Helping business grow with a business plan
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When helping a business grow, the best thing you can do is get an analysis of the business and how it functions. This will best help the company analyze, make a plan, and move forward with that plan. The parts that I found most important about the “The 10 Key Components of a Business Plan” article is the executive summary, company analysis, analysis of customers, competitors, and marketing, sales, and plan.
The most important step in a marketing plan for a business is an executive summary. So, what is an executive summary? According to Growthink, “The Executive Summary provides a succinct synopsis of the business plan, and highlights the key points raised within.” I think to have any successful plan you have to have a way to make sure that it’s summarized in such a fashion that’s it lays out the idea and points easily for everyone to understand and that’s what the executive summary does, it lays out the foundation of all the accumulated data.
The second part of the business plan I agree with is the company analysis. The company analysis tells you who the company is, what products their selling, and a general idea of where the company is, and what it’s achieved so far. It’s a snapshot of the company as a whole as well as its potential future. This is important for a company to have if they are starting a new product line or just evaluating their business altogether.
In any business, you want to know who your audience is especially when launching a new product or reevaluating a product line. This is where a customer analysis comes in. A customer analysis is a snapshot of who your customer base is and which of the products they’re responding to. Growthink says, “In this section, the company must convey the needs of its target customers. It must then show how its products and services satisfy these needs to an extent that the customer will pay for them.” It uses customer segments do this as well. What is the customer segment? A customer segment is groups of people such as moms, engaged couples, teens, etc. Choosing the right segment will allow the company to perform a test to see how their products do in that specific market.
When looking at your target audience, you also need to look at your competitors. This means doing a deep dive of what companies are doing something similar, are they excelling or failing? So, this is where competitor analysis comes in. Competitor analysis does just that, it looks at the strengths and weaknesses of your direct and indirect competitors. Then compare those to the company, their services, and how they are doing with their customers.
Last, but not least would be based on all of the data accumulated and that would be the marketing plan to move forward. The marketing plan allows you to take the current data gathered and make a plan on how a product would be sold. This section in the business plan allows for a strategy for penetrating the target markets. This is very important as once you’ve gathered the necessary data, you need to put it to action with a plan and follow that plan so you’re successful. This will ensure all the components have come together to finalize the plan for a product launch.
Growthink has the right ideas when putting in a business plan together. To find out more great tips on how to write a successful business plan, check out the Growthink article here.