an example of a simple business plan

24 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

Published: February 06, 2024

I believe that reading sample business plans is essential when writing your own.

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As you explore business plan examples from real companies and brands, it’s easier for you to learn how to write a good one.

But what does a good business plan look like? And how do you write one that’s both viable and convincing. I’ll walk you through the ideal business plan format along with some examples to help you get started.

Table of Contents

Business Plan Format

Business plan types, sample business plan templates, top business plan examples.

Ask any successful sports coach how they win so many games, and they’ll tell you they have a unique plan for every single game. To me, the same logic applies to business.

If you want to build a thriving company that can pull ahead of the competition, you need to prepare for battle before breaking into a market.

Business plans guide you along the rocky journey of growing a company. And if your business plan is compelling enough, it can also convince investors to give you funding.

With so much at stake, I’m sure you’re wondering where to begin.

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First, you’ll want to nail down your formatting. Most business plans include the following sections.

1. Executive Summary

I’d say the executive summary is the most important section of the entire business plan. 

Why? Essentially, it's the overview or introduction, written in a way to grab readers' attention and guide them through the rest of the business plan. This is important, because a business plan can be dozens or hundreds of pages long.

There are two main elements I’d recommend including in your executive summary:

Company Description

This is the perfect space to highlight your company’s mission statement and goals, a brief overview of your history and leadership, and your top accomplishments as a business.

Tell potential investors who you are and why what you do matters. Naturally, they’re going to want to know who they’re getting into business with up front, and this is a great opportunity to showcase your impact.

Need some extra help firming up those business goals? Check out HubSpot Academy’s free course to help you set goals that matter — I’d highly recommend it

Products and Services

To piggyback off of the company description, be sure to incorporate an overview of your offerings. This doesn’t have to be extensive — just another chance to introduce your industry and overall purpose as a business.

In addition to the items above, I recommend including some information about your financial projections and competitive advantage here too.:

Keep in mind you'll cover many of these topics in more detail later on in the business plan. So, keep the executive summary clear and brief, and only include the most important takeaways.

Executive Summary Business Plan Examples

This example was created with HubSpot’s business plan template:

This executive summary is so good to me because it tells potential investors a short story while still covering all of the most important details.

Image Source

Tips for Writing Your Executive Summary

• Start with a strong introduction of your company, showcase your mission and impact, and outline the products and services you provide.
• Clearly define a problem, and explain how your product solves that problem, and show why the market needs your business.
• Be sure to highlight your value proposition, market opportunity, and growth potential.
• Keep it concise and support ideas with data.
• Customize your summary to your audience. For example, emphasize finances and return on investment for venture capitalists.

Check out our tips for writing an effective executive summary for more guidance.

2. Market Opportunity

This is where you'll detail the opportunity in the market.

The main question I’d ask myself here is this: Where is the gap in the current industry, and how will my product fill that gap?

More specifically, here’s what I’d include in this section:

• The size of the market
• Current or potential market share
• Trends in the industry and consumer behavior
• Where the gap is
• What caused the gap
• How you intend to fill it

To get a thorough understanding of the market opportunity, you'll want to conduct a TAM, SAM, and SOM analysis and perform market research on your industry.

You may also benefit from creating a SWOT analysis to get some of the insights for this section.

Market Opportunity Business Plan Example

I like this example because it uses critical data to underline the size of the potential market and what part of that market this service hopes to capture.

Tips for Writing Your Market Opportunity Section

• Focus on demand and potential for growth.
• Use market research, surveys, and industry trend data to support your market forecast and projections.
• Add a review of regulation shifts, tech advances, and consumer behavior changes.
• Refer to reliable sources.
• Showcase how your business can make the most of this opportunity.

3. Competitive Landscape

Since we’re already speaking of market share, you'll also need to create a section that shares details on who the top competitors are.

After all, your customers likely have more than one brand to choose from, and you'll want to understand exactly why they might choose one over another.

My favorite part of performing a competitive analysis is that it can help you uncover:

• Industry trends that other brands may not be utilizing
• Strengths in your competition that may be obstacles to handle
• Weaknesses in your competition that may help you develop selling points
• The unique proposition you bring to the market that may resonate with customers

Competitive Landscape Business Plan Example

I like how the competitive landscape section of this business plan below shows a clear outline of who the top competitors are.

It also highlights specific industry knowledge and the importance of location, which shows useful experience in this specific industry. 

This can help build trust in your ability to execute your business plan.

Tips for Writing Your Competitive Landscape

• Complete in-depth research, then emphasize your most important findings.
• Compare your unique selling proposition (USP) to your direct and indirect competitors.
• Show a clear and realistic plan for product and brand differentiation.
• Look for specific advantages and barriers in the competitive landscape. Then, highlight how that information could impact your business.
• Outline growth opportunities from a competitive perspective.
• Add customer feedback and insights to support your competitive analysis.

4. Target Audience

Use this section to describe who your customer segments are in detail. What is the demographic and psychographic information of your audience?

If your immediate answer is "everyone," you'll need to dig deeper. Here are some questions I’d ask myself here:

• What demographics will most likely need/buy your product or service?
• What are the psychographics of this audience? (Desires, triggering events, etc.)
• Why are your offerings valuable to them?

I’d also recommend building a buyer persona to get in the mindset of your ideal customers and be clear on why you're targeting them.

Target Audience Business Plan Example

I like the example below because it uses in-depth research to draw conclusions about audience priorities. It also analyzes how to create the right content for this audience.

Tips for Writing Your Target Audience Section

• Include details on the size and growth potential of your target audience.
• Figure out and refine the pain points for your target audience , then show why your product is a useful solution.
• Describe your targeted customer acquisition strategy in detail.
• Share anticipated challenges your business may face in acquiring customers and how you plan to address them.
• Add case studies, testimonials, and other data to support your target audience ideas.
• Remember to consider niche audiences and segments of your target audience in your business plan.

5. Marketing Strategy

Here, you'll discuss how you'll acquire new customers with your marketing strategy. I’d suggest including information:

• Your brand positioning vision and how you'll cultivate it
• The goal targets you aim to achieve
• The metrics you'll use to measure success
• The channels and distribution tactics you'll use

I think it’s helpful to have a marketing plan built out in advance to make this part of your business plan easier.

Marketing Strategy Business Plan Example

This business plan example includes the marketing strategy for the town of Gawler.

In my opinion, it really works because it offers a comprehensive picture of how they plan to use digital marketing to promote the community.

Tips for Writing Your Marketing Strategy

• Include a section about how you believe your brand vision will appeal to customers.
• Add the budget and resources you'll need to put your plan in place.
• Outline strategies for specific marketing segments.
• Connect strategies to earlier sections like target audience and competitive analysis.
• Review how your marketing strategy will scale with the growth of your business.
• Cover a range of channels and tactics to highlight your ability to adapt your plan in the face of change.

6. Key Features and Benefits

At some point in your business plan, you'll need to review the key features and benefits of your products and/or services.

Laying these out can give readers an idea of how you're positioning yourself in the market and the messaging you're likely to use. It can even help them gain better insight into your business model.

Key Features and Benefits Business Plan Example

In my opinion, the example below does a great job outlining products and services for this business, along with why these qualities will attract the audience.

Tips for Writing Your Key Features and Benefits

• Emphasize why and how your product or service offers value to customers.
• Use metrics and testimonials to support the ideas in this section.
• Talk about how your products and services have the potential to scale.
• Think about including a product roadmap.
• Focus on customer needs, and how the features and benefits you are sharing meet those needs.
• Offer proof of concept for your ideas, like case studies or pilot program feedback.
• Proofread this section carefully, and remove any jargon or complex language.

7. Pricing and Revenue

This is where you'll discuss your cost structure and various revenue streams. Your pricing strategy must be solid enough to turn a profit while staying competitive in the industry. 

For this reason, here’s what I’d might outline in this section:

• The specific pricing breakdowns per product or service
• Why your pricing is higher or lower than your competition's
• (If higher) Why customers would be willing to pay more
• (If lower) How you're able to offer your products or services at a lower cost
• When you expect to break even, what margins do you expect, etc?

Pricing and Revenue Business Plan Example

I like how this business plan example begins with an overview of the business revenue model, then shows proposed pricing for key products.

Tips for Writing Your Pricing and Revenue Section

• Get specific about your pricing strategy. Specifically, how you connect that strategy to customer needs and product value.
• If you are asking a premium price, share unique features or innovations that justify that price point.
• Show how you plan to communicate pricing to customers.
• Create an overview of every revenue stream for your business and how each stream adds to your business model as a whole.
• Share plans to develop new revenue streams in the future.
• Show how and whether pricing will vary by customer segment and how pricing aligns with marketing strategies.
• Restate your value proposition and explain how it aligns with your revenue model.

8. Financials

To me, this section is particularly informative for investors and leadership teams to figure out funding strategies, investment opportunities, and more.

 According to Forbes , you'll want to include three main things:

• Profit/Loss Statement - This answers the question of whether your business is currently profitable.
• Cash Flow Statement - This details exactly how much cash is incoming and outgoing to give insight into how much cash a business has on hand.
• Balance Sheet - This outlines assets, liabilities, and equity, which gives insight into how much a business is worth.

While some business plans might include more or less information, these are the key details I’d include in this section.

Financials Business Plan Example

This balance sheet is a great example of level of detail you’ll need to include in the financials section of your business plan.

Tips for Writing Your Financials Section

• Growth potential is important in this section too. Using your data, create a forecast of financial performance in the next three to five years.
• Include any data that supports your projections to assure investors of the credibility of your proposal.
• Add a break-even analysis to show that your business plan is financially practical. This information can also help you pivot quickly as your business grows.
• Consider adding a section that reviews potential risks and how sensitive your plan is to changes in the market.
• Triple-check all financial information in your plan for accuracy.
• Show how any proposed funding needs align with your plans for growth.

As you create your business plan, keep in mind that each of these sections will be formatted differently. Some may be in paragraph format, while others could be charts or graphs.

The formats above apply to most types of business plans. That said, the format and structure of your plan will vary by your goals for that plan. 

So, I’ve added a quick review of different business plan types. For a more detailed overview, check out this post .

1. Startups

Startup business plans are for proposing new business ideas.

If you’re planning to start a small business, preparing a business plan is crucial. The plan should include all the major factors of your business.

You can check out this guide for more detailed business plan inspiration .

2. Feasibility Studies

Feasibility business plans focus on that business's product or service. Feasibility plans are sometimes added to startup business plans. They can also be a new business plan for an already thriving organization.

3. Internal Use

You can use internal business plans to share goals, strategies, or performance updates with stakeholders. In my opinion, internal business plans are useful for alignment and building support for ambitious goals.

4. Strategic Initiatives

Another business plan that's often for sharing internally is a strategic business plan. This plan covers long-term business objectives that might not have been included in the startup business plan.

5. Business Acquisition or Repositioning

When a business is moving forward with an acquisition or repositioning, it may need extra structure and support. These types of business plans expand on a company's acquisition or repositioning strategy.

Growth sometimes just happens as a business continues operations. But more often, a business needs to create a structure with specific targets to meet set goals for expansion. This business plan type can help a business focus on short-term growth goals and align resources with those goals.

Now that you know what's included and how to format a business plan, let's review some of my favorite templates.

1. HubSpot's One-Page Business Plan

Download a free, editable one-page business plan template..

The business plan linked above was created here at HubSpot and is perfect for businesses of any size — no matter how many strategies we still have to develop.

Fields such as Company Description, Required Funding, and Implementation Timeline give this one-page business plan a framework for how to build your brand and what tasks to keep track of as you grow.

Then, as the business matures, you can expand on your original business plan with a new iteration of the above document.

Why I Like It

This one-page business plan is a fantastic choice for the new business owner who doesn’t have the time or resources to draft a full-blown business plan. It includes all the essential sections in an accessible, bullet-point-friendly format. That way, you can get the broad strokes down before honing in on the details.

2. HubSpot's Downloadable Business Plan Template

We also created a business plan template for entrepreneurs.

The template is designed as a guide and checklist for starting your own business. You’ll learn what to include in each section of your business plan and how to do it.

There’s also a list for you to check off when you finish each section of your business plan.

Strong game plans help coaches win games and help businesses rocket to the top of their industries. So if you dedicate the time and effort required to write a workable and convincing business plan, you’ll boost your chances of success and even dominance in your market.

This business plan kit is essential for the budding entrepreneur who needs a more extensive document to share with investors and other stakeholders.

It not only includes sections for your executive summary, product line, market analysis, marketing plan, and sales plan, but it also offers hands-on guidance for filling out those sections.

3. LiveFlow’s Financial Planning Template with built-in automation

This free template from LiveFlow aims to make it easy for businesses to create a financial plan and track their progress on a monthly basis.

The P&L Budget versus Actual format allows users to track their revenue, cost of sales, operating expenses, operating profit margin, net profit, and more.

The summary dashboard aggregates all of the data put into the financial plan sheet and will automatically update when changes are made.

Instead of wasting hours manually importing your data to your spreadsheet, LiveFlow can also help you to automatically connect your accounting and banking data directly to your spreadsheet, so your numbers are always up-to-date.

With the dashboard, you can view your runway, cash balance, burn rate, gross margins, and other metrics. Having a simple way to track everything in one place will make it easier to complete the financials section of your business plan.

This is a fantastic template to track performance and alignment internally and to create a dependable process for documenting financial information across the business. It’s highly versatile and beginner-friendly.

It’s especially useful if you don’t have an accountant on the team. (I always recommend you do, but for new businesses, having one might not be possible.)

4. ThoughtCo’s Sample Business Plan

One of the more financially oriented sample business plans in this list, BPlan’s free business plan template dedicates many of its pages to your business’s financial plan and financial statements.

After filling this business plan out, your company will truly understand its financial health and the steps you need to take to maintain or improve it.

I absolutely love this business plan template because of its ease-of-use and hands-on instructions (in addition to its finance-centric components). If you feel overwhelmed by the thought of writing an entire business plan, consider using this template to help you with the process.

6. Harvard Business Review’s "How to Write a Winning Business Plan"

Most sample business plans teach you what to include in your business plan, but this Harvard Business Review article will take your business plan to the next level — it teaches you the why and how behind writing a business plan.

With the guidance of Stanley Rich and Richard Gumpert, co-authors of " Business Plans That Win: Lessons From the MIT Enterprise Forum ", you'll learn how to write a convincing business plan that emphasizes the market demand for your product or service.

You’ll also learn the financial benefits investors can reap from putting money into your venture rather than trying to sell them on how great your product or service is.

This business plan guide focuses less on the individual parts of a business plan, and more on the overarching goal of writing one. For that reason, it’s one of my favorites to supplement any template you choose to use. Harvard Business Review’s guide is instrumental for both new and seasoned business owners.

7. HubSpot’s Complete Guide to Starting a Business

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know writing a business plan is one of the most challenging first steps to starting a business.

Fortunately, with HubSpot's comprehensive guide to starting a business, you'll learn how to map out all the details by understanding what to include in your business plan and why it’s important to include them. The guide also fleshes out an entire sample business plan for you.

If you need further guidance on starting a business, HubSpot's guide can teach you how to make your business legal, choose and register your business name, and fund your business. It will also give small business tax information and includes marketing, sales, and service tips.

This comprehensive guide will walk you through the process of starting a business, in addition to writing your business plan, with a high level of exactitude and detail. So if you’re in the midst of starting your business, this is an excellent guide for you.

It also offers other resources you might need, such as market analysis templates.

8. Panda Doc’s Free Business Plan Template

PandaDoc’s free business plan template is one of the more detailed and fleshed-out sample business plans on this list. It describes what you should include in each section, so you don't have to come up with everything from scratch.

Once you fill it out, you’ll fully understand your business’ nitty-gritty details and how all of its moving parts should work together to contribute to its success.

This template has two things I love: comprehensiveness and in-depth instructions. Plus, it’s synced with PandaDoc’s e-signature software so that you and other stakeholders can sign it with ease. For that reason, I especially love it for those starting a business with a partner or with a board of directors.

9. Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template

The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers several free business plan templates that can be used to inspire your own plan.

Before you get started, you can decide what type of business plan you need — a traditional or lean start-up plan.

Then, you can review the format for both of those plans and view examples of what they might look like.

We love both of the SBA’s templates because of their versatility. You can choose between two options and use the existing content in the templates to flesh out your own plan. Plus, if needed, you can get a free business counselor to help you along the way.

I’ve compiled some completed business plan samples to help you get an idea of how to customize a plan for your business.

I chose different types of business plan ideas to expand your imagination. Some are extensive, while others are fairly simple.

Let’s take a look.

1. LiveFlow

One of the major business expenses is marketing. How you handle your marketing reflects your company’s revenue.

I included this business plan to show you how you can ensure your marketing team is aligned with your overall business plan to get results. The plan also shows you how to track even the smallest metrics of your campaigns, like ROI and payback periods instead of just focusing on big metrics like gross and revenue.

Fintech startup, LiveFlow, allows users to sync real-time data from its accounting services, payment platforms, and banks into custom reports. This eliminates the task of pulling reports together manually, saving teams time and helping automate workflows.

"Using this framework over a traditional marketing plan will help you set a profitable marketing strategy taking things like CAC, LTV, Payback period, and P&L into consideration," explains LiveFlow co-founder, Lasse Kalkar .

When it came to including marketing strategy in its business plan, LiveFlow created a separate marketing profit and loss statement (P&L) to track how well the company was doing with its marketing initiatives.

This is a great approach, allowing businesses to focus on where their marketing dollars are making the most impact. Having this information handy will enable you to build out your business plan’s marketing section with confidence. LiveFlow has shared the template here . You can test it for yourself.

2. Lula Body

Sometimes all you need is a solid mission statement and core values to guide you on how to go about everything. You do this by creating a business plan revolving around how to fulfill your statement best.

For example, Patagonia is an eco-friendly company, so their plan discusses how to make the best environmentally friendly products without causing harm.

A good mission statement  should not only resonate with consumers but should also serve as a core value compass for employees as well.

Patagonia has one of the most compelling mission statements I’ve seen:

"Together, let’s prioritise purpose over profit and protect this wondrous planet, our only home."

It reels you in from the start, and the environmentally friendly theme continues throughout the rest of the statement.

This mission goes on to explain that they are out to "Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to protect nature."

Their mission statement is compelling and detailed, with each section outlining how they will accomplish their goal.

4. Vesta Home Automation

This executive summary for a smart home device startup is part of a business plan created by students at Mount Royal University .

While it lacks some of the sleek visuals of the templates above, its executive summary does a great job of demonstrating how invested they are in the business.

Right away, they mention they’ve invested $200,000 into the company already, which shows investors they have skin in the game and aren’t just looking for someone else to foot the bill.

This is the kind of business plan you need when applying for business funds. It clearly illustrates the expected future of the company and how the business has been coming along over the years.

5. NALB Creative Center

This fictional business plan for an art supply store includes everything one might need in a business plan: an executive summary, a company summary, a list of services, a market analysis summary, and more.

One of its most notable sections is its market analysis summary, which includes an overview of the population growth in the business’ target geographical area, as well as a breakdown of the types of potential customers they expect to welcome at the store. 

This sort of granular insight is essential for understanding and communicating your business’s growth potential. Plus, it lays a strong foundation for creating relevant and useful buyer personas .

It’s essential to keep this information up-to-date as your market and target buyer changes. For that reason, you should carry out market research as often as possible to ensure that you’re targeting the correct audience and sharing accurate information with your investors.

Due to its comprehensiveness, it’s an excellent example to follow if you’re opening a brick-and-mortar store and need to get external funding to start your business .

6. Curriculum Companion Suites (CSS)

If you’re looking for a SaaS business plan example, look no further than this business plan for a fictional educational software company called Curriculum Companion Suites. 

Like the business plan for the NALB Creative Center, it includes plenty of information for prospective investors and other key stakeholders in the business.

One of the most notable features of this business plan is the executive summary, which includes an overview of the product, market, and mission.

The first two are essential for software companies because the product offering is so often at the forefront of the company’s strategy. Without that information being immediately available to investors and executives, then you risk writing an unfocused business plan.

It’s essential to front-load your company’s mission if it explains your "Why?" and this example does just that. In other words, why do you do what you do, and why should stakeholders care? This is an important section to include if you feel that your mission will drive interest in the business and its offerings.

7. Culina Sample Business Plan

Culina's sample business plan is an excellent example of how to lay out your business plan so that it flows naturally, engages readers, and provides the critical information investors and stakeholders need. 

You can use this template as a guide while you're gathering important information for your own business plan. You'll have a better understanding of the data and research you need to do since Culina’s plan outlines these details so flawlessly for inspiration.

8. Plum Sample Business Plan

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How to Write a Business Plan in 9 Steps (+ Template and Examples)

Every successful business has one thing in common, a good and well-executed business plan. A business plan is more than a document, it is a complete guide that outlines the goals your business wants to achieve, including its financial goals . It helps you analyze results, make strategic decisions, show your business operations and growth.

If you want to start a business or already have one and need to pitch it to investors for funding, writing a good business plan improves your chances of attracting financiers. As a startup, if you want to secure loans from financial institutions, part of the requirements involve submitting your business plan.

Writing a business plan does not have to be a complicated or time-consuming process. In this article, you will learn the step-by-step process for writing a successful business plan.

You will also learn what you need a business plan for, tips and strategies for writing a convincing business plan, business plan examples and templates that will save you tons of time, and the alternatives to the traditional business plan.

Let’s get started.

What Do You Need A Business Plan For?

Businesses create business plans for different purposes such as to secure funds, monitor business growth, measure your marketing strategies, and measure your business success.

1. Secure Funds

One of the primary reasons for writing a business plan is to secure funds, either from financial institutions/agencies or investors.

For you to effectively acquire funds, your business plan must contain the key elements of your business plan . For example, your business plan should include your growth plans, goals you want to achieve, and milestones you have recorded.

A business plan can also attract new business partners that are willing to contribute financially and intellectually. If you are writing a business plan to a bank, your project must show your traction , that is, the proof that you can pay back any loan borrowed.

Also, if you are writing to an investor, your plan must contain evidence that you can effectively utilize the funds you want them to invest in your business. Here, you are using your business plan to persuade a group or an individual that your business is a source of a good investment.

2. Monitor Business Growth

A business plan can help you track cash flows in your business. It steers your business to greater heights. A business plan capable of tracking business growth should contain:

• The business goals
• Methods to achieve the goals
• Time-frame for attaining those goals

A good business plan should guide you through every step in achieving your goals. It can also track the allocation of assets to every aspect of the business. You can tell when you are spending more than you should on a project.

You can compare a business plan to a written GPS. It helps you manage your business and hints at the right time to expand your business.

3. Measure Business Success

A business plan can help you measure your business success rate. Some small-scale businesses are thriving better than more prominent companies because of their track record of success.

Right from the onset of your business operation, set goals and work towards them. Write a plan to guide you through your procedures. Use your plan to measure how much you have achieved and how much is left to attain.

You can also weigh your success by monitoring the position of your brand relative to competitors. On the other hand, a business plan can also show you why you have not achieved a goal. It can tell if you have elapsed the time frame you set to attain a goal.

4. Document Your Marketing Strategies

You can use a business plan to document your marketing plans. Every business should have an effective marketing plan.

Competition mandates every business owner to go the extraordinary mile to remain relevant in the market. Your business plan should contain your marketing strategies that work. You can measure the success rate of your marketing plans.

In your business plan, your marketing strategy must answer the questions:

• How do you want to reach your target audience?
• How do you plan to retain your customers?
• What is/are your pricing plans?
• What is your budget for marketing?

How to Write a Business Plan Step-by-Step

1. create your executive summary.

The executive summary is a snapshot of your business or a high-level overview of your business purposes and plans . Although the executive summary is the first section in your business plan, most people write it last. The length of the executive summary is not more than two pages.

Generally, there are nine sections in a business plan, the executive summary should condense essential ideas from the other eight sections.

A good executive summary should do the following:

• A Snapshot of Growth Potential. Briefly inform the reader about your company and why it will be successful)
• Contain your Mission Statement which explains what the main objective or focus of your business is.
• Product Description and Differentiation. Brief description of your products or services and why it is different from other solutions in the market.
• The Team. Basic information about your company’s leadership team and employees
• Business Concept. A solid description of what your business does.
• Target Market. The customers you plan to sell to.
• Marketing Strategy. Your plans on reaching and selling to your customers
• Current Financial State. Brief information about what revenue your business currently generates.
• Projected Financial State. Brief information about what you foresee your business revenue to be in the future.

The executive summary is the make-or-break section of your business plan. If your summary cannot in less than two pages cannot clearly describe how your business will solve a particular problem of your target audience and make a profit, your business plan is set on a faulty foundation.

Avoid using the executive summary to hype your business, instead, focus on helping the reader understand the what and how of your plan.

View the executive summary as an opportunity to introduce your vision for your company. You know your executive summary is powerful when it can answer these key questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• What sector or industry are you in?
• What are your products and services?
• What is the future of your industry?
• Is your company scaleable?
• Who are the owners and leaders of your company? What are their backgrounds and experience levels?
• What is the motivation for starting your company?
• What are the next steps?

Writing the executive summary last although it is the most important section of your business plan is an excellent idea. The reason why is because it is a high-level overview of your business plan. It is the section that determines whether potential investors and lenders will read further or not.

The executive summary can be a stand-alone document that covers everything in your business plan. It is not uncommon for investors to request only the executive summary when evaluating your business. If the information in the executive summary impresses them, they will ask for the complete business plan.

If you are writing your business plan for your planning purposes, you do not need to write the executive summary.

2. Add Your Company Overview

The company overview or description is the next section in your business plan after the executive summary. It describes what your business does.

Adding your company overview can be tricky especially when your business is still in the planning stages. Existing businesses can easily summarize their current operations but may encounter difficulties trying to explain what they plan to become.

Your company overview should contain the following:

• What products and services you will provide
• Geographical markets and locations your company have a presence
• What you need to run your business
• Who your target audience or customers are
• Who will service your customers
• Your company’s purpose, mission, and vision
• Information about your company’s founders
• Who the founders are
• Notable achievements of your company so far

When creating a company overview, you have to focus on three basics: identifying your industry, identifying your customer, and explaining the problem you solve.

If you are stuck when creating your company overview, try to answer some of these questions that pertain to you.

• Who are you targeting? (The answer is not everyone)
• What pain point does your product or service solve for your customers that they will be willing to spend money on resolving?
• How does your product or service overcome that pain point?
• Where is the location of your business?
• What products, equipment, and services do you need to run your business?
• How is your company’s product or service different from your competition in the eyes of your customers?
• How many employees do you need and what skills do you require them to have?

After answering some or all of these questions, you will get more than enough information you need to write your company overview or description section. When writing this section, describe what your company does for your customers.

The company description or overview section contains three elements: mission statement, history, and objectives.

• Mission Statement

The mission statement refers to the reason why your business or company is existing. It goes beyond what you do or sell, it is about the ‘why’. A good mission statement should be emotional and inspirational.

Your mission statement should follow the KISS rule (Keep It Simple, Stupid). For example, Shopify’s mission statement is “Make commerce better for everyone.”

When describing your company’s history, make it simple and avoid the temptation of tying it to a defensive narrative. Write it in the manner you would a profile. Your company’s history should include the following information:

• Founding Date
• Major Milestones
• Location(s)
• Flagship Products or Services
• Number of Employees
• Executive Leadership Roles

When you fill in this information, you use it to write one or two paragraphs about your company’s history.

Business Objectives

Your business objective must be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.) Failure to clearly identify your business objectives does not inspire confidence and makes it hard for your team members to work towards a common purpose.

3. Perform Market and Competitive Analyses to Proof a Big Enough Business Opportunity

The third step in writing a business plan is the market and competitive analysis section. Every business, no matter the size, needs to perform comprehensive market and competitive analyses before it enters into a market.

Performing market and competitive analyses are critical for the success of your business. It helps you avoid entering the right market with the wrong product, or vice versa. Anyone reading your business plans, especially financiers and financial institutions will want to see proof that there is a big enough business opportunity you are targeting.

This section is where you describe the market and industry you want to operate in and show the big opportunities in the market that your business can leverage to make a profit. If you noticed any unique trends when doing your research, show them in this section.

Market analysis alone is not enough, you have to add competitive analysis to strengthen this section. There are already businesses in the industry or market, how do you plan to take a share of the market from them?

You have to clearly illustrate the competitive landscape in your business plan. Are there areas your competitors are doing well? Are there areas where they are not doing so well? Show it.

Make it clear in this section why you are moving into the industry and what weaknesses are present there that you plan to explain. How are your competitors going to react to your market entry? How do you plan to get customers? Do you plan on taking your competitors' competitors, tap into other sources for customers, or both?

Illustrate the competitive landscape as well. What are your competitors doing well and not so well?

Answering these questions and thoughts will aid your market and competitive analysis of the opportunities in your space. Depending on how sophisticated your industry is, or the expectations of your financiers, you may need to carry out a more comprehensive market and competitive analysis to prove that big business opportunity.

Instead of looking at the market and competitive analyses as one entity, separating them will make the research even more comprehensive.

Market Analysis

Market analysis, boarding speaking, refers to research a business carried out on its industry, market, and competitors. It helps businesses gain a good understanding of their target market and the outlook of their industry. Before starting a company, it is vital to carry out market research to find out if the market is viable.

The market analysis section is a key part of the business plan. It is the section where you identify who your best clients or customers are. You cannot omit this section, without it your business plan is incomplete.

A good market analysis will tell your readers how you fit into the existing market and what makes you stand out. This section requires in-depth research, it will probably be the most time-consuming part of the business plan to write.

• Market Research

To create a compelling market analysis that will win over investors and financial institutions, you have to carry out thorough market research . Your market research should be targeted at your primary target market for your products or services. Here is what you want to find out about your target market.

• Your target market’s needs or pain points
• The existing solutions for their pain points
• Geographic Location
• Demographics

The purpose of carrying out a marketing analysis is to get all the information you need to show that you have a solid and thorough understanding of your target audience.

Only after you have fully understood the people you plan to sell your products or services to, can you evaluate correctly if your target market will be interested in your products or services.

You can easily convince interested parties to invest in your business if you can show them you thoroughly understand the market and show them that there is a market for your products or services.

