i) Product – There are several aspect that the business owner should take into consideration for the product or service provided in relation to the marketing strategy. The business owner have to consider the benefit for the consumer or customer if they purchase the product or service and detail research in this area is a must. The business owner have to think of creating a outstanding packaging that it could be separated from the competitors’ packaging. The business owner also have to consider the warranty use of the product and how to make the customer feel that they are staying in the comfortable zone after they buy your product.

ii) Price – The next important P is the pricing strategy, if you set the price for a product high you will be facing a great resistance in pursuing people to purchase your product, if you set the price for a product low you will generate a perception of low quality for the product. The business owner have to do some home works to find out what is the best price to charge in order to convince the customer that they have a perception that they are not buying an expensive product with the same product quality which the competitors are able to provide.

iii) Promotion – The business owner have to think on how to promote the product or service provided in order to generate great sales projection. The activities that the business owner would go through includes identify the type of advertising medium that is to be used, the marketing effort that is to be carried out, discuss about public relation, describe the promotional and the plan for using advertising specialties or premium items such as pencil, flower and so on.

iv) Place – The word place means by itself indicate that where your product should be sell at and where your customer can purchase your products. Most of the home based business or small business are selling their product through website, auction or direct mail order. For example, if you own a SEO company and where you sell your SEO product should be through online marketplace like forum, online classifieds, webcart and so on. Place is not determined as where the product originated but is best determined as where you should sell your product.

i) The customer – You must understand the market needs, be focus on a niche market as well as how often the prospect will buy your product or services. You must also know exactly what those customers are doing even you have to know in which sector they are belong to. Understand the customer well is important to your home based business, because they play an important role in rating your products or services and how well you have done on the customer service and follow up. As a business owner, it is also important to know what question would your prospect ask before they raise it to you.

ii) The products – Before you launch the product into the market, you as the business owner (sometimes the product designer as well) have to know in detail what your product is. You have to do your homework on research, training and as well as feedback from customer to get the full knowledge about the product. The better you know about the product, you will be able to identify the potential problem or question that your customer would face, thus you are able to provide a prompt solution to the customer in case they raise. With this, the image for your business in terms of customer service also increase.

iii) The tool – The tool that i mentioned it here is not the tool that you use to create the product or the tool you use to repair the product. The tool that i am talking about here is strategy that you use to sale your product, this includes product sample, customer testimonial and etc. I would say every type of home based business would have a different set of sales tools.

iv) The competitors – Know your competitors well is very important in fighting for the sales in a niche market, you have to know what your competitors doing, how long they have been in the market, the price they charge, their key person in business operation, the customer service level and whatever thing that they are doing in they sales strategy. By knowing your competitors well, you are basically able to plan the sales for now, tomorrow and the far futures.

A good marketing plan should include the analysis of the potential targeted market include the customer’s behavior, the competitors and the strength and weakness of the business compare to the competitors. A marketing plan is not as simple as just a list of advertising or promotional activities. The conclusion to a marketing plan is to predict competitive reaction and a brief consideration of possible longer product term options.

Creating a serious and well planned marketing study take into consideration of each individual product or service group will definately create analysis overlaps between other product or company-wide strategies. It is strongly advised that each product line or service are look into detail separately. Doing a research for each product may reveal the individual product characteristic that may not be considered by other businesses.

Start a home based business is not as easy as you think, it required hardwork, hardwork and hardwork. Not every person is suitable to start their own home based business, not because they are stupid, lazy, afraid or they don’t want to success, but this business venture require the person to spend lot of time and hardwork to succeed. A home based business owner may spend at least 50-70 hours per week just to operate their business, with little of rest or holiday, and probably with less income than working full time.

As the statistical data suggest, 80% of a new home based business may fail within the first 3 years of business operation. Before getting involve to start your home based business, you have to make sure that you are willing to sacrifice your time and hardwork and do what you love to do, otherwise you will be in the 80% of failing statistical data!

There are also some peoples who close their business because they found a better opportunity to work with somebody else. I won’t say closing of the business is a failure, at least the person will gain a lot of business operation experiences than anybody else.

A home based business fail can be for many reasons, but few of the most important factors are:
1. No proper research
2. No proper planning
3. No financial support
4. Lack of business operation skill
5. Start with a bad business idea
6. Entering an over saturated market
7. Unrealistic expectation
8. and etc.

If you are to start your own home based business, you are possible to achieve your own set of target and goal, but you have to be very consistent and be focus on what you are doing.

Try to research the industry in depth, and provide a report with fact and statistical data on how the industry behave currently as well as in the future. In the last paragraph of this session, explain how your home based business will fit into this industry. What makes you invent into this industry.

The idea of industry analysis in business plan is to provide a clear analytic data on how the industry behave and why you are choosing to enter into this industry.