The author is a firm believer in classic marketing principles. Many of those principles were drummed into me in my corporate marketing days and also through my MBA studied in Edinburgh.

I agree that all businesses should have a plan and that all businesses should be taking advantage of the power of the internet and fully embracing what the internet has to offer in driving both offline and online business growth. Always be learning more about marketing on the internet.

With that said let me ask you a question. Do You Have Marketing Plan?

Marketing is the real back bone of your business. Don't you think that it is important enough to need a plan, completely separate from your basic business plan? After all with out a plan how will you know where you are going. Let's go over the basic information that your marketing plan should include.

First you need a marketing strategy and a budget. It is a good idea to get the basics of your marketing plan written down, so that you can see exactly what you are aiming for. Start the process by making lists.

List of all the advertising you plan to do. Include websites, newspapers, radio, flyers, the yellow pages etc.

For each form of advertising you should assign an estimated cost. Determine how many customers you expect to reach. This will allow you to work out your cost of per customer, which is how much of you budget you need to spend on advertising to bring in one customer.

Next make a list all of the pricing policies you plan to have, as well as any special offers that you think will be good. Don't worry you can make price changes and new offers later, The idea here is to have some basic long term plans.

Another good idea is to have a list of other businesses in your area that could be considered to be competitors. You need to know who you are up against and a good plan to differentiate yourself from them.

This is just a basic outline for starting your businesses plan. Remember, when in doubt seek out help. Do a quick search for sample marketing plans online or visit your local library for more information.

A Disaster Plan:
Disaster plans, do you have one? I don't mean to be a downer but, any time you start a business, you are taking the risk that the business might fail. What you may not have considered when you started out was along with your business plan you need a disaster plan. Having a plan in place will help you shield yourself from risk and help you make sure that you can keep your business going even on the brink of disaster.

You need to have a plan for what you're going to do if your business looks like it is going to go under. Are you going to borrow money, raise prices, cut back or fire people. Are you willing to sell your possessions or mortgage your house, ? What will you do? This is where your disaster plan comes into play.

Just like a business plan your disaster plan will layout a list of options that you can refer to if your business runs into trouble. In your disaster plan include a list of the things that you will or will not do before you close your doors on your business.

A good disaster plan will depend a lot on how much risk you're willing to take on yourself. If you are sensible and conservative then you will go as far as you can to avoid selling or borrowing against any of your own assets to keep your business open.

If you don't lean to the conservative side and are willing to take more of a risk, then you may consider getting a loan against your car or maybe even your house. Just be prepared to lose it all if you can't recover from whatever business disaster you may encounter.

A good disaster plan also includes a recovery plan. Once you have decided what you will do to handle a business disaster you need to decide how you will recover. When writing your disaster plan consider adding these things to your list. What will you do if you keep your doors open? How will you rebuild? What will you do if you decide to go out of business? Start another business? Go back into the job market? What will you do next?

How you handle a business disaster is completely up to you. That is where having a good disaster plan comes into play. You have to decide are you going to cut your losses and walk away or dig in your heals and risk it all to make your business a huge success.