Marketing Plan?

[goktug]

Hello guys,
I am just an undergrad, for a course project we are working on developing a business plan. As you can guess, we are planning to open a coffeeshop, and for that purpose we have to convince the bank (our instructor) to give us the money we want

So, we have the basic idea, some sort of plan. We are currently doing research on "how to do ..." and bellissimo's 10 rules really help us. However, in order to realize a marketing plan, we believe that working on an example would be the best for us.

Therefore, professional or not, can anyone provide me a marketin plan for a coffeeshop or a complete business plan? I would really appreciate that...

Thank you for your time..

 

[cafemakers]

Therefore, professional or not, can anyone provide me a marketin plan for a coffeeshop or a complete business plan? I would really appreciate that...

Wouldn't that be cheating?

 

[goktug]

No it will NOT be cheating.

Let me explain to you. I am a senior electrical engineer and i am interested in these management issues. Therefore (my university has an inter-diciplinary system) I have taken MGMT201 - Introduction to Management course. Hence, what I am trying to do is to develop my skills on this subject and save it for my career. Therefore cheating would be the last thing I would think of.

To return to the point, since I have not seen a marketing plan before, I believe that the best place to start developing a marketing plan is to *know* what is it and how people do it. Therefore I think I can use that plan for MY business plan, and since I have my own proposal, I CANNOT use that plan for my project. Therefore that plan will ONLY be a guideline for my project.

I hope I made myself clear, because this is nothing about cheating or else. This is about learning and as people said in the previous posts about setting up their own business, one can only learn the basics when he/she is working, not in MBA or else.

Sincerely..

 

[Baugo]

My intention in NOT to offend or to judge, however I have completed mgmt 101 and 201 from the business college I attended. We were asked to provide a business plan and a marketing strategy. Our professor has been teaching for several years and a business owner even longer (a great teacher). He checked each and every one of our papers for plagiary. So we ended up doing a lot of research and a lot of espresso shots LOL. But we managed to complete the assignment without outside help. After getting our grade and completing the course AND ending up on the “Deans list” our professor showed us how he checked our papers for plagiarism. He is a very smart man, whom I am glad to have known. I guess what I am trying to say is, you will never learn by asking someone to do it for you. You will feel much better in the end. Or you can spend 20 to 50 dollars and someone on the internet will write the paper for you, all you need to do is hand it in.

 

[goktug]

First of all, thank you for your reply...

I certainly see your point, understand what you want to say. I also agree to most of your points which you illustrated in your post. However, what I meant is not someone to do it for me, instead of that, have a reference or a sample in order to visualize what should I do.

I certainly know a lot of friends from my university whom had taken the same course

Anyways... thanks again for all...

 

[Comfy Place]

Marketing Plan

I'm going to toss my 2 cents in here, just because I think I have a few good points to convey (nothing like boosting my self-esteem, eh?)

First off, I can certainly understand your desire to want to have a "blueprint" to work from for your marketing plan. Not that you would be copying it and passing it off as your own, but that you could use some of the basic framework to build your marketing plan around. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I'll try to persuade you to go the longer route and devise something truely your own.

An immediate question that I have is: have you looked through any books about writing a business plan? If not, I would highly recommend it. You wouldn't need to purchase them, as I would hope that your library would have a couple that you could use/check out. My point with you using these is they will provide some of that framework that you seek, but still be open-ended enough that you will still need to work at putting together your total marketing package/plan.

Another thing to do, and this you could do with others in your class, is to brainstorm ideas for marketing. Leave nothing on the table; offer up every conceivable idea that you can think of. From there, you will have a list of potential marketing ideas that you can then pick and choose from for your plan. Also keep in mind that some of these ideas would be expensive at first, but after the business has been operating for a few years would be financially doable. This would give you some long-range marketing goals/plans, which is good to have in your plan.

Another thought for you: why not go and talk with some of the different media reps? They could give you actual costs/figures that you can use in your plan. You want to know how much it costs to purchase radio ads, how much newspaper ads are, etc.. These are real-world figures that will vary from location to location, and its best to know your area. Also, you could speak with area banks/lenders to see what they look for in a marketing plan. Then you would have something to back up your ideas in your plan when questioned by your instructor.

Part of the process of doing these plans (I did them too in my college career) is that you stretch yourself, both creatively and in other areas. It is sometimes fearful to do something that, for you, is completely new; its safer in some ways to take what someone else has done and modify it for your use. However, I think that you will be surprised at what you will end up with if you take my advice and that of the others before me who have posted on this topic. In our shop, we do a bunch of different marketing: newspapers, local publications, Internet (website), brochures, radio spots (in the process right now), banners, and some other things. My business plan that I wrote actually didn't have all of these as marketing tools, but we still go financing anyway. What mattered is that we did our homework, understood our area/market, and could back it up with solid numbers. The marketing, while sparse in our plan, still was solid because it allowed us to reach as many people as we could for the limited dollars that we had.

I hope that I have not discouraged you in your efforts. I just know that when I was in the same boat as you are now, I had the same thoughts and feelings. But when I really looked at what I wanted to do, I basically had to make it up myself, because that's when I could truely convey what I wanted for my business, my vision. You'll have a much more solid plan this way, I'm positive about that. I'd be happy to help out more if you would like. You could send me an e-mail from our website, www.thecomfyplacecoffeehouse.com.

 

[goktug]

First of all, I'm sorry I couldn't reply earlier... Thank you for your precious comments and suggestions. We are working and I guess doing well, at least for now.. lol

I will check this site more often and try to grasp more about coffeeshop business..

Thanks everybody