How to Quantify Your Target Market

One of the goals of your marketing research is to understand who your ideal customers are and their purchasing power. To quantify your target market, you have to determine the following:

• Your Potential Customers: They are the people you plan to target. For example, if you sell accounting software for small businesses , then anyone who runs an enterprise or large business is unlikely to be your customers. Also, individuals who do not have a business will most likely not be interested in your product.
• Total Households: If you are selling household products such as heating and air conditioning systems, determining the number of total households is more important than finding out the total population in the area you want to sell to. The logic is simple, people buy the product but it is the household that uses it.
• Median Income: You need to know the median income of your target market. If you target a market that cannot afford to buy your products and services, your business will not last long.
• Income by Demographics: If your potential customers belong to a certain age group or gender, determining income levels by demographics is necessary. For example, if you sell men's clothes, your target audience is men.

What Does a Good Market Analysis Entail?

Your business does not exist on its own, it can only flourish within an industry and alongside competitors. Market analysis takes into consideration your industry, target market, and competitors. Understanding these three entities will drastically improve your company’s chances of success.

You can view your market analysis as an examination of the market you want to break into and an education on the emerging trends and themes in that market. Good market analyses include the following:

• Industry Description. You find out about the history of your industry, the current and future market size, and who the largest players/companies are in your industry.
• Overview of Target Market. You research your target market and its characteristics. Who are you targeting? Note, it cannot be everyone, it has to be a specific group. You also have to find out all information possible about your customers that can help you understand how and why they make buying decisions.
• Size of Target Market: You need to know the size of your target market, how frequently they buy, and the expected quantity they buy so you do not risk overproducing and having lots of bad inventory. Researching the size of your target market will help you determine if it is big enough for sustained business or not.
• Growth Potential: Before picking a target market, you want to be sure there are lots of potential for future growth. You want to avoid going for an industry that is declining slowly or rapidly with almost zero growth potential.
• Market Share Potential: Does your business stand a good chance of taking a good share of the market?
• Market Pricing and Promotional Strategies: Your market analysis should give you an idea of the price point you can expect to charge for your products and services. Researching your target market will also give you ideas of pricing strategies you can implement to break into the market or to enjoy maximum profits.
• Potential Barriers to Entry: One of the biggest benefits of conducting market analysis is that it shows you every potential barrier to entry your business will likely encounter. It is a good idea to discuss potential barriers to entry such as changing technology. It informs readers of your business plan that you understand the market.
• Research on Competitors: You need to know the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and how you can exploit them for the benefit of your business. Find patterns and trends among your competitors that make them successful, discover what works and what doesn’t, and see what you can do better.

The market analysis section is not just for talking about your target market, industry, and competitors. You also have to explain how your company can fill the hole you have identified in the market.

Here are some questions you can answer that can help you position your product or service in a positive light to your readers.

• Is your product or service of superior quality?
• What additional features do you offer that your competitors do not offer?
• Are you targeting a ‘new’ market?

Basically, your market analysis should include an analysis of what already exists in the market and an explanation of how your company fits into the market.

Competitive Analysis

In the competitive analysis section, y ou have to understand who your direct and indirect competitions are, and how successful they are in the marketplace. It is the section where you assess the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, the advantage(s) they possess in the market and show the unique features or qualities that make you different from your competitors.

Many businesses do market analysis and competitive analysis together. However, to fully understand what the competitive analysis entails, it is essential to separate it from the market analysis.

Competitive analysis for your business can also include analysis on how to overcome barriers to entry in your target market.

The primary goal of conducting a competitive analysis is to distinguish your business from your competitors. A strong competitive analysis is essential if you want to convince potential funding sources to invest in your business. You have to show potential investors and lenders that your business has what it takes to compete in the marketplace successfully.

Competitive analysis will s how you what the strengths of your competition are and what they are doing to maintain that advantage.

When doing your competitive research, you first have to identify your competitor and then get all the information you can about them. The idea of spending time to identify your competitor and learn everything about them may seem daunting but it is well worth it.

Find answers to the following questions after you have identified who your competitors are.

• What are your successful competitors doing?
• Why is what they are doing working?
• Can your business do it better?
• What are the weaknesses of your successful competitors?
• What are they not doing well?
• Can your business turn its weaknesses into strengths?
• How good is your competitors’ customer service?
• Where do your competitors invest in advertising?
• What sales and pricing strategies are they using?
• What marketing strategies are they using?
• What kind of press coverage do they get?
• What are their customers saying about your competitors (both the positive and negative)?

If your competitors have a website, it is a good idea to visit their websites for more competitors’ research. Check their “About Us” page for more information.

If you are presenting your business plan to investors, you need to clearly distinguish yourself from your competitors. Investors can easily tell when you have not properly researched your competitors.

Take time to think about what unique qualities or features set you apart from your competitors. If you do not have any direct competition offering your product to the market, it does not mean you leave out the competitor analysis section blank. Instead research on other companies that are providing a similar product, or whose product is solving the problem your product solves.

The next step is to create a table listing the top competitors you want to include in your business plan. Ensure you list your business as the last and on the right. What you just created is known as the competitor analysis table.

Direct vs Indirect Competition

You cannot know if your product or service will be a fit for your target market if you have not understood your business and the competitive landscape.

There is no market you want to target where you will not encounter competition, even if your product is innovative. Including competitive analysis in your business plan is essential.

If you are entering an established market, you need to explain how you plan to differentiate your products from the available options in the market. Also, include a list of few companies that you view as your direct competitors The competition you face in an established market is your direct competition.

In situations where you are entering a market with no direct competition, it does not mean there is no competition there. Consider your indirect competition that offers substitutes for the products or services you offer.

For example, if you sell an innovative SaaS product, let us say a project management software , a company offering time management software is your indirect competition.

There is an easy way to find out who your indirect competitors are in the absence of no direct competitors. You simply have to research how your potential customers are solving the problems that your product or service seeks to solve. That is your direct competition.

Factors that Differentiate Your Business from the Competition

There are three main factors that any business can use to differentiate itself from its competition. They are cost leadership, product differentiation, and market segmentation.

1. Cost Leadership

A strategy you can impose to maximize your profits and gain an edge over your competitors. It involves offering lower prices than what the majority of your competitors are offering.

A common practice among businesses looking to enter into a market where there are dominant players is to use free trials or pricing to attract as many customers as possible to their offer.

2. Product Differentiation

Your product or service should have a unique selling proposition (USP) that your competitors do not have or do not stress in their marketing.

Part of the marketing strategy should involve making your products unique and different from your competitors. It does not have to be different from your competitors, it can be the addition to a feature or benefit that your competitors do not currently have.

3. Market Segmentation

As a new business seeking to break into an industry, you will gain more success from focusing on a specific niche or target market, and not the whole industry.

If your competitors are focused on a general need or target market, you can differentiate yourself from them by having a small and hyper-targeted audience. For example, if your competitors are selling men’s clothes in their online stores , you can sell hoodies for men.

4. Define Your Business and Management Structure

The next step in your business plan is your business and management structure. It is the section where you describe the legal structure of your business and the team running it.

Your business is only as good as the management team that runs it, while the management team can only strive when there is a proper business and management structure in place.

If your company is a sole proprietor or a limited liability company (LLC), a general or limited partnership, or a C or an S corporation, state it clearly in this section.

Use an organizational chart to show the management structure in your business. Clearly show who is in charge of what area in your company. It is where you show how each key manager or team leader’s unique experience can contribute immensely to the success of your company. You can also opt to add the resumes and CVs of the key players in your company.

The business and management structure section should show who the owner is, and other owners of the businesses (if the business has other owners). For businesses or companies with multiple owners, include the percent ownership of the various owners and clearly show the extent of each others’ involvement in the company.

Investors want to know who is behind the company and the team running it to determine if it has the right management to achieve its set goals.

Management Team

The management team section is where you show that you have the right team in place to successfully execute the business operations and ideas. Take time to create the management structure for your business. Think about all the important roles and responsibilities that you need managers for to grow your business.

Include brief bios of each key team member and ensure you highlight only the relevant information that is needed. If your team members have background industry experience or have held top positions for other companies and achieved success while filling that role, highlight it in this section.

A common mistake that many startups make is assigning C-level titles such as (CMO and CEO) to everyone on their team. It is unrealistic for a small business to have those titles. While it may look good on paper for the ego of your team members, it can prevent investors from investing in your business.

Instead of building an unrealistic management structure that does not fit your business reality, it is best to allow business titles to grow as the business grows. Starting everyone at the top leaves no room for future change or growth, which is bad for productivity.

Your management team does not have to be complete before you start writing your business plan. You can have a complete business plan even when there are managerial positions that are empty and need filling.

If you have management gaps in your team, simply show the gaps and indicate you are searching for the right candidates for the role(s). Investors do not expect you to have a full management team when you are just starting your business.

Key Questions to Answer When Structuring Your Management Team

• Who are the key leaders?
• What experiences, skills, and educational backgrounds do you expect your key leaders to have?
• Do your key leaders have industry experience?
• What positions will they fill and what duties will they perform in those positions?
• What level of authority do the key leaders have and what are their responsibilities?
• What is the salary for the various management positions that will attract the ideal candidates?

Additional Tips for Writing the Management Structure Section

1. Avoid Adding ‘Ghost’ Names to Your Management Team

There is always that temptation to include a ‘ghost’ name to your management team to attract and influence investors to invest in your business. Although the presence of these celebrity management team members may attract the attention of investors, it can cause your business to lose any credibility if you get found out.

Seasoned investors will investigate further the members of your management team before committing fully to your business If they find out that the celebrity name used does not play any actual role in your business, they will not invest and may write you off as dishonest.

2. Focus on Credentials But Pay Extra Attention to the Roles

Investors want to know the experience that your key team members have to determine if they can successfully reach the company’s growth and financial goals.

While it is an excellent boost for your key management team to have the right credentials, you also want to pay extra attention to the roles they will play in your company.

Organizational Chart

Adding an organizational chart in this section of your business plan is not necessary, you can do it in your business plan’s appendix.

If you are exploring funding options, it is not uncommon to get asked for your organizational chart. The function of an organizational chart goes beyond raising money, you can also use it as a useful planning tool for your business.

An organizational chart can help you identify how best to structure your management team for maximum productivity and point you towards key roles you need to fill in the future.

You can use the organizational chart to show your company’s internal management structure such as the roles and responsibilities of your management team, and relationships that exist between them.

5. Describe Your Product and Service Offering

In your business plan, you have to describe what you sell or the service you plan to offer. It is the next step after defining your business and management structure. The products and services section is where you sell the benefits of your business.

Here you have to explain how your product or service will benefit your customers and describe your product lifecycle. It is also the section where you write down your plans for intellectual property like patent filings and copyrighting.

The research and development that you are undertaking for your product or service need to be explained in detail in this section. However, do not get too technical, sell the general idea and its benefits.

If you have any diagrams or intricate designs of your product or service, do not include them in the products and services section. Instead, leave them for the addendum page. Also, if you are leaving out diagrams or designs for the addendum, ensure you add this phrase “For more detail, visit the addendum Page #.”

Your product and service section in your business plan should include the following:

• A detailed explanation that clearly shows how your product or service works.
• The pricing model for your product or service.
• Your business’ sales and distribution strategy.
• The ideal customers that want your product or service.
• The benefits of your products and services.
• Reason(s) why your product or service is a better alternative to what your competitors are currently offering in the market.
• Plans for filling the orders you receive
• If you have current or pending patents, copyrights, and trademarks for your product or service, you can also discuss them in this section.

What to Focus On When Describing the Benefits, Lifecycle, and Production Process of Your Products or Services

In the products and services section, you have to distill the benefits, lifecycle, and production process of your products and services.

When describing the benefits of your products or services, here are some key factors to focus on.

• Unique features
• Translating the unique features into benefits
• The emotional, psychological, and practical payoffs to attract customers
• Intellectual property rights or any patents

When describing the product life cycle of your products or services, here are some key factors to focus on.

• Upsells, cross-sells, and down-sells
• Time between purchases
• Plans for research and development.

When describing the production process for your products or services, you need to think about the following:

• The creation of new or existing products and services.
• The sources for the raw materials or components you need for production.
• Assembling the products
• Maintaining quality control
• Supply-chain logistics (receiving the raw materials and delivering the finished products)
• The day-to-day management of the production processes, bookkeeping, and inventory.

Tips for Writing the Products or Services Section of Your Business Plan

1. Avoid Technical Descriptions and Industry Buzzwords

The products and services section of your business plan should clearly describe the products and services that your company provides. However, it is not a section to include technical jargons that anyone outside your industry will not understand.

A good practice is to remove highly detailed or technical descriptions in favor of simple terms. Industry buzzwords are not necessary, if there are simpler terms you can use, then use them. If you plan to use your business plan to source funds, making the product or service section so technical will do you no favors.

2. Describe How Your Products or Services Differ from Your Competitors

When potential investors look at your business plan, they want to know how the products and services you are offering differ from that of your competition. Differentiating your products or services from your competition in a way that makes your solution more attractive is critical.

If you are going the innovative path and there is no market currently for your product or service, you need to describe in this section why the market needs your product or service.

For example, overnight delivery was a niche business that only a few companies were participating in. Federal Express (FedEx) had to show in its business plan that there was a large opportunity for that service and they justified why the market needed that service.

3. Long or Short Products or Services Section

Should your products or services section be short? Does the long products or services section attract more investors?

There are no straightforward answers to these questions. Whether your products or services section should be long or relatively short depends on the nature of your business.

If your business is product-focused, then automatically you need to use more space to describe the details of your products. However, if the product your business sells is a commodity item that relies on competitive pricing or other pricing strategies, you do not have to use up so much space to provide significant details about the product.

Likewise, if you are selling a commodity that is available in numerous outlets, then you do not have to spend time on writing a long products or services section.

The key to the success of your business is most likely the effectiveness of your marketing strategies compared to your competitors. Use more space to address that section.

If you are creating a new product or service that the market does not know about, your products or services section can be lengthy. The reason why is because you need to explain everything about the product or service such as the nature of the product, its use case, and values.

A short products or services section for an innovative product or service will not give the readers enough information to properly evaluate your business.

4. Describe Your Relationships with Vendors or Suppliers

Your business will rely on vendors or suppliers to supply raw materials or the components needed to make your products. In your products and services section, describe your relationships with your vendors and suppliers fully.

Avoid the mistake of relying on only one supplier or vendor. If that supplier or vendor fails to supply or goes out of business, you can easily face supply problems and struggle to meet your demands. Plan to set up multiple vendor or supplier relationships for better business stability.

5. Your Primary Goal Is to Convince Your Readers

The primary goal of your business plan is to convince your readers that your business is viable and to create a guide for your business to follow. It applies to the products and services section.

When drafting this section, think like the reader. See your reader as someone who has no idea about your products and services. You are using the products and services section to provide the needed information to help your reader understand your products and services. As a result, you have to be clear and to the point.

While you want to educate your readers about your products or services, you also do not want to bore them with lots of technical details. Show your products and services and not your fancy choice of words.

Your products and services section should provide the answer to the “what” question for your business. You and your management team may run the business, but it is your products and services that are the lifeblood of the business.

Key Questions to Answer When Writing your Products and Services Section

Answering these questions can help you write your products and services section quickly and in a way that will appeal to your readers.

• Are your products existing on the market or are they still in the development stage?
• What is your timeline for adding new products and services to the market?
• What are the positives that make your products and services different from your competitors?
• Do your products and services have any competitive advantage that your competitors’ products and services do not currently have?
• Do your products or services have any competitive disadvantages that you need to overcome to compete with your competitors? If your answer is yes, state how you plan to overcome them,
• How much does it cost to produce your products or services? How much do you plan to sell it for?
• What is the price for your products and services compared to your competitors? Is pricing an issue?
• What are your operating costs and will it be low enough for you to compete with your competitors and still take home a reasonable profit margin?
• What is your plan for acquiring your products? Are you involved in the production of your products or services?
• Are you the manufacturer and produce all the components you need to create your products? Do you assemble your products by using components supplied by other manufacturers? Do you purchase your products directly from suppliers or wholesalers?
• Do you have a steady supply of products that you need to start your business? (If your business is yet to kick-off)
• How do you plan to distribute your products or services to the market?

You can also hint at the marketing or promotion plans you have for your products or services such as how you plan to build awareness or retain customers. The next section is where you can go fully into details about your business’s marketing and sales plan.

6. Show and Explain Your Marketing and Sales Plan

Providing great products and services is wonderful, but it means nothing if you do not have a marketing and sales plan to inform your customers about them. Your marketing and sales plan is critical to the success of your business.

The sales and marketing section is where you show and offer a detailed explanation of your marketing and sales plan and how you plan to execute it. It covers your pricing plan, proposed advertising and promotion activities, activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success, and the benefits of your products and services.

There are several ways you can approach your marketing and sales strategy. Ideally, your marketing and sales strategy has to fit the unique needs of your business.

In this section, you describe how the plans your business has for attracting and retaining customers, and the exact process for making a sale happen. It is essential to thoroughly describe your complete marketing and sales plans because you are still going to reference this section when you are making financial projections for your business.

Outline Your Business’ Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The sales and marketing section is where you outline your business’s unique selling proposition (USP). When you are developing your unique selling proposition, think about the strongest reasons why people should buy from you over your competition. That reason(s) is most likely a good fit to serve as your unique selling proposition (USP).

Target Market and Target Audience

Plans on how to get your products or services to your target market and how to get your target audience to buy them go into this section. You also highlight the strengths of your business here, particularly what sets them apart from your competition.

Before you start writing your marketing and sales plan, you need to have properly defined your target audience and fleshed out your buyer persona. If you do not first understand the individual you are marketing to, your marketing and sales plan will lack any substance and easily fall.

Creating a Smart Marketing and Sales Plan

Marketing your products and services is an investment that requires you to spend money. Like any other investment, you have to generate a good return on investment (ROI) to justify using that marketing and sales plan. Good marketing and sales plans bring in high sales and profits to your company.

Avoid spending money on unproductive marketing channels. Do your research and find out the best marketing and sales plan that works best for your company.

Your marketing and sales plan can be broken into different parts: your positioning statement, pricing, promotion, packaging, advertising, public relations, content marketing, social media, and strategic alliances.

Your Positioning Statement

Your positioning statement is the first part of your marketing and sales plan. It refers to the way you present your company to your customers.

Are you the premium solution, the low-price solution, or are you the intermediary between the two extremes in the market? What do you offer that your competitors do not that can give you leverage in the market?

Before you start writing your positioning statement, you need to spend some time evaluating the current market conditions. Here are some questions that can help you to evaluate the market

• What are the unique features or benefits that you offer that your competitors lack?
• What are your customers’ primary needs and wants?
• Why should a customer choose you over your competition? How do you plan to differentiate yourself from the competition?
• How does your company’s solution compare with other solutions in the market?

After answering these questions, then you can start writing your positioning statement. Your positioning statement does not have to be in-depth or too long.

All you need to explain with your positioning statement are two focus areas. The first is the position of your company within the competitive landscape. The other focus area is the core value proposition that sets your company apart from other alternatives that your ideal customer might consider.

Here is a simple template you can use to develop a positioning statement.

For [description of target market] who [need of target market], [product or service] [how it meets the need]. Unlike [top competition], it [most essential distinguishing feature].

For example, let’s create the positioning statement for fictional accounting software and QuickBooks alternative , TBooks.

“For small business owners who need accounting services, TBooks is an accounting software that helps small businesses handle their small business bookkeeping basics quickly and easily. Unlike Wave, TBooks gives small businesses access to live sessions with top accountants.”

You can edit this positioning statement sample and fill it with your business details.

After writing your positioning statement, the next step is the pricing of your offerings. The overall positioning strategy you set in your positioning statement will often determine how you price your products or services.

Pricing is a powerful tool that sends a strong message to your customers. Failure to get your pricing strategy right can make or mar your business. If you are targeting a low-income audience, setting a premium price can result in low sales.

You can use pricing to communicate your positioning to your customers. For example, if you are offering a product at a premium price, you are sending a message to your customers that the product belongs to the premium category.

Basic Rules to Follow When Pricing Your Offering

Setting a price for your offering involves more than just putting a price tag on it. Deciding on the right pricing for your offering requires following some basic rules. They include covering your costs, primary and secondary profit center pricing, and matching the market rate.

• Covering Your Costs: The price you set for your products or service should be more than it costs you to produce and deliver them. Every business has the same goal, to make a profit. Depending on the strategy you want to use, there are exceptions to this rule. However, the vast majority of businesses follow this rule.
• Primary and Secondary Profit Center Pricing: When a company sets its price above the cost of production, it is making that product its primary profit center. A company can also decide not to make its initial price its primary profit center by selling below or at even with its production cost. It rather depends on the support product or even maintenance that is associated with the initial purchase to make its profit. The initial price thus became its secondary profit center.
• Matching the Market Rate: A good rule to follow when pricing your products or services is to match your pricing with consumer demand and expectations. If you price your products or services beyond the price your customer perceives as the ideal price range, you may end up with no customers. Pricing your products too low below what your customer perceives as the ideal price range may lead to them undervaluing your offering.

Pricing Strategy

Your pricing strategy influences the price of your offering. There are several pricing strategies available for you to choose from when examining the right pricing strategy for your business. They include cost-plus pricing, market-based pricing, value pricing, and more.

• Cost-plus Pricing: This strategy is one of the simplest and oldest pricing strategies. Here you consider the cost of producing a unit of your product and then add a profit to it to arrive at your market price. It is an effective pricing strategy for manufacturers because it helps them cover their initial costs. Another name for the cost-plus pricing strategy is the markup pricing strategy.
• Market-based Pricing: This pricing strategy analyses the market including competitors’ pricing and then sets a price based on what the market is expecting. With this pricing strategy, you can either set your price at the low-end or high-end of the market.
• Value Pricing: This pricing strategy involves setting a price based on the value you are providing to your customer. When adopting a value-based pricing strategy, you have to set a price that your customers are willing to pay. Service-based businesses such as small business insurance providers , luxury goods sellers, and the fashion industry use this pricing strategy.

After carefully sorting out your positioning statement and pricing, the next item to look at is your promotional strategy. Your promotional strategy explains how you plan on communicating with your customers and prospects.

As a business, you must measure all your costs, including the cost of your promotions. You also want to measure how much sales your promotions bring for your business to determine its usefulness. Promotional strategies or programs that do not lead to profit need to be removed.

There are different types of promotional strategies you can adopt for your business, they include advertising, public relations, and content marketing.

Advertising

Your business plan should include your advertising plan which can be found in the marketing and sales plan section. You need to include an overview of your advertising plans such as the areas you plan to spend money on to advertise your business and offers.

Ensure that you make it clear in this section if your business will be advertising online or using the more traditional offline media, or the combination of both online and offline media. You can also include the advertising medium you want to use to raise awareness about your business and offers.

Some common online advertising mediums you can use include social media ads, landing pages, sales pages, SEO, Pay-Per-Click, emails, Google Ads, and others. Some common traditional and offline advertising mediums include word of mouth, radios, direct mail, televisions, flyers, billboards, posters, and others.

A key component of your advertising strategy is how you plan to measure the effectiveness and success of your advertising campaign. There is no point in sticking with an advertising plan or medium that does not produce results for your business in the long run.

Public Relations

A great way to reach your customers is to get the media to cover your business or product. Publicity, especially good ones, should be a part of your marketing and sales plan. In this section, show your plans for getting prominent reviews of your product from reputable publications and sources.

Your business needs that exposure to grow. If public relations is a crucial part of your promotional strategy, provide details about your public relations plan here.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a popular promotional strategy used by businesses to inform and attract their customers. It is about teaching and educating your prospects on various topics of interest in your niche, it does not just involve informing them about the benefits and features of the products and services you have,

Businesses publish content usually for free where they provide useful information, tips, and advice so that their target market can be made aware of the importance of their products and services. Content marketing strategies seek to nurture prospects into buyers over time by simply providing value.

Your company can create a blog where it will be publishing content for its target market. You will need to use the best website builder such as Wix and Squarespace and the best web hosting services such as Bluehost, Hostinger, and other Bluehost alternatives to create a functional blog or website.

If content marketing is a crucial part of your promotional strategy (as it should be), detail your plans under promotions.

Including high-quality images of the packaging of your product in your business plan is a lovely idea. You can add the images of the packaging of that product in the marketing and sales plan section. If you are not selling a product, then you do not need to include any worry about the physical packaging of your product.

When organizing the packaging section of your business plan, you can answer the following questions to make maximum use of this section.

• Is your choice of packaging consistent with your positioning strategy?
• What key value proposition does your packaging communicate? (It should reflect the key value proposition of your business)
• How does your packaging compare to that of your competitors?

Social Media

Your 21st-century business needs to have a good social media presence. Not having one is leaving out opportunities for growth and reaching out to your prospect.

You do not have to join the thousands of social media platforms out there. What you need to do is join the ones that your customers are active on and be active there.

Businesses use social media to provide information about their products such as promotions, discounts, the benefits of their products, and content on their blogs.

Social media is also a platform for engaging with your customers and getting feedback about your products or services. Make no mistake, more and more of your prospects are using social media channels to find more information about companies.

You need to consider the social media channels you want to prioritize your business (prioritize the ones your customers are active in) and your branding plans in this section.

Strategic Alliances

If your company plans to work closely with other companies as part of your sales and marketing plan, include it in this section. Prove details about those partnerships in your business plan if you have already established them.

Strategic alliances can be beneficial for all parties involved including your company. Working closely with another company in the form of a partnership can provide access to a different target market segment for your company.

The company you are partnering with may also gain access to your target market or simply offer a new product or service (that of your company) to its customers.

Mutually beneficial partnerships can cover the weaknesses of one company with the strength of another. You should consider strategic alliances with companies that sell complimentary products to yours. For example, if you provide printers, you can partner with a company that produces ink since the customers that buy printers from you will also need inks for printing.

Steps Involved in Creating a Marketing and Sales Plan

1. Focus on Your Target Market

Identify who your customers are, the market you want to target. Then determine the best ways to get your products or services to your potential customers.

2. Evaluate Your Competition

One of the goals of having a marketing plan is to distinguish yourself from your competition. You cannot stand out from them without first knowing them in and out.

You can know your competitors by gathering information about their products, pricing, service, and advertising campaigns.

These questions can help you know your competition.

• What makes your competition successful?
• What are their weaknesses?
• What are customers saying about your competition?

3. Consider Your Brand

Customers' perception of your brand has a strong impact on your sales. Your marketing and sales plan should seek to bolster the image of your brand. Before you start marketing your business, think about the message you want to pass across about your business and your products and services.

4. Focus on Benefits

The majority of your customers do not view your product in terms of features, what they want to know is the benefits and solutions your product offers. Think about the problems your product solves and the benefits it delivers, and use it to create the right sales and marketing message.

Your marketing plan should focus on what you want your customer to get instead of what you provide. Identify those benefits in your marketing and sales plan.

5. Focus on Differentiation

Your marketing and sales plan should look for a unique angle they can take that differentiates your business from the competition, even if the products offered are similar. Some good areas of differentiation you can use are your benefits, pricing, and features.

Key Questions to Answer When Writing Your Marketing and Sales Plan

• What is your company’s budget for sales and marketing campaigns?
• What key metrics will you use to determine if your marketing plans are successful?
• What are your alternatives if your initial marketing efforts do not succeed?
• Who are the sales representatives you need to promote your products or services?
• What are the marketing and sales channels you plan to use? How do you plan to get your products in front of your ideal customers?
• Where will you sell your products?

You may want to include samples of marketing materials you plan to use such as print ads, website descriptions, and social media ads. While it is not compulsory to include these samples, it can help you better communicate your marketing and sales plan and objectives.

The purpose of the marketing and sales section is to answer this question “How will you reach your customers?” If you cannot convincingly provide an answer to this question, you need to rework your marketing and sales section.

7. Clearly Show Your Funding Request

If you are writing your business plan to ask for funding from investors or financial institutions, the funding request section is where you will outline your funding requirements. The funding request section should answer the question ‘How much money will your business need in the near future (3 to 5 years)?’

A good funding request section will clearly outline and explain the amount of funding your business needs over the next five years. You need to know the amount of money your business needs to make an accurate funding request.

Also, when writing your funding request, provide details of how the funds will be used over the period. Specify if you want to use the funds to buy raw materials or machinery, pay salaries, pay for advertisements, and cover specific bills such as rent and electricity.

In addition to explaining what you want to use the funds requested for, you need to clearly state the projected return on investment (ROI) . Investors and creditors want to know if your business can generate profit for them if they put funds into it.

Ensure you do not inflate the figures and stay as realistic as possible. Investors and financial institutions you are seeking funds from will do their research before investing money in your business.

If you are not sure of an exact number to request from, you can use some range of numbers as rough estimates. Add a best-case scenario and a work-case scenario to your funding request. Also, include a description of your strategic future financial plans such as selling your business or paying off debts.

Funding Request: Debt or Equity?

When making your funding request, specify the type of funding you want. Do you want debt or equity? Draw out the terms that will be applicable for the funding, and the length of time the funding request will cover.

Case for Equity

If your new business has not yet started generating profits, you are most likely preparing to sell equity in your business to raise capital at the early stage. Equity here refers to ownership. In this case, you are selling a portion of your company to raise capital.

Although this method of raising capital for your business does not put your business in debt, keep in mind that an equity owner may expect to play a key role in company decisions even if he does not hold a major stake in the company.

Most equity sales for startups are usually private transactions . If you are making a funding request by offering equity in exchange for funding, let the investor know that they will be paid a dividend (a share of the company’s profit). Also, let the investor know the process for selling their equity in your business.

Case for Debt

You may decide not to offer equity in exchange for funds, instead, you make a funding request with the promise to pay back the money borrowed at the agreed time frame.

When making a funding request with an agreement to pay back, note that you will have to repay your creditors both the principal amount borrowed and the interest on it. Financial institutions offer this type of funding for businesses.

Large companies combine both equity and debt in their capital structure. When drafting your business plan, decide if you want to offer both or one over the other.

Before you sell equity in exchange for funding in your business, consider if you are willing to accept not being in total control of your business. Also, before you seek loans in your funding request section, ensure that the terms of repayment are favorable.

You should set a clear timeline in your funding request so that potential investors and creditors can know what you are expecting. Some investors and creditors may agree to your funding request and then delay payment for longer than 30 days, meanwhile, your business needs an immediate cash injection to operate efficiently.

Additional Tips for Writing the Funding Request Section of your Business Plan

The funding request section is not necessary for every business, it is only needed by businesses who plan to use their business plan to secure funding.

If you are adding the funding request section to your business plan, provide an itemized summary of how you plan to use the funds requested. Hiring a lawyer, accountant, or other professionals may be necessary for the proper development of this section.

You should also gather and use financial statements that add credibility and support to your funding requests. Ensure that the financial statements you use should include your projected financial data such as projected cash flows, forecast statements, and expenditure budgets.

