In a much more visually appealing piece of content, the fourth page of the business plan, Market & Competitor Analysis, is covered in this week's Business 101: How To Effectively Write a Business Plan.
It will teach you the importance of the Market & Competitor Analysis page, what information should be included, and an visually appealing example of a successful Market & Competitor Analysis page I created.
The Market & Competitor Analysis page of your business plan is essential because without knowing a business's competitors and its own Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity, and Threats (SWOT) you business has little chance of funding and/or long-term success.
Potential investors need to know that you have: (1) critically evaluated your business and (2) critically evaluated the market and competitors you will be entering.
First, make a list of the competitors, big and small, in the marketplace you are planning to enter. Make sure to document certain differential attributes each of them have so that you can graphically display your results later.
Second, do the primary and secondary research necessary to find out this information about your competitors. Evaluate their branding, price points, quality levels, differential attributes like convenience and value.
As you can see I rated my main competitors, marinas and land-based gasoline stations, by how popular of a choice they are, their price levels, and how much value they are bringing to their customers. These attributes correlate with the next step.
Third, create a visually appealing display of this information so that potential investors can easily and clearly see and understand the information.
This is an extremely important step in creating a successful Market & Competitor Analysis page. You could have done the best research, the best results, but if you can't display the results in a visually appealing manner it won't get the attention it deserves from potential investors. You can see below how I visually displayed my competitor analysis.
In the above example I created, the X-axis is Price and the Y-Axis is Convenience.
Land-based gas stations offer the lowest fuel prices, but the lowest convenience.
Marinas have a higher price and a higher level of convenience compared to land-based gas stations.
Full Tank Petroleum's weekly customers would receive a lower price because of the length of their service and still receive a high level of convenience because the fuel is being delivered to them.
And lastly, Marine Fuel On Demand is a premium service of Full Tank Petroleum and is for any random person not signed up for a service contract that wants the fuel delivered now. As a result, they pay a premium price and receive premium convenience.
Fourth, you need to move from analyzing your competition to analyzing yourself by performing a SWOT Analysis.
As you can see above, SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
The SWOT Analysis has been a staple of the business plan for decades now and needs to be included in this page because it shows the potential investors you are well-rounded and have critically thought of ways your business could thrive and die.
For a successful SWOT Analysis, you need to critically think about your business external AND internal strengths and weaknesses. This would also include strengths and weaknesses of the market you are entering, hence the inclusion on this Market & Competitor Analysis Page.
You also need to critically analyze threats and opportunities to your business and threat and opportunities in the marketplace your business is entering.
Please fell free to use the above SWOT Analysis I created as reference material. It may look simple but that SWOT Analysis has been updated five different times to keep it effective.
The fifth step is to include a few effective sentences (my example below has four) that bring the entire page together and reinforces the main points you are trying to drive home.
As you can see, the text I included brought value to the page and reinforced and brought together the main points of Full Tank Petroleum's service to be better than the competition because of a lower price, higher convenience for customers, and higher overall customer value.
Finally, the sixth step bring all the parts together and create one visually appealing, effective Market & Competitor Analysis Page.
As you can see my example above, this Market & Competitor Analysis page is visually appealing and display useful, relevent information to potential investors in an easy to read format.
I hope this provided some value in a more visually-appealing manner than previous content apart of this series.
Good luck creating your business plan. It has never been a better time to start a business :)
If you want to check out how to create the first three (3) pages of your business plan go here:
Page Three, Market Description, go here: https://steemit.com/money/@chiefmappster/business-plan-101-market-description
Page Two, Company Description, go here: https://steemit.com/howto/@chiefmappster/business-plan-101-company-description
Page One, Executive Summary, go here: https://steemit.com/howto/@chiefmappster/business-plan-101-executive-summary
Thank you as always for your time and attention.
Namaste
@chiefmappster Thanks for the information. I've tried searching for this stuff before but wasn't as clear as yours. Awesome work. You do graphics too?
Heck yeah buddy thank you so much. That is one of my goals with this series, bring the community useful business info in one place.
And yea I dabble in a little bit of everything my friend I really like SmartArt :)
excelent pots
Thank you buddy
Fantastic post have even copied it to an excel and apply the principles. Great Post.
Wow thank you buddy I really appreciate that. I really have put a lot of time and effort into this series trying to bring some business value to the Steemit community.
Thanks for writing up these detailed business plan strategy posts!
I'm currently not at the stage where I am planning on starting a business where I would really need a business plan. But if I did, this would be very helpful!
One thing I'm missing (caveat: I have not actually gone through your other posts. I'm too lazy... 😉 ) is how your product is going to serve the market better.
Reading this post brought back to mind this speech from the Nomad Summit 2017 (Chiang Mai):
Hanne Vervaeck from Thrive Themes explains how just having an MVP – Minimum Viable Product – is not enough anymore; you need an MMP, a Minimum Marketable Product.
I suppose this would be an important part of any business plan, right?
Also: would be great to explain how these strategies could be applied to Steemit. You could view what we do here on Steemit as a business. Even though it's a lot of fun, treating it like you would do a business will give you focus and help you prioritize. Of course we're not looking to obtain angel funding or a bank loan. But perhaps some strategies equally apply to building your Steemit following?
Wow thank you for this you are absolutely right. You just inspired me to do another business series documenting that because for real thats how I treat Steemit.
But I have never heard about a *MMP always hear about the MVP heck yeah thank you for teaching me something new. Yeah you have to start from the idea phase, to the MVP, and then to the MMP. Can't market something that doesn't work yet ya dig. Thanks again this was awesome
Yeah I think she coined the term for her talk. Everyone knows about MVP, but in the business example she shares she says it's really all about how you can differentiate your product from your competition. That is a product you can market.
Yeah buddy I have learned my experience: anything can be marketed just the people saying this stuff can't influence. People still using the word marketing in today's word you should watch out its an indicator they are using old practices. I have to use the term marketing still just so people can relate. The old marketing is dead. Its influencing now and it really has been for about five years. People are just getting hip to it. Thanks again for your time and attention buddy
Thank you, that was very interesting! I usually use adwords competitor analysis, will try your way next time!