Internet Business Plan - Research p. 2
Step Three, Develop a plan: What type of research plan can you come up with apart from other sellers who are in a similar market as yourself? Well for starters, a pretty new one! Your marketing plan should be developed around the marketing of your competitors. It is an unwise business that operates under the assumption that they can get by on their own without consulting other businesses for the good and the bad. Learning from other companies mistakes can work out pretty good for you, especially if you have an open mind and an innovative spirit!
What should a research plan consist of? Your plan is going to consist of marketing demographics and advertisement criteria. This is detailed later in the Section (below).
2. Research your sub-competitors! What is a sub-competitor for a business? A sub-competitor is a seller who is involved in product distribution but isn’t selling within your particular niche. In other words, if you concentrate your business on selling poker playing cards your competitors are those other business with the narrow focus of selling playing cards while your sub- competitors are those businesses who sell poker chips, poker tables or sunglasses. These businesses aren’t as much of a threat to you but there is still quite a bit you can learn from them and by researching them. Here are just a few things you can expect to learn:
Just how do they advertise; through what mediums? If you ask one of your product competitors to share their marketing techniques with you, just for research reasons, they will most likely shove the door in your face and tell you to get out! On the other hand, if you seek the help of one of your sub-competitors you will probably get a more favorable response! These companies won’t see you as much as competition but as a formidable friend. They can give you advice on how to tackle the sometimes daunting task of marketing to a tough crowd and what seems to work the best.
Will they work together through linking? Ah, the benefits of linking! One of the best moves you can do to not only bring traffic to your website but to gain a potential partner is to use links. Locate several sub-competitors of your business and email them asking if they would be willing to ‘trade’ links. In other words you will be asking them if they can put a link to your website on their site and vise versa. Usually sub-competitors will be willing to do this as long as you don’t both sell the same products because it works as a free form of advertising. Why is this good? When a visitor is browsing on one of your sub- competitors websites looking for certain products they may see a hyper-link to your website and within one click they are on your site! This is a great way to increase your profits by getting more intentional traffic!
3. Come up with a detailed business plan! By now you should have a pretty decent idea about what your business competition and sub competition is up to in terms of marketing and advertising on the web. You should have compiled some sort of list or comprehensive guide to what they are doing and how they are trying to influence the market- now it is time for you to get in the game!
How do you form a plan? Well obviously you’re trying to do something different. This is where your imagination is going to come in handy. Look at what these other product companies are doing and think about what else could benefit the market. Keep in mind that your business is only profitable if you emphasize customer satisfaction so think about what your customers want! All of your advertisements should be geared toward the demographics, geographical considerations and behavioral characteristics that you decided on in Section 1.
While there is no need to actually design your advertisements or calculate marketing costs at this point, it is important to figure out where you will be aiming at in terms of focus. Are you going to look for flyers, internet postings, pay-per-click ads, pop-ups, linking, or one of the multitudes of advertisement formats?
What do your customers seem to be attracted to? What types of advertisements work for your competitors? What type of advertisements may pull clients away from another small business’s products and to yours?
After you answer the above questions, leave your responses in your file with the advertisement schemes of other business competitors and sub-competitors, you’ll need it for reference and for constant updating in the future as your small business grows.
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