If you are an existing business, include all historical financial statements such as cash flow statements, balance sheets and income statements .

Provide monthly and quarterly financial statements for a year. If your business has records that date back beyond the one-year mark, add the yearly statements of those years. These documents are for the appendix section of your business plan.

8. Detail Your Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projections

If you used the funding request section in your business plan, supplement it with a financial plan, metrics, and projections. This section paints a picture of the past performance of your business and then goes ahead to make an informed projection about its future.

The goal of this section is to convince readers that your business is going to be a financial success. It outlines your business plan to generate enough profit to repay the loan (with interest if applicable) and to generate a decent return on investment for investors.

If you have an existing business already in operation, use this section to demonstrate stability through finance. This section should include your cash flow statements, balance sheets, and income statements covering the last three to five years. If your business has some acceptable collateral that you can use to acquire loans, list it in the financial plan, metrics, and projection section.

Apart from current financial statements, this section should also contain a prospective financial outlook that spans the next five years. Include forecasted income statements, cash flow statements, balance sheets, and capital expenditure budget.

If your business is new and is not yet generating profit, use clear and realistic projections to show the potentials of your business.

When drafting this section, research industry norms and the performance of comparable businesses. Your financial projections should cover at least five years. State the logic behind your financial projections. Remember you can always make adjustments to this section as the variables change.

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section create a baseline which your business can either exceed or fail to reach. If your business fails to reach your projections in this section, you need to understand why it failed.

Investors and loan managers spend a lot of time going through the financial plan, metrics, and projection section compared to other parts of the business plan. Ensure you spend time creating credible financial analyses for your business in this section.

Many entrepreneurs find this section daunting to write. You do not need a business degree to create a solid financial forecast for your business. Business finances, especially for startups, are not as complicated as they seem. There are several online tools and templates that make writing this section so much easier.

Use Graphs and Charts

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section is a great place to use graphs and charts to tell the financial story of your business. Charts and images make it easier to communicate your finances.

Accuracy in this section is key, ensure you carefully analyze your past financial statements properly before making financial projects.

Address the Risk Factors and Show Realistic Financial Projections

Keep your financial plan, metrics, and projection realistic. It is okay to be optimistic in your financial projection, however, you have to justify it.

You should also address the various risk factors associated with your business in this section. Investors want to know the potential risks involved, show them. You should also show your plans for mitigating those risks.

What You Should In The Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projection Section of Your Business Plan

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section of your business plan should have monthly sales and revenue forecasts for the first year. It should also include annual projections that cover 3 to 5 years.

A three-year projection is a basic requirement to have in your business plan. However, some investors may request a five-year forecast.

Your business plan should include the following financial statements: sales forecast, personnel plan, income statement, income statement, cash flow statement, balance sheet, and an exit strategy.

1. Sales Forecast

Sales forecast refers to your projections about the number of sales your business is going to record over the next few years. It is typically broken into several rows, with each row assigned to a core product or service that your business is offering.

One common mistake people make in their business plan is to break down the sales forecast section into long details. A sales forecast should forecast the high-level details.

For example, if you are forecasting sales for a payroll software provider, you could break down your forecast into target market segments or subscription categories.

Your sales forecast section should also have a corresponding row for each sales row to cover the direct cost or Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). The objective of these rows is to show the expenses that your business incurs in making and delivering your product or service.

Note that your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) should only cover those direct costs incurred when making your products. Other indirect expenses such as insurance, salaries, payroll tax, and rent should not be included.

For example, the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for a restaurant is the cost of ingredients while for a consulting company it will be the cost of paper and other presentation materials.

2. Personnel Plan

The personnel plan section is where you provide details about the payment plan for your employees. For a small business, you can easily list every position in your company and how much you plan to pay in the personnel plan.

However, for larger businesses, you have to break the personnel plan into functional groups such as sales and marketing.

The personnel plan will also include the cost of an employee beyond salary, commonly referred to as the employee burden. These costs include insurance, payroll taxes , and other essential costs incurred monthly as a result of having employees on your payroll.

3. Income Statement

The income statement section shows if your business is making a profit or taking a loss. Another name for the income statement is the profit and loss (P&L). It takes data from your sales forecast and personnel plan and adds other ongoing expenses you incur while running your business.

Every business plan should have an income statement. It subtracts your business expenses from its earnings to show if your business is generating profit or incurring losses.

The income statement has the following items: sales, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), gross margin, operating expenses, total operating expenses, operating income , total expenses, and net profit.

• Sales refer to the revenue your business generates from selling its products or services. Other names for sales are income or revenue.
• Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) refers to the total cost of selling your products. Other names for COGS are direct costs or cost of sales. Manufacturing businesses use the Costs of Goods Manufactured (COGM) .
• Gross Margin is the figure you get when you subtract your COGS from your sales. In your income statement, you can express it as a percentage of total sales (Gross margin / Sales = Gross Margin Percent).
• Operating Expenses refer to all the expenses you incur from running your business. It exempts the COGS because it stands alone as a core part of your income statement. You also have to exclude taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Your operating expenses include salaries, marketing expenses, research and development (R&D) expenses, and other expenses.
• Total Operating Expenses refers to the sum of all your operating expenses including those exemptions named above under operating expenses.
• Operating Income refers to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. It is simply known as the acronym EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). Calculating your operating income is simple, all you need to do is to subtract your COGS and total operating expenses from your sales.
• Total Expenses refer to the sum of your operating expenses and your business’ interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
• Net profit shows whether your business has made a profit or taken a loss during a given timeframe.

4. Cash Flow Statement

The cash flow statement tracks the money you have in the bank at any given point. It is often confused with the income statement or the profit and loss statement. They are both different types of financial statements. The income statement calculates your profits and losses while the cash flow statement shows you how much you have in the bank.

5. Balance Sheet

The balance sheet is a financial statement that provides an overview of the financial health of your business. It contains information about the assets and liabilities of your company, and owner’s or shareholders’ equity.

You can get the net worth of your company by subtracting your company’s liabilities from its assets.

6. Exit Strategy

The exit strategy refers to a probable plan for selling your business either to the public in an IPO or to another company. It is the last thing you include in the financial plan, metrics, and projection section.

You can choose to omit the exit strategy from your business plan if you plan to maintain full ownership of your business and do not plan on seeking angel investment or virtual capitalist (VC) funding.

Investors may want to know what your exit plan is. They invest in your business to get a good return on investment.

Your exit strategy does not have to include long and boring details. Ensure you identify some interested parties who may be interested in buying the company if it becomes a success.

Key Questions to Answer with Your Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projection

Your financial plan, metrics, and projection section helps investors, creditors, or your internal managers to understand what your expenses are, the amount of cash you need, and what it takes to make your company profitable. It also shows what you will be doing with any funding.

You do not need to show actual financial data if you do not have one. Adding forecasts and projections to your financial statements is added proof that your strategy is feasible and shows investors you have planned properly.

Here are some key questions to answer to help you develop this section.

• What is your sales forecast for the next year?
• When will your company achieve a positive cash flow?
• What are the core expenses you need to operate?
• How much money do you need upfront to operate or grow your company?
• How will you use the loans or investments?

9. Add an Appendix to Your Business Plan

Adding an appendix to your business plan is optional. It is a useful place to put any charts, tables, legal notes, definitions, permits, résumés, and other critical information that do not fit into other sections of your business plan.

The appendix section is where you would want to include details of a patent or patent-pending if you have one. You can always add illustrations or images of your products here. It is the last section of your business plan.

When writing your business plan, there are details you cut short or remove to prevent the entire section from becoming too lengthy. There are also details you want to include in the business plan but are not a good fit for any of the previous sections. You can add that additional information to the appendix section.

Businesses also use the appendix section to include supporting documents or other materials specially requested by investors or lenders.

You can include just about any information that supports the assumptions and statements you made in the business plan under the appendix. It is the one place in the business plan where unrelated data and information can coexist amicably.

If your appendix section is lengthy, try organizing it by adding a table of contents at the beginning of the appendix section. It is also advisable to group similar information to make it easier for the reader to access them.

A well-organized appendix section makes it easier to share your information clearly and concisely. Add footnotes throughout the rest of the business plan or make references in the plan to the documents in the appendix.

The appendix section is usually only necessary if you are seeking funding from investors or lenders, or hoping to attract partners.

People reading business plans do not want to spend time going through a heap of backup information, numbers, and charts. Keep these documents or information in the Appendix section in case the reader wants to dig deeper.

Common Items to Include in the Appendix Section of Your Business Plan

The appendix section includes documents that supplement or support the information or claims given in other sections of the business plans. Common items you can include in the appendix section include:

• Additional data about the process of manufacturing or creation
• Additional description of products or services such as product schematics
• Additional financial documents or projections
• Articles of incorporation and status
• Backup for market research or competitive analysis
• Bank statements
• Business registries
• Client testimonials (if your business is already running)
• Copies of insurances
• Credit histories (personal or/and business)
• Deeds and permits
• Equipment leases
• Examples of marketing and advertising collateral
• Industry associations and memberships
• Images of product
• Intellectual property
• Key customer contracts
• Legal documents and other contracts
• Letters of reference
• Links to references
• Market research data
• Organizational charts
• Photographs of potential facilities
• Professional licenses pertaining to your legal structure or type of business
• Purchase orders
• Resumes of the founder(s) and key managers
• State and federal identification numbers or codes
• Trademarks or patents’ registrations

Avoid using the appendix section as a place to dump any document or information you feel like adding. Only add documents or information that you support or increase the credibility of your business plan.

Tips and Strategies for Writing a Convincing Business Plan

To achieve a perfect business plan, you need to consider some key tips and strategies. These tips will raise the efficiency of your business plan above average.

1. Know Your Audience

When writing a business plan, you need to know your audience . Business owners write business plans for different reasons. Your business plan has to be specific. For example, you can write business plans to potential investors, banks, and even fellow board members of the company.

The audience you are writing to determines the structure of the business plan. As a business owner, you have to know your audience. Not everyone will be your audience. Knowing your audience will help you to narrow the scope of your business plan.

Consider what your audience wants to see in your projects, the likely questions they might ask, and what interests them.

• A business plan used to address a company's board members will center on its employment schemes, internal affairs, projects, stakeholders, etc.
• A business plan for financial institutions will talk about the size of your market and the chances for you to pay back any loans you demand.
• A business plan for investors will show proof that you can return the investment capital within a specific time. In addition, it discusses your financial projections, tractions, and market size.

2. Get Inspiration from People

Writing a business plan from scratch as an entrepreneur can be daunting. That is why you need the right inspiration to push you to write one. You can gain inspiration from the successful business plans of other businesses. Look at their business plans, the style they use, the structure of the project, etc.

To make your business plan easier to create, search companies related to your business to get an exact copy of what you need to create an effective business plan. You can also make references while citing examples in your business plans.

When drafting your business plan, get as much help from others as you possibly can. By getting inspiration from people, you can create something better than what they have.

3. Avoid Being Over Optimistic

Many business owners make use of strong adjectives to qualify their content. One of the big mistakes entrepreneurs make when preparing a business plan is promising too much.

The use of superlatives and over-optimistic claims can prepare the audience for more than you can offer. In the end, you disappoint the confidence they have in you.

In most cases, the best option is to be realistic with your claims and statistics. Most of the investors can sense a bit of incompetency from the overuse of superlatives. As a new entrepreneur, do not be tempted to over-promise to get the interests of investors.

The concept of entrepreneurship centers on risks, nothing is certain when you make future analyses. What separates the best is the ability to do careful research and work towards achieving that, not promising more than you can achieve.

To make an excellent first impression as an entrepreneur, replace superlatives with compelling data-driven content. In this way, you are more specific than someone promising a huge ROI from an investment.

4. Keep it Simple and Short

When writing business plans, ensure you keep them simple throughout. Irrespective of the purpose of the business plan, your goal is to convince the audience.

One way to achieve this goal is to make them understand your proposal. Therefore, it would be best if you avoid the use of complex grammar to express yourself. It would be a huge turn-off if the people you want to convince are not familiar with your use of words.

Another thing to note is the length of your business plan. It would be best if you made it as brief as possible.

You hardly see investors or agencies that read through an extremely long document. In that case, if your first few pages can’t convince them, then you have lost it. The more pages you write, the higher the chances of you derailing from the essential contents.

To ensure your business plan has a high conversion rate, you need to dispose of every unnecessary information. For example, if you have a strategy that you are not sure of, it would be best to leave it out of the plan.

5. Make an Outline and Follow Through

A perfect business plan must have touched every part needed to convince the audience. Business owners get easily tempted to concentrate more on their products than on other sections. Doing this can be detrimental to the efficiency of the business plan.

For example, imagine you talking about a product but omitting or providing very little information about the target audience. You will leave your clients confused.

To ensure that your business plan communicates your full business model to readers, you have to input all the necessary information in it. One of the best ways to achieve this is to design a structure and stick to it.

This structure is what guides you throughout the writing. To make your work easier, you can assign an estimated word count or page limit to every section to avoid making it too bulky for easy reading. As a guide, the necessary things your business plan must contain are:

• Table of contents
• Introduction
• Product or service description
• Target audience
• Market size
• Competition analysis
• Financial projections

Some specific businesses can include some other essential sections, but these are the key sections that must be in every business plan.

6. Ask a Professional to Proofread

When writing a business plan, you must tie all loose ends to get a perfect result. When you are done with writing, call a professional to go through the document for you. You are bound to make mistakes, and the way to correct them is to get external help.

You should get a professional in your field who can relate to every section of your business plan. It would be easier for the professional to notice the inner flaws in the document than an editor with no knowledge of your business.

In addition to getting a professional to proofread, get an editor to proofread and edit your document. The editor will help you identify grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and inappropriate writing styles.

Writing a business plan can be daunting, but you can surmount that obstacle and get the best out of it with these tips.

Business Plan Examples and Templates That’ll Save You Tons of Time

1. hubspot's one-page business plan.

The one-page business plan template by HubSpot is the perfect guide for businesses of any size, irrespective of their business strategy. Although the template is condensed into a page, your final business plan should not be a page long! The template is designed to ask helpful questions that can help you develop your business plan.

Hubspot’s one-page business plan template is divided into nine fields:

• Business opportunity
• Company description
• Industry analysis
• Target market
• Implementation timeline
• Marketing plan
• Financial summary
• Funding required

2. Bplan’s Free Business Plan Template

Bplans' free business plan template is investor-approved. It is a rich template used by prestigious educational institutions such as Babson College and Princeton University to teach entrepreneurs how to create a business plan.

The template has six sections: the executive summary, opportunity, execution, company, financial plan, and appendix. There is a step-by-step guide for writing every little detail in the business plan. Follow the instructions each step of the way and you will create a business plan that impresses investors or lenders easily.

3. HubSpot's Downloadable Business Plan Template

HubSpot’s downloadable business plan template is a more comprehensive option compared to the one-page business template by HubSpot. This free and downloadable business plan template is designed for entrepreneurs.

The template is a comprehensive guide and checklist for business owners just starting their businesses. It tells you everything you need to fill in each section of the business plan and how to do it.

There are nine sections in this business plan template: an executive summary, company and business description, product and services line, market analysis, marketing plan, sales plan, legal notes, financial considerations, and appendix.

4. Business Plan by My Own Business Institute

My Own Business Institute (MOBI) which is a part of Santa Clara University's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship offers a free business plan template. You can either copy the free business template from the link provided above or download it as a Word document.

The comprehensive template consists of a whopping 15 sections.

• The Business Profile
• The Vision and the People
• Home-Based Business and Freelance Business Opportunities
• Organization
• Licenses and Permits
• Business Insurance
• Communication Tools
• Acquisitions
• Location and Leasing
• Accounting and Cash Flow
• Opening and Marketing
• Managing Employees
• Expanding and Handling Problems

There are lots of helpful tips on how to fill each section in the free business plan template by MOBI.

5. Score's Business Plan Template for Startups

Score is an American nonprofit organization that helps entrepreneurs build successful companies. This business plan template for startups by Score is available for free download. The business plan template asks a whooping 150 generic questions that help entrepreneurs from different fields to set up the perfect business plan.

The business plan template for startups contains clear instructions and worksheets, all you have to do is answer the questions and fill the worksheets.

There are nine sections in the business plan template: executive summary, company description, products and services, marketing plan, operational plan, management and organization, startup expenses and capitalization, financial plan, and appendices.

The ‘refining the plan’ resource contains instructions that help you modify your business plan to suit your specific needs, industry, and target audience. After you have completed Score’s business plan template, you can work with a SCORE mentor for expert advice in business planning.

6. Minimalist Architecture Business Plan Template by Venngage

The minimalist architecture business plan template is a simple template by Venngage that you can customize to suit your business needs .

There are five sections in the template: an executive summary, statement of problem, approach and methodology, qualifications, and schedule and benchmark. The business plan template has instructions that guide users on what to fill in each section.

7. Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template

The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers two free business plan templates, filled with practical real-life examples that you can model to create your business plan. Both free business plan templates are written by fictional business owners: Rebecca who owns a consulting firm, and Andrew who owns a toy company.

There are five sections in the two SBA’s free business plan templates.

• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• Service Line
• Marketing and Sales

8. The $100 Startup's One-Page Business Plan

The one-page business plan by the $100 startup is a simple business plan template for entrepreneurs who do not want to create a long and complicated plan . You can include more details in the appendices for funders who want more information beyond what you can put in the one-page business plan.

There are five sections in the one-page business plan such as overview, ka-ching, hustling, success, and obstacles or challenges or open questions. You can answer all the questions using one or two sentences.

9. PandaDoc’s Free Business Plan Template

The free business plan template by PandaDoc is a comprehensive 15-page document that describes the information you should include in every section.

There are 11 sections in PandaDoc’s free business plan template.

• Executive summary
• Business description
• Products and services
• Operations plan
• Management organization
• Financial plan
• Conclusion / Call to action
• Confidentiality statement

You have to sign up for its 14-day free trial to access the template. You will find different business plan templates on PandaDoc once you sign up (including templates for general businesses and specific businesses such as bakeries, startups, restaurants, salons, hotels, and coffee shops)

PandaDoc allows you to customize its business plan templates to fit the needs of your business. After editing the template, you can send it to interested parties and track opens and views through PandaDoc.

10. Invoiceberry Templates for Word, Open Office, Excel, or PPT

InvoiceBerry is a U.K based online invoicing and tracking platform that offers free business plan templates in .docx, .odt, .xlsx, and .pptx formats for freelancers and small businesses.

Before you can download the free business plan template, it will ask you to give it your email address. After you complete the little task, it will send the download link to your inbox for you to download. It also provides a business plan checklist in .xlsx file format that ensures you add the right information to the business plan.

Alternatives to the Traditional Business Plan

A business plan is very important in mapping out how one expects their business to grow over a set number of years, particularly when they need external investment in their business. However, many investors do not have the time to watch you present your business plan. It is a long and boring read.

Luckily, there are three alternatives to the traditional business plan (the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and Startup Pitch Deck). These alternatives are less laborious and easier and quicker to present to investors.

Business Model Canvas (BMC)

The business model canvas is a business tool used to present all the important components of setting up a business, such as customers, route to market, value proposition, and finance in a single sheet. It provides a very focused blueprint that defines your business initially which you can later expand on if needed.

The sheet is divided mainly into company, industry, and consumer models that are interconnected in how they find problems and proffer solutions.

Segments of the Business Model Canvas

The business model canvas was developed by founder Alexander Osterwalder to answer important business questions. It contains nine segments.

• Key Partners: Who will be occupying important executive positions in your business? What do they bring to the table? Will there be a third party involved with the company?
• Key Activities: What important activities will production entail? What activities will be carried out to ensure the smooth running of the company?
• The Product’s Value Propositions: What does your product do? How will it be different from other products?
• Customer Segments: What demography of consumers are you targeting? What are the habits of these consumers? Who are the MVPs of your target consumers?
• Customer Relationships: How will the team support and work with its customer base? How do you intend to build and maintain trust with the customer?
• Key Resources: What type of personnel and tools will be needed? What size of the budget will they need access to?
• Channels: How do you plan to create awareness of your products? How do you intend to transport your product to the customer?
• Cost Structure: What is the estimated cost of production? How much will distribution cost?
• Revenue Streams: For what value are customers willing to pay? How do they prefer to pay for the product? Are there any external revenues attached apart from the main source? How do the revenue streams contribute to the overall revenue?

Lean Canvas

The lean canvas is a problem-oriented alternative to the standard business model canvas. It was proposed by Ash Maurya, creator of Lean Stack as a development of the business model generation. It uses a more problem-focused approach and it majorly targets entrepreneurs and startup businesses.

Lean Canvas uses the same 9 blocks concept as the business model canvas, however, they have been modified slightly to suit the needs and purpose of a small startup. The key partners, key activities, customer relationships, and key resources are replaced by new segments which are:

• Problem: Simple and straightforward number of problems you have identified, ideally three.
• Solution: The solutions to each problem.
• Unfair Advantage: Something you possess that can't be easily bought or replicated.
• Key Metrics: Important numbers that will tell how your business is doing.

Startup Pitch Deck

While the business model canvas compresses into a factual sheet, startup pitch decks expand flamboyantly.

Pitch decks, through slides, convey your business plan, often through graphs and images used to emphasize estimations and observations in your presentation. Entrepreneurs often use pitch decks to fully convince their target audience of their plans before discussing funding arrangements.

Considering the likelihood of it being used in a small time frame, a good startup pitch deck should ideally contain 20 slides or less to have enough time to answer questions from the audience.

Unlike the standard and lean business model canvases, a pitch deck doesn't have a set template on how to present your business plan but there are still important components to it. These components often mirror those of the business model canvas except that they are in slide form and contain more details.

Using Airbnb (one of the most successful start-ups in recent history) for reference, the important components of a good slide are listed below.

• Cover/Introduction Slide: Here, you should include your company's name and mission statement. Your mission statement should be a very catchy tagline. Also, include personal information and contact details to provide an easy link for potential investors.
• Problem Slide: This slide requires you to create a connection with the audience or the investor that you are pitching. For example in their pitch, Airbnb summarized the most important problems it would solve in three brief points – pricing of hotels, disconnection from city culture, and connection problems for local bookings.
• Solution Slide: This slide includes your core value proposition. List simple and direct solutions to the problems you have mentioned
• Customer Analysis: Here you will provide information on the customers you will be offering your service to. The identity of your customers plays an important part in fundraising as well as the long-run viability of the business.
• Market Validation: Use competitive analysis to show numbers that prove the presence of a market for your product, industry behavior in the present and the long run, as well as the percentage of the market you aim to attract. It shows that you understand your competitors and customers and convinces investors of the opportunities presented in the market.
• Business Model: Your business model is the hook of your presentation. It may vary in complexity but it should generally include a pricing system informed by your market analysis. The goal of the slide is to confirm your business model is easy to implement.
• Marketing Strategy: This slide should summarize a few customer acquisition methods that you plan to use to grow the business.
• Competitive Advantage: What this slide will do is provide information on what will set you apart and make you a more attractive option to customers. It could be the possession of technology that is not widely known in the market.
• Team Slide: Here you will give a brief description of your team. Include your key management personnel here and their specific roles in the company. Include their educational background, job history, and skillsets. Also, talk about their accomplishments in their careers so far to build investors' confidence in members of your team.
• Traction Slide: This validates the company’s business model by showing growth through early sales and support. The slide aims to reduce any lingering fears in potential investors by showing realistic periodic milestones and profit margins. It can include current sales, growth, valuable customers, pre-orders, or data from surveys outlining current consumer interest.
• Funding Slide: This slide is popularly referred to as ‘the ask'. Here you will include important details like how much is needed to get your business off the ground and how the funding will be spent to help the company reach its goals.
• Appendix Slides: Your pitch deck appendix should always be included alongside a standard pitch presentation. It consists of additional slides you could not show in the pitch deck but you need to complement your presentation.

It is important to support your calculations with pictorial renditions. Infographics, such as pie charts or bar graphs, will be more effective in presenting the information than just listing numbers. For example, a six-month graph that shows rising profit margins will easily look more impressive than merely writing it.

Lastly, since a pitch deck is primarily used to secure meetings and you may be sharing your pitch with several investors, it is advisable to keep a separate public version that doesn't include financials. Only disclose the one with projections once you have secured a link with an investor.

Advantages of the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and Startup Pitch Deck over the Traditional Business Plan

• Time-Saving: Writing a detailed traditional business plan could take weeks or months. On the other hand, all three alternatives can be done in a few days or even one night of brainstorming if you have a comprehensive understanding of your business.
• Easier to Understand: Since the information presented is almost entirely factual, it puts focus on what is most important in running the business. They cut away the excess pages of fillers in a traditional business plan and allow investors to see what is driving the business and what is getting in the way.
• Easy to Update: Businesses typically present their business plans to many potential investors before they secure funding. What this means is that you may regularly have to amend your presentation to update statistics or adjust to audience-specific needs. For a traditional business plan, this could mean rewriting a whole section of your plan. For the three alternatives, updating is much easier because they are not voluminous.
• Guide for a More In-depth Business Plan: All three alternatives have the added benefit of being able to double as a sketch of your business plan if the need to create one arises in the future.

Business Plan FAQ

Business plans are important for any entrepreneur who is looking for a framework to run their company over some time or seeking external support. Although they are essential for new businesses, every company should ideally have a business plan to track their growth from time to time.  They can be used by startups seeking investments or loans to convey their business ideas or an employee to convince his boss of the feasibility of starting a new project. They can also be used by companies seeking to recruit high-profile employee targets into key positions or trying to secure partnerships with other firms.

Business plans often vary depending on your target audience, the scope, and the goals for the plan. Startup plans are the most common among the different types of business plans.  A start-up plan is used by a new business to present all the necessary information to help get the business up and running. They are usually used by entrepreneurs who are seeking funding from investors or bank loans. The established company alternative to a start-up plan is a feasibility plan. A feasibility plan is often used by an established company looking for new business opportunities. They are used to show the upsides of creating a new product for a consumer base. Because the audience is usually company people, it requires less company analysis. The third type of business plan is the lean business plan. A lean business plan is a brief, straight-to-the-point breakdown of your ideas and analysis for your business. It does not contain details of your proposal and can be written on one page. Finally, you have the what-if plan. As it implies, a what-if plan is a preparation for the worst-case scenario. You must always be prepared for the possibility of your original plan being rejected. A good what-if plan will serve as a good plan B to the original.

A good business plan has 10 key components. They include an executive plan, product analysis, desired customer base, company analysis, industry analysis, marketing strategy, sales strategy, financial projection, funding, and appendix. Executive Plan Your business should begin with your executive plan. An executive plan will provide early insight into what you are planning to achieve with your business. It should include your mission statement and highlight some of the important points which you will explain later. Product Analysis The next component of your business plan is your product analysis. A key part of this section is explaining the type of item or service you are going to offer as well as the market problems your product will solve. Desired Consumer Base Your product analysis should be supplemented with a detailed breakdown of your desired consumer base. Investors are always interested in knowing the economic power of your market as well as potential MVP customers. Company Analysis The next component of your business plan is your company analysis. Here, you explain how you want to run your business. It will include your operational strategy, an insight into the workforce needed to keep the company running, and important executive positions. It will also provide a calculation of expected operational costs.  Industry Analysis A good business plan should also contain well laid out industry analysis. It is important to convince potential investors you know the companies you will be competing with, as well as your plans to gain an edge on the competition. Marketing Strategy Your business plan should also include your marketing strategy. This is how you intend to spread awareness of your product. It should include a detailed explanation of the company brand as well as your advertising methods. Sales Strategy Your sales strategy comes after the market strategy. Here you give an overview of your company's pricing strategy and how you aim to maximize profits. You can also explain how your prices will adapt to market behaviors. Financial Projection The financial projection is the next component of your business plan. It explains your company's expected running cost and revenue earned during the tenure of the business plan. Financial projection gives a clear idea of how your company will develop in the future. Funding The next component of your business plan is funding. You have to detail how much external investment you need to get your business idea off the ground here. Appendix The last component of your plan is the appendix. This is where you put licenses, graphs, or key information that does not fit in any of the other components.

The business model canvas is a business management tool used to quickly define your business idea and model. It is often used when investors need you to pitch your business idea during a brief window.

A pitch deck is similar to a business model canvas except that it makes use of slides in its presentation. A pitch is not primarily used to secure funding, rather its main purpose is to entice potential investors by selling a very optimistic outlook on the business.

Business plan competitions help you evaluate the strength of your business plan. By participating in business plan competitions, you are improving your experience. The experience provides you with a degree of validation while practicing important skills. The main motivation for entering into the competitions is often to secure funding by finishing in podium positions. There is also the chance that you may catch the eye of a casual observer outside of the competition. These competitions also provide good networking opportunities. You could meet mentors who will take a keen interest in guiding you in your business journey. You also have the opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs whose ideas can complement yours.

Exlore Further

• 12 Key Elements of a Business Plan (Top Components Explained)
• 13 Sources of Business Finance For Companies & Sole Traders
• 5 Common Types of Business Structures (+ Pros & Cons)
• How to Buy a Business in 8 Steps (+ Due Diligence Checklist)

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Martin luenendonk.

Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.

This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.

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How to Write a Business Plan (Plus Examples & Templates)

May 24, 2021

Have you ever wondered how to write a business plan step by step? Mike Andes, told us: 

This guide will help you write a business plan to impress investors.

Throughout this process, we’ll get information from Mike Andes, who started Augusta Lawn Care Services when he was 12 and turned it into a franchise with over 90 locations. He has gone on to help others learn how to write business plans and start businesses.  He knows a thing or two about writing  business plans!

We’ll start by discussing the definition of a business plan. Then we’ll discuss how to come up with the idea, how to do the market research, and then the important elements in the business plan format. Keep reading to start your journey!

What Is a Business Plan?

A business plan is simply a road map of what you are trying to achieve with your business and how you will go about achieving it. It should cover all elements of your business including: 

• Finding customers
• Plans for developing a team
•  Competition
• Legal structures
• Key milestones you are pursuing

If you aren’t quite ready to create a business plan, consider starting by reading our business startup guide .

Get a Business Idea

Before you can write a business plan, you have to have a business idea. You may see a problem that needs to be solved and have an idea how to solve it, or you might start by evaluating your interests and skills. 

Mike told us, “The three things I suggest asking yourself when thinking about starting a business are:

• What am I good at?
• What would I enjoy doing?
• What can I get paid for?”

If all three of these questions don’t lead to at least one common answer, it will probably be a much harder road to success. Either there is not much market for it, you won’t be good at it, or you won’t enjoy doing it. 

As Mike told us, “There’s enough stress starting and running a business that if you don’t like it or aren’t good at it, it’s hard to succeed.”

