Day 1. Finding the Right Fit
Day 3. Calculate Your Costs
Day 4. Write Your Business Plan
Day 5. Find Financing
Day 6. Name Your Business
Day 7. Develop a Marketing Plan
Day 8. Build Your Support Team
Day 9. Execute Your Marketing Plan
Day 10. Hang Out Your Shingle and Sell
Many people have great ideas, but their businesses flounder in the marketplace because there really isn't an audience for their product or service. In this second installment of our 10-part series to help you launch a business, we'll help you evaluate your big idea.
Of course, thorough research will help support expectations about a business's success as well as uncover any potholes in your thinking.
Start now by asking yourself these questions:
- What problem does my product or service solve?
- Who will buy my product or service?
- Why will they buy it?
- Where will they buy it -- specialty shops, department stores, online, smartphones?
- What do I need to charge to make a healthy profit and will people actually pay that?
- What products or services will mine be competing with?
No business -- particularly a small one -- can be all things to all people. The more narrowly you can define your business and your target market, the better. So it's crucial that you create a niche for yourself in the marketplace. It's the key to success for even the biggest companies.
Wal-Mart and Tiffany's are both retailers, but they have very different niches: Wal-Mart caters to bargain-minded shoppers, while Tiffany's appeals to upscale jewelry customers.
To find out if your business idea has a chance of succeeding in the marketplace and to help you create an effective marketing plan, you'll need to do more than just answer the questions listed above. You'll also need to conduct more formal market research.
It's a good idea to meet with an advisor at your local Small Business Development Center or talk to a business or marketing professor at a local college or university. These sources can offer guidance and help you decide exactly what information you need to gather.
Generally, you'll need to collect information on three crucial aspects of your business:
- industry information
- target market
- your competition
You can dig up trends, statistics, surveys and other data from sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau, and industry associations. Once you're able to substantiate the viability of your idea, then you can confidently move ahead.
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Tomorrow -- Day 3: Calculating Your Costs
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Comments:
Very crucial points for sustainable growth of business i believe
This article nicely sums up the my company's entire core message - Do your research! Excellent information.
Another good way to do market research is to use free survey tool like Survey Monkey. I you make good sampling and come up with good 10 questions, you'll find that results are very relevant and useful.
This is good, but these days entrepreneurs can iterate their testing on real users (and collect beta users) by launching a series of test pages and advertising (cheaply) using Google Adwords, Facebook, and others. Check this out to learn how (and lots of other great resources): http://startupplays.com/plays/new_product_concept
It is simple and straightforward. Thanks for the Effort
Very informative article. If you need a quick, inexpensive way to test a potential business idea, I've found market research company Lab42 to be very helpful (https://lab42.com/). They use social networks to gather key information on your target market.
Great article & thanks for sharing! Very informative & offers key information that anyone should know throughly about their business!
Very informative. You especially need to keep focused because it is easier to start doing many things and failing. I'm documenting this
Nice one, that is what we repeat all the time to our visitors/client: Test your market first! You need to survey your REAL target market and not only your friends and family circle, they'll all buy it of course! Read more useful information on Marketest (http://www.marketest.co.uk), online market research company to help you testing your market.
Great article! Other places I found that worked really well was Hoovers.com and also searching your states corporate database if you are looking for similar businesses. You can see my research data and answers to all the question above at http://bit.ly/fWSfsZ. Hopefully they write an article about picking a business name, other wise please comment on my article :)
FYI there is a random ")" in the census link, which makes it invalid. :)
Day 1 down......... Day 2 underway. I'm going to follow each step all the way to completion and document each step on my blog as I go. I feel like this will keep me motivated and give people a chance to see my work, almost like a case study.