Don’t even consider creating your formal business plan until you are actually ready to use it. The business plan of today for online businesses is far less formal than it used to be and it is far more practical. Does each section of your business plan when you require it and don’t be too concerned about formalities?
Don’t confuse this with scrapping out your business plan completely, because online entrepreneurs still need to focus on whatever their ‘niche’ is and their plans for getting their business both off the ground and growing.
What’s in your business plan can change based on the current situation, what you will incorporate into your business plan won’t change. So in other words your final destination will remain the same but how you reach that destination can change.
Steps for Creating an Online Business Plan
The internet is an extremely powerful tool for all kinds of companies and it has certainly changed the kinds of companies that will prosper. There are four key reasons for an internet site:
1. Transactional
2. Content
3. Promotional
4. Relational
These apply no matter what kind of business you are operating. Remember that your business plan is alive – that blueprint is a living, breathing entity that can help you to navigate. It can help you to manage your business, help you find potential partners or investors, help you find lenders and others who can see your business plan and easily understand it.
Your business plan will need to include an executive summary, company overview, business offering, marketing plan and marketing analysis, strategy and implementation of that strategy, what your management team will look like, and finally your financial projections.
It’s important that you understand your online market and that you are able to clearly and concisely create a picture of what this will look like for those who will be reading your business plan and making decisions based on it, and who may not have a good understanding of online business opportunities.
Just because you are running, an online business or planning to start an online business does not mean that you do not need a business plan. Every viable business should have a business plan, even if they are not interested in gaining investment capital. This finely detailed plan will help you to navigate through the waters, and help you to not only get your business off the ground but also keep it successfully moving forward.
You should never develop a business plan that doesn’t have a scheduled review and today, it’s more important than ever. In fact, it has become very important to do this review earlier and more frequently.
There is no point in wasting your time worrying about things like your executive summary or the language you used in your marketing analysis if you haven’t taken the time to do the most important thing to actually make your business plan work. What’s important is the actual planning for the future and being ready to adapt and change as needed along the way.
Your business plan is a great way to get all of your ideas and thoughts for your business onto paper in a manner that’s streamlined and easy to understand. However, this one time collection of ideas and information is nothing compared to the process of your ongoing planning and it will change and morph as you move along with your business. What you believed would work may be exception or it may be a complete flop and you will need to be able to think on your feet and adapt. Your business plan can help you achieve this if you have created a review schedule that is designed to make any necessary changes.
For example, maybe the last Friday of every month is the time you will evaluate your business, your traffic flow, you customer conversion rate and your competitors. By creating a schedule there will not be the worry that you have waited too long to address any concerns or problems that have arisen.
From the very beginning at the most basic level, you must define what your business goals are. What will you be selling, where does it fit in the market, how does your price compare to your competitors? How do you plan to make money. If your site doesn’t sell an actual product, you will need to define what your income source will be. For example, affiliates.
By clearly defining these areas of your business it will make it much easier during your reviews to compare how you are doing, what’s working and what you should consider changing.
The online market can change quickly and having a plan in place to review your business frequently is smart business sense. Waiting just a couple of weeks too long before you do your review can be the difference between success and failure.
Marketing Online 