Building an ISP Business Plan
   Part 3: The Marketing Plan

You may have a first-rate organization and a winning product, but without solid marketing your prospects for success are limited. Here's how to supercharge your business plan with marketing power.

by Jason Zigmont
     HowToSell.net

In our high tech world, it's often the case that it's not good technology but good marketing that makes a company successful. When you're planning your company, you need to keep marketing in the forefront of your mind.

Before you write the marketing plan section of your business plan, think about how you intend to position yourself; what will make your service different from your competitors' service. VCs, bankers, and outsiders who read your marketing plan will look closely to see if you have done your research and found a niche that you can conquer.

In the previous segment of this guide, we looked at the Market and Industry Analysis sections of a complete business plan. The research you did for those sections will be the foundation on which you'll build your marketing plan.

A complete Marketing Plan consists of the following sections:

•  Marketing Plan Summary
•  Situational Review
•  Strategic Opportunities and Threats
•  Marketing Goals
•  Marketing Strategy
•  Marketing Budget
•  Marketing Controls

Marketing Plan Summary
As with most sections of a formal business plan, the Marketing Plan starts with a summary, which is used primarily as a reference for outside readers.

Tip: Since this section is a summary of the entire Marketing Plan, write it last and use the rest of the plan to develop a precise and strong summary.

Situational Review
The main section that follows the Summary, gives readers an overall review of the lay of the competitive landscape in your market. I suggest three subsections within the Situational Review:

•  The Market
•  User Sign-up Process
•  The Competition.

The Market subsection should cover overall market size, characteristics, and buying patterns. Within The Market, you should be specific about how many households and businesses fall within your target market, how many of them are potential buyers, and why they would want to buy your service.

User Sign-up Process should read like a '10,000 foot' view of how users will sign-up and interact with you to receive your service.

The Competition is a high level review of who your competitors are, why you are different, and how much of the market you are attempting to capture—either as a percentage of the target market, or as a number of subscribers.

Strategic Opportunities and Threats
In marketing speak, this material is often referred to as "SWOTs" (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). This is where you analyze your business vs. your competitors in depth.

A simple way to approach this section is to do a SWOTs analysis—set down a point-counterpoint description of strengths and weaknesses—and then take the data from that analysis and put it into this section. For example, if you provide quality service at a premium price, that would be a strength. The weakness in your positioning would be that cheap or free providers would be able to use their lower price against you.

The key in the Strategic Opportunities and Threats section (along with the rest of the business plan) is to be candid and realistic. Every company has weaknesses, but if you know your weaknesses, acknowledge them, and market accordingly, you will have a higher success rate. Your potential investors will be looking to see if you identify your weaknesses and how you plan to deal with them. If you don't, they'll certainly notice that—and react accordingly.

Marketing Goals
Whatever your goals may be, this is the place to discuss them. If your marketing plan is based on branding vs. user acquisition, for example, let readers know this. A typical Marketing Goals section addresses three main goals; number of users, gross profit, and market share. Other possible goals include; lowering churn, brand awareness, and product awareness, among many others.

A simple Marketing Goals section would look something like this:

Marketing Goals

1. Given QEI.net's stated dial-up price of $23.95 per month per user, the company's goal is $100,000 gross profit in planning year one.
2. Capture 1 percent of the target market or 5,000 users during planning year one.
3. Generate sales revenue of $750,000 in year one and a monthly recurring revenue stream of $145,000 per month by end of year one.
4. Conduct a wide-scale advertising program to build brand and product awareness and gain additional subscribers.
5. Expand the number of resellers, affinity groups, and companies who offer the company's services by 10 percent monthly.
6. Increase average ticket size to $30 per month per user by upselling additional services, higher speed connections, and training.

Go to page 2: Marketing Strategy