Market Analysis 1: Overview to Market Analysis and Business Strategy

This begins a series about preparing or updating the market analysis section of your business plan.
A major element of business growth includes analyzing your competition, market idea, product or service. Market analysis builds a foundation for your business strategy. The market analysis fills a primary section of your business plan. The information identified during your market analysis allows you to set your business apart. You will find that a strong market analysis facilitates preparing your sales and marketing plan. You should conduct an extensive market analysis during the startup phase of your business. You should also update your market analysis annually.
Elements of Market Analysis
You evaluate several factors when you complete your market analysis:

• Description of your business advantage and why clients would do business with you
  
• Resources to help your business strategy
  
• Competitors past, current, and future to your business idea and dollar
  
• Demand and market trends for your product, service, or industry
  
• Number of current, potential, and future clients living in your market area
  
• Expected growth or shrinkage in total market populations, prices, and competition
  
• Segmentation of your market base into market niches
  
• Appendix containing the documentation supporting each of the previous sections
  
• Summary (the first section) outlining all the other elements together

We will review each of these elements in posts over the next three weeks. We hope the information will help you conduct or update your market analysis.
Sources for Market Analysis Information
Before we discuss the sources of information for your market analysis, I want to discuss what information you need to gather. Several sources exist that list typical questions that your market analysis should answer:

• Entrepreneur magazine
• Inc. magazine
• Home Business Section of About.com 
• Small-Business Administration
• M-Plans

Once you identify the questions you want answered, the source of information will become apparent:

• Entrepreneurship in a Box: 10 excellent sources
• Business USA: government and other databases
• Food and Agriculture Organization: primary and secondary sources
• Cambridge University: Google and other sources
• Vanguard Vista: survey and research instruments

Join us Thursday when we explore your business advantage and unique part of your business