Before
setting out to develop the plan you need to have a thorough
understanding of the market in which you are competing and your
position in that market.
You
cannot know too much about your customers and prospects.
Facts and
figures elevate your marketing plans from dreaming to meaningful action
plans.
Ideally,
you should know:
The value and volume
of the market in which you compete.
The growth sectors of
the market.
A breakdown of the
market by locally manufactured products imports and exports.
An understanding of
market shares by market segment including your own.
A trade profile of the
market.
A profile of end users
or consumers.
With this
knowledge you can assess your current market position, define where you
want to be and understand the problems and opportunities.
Much of
this information can be gathered from such external sources as:
Government bureaus or
instrumentalities
Trade publications
Trade associations
Public libraries
Annual reports
Market research firms
The Yellow Pages
The internet
The
Internet is the best place to start to establish what information
exists. Some of it may be available at no cost or for a moderate
outlay. More detailed data may cost more but it could be invaluable in
helping you to analyse market opportunities that would otherwise not be
possible.
Your
internal sales data can be a goldmine of information.
Your own
internal sales records can be goldmine of information and is usually
the best place to start. If hard market data is not readily available,
projections or estimates based on your own internal statistics is a
good launching point. At the
very least you need to know which product categories are growing,
declining or staying about the same
Estimates
are better than no data at all providing they are updated as fragments
of hard data become available to piece the picture together. At times,
it is possible to gather a reasonably accurate estimate of the big
picture from bits and pieces of information collected from a variety of
collaborative or anecdotal sources. When
using data in a plan to support a conclusion or a course of action it
is good practice to always quote the data source.
