secure new customers and gain competitive advantage.
The four key components to your online marketing strategy are as follows:
1.       Keyword Strategy: identify what keywords you would like to optimize your website for.
2.       Search Engine Optimization Strategy: document updates you will make to your website so it shows up more prominently for your top keywords.
3.       Paid Online Advertising Strategy: write down the online advertising programs you will use to reach target customers.
4.       Social Media Strategy: document how you will use social media websites to attract customers.
For a successful digital marketing strategy, you need to first define your objectives. Look at a target audience and identify if they can be reached through any digital platforms. Consider;
·         What sites would they visit online?
·         What do they do online? Do they buy online?
·         What tools do they use? Email? Social media?
·         So, how will you reach them on these digital platforms?

Once you’ve identified your audience and platforms, you’ll need to set the resources needed for digital campaigns – including employee skills, time and budget for any paid campaigns. When it comes to digital marketing, content is critical - what you say and how it’s said – think about building a content plan with key messages and timelines.

There are many tools online to help you implement your strategy including social media marketing, mobile messaging platforms, email systems or paid online advertising.
Whichever tool you use will need to be laid out in your action plan to lay out key tactics, people, budget, timelines and expected outcomes.
·         Referral Strategy: A strong customer referral program could transform your success. For example, if every one of your customers referred one new customer, your customer base would constantly grow. However, rarely will you get such growth unless you have a formalized referral strategy. For example, you need to determine when you will ask customers for referrals, anything you will give them as a reward, etc. Think through the best referral strategy for your business and document it here.
·         Retention Strategy: Too many organizations spend too much time and energy trying to secure new customers rather than investing in getting existing customers to buy more often. By using retention strategies such as sending a monthly newsletter to your key customers or using a customer loyalty program, you can increase revenues and profits by getting customers to purchase from you more frequently over time. Identify and document ways you can better retain customers here.
SECTION 4: ACTION PLAN – IMPLEMENTATION
In this section of your plan, you show the tasks or tactical actions that will be used to achieve your set objectives and strategies but in shorter periods of time.

These are more specific tasks carried out on a daily or weekly or monthly basis which will eventually get the main objectives to be realized. The questions that get covered in this section of your marketing plan therefore are:
  • What activities will be required in order to implement each strategy?
  • Who will be responsible for which activity?
  • What should each person do specifically?
  • When should they do it?
  • How should they do it?
  • What are the resources available?

Use an implementation schedule to capture this information. A sample is available as a downloadable tool from the resources site.
SECTION 5: EVALUATION OF PERFORMANCE AND CONTROL
This is the last part of your marketing plan in which you demonstrate how you will monitor the performance of the marketing activities.  Three areas you need to address here are:
1.   Establish the performance standards: it involves setting of targets or standards on what is to be        achieved.
2.   Evaluating actual performance: records of actual performance are compared with standards set         to determine whether and how much of a discrepancy exists – Negative discrepancy; Positive               discrepancy; or No discrepancy.
3.   Take corrective action: what course of action will you take in case of a Negative discrepancy;                Positive discrepancy; no discrepancy?

APPENDICES

In this section, put any supporting documents that a reader may be interested in scrutinizing further. Usually, a detailed sales forecast and budget of all the activities to be carried out will be found here.

You may also put here any drawings of products, packages etc. that may be of interest to the reader.












SKELETAL SAMPLE


PalmGate Global Ventures Inc



July 2016




Contents
A. Executive Summary
B. Summary of Background
C. Business Environment
D. Business Background
E. Operations
F. Go to Market Plan
G. Investment
H. Cash Flow Forecast












A. Executive Summary
We are an IT solutions provider based in Isuokporo, Nigeria with a well-established local and national client base. We deliver consultancy, bespoke IT solutions, and skills transfer projects, and have a range of e-learning courses available.
To support our national and international expansion ambitions we are looking to make significant investment in the company infrastructure, skills knowledge and staff resources. This will be enable us to develop our e-learning delivery capabilities, and access new national and international markets.
The expansion project will involve us in working closely with specialist international sales, marketing and e-learning software consultants to undertake comprehensive market research and build successful commercial relationships with distributors and partners. We will also invest in marketing activity in new markets.
Funding is sought principally to provide working capital for this national and international expansion project.

