Transcript
Video: Module 2 – New Markets
Presenter: Bruce Lacroix
There is a part of your business plan where you must describe your markets. Your markets are the people or groups or businesses that are going to buy what you have for sale. And you may have a number of different markets. So what we're assuming here is you've done your market research. How do you put this into your business plan? So you must identify your markets. Markets means buyers. Who will buy what you have to sell? If you're selling a product, for instance the clocks we were talking about earlier, will your market be retail stores, meaning that you sell wholesale to the retailer who then sells to the user? Or do you think your market is going to be more the end user? Or maybe a combination of both?
It needs to be very clear in your business plan. If you're selling the service, for instance you may be doing bookkeeping services, are you selling to many people at once, maybe to an organization doing it all, or assigned to individual people one at a time? Again, this needs to be made clear in your business plan.
So in your business plan, with your markets, you want to describe who is the market, or markets if you have more than one. Be specific. Individual people, as I say? Stores? Which ones? Are they craft stores, if you're selling the clock? Are they hardware stores? Are they gift shops? Where are those gift shops? If it's individuals, what type of people? Not everybody's going to buy a handcrafted clock. Are there specific demographics? Are they a certain age maybe? Do they fall into some lifestyle category of people who like old, beautiful things? If you're making the clocks, they're not going to be cheap, so you just can't say everyone, because if people are trying to put food on the table, they're not really thinking about a $500 clock. So you really want to get as specific as you can with your markets.
So who are they? Where are they? Are they a specific geographic region? If you're selling over the internet, they could be broad based, but not everybody in the world of course has internet access. So it's still going to be maybe North America, Europe, English speaking countries, or not. If you're selling regionally, then are they in a specific town? Are they in a specific village? Do they live over here? Are they tourists passing through the area? So that's the who, the where.
When do they want to buy what you have? Is there a certain time of year?, for instance, Christmas gifts? Or if it's a tourism product, do they purchase this in the spring before they come for the summertime? If it's a lifestyle product, if it's diaper service, well, when people have young children or maybe when they get old like me, they need them but there is a certain time of life when people will be buying diaper services. You don't find a lot of 40 year olds with 16 year old children buying diapers. So that's more of a lifestyle time.
How do your customers want to buy what you have? You have this for sale, do they want to pick it up when they go to the grocery store? Is it something they buy when they go to the flea market or to the graft fair? Or do they want to purchase this over the internet? Do they want to go to a store and pick it up? Would they rather come to your home? Or do you go door to door, you know [making a knocking sound] want to buy a clock?
All of these have to be thought about, because how you want to sell may not be how people want to buy, and you want to sell things of course the way they want to buy. If they want to pick it up at the store, there's no sense you selling to individual people, you sell to the store who then sells to the person.
And of course the last question is how much? How much are they willing to pay for what you're selling? How much will they pay, if maybe you make some changes? So of course this affects your pricing, this affects your marketing.
So to wrap up here: Who is your market? Where are they? When do they want to buy? And how much do they want to buy? And I think you've pretty much covered that part of your business plan.
Transcript provided by: Accurate Realtime Reporting Inc.
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