From Mary Bellis,
Your Guide to Inventors.
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Marketing plans plays a vital role in successful business ventures. How well you market your invention, along with a few other considerations, will ultimately determine your degree of success or failure. The key element of a successful marketing plan is to know your customers their likes, dislikes, expectations. By identifying these factors, you can develop a marketing strategy that will allow you to arouse and fulfill their needs.

Identify your customers by their age, sex, income/educational level and residence. At first, target only those customers who are more likely to purchase your invention. As your customer base expands, you may need to consider modifying the marketing plan to include other customers.

Develop A Marketing Plan

Develop a marketing plan for your business by answering these questions. Your marketing plan should be included in your business plan and contain answers to the questions outlined below.

Answer the following questions in your marketing plan.

• Who are your customers? Define your target market(s).
• Are your markets growing? steady? declining?
• Is your market share growing? steady? declining?
• Are your markets large enough to expand?
• How will you attract, hold, increase your market share?
• What pricing strategy have you devised?
• Did you know that we have a tutorial on Creating a Marketing Plan?

Next: Competitors, Pricing and Sales