The Marketing Plan

Marketing plays a vital role in successful business ventures. How well you market your business, along with a few other considerations, will ultimately determine your degree of success or failure.

The key element of a successful marketing plan is to know your customers - their likes, dislikes and expectations. By identifying these factors, you can develop a marketing strategy that will allow you to arouse and fulfil their needs. Identify your customers by their age, sex and income level but remember, with childcare, you have two customers - the parent and the child! At first, target only those customers who are more likely to purchase your service. As your customer base expands, you may need to consider modifying the marketing plan to include other customers.

Develop a marketing plan for your business by answering these questions:

1. Who are your customers? Define your target market(s).
2. Are your markets growing? steady? declining?
3. Is your market share growing? steady? declining?
4. Are your markets large enough to expand?
5. How will you attract, hold, increase your market share?
6. How will you promote your sales?
7. What pricing strategy have you devised?

Marketing Tips and Tricks is a condensed guide on how to market your service. Consider these points when developing the marketing portion of your business plan: