A business plan is nothing more than a document that allows you to translate your business ideas into wordsmaterialize what you want to achieve. Is about draw a path along which you are going to travel with your company and make your brand successful.
Every business plan is mainly composed of 3 factors:
- Goals: The first step is to have clear objectives. We advise you to describe them as SMART goals. This is a technique used in the business world to write goals so that they are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and associated with a stage of the business. Called SMART because it corresponds to an acronym of those words in English and they do reference to each of the characteristics that a good lens should have.
- : it is about establish a business vision that will help you achieve the objectives you have at each stage. A brand launch strategy will not be the same as an accelerated growth strategy, or a relaunch of your online store, for example.
- Actions: group those concrete actions that you are going to carry out, and that they must be guided by a common strategy to achieve the proposed objectives.
If you decided to start sell online, it is very important that you draw up your business plan before . It seems obvious, but it is not.
Why do we advise you this? Because you are starting from a different scenario if you already have a physical location, for example, or if you are going to develop a new business that will be exclusively online.
If you already have a developed sales channel, your business plan will have to integrate both channels (online / offline) and you will have to think about its synergy from scratch (in e-commerce this is known as we will talk about this later).
Having a business plan means, then, having a northbut it is worth clarifying that this business plan it is dynamic as your business will go through different stages and eventually the context will also change. And that’s where you’re going to have to adjust your goals and rethink your strategy.
Therefore, we advise you that review the initial business plan as many times as necessary.
Before you start selling online
If you have not yet explored this sales channel, it is expected that you will have uncertainty. When putting together your business plan, you start with assumptions. But, as we said, remember that this plan is dynamic and will change over time.
Before setting up your online storewe recommend that you investigate the current state of e-commerce in Argentina and in your particular field. You will find valuable information in the reports prepared by the. This will give you a clearer picture of the industry and help you make better decisions.
In our blog you will also find a lot of information that will be useful to you. For example, or our complete guide on .
In addition to everything you find out on your own, we also advise you, if you can, and participate in events, ideally networkingoriented to .
In a second stage, once you start selling through your online store,the daily operation of your e-commerce and the performance analysis (yield) that you are doing, will be the factors that will help you adjust the initial plan since the need to make your business more scalable and increase its profitability will undoubtedly arise.
How to put together an e-commerce oriented business plan
Although there is no single way to develop a business plan, If we think about electronic commerce, it is essential that you consider these 9 points:
1) Production: you have to define what products or services you are going to market and what will be your (own production, wholesale purchase or , for instance). Also, you will have to decide if you are going to sell to a single type of customer or to more than one (wholesale and/or retail).
2) Sources of income: at this point you’re going to have to specify what your sources of income are going to be, what you plan to obtain and make an estimate of your profits. It will be necessary to consider the seasonality of your business to make this projection (for example, if you sell bikinis and tights, your income will not be the same in December as in July).
3) Costs: you also need to do a detailed analysis of those associated with your businessfrom product manufacturing expenses, implementation, commissions for the use of platforms and means of payment, logistics process, work team, to advertising, taxes and services that you contract, among others.
Starting from identifying the sources of income, your profit margins and the associated costs, you will be able to identify if your business plan is viable and if it will generate the expected profitability.
4) Market: here you have to define What industry is your company in and its characteristicsthat is, how is this market, who are the main competitors, what are the particularities of the target audience, among other points.
Some tools that can help you with this task are,
a – to know the strengths and opportunities of your brand, as well as the weaknesses and threats of the environment towards it;
b- to analyze your competition through an exercise and
c- to assess the industry you want to enter.
5) Operation: it is essential that you diagram with a lot of focus your and stock. This includes, among other things, how your processes will be as well as the logistics of your e-commerce (storage, distribution and delivery). You will also have to define what are the What are you going to offer in your online store?
6) Equipment: form a The ideal work team is key in any business. If you already have a business running, you will have to define if you are going to hire new staff or if you are going to train current employees and redistribute their tasks.
Do not be discouraged if you start the activity with few staff, or assuming all the roles yourself. But keep in mind that in order to grow with your e-commerce, you will have to delegate. Online sales involve processes and tasks that, of course, require time and full attention.
7) Partners: you will also need to identify who are going to be your strategic business partners. Which providers are you going to work with? and to whom you are going to delegate all those tasks that you cannot carry out with your own work team.
8) Marketing: We advise you that in the business plan you also consider a . That is, think those strategies and actions that you are going to carry out using the different marketing and advertising tools to boost your business.
Social networks are one of the main sources of traffic to online stores, so we advise you to develop a and accompany with advertising investment both in as well as with campaigns of .
The investment in advertising will not always be the same, but keep in mind that To launch a virtual store, it is ideal to make an initial investment in online advertising.
It is very important that you also analyze the ROI (return on investment) of all the marketing actions you carry out.
Learn more about ROI:
Article
9) Omnichannel: currently buyers are active in various sales channels of the brands (physical store, show roomsocial networks, online store).
For this reason, it is necessary that, when designing your business plan, you take into account an omnichannel strategy. In other words, think about how these different channels are going to be integrated into one to offer a personalized experience in all of them and, in this way, increase your sales and guarantee excellent customer service.
💡 Here we tell you.
Finally, and as we said before, every business starts from a business idea, which then begins to materialize. When materializing that idea, it is important that from the beginning, in addition to the objectives, the strategy and the actions, Be clear about what you want to convey with your brand.
This will help you better communicate who you are, what you offer and for whom you offer those products or services. You need to define what is the purpose of the company, its as well as the values ​​of your brand, its differential and .
These are the 9 points to keep in mind when developing your e-commerce-oriented business plan. Now it’s time to take action!
We share a free downloadable with some questions that will serve as triggers to develop your plan successfully:
Good sales!
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