[MUSIC] I'd now like to start talking about strategy and in particular marketing strategy. I think it's important that you outline a marketing strategy that is consistent with your particular niche that you're planning to move into. You need to have an idea about how you're going to promote your particular product or service. In other words, how is it you're actually going to get the word out there to your customers? In terms of advertising, what sort of media is it you're going to use? It's not just what media, but why is it you're going to use that media? And also you need to have an idea of how often. Why this particular mix, why not any other mix? What is it that sort of this way it suits you in terms of marketing strategy? Have you identified low cost methods to get the most out of your promotional budget? I think that's the key point because marketing in a particular advertising can be very expensive. Will you be using other methods other than paid advertising? Maybe trade shows, catalogs, catchy dealer incentives, word of mouth? How is it you're going to stimulate that word of mouth about your product and therefore build your brand, build your name? What about certain networks, friends, professionals? LinkedIn etc, those types of online social networks are now important way. And can be a really valuable method of building your brand. What sort of image is it you want to project or portray? How is it you want your customers to see you? In addition to advertising, what plans do you have for what can be called the graphic image support? This includes things like logo design, maybe cards, business cards etc, letterheads, brochures. What about any sort of signage? Exterior, interior design? If the customers are coming to see you at a physical location, what is it you're trying to portray in terms of the design? But if you think about this, there's a lot of organizations that use very specific designs when we're talking about a physical location. If you have ever been to an Ikea store, for instance, and you follow the arrows through, that's very specific to Ikea. Should you have a system to identify repeat customers and then systematically contact them? It's always cheaper to retain an existing customer, than to get out to get new customers. So I think it's important that you have ideas on how you're going to interact with your customers. What sort of promotional budget? There's the word budget, I think which is important. We'll do a lot more on budgeting. But what sort of promotional budget is it that you plan to have? How much is it you're going to spend on all of those items which we have spoken about? Before you start, I think it's important to have an idea, because these particular numbers are going to go into your start-up budget. In other words, the funding that you'll need to get your business or project underway. What about the general running of the business? Okay, once again, we'll need to have a budget once the business is up and running. And these will go into the operating plan budget. And a little bit more on that later. Just to sort of finalize your promotional plan, I think it's important that before you actually start that you have an idea of the numbers that we're talking about here, because these will go into your start-up budget. When you actually go on and start running the business itself, you'll have some more numbers that will feed into your operational budget plan. But I think more on these a little bit later on. [MUSIC]
