Chapter 8 | Write Your Marketing and Personnel Plans | 147
Antoinette’s Dress Shop: Marketing Budget Preopening promotion 1. Mail 10,000 pieces announcing grand opening
$ 5,000
2. Advertisement in New City Monthly, one month (including graphics)
500
3. Publicity from papers, New City Monthly, no cost—but much time to write articles and contact editors Total preopening costs
Write Your Marketing Plan -0$ 5,500
Monthly advertising 1. Newsletter every two months to mailing list—approximate cost per month $
650
2. Monthly column in daily paper, no cost—but time to write column
-0-
3. Advertising for sale every three months, estimated monthly
250
4. Join service clubs, estimated monthly lunch and membership fees
100
Total monthly cost
and by how much to increase the marketing budget. We’ll leave her now to solve that problem in peace and quiet while we move along to the next step. If you’re in the same predicament, take your time to balance costs and effectiveness the best you can, and then move ahead to the next step.
$ 1,000
Despite Antoinette’s well-thought-out marketing plan, her original budget allowed nothing for an opening promotion and $1,000 per month for ongoing advertising. She could, however, decide to take some of the $15,000 contingency and use it for preopening promotions. It looks like Antoinette needs to make some hard choices about which marketing tools to drop
By now, you have asked some tough questions and faced some critical issues. You may wish to combine the major points of the exercises into a summary narrative, or you may wish to present the results of each exercise independently. If you summarize the work into a narrative, your plan will read more easily and look more professional. However, the potential downside to combining the answers into a narrative format is that you may inadvertently leave out a point of major interest to your backers. If you do elect to combine the answers into a narrative, be careful to cover all the points in each exercise. Use Antoinette’s marketing plan as a guide.
Discuss the Risks Facing Your Business Every business faces risks. The people whom you will ask for money will want to see that you can not only face reality but also deal with possible difficulties. The following discussion outlines risks small business owners typically face. Once you’ve analyzed these factors, you’ll be ready to