If you’d like to hear more about Mike’s approach to starting a business, check out our YouTube video

Conduct Market Analysis

Market analysis is focused on establishing if there is a target market for your products and services, how large the target market is, and identifying the demographics of people or businesses that would be interested in the product or service. The goal here is to establish how much money your business concept can make.

Product and Service Demand

A search engine is your best friend when trying to figure out if there is demand for your products and services. Personally, I love using presearch.org because it lets you directly search on a ton of different platforms including Google, Youtube, Twitter, and more. Check out the screenshot for the full list of search options.

With quick web searches, you can find out how many competitors you have, look through their reviews, and see if there are common complaints about the competitors. Bad reviews are a great place to find opportunities to offer better products or services. 

If there are no similar products or services, you may have stumbled upon something new, or there may just be no demand for it. To find out, go talk to your most honest friend about the idea and see what they think. If they tell you it’s dumb or stare at you vacantly, there’s probably no market for it.

You can also conduct a survey through social media to get public opinion on your idea. Using Facebook Business Manager , you could get a feel for who would be interested in your product or service.

 I ran a quick test of how many people between 18-65  you could reach in the U.S. during a week. It returned an estimated 700-2,000 for the total number of leads, which is enough to do a fairly accurate statistical analysis.

Identify Demographics of Target Market

Depending on what type of business you want to run, your target market will be different. The narrower the demographic, the fewer potential customers you’ll have. If you did a survey, you’ll be able to use that data to help define your target audience. Some considerations you’ll want to consider are:

• Other Interests
• Marital Status
• Do they have kids?

Once you have this information, it can help you narrow down your options for location and help define your marketing further. One resource that Mike recommended using is the Census Bureau’s Quick Facts Map . He told us,  

“It helps you quickly evaluate what the best areas are for your business to be located.”

How to Write a Business Plan

Now that you’ve developed your idea a little and established there is a market for it, you can begin writing a business plan. Getting started is easier with the business plan template we created for you to download. I strongly recommend using it as it is updated to make it easier to create an action plan. 

Each of the following should be a section of your business plan:

• Business Plan Cover Page
• Table of Contents
• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• Description of Products and Services

SWOT Analysis

• Competitor Data
• Competitive Analysis
• Marketing Expenses Strategy 

Pricing Strategy

• Distribution Channel Assessment
• Operational Plan
• Management and Organizational Strategy
• Financial Statements and/or Financial Projections

We’ll look into each of these. Don’t forget to download our free business plan template (mentioned just above) so you can follow along as we go. 

How to Write a Business Plan Step 1. Create a Cover Page

The first thing investors will see is the cover page for your business plan. Make sure it looks professional. A great cover page shows that you think about first impressions.

A good business plan should have the following elements on a cover page:

• Professionally designed logo
• Company name
• Mission or Vision Statement
• Contact Info

Basically, think of a cover page for your business plan like a giant business card. It is meant to capture people’s attention but be quickly processed.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 2. Create a Table of Contents

Most people are busy enough that they don’t have a lot of time. Providing a table of contents makes it easy for them to find the pages of your plan that are meaningful to them.

A table of contents will be immediately after the cover page, but you can include it after the executive summary. Including the table of contents immediately after the executive summary will help investors know what section of your business plan they want to review more thoroughly.

Check out Canva’s article about creating a  table of contents . It has a ton of great information about creating easy access to each section of your business plan. Just remember that you’ll want to use different strategies for digital and hard copy business plans.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 3. Write an Executive Summary

An executive summary is where your business plan should catch the readers interest.  It doesn’t need to be long, but should be quick and easy to read.

Mike told us,

How long should an executive summary bein an informal business plan?

For casual use, an executive summary should be similar to an elevator pitch, no more than 150-160 words, just enough to get them interested and wanting more. Indeed has a great article on elevator pitches .  This can also be used for the content of emails to get readers’ attention.

It consists of three basic parts:

• An introduction to you and your business.
• What your business is about.
• A call to action

Example of an informal executive summary 

One of the best elevator pitches I’ve used is:

So far that pitch has achieved a 100% success rate in getting partnerships for the business.

What should I include in an executive summary for investors?

Investors are going to need a more detailed executive summary if you want to secure financing or sell equity. The executive summary should be a brief overview of your entire business plan and include:

• Introduction of yourself and company.
• An origin story (Recognition of a problem and how you came to solution)
• An introduction to your products or services.
• Your unique value proposition. Make sure to include intellectual property.
• Where you are in the business life cycle
• Request and why you need it.

Successful business plan examples

The owner of Urbanity told us he spent 2 months writing a 75-page business plan and received a $250,000 loan from the bank when he was 23. Make your business plan as detailed as possible when looking for financing. We’ve provided a template to help you prepare the portions of a business plan that banks expect.

Here’s the interview with the owner of Urbanity:

When to write an executive summary?

Even though the summary is near the beginning of a business plan, you should write it after you complete the rest of a business plan. You can’t talk about revenue, profits, and expected expenditures if you haven’t done the market research and created a financial plan.

What mistakes do people make when writing an executive summary?

Business owners commonly go into too much detail about the following items in an executive summary:

• Marketing and sales processes
• Financial statements
• Organizational structure
• Market analysis

These are things that people will want to know later, but they don’t hook the reader. They won’t spark interest in your small business, but they’ll close the deal.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 4. Company Description

Every business plan should include a company description. A great business plan will include the following elements while describing the company:

• Mission statement
• Philosophy and vision
• Company goals

Target market

• Legal structure

Let’s take a look at what each section includes in a good business plan.

Mission Statement

A mission statement is a brief explanation of why you started the company and what the company’s main focus is. It should be no more than one or two sentences. Check out HubSpot’s article 27 Inspiring Mission Statement for a great read on informative and inspiring mission and vision statements. 

Company Philosophy and Vision

The company philosophy is what drives your company. You’ll normally hear them called core values.  These are the building blocks that make your company different. You want to communicate your values to customers, business owners, and investors as often as possible to build a company culture, but make sure to back them up.

What makes your company different?

Each company is different. Your new business should rise above the standard company lines of honesty, integrity, fun, innovation, and community when communicating your business values. The standard answers are corporate jargon and lack authenticity. 

Examples of core values

One of my clients decided to add a core values page to their website. As a tech company they emphasized the values:

•  Prioritize communication.
•  Never stop learning.
•  Be transparent.
•  Start small and grow incrementally.

These values communicate how the owner and the rest of the company operate. They also show a value proposition and competitive advantage because they specifically focus on delivering business value from the start. These values also genuinely show what the company is about and customers recognize the sincerity. Indeed has a great blog about how to identify your core values .

What is a vision statement?

A vision statement communicate the long lasting change a business pursues. The vision helps investors and customers understand what your company is trying to accomplish. The vision statement goes beyond a mission statement to provide something meaningful to the community, customer’s lives, or even the world.

Example vision statements

The Alzheimer’s Association is a great example of a vision statement:

A world without Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementia.

It clearly tells how they want to change the world. A world without Alzheimers might be unachievable, but that means they always have room for improvement.

Business Goals

You have to measure success against goals for a business plan to be meaningful. A business plan helps guide a company similar to how your GPS provides a road map to your favorite travel destination. A goal to make as much money as possible is not inspirational and sounds greedy.

Sure, business owners want to increase their profits and improve customer service, but they need to present an overview of what they consider success. The goals should help everyone prioritize their work.

How far in advance should a business plan?

Business planning should be done at least one year in advance, but many banks and investors prefer three to five year business plans. Longer plans show investors that the management team  understands the market and knows the business is operating in a constantly shifting market. In addition, a plan helps businesses to adjust to changes because they have already considered how to handle them.

Example of great business goals

My all time-favorite long-term company goals are included in Tesla’s Master Plan, Part Deux . These goals were written in 2016 and drive the company’s decisions through 2026. They are the reason that investors are so forgiving when Elon Musk continually fails to meet his quarterly and annual goals.

If the progress aligns with the business plan investors are likely to continue to believe in the company. Just make sure the goals are reasonable or you’ll be discredited (unless you’re Elon Musk).

You did target market research before creating a business plan. Now it’s time to add it to the plan so others understand what your ideal customer looks like. As a new business owner, you may not be considered an expert in your field yet, so document everything. Make sure the references you use are from respectable sources. 

Use information from the specific lender when you are applying for lending. Most lenders provide industry research reports and using their data can strengthen the position of your business plan.

A small business plan should include a section on the external environment. Understanding the industry is crucial because we don’t plan a business in a vacuum. Make sure to research the industry trends, competitors, and forecasts. I personally prefer IBIS World for my business research. Make sure to answer questions like:

• What is the industry outlook long-term and short-term?
• How will your business take advantage of projected industry changes and trends?
• What might happen to your competitors and how will your business successfully compete?

Industry resources

Some helpful resources to help you establish more about your industry are:

• Trade Associations
• Federal Reserve
• Bureau of Labor Statistics

Legal Structure

There are five basic types of legal structures that most people will utilize:

• Sole proprietorships
• Limited Liability Companies (LLC)

Partnerships

Corporations.

• Franchises.

Each business structure has their pros and cons. An LLC is the most common legal structure due to its protection of personal assets and ease of setting up. Make sure to specify how ownership is divided and what roles each owner plays when you have more than one business owner.

You’ll have to decide which structure is best for you, but we’ve gathered information on each to make it easier.

Sole Proprietorship

A sole proprietorship is the easiest legal structure to set up but doesn’t protect the owner’s personal assets from legal issues. That means if something goes wrong, you could lose both your company and your home.

To start a sole proprietorship, fill out a special tax form called a  Schedule C . Sole proprietors can also join the American Independent Business Alliance .

Limited Liability Company (LLC)

An LLC is the most common business structure used in the United States because an LLC protects the owner’s personal assets. It’s similar to partnerships and corporations, but can be a single-member LLC in most states. An LLC requires a document called an operating agreement.

Each state has different requirements. Here’s a link to find your state’s requirements . Delaware and Nevada are common states to file an LLC because they are really business-friendly. Here’s a blog on the top 10 states to get an LLC.

Partnerships are typically for legal firms. If you choose to use a partnership choose a Limited Liability Partnership. Alternatively, you can just use an LLC.

Corporations are typically for massive organizations. Corporations have taxes on both corporate and income tax so unless you plan on selling stock, you are better off considering an LLC with S-Corp status . Investopedia has good information corporations here .

There are several opportunities to purchase successful franchises. TopFranchise.com has a list of companies in a variety of industries that offer franchise opportunities. This makes it where an entrepreneur can benefit from the reputation of an established business that has already worked out many of the kinks of starting from scratch.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 5. Products and Services

This section of the business plan should focus on what you sell, how you source it, and how you sell it. You should include:

• Unique features that differentiate your business products from competitors
• Intellectual property
• Your supply chain
• Cost and pricing structure 

Questions to answer about your products and services

Mike gave us a list  of the most important questions to answer about your product and services:

• How will you be selling the product? (in person, ecommerce, wholesale, direct to consumer)?
• How do you let them know they need a product?
• How do you communicate the message?
• How will you do transactions?
• How much will you be selling it for?
• How many do you think you’ll sell and why?

Make sure to use the worksheet on our business plan template .

How to Write a Business Plan Step 6. Sales and Marketing Plan

The marketing and sales plan is focused on the strategy to bring awareness to your company and guides how you will get the product to the consumer.  It should contain the following sections:

SWOT Analysis stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Not only do you want to identify them, but you also want to document how the business plans to deal with them.

Business owners need to do a thorough job documenting how their service or product stacks up against the competition.

If proper research isn’t done, investors will be able to tell that the owner hasn’t researched the competition and is less likely to believe that the team can protect its service from threats by the more well-established competition. This is one of the most common parts of a presentation that trips up business owners presenting on Shark Tank .

SWOT Examples

Examples of strengths and weaknesses could be things like the lack of cash flow, intellectual property ownership, high costs of suppliers, and customers’ expectations on shipping times.

Opportunities could be ways to capitalize on your strengths or improve your weaknesses, but may also be gaps in the industry. This includes:

• Adding offerings that fit with your current small business
• Increase sales to current customers
• Reducing costs through bulk ordering
• Finding ways to reduce inventory
•  And other areas you can improve

Threats will normally come from outside of the company but could also be things like losing a key member of the team. Threats normally come from competition, regulations, taxes, and unforeseen events.

The management team should use the SWOT analysis to guide other areas of business planning, but it absolutely has to be done before a business owner starts marketing. 

Include Competitor Data in Your Business Plan

When you plan a business, taking into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of the competition is key to navigating the field. Providing an overview of your competition and where they are headed shows that you are invested in understanding the industry.

For smaller businesses, you’ll want to search both the company and the owners names to see what they are working on. For publicly held corporations, you can find their quarterly and annual reports on the SEC website .

What another business plans to do can impact your business. Make sure to include things that might make it attractive for bigger companies to outsource to a small business.

Marketing Strategy

The marketing and sales part of business plans should be focused on how you are going to make potential customers aware of your business and then sell to them.

If you haven’t already included it, Mike recommends:

“They’ll want to know about Demographics, ages, and wealth of your target market.”

Make sure to include the Total addressable market .  The term refers to the value if you captured 100% of the market.

Advertising Strategy

You’ll explain what formats of advertising you’ll be using. Some possibilities are:

• Online: Facebook and Google are the big names to work with here.
• Print : Print can be used to reach broad groups or targeted markets. Check out this for tips .
• Radio : iHeartMedia is one of the best ways to advertise on the radio
• Cable television : High priced, hard to measure ROI, but here’s an explanation of the process
• Billboards: Attracting customers with billboards can be beneficial in high traffic areas.

You’ll want to define how you’ll be using each including frequency, duration, and cost. If you have the materials already created, including pictures or links to the marketing to show creative assets.

Mike told us “Most businesses are marketing digitally now due to Covid, but that’s not always the right answer.”

Make sure the marketing strategy will help team members or external marketing agencies stay within the brand guidelines .

This section of a business plan should be focused on pricing. There are a ton of pricing strategies that may work for different business plans. Which one will work for you depends on what kind of a business you run.

Some common pricing strategies are:

• Value-based pricing – Commonly used with home buying and selling or other products that are status symbols.
• Skimming pricing – Commonly seen in video game consoles, price starts off high to recoup expenses quickly, then reduces over time.
• Competition-based pricing – Pricing based on competitors’ pricing is commonly seen at gas stations.
• Freemium services –  Commonly used for software, where there is a free plan, then purchase options for more functionality.

HubSpot has a great calculator and blog on pricing strategies.

Beyond explaining what strategy your business plans to use, you should include references for how you came to this pricing strategy and how it will impact your cash flow.

Distribution Plan

This part of a business plan is focused on how the product or service is going to go through the supply chain. These may include multiple divisions or multiple companies. Make sure to include any parts of the workflow that are automated so investors can see where cost savings are expected and when.

Supply Chain Examples

For instance, lawn care companies  would need to cover aspects such as:

• Suppliers for lawn care equipment and tools
• Any chemicals or treatments needed
• Repair parts for sprinkler systems
• Vehicles to transport equipment and employees
• Insurance to protect the company vehicles and people.

Examples of Supply Chains

These are fairly flat supply chains compared to something like a clothing designer where the clothes would go through multiple vendors. A clothing company might have the following supply chain:

• Raw materials
• Shipping of raw materials
• Converting of raw materials to thread
• Shipping thread to produce garments
• Garment producer
• Shipping to company
• Company storage
• Shipping to retail stores

There have been advances such as print on demand that eliminate many of these steps. If you are designing completely custom clothing, all of this would need to be planned to keep from having business disruptions.

The main thing to include in the business plan is the list of suppliers, the path the supply chain follows, the time from order to the customer’s home, and the costs associated with each step of the process.

According to BizPlanReview , a business plan without this information is likely to get rejected because they have failed to research the key elements necessary to make sales to the customer.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 7. Company Organization and Operational Plan

This part of the business plan is focused on how the business model will function while serving customers.  The business plan should provide an overview of  how the team will manage the following aspects:

Quality Control

• Legal environment

Let’s look at each for some insight.

Production has already been discussed in previous sections so I won’t go into it much. When writing a business plan for investors, try to avoid repetition as it creates a more simple business plan.

If the organizational plan will be used by the team as an overview of how to perform the best services for the customer, then redundancy makes more sense as it communicates what is important to the business.

Quality control policies help to keep the team focused on how to verify that the company adheres to the business plan and meets or exceeds customer expectations.

Quality control can be anything from a standard that says “all labels on shirts can be no more than 1/16″ off center” to a defined checklist of steps that should be performed and filled out for every customer.

There are a variety of organizations that help define quality control including:

• International Organization for Standardization – Quality standards for energy, technology, food, production environments, and cybersecurity
• AICPA – Standard defined for accounting.
• The Joint Commission – Healthcare
• ASHRAE – HVAC best practices

You can find lists of the organizations that contribute most to the government regulation of industries on Open Secrets . Research what the leaders in your field are doing. Follow their example and implement it in your quality control plan.

For location, you should use information from the market research to establish where the location will be. Make sure to include the following in the location documentation.

• The size of your location
• The type of building (retail, industrial, commercial, etc.)
• Zoning restrictions – Urban Wire has a good map on how zoning works in each state
• Accessibility – Does it meet ADA requirements?
• Costs including rent, maintenance, utilities, insurance and any buildout or remodeling costs
• Utilities – b.e.f. has a good energy calculator .

Legal Environment

The legal requirement section is focused on defining how to meet the legal requirements for your industry. A good business plan should include all of the following:

• Any licenses and/or permits that are needed and whether you’ve obtained them
• Any trademarks, copyrights, or patents that you have or are in the process of applying for
• The insurance coverage your business requires and how much it costs
• Any environmental, health, or workplace regulations affecting your business
• Any special regulations affecting your industry
• Bonding requirements, if applicable

Your local SBA office can help you establish requirements in your area. I strongly recommend using them. They are a great resource.

Your business plan should include a plan for company organization and hiring. While you may be the only person with the company right now, down the road you’ll need more people. Make sure to consider and document the answers to the following questions:

• What is the current leadership structure and what will it look like in the future?
• What types of employees will you have? Are there any licensing or educational requirements?
• How many employees will you need?
• Will you ever hire freelancers or independent contractors?
• What is each position’s job description?
• What is the pay structure (hourly, salaried, base plus commission, etc.)?
• How do you plan to find qualified employees and contractors?

One of the most crucial parts of a business plan is the organizational chart. This simply shows the positions the company will need, who is in charge of them and the relationship of each of them. It will look similar to this:

Our small business plan template has a much more in-depth organizational chart you can edit to include when you include the organizational chart in your business plan.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 8. Financial Statements 

No business plan is complete without financial statements or financial projections. The business plan format will be different based on whether you are writing a business plan to expand a business or a startup business plan. Let’s dig deeper into each.

Provide All Financial Income from an Existing Business

An existing business should use their past financial documents including the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement to find trends to estimate the next 3-5 years.

You can create easy trendlines in excel to predict future revenue, profit and loss, cash flow, and other changes in year-over-year performance. This will show your expected performance assuming business continues as normal.

If you are seeking an investment, then the business is probably not going to continue as normal. Depending on the financial plan and the purpose of getting financing, adjustments may be needed to the following:

• Higher Revenue if expanding business
• Lower Cost of Goods Sold if purchasing inventory with bulk discounts
• Adding interest if utilizing financing (not equity deal)
• Changes in expenses
• Addition of financing information to the cash flow statement
• Changes in Earnings per Share on the balance sheet

Financial modeling is a challenging subject, but there are plenty of low-cost courses on the subject. If you need help planning your business financial documentation take some time to watch some of them.

Make it a point to document how you calculated all the changes to the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement in your business plan so that key team members or investors can verify your research.

Financial Projections For A Startup Business Plan

Unlike an existing business, a startup doesn’t have previous success to model its future performance. In this scenario, you need to focus on how to make a business plan realistic through the use of industry research and averages.

Mike gave the following advice in his interview:

Financial Forecasting Mistakes

One of the things a lot of inexperienced people use is the argument, “If I get one percent of the market, it is worth $100 million.” If you use this, investors are likely to file the document under bad business plan examples.

Let’s use custom t-shirts as an example.

Credence Research estimated in 2018 there were 11,334,800,000 custom t-shirts sold for a total of $206.12 Billion, with a 6% compound annual growth rate.

With that data,  you can calculate that the industry will grow to $270 Billion in 2023 and that the average shirt sold creates $18.18 in revenue.

Combine that with an IBIS World estimate of 11,094 custom screen printers and that means even if you become an average seller, you’ll get .009% of the market.

Here’s a table for easier viewing of that information.

The point here is to make sure your business proposal examples make sense.

You’ll need to know industry averages such as cost of customer acquisition, revenue per customer, the average cost of goods sold, and admin costs to be able to create accurate estimates.

Our simple business plan templates walk you through most of these processes. If you follow them you’ll have a good idea of how to write a business proposal.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 9. Business Plan Example of Funding Requests

What is a business plan without a plan on how to obtain funding?

The Small Business Administration has an example for a pizza restaurant that theoretically needed nearly $20k to make it through their first month.

In our video, How to Start a $500K/Year T-Shirt Business (Pt. 1 ), Sanford Booth told us he needed about $200,000 to start his franchise and broke even after 4 months.

Freshbooks estimates it takes on average 2-3 years for a business to be profitable, which means the fictitious pizza company from the SBA could need up to $330k to make it through that time and still pay their bills for their home and pizza shop.

Not every business needs that much to start, but realistically it’s a good idea to assume that you need a fairly large cushion.

Ways to get funding for a small business

There are a variety of ways to cover this. the most common are:

• Bootstrapping – Using your savings without external funding.
• Taking out debt – loans, credit cards
• Equity, Seed Funding – Ownership of a percentage of the company in exchange for current funds
• Crowdsourcing – Promising a good for funding to create the product

Keep reading for more tips on how to write a business plan.

How funding will be used

When asking for business financing make sure to include:

• How much to get started?
• What is the minimum viable product and how soon can you make money?
• How will the money be spent?

Mike emphasized two aspects that should be included in every plan, 

How to Write a Business Plan Resources

Here are some links to a business plan sample and business plan outline. 

• Sample plan

It’s also helpful to follow some of the leading influencers in the business plan writing community. Here’s a list:

• Wise Plans –  Shares a lot of information on starting businesses and is a business plan writing company.
• Optimus Business Plans –  Another business plan writing company.
• Venture Capital – A venture capital thread that can help give you ideas.

How to Write a Business Plan: What’s Next?

We hope this guide about how to write a simple business plan step by step has been helpful. We’ve covered:

• The definition of a business plan
• Coming up with a business idea
• Performing market research
• The critical components of a business plan
• An example business plan

In addition, we provided you with a simple business plan template to assist you in the process of writing your startup business plan. The startup business plan template also includes a business model template that will be the key to your success.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our business hub .

Have you written a business plan before? How did it impact your ability to achieve your goals?

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The Ultimate Guide to Restaurant Marketing (2024)

The restaurant industry is highly competitive. Restaurant marketing is no different—you’re competing against restaurants in your niche and in every niche.

There are so many ways to promote your restaurant that you need a well-laid marketing plan. We’ll explain the goal of restaurant marketing and provide restaurant marketing tips, sample marketing plans and budgets, and software recommendations.

[su_note note_color="#dbeafc"]  We’ll cover the following topics:

What is restaurant marketing?

Step #1. dream up your restaurant, step #2. create a restaurant marketing strategy, step #3. create a restaurant marketing plan, step #4. prepare a restaurant marketing budget, step #5. buy restaurant marketing software, step #6. implement the restaurant marketing strategies, step #7. optimize your restaurant marketing strategies, how to advertise a restaurant, how to promote a restaurant.

• What are your favorite restaurant marketing ideas?   [/su_note]

Click on any of the links above to learn more about how to promote a restaurant, or just continue reading.

Restaurant marketing focuses on identifying the ideal clients for a restaurant, getting them to try your restaurant, collecting data, and creating loyalty. It can increase your restaurant's brand reputation, revenue, and profits.

How to market a restaurant

The four Ps of marketing are product, price, place, and promotion. So essentially, marketing should have a role in nearly every decision you make as you start a restaurant.

To effectively market your restaurant, follow the following steps:

• Dream up your restaurant.
• Choose a restaurant marketing strategy.
• Create a marketing plan.
• Prepare a marketing budget.
• Market your restaurant.

Let’s look at each of these steps to understand how to market a business in the restaurant industry.

Before your restaurant is even open, you’ll need to make decisions that affect your restaurant marketing, like:

• The type of food you’ll serve
• How much you’ll charge for food
• The location of your restaurant
• Your menu design
• Whether you’ll provide dine-in, carry-out, drive-thru, delivery, or other methods

These decisions will impact everything you do. It’s essential to think about them before you start spending money.

Once you’ve thought about the big picture, you need to narrow it down to the restaurant marketing strategies you want to use.

You can choose a combination of traditional and digital marketing strategies. Some restaurant marketing strategies include:

1. Style of restaurant 2. Brand 3. Location 4. Pricing 5. Menu design 6. Visually appealing dishes 7. Online food delivery system 8. Online booking platforms 9. Customer loyalty programs

10. Coupon-based discounts 11. Promotions 12. Paid advertising 13. Print/free-standing inserts 14. Events (like soft openings and a grand opening) 15. Search engine optimization (SEO) 16. Local SEO 17. Influencer marketing 18. Social media marketing

Let’s look at how each of these restaurant marketing ideas helps you market your business.

#1. Style of restaurant

This decision is more of a business decision than a restaurant marketing strategy, but you’ll need to decide it before you do anything else. This will help you do competitor research and target market research.

Of course, if you have a themed restaurant (like Noah’s Ark, a former St. Louis-area restaurant shaped like a massive wooden boat), your style of restaurant will be closely related to your marketing.

It’s essential to establish your brand. A restaurant brand includes:

• Restaurant values and mission: Your values and mission statement should explain how and why you do what you do.
• Restaurant name: Your restaurant's name will be on countless marketing materials, including its logo, website, and social media accounts. It will appear on ordering apps as well.
• Restaurant logo: The visual representation of your restaurant will be used just as much—if not more. If your logo becomes iconic—think the McDonald’s Golden Arches—you won’t even need the name for people to know what company it is.
• Color palette: The colors you use help create a brand image. Think of some of your favorite restaurants. What colors do they use? The colors can be used for everything from uniforms to marketing materials and even the restaurant’s interior. Dig into color theory here .
• Font: Different fonts are interpreted in different ways. Learn more about font psychology here .
• Communication style: How does your restaurant communicate with the public? A bar or neighborhood grill might want a friendly vibe, while a fine-dining establishment may use more formal communication.
• Slogans: Is there something you want your company to be known for? These are commonly used with fast food. For instance, what restaurant comes to mind when you see the words “I’m lovin’ it”?

#3. Location

Your restaurant location doesn’t inherently seem like a marketing decision, but it is.

The placement of your restaurant can make or break it. It could be in an area with a perfect vibe, or it could be a mismatch for your target audience.

Make sure the restaurant location is:

• Easily accessible from all directions
• Near your target market
• Convenient for employees who need to ride a bus

Learn more about choosing a location .

Note: Many modern-day point-of-sale (POS) systems make it easy to implement restaurant marketing strategies #4 through #9.

#4. Online food delivery system

An online food delivery system is a marketing strategy that connects you with outside companies such as Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub.

Lightspeed HQ expects a 20% or higher compound annual growth rate in food delivery between now and 2030.

You can’t really afford to ignore these restaurant marketing channels anymore, but you need to be aware that each delivery company has different commissions they take for their services.

You should assume that 30% of the total ticket price will be spent on delivery. That means if you need to make $15 on a meal to stay in business, you need to charge $21.99 for the meal to cover the delivery costs.

Failing to factor in these costs could cause your restaurant to fail, as the average restaurant has a slim 9.08% net profit margin . Make sure you get this right. Hire a restaurant consultant if you need help.

Hear from a restaurant consultant below:

#5. Online booking platforms

In addition to online deliveries, you can also take online orders or reservations through marketing channels like OpenTable, Resy, and Reserve with Google.

These restaurant marketing strategies increase your digital footprint and make it easier for customers to book reservations and orders. They might also increase productivity by reducing incoming phone calls.

#6. Customer loyalty programs

Another marketing strategy that every restaurant owner needs is a customer loyalty program. Rewarding loyal customers encourages people to keep coming back. It also helps you gather data about your customers to create better customer avatars.

Whether you’re using branded punch cards or digital rewards programs, business owners who implement loyalty programs could see up to 67% increased customer spending .

#7. Coupon-based discounts

Offering physical or digital coupons is another of the restaurant marketing ideas that may be included in your point-of-sale system. You can use coupons as a way to bring in first-time clients, encourage birthday meals, or reward loyal customers.

Make sure to calculate the cost of the discounts and include them in your restaurant marketing budget plan. As a good rule of thumb, don’t make coupons greater than the expected gross profit from the purchases.

#8. Running promotions

Promotions are similar to discounts but cover a broader range of strategies. They might include discounts, buy-one-get-one, giveaways, or other restaurant marketing strategies that help increase awareness of the restaurant on social media and other marketing channels.

#9. Pricing

Restaurant owners need to get the price of the food they are selling right. Too expensive, and you’ll scare off most customers; too inexpensive, and you may lose money with every item sold. The sweet spot will attract customers and allow for profit.

#10. Menu design

Your menu is part of your restaurant marketing strategy. Will it be professional looking in a leather-bound protector or laminated with lots of pictures? Maybe it will be on the wall.

Consider what your competitors do before making a decision. It would be weird to go into fine dining and see a fast food-style menu above the hostess stand.

#11. Visually appealing dishes

While you might not think of the plate layout as part of marketing, impressed customers might share photos of their dishes on social media. Take a food-styling course, plan out your food presentation, and train your employees to duplicate it with every dish. Just remember to be reasonable.

#12. Paid advertising

Restaurant advertising can take on many formats. In a search engine, you might have text-based advertisements, while you might prioritize pictures or videos when advertising on social media.

Make sure that you are narrowing your restaurant advertisement to people who live near the restaurant or travel to the location consistently. Otherwise, online advertising platforms can become prohibitively expensive.

#13. Events (like soft openings and a grand opening)

A great restaurant marketing strategy is to host soft openings and a grand opening. New restaurants can use these to get a lot of attention, especially if you combine them with promotions.

A soft opening also acts as a low-pressure environment for your staff to prepare for the grand opening by only serving friends and family. The grand opening is a more formal event that should include media and influencers.

Talk to people with PR credentials in your area to maximize the results.

#14. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Optimizing your restaurant website for search engines is a great way to bring more awareness to your business. You’ll want to research keywords for your type of restaurant, create pages that describe each item, provide an online menu, and make it easy to place online orders and provide reviews.

Check out TouchBistro’s blog about restaurant SEO .

#15. Local SEO

You’ll need to use local SEO techniques and directories, including:

• Google Business Profile (Formerly Google My Business)
• Tripadvisor
• Yellow Pages

Learn more about starting a Google Business Profile for your restaurant .

#16. Social media marketing for restaurants

Social media marketing will require you to:

• Create a social media restaurant profile on all social media platforms.
• Add your business information.
• Invite your friends to like the page.
• Share posts about the food and restaurant.
• Use QR codes to make it easy for guests to find your socials in your restaurant.
• Encourage people to share pictures and tag your business.
• Ask people to provide reviews. You can even offer incentives or discounts to provide reviews.
• Consider using social media ads.

Suppose you don’t love being on social media. You might find a friend or family member who enjoys social media and have them manage it. Alternatively, you could pay a restaurant marketing company to manage your social media marketing.

#17. Influencer marketing

Another social media marketing strategy is inviting influencers to eat for free. If they enjoy your restaurant and provide a stellar review, it can help drive new customers.

There are keys to making this marketing strategy effective, including:

• Brand goals: Before hiring any influencer, define what you want to achieve by hiring them.
• Target audience: The influencer should share your target audience.
• Engagement rate: An influencer’s engagement rate, or how many people interact with posts, is more important than how many followers they have. Customer engagement is a sign that the influencer isn’t buying followers.
• Content alignment: If the influencer style and content don’t align with your brand identity, it could turn off potential customers.
• Cost: User-generated content helps attract customers, but the prices for influencers can range from free products to a percentage of sales to a flat rate per post. Learn about influencer pricing .
• Platform: Make sure your restaurant has a presence on the platforms the influencer works on.
• Reach: Pricing may be partially based on how many potential customers will see the user-generated content. If you take online reservations, you can use a promo code to tie the influencer directly to the revenue and then pay them a percentage.
• Search and discovery tools: How does the platform allow the content to be found by your target audience? Some platforms are more successful at bringing in new customers than others.
• Influencer vetting system: Each influencer has their own requirements for who they work with. You should also have requirements because digital marketing for restaurants can have unintended consequences if the influencer is involved in a scandal.

Klear and Traackr are influencer marketing tools that match influencers with businesses.

#18. Restaurant email marketing

Restaurants use email marketing to offer discounts, offer birthday gifts, notify people about new products, or confirm online orders. The more ways you use email marketing to communicate with your audience, the more you’ll stay in their mind.

Restaurant owners need to create a marketing plan (a document) for handling each of the marketing efforts (time and resources put into marketing), including:

• The marketing strategy (the goals and process), including a step-by-step process
• How much to spend on the marketing efforts
• The restaurant marketing software that will be used
• Who is responsible for implementing the restaurant’s marketing strategy
• Metrics to measure the marketing strategy success
• How often to optimize the marketing strategy

These will help provide a restaurant marketing plan that drives your marketing decision-making and efforts as you run your restaurant.

Steal restaurant marketing ideas from the big guys

There are two lists you might want to look at to get an idea of what the most successful restaurants do:

Independent restaurants

Restaurant Business estimated the earnings of the top 100 independent restaurants . Below, we did some calculations with the figures to help guide your goals.

To be one of the top 100 restaurants, you’d want to serve $20M in food at a price between $50 and $70 per person. Not feasible to start, but something to shoot for.

Look at restaurants on Restaurant Business’s list to see which are comparable to your restaurant, then research their marketing.

We also gathered some data about the top chains in the U.S. You can view the full list on Nation’s Restaurant News , but it’s most important to understand that there are 500 chains with a combined 230,250 locations and that you’ll want to aim for at least $1.5M in revenue to be among the top 50% of performers.

You can review our calculations here .

Check out restaurants with Instagram followers

Another easy way to learn how to market a restaurant is to look at what the restaurants in your area are doing. Delicious has a great list of the “most Instagrammed restaurants” by state .

A restaurant marketing budget is normally only 2% of revenue, according to the Small Business Administration (SBA). This number is less than 25% of what the SBA suggests.

Based on IBIS World’s industry revenue and number of businesses, the average revenue for a restaurant is nearly $1.67M. That means your marketing budget should be somewhere between the values in the table below.

Some recommend spending up to 30% on restaurant marketing strategies during the first year to help develop brand awareness at a much quicker base. If you decide to take such an aggressive strategy, monitor your marketing campaigns to verify that they are bringing in new customers and increasing customer retention.

If they are not, we highly suggest optimizing the strategies by focusing your spending on campaigns that are outperforming the others.

Learn how to prepare your marketing budget here .

A powerful restaurant marketing plan will encompass many of these strategies. You’ll also need to collect important marketing campaign data to refine your approach.

A key component of collecting valuable customer data is using marketing software to collect and optimize marketing strategies. A restaurant marketer will need several hardware and software solutions to serve their customers best.

You’ll need a:

• Social media

POS and restaurant management system

• Customer relationship management software

Analytics software

Accounting systems, keyword research tools.

You’ll want to consider how each tool fits into your restaurant marketing plan, business goals, and marketing campaigns. In addition, you’ll want to consider costs, integration with other software, and online reviews when making decisions on marketing tools.

When you create a restaurant website, you’ll want to consider what new and repeat customers need when they visit your website.

Take a minute to think about what you do when you are researching a restaurant. What did you want when you were a first-time customer? What did you want as a repeat customer?

The table below includes some restaurant marketing tools people expect to see when they visit a restaurant website. Can you think of more?

In addition, you’ll want the website to link to your social media, restaurant management software, and analytics software.

Restaurant social media marketing software

In addition to social media accounts, some tools can help with social media marketing for restaurants.

Agorapulse (“agora” means meeting place) helps you track 10 social media platforms, providing analytics, scheduling, and responding. There is a free 30-day trial, and many other features depending on your plan. It’s the preferred social management platform for industry behemoth McDonald’s.

Learn about other social media tools .

Remember all the marketing strategies that were part of a POS system?

You can use POS or restaurant management systems like Toast to get all those features. Find out how Toast stacks up against competitors . You can get started for free, but the paid packages range from $69 and up , depending on your desired features.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software

OpenTable, Upserve, Toast, and Sugar CRM are some CRM software for restaurants . Many CRM software platforms will also serve as POS and online ordering systems. Before you mix and match software, make sure it works together.

Posist and Restaurant365 are top performers in small restaurant analytics software . Analytics software combines revenue, employee scheduling information, and food inventory to help local businesses and major corporations in the restaurant industry manage their costs more effectively.

You may be able to access analytics with your POS system, but make sure to check each provider to see what is included.

Restaurant marketing tips are great, but you’ll have no idea how well you’re doing unless you can tie the marketing to financial results.

Most small businesses use QuickBooks, but restaurants can also use the POS systems to monitor financial performance for quick managerial decisions.

Another helpful tool is keyword research software. You can use software like SurferSEO or Ahrefs to find online search keywords.

A good rule of thumb is to go for high-volume, low-difficulty keywords, and as you increase your authority, progress to high-volume, high-difficulty keywords.

During this phase, you will set up all the software, create your restaurant marketing campaign, and monitor it to see whether it meets the goal of bringing in potential customers.

Even the most effective marketing strategies require time to work. In our courses, Joshua Brown explains that you’ll generally want to start email marketing and paid ads between one and three weeks before you want to earn revenue from new or existing customers.

Should I hire a restaurant marketing agency?

Restaurant marketing agencies can be tremendously helpful. They can help you establish your restaurant’s brand identity, advise you on the best software, set up effective marketing strategies, and monitor and optimize your campaigns.

Despite the benefits of hiring a restaurant marketing agency, a local restaurant may be better off hiring them for specific tasks than to manage everything.

When a single company does all your restaurant marketing, they might claim ownership of assets, like your Google Business Profile or website. If you want to fire them, you must find new, effective restaurant marketing strategies.

Be prepared to spend over $1K monthly if you’re looking for full-service marketing agencies. You’ll want to check their online reviews to see what their customer base likes and dislikes about the company.

When you market a restaurant, you’ll adjust your marketing budget for each channel's spending based on how well they attract customers. Most small restaurants find local online and Google Ads to be the most effective.

Approximately once per month, you’ll want to adjust each marketing strategy for restaurant operations. But another business owner warned us:

[su_quote] You can’t throw $100 at ads for a month and decide it didn’t work. Give marketing for a restaurant a few months to adjust how to market your restaurant. [/su_quote]

When you find that marketing ideas for restaurants are not getting the results you want, you have a couple of options:

• Change the call to action.
• Change the offer.
• Reduce the spending on the marketing channel.

Brandon told us you must track everything to see where you lose your customer base.

Suppose you get many potential customers from a source, but they aren’t ordering food at the same rate as other restaurant digital marketing campaigns. In that case, it’s probably not the right marketing channel.

Stop wasting money marketing a restaurant to the wrong people. Likewise, shift the budget to restaurant ads you know work.

The best restaurant marketing campaigns will be able to scale and attract more customers. No matter how well the campaign attracts customers, there will be a point where your returns start to drop. When this occurs, you’ve hit the point of diminishing returns and should stop increasing the allocation to those local ads.

Advertising a restaurant should use a combination of traditional marketing strategies, paid digital ads, and customer retention methods. Restaurant advertisement examples will normally include:

• Google Business Profile: Provides location in Google Maps. This will help people see your food, restaurant, business hours, and location.
• Google Ads: Run paid advertisements on Google Ads. Help people find your restaurant when they search for the type of food you serve, or simply “food near me”.
• Social Media: Social media ads are the best place to increase brand awareness because you can narrow your audience to people in your location and show them videos.

On any of the platforms, you’ll want to:

• Create a business account.
• Sign up for ads.
• Specify your goals.
• Create the ad copy and/or designs.
• Specify your budget.
• Monitor the performance.

Restaurant marketing companies can help you market your restaurant online to help remove the learning curve, but the saved time comes with higher upfront costs.

There are numerous ways to promote a restaurant. Consider some of the following ideas:

• Schedule a grand opening and publish it in places that announce local events.
• Run local online ads with a promotional offer or discount for new customers.
• Make it easy for people to provide positive reviews.
• Respond kindly to negative reviews to show you care about the customers’ experience.

What are your favorite restaurant marketing ideas?

At this point, you should know what to do to prepare to market your restaurant. It’s up to you to choose the best strategies for you.

What restaurant marketing appeals most to you? Let us know in the comments.

34 Interview Questions to Ask a Business Owner

• Origination of the business
• Processes  and challenges during the startup stage
• Operations questions
• Financial questions
• Marketing questions
• Fun questions

Types of interviews you might have with small business owners

Hiring interviews (h), subject matter expert interviews (sme), business investment interviews (bi), company profile interviews (cp).

Questions to ask business owners during covid

"what are your policies on ppe involving covid",     2.  "if someone in the workplace is diagnosed with covid, what should we expect to happen".

• Super cautious. (I have a friend that has been quarantined 8 times since Covid started due to potential exposure.)
• Follow local recommendations (Most prevalent)
• Blatantly disregarding the local recommendations ( I have another friend who has had 6 people out with "pneumonia" in the last month, and all continued working while sick.)

Many Business Owners Answer Questions About Their Inspiration

    3. what were you doing before you started (insert company name) (sme, bi, cp),     4. how did you come up with the idea for (insert business name) (h, sme, bi, cp).

Business Formation  and Process Questions to Ask a Business Owner 

    5. do you have a business plan (bi, cp),      6. did you start the business as a sole proprietorship, corporation, or llc (bi, cp),     7. what were your startup costs (sme, bi, cp),    8. follow-up questions to ask entrepreneurs- can you break down the costs for us.

9. Another followup: How do government regulations and startup costs create a barrier to entry in your field?

10. how did you fund your small business (h, sme, bi, cp),    11. do you have other outstanding business debts what are they,    12. what will the funding you are requesting be used for, 13. what were some challenges you faced when creating your product (sme, bi, cp), 14. how do you select vendors for your companies (h, sme, bi, cp),    15. follow-up question: once you’ve selected a vendor how do you verify they are performing up to those standards, questions to ask entrepreneurs about equipment computer systems (sme, cp),    17. what software do you use to track your inventory and sales,    18. what is the most profitable piece of equipment for your business,    19. where are the best places to buy equipment,    20. what software can't you live without, operations questions to ask a company about their business,    21. what does a normal day at your company look like (h, cp),     22. how do you manage customer relationships (h, bi, cp).

   23. How do you delegate tasks? (H, SME, CP)

Financial questions to ask the owner of a company (bi),    24. what was last year's net profit,    25. what was the change in your cash flow last quarter,    26. what was year-over-year sales growth,    27. do you have enough cash to continue operations and service additional debt, marketing questions you might be asked as a business owner,    28. what social media channels get the best results,    29. what are your favorite marketing tools to use,    30. what percent of revenue do you spend on marketing,    31. what unique marketing strategies do you use to drive results, fun questions to ask business owners.

    32.What are your favorite books?

    33.who are your favorite entrepreneurs to follow ,     34. what are some business opportunities today that you wish someone would tackle.

338 Eye-Catching Travel Agency Names

Did you know Americans spend nearly $1.1 trillion traveling every year, but there are fewer than 50,000 travel agents? That’s an average of $2.2 million in vacations booked per travel agent.

Given that employment in the travel agent industry is going down while the number of vacations booked is going up, there may be short-term opportunities in the field.

Great travel agency names will help agents find potential customers who want to go to their dream destinations. We provide lots of travel agency name ideas and then explain how to register your travel business name.

[su_note note_color="#dbeafc"] Click on any of the links below to jump to the section.

How To Pick A Travel Agency Name

32 travel agency name ideas, 38 creative travel agency names, 30 unique travel agency names, 42 catchy travel agency names, 20 luxury travel agency names, 28 cool travel agency names, 50 travel company names, 20 good travel agency names, 30 travel agent business name ideas, 28 trip names, 20 travel website names, screen travel: summer vacations, how to name your travel agency.

• Next Steps After Naming Your Travel Agent Business [/su_note]

Choosing the right name for your travel agency is an important step in starting your business. Your travel agency name should be memorable, easy to pronounce, and relevant to the services you offer.

Here’s some advice for choosing a travel agency name:

• Consider your target audience. Who are you trying to attract? Once you know your target audience, you can start to brainstorm names that will appeal to them.
• Focus on your unique selling points, or USP. What makes your agency different from the competition? What are your strengths? Once you know your USP, you can start developing names highlighting these qualities.
• Keep it simple. Your agency's name should be easy to remember and pronounce. Avoid using long or complicated names.
• Make it relevant. Your agency's name should be relevant to the services you offer. If you specialize in a particular type of travel, such as luxury travel or adventure travel, your name should reflect that.
• Be creative. Your agency's name is a chance to show off your creativity. Don't be afraid to think outside the box and come up with a unique name.

The first thing you should think about is your target audience. Are you targeting luxury travelers? History buffs? Adventurers? These could factor into your agency name.

1. History Buffs Abroad 2. Luxe Expeditions 3. Elite Explorers Unlimited 4. Prestige Travel 5. Royal Wanderlust Agency 6. Imminent Escapes 7. Exclusive Expeditions 8. Premier Passage Agency 9. Havenfinders 10. The Noble Nomads 11. Aristocrat Adventures 12. Signature Sojourners 13. Global Hiking Trips 14. Find-a-Path Travel 15. Upper-Echelon Excursions 16. Genetic Pilgrimage Agency

17. Literary Journeybuilders 18. Majesty Awaits 19. Goldrush Journeys 20. Musical Excursions 21. Oceania Travel Co. 22. Pinnacle Passage Agency 23. Overwater Odysseys 24. Pristine Paths Agency 25. Bucket List Vacation Co. 26. ResortFinders 27. Happy Days Travel Co. 28. Apex Ascents Agency 29. Mountaintop Vistas Travel 30. Summit Seekers Agency 31. Posh Pilgrimage 32. Majestic Voyage Agency

Pro Tip: Creative travel agency names not only draw potential customers, but they can also help you find the right travel agent to join your team.

Names for a travel agency could include descriptive words, like “escapes,” “luxury,” “voyages,” “adventure,” “vacation,” and “getaway”—little descriptive words matter.

1. DreamScape Travel Co. 2. VistaVoyage Agency 3. Odyssey Vacations 4. Horizon Trails Travel 5. Roaming Routes 6. Excursion Experts 7. ExploreEase 8. JourneyJoy Travel Agency 9. Destination Dreamers 10. Adventure Awaits 11. Infinite Travels 12. ExploreMore Agency 13. Eternal Odyssey Travel 14. WanderWell Voyages 15. Nomadic Trails Travel 16. Serenity Seekers Agency 17. Quest Seekers 18. Epic Excursions 19. Aspire Adventures

20. Travel & Thrive Agency 21. Vagabond Adventures 22. TrailBlazer Travel Co. 23. Elysian Expeditions 24. VentureVista Travel 25. Discovery Trips 26. Journeybookers 27. Tripbookers Unlimited 28. Elite Odysseys 29. WanderWise Voyages 30. Evoke Adventure Travel 31. VistaFinders 32. Serene Expeditions 33. VentureVista Voyages 34. Origin Expeditions 35. Utopia Travel 36. Explore Evermore 37. DreamQuest Destinations 38. Boundless Bliss Travel

Pro Tip: The keywords related to your travel business should be represented in your name and or slogan. It’s very important to be clear on what services you offer to differentiate your travel agency from a similar travel company in your area.

In all likelihood, people are searching for travel agent services online. Stand out in the wall of text with a unique name.

1. Golden Ticket Travel Operations 2. Soul Travel Vacation 3. Broken Bow Lake Tours 4. Class Act Travel 5. Adventurous Travelers 6. TrekTrove Travel Co. 7. Discovery Dynamics 8. TravelTide Agency 9. Serendipity Sojourns 10. HorizonHue Voyages 11. JourneyGuru Travel 12. ExploreElysium Agency 13. RoamingRadiance Tours 14. Trailblaze Travelers 15. Odyssey Originators

16. PassagePoint Agency 17. JourneyJunction Expeditions 18. WanderWise Voyagers 19. TrekTrails Travel Co. 20. Trailblazer Trips 21. Odyssey Orbit Travel 22. VentureVista Voyagers 23. QuestQuell Expeditions 24. WayfarerWaves Agency 25. Elysian Escapes 26. WanderWells Voyages 27. ExploreEclipse Travel 28. JourneyJive Agency 29. PassagePilot Tours 30. HorizonHue Expeditions

Pro Tip: If your name is more plain, let your logo do the talking. Make sure you can envision your logo when you make your travel agency names list. If you see a name but can’t imagine what you would do for a catchy logo, it’s probably not a good fit.

Sometimes, if your name rolls off the tongue, it’s impossible to forget. Try a name like:

1. Wanderlust Escapes 2. Horizon Hoppers 3. Globe Trotters 4. Vacation Vibes 5. Travel Tribe 6. Explore More Tours 7. World Wanderer 8. Compass & Camera 9. Map My Getaway 10. Wanderlust & Wine 11. Passport & Paradise 12. Jet Set Journeys 13. Roam & Relax 14. Dream Destination Travel 15. Travel Mavericks 16. The Adventure Collective 17. Off the Beaten Path Tours 18. The Bucket List Brigade 19. Voyage & Vistas 20. Nomad Nation 21. The World is My Office

22. Roam Sweet Roam 23. The Wanderlust Society 24. Jet Set Junkies 25. Journey Seekers 26. The Explorationists 27. Wanderlust Wonders 28. Globe Trotter Getaways 29. Adventure Avenue 30. Compass & Cork 31. Roam & Relish 32. Tranquil Trails 33. Pilgrim Paths 34. Sun-Kissed Safaris 35. Mystic Mountains 36. Oceanic Odyssey 37. Urban Escapades 38. Culinary Capitals 39. Artful Adventures 40. Eco-Explorers 41. Cultural Connections 42. Timeless Travel

As a travel agent, you’ll likely serve wealthy clientele—and some travel agents gear their entire business around that. If you specialize in luxury trips, consider:

1. The Luxe Wanderer 2. The Grand Voyage 3. The Elite Traveler 4. The Opulent Odyssey 5. The Five-Star Safari 6. The Private Jetsetters 7. The Connoisseur's Cruise 8. The Bespoke Journey 9. The Indulgent Escape 10. The Exclusive Expedition

11. The Majestic Retreat 12. The Enchanting Getaway 13. The Serene Sanctuary 14. The Exquisite Experience 15. The Unforgettable Adventure 16. The Dreamlike Destination 17. The Heavenly Haven 18. The Divine Discovery 19. The LuxeVoyage Agency 20. The Jet Setters

Sometimes, naming a company can be simple. The strategy? Go for something cool. We thought these travel agency name ideas were cool.

1. Regal Routes Agency 2. Grand Travels 3. Wanderlust Explorers 4. Globe Trotter Adventures 5. Compass & Cleats 6. Infinite Horizon Tours 7. Voyage Voyagers 8. Roam & Ramble 9. Expedition Enthusiasts 10. Nomadic Souls 11. Trailblazers Uncharted 12. Odyssey Quest 13. Far & Away Adventures 14. The Travelling Kind

15. Beyond Borders Travel 16. The Wander Society 17. The World Wanderers 18. The Globe Hoppers 19. Boundless Journey 20. Global Reach Travel Agency 21. Enchanting Escapes Travel Agency 22. Compass & Key 23. Roam & Explore 24. The Travelling Soul 25. Nomadic Nation 26. The Roving Explorers 27. Seekers of Wonder 28. Boundless Journeys

Perhaps you offer more than travel agent services. Maybe you run proprietary tours and excursions, too. These names could be perfect for your travel company:

1. TravelVista Co. 2. VoyageWell Travels 3. ExploreWise Journeys 4. Wanderlust Wayfarers 5. AdventureScope Travel 6. JourneyEase Co. 7. TrekTide Travels 8. RoamRoots 9. Excursionista Tours 10. Globetrotter Getaways 11. OdysseyAxis Travel 12. HorizonHue Ventures 13. Trailblaze Travels 14. Wayfarer’s Quest 15. TrekVista Tours 16. WanderWise Expeditions 17. TravelMosaic Co. 18. VentureVista Journeys 19. ExploreQuest Agency 20. Odyssey Orchid Travels 21. PathFinder Expeditions 22. ExpeditionEase Tours 23. DiscoverEase Travel 24. NomadNest Voyages 25. Serenity Trails Co.

26. RoamReady Travel 27. OdysseyAura Journeys 28. ExploreBeyond Tours 29. Wayfarer Wonders Co. 30. WanderWhale Travel 31. JourneyVista Ventures 32. ExpeditionXplorer Co. 33. ExploreNest Tours 34. OdysseyTrail Journeys 35. TrailSeeker Travels 36. VentureVibe Agency 37. TravelZenith Co. 38. OdysseyWayfarer Travels 39. TrekTrekker Journeys 40. Voyager’s Haven 41. ExploreSphere Travel 42. JourneyJunction Co. 43. OdysseyVenture Tours 44. RoamRight Travels 45. WanderSphere Co. 46. TrailTrekker Journeys 47. QuestSphere Travel 48. OdysseyTrails Co. 49. TrekTrove Voyages 50. VoyageVista Travel

Haven’t found a good travel agency name yet? Here are a few more:

1. Demand Vacations 2. American Vacation 3. Vacation Connection 4. Sea Turtle Travel 5. International Adventures 6. Smart Flyer 7. Around the World 8. Travel Shoppe 9. Liberty Travel International 10. Budget Travelers

11. Exquisite Expeditions 12. Mapstop Travel Agent 13. Happy Vacations 14. Tremendous Trips 15. Adventures Bloom 16. Mercury Travel 17. MapStat Travel Agent 18. Adventure Travelers 19. World Adventure Travel Agents 20. Willow Tree Travel Resort

Don’t settle. Only go with travel agency name ideas that will jump off the page. Consider some of these:

1. Wanderlust & Co. 2. Elite Global Travel 3. Adventure Bound 4. Horizon Seekers 5. The Travel Alchemist 6. Off the Beaten Path 7. Jetset Journeys 8. The World Awaits 9. Journey Junkies 10. Wanderlust Warriors 11. The Global Nomad 12. Escape Artists 13. The Adventure Society 14. The Road Less Traveled 15. The World is Ours

16. Wanderlust Collective 17. The Travel Enthusiast 18. Holy Trinity Missions & Trips 19. The Travel Team 20. Airborne Travel Agency 21. Married Travel 22. Travel Business Advantage 23. Journey Makers 24. Pegasus Travel Services 25. Fly Tours 26. Mayflower Travel Agency 27. Weekend Getaways 28. Unbeatable Travel & Tour Co. 29. Top Flight Travel Agents 30. Can’t Touch This Travel Tours

As a travel agent, you might offer pre-planned trip packages. The names will depend on the details, of course, but take these for inspiration.

1. Amazonian Escape 2. Alaskan Wilderness Excursion 3. Antarctic Expedition 4. Asian Odyssey 5. Australian Outback Adventure 6. Baja California Getaway 7. Balkan Delights 8. Brazilian Carnival Extravaganza 9. Canadian Rockies Getaway 10. Caribbean Cruise 11. Central American Discovery 12. Chinese Cultural Tour 13. Costa Rican Nature Retreat 14. Cuban Salsa Adventure

15. Dubai and Abu Dhabi Extravaganza 16. Egyptian Pyramids and Nile River Cruise 17. European River Cruise 18. Galapagos Island Expedition 19. Greek Island Hopping 20. Himalayan Trek 21. Indian Golden Triangle Tour 22. Indonesian Island Paradise 23. Irish Castles and Pubs 24. Italian Food and Wine Tour 25. Japanese Cultural Immersion 26. Moroccan Desert Adventure 27. New Zealand Adventure 28. Peruvian Machu Picchu and Sacred Valley

You’ll need a website, and obviously, it should mirror your business name. Consider one of these as a website name:

1. Nomad's Land 2. Wanderlust Wanderer 3. The Endless Journey 4. The Globe Trotter 5. The Traveling Soul 6. The Armchair Adventurer 7. The Adventure Junkie 8. The Offbeat Explorer 9. The Cultural Connoisseur 10. The Foodie Traveler

11. The Nature Lover 12. The Wildlife Enthusiast 13. The History Buff 14. The Art Aficionado 15. The Music Maven 16. The Beach Bum 17. The Ski Bunny 18. The Hiker's Haven 19. The Biker's Paradise 20. The Climber's Challenge

These days, real travel is always preceded by screen travel.

When selecting your travel agency names, imagine a couple or family sitting down in front of a computer screen and fantasizing about their summer vacations.

What will they search for and be drawn to in a local travel company? Your agency names should include the specialties your travel company wants to be known for , and these 50 ideas can help.

1. SunScape Tours 2. SummerBreeze Getaways 3. BeachBliss Travels 4. SunSplash Adventures 5. SummerSiesta Voyages 6. CoastalCharm Vacations 7. SunnySide Travels 8. TropicalDream Tours 9. SeaShore Serenity Trips 10. IslandHaven Getaways 11. SummerSizzle Travels 12. SunSeeker Expeditions 13. BeachBound Ventures 14. SandCastle Escapes 15. SummerWave Journeys 16. OceanView Odyssey 17. SunshineSojourn Travels 18. CoastalCove Vacations 19. SummerAura Getaways 20. BeachBreeze Tours 21. SunDaze Ventures 22. Shoreline Serenade 23. IslandEscape Tours 24. SummerSands Travel Co. 25. SunSplash Sojourns

26. BeachComber Voyages 27. CoastalEscape Getaways 28. TropicalTide Journeys 29. SummerSway Travels 30. SunShine Expeditions 31. BeachBliss Retreats 32. SandDune Sojourns 33. IslandWander Voyages 34. SummerRays Travels 35. CoastalWaves Getaways 36. SunTrail Expeditions 37. OceanBreeze Tours 38. SunnyShore Journeys 39. BeachVista Vacations 40. SummerSails Travels 41. SeaScape Sojourns 42. IslandOasis Tours 43. SunSerenity Ventures 44. BeachHaven Getaways 45. CoastalWonders Travels 46. TropicalTrek Voyages 47. SummerShore Trips 48. SunSpiral Journeys 49. BeachRover Travels 50. IslandCrest Getaways

Once you’ve considered some creative travel agency names, you’ll need to register the name of your travel company. During the process you’ll want to:

• Check domain availability: Travel agencies need a website, and it should match their travel business name.
• Perform a web search: You want to check to see if the name is already in use by another travel agent. If it is, consider other catchy travel agency names.
• Check for trademarks: A travel business name could already be trademarked. Check on USPTO.gov to make sure it’s available.
• Register the travel agency name: As long as the business name is available, you can register the business and start selling business travel or family vacations.

Next Steps After Naming Your Travel Agent Business

You still have plenty of work to do to start a travel agent business. You’ll need to create your website, open your socials, negotiate deals with tour operators, market your business, and book clients. 

Check out our Business Hub to learn more about starting a business.

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Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Simple Business Plan

By Joe Weller | October 11, 2021

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A business plan is the cornerstone of any successful company, regardless of size or industry. This step-by-step guide provides information on writing a business plan for organizations at any stage, complete with free templates and expert advice. 

Included on this page, you’ll find a step-by-step guide to writing a business plan and a chart to identify which type of business plan you should write . Plus, find information on how a business plan can help grow a business and expert tips on writing one .

What Is a Business Plan?

A business plan is a document that communicates a company’s goals and ambitions, along with the timeline, finances, and methods needed to achieve them. Additionally, it may include a mission statement and details about the specific products or services offered.

A business plan can highlight varying time periods, depending on the stage of your company and its goals. That said, a typical business plan will include the following benchmarks:

• Product goals and deadlines for each month
• Monthly financials for the first two years
• Profit and loss statements for the first three to five years
• Balance sheet projections for the first three to five years

Startups, entrepreneurs, and small businesses all create business plans to use as a guide as their new company progresses. Larger organizations may also create (and update) a business plan to keep high-level goals, financials, and timelines in check.

While you certainly need to have a formalized outline of your business’s goals and finances, creating a business plan can also help you determine a company’s viability, its profitability (including when it will first turn a profit), and how much money you will need from investors. In turn, a business plan has functional value as well: Not only does outlining goals help keep you accountable on a timeline, it can also attract investors in and of itself and, therefore, act as an effective strategy for growth.

