How to Write a Marketing Plan for your Home Business

Many people include their marketing plan as a section in their home business plan. Really, though, marketing is important enough that it deserves a plan of its own, separate from the technical details of the business. Here’s what your marketing plan for your home business should include.

Your Home Business Marketing Strategy.

It might sound silly, but it’s good to get the core of your marketing plan written down, just so people can see what the rest of your plan is aiming at. Keeping your strategy in mind can also be good when you receive offers to place ads here, there and everywhere – you can ask yourself whether it really fits in with your overall strategy.

Identify Competitors for your Home Business.

You should have a list of everyone in your area who could be considered to be a competitor, followed by how you plan to differentiate yourself from them.

Advertising your Home Business.

Your marketing plan should contain a comprehensive list of all the advertising you plan to undertake. This includes a website, advertising in newspapers, leaflets, and so on. For each method of advertising you should list an estimated cost, and the number of customers you expect the advertising to bring in. This allows you to work out your ‘cost of acquisition’, which is how much you need to spend on advertising to bring in a customer. The market works out so that this will be more for higher-end customers, and less for lower-end ones.

Pricing policies for your home business.

Your marketing plan should also list all of the pricing policies you plan to have, as well as any special offers that you think will be good. That doesn’t mean that you can’t make up new offers later, but it’s still good to have some on the plan for the long-term.

An Example of a Home Business Marketing Plan.

The Catering & Cake Co.: Marketing Plan.

Strategy: Our marketing strategy will be to advertise sufficiently that we will be the first company coming to mind when catering is needed in the Anytown/Othertown area. Marketing will be especially targeted towards people arranging weddings and people planning corporate events, so we will always be looking out for new ways to reach these customers. We will not repeat any marketing effort where the COA proves to be more than 20% of the profit those customers provide.

Competitors: In the Anytown area, the established catering companies are Cathy’s Catering and Funfoods. Cathy’s Catering mainly cater for low-end corporate events, while Funfoods specialise in food for children’s parties.

Our position in the middle-market means that we would be unlikely to provide children’s birthday cakes, and could provide a higher-quality alternative to Cathy’s Catering for corporate customers.

The company that we believe would be our main competitor is Luxury Food and Cakes, based in the Othertown area. They serve the same kinds of food we plan to, and to similar events. However, we differentiate ourselves from them by offering our food at far lower prices. While they use more expensive ingredients, our taste tests have shown that most consumers are unable to tell in blind taste tests which food cost more. Offering mostly indistinguishable quality at a lower price gives us a powerful way to move in on Luxury’s customers.

Advertising (in order of decreasing cost-effectiveness):
Leafleting. $0.01 printing per leaflet, 10,000 leaflets, plus delivery at $100 = $200. Projected 50 customers. COA $4.
Local newspaper. $500 per half page, run once monthly. Projected 100 customers, COA $5.
Corporate mailshots. $0.10 printing per mail, 100 mails, plus delivery at $20 = $30. Projected 3 customers, COA $10 (however, customers are high-value).
‘Weddings’ magazine. $200 quarter page, quarterly. Projected 20 customers, COA $10.

Pricing:
Basic catering: cost + 50%.
Deluxe catering: cost + 70%.
Cake: cost + 100%.
Large cake: cost + 80%.
Personalised cake (large only): cost + 120%.

Special Offers: Business is slower in winter than in summer, so there are special winter deals. For example, we plan to offer ‘every third person free’ on basic catering to give extra value for corporate functions in the winter months (November, December, January, February). There will also be a ‘free champagne’ offer with the deluxe catering in these months.

Develop your own Marketing Plan along the lines given in this example.

Index for 'Work from Home Businesses' Articles

Thought for the Day

Do you want Success? by Dave Vallieres

There are some things we can control about our future and there are some things we cannot control.

There are a lot of things out of our control: -

• The weather
• Natural disasters
• Terrorist activities ...

are just a few.

But there are a lot of things totally within our control...

• Our attitude
• Our habits
• Our thoughts and motivation

I want you to imagine yourself making more money in 2006 than you have in any other year of your life.

Can you imagine it? If you can imagine it, you can do it.

The only way to succeed is by changing ourselves.

If your habits, the things you do everyday are not getting the things you want out of life, it's time to CHANGE your habits.

Eliminate BAD attitudes, BAD habits, BAD or DISTRACTING desires by KNOWING what they are and HOW TO overcome them.

Let's talk about how your attitude and habits affect your ability to make money. There are certain rules for succeeding financially ... like 'golf' there are 'rules' ... and there are rules to winning the Internet marketing business too.

If you don't even know what the rules are how can you formulate a strategy to win? You can't formulate a strategy because you don't understand what the GAME is all about! And that's why you aren't successful ... yet.

Learn the 'rules' and win by playing the best you can play ... Now is the time to look forward. Look toward changing those habits that have kept you back... what are they?

IDENTIFY them! Name them and write them down! Then you can SEE them for what they are... BARRIERS to YOUR success! Kill them, stomp on them, HATE them!

• Do you tend to procrastinate?
• Do you ease up after succeeding?
• Do you fail to plan ahead?

All of these are BAD habits that must be broken.

How?

By DESIRING it... by WANTING success so bad you can taste it.

Stop settling for LESS, EXPECT more from yourself and 'feel bad' when you don't make money.

Feel terrible when you failed to DO SOMETHING to bring you closer to your goal.

Use your feelings to propel you forward... feel afraid of being POOR ...WANT MORE, WANT BIGGER dreams to come true, for you.

Then and only then will you have the motivation to succeed.

There's only one rule you need to know to succeed: If you want success you have to STOP doing what you have been doing and do something else instead until you reach your goals.

Your habits will FORCE you to succeed. To be more successful change your habits.

Learn MONEY-MAKING Habits.

That's all the news for now,

-Dave Vallieres
(c) 2006 by David Vallieres.
All rights reserved.
David Vallieres is the Editor and Publisher of "Little Known Ways To Make Money Online"
a resource eLetter.

Find out more at http://www.cherrykay.com/DVwebsite.html