Developing A Marketing Plan

Jan 21, 10 in Customer Focus, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Presentations, Startups

Last night I had the pleasure to present to a group of folks that are in the Georgia Tech College of Management Business Plan Competition run by Alan Flury. I have been involved in past years. It is a great program that has been the start for operational companies such as Accelereyes and Sentrinsic.

The topic of the night was developing a marketing plan. That is a really challenging task to undertake for a new venture. Too many unkowns. Unkowns that are best solved via the customer development process. Regardless it is a business plan competition. They have to write something. Hopefully the audience walked away with some good thoughts on how to write a rational well thought out marketing plan that will help them in the competition and move their business along. More importantly I hope they got the message to get out of the classroom and go talk to customers.

Comments

Lance, great post. The GT BPC was a great way for us to get our thoughts down on paper. More importantly for us, it accomplished the following:

1) Forced us to have a well-defined team

2) Gave us great exposure to experienced mentors, who are still guiding us today

I totally agree with the need to get off campus physically to meet with people as well as the need to get on the phone with potential customers. That's the most valuable driver of action and motivation for everyone.

Finally, I really like your sniff-tested projected revenue numbers. I'm mad you gave them out so freely!

John Melonakos | Jan 21, 10 at 05:02 PM

Having a business plan is important too raise capital and too help the business owner to plan and budget. Remember that the plan can change constantly as things happen.
Do you think so?

Superb advice Lance. Captures what great marketing strives to be: scalable simplicity.

Heath Wilkes | Jan 22, 10 at 11:22 PM

Charlotte, at an early stage - being able to write a plan is important, but any investor that requires you to write one for an early round is quite unlikely to read it, or to even invest for that matter.

Nobody does business plans anymore. Slide deck + Executive summary.

Russell Jurney2 | Jan 23, 10 at 06:23 AM

This is a pertinent post. A fabulous article with an amazing level of detail! Valuable thoughts and advices. I read your topic with great interest. Many thanks for sharing this. I hope plenty of people see it.

Regards,
Jamie

Developing A Marketing Plan

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