For more information, visit our comprehensive guide to writing a strategic plan or download free strategic plan templates . This page focuses on for-profit business plans, but you can read our article with nonprofit business plan templates .

Business Plan Steps

The specific information in your business plan will vary, depending on the needs and goals of your venture, but a typical plan includes the following ordered elements:

• Executive summary
• Description of business
• Market analysis
• Competitive analysis
• Description of organizational management
• Description of product or services
• Marketing plan
• Sales strategy
• Funding details (or request for funding)
• Financial projections

If your plan is particularly long or complicated, consider adding a table of contents or an appendix for reference. For an in-depth description of each step listed above, read “ How to Write a Business Plan Step by Step ” below.

Broadly speaking, your audience includes anyone with a vested interest in your organization. They can include potential and existing investors, as well as customers, internal team members, suppliers, and vendors.

Do I Need a Simple or Detailed Plan?

Your business’s stage and intended audience dictates the level of detail your plan needs. Corporations require a thorough business plan — up to 100 pages. Small businesses or startups should have a concise plan focusing on financials and strategy.

How to Choose the Right Plan for Your Business

In order to identify which type of business plan you need to create, ask: “What do we want the plan to do?” Identify function first, and form will follow.

Use the chart below as a guide for what type of business plan to create:

Is the Order of Your Business Plan Important?

There is no set order for a business plan, with the exception of the executive summary, which should always come first. Beyond that, simply ensure that you organize the plan in a way that makes sense and flows naturally.

The Difference Between Traditional and Lean Business Plans

A traditional business plan follows the standard structure — because these plans encourage detail, they tend to require more work upfront and can run dozens of pages. A Lean business plan is less common and focuses on summarizing critical points for each section. These plans take much less work and typically run one page in length.

In general, you should use a traditional model for a legacy company, a large company, or any business that does not adhere to Lean (or another Agile method ). Use Lean if you expect the company to pivot quickly or if you already employ a Lean strategy with other business operations. Additionally, a Lean business plan can suffice if the document is for internal use only. Stick to a traditional version for investors, as they may be more sensitive to sudden changes or a high degree of built-in flexibility in the plan.

How to Write a Business Plan Step by Step

Writing a strong business plan requires research and attention to detail for each section. Below, you’ll find a 10-step guide to researching and defining each element in the plan.

Step 1: Executive Summary

The executive summary will always be the first section of your business plan. The goal is to answer the following questions:

• What is the vision and mission of the company?
• What are the company’s short- and long-term goals?

See our  roundup of executive summary examples and templates for samples. Read our executive summary guide to learn more about writing one.

Step 2: Description of Business

The goal of this section is to define the realm, scope, and intent of your venture. To do so, answer the following questions as clearly and concisely as possible:

• What business are we in?
• What does our business do?

Step 3: Market Analysis

In this section, provide evidence that you have surveyed and understand the current marketplace, and that your product or service satisfies a niche in the market. To do so, answer these questions:

• Who is our customer? 
• What does that customer value?

Step 4: Competitive Analysis

In many cases, a business plan proposes not a brand-new (or even market-disrupting) venture, but a more competitive version — whether via features, pricing, integrations, etc. — than what is currently available. In this section, answer the following questions to show that your product or service stands to outpace competitors:

• Who is the competition? 
• What do they do best? 
• What is our unique value proposition?

Step 5: Description of Organizational Management

In this section, write an overview of the team members and other key personnel who are integral to success. List roles and responsibilities, and if possible, note the hierarchy or team structure.

Step 6: Description of Products or Services

In this section, clearly define your product or service, as well as all the effort and resources that go into producing it. The strength of your product largely defines the success of your business, so it’s imperative that you take time to test and refine the product before launching into marketing, sales, or funding details.

Questions to answer in this section are as follows:

• What is the product or service?
• How do we produce it, and what resources are necessary for production?

Step 7: Marketing Plan

In this section, define the marketing strategy for your product or service. This doesn’t need to be as fleshed out as a full marketing plan , but it should answer basic questions, such as the following:

• Who is the target market (if different from existing customer base)?
• What channels will you use to reach your target market?
• What resources does your marketing strategy require, and do you have access to them?
• If possible, do you have a rough estimate of timeline and budget?
• How will you measure success?

Step 8: Sales Plan

Write an overview of the sales strategy, including the priorities of each cycle, steps to achieve these goals, and metrics for success. For the purposes of a business plan, this section does not need to be a comprehensive, in-depth sales plan , but can simply outline the high-level objectives and strategies of your sales efforts. 

Start by answering the following questions:

• What is the sales strategy?
• What are the tools and tactics you will use to achieve your goals?
• What are the potential obstacles, and how will you overcome them?
• What is the timeline for sales and turning a profit?
• What are the metrics of success?

Step 9: Funding Details (or Request for Funding)

This section is one of the most critical parts of your business plan, particularly if you are sharing it with investors. You do not need to provide a full financial plan, but you should be able to answer the following questions:

• How much capital do you currently have? How much capital do you need?
• How will you grow the team (onboarding, team structure, training and development)?
• What are your physical needs and constraints (space, equipment, etc.)?

Step 10: Financial Projections

Apart from the fundraising analysis, investors like to see thought-out financial projections for the future. As discussed earlier, depending on the scope and stage of your business, this could be anywhere from one to five years. 

While these projections won’t be exact — and will need to be somewhat flexible — you should be able to gauge the following:

• How and when will the company first generate a profit?
• How will the company maintain profit thereafter?

Business Plan Template

Download Business Plan Template

Microsoft Excel | Smartsheet

This basic business plan template has space for all the traditional elements: an executive summary, product or service details, target audience, marketing and sales strategies, etc. In the finances sections, input your baseline numbers, and the template will automatically calculate projections for sales forecasting, financial statements, and more.

For templates tailored to more specific needs, visit this business plan template roundup or download a fill-in-the-blank business plan template to make things easy. 

If you are looking for a particular template by file type, visit our pages dedicated exclusively to Microsoft Excel , Microsoft Word , and Adobe PDF business plan templates.

How to Write a Simple Business Plan

A simple business plan is a streamlined, lightweight version of the large, traditional model. As opposed to a one-page business plan , which communicates high-level information for quick overviews (such as a stakeholder presentation), a simple business plan can exceed one page.

Below are the steps for creating a generic simple business plan, which are reflected in the template below .

• Write the Executive Summary This section is the same as in the traditional business plan — simply offer an overview of what’s in the business plan, the prospect or core offering, and the short- and long-term goals of the company. 
• Add a Company Overview Document the larger company mission and vision. 
• Provide the Problem and Solution In straightforward terms, define the problem you are attempting to solve with your product or service and how your company will attempt to do it. Think of this section as the gap in the market you are attempting to close.
• Identify the Target Market Who is your company (and its products or services) attempting to reach? If possible, briefly define your buyer personas .
• Write About the Competition In this section, demonstrate your knowledge of the market by listing the current competitors and outlining your competitive advantage.
• Describe Your Product or Service Offerings Get down to brass tacks and define your product or service. What exactly are you selling?
• Outline Your Marketing Tactics Without getting into too much detail, describe your planned marketing initiatives.
• Add a Timeline and the Metrics You Will Use to Measure Success Offer a rough timeline, including milestones and key performance indicators (KPIs) that you will use to measure your progress.
• Include Your Financial Forecasts Write an overview of your financial plan that demonstrates you have done your research and adequate modeling. You can also list key assumptions that go into this forecasting. 
• Identify Your Financing Needs This section is where you will make your funding request. Based on everything in the business plan, list your proposed sources of funding, as well as how you will use it.

Simple Business Plan Template

Download Simple Business Plan Template

Microsoft Excel |  Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF  | Smartsheet

Use this simple business plan template to outline each aspect of your organization, including information about financing and opportunities to seek out further funding. This template is completely customizable to fit the needs of any business, whether it’s a startup or large company.

Read our article offering free simple business plan templates or free 30-60-90-day business plan templates to find more tailored options. You can also explore our collection of one page business templates . 

How to Write a Business Plan for a Lean Startup

A Lean startup business plan is a more Agile approach to a traditional version. The plan focuses more on activities, processes, and relationships (and maintains flexibility in all aspects), rather than on concrete deliverables and timelines.

While there is some overlap between a traditional and a Lean business plan, you can write a Lean plan by following the steps below:

• Add Your Value Proposition Take a streamlined approach to describing your product or service. What is the unique value your startup aims to deliver to customers? Make sure the team is aligned on the core offering and that you can state it in clear, simple language.
• List Your Key Partners List any other businesses you will work with to realize your vision, including external vendors, suppliers, and partners. This section demonstrates that you have thoughtfully considered the resources you can provide internally, identified areas for external assistance, and conducted research to find alternatives.
• Note the Key Activities Describe the key activities of your business, including sourcing, production, marketing, distribution channels, and customer relationships.
• Include Your Key Resources List the critical resources — including personnel, equipment, space, and intellectual property — that will enable you to deliver your unique value.
• Identify Your Customer Relationships and Channels In this section, document how you will reach and build relationships with customers. Provide a high-level map of the customer experience from start to finish, including the spaces in which you will interact with the customer (online, retail, etc.). 
• Detail Your Marketing Channels Describe the marketing methods and communication platforms you will use to identify and nurture your relationships with customers. These could be email, advertising, social media, etc.
• Explain the Cost Structure This section is especially necessary in the early stages of a business. Will you prioritize maximizing value or keeping costs low? List the foundational startup costs and how you will move toward profit over time.
• Share Your Revenue Streams Over time, how will the company make money? Include both the direct product or service purchase, as well as secondary sources of revenue, such as subscriptions, selling advertising space, fundraising, etc.

Lean Business Plan Template for Startups

Download Lean Business Plan Template for Startups

Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF

Startup leaders can use this Lean business plan template to relay the most critical information from a traditional plan. You’ll find all the sections listed above, including spaces for industry and product overviews, cost structure and sources of revenue, and key metrics, and a timeline. The template is completely customizable, so you can edit it to suit the objectives of your Lean startups.

See our wide variety of  startup business plan templates for more options.

How to Write a Business Plan for a Loan

A business plan for a loan, often called a loan proposal , includes many of the same aspects of a traditional business plan, as well as additional financial documents, such as a credit history, a loan request, and a loan repayment plan.

In addition, you may be asked to include personal and business financial statements, a form of collateral, and equity investment information.

Download free financial templates to support your business plan.

Tips for Writing a Business Plan

Outside of including all the key details in your business plan, you have several options to elevate the document for the highest chance of winning funding and other resources. Follow these tips from experts:.

• Keep It Simple: Avner Brodsky , the Co-Founder and CEO of Lezgo Limited, an online marketing company, uses the acronym KISS (keep it short and simple) as a variation on this idea. “The business plan is not a college thesis,” he says. “Just focus on providing the essential information.”
• Do Adequate Research: Michael Dean, the Co-Founder of Pool Research , encourages business leaders to “invest time in research, both internal and external (market, finance, legal etc.). Avoid being overly ambitious or presumptive. Instead, keep everything objective, balanced, and accurate.” Your plan needs to stand on its own, and you must have the data to back up any claims or forecasting you make. As Brodsky explains, “Your business needs to be grounded on the realities of the market in your chosen location. Get the most recent data from authoritative sources so that the figures are vetted by experts and are reliable.”
• Set Clear Goals: Make sure your plan includes clear, time-based goals. “Short-term goals are key to momentum growth and are especially important to identify for new businesses,” advises Dean.
• Know (and Address) Your Weaknesses: “This awareness sets you up to overcome your weak points much quicker than waiting for them to arise,” shares Dean. Brodsky recommends performing a full SWOT analysis to identify your weaknesses, too. “Your business will fare better with self-knowledge, which will help you better define the mission of your business, as well as the strategies you will choose to achieve your objectives,” he adds.
• Seek Peer or Mentor Review: “Ask for feedback on your drafts and for areas to improve,” advises Brodsky. “When your mind is filled with dreams for your business, sometimes it is an outsider who can tell you what you’re missing and will save your business from being a product of whimsy.”

Outside of these more practical tips, the language you use is also important and may make or break your business plan.

Shaun Heng, VP of Operations at Coin Market Cap , gives the following advice on the writing, “Your business plan is your sales pitch to an investor. And as with any sales pitch, you need to strike the right tone and hit a few emotional chords. This is a little tricky in a business plan, because you also need to be formal and matter-of-fact. But you can still impress by weaving in descriptive language and saying things in a more elegant way.

“A great way to do this is by expanding your vocabulary, avoiding word repetition, and using business language. Instead of saying that something ‘will bring in as many customers as possible,’ try saying ‘will garner the largest possible market segment.’ Elevate your writing with precise descriptive words and you'll impress even the busiest investor.”

Additionally, Dean recommends that you “stay consistent and concise by keeping your tone and style steady throughout, and your language clear and precise. Include only what is 100 percent necessary.”

Resources for Writing a Business Plan

While a template provides a great outline of what to include in a business plan, a live document or more robust program can provide additional functionality, visibility, and real-time updates. The U.S. Small Business Association also curates resources for writing a business plan.

Additionally, you can use business plan software to house data, attach documentation, and share information with stakeholders. Popular options include LivePlan, Enloop, BizPlanner, PlanGuru, and iPlanner.

How a Business Plan Helps to Grow Your Business

A business plan — both the exercise of creating one and the document — can grow your business by helping you to refine your product, target audience, sales plan, identify opportunities, secure funding, and build new partnerships. 

Outside of these immediate returns, writing a business plan is a useful exercise in that it forces you to research the market, which prompts you to forge your unique value proposition and identify ways to beat the competition. Doing so will also help you build (and keep you accountable to) attainable financial and product milestones. And down the line, it will serve as a welcome guide as hurdles inevitably arise.

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When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

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The 7 Best Business Plan Examples (2024)

As an aspiring entrepreneur gearing up to start your own business , you likely know the importance of drafting a business plan. However, you might not be entirely sure where to begin or what specific details to include. That’s where examining business plan examples can be beneficial. Sample business plans serve as real-world templates to help you craft your own plan with confidence. They also provide insight into the key sections that make up a business plan, as well as demonstrate how to structure and present your ideas effectively.

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Example business plan

To understand how to write a business plan, let’s study an example structured using a seven-part template. Here’s a quick overview of those parts:

• Executive summary: A quick overview of your business and the contents of your business plan.
• Company description: More info about your company, its goals and mission, and why you started it in the first place.
• Market analysis: Research about the market and industry your business will operate in, including a competitive analysis about the companies you’ll be up against.
• Products and services: A detailed description of what you’ll be selling to your customers.
• Marketing plan: A strategic outline of how you plan to market and promote your business before, during, and after your company launches into the market.
• Logistics and operations plan: An explanation of the systems, processes, and tools that are needed to run your business in the background.
• Financial plan: A map of your short-term (and even long-term) financial goals and the costs to run the business. If you’re looking for funding, this is the place to discuss your request and needs.

7 business plan examples (section by section)

In this section, you’ll find hypothetical and real-world examples of each aspect of a business plan to show you how the whole thing comes together. 

• Executive summary

Your executive summary offers a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. You’ll want to include a brief description of your company, market research, competitor analysis, and financial information. 

In this free business plan template, the executive summary is three paragraphs and occupies nearly half the page:

• Company description

You might go more in-depth with your company description and include the following sections:

• Nature of the business. Mention the general category of business you fall under. Are you a manufacturer, wholesaler, or retailer of your products?
• Background information. Talk about your past experiences and skills, and how you’ve combined them to fill in the market. 
• Business structure. This section outlines how you registered your company —as a corporation, sole proprietorship, LLC, or other business type.
• Industry. Which business sector do you operate in? The answer might be technology, merchandising, or another industry.
• Team. Whether you’re the sole full-time employee of your business or you have contractors to support your daily workflow, this is your chance to put them under the spotlight.

You can also repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your About page, Instagram page, or other properties that ask for a boilerplate description of your business. Hair extensions brand Luxy Hair has a blurb on it’s About page that could easily be repurposed as a company description for its business plan. 

• Market analysis

Market analysis comprises research on product supply and demand, your target market, the competitive landscape, and industry trends. You might do a SWOT analysis to learn where you stand and identify market gaps that you could exploit to establish your footing. Here’s an example of a SWOT analysis for a hypothetical ecommerce business: 

You’ll also want to run a competitive analysis as part of the market analysis component of your business plan. This will show you who you’re up against and give you ideas on how to gain an edge over the competition. 

• Products and services

This part of your business plan describes your product or service, how it will be priced, and the ways it will compete against similar offerings in the market. Don’t go into too much detail here—a few lines are enough to introduce your item to the reader.

• Marketing plan

Potential investors will want to know how you’ll get the word out about your business. So it’s essential to build a marketing plan that highlights the promotion and customer acquisition strategies you’re planning to adopt. 

Most marketing plans focus on the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. However, it’s easier when you break it down by the different marketing channels . Mention how you intend to promote your business using blogs, email, social media, and word-of-mouth marketing. 

Here’s an example of a hypothetical marketing plan for a real estate website:

Logistics and operations

This section of your business plan provides information about your production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory.

Financial plan

The financial plan (a.k.a. financial statement) offers a breakdown of your sales, revenue, expenses, profit, and other financial metrics. You’ll want to include all the numbers and concrete data to project your current and projected financial state.

In this business plan example, the financial statement for ecommerce brand Nature’s Candy includes forecasted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.

It then goes deeper into the financials, citing:

• Funding needs
• Project cash-flow statement
• Project profit-and-loss statement
• Projected balance sheet

You can use Shopify’s financial plan template to create your own income statement, cash-flow statement, and balance sheet. 

Types of business plans (and what to write for each)

A one-page business plan is a pared down version of a standard business plan that’s easy for potential investors and partners to understand. You’ll want to include all of these sections, but make sure they’re abbreviated and summarized:

• Logistics and operations plan
• Financials 

A startup business plan is meant to secure outside funding for a new business. Typically, there’s a big focus on the financials, as well as other sections that help determine the viability of your business idea—market analysis, for example. Shopify has a great business plan template for startups that include all the below points:

• Market research: in depth
• Financials: in depth

Internal 

Your internal business plan acts as the enforcer of your company’s vision. It reminds your team of the long-term objective and keeps them strategically aligned toward the same goal. Be sure to include:

• Market research

Feasibility 

A feasibility business plan is essentially a feasibility study that helps you evaluate whether your product or idea is worthy of a full business plan. Include the following sections:

A strategic (or growth) business plan lays out your long-term vision and goals. This means your predictions stretch further into the future, and you aim for greater growth and revenue. While crafting this document, you use all the parts of a usual business plan but add more to each one:

• Products and services: for launch and expansion
• Market analysis: detailed analysis
• Marketing plan: detailed strategy
• Logistics and operations plan: detailed plan
• Financials: detailed projections

Free business plan templates

Now that you’re familiar with what’s included and how to format a business plan, let’s go over a few templates you can fill out or draw inspiration from.

Bplans’ free business plan template

Bplans’ free business plan template focuses a lot on the financial side of running a business. It has many pages just for your financial plan and statements. Once you fill it out, you’ll see exactly where your business stands financially and what you need to do to keep it on track or make it better.

PandaDoc’s free business plan template

PandaDoc’s free business plan template is detailed and guides you through every section, so you don’t have to figure everything out on your own. Filling it out, you’ll grasp the ins and outs of your business and how each part fits together. It’s also handy because it connects to PandaDoc’s e-signature for easy signing, ideal for businesses with partners or a board.

Miro’s Business Model Canvas Template

Miro’s Business Model Canvas Template helps you map out the essentials of your business, like partnerships, core activities, and what makes you different. It’s a collaborative tool for you and your team to learn how everything in your business is linked.

Better business planning equals better business outcomes

Building a business plan is key to establishing a clear direction and strategy for your venture. With a solid plan in hand, you’ll know what steps to take for achieving each of your business goals. Kickstart your business planning and set yourself up for success with a defined roadmap—utilizing the sample business plans above to inform your approach.

Business plan FAQ

What are the 3 main points of a business plan.

• Concept. Explain what your business does and the main idea behind it. This is where you tell people what you plan to achieve with your business.
• Contents. Explain what you’re selling or offering. Point out who you’re selling to and who else is selling something similar. This part concerns your products or services, who will buy them, and who you’re up against.
• Cash flow. Explain how money will move in and out of your business. Discuss the money you need to start and keep the business going, the costs of running your business, and how much money you expect to make.

How do I write a simple business plan?

To create a simple business plan, start with an executive summary that details your business vision and objectives. Follow this with a concise description of your company’s structure, your market analysis, and information about your products or services. Conclude your plan with financial projections that outline your expected revenue, expenses, and profitability.

What is the best format to write a business plan?

The optimal format for a business plan arranges your plan in a clear and structured way, helping potential investors get a quick grasp of what your business is about and what you aim to achieve. Always start with a summary of your plan and finish with the financial details or any extra information at the end.

Want to learn more?

• Question: Are You a Business Owner or an Entrepreneur?
• Bootstrapping a Business: 10 Tips to Help You Succeed
• Entrepreneurial Mindset: 20 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur
• 101+ Best Small Business Software Programs 

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Blog Business 15+ Business Plan Examples to Win Your Next Round of Funding

15+ Business Plan Examples to Win Your Next Round of Funding

Written by: Jennifer Gaskin Jun 09, 2021

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail,” according to words of wisdom dubiously attributed to Benjamin Franklin. While there’s no solid evidence that Franklin actually coined this phrase, the sentiment rings true for any business.

Not having a solid plan makes it unlikely you’ll achieve the goals you seek, whether the goals are getting your to-do list done or launching a successful organization.

In the early stages of a company, that means developing things like pitch decks, business plans, one-sheeters and more. With Venngage’s Business Plan Builder , you can easily organize your business plan into a visually appealing format that can help you win over investors, lenders or partners.

Learn more about  how to create a business plan  so you can hit the ground running after reading through this list for inspirational examples of business plans.

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Simple business plan example, startup business plan example, small business plan example, nonprofit business plan example, strategic business plan example, market analysis business plan example, sales business plan example, organization and management business plan example, marketing and sales strategy business plan example, apple business plan example, airbnb business plan example, sequoia capital business plan example.

While your business plan should be supported by thorough and exhaustive research into your market and competitors, the resulting document does not have to be overwhelming for the reader. In fact, if you can boil your business plan down to a few key pages, all the better.

CREATE THIS PLAN TEMPLATE

The simple, bold visual aesthetic of this  business plan template  pairs well with the straightforward approach to the content and various elements of the business plan itself.

Use Venngage’s My Brand Kit  to automatically add your brand colors and fonts to your business plan with just a few clicks.

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An essential startup business plan should include a clear and compelling value proposition, market analysis, competitive analysis, target audience identification, financial projections, and a well-defined marketing and operational strategy.

For a typical startup, the need to appear disruptive in the industry is important. After all, if you’re not offering anything truly new, why would an investor turn their attention toward your organization. That means establishing a problem and the ways in which you solve it right away.

CREATE THIS PRESENTATION TEMPLATE

Whether it’s a full-scale business plan or, in this case, a pitch deck, the ideal way for a startup to make a splash with its plans is to be bold. This successful business plan example is memorable and aspirational.

In the Venngage editor, you can upload images of your business. Add these images to your plans and reports to make them uniquely your own.

All businesses start out small at first, but that doesn’t mean their communications have to be small. One of the best ways to get investors, lenders and talent on board is to show that you’ve done your due diligence.

In this small business plan example, the content is spread over many pages, which is useful in making lengthy, in-depth research feel less like a chore than packing everyone on as few pages as possible.

Organizations that set out to solve problems rather than earning profits also benefit from creating compelling business plans that stir an emotional response in potential donors, benefactors, potential staff members or even media.

CREATE THIS REPORT TEMPLATE

Simplicity is the goal for nonprofits when it comes to business plans, particularly in their early days. Explain the crisis at hand and exactly how your organization will make a difference, which will help donors visualize how their money will be used to help.

Business plans are also helpful for companies that have been around for a while. Whether they’re considering new products to launch or looking for new opportunities, companies can approach business plans from the strategy side of the equation as well.

Strategic business plans or strategy infographics should be highly focused on a single area or problem to be solved rather than taking a holistic approach to the entire business. Expanding scope too much can make a strategy seem too difficult to implement.

Easily share your business plan with Venngage’s multiple download options, including PNG, PNG HD, and as an interactive PDF.

One-page business plan example

For organizations with a simple business model, often a one-page business plan is all that’s needed. This is possible in any industry, but the most common are traditional ones like retail, where few complex concepts need to be explained.

This one-page strategic business plan example could be easily replicated for an organization that offers goods or services across multiple channels or one with three core business areas. It’s a good business plan example for companies whose plans can be easily boiled down to a few bullet points per area.

Especially when entering a saturated market, understanding the landscape and players is crucial to understanding how your organization can fit it—and stand out. That’s why centering your business plan around a market analysis is often a good idea.

In this example, the majority of the content and about half the pages are focused on the market analysis, including competitors, trends, pricing, demographics and more. This successful business plan example ensures the artwork and style used perfectly matches the company’s aesthetic, which further reinforces its position in the market.

You can find more memorable business plan templates to customize in the Venngage editor. Browse Venngage’s  business plan templates  to find plans that work for you and start editing.

Company description business plan example

Depending on the market, focusing on your company story and what makes you different can drive your narrative home with potential investors. By focusing your business plan on a company description, you center yourself and your organization in the minds of your audience.

This abbreviated plan is a good business plan example. It uses most of the content to tell the organization’s story. In addition to background about the company, potential investors or clients can see how this design firm’s process is different from their rivals.

With Venngage Business , you can collaborate with team members in real-time to create a business plan that will be effective when presenting to investors.

Five-year business plan example

For most startups or young companies, showing potential investors or partners exactly how and when the company will become profitable is a key aspect of presenting a business plan. Whether it’s woven into a larger presentation or stands alone, you should be sure to include your five-year business plan so investors know you’re looking far beyond the present.

CREATE THIS PROPOSAL TEMPLATE

With Venngage’s Business Plan Builder , you can customize a schedule like this to quickly illustrate for investors or partners what your revenue targets are for the first three to five years your company is in operation.

The lifeblood of any company is the sales team. These are the energetic folks who bring in new business, develop leads and turn prospects into customers. Focusing your energy on creating a sales business plan would prove to investors that you understand what will make your company money.

In this example sales business plan, several facets of ideal buyers are detailed. These include a perfect customer profile that helps to convey to your audience that customer relationships will be at the heart of your operation.

You can include business infographics in your plan to visualize your goals. And with Venngage’s gallery of images and icons, you can customize the template to better reflect your business ethos.

Company mergers and shakeups are also major reasons for organizations to require strong business planning. Creating new departments, deciding which staff to retain and charting a course forward can be even more complex than starting a business from scratch.

This organization and management business plan focuses on how the company can optimize operations through a few key organizational projects.

Executive summary for business plan example

Executive summaries give your business plan a strong human touch, and they set the tone for what’s to follow. That could mean having your executive leadership team write a personal note or singling out some huge achievements of which you’re particularly proud in a business plan infographic .

In this executive summary for a business plan, a brief note is accompanied by a few notable achievements that signal the organization and leadership team’s authority in the industry.

Marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin, and clever companies know how they play off each other. That’s why centering your business plan around your marketing and sales strategy can pay dividends when it comes time to find investors and potential partners.

This marketing and sales business plan example is the picture of a sleek, modern aesthetic, which is appropriate across many industries and will speak volumes to numbers-obsesses sales and marketing leaders.

Do business plans really help? Well, here’s some math for you; in 1981, Apple had just gone public and was in the midst of marketing an absolute flop , the Apple III computer.  The company’s market cap, or total estimated market value,  could hit $3 trillion this year.

Did this Apple business plan make the difference? No, it’s not possible to attribute the success of Apple entirely to this business plan from July 1981, but this ancient artifact goes to show that even the most groundbreaking companies need to take an honest stock of their situation.

Apple’s 1981 business plan example pdf covers everything from the market landscape for computing to the products that founder Steve Jobs expects to roll out over the next few years, and the advanced analysis contained in the document shows how strategic Jobs and other Apple executives were in those early days.

Inviting strangers to stay in your house for the weekend seemed like a crazy concept before Airbnb became one of the world’s biggest companies. Like all disruptive startups, Airbnb had to create a robust, active system from nothing.

As this Airbnb business plan pitch deck example shows, for companies that are introducing entirely new concepts, it’s helpful not to get too into the weeds. Explain the problem simply and boil down the essence of your solution into a few words; in this case, “A web platform where users can rent out their space” perfectly sums up this popular company.

Sequoia Capital is one of the most successful venture capital firms in the world, backing startups that now have a combined stock market value of more than $1 trillion, according to a Forbes analysis .

For young companies and startups that want to play in the big leagues, tailoring your pitch to something that would appeal to a company like Sequoia Capital is a good idea. That’s why the company has a standard business plan format it recommends .

Using Sequoia Capital’s business plan example means being simple and clear with your content, like the above deck. Note how no slide contains much copy, and even when all slides appear on the screen at once, the text is legible.

In summary: Use Venngage to design business plans that will impress investors

Not every business plan, pitch deck or one-sheeter will net you billions in investment dollars, but every entrepreneur should be adept at crafting impressive, authoritative and informative business plans.

Whether you use one of the inspirational templates shared here or you want to go old school and mimic Apple’s 1981 business plan, using Venngage’s Business Plan Builder helps you bring your company’s vision to life.

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Download a free business plan in pdf or word doc format to make writing a plan fast and easy, find your sample plan.

Discover the sample plan that best fits your business. Search our gallery of over 550 sample business plans and find the one that's right for you.

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What You'll Get:

A complete business plan Unlike other blank templates, our business plan examples are complete business plans with all of the text and financial forecasts already filled out. Edit the text to make the plan your own and save hundreds of hours.

A professional business plan template All 550 of our business plans are in the SBA-approved format that’s proven to raise money from lenders and investors.

Instructions and help at every step Get help with clear, simple instructions for each section of the business plan. No business experience necessary.

A Word doc you can edit We don’t just have PDF documents that make editing a challenge. Each plan is available in Word format so you can start editing your business plan example right away.

Key Sections Included in our Example Business Plans:

Executive Summary : A quick overview of your plan and entices investors to read more of your plan.

Company : Describes the ownership and history of your business.

Products and Services : Reviews what you sell and what you’re offering your customers.

Market Analysis : Describes your customers and the size of your target market.

Strategy and Implementation : Provides the details of how you plan on building the business.

Management Team : An overview of the people behind the business and why they’re the right team to make the business a success.

Financial Plan : A complete set of forecasts including a Profit and Loss Statement, Cash Flow Statement, and Balance Sheet.

