Entrepreneurial Planning — Entrepreneurship STD 12 Commerce — Question

Procedure for preparing the marketing plan involves following steps:

1. Business Situation Analysis
2. Identify the Target Market
3. Conduct Swot
4. Establish Goals
5. Define Marketing Strategy

Steps in preparing the marketing plan
Potential investors regard the marketing plan as critical to the success of the new venture. Thus, the entrepreneur should make every effort to prepare it as comprehensive and detailed. Generally, procedure for preparing the marketing plan involves following steps:

1. Business situation analysis: 'Where we have been?' – is the question responded to as the first step in designing the marketing plan. Mostly a review of past performance and achievements of the enterprise are stated here in but for a new venture, focus shifts rather towards:
   1. Personal profile of the entrepreneur
   2. Emphasis on products development
   3. What 'need' it satisfies
   4. Any other enterprise/experience of the entrepreneur
   5. Any marketing segmentation, if planned.
2. Identify the target market: For a new venture, it's very essential to define clearly the specific group of potential customers whose needs the enterprise aims to fulfill. This identification of the "target market" is pretty tedious task as it involves:
   1. Deciding what the general market or industry entrepreneur wishes to pursue is based, on market research or industry analysis done and complied with by competent people or the entrepreneurs.
   2. Divide the market into smaller groups based on:

1. Consumer's characteristics viz.

• Geographic (State, Country etc.)
• Psychographics (Personality, life style, etc.)
• Demographic (Sex, age, etc.)

2. Buying situations viz.

• Buying conditions (time available etc.)
• Usage
• Desired benefits (features of product)

3. Select segment or segments to target.
4. Develop a marketing plan integrating according to product, price, distribution, promotion.

3. Conduct SWOT analysis: It is important for the entrepreneur to consider in the 'target market' his/her enterprise's:
   1. Strengths
   2. Weaknesses
   3. Opportunities
   4. Threats

Marketing plan needs to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the new venture to ensure its success.

4. Establish goals: "Where do we want to go?" is answered well by establishing -
   1. Realistic, attainable and well defined goals and objectives for the enterprises,
   2. Quantifying the goals so that they could be measured for control purposes.
   3. Setting standards to measure those goals which are qualitative in nature.
   4. Limiting the goals to a specific number so that there are no chaos, confusions or overlapping. Otherwise, even controlling and monitoring will be difficult.
5. Define marketing strategy: "How do we get there?" demands specific activities to be outlined to meet the enterprise's so established goals and objectives. The marketing strategy and action plan comprise of decisions pertaining to the following 4 P’s:
   1. Product
   2. Price
   3. Promotion
   4. Place.