B. Summary of Background

PGV was established in 2008 as an IT solutions provider. We have developed our client base, winning some national contracts, and established our consultancy arm in 2010.

We began our skills transfer projects at the request of clients, who wanted their staff to receive training in the deployment of systems we had installed. These courses were subsequently developed into e-learning content.

We have achieved Investors in People status, are accredited by the Institution of Electronics and are Microsoft Partners.

Clients have included The South of England Development Agency, the Department for Work and Pensions, and XYZ International.


C. Business Environment
We currently have six ongoing IT solutions contracts with local clients, and two with national clients. These are all renewable annual contracts, with a minimum of six months left to run. We have a further two similar contracts under negotiation.
There are two skills transfer projects being delivered now, with a further two in development.
All of the courses we develop for clients are subsequently re-developed for e-learning. We have a portfolio of ten now, with a further two in development.
We are at an advanced stage of negotiation with several potential clients in other African countries and the Middle East.
D. Business Background
As can be seen from the section C above, we have several new initiatives which will shortly add to our existing income streams

Market SWOT Analysis

Strengths
·         In –house technical expertise to develop new products as technologies evolve.
·         Thorough knowledge of the IT industry, an understanding of emerging technologies, and an appreciation of the IT skills required by business. 
·         We have a strong and expanding client base;-
Six local clients, two national clients, Contracts under negotiation, Potential international expansion
·         Skills transfer capabilities.
·         E-learning course portfolio.

Weaknesses
·         We do not have the resources to carry out pre-sales research to identify suitable markets
·         We do not have adequate sales and marketing resources
·         We do not have adequate working capital to develop and expand the business.

Opportunities
·         We have many years of technical and management expertise, enabling us to be at the forefront of new technical developments.
·         New development is a feature of our business strategy
·         We have established routes to international markets 

Threats
·         We need to move quickly and innovate continually to keep abreast of competitors
·         We have to redevelop our e-learning content to be current with new systems


E. Operations
We currently have on staff;-
·         A technical Director who works with clients on all technical aspects of their projects
·         A commercial Director who manages all Commercial and Financial aspects of the company and seeks New Business opportunities.
·         A tutor who delivers skills transfer projects and develops e-learning content.
·         A  team of network technicians
·         We are actively seeking a Sales and Marketing manager

Key existing staff
Technical director Ezeh Chima MCSE, COMPTIA, ten years networking experience.
Commercial Director Mary Egenonu, BA Hons , twelve years commercial experience with a major national company .

F. Go to Market Plan
We have developed a range of off the shelf products which enable us to offer a comprehensive support package to clients.

We have redeveloped our client courses as e-learning courses and are in negotiation with a portal which will enable wider distribution of them.

We are working with an international sales partner who has made introductions to several potential overseas partners.

We are working with the International Trade and Investment Department to identify target markets.

Many of our products are ready for launch into international markets.

We are actively seeking Sales representation, both in the UK and in export markets. 


G. Investment
Initial finance was injected into the company by each of the directors. Ezeh Chima injected £50k, Mary Egenonu £30K. In addition there is a government backed loan for 5 years which now stands at £25K, and a bank overdraft of £50K

Funding of £40K is sought for a business development project, designed to increase demand for our off –the- shelf support packages and e-learning content developed by PGV Ltd.

The investment will be used for;-
UK based research into international markets by an agency (£10K)
To cover initial employment cost of a sales representative, who will quickly bring in revenue to support the cost (£10K)
To cover employment cost of an e-learning content developer, whose work will become self-funding as it is sold (£10K).
And to access appropriate legal and financial advice. (£10K)

Timescale
Subject to availability of funding activity will commence as follows  
UK based agency research August 2016
Sales representative   September 2016
Content developer September 2016
Legal and financial advice October 2016

H. Cash Flow Forecast
See separate document…