Looking for a sample business plan PDF? You can download a few PDF examples below:

• Accounting and Bookkeeping Sample Business Plan PDF
• Agriculture Farm Sample Business Plan PDF
• Cleaning Service Sample Business Plan PDF

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Didn't find what you are looking for.

The answer is simple.

It’s an informal business plan that can convince you that your idea makes sense to the outside world because you are investing your time, money, and everything into that idea.

To write a business plan, maybe you think you don’t need a step-by-step guide or a sample business plan . After all, some entrepreneurs achieved success without writing a business plan. With great timing, past business experiences, entrepreneurial ambitions, and a little luck, some entrepreneurs build successful businesses without even writing an informal business plan.

But the odds are greater than those entrepreneurs fail.

And that’s why writing a business plan will help you succeed .

The easiest way to simplify the work of writing a business plan is to start with sample business plans.

What is business plan sample?

Why you should refer a business plan example, who should use business plan examples, how to use sample business plans.

What is Business Plan Sample?

That’s why we created business plan examples to help you get started.

Use our 400+ business plan examples written for all industries and write your business plan in half of the time with twice the impact.

• Guidance on what to include in each section.  If you’ve never attended business school, you might never have created a  SWOT analysis   or a balance sheet before. Business templates that give guidance — in plain language — about what to include and how to fill in each section and create a complete and effective plan.
• A business plan is vital to get an investment.  If you’re seeking investment for your business, you’ll need to convince banks and investors why they should invest in your business . Lenders and investors will only risk their time and money if they’re certain that your business will be successful and profitable and they will get a great return on their investment.
• A business plan can help you prioritize.  A complete, well-balanced business plan is one of the most valuable tools in assisting you to reach your long-term goals. It gives your business direction, defines your goals, outlines out strategies to reach your goals, and helps you to manage possible bumps in the way.

Who should use Business Plan Examples?

Well Everyone, who wants to write a business plan should use these sample business plans. These plans apply to almost all industries.

We have created a library of professional sample business plans from a wide variety of industries to help you start writing your business plan with minimum effort.

Use our Upmetrics — business plan software that offers step by step guide to start writing your business plan , especially if you’re writing an informal business plan to get a bank loan or outside investment.

Our extensive sample business plans library includes  business plan templates  and  business plan examples  for almost all business industries.

Make your plan in half the time & twice the impact with Upmetrics.

How to use Business Plan Examples to write your own?

Having real-life and industry-specific business plan examples by your side can be incredibly resourceful to help you write a business plan from scratch. 

A well-planned structure helps you outline your plan, while content inspiration helps you set the tone for your business document. 

Let’s dive deep and understand how to use these examples effectively to write your business plan.

1. Use examples as a guide

2. understanding the structure.

Traditional business plans generally follow a similar structure. 

It starts with an executive summary followed by a company description, market analysis, product and services, sales and marketing strategies, operational plan, management team, financial plan, and appendix.

Using an example business plan is the best way to understand the structure and outline your plan. 

3. Gaining Inspiration

Reading industry-specific business plan examples can help you gain inspiration for your plan. You can gain insights on presenting your business idea, vision, mission, and values and persuade investors to invest in your idea.

4. Learning Industry-Specific Language

There’s no universal template for business planning that fits all. An industry-specific template can help you learn and understand the business language for your industry and the best way to communicate your message to your investors.

5. Identifying Key Elements

Reading business plan examples of similar businesses can help you identify the key elements and information to include in your plan. You can keep note of these and ensure everything necessary for investors to consider is present in your final draft.

6. Crafting Financial Projections

A financial plan is a critical component of your business plan, and a good business plan example can help you better understand how they project their financials which can be incredibly helpful while forecasting yours.

7. Refining Your Executive Summary

As mentioned earlier, your executive summary is a key factor influencing potential investors and lenders to invest or lend you money. Analyzing free business plan templates can help you optimize your executive summary to make it more brief, persuasive, and attention-grabbing.

8. Realizing What Works and What Doesn’t

Analyzing industry-specific and real-life examples can help you determine what works best and what doesn’t within your industry. Understanding these factors can help you avoid many significant pitfalls.

While business plan examples can be incredibly helpful in writing a plan from scratch, ensure your plan is customized for your business and sends out a unique message. Your business plan must reflect its unique idea, vision, and target market.

Using your Business Plan as a Management Tool

It’s essential to have a business plan, but it’s also crucial to keep it up to date as your business progresses. A business plan is not merely a document that you write once and forget after you get started. It’s a business road map and vision that you should develop as your business progresses and evolves. It’s also important to update your business plan regularly as your business situation and position change.

How Business Plan Software can help you?

We have created Upmetrics — business plan software to simplify the process of business planning.

Our financial forecasting module will create all the essential reports automatically. You just need to enter numbers and the application will do all the math to generate your financial reports. Later you can embed those reports into your business plan.

After completing your business plan, you can download your business plan in PDF or DOC file using Upmetrics. Also, you can share it online with investors or with other important people just by a quick link.

Ready to take the next step?

Now that you have a business idea and you know how to write a business plan, it’s time to go for it . Our business plan software will take you through each step outlined above in more detail so there are no surprises on your journey.

Simplifying Business Planning through AI-Powered Insights.

Founder, CEO & Lead Scientist at Nanolyse Technologies

After trying Upmetrics, I wish to highly recommend this app to anyone who needs to write a business plan flexibly and to a high standard.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is sample business plan, how do i write a business plan.

In business plan writing you will need to write the following sections into your business plan. These sections include an Executive Summary, Company Overview, Problem Analysis, The Solution, Market Analysis, Customer Analysis, Competitive Analysis, SWOT Analysis, Marketing Plan, Operations Plan, and Financial Plan.

Check out our article to learn how you can write these sections in detail for your business plan.

How long should my business plan be?

The length of your business plan depends on the type of plan you choose. There are one-page business plans that offer easy and practical planning. Then you have traditional business plans that usually vary from 20 to 50 pages. It’s worth noting that the quality of your business plan matters more than its length.

Should I hire someone to write my business plan for me?

Absolutely No, You as a business owner know all about your business idea, your business goals, target market and audience, and what you want to achieve by writing your plan. Don’t hire someone who doesn’t know what your readers will want, the reason is that, if you intend to raise funds, you are the best person that understands what investors will look out for in your business plan.

Consultants or  business plan writers  definitely can write a business plan but not better than you.

Looking for a faster way to finish your business plan?

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Popular Templates

Simple Business Plan

To reach your goals in business , you need to have strategies in mind. There must be somewhere you can list down all the variables to your success; all the necessary factors to get to where you want to be. If you know how to create a business plan , then you’re a step closer to what you want. Allow this article to shed some light on its complexity. Learn about its purpose, its formats, and browse through an amazing list of sample business plans . Without further ado, here are some of the most useful templates and examples that you can ever find online!

46+ Simple Business Plan Examples

1. simple business plan template.

• Apple Pages
• Google Docs

Size: A4, US

2. Spa Business Plan Template

3. Nonprofit Business Plan Template

Size: 39 KB

4. Trucking Business Plan Template

Size: 31 KB

5. Business Plan Template

Size: 35 KB

6. Business Plan Table of Contents Template

• MS Publisher

Size: 57 KB

7. Sports Bar Business Plan Template

8. Saas Business Plan Template

Size: A4 & US

9. Startup Business Plan Template

Size: 33 KB

10. Rental Property Business Plan Template

11. Construction Business Plan Template

Size: 34 KB

12. Sample Construction Business Plan Template

Size: 58 KB

13. Restaurant Business Plan Template

Size: 36 KB

14. Generic Business Plan Template

15. Freight Trucking Business Plan Template

Size: 40 KB

16. Mortgage Broker Business Plan Template

17. Boutique Business Plan Template

Size: 42 KB

18. Recruitment/Staffing Agency Business Plan Template

Size: 45 KB

19. Modern Business Plan Template

20. Travel Business Plan Template

21. Veterinary Business Plan Template

22. Renovation Business Plan Template

23. Sample Business Plan Template

24. Simple Business Plan Template

25. Business Plan Outline Template

26. Sample Marketing Business Plan Template

27. Business Operational Plan Template

Free Download

28. 30 60 90 Day Business Plan Template

29. Business Plan Presentation Template

30. Business Plan Outline

Size: 79 kB

31. Small Business Sample

Size: 199 kB

32. Cafe Business Plan

Size: 151 kB

33. Restaurant Business Example

34. Mini Business Plan

35. Farm Business Plan

Size: 32 kB

36. Social Business Sample

37. Presentation Business Plan

Size: 774 kB

38. Start-up Business Example

39. Bakery Business Plan

40. Car Wash Business Sample

Size: 125 kB

41. Cleaning Business Plan

Size: 140 kB

42. Daycare Business Example

Size: 171 kB

43. Insurance Business Sample

Size: 324 kB

44. Lawn Care Business Plan

Size: 397 kB

45. Personal Business Plan

Size: 237 kB

46. Real Estate Business Sample

47. Retail Business Plan

48. Student Business Plan

What Is the Purpose of a Business Plan?

A business plan has one true purpose and that is to help determine the success of a company. No organization makes it to the top of their industry on sheer luck and hard work alone. Writing a business plan becomes essential so that a company can have as much direction as it needs as it claws its way towards the point of success. Such is the role of a  quality plan  for business and is defined by the following:

• To explain the business model  – A good business plan clarifies what the business is about and what is needed to be done to attain success.
• Set goals  – Business plans, like  work plans , are made to ascertain specific goals detailed in  strategic plans  directed towards the profitability and success of a company or business
• Detect potential problems  – A sure way of finding out problems within a business is the inclusion of an evaluation as a result of actions being done in a business plan.
• Measure development  – Having a  budget plan  for business provides the owner or decision-maker a guide of sorts in determining where the current business is and the next step of the  management plan  to take in progressing towards the success set by the business plan.

Tips on How to Pick the Right Business Plan Format

Remember that there’s no such thing as right or wrong when you want to learn how to write a business plan. Instead, adjust your thinking towards what is more effective or appropriate for your needs. Keep in mind that formatting is always an important consideration. You can stay up all night working on your simple analysis  plan or spend hours browsing for the right business plan template, but if the formatting is wrong, then you still won’t be able to guarantee your document’s efficacy. Nowadays, there are two major formats that you can select. One is the traditional business plan format while the other is the lean start-up format . To help you decide between either of these, here are some important tips to consider:

1. Determine Your Specific Need for the Business Plan

As stated in the previous section, the main purpose of a business plan is to serve as a guide. What hasn’t been said yet is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be your guide alone. Those who want to attract investors or lenders will want the traditional business plan format for reasons that will become apparent soon. Otherwise, the lean start-up format may be more suitable.

2. Look into the Characteristics of Each Type

After you’ve determined why there’s a need for a business plan, now it’s time to tackle the elements of the formats. The traditional format, for example, is much longer and more detailed. Its precise nature is what makes this format attractive to investors or lenders—people who normally require a lot of information. On the other hand, the lean start-up format focuses only on the significant bits of info, such as the company’s organizational infrastructure, finances, and value proposal.

3. Determine Whether or Not Time is on Your Side

The lengthy and specific nature of traditional business plans requires a lot of time and effort to do. If you only have a longer time to prepare, then perhaps that is the best choice for you. Yet those who only have a few hours or days to prepare one may have to go for the lean start-up format instead. 

4. Look into Which Type is Better for You

Both of these  business plan outline  formats have their weaknesses and strengths. It is up to you to choose which of these will you apply in composing your business plan. Remember, consider not your wants but your needs. If you need to obtain a simple, less hassle and faster yet more likely to be ambiguous, you may utilize the lean start-up format. Conversely, if you need to have a precise and detailed business plan which is paired with challenging and time-consuming composition then use the traditional one.

General FAQs

1. what is a business plan.

A business plan is a formal and comprehensive document that is prepared by a business to outline the goals of the business and how it can be attained. It states the time frame within which these goals should be achieved, along with the product details, manpower, and financial estimates.

2. What are the main components of a business plan?

Each business plan examples share common components such as the executive summary , company description, marketing plan, operational plan , and so much more. However, how these components are expressed or explained will differ according to the needs and designs of the business owner.

3. What is the purpose of a business plan?

The purpose of a business plan is to define the goals of a business along with the steps needed to reach them. It also helps in maintaining the focus of your business and securing long-term financing .

If you weren’t so sure before about how to make a business plan, well you are now. Whether it is a simple one-page version, a non-profit business plan , or even a business continuity plan , you now have the skills and knowledge necessary to make a highly effective document. Should that be something you aren’t too keen on yet, then there are always templates like the ones above. Stop hesitating and get started on your plan today!

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The Basics Done Right: Creating a Simple Yet Effective Business Plan

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2024 Small Business Startup Made Easy: Free Simple Basic Business Plan Template

Kristal Sepulveda, CPA

May 10, 2024

Using a business plan template , you bring the distant vision of your business into the immediate, actionable present. This process clarifies your business objectives and provides a clear roadmap for achieving them. In this article, discover how a simple, basic business plan template can transform a budding idea into a thriving enterprise, guiding you through each step with precision and focus.

Further reading: 5 Benefits of Using a Business Plan Templates to Launch Your Dream in 2024

Key Components Every Basic Business Plan Must Have

Executive summary.

This section of your business plan summarizes your business idea, business needs, and goals. It should quickly captivate potential investors' interest, encouraging them to read more about your unique value proposition and the future direction of your startup business .

Market Analysis

A critical part of your business plan, the market analysis helps you determine your target market, understand customer needs, and conduct competitive analysis. This section is foundational in developing a robust marketing plan and setting your business up for success.

Financial Projections

Every effective business plan includes detailed financial projections. This section should outline your expected revenue streams, balance sheet, cash flow statements, and other financial forecasts that demonstrate your business's viability to investors. Using a simple template or tools like Microsoft Word, you can create clear and professional financial statements that are easily updated as your financials are subject to change.

Tailoring to Specific Business Needs

It's a good idea to customize your free business plan template to reflect the specific type of business you’re looking to start. Whether you’re opening an ecommerce shop with Shopify, a local service business, or a tech startup, your plan should reflect the unique aspects of your market and operational needs.

Tips for Effective Financial Management in Your Business Plan

Realistic budgeting and financial advice.

Budgeting is a fundamental step in the planning process, helping build the foundation of your financial plan. Spend time forecasting your costs and revenue to ensure you have sufficient cash to cover upcoming expenses. Financial advice from experienced advisors can also help you understand how to manage your business’s money more effectively.

Comprehensive Financial Forecasts

Include a step-by-step guide to your startup business’s financial health through projections, break-even analysis, and other financial forecasts. These elements are vital for planning your business’ growth and securing funding .

Utilizing Financial Management Tools

Tools like QuickBooks or Xero can simplify managing your business' financials by providing comprehensive features for monitoring cash flow, creating balance sheets, and preparing other financial statements. These tools are particularly useful in updating your business plan as your company grows and your financial situation evolves.

Further reading: Startup Funding: Strategies for Securing Startup Capital

Leveraging market research to strengthen your business plan, utilize free resources.

Numerous free resources are available that can provide valuable market insights. Websites like the U.S. Census Bureau and industry associations offer free data that can be pivotal for understanding market trends and consumer behavior. Platforms like Google Trends and social media sites can also offer free, real-time data on consumer interests and market dynamics, enhancing your written business plan without needing a costly investment.

Conduct Surveys and Polls

Using tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey, create simple surveys to collect data directly from your target audience. This direct feedback can be invaluable in understanding what features of your products or services are most appealing, which can be emphasized in your marketing and sales strategies.

Interviews and Focus Groups

Another low-cost way to gather market data is through interviews and focus groups. Contact potential customers, industry experts, or competitors for one-on-one discussions. These conversations can provide deep insights into the industry and help refine your business’ elevator pitch.

Analyze Competitors

Competitive analysis doesn’t have to be expensive. Review your competitors’ websites, marketing materials, and customer reviews. This can help you identify their strengths and weaknesses and position your business to take advantage of gaps in the market, thereby enhancing your competitive advantage.

Using Market Data to Inform Business Strategy and Competitive Positioning

Swot analysis.

Conduct a SWOT analysis using the data you’ve gathered. This will help you understand where your business stands in the broader market context and what strategic steps you need to take to achieve success. You would write this section last in your business plan examples.

Tailor Marketing and Sales Strategies

Use insights from your market research to tailor your marketing strategies. Understanding customer preferences and market demand can help you create targeted marketing campaigns that speak directly to your potential customers’ needs.

Develop or Refine Your Business’ Value Proposition

Based on what you learn about your target market and competitive landscape, you may find opportunities to tweak your business model or value proposition to meet your market's needs better. This could involve emphasizing certain features of your products, adjusting pricing, or altering your service delivery methods.

Create an Elevator Pitch

Once you clearly understand your competitive advantage and value proposition, distill this into a concise elevator pitch. This should summarize the unique benefits of your business in a way that resonates with potential customers and investors.

Streamlining Your Business Plan for Clarity and Impact

Keep it concise.

The best business plans, especially a lean business model or a one-page business plan, are concise and to the point. These formats encourage you to focus on the essentials and avoid overloading with unnecessary detail that could dilute the key messages about your products and services.

Focus on Key Elements

Every business plan section should contribute directly to the reader's understanding of your business. Essential elements to highlight include your company description, the unique aspects of your products and services, and your strategic marketing plans. This focus is particularly vital if the free business plan template includes sections that might not be directly relevant to your specific business model.

Use Clear and Simple Language

Your business plan should use straightforward, jargon-free language, ensuring it is accessible to readers outside your industry. This clarity is vital, as your plan often serves as an introduction to potential investors who need a business overview quickly and clearly.

Effective Formatting

Use effective formatting tools like bullet points, bold text, and subheadings to organize information and make your document easier to scan. A well-formatted business plan enhances readability and helps maintain the reader's attention on your critical points.

Visual Elements

Enhance your financials and analytical data with graphs, charts , and images. Visual aids can help summarize complex information quickly and are especially effective in sections like financial forecasts and competitive analysis.

Consistency in Design

A consistent design across your business plan reinforces your brand and contributes to a professional appearance. Ensure that the document's layout, color scheme, and typography are uniform to provide a seamless reading experience.

Review and Revise

Revising your business plan is necessary. After you write it, review it for any content that can be condensed or simplified. Also, consider having someone else review it to catch errors or areas where the business strategy might not be clear. Feedback is invaluable when you are creating a business plan to secure funding .

Achieving Clarity Through Language, Format, and Design

Clarity in your business plan is critical. It ensures that readers, particularly potential investors, can quickly grasp the essence of your business and its strategy. A clear, logical presentation builds investor confidence and shows that you have a deliberate and considered approach to launching and growing your business.

Achieving clarity involves more than just the words you choose. It extends to how information is visually presented. Use a one-page format if brevity is essential or provide detailed annexes if deeper dives are necessary. Every content in your business plan should serve a clear purpose and support the business objectives contained herein.

Common Business Plan Mistakes to Avoid

Neglecting emotional connection in your simple business plan.

Business plans often prioritize numbers and strategies, but overlooking the emotional connection with your target audience is a significant oversight. Briefly outline how your product or service, detailed in your simple business plan template, will enhance lives, evoke positive emotions, or address deeper needs. This connection is essential for resonating with investors and customers alike, especially for new business owners.

Failing to Future-Proof Technology

Technology evolves rapidly, making it essential for new business owners to write an effective plan considering future advancement. While your simple business plan covers current solutions, including a section on staying ahead of the curve is essential. Mention adapting your tech stack using your free template for potential advancements or industry trends.

Omitting Your "Why"

Investors seek businesses with a strong purpose beyond profit. As a business owner, showcasing your company's mission in your business plan is essential. Explain core values and demonstrate a commitment to making a positive impact. This effective plan is beneficial for starting a new business and resonating with investors.

Underestimating Storytelling

Facts are indispensable, but a compelling narrative in your sample business plan can be powerful. Share how your business idea originated, the challenges you've overcome, and your vision for the future. Humanize the plan to foster a deeper connection with readers and make your business more successful.

Ignoring Cyber Threats

Cybersecurity is vital for new business owners. Briefly outline your data security plan in your business plan template, showing awareness of potential threats. This understanding builds investor confidence in your ability to safeguard information and manage risks effectively.

Key Takeaways

• Structure: Templates offer a clear layout, simplifying the process of writing a business plan.
• Simplification: They break down complex ideas into manageable sections, ensuring you'll need not to start from scratch.
• Guidance: Templates provide direction on what to include in each section, aiding in creating a comprehensive plan.
• Customization: Versatile templates can be tailored to different businesses, ensuring they meet your specific needs.
• Foundation: They establish a solid groundwork for a successful business strategy, demonstrating how a template can help you get started effectively.

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Sample Business Plan

Learn the Essential Elements of a Full Business Plan

• Famous Inventions
• Famous Inventors
• Patents & Trademarks
• Invention Timelines
• Computers & The Internet
• American History
• African American History
• African History
• Ancient History and Culture
• Asian History
• European History
• Latin American History
• Medieval & Renaissance History
• Military History
• The 20th Century
• Women's History

The following business plan for the fictional firm of "Acme Management Technology" (AMT) is an example of what a completed business plan might look like. This example is provided as part of the instructions and detailed descriptions included in the Components of a Business Plan.

Sample Business Plan for Acme Management Technology

1.0 executive summary.

By focusing on its strengths, its key customers , and the company's underlying core values, Acme Management Technology will increase sales to more than $10 million in three years, while also improving the gross margin on sales and cash management and working capital .

This business plan leads the way by renewing our vision and strategic focus of adding value to our target market segments—the small business and high-end home office users in our local market. It also provides a step-by-step plan for improving our sales, gross margin, and profitability.

This plan includes this summary, and chapters on the company, products & services, market focus, action plans & forecasts, management team, and financial plan.

1.1 Objectives

• Sales increased to more than $10 million by the third year.
• Bring gross margin back up to above 25% and maintain that level.
• Sell $2 million of service, support, and training by 2022.
• Improve inventory turnover to six turns next year, seven in 2021, and eight in 2022.

1.2 Mission

AMT is built on the assumption that the management of information technology for business is like legal advice, accounting, graphic arts, and other bodies of knowledge, in that it is not inherently a do-it-yourself prospect. Smart business people who aren't computer hobbyists need to find quality vendors of reliable hardware, software, service, and support and they need to use these quality vendors as they use their other professional service suppliers—as trusted allies.

AMT is such a vendor. It serves its clients as a trusted ally, providing them with the loyalty of a business partner and the economics of an outside vendor. We make sure that our clients have what they need in order to run their businesses at peak performance levels, with maximum efficiency and reliability.

Many of our information applications are mission-critical, so we assure our clients that we'll be there when they need us.

1.3 Keys to Success

• Differentiate from box-pushing, price-oriented businesses by offering and delivering service and support—and charging for it accordingly.
• Increase gross margin to more than 25%.
• Increase our non-hardware sales to 20% of the total sales by the third year.

2.0 Company Summary

AMT is a 10-year-old computer reseller with sales of $7 million per year, declining margins, and market pressure. It has a good reputation, excellent people, and a steady position in the local market, but has been having difficulty maintaining healthy financials.

2.1 Company Ownership

AMT is a privately-held C corporation owned in majority by its founder and president, Ralph Jones. There are six part owners, including four investors and two past employees. The largest of these (in percent of ownership) are Frank Dudley, our attorney, and Paul Karots, our public relations consultant. Neither owns more than 15%, but both are active participants in management decisions.

2.2 Company History

AMT has been caught in the vise grip of margin squeezes that have affected computer resellers worldwide. Although the chart titled "Past Financial Performance" shows that we've had healthy growth in sales, it also indicates declining gross margin and declining profits .

The more detailed numbers in Table 2.2 include other indicators of some concern: As can be seen in the chart, the gross margin percentage has been declining steadily, and nventory turnover is getting steadily worse as well.

All of these concerns are part of the general trend affecting computer resellers. The margin squeeze is happening throughout the computer industry, worldwide.

Balance Sheet: 2018

Short-Term Assets

• Cash—$55,432
• Accounts receivable—$395,107
• Inventory—$651,012
• Other Short-term Assets—$25,000
• Total Short-term Assets—$1,126,551

Long-Term Assets

• Capital Assets—$350,000
• Accumulated Depreciation—$50,000
• Total Long-term Assets—$300,000
• Total Assets—$1,426,551

Debt and Equity

• Accounts Payable—$223,897
• Short-term Notes—$90,000
• Other ST Liabilities—$15,000
• Subtotal Short-term Liabilities—$328,897
• Long-term Liabilities—$284,862
• Total Liabilities—$613,759
• Paid in Capital—$500,000
• Retained Earnings—$238,140
• Earnings (over three years)—$437,411, $366,761, $74,652
• Total Equity—$812,792
• Total Debt and Equity—$1,426,551

Other Inputs: 2017

• Payment days—30
• Sales on credit—$3,445,688
• Receivables turnover—8.72%

2.4 Company Locations and Facilities

We have one location—a 7,000 square-foot brick & mortar facility located in a suburban shopping center conveniently close to the downtown area. Along with sales, it includes a training area, service department, offices, and showroom area.

3.0 Products and Services

AMT sells personal computer technology for small business including personal computer hardware, peripherals, networks, software, support, service, and training.

Ultimately, we are selling information technology . We sell reliability and confidence. We sell the assurance to small business people that their business will not suffer any information technology disasters or critical downtimes.

AMT serves its clients as a trusted ally, providing them with the loyalty of a business partner and the economics of an outside vendor. We make sure that our clients have what they need to run their businesses at peak performance levels, with maximum efficiency and reliability. Since many of our information applications are mission-critical, we give our clients the confidence that we'll be there when they need us.

3.1 Product and Service Description

In personal computers , we support three main lines:

• The Super Home is our smallest and least expensive, initially positioned by its manufacturer as a home computer. We use it mainly as an inexpensive workstation for small business installations. Its specifications include: (add relevant information)
• The Power User is our main up-scale line and our most important system for high-end home and small business main workstations, because of (add relevant information) Its key strengths are: (add relevant information) Its specifications include: (add relevant information)
• The Business Special is an intermediate system, used to fill the gap in positioning. Its specifications include: (add information)

In peripherals , accessories and other hardware, we carry a complete line of necessary items from cables to forms to mousepads to... (add relevant information)

In service and support , we offer a range of walk-in or depot service, maintenance contracts, and on-site guarantees. We haven't had much success in selling service contracts. Our networking capabilities include... (add relevant information)

In software , we sell a complete line of... (add relevant information)

In training , we offer... (add relevant information)

3.2 Competitive Comparison

The only way we can hope to differentiate effectively is to brand the vision of the company as a trusted information technology ally to our clients. We will not be able to compete in any effective way with the chains using boxes or products as appliances. We need to offer a real alliance that feels personal.

The benefits we sell include many intangibles: confidence, reliability, knowing that somebody will be there to answer questions and help at critical times.

These are complex products that require serious knowledge and experience to use, which we have, while our competitors sell only the products themselves.

Unfortunately, we cannot sell the products at a higher price simply because we offer services; the market has shown that it will not support that concept. We must also sell the service and charge for it separately.

3.3 Sales Literature

Copies of our brochure and advertisements are attached as appendices. Of course, one of our first tasks will be to change the messaging of our literature to make sure we are selling the company, rather than the product.

3.4 Sourcing

Our costs are part of the margin squeeze. As price competition increases, the squeeze between the manufacturer's price into channels and the end-users ultimate buying price continues.

Our margins are declining steadily for our hardware lines. We generally buy at... (add relevant information) Our margins are thus being squeezed from 25% from five years ago to closer to 13 to 15% at present. A similar trend shows for our main-line peripherals, with prices for printers and monitors declining steadily. We are also starting to see that same trend with software...(add relevant information)

To hold costs down as much as possible, we concentrate our purchasing with Hauser, which offers 30-day net terms and overnight shipping from the warehouse in Dayton. We need to continue to make sure our volume gives us negotiating strength.

In accessories and add-ons, we can still get decent margins of 25 to 40%.

For software, margins are: (add relevant information)

3.5 Technology

For years, we have supported both Windows and Macintosh technology for CPUs, although we've switched vendors many times for the Windows (and previously DOS) lines. We are also supporting Novell, Banyon, and Microsoft networking, Xbase database software, and Claris application products.

3.6 Future Products and Services

We must remain on top of emerging technologies because this is our bread and butter. For networking, we need to provide better knowledge of cross-platform technologies. We are also under pressure to improve our understanding of the direct-connect Internet and related communications. Finally, although we have a good command of desktop publishing, we are concerned about improving integrated fax, copier, printer, and voicemail technology into the computer system.

4.0 Market Analysis Summary

AMT focuses on local markets, small business, and home office, with a special focus on the high-end home office and the five-to-20 unit small business office.

4.1 Market Segmentation

The segmentation allows some room for estimates and nonspecific definitions. We focus on a small-medium level of small business, and it's hard to locate data to make an exact classification. Our target companies are large enough to require the kind of high-quality information technology management we offer but too small to have a separate computer management staff (such as an MIS department). We say that our target market has 10 to 50 employees, and requires five to 20 connect workstations in a local area network, however, the definition is flexible.

Defining the high-end home office is even more difficult. We generally know the characteristics of our target market, but we can't find easy classifications that fit into available demographics. The high-end home office business is a business, not a hobby. It generates enough money to merit the owner's paying real attention to the quality of information technology management, meaning that both budget and productivity concerns warrant working with our level of quality service and support. We can assume that we aren't talking about home offices used only part-time by people who work elsewhere during the day and that our target market home office needs powerful technology and sufficient links between computing, telecommunications, and video assets.

4.2 Industry Analysis

We are part of the computer reselling business, which includes several kinds of businesses:

• Computer dealers : storefront computer resellers, usually less than 5,000 square feet, often focused on a few main brands of hardware, usually offering only a minimum of software and variable amounts of service and support. Many are old-fashioned (1980s-style) computer stores that offer relatively few reasons for buyers to shop with them. Their service and support are not usually very good, and their prices are normally higher than those at larger stores.
• Chain stores and computer superstores : these include major chains such as CompUSA, Best Buy, Future Shop, etc. They almost always have a footprint of over 10,000 square feet of space, usually offer decent walk-in service, and are often warehouse-like locations where people go to find products in boxes with very aggressive pricing, but little support.
• Mail order/Online retailers : the market is served increasingly by mail order and online retailers that offer aggressive pricing of a boxed product. For the purely price-driven buyer, who buys boxes and expects no service, these are very good options.
• Others : there are many other channels through which people buy their computers, however, most are variations of the three main types above.

