Creating a Business and Marketing Plan for a Home Based Business

Creating a business and marketing plan gives you the opportunity to clearly outline your business objectives and how you plan to achieve them. It serves as a personal roadmap for launching and operating your home-based business. It is also a necessary component when you need to obtain financial assistance from banks or investors.

As you create your business plan, you will want to place emphasis on the needs of your business. For instance, a business plan for a start-up company will highlight different points than a business plan being used to attract investors. This article focuses on developing a business and marketing plan for a start-up company.

In most cases, your plan will be a 20- to 30-page document written in simple business language. You will want to highlight main points with bullets, tables and charts. A standard business plan includes seven sections:

1. Executive Summary
2. Company
3. What You Sell
4. Your Market
5. Strategy and Implementation
6. Management Team
7. Financial Projections

As you begin to organize and develop your business plan, realize that you may not need every item listed above. It's okay to ignore anything that doesn't fit your needs. It's also okay to add sections that aren't listed here. Unless you will be using the plan to obtain financing or attract investors, there will be areas that simply aren't important.

Last, but not least, your business plan should include a table of contents to provide readers with a quick and easy way to find each section of the plan. All pages should be numbered and the table of contents should include these page numbers.

Step-by-Step Guide for Writing Your Business and Marketing Plan