4.2.1 Industry Participants

• The national chains are a growing presence: CompUSA, Best Buy, and others. They benefit from national advertising, economies of scale, volume buying, and a general trend toward name-brand loyalty for buying in the channels as well as for products.
• Local computer stores are threatened. These tend to be small businesses, owned by people who started them because they liked computers. They are under-capitalized and under-managed. Margins are squeezed as they compete against chains, in a competition based on price more than on service and support.

4.2.2 Distribution Patterns

Small business buyers are accustomed to buying from vendors who visit their offices. They expect the copy machine vendors, office products vendors, and office furniture vendors, as well as the local graphic artists, freelance writers, or whomever, to visit their office to make their sales.

There is usually a lot of leakage in ad-hoc purchasing through local chain stores and mail order. Often the administrators try to discourage this but are only partially successful.

Unfortunately, our home office target buyers don't expect to buy from us. Many of them turn immediately to the superstores (office equipment, office supplies, and electronics) and mail order to look for the best price, without realizing that there is a better option for them at only a little bit more.

4.2.3 Competition and Buying Patterns

The small business buyers understand the concept of service and support and are much more likely to pay for it when the offering is clearly stated.

There is no doubt that we face stiffer competition from box pushers than from other service providers. We need to effectively compete against the idea that businesses should buy computers as plug-in appliances that don't need ongoing service, support, and training.

Our focus group sessions indicated that our target home office buyers think about the price but would buy based on quality service if the offering were properly presented. They think about the price because that's all they ever see. We have very good indications that many would rather pay 10 to 20% more for a relationship with a long-term vendor providing back-up and quality service and support, however, they end up in the box-pusher channels because they aren't aware of the alternatives.

Availability is also very important. The home office buyers tend to want immediate, local solutions to problems.

4.2.4 Main Competitors

Chain stores:

• We have Store 1 and Store 2 already within the valley, and Store 3 is expected by the end of next year. If our strategy works, we will have differentiated ourselves sufficiently to avoid competition against these stores.
• Strengths: national image, high volume, aggressive pricing, economies of scale.
• Weaknesses: lack of product, service and support knowledge, lack of personal attention.

Other local computer stores:

• Store 4 and Store 5 are both in the downtown area. They are both competing against the chains in an attempt to match prices. When asked, the owners will complain that margins are squeezed by the chains and customers buy based on price only. They say they tried offering services and that buyers didn't care, instead preferring lower prices. We think the problem is that they didn't really offer good service, and also that they didn't differentiate from the chains.

4.3 Market Analysis

The home offices in Tintown are an important growing market segment. Nationally, there are approximately 30 million home offices, and the number is growing at 10% per year. Our estimate in this plan for the home offices in our market service area is based on an analysis published four months ago in the local newspaper.

There are several types of home offices. For the focus of our plan, the most important are those that are real businesses offices from which people earn their primary income. These are likely to be people in professional services such as graphic artists, writers, and consultants, some accountants—and the occasional lawyer, doctor, or dentist. We will not be focusing on the market segment that includes part-time home offices with people who are employed during the day but work at home at night, people who work at home to provide themselves with a part-time income, or people who maintain home offices relating to their hobbies.

Small business within our market includes virtually any business with a retail, office, professional, or industrial location outside of the home, and fewer than 30 employees. We estimate there are 45,000 such businesses in our market area.

The 30-employee cutoff is arbitrary. We find that the larger companies turn to other vendors, but we can sell to departments of larger companies, and we shouldn't give up such leads when we get them.

Market Analysis . . . (numbers and percentages)

5.0 Strategy and Implementation Summary

• Emphasize service and support.

We must differentiate ourselves from the box pushers. We need to establish our business offering as a clear and viable alternative to the price-only kind of buying for our target market.

• Build a relationship-oriented business.

Build long-term relationships with clients, not single-transaction deals with customers. Become their computer department, not just a vendor. Make them understand the value of the relationship.

• Focus on target markets.

We need to focus our offerings on small business as the key market segment we should own. This means the five to 20 unit system, connected by a local area network, in a company with five to 50 employees. Our values—training, installation, service, support, knowledge—are more clearly differentiated in this segment.

As a corollary, the high end of the home office market is also appropriate. We do not want to compete for buyers who go to chain stores or buy from mail-order outlets, but we definitely want to be able to sell individual systems to the smart home office buyers who want a reliable, full-service vendor.

• Differentiate and fulfill the promise.

We can't just market and sell service and support; we must deliver as well. We need to make sure we have the knowledge-intensive business and service-intensive business we claim to have.

5.1 Marketing Strategy

The marketing strategy is the core of the main strategy:

• Emphasize service and support
• Build a relationship business
• Focus on small business and high-end home office as key target markets

5.1.2 Pricing Strategy

We must charge appropriately for the high-end, high-quality service and support we offer. Our revenue structure has to match our cost structure, so the salaries we pay to assure good service and support must be balanced by the revenue we charge.

We cannot build the service and support revenue into the price of products. The market can't bear the higher prices, and the buyer feels ill-used when they see the same product priced lower at the chains. Despite the logic behind it, the market doesn't support this concept.

Therefore, we must make sure that we deliver and charge for service and support. Training, service, installation, networking support—all of this must be readily available and priced to sell and deliver revenue.

5.1.3 Promotion Strategy

We depend on newspaper advertising as our main outlet to reach new buyers. As we change strategies, however, we need to change the way we promote ourselves:

• Advertising

We'll be developing our core positioning message: "24 Hour On-Site Service—365 Days a Year With No Extra Charges" to differentiate our service from the competition. We will be using local newspaper advertising, radio, and cable TV to launch the initial campaign.

• Sales Brochure

Our collaterals have to sell the store and visiting the store, not the specific book or discount pricing.

• Direct Mail 

We must radically improve our direct mail efforts, reaching our established customers with training, support services, upgrades, and seminars.

• Local Media

It's time to work more closely with the local media . We could offer the local radio station a regular talk show on technology for small business, as one example. We could also reach out to local news outlets to let them know we have experts who are able to address issues relating to technology for small business/home offices should the need arise.

5.2 Sales Strategy

• We need to sell the company, not the product. We sell AMT, not Apple, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, or Compaq, or any of our software brand names.
• We have to sell our service and support. The hardware is like the razor, and the support, service, software services, training, and seminars are the razor blades. We need to serve our customers with what they need.

The Yearly Total Sales chart summarizes our ambitious sales forecast. We expect sales to increase from $5.3 million last year to more than $7 million next year and to more than $10 million in the last year of this plan.

5.2.1 Sales Forecast

The important elements of the sales forecast are shown in the Total Sales by Month in Year 1 table. The non-hardware sales increase to about $2 million total in the third year.

Sales Forecast … (numbers and percentages)

5.2.2 Startup Summary

• 93% of startup costs will go to assets.
• The building will be purchased with a down payment of $8,000 on a 20-year mortgage. The espresso machine will cost $4,500 (straight-line depreciation, three years).
• Startup costs will be financed through a combination of owner investment, short-term loans, and long-term borrowing. The startup chart shows the distribution of financing.

Other miscellaneous expenses include:

• Marketing/advertising consultancy fees of $1,000 for our company logo and assistance in designing our grand-opening ads and brochures.
• Legal fees for corporate organization filings: $300.
• Retail merchandising/designing consultancy fees of $3,500 for store layout and fixture purchasing.
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10 Simple Tips to Write a Successful Business Plan

"The absolute biggest business plan mistake you can make is to not plan at all." So writes Noah Parsons in his helpful blog post 17 Key Business Plan Mistakes to Avoid in 2023 . But how does one pull together all of the necessary components of a cohesive plan? It can feel overwhelming.

Eric Butow, CEO of online marketing ROI improvement firm Butow Communications Group, has teamed up with Entrepreneur Media to update the second edition of our best-selling book Write Your Business Plan to provide you with a simple, step-by-step process for creating a successful business plan. In the following excerpt, he gives ten tips to gather all of the critical information you will need to succeed.

1. Know your competition.

You need to name them and point out what makes you different from (and better than) each of them. But do not disparage your competition.

2. Know your audience.

You may need several versions of your business plan. For example, you may need one for bankers or venture capitalists, one for individual investors, and one for companies that may want to do a joint venture with you rather than fund you.

3. Have proof to back up every claim you make.

If you expect to be the leader in your field in six months, you have to say why you think that is. If you say your product will take the market by storm, you have to support this statement with facts. If you say your management team is fully qualified to make the business a success, be sure staff resumes demonstrate their experience.

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4. Be conservative in all financial estimates and projections.

If you feel certain you'll capture 50 percent of the market in the first year, you can say why you think so and hint at what those numbers may be. But make your financial projections more conservative. For example, a 10 percent market share is much more credible.

5. Be realistic with time and resources available.

If you're working with a big company before you buy a business, you may think things will happen faster than they will once you have to buy the supplies, write the checks, and answer the phones yourself. Being overly optimistic with time and resources is a common error entrepreneurs make. Being realistic is important because it lends credibility to your presentation. Always assume things will take 20 percent longer than you anticipated. Therefore, twenty weeks is now twenty-four weeks.

6. Be logical.

Think like a banker and write what they would want to see.

7. Have a strong management team.

Make sure it has good credentials and expertise. Your team members don't have to have worked in the field. However, you need to draw parallels between what they've done and the skills needed to make your venture succeed. Don't have all the skills you need? Consider adding an advisory board of people skilled in your field and include their resumes.

Write Your Own Business Plan is available now at Entrepreneur Bookstore | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

8. Document why your idea will work.

Have others done something similar that was successful? Have you made a prototype? Include all the variables that can have an impact on the result or outcome of your idea. Show why some of the variables don't apply to your situation or explain how you intend to overcome them or make them better.

9. Describe your facilities and location for performing the work.

That includes equipment you use to create your products and/or services. If you'll need to expand, discuss when, where, and why.

10. Discuss payout options for the investors.

Some investors want a hands-on role. Some want to put associates on your board of directors. Some don't want to be involved in day-to-day activities at all. All investors want to know when they can get their money back and at what rate of return. Most want out within three to five years. Provide a brief description of options for investors, or at least mention that you're ready to discuss options with any serious prospect.

To dig deeper, buy Write Your Own Business Plan and get 1 month of free access to business planning software Liveplan Premium.

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PESTLE Analysis

Insights and resources on business analysis tools

PEST Analysis: Examples and Meaning in Business

Last Updated: Apr 8, 2024 by Jim Makos Filed Under: PEST Analysis

What is a PEST analysis, and what are its four parts? What is the difference between PESTLE analysis and PEST, and why is it important for every business? As a business student, analyst, manager or owner, you are called to conduct a PEST analysis sooner or later. In the next 10 minutes, I’ll go through everything you need to know about PEST analysis and how you can do a PEST analysis of an organization starting from scratch. I promise you’ll know more about PEST analysis than 99% of people out there, as I’m explaining everything as concisely as possible. Let’s start with the PEST analysis definition.

What is a PEST Analysis?

PEST analysis is a strategic tool for organizations to identify and assess how Political, Economic, Social, and Technological external factors impact operations so that they can gain a competitive edge. A PEST analysis helps you determine how these factors will affect a business’s performance and strategy in the long term. It is often used in collaboration with other analytical business tools. For example:

• A combination of PEST and SWOT analysis usually gives a clearer understanding of a situation with related internal and external factors
• PESTLE analysis is an extension of PEST analysis that covers legal and environmental factors

I’m going to explain the PEST analysis as simply as possible with examples and a template for better understanding. I will also show how to do a PEST analysis starting from scratch, even for people without any business education like me!

Why Do a PEST Analysis

It’s simple: to succeed. For a business to be successful, they need a few things:

• A solid product
• Marketing plan
• Identifiable brand
• Happy customers
• Thorough budget
• An investor or two
• Unique selling position
• And a whole lot of research

Throughout the endless market research, customer acquisition costs, and project risk assessments, business managers could forget about outside influences ( we call these external factors in this type of analysis). Aside from the company’s internal resources and industry factors, PEST’s macroeconomic factors can impact a company’s performance in a big way.

By being aware of external factors, managers can aid their business. But if they don’t know them, they can cripple their business before it begins. That’s how advantageous PEST analysis is .

What are the four parts of PEST analysis?

Now, let me explain each of the four parts of a PEST analysis more thoroughly. You’ll better understand what each of these external factors in this analysis is all about.

• Political – Here, government regulations and legal factors are assessed in terms of their ability to affect the business environment and trade markets. The main issues addressed in this section include political stability, tax guidelines, trade regulations, safety regulations, and employment laws.
• Economic – Next, businesses examine the economic issues that have an impact on the company. This would include factors like inflation, interest rates, economic growth, the unemployment rate and policies, and the business cycle followed in the country.
• Social – At this stage, businesses focus on the society and people. Elements like customer demographics, cultural limitations, lifestyle attitudes, and education come into play here. This part allows a business to understand how consumer needs are shaped.
• Technological – This may come as a surprise, but technology may not always be an ally for businesses. Depending on the product, technology may affect the organization positively but also negatively. In PEST’s last section we find technological advancements, the role of the Internet, and how an industry’s innovation creates winners and losers.

Every business is different. Some factors may not affect a firm or industry as they would with others. But it’s beneficial to have a well-rounded view of the many factors that could affect them. Along with the ones that will affect them.

This is why we do PEST analysis for a business — to be aware of risks, opportunities, influences, and limitations. Let’s go deeper into these external factors that impact the success of a business. I’ll also briefly mention a specific example for each of them.

Political Factors

Political factors in PEST analysis refer to the extent to which the government and political actions in a country influence the business climate. Here are some examples that will occasionally make it into the (P) of my PEST analysis:

• Tax policies
• Tax incentives
• Political tensions
• Employment laws
• Import restrictions
• Health and safety laws
• Consumer protection laws
• Tariff and Trade restrictions
• Regulation and deregulation

For instance, a country’s foreign policy often plays an important role in determining trade regulations. This can either result in trade restrictions or trade incentives and can affect an organization’s operations. Read my dedicated page on political factors with more examples here .

Economic Factors

In the (E) part of PEST Analysis, we run into how the economy affects the organization. I consider the following economic factors when doing a PEST analysis:

• Interest rate
• Inflation rates
• Exchange rates
• Unemployment rate

For instance, exchange rates affect a global organization by influencing the cost of imported and exported goods. Furthermore, interest rates influence the cost of capital available to the organization. Thus they are significant in the expansion and growth of a business. Find more economic factors and examples of how they affect businesses here .

Social Factors

Social factors include different cultural and demographic aspects of society. These can affect the macro-environment in which the organization operates.

In the ‘S’ part of the PEST analysis I usually examine:

• Age distribution
• Cultural diversity
• Demographics shifts
• Population growth rate
• Health consciousness and trends
• Changing consumer lifestyles and preferences

A study of these factors can help organizations understand the dynamics of existing and emerging potential markets along with future customer needs.

Social factors are more unpredictable than economic and political factors, simply because people are unpredictable. But every business needs customers. And what and how they buy has an immediate effect on an organization’s profitability.

Based on these social factors, marketers create buyer personas. These avatars are necessary for businesses to target the ideal customer.

For example, if you’re selling whey powder, you go after fitness enthusiasts and bodybuilders. You are looking for people that follow an active lifestyle. Hence, a declining trend in health consciousness doesn’t seem encouraging.

That’s the tip of the iceberg. Learn more about social factors here .

Technological Factors

Technological factors aren’t important only for tech-related businesses. The (T) part in PEST analysis may affect even the most old-school organization that’s been operating for a century.

Technology is evolving at a rapid pace and consumers are becoming extremely tech-savvy. With the advent of new technology, older technology gets outdated and obsolete. If an organization does not look out for technological changes, it can lag behind its competitors.

I often include the following technological factors when conducting a PEST analysis:

• Cybersecurity Threats
• Emerging Technologies
• Big data and computing
• AI and Machine Learning
• Supply Chain Automation

Let’s consider the advancements in computing; more specifically, networking.

If a business offers the latest and fastest Wi-Fi in their store, it’s an added luxury. It’s annoying if it still operates on 3G speeds, but won’t ruin sales. However, if they handle all receipts in an online database and that goes offline because they didn’t keep their network infrastucture up-to-date then they have a major problem. Especially in big holidays like Black Friday.

Again, this is about impact on the business operation. How will ‘X’ technology affect the business in the long and short term? That’s what we’re trying to figure out with PEST analysis.

A ton more technological factors can be found here .

PEST Analysis Examples

Here is a hypothetical PEST analysis example that can give you a clear understanding of how this works:

Here at PESTLEanalysis.com I rarely limit myself to PEST analysis. I almost always go the extra mile and include the Legal and Environmental factors when I initiate a PEST analysis. This leads to a more detailed analysis called PESTLE.

PESTLE Analysis: An extension of PEST Analysis

PESTLE analysis is an extension of PEST that is used to assess two additional macroeconomic factors. These factors are the  Legal and Environmental conditions that can have an impact on a organization. Examples of PESTLE analysis are similar to those of a PEST analysis, but they will include factors such as these:

• Discrimination laws
• Copyright and patent laws

Environment:

• Waste management
• Changes in weather and climate
• Laws regarding pollution and recycling
• Use of green or eco-friendly products and practices

So, if you want to assess a business situation comprehensively, a PESTLE analysis is a definite must. You can find more about that analysis here .

Why PEST Analysis Is Important For Every Business

So, now that we did a PEST analysis, how’s that going to help the business?

What does a five-year business plan look like? Or a ten-year plan? It likely involves growth.

Whether it’s the expansion of a product line or opening stores in new locations, business changes need proper preparation. And that’s where the PEST analysis comes in.

PEST analysis is the foolproof plan for business expansion !

Both new business owners and veterans should include PEST analysis in their business plan. By breaking down the critical influences in the P.E.S.T. categories, businesses get a better understanding of whether their next business move is strategic or doesn’t make sense.

For example, politics isn’t just about political tensions, unrest and elections. Politics are also about trade policies, regulations and taxation. Companies doing business worldwide have to consider laws in the countries they operate, as well. Even if they aren’t doing international trade yet, it could be a possibility in the future, and going in blind is a good way to toss success out the window.

PEST analysis helps people become aware.

Aware of how political parties and regulations can impact a business. And how the economy (past, present, and future) affects an industry. It allows people to understand consumers — who they are, what they buy, and why they don’t buy. And finally, it identifies what technology is necessary for the development and success of a product, business, or industry.

It’s almost like an outline. It shows people what influences impact the quality, success, or devastation of businesses and industries. You can’t stop the four influences, but if you’re aware of them and their impact, you can plan around, against, or with them.

PEST analysis is often used by business analysts, marketers, students, and business owners, since it’s super important for every business!

All you need to do a proper PEST analysis is time. And the payoff is worth every second.

How PEST analysis works

PEST analysis requires research and data, sometimes ten years old, sometimes only a couple. The more information I have to go through, the more accurate my final results will be. By looking into the past and the present, I can make predictions for the future.

By studying these recent developments through a PEST analysis lens, organizations are deciding whether to jump into this for the long haul or for the time being.

You want to look at your industry in a similar light. Ten years ago, did it exist? Has it slowed down within the last two years or are more companies diving in? More competition can be a strong sign an industry is booming, but it could also be the first sign of oversaturation.

Break down your assessment into the four categories of PEST analysis. Start with politics and work your way through the remaining factors. Or start from the bottom. Whatever gets the job done and makes the analysis enjoyable.

How to Do a PEST Analysis From Scratch

I’ve written dozens of PEST analyses over the last couple of years. Below I document my process on how to do a PEST analysis , even when you’ve never written one before.

You should have a topic in mind. Most PEST analyses are about a specific business, industry, or product. However, they can also be applied to countries, too. You can’t start without a topic, though, so have it ready.

Where to find information for your PEST analysis

It’ll be easier to find and segment information if you break your analysis down into four sections, like the acronym implies:

• Technological

Each section will require its own information. However, some of this information will overlap.

For instance, the economy is often closely tied to political (in)stability. And the state of the economy always affects consumers (social). You don’t need to look for these patterns specifically— it’ll become apparent as you discover new information.

Start with the history

You should be familiar with your topic. If you’re not, read about its history. Learn how it was established, how long it has been around, and who founded it. Read about any major achievements on the organization in question over the last few years. Jot down notes whenever something that seems relevant or important pops up.

After this informational primer, it’s time to start on the four sections. I do my PEST analysis in order of the acronym because the information often bleeds into the next section.

Finding Political Information

Political information is easier to find than in other sections of the analysis (social and technological, specifically). Here, you’ll want to investigate the current political climate.

For instance, if the organization originates from America, you’ll research the current political parties. Who is in charge? Has this affected business operations in any way?

If your topic (business, product, industry) was established years ago, what was the political climate like then? Are different parties in power now? If this is the case, then you’ll want to compare how things have changed for your topic from then to now.

This is also the section where you’ll look into laws and regulations affecting business. Remember the list we went through in the beginning.

I find this information with a simple Google search. Such as “tariff laws USA” (plug in the country you’re searching for if it’s not the United States).

It’s best to get this information from a government site. These sites end in .gov. You may also find information from organizations (websites ending in .org) but not all of these sites are legitimate organizations. Be wary while you research.

Honestly, most of the information you’ll find is dense. But it’s easier if you have a goal. Look for signs of:

• Government (in)stability
• Possible political corruption
• New bills/regulations that may impact your topic
• Any issues your topic has had with current/former regulations or political parties

If your topic is a company, finding the right information may be easier. Search for “company name + political issues” or “company name + policies” and see what comes up. Avoid any information from untrustworthy sites and sites with no legitimate source.

Finding Economic Information

While you’re researching political information, you may come across connections to the current economy. For instance, political instability often leads to economic instability. This causes unemployment rates to rise and employee strikes. This affects how much disposable income people have.

You may have already found information in your political section that confirms economic problems. But if you haven’t, search government sites for current tax rates, interest rates (if your topic involves international business), and the current state of the economy. Is it good? Thriving? Or bad and declining?

Again, use government websites. Search for economic statistics over the last few years. If your topic is an industry, see how many companies (startups) have started within the last few years.

If your topic is a business that has international stores, look into the relationship between the country of origin and each country the company does business. If the relationship is good, it’s often a good outlook for the company. But if it’s bad, it may lead to problems. What problems? Do a bit of digging online.

Also, if your PEST analysis is for a company, you may look into stocks . Have they been declining? On the rise? Because if it’s the former, then the business may not be looking good. And you’ll want to find out why .

If my topic is a business, I sometimes check out the competition. I’ll look into how that other company has been fairing economically, specifically how its sales have risen or fallen over the last couple of years. If it’s dropped products, shifted marketing efforts, etc., I want to know why . A competitor analysis isn’t always necessary , but it can shed light on possible problems your topic may face.

Finding Social Information

This section is a bit trickier. Political and economic sectors rely heavily on data and evidence. You can find this information on government websites. News sites too, even. And although you can find databases about demographics and population growth for this section — all applicable in a PEST analysis — I wouldn’t stop there.

In the social section, I often examine how consumers are impacted by political and economic factors. You can draw conclusions based on the information you’ve already gathered from your political and economic segments.

For instance, if there is political instability and the economy is on the fritz, then consumers may feel uneasy. They may have fewer job options. And that means they’re less likely to spend frivolously. If your topic is a luxury product, it may mean the company that makes it may have lower sales this year.

But you also want to learn about how consumers feel about your topic. If it’s a company, do consumers generally like it? Or is public opinion souring? There should be a reason for why.

Consider Facebook. The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has consistently been in hot water over the years. If not for data breaches affecting millions of users, but for their shady involvement with fake news and political tampering.

This has led many consumers to shy away from using Facebook. And this affects businesses that use Facebook to reach new customers.

In this section of the PEST analysis, I’m more likely to search for my topic on news sites and publications. The more popular the topic, the easier it’ll be to find articles written about it. But if the topic has ever been in the news, you’ll likely find it online.

Websites to search include :

• Consumer Reports
• Local news websites
• Other reputable sources

If you know your topic has been in the news for something bad, you can search the topic + the problem.

Although the information may overlap, take keynotes here. See how the problem is affecting consumer opinion. You may even want to take a look at the comments (if there are any) and see what people are saying. It’s coming straight from the lion’s mouth (consumers).

I think many PEST analyses favor numbers too much. We live in a world where anyone with an opinion can be heard, thanks to the internet. And enough of those voices can cause a business to change its policies and products. It can even cause the company to collapse.

So it’s important to search for how consumers feel about your topic too.

Finding Technological Information

This section of the PEST analysis is a bit abstract as well. You’re looking into how new technological advancements has affected your topic positively or negatively. You should also look into what technology your topic uses (currently). And what technology they may want to incorporate.

You may want to look at competitors if your topic is a product or business. See what others are using. And think about why they are.

Press releases

It may be beneficial to search for press releases involving your topic, if possible. If your company is using new technology, they may have announced it through a press release. You can search “company name + press release” or search through these press release websites:

• PR NewsWire
• NPR: National Public Radio

You may also find other information here for the other sections of the PEST analysis. Which is just an overall bonus. If all else fails, check if your topic has a website (unless it’s an industry or country). Discuss how they use social media (if they don’t, then… discuss that too!). In this section, you’re assessing what your topic uses, what it doesn’t, and why.

Putting it all together in a final PEST analysis

You’ll likely have heaps of information at hand. For some it’ll feel like too much — but that’s never the case for a PEST analysis. As you begin to read through each section’s notes, incorporate the most interesting, pressing, or surprising information. If anything overlaps with other sections, include that too.

I write each section of a PEST analysis at a time. I take my notes and create coherent sentences. Sometimes I make a list of the most important points and include them that way. If the section is long, I’ll use subheadings to break up the information.

Work on each section separately. And then if there are overlapping themes, incorporate those in. You may want to use those at the end of each section to connect to the next.

Once you’ve done this, you’ve completed your PEST analysis! Most of the work is in finding the information and making it coherent. The last 10-20 percent is putting it all together. So, once the research phase is done, you’re basically done too!

Understanding PEST Analysis: Taking Action

In conclusion, developing an understanding of what is PEST analysis becomes even more important when a company is about to launch a new business or a new product. In general, when they are about to change something drastically. That’s when all these factors play an important role in determining the feasibility and profitability of the new venture.

Therefore, developing an understanding of PEST analysis is useful for organizations for analyzing and understanding the ground realities of the environment they have to operate in.

Realizing what is PEST and knowing how to take this analysis into consideration, the organization can be in a better position to analyze the challenges, environment, factors, opportunities, restrictions and incentives it faces. In case an organization fails to take into account any one of these factors, it may fail to plan and operate properly.

But don’t PEST analysis stop you. Here are some variations that may come in handy when assessing how the external environment affects an organization:

• STEEP Analysis
• STEEPLED Analysis
• SWOT Analysis

Preparing to cash a money order

Where to cash a money order, steps to cash a money order.

• Tips for cashing a money order

How to Cash a Money Order: A Step-by-Step Guide

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• A money order is a method of sending money that's more secure than a personal check or cash.
• To cash a money order, verify its authenticity and find a bank, credit union, or check-cashing store.
• Bring photo ID when you cash a money order, and expect to pay a fee in most cases.

If you're receiving a payment from someone you don't know — especially through the mail — you might want to consider a money order instead of a personal check or cash payment.

"A money order is a method of sending a prepaid amount of money to somebody," explains Chane Steiner, CEO of Crediful. "It's considered very secure and is an excellent way to send money quickly in situations where a personal check is not appropriate. In some instances, money orders are even preferred to cash in hand."

Here's how to cash a money order quickly and securely.

The first thing to do when you receive a money order is to review the document and make sure the money order was filled out correctly. Double-check its value to make sure the amount is correct; money orders are prepaid, so you should know in advance how much you're receiving. Also, make sure the name on the money order matches the name on your ID.

You'll also want to verify that the money order is legitimate. If you know the sender, this might not be a concern, but if you aren't familiar with the person sending it — maybe you sold an item on Facebook Marketplace, for example — you'll want to confirm the amount is what it's supposed to be.

Banks and credit unions

Going directly to the issuer is also a way to verify the money order. If you're cashing with a bank or credit union  where you're an account holder, you should be able to avoid fees.

Grocery stores and check-cashing businesses

Many retail locations have a money-transfer outlet like Moneygram or Western Union counter to make the process convenient. 

If you go directly to the place that issued your money order — that could be a place like Western Union, Moneygram, or Walmart — you might be able to minimize your fees.

Postal services for postal money orders

Many consumers send money orders from the United States Post Office, and a local post office will cash USPS money orders. If you receive a USPS money order , you can cash it for free.

Plan to cash your money order in a timely fashion

The longer you hold on to the money order, there's a chance it can be lost, damaged, or misplaced.

Plus, cashing a money order quickly is a way to protect yourself against possible fraud, since the sender can cancel their money order. If you've already cashed it with the issuer, the sender won't be able to cancel.

Present valid identification

You will need to provide a photo ID, such as a driver's license, passport, or other government-issued ID, to cash a money order.

Endorse the money order

Don't sign the money order in advance; add a signature to the back of the money order when you are at the counter in front of a bank teller or other customer service representative.

"Sign your money order only once you are handing it over to be cashed. Signing it beforehand can be risky if it is stolen," says Steiner.

Pay associated fees

Fees vary by financial institution or retailer. If you're worried about overpaying, call and ask about fees before you go. Some banks also have a Schedule of Fees online, which is a document with all common bank fees .

Receive your cash

Count the money that you receive, and make sure to save your receipt. Put the cash away securely before leaving the location.

Tips for safely cashing a money order

Avoiding scams and fraudulent money orders.

The easiest way to avoid a money order scam is to call the money order issuer, or visit its website, to verify the funds. Every money order includes a serial number for verification.

For Postal Service money orders, visit this webpage to learn more about how to spot a fake.

What to do if a money order is lost or stolen

If you need to cancel a money order because it was lost or stolen, contact the issuer immediately. You will likely be asked to fill out a request form and pay a cancelation fee.

Postal money orders cannot be canceled, but they can be replaced for a fee of $18. It may take up to 60 days.

Cashing a money order FAQs

The best banks will cash money orders for free for customers. Non-customers may have to pay a fee.

You will need a valid photo ID to cash a money order.

Retail and check-cashing stores usually charge a fee to cash a money order. You can avoid this fee by visiting your bank or credit union instead.

A bank where you are not a customer may charge a fee to cash a Postal Service money order. The Post Office will cash it for free if you present a valid photo ID.

Alert your bank and the money order issuer, and do not attempt to cash it.

Editorial Note: Any opinions, analyses, reviews, or recommendations expressed in this article are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Read our editorial standards .

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