The Market Research Business Plan Template provides you with everything you need to formulate a competitive market research business plan. The plan is written in easy-to-understand language that you will be able to understand without any prior analytical experience.
The business plan template provides you with everything you need to formulate a competitive market research business plan. It’s easy-to-understand language will give you all the information you need to start off on the right foot.
Market research is the process of gathering information about your potential customers. It helps you define your buyer personas, target market, and understand the viability of your business by answering questions like — Who are they? What are their buying and shopping habits? How many of them are there?
By exploring your ideal customer’s problems, desires, and current solutions, you can build your product, service, and broader strategy to better serve them.
HubSpot’s One-Page Business Plan
The business plan linked above was created here at HubSpot, and is perfect for businesses of any size — no matter how much strategy they still have to develop.
Including fields such as Company Description, Required Funding, and Implementation Timeline, this one-page business plan gives businesses a framework for how to build their brand and what tasks to keep track of as they grow. Then, as the business matures, it can expand on its original business plan with a new iteration of the above document.
ThoughtCo’s Sample Business Plan
If you want to reference an actual business plan while writing your own, ThoughtCo’s got you covered. They created a fictional company called Acme Management Technology and wrote an entire business plan for them.
Using their sample business plan as a guide while filling out your own will help you catch and include small yet important details in your business plan that you otherwise might not have noticed.
Harvard Business Review’s “How to Write a Winning Business Plan”
Most sample business plans teach you what to include in your business plan, but this Harvard Business Review article will take your business plan to the next level — it teaches you the why and how behind writing a business plan.
With the guidance of Stanley Rich and Richard Gumpert, co-authors of Business Plans That Win: Lessons From the MIT Enterprise Forum, you’ll learn how to write a convincing business plan that emphasizes the market demand for your product or service and the financial benefits investors can reap from putting money into your venture, rather than trying to sell them on how great your product or service is.
Panda Doc’s Free Business Plan Template
Panda Doc’s free business plan template is one of the more detailed and fleshed out sample business plans on this list. It describes what you should include in each of its sections, so you don’t have to come up with everything from scratch.
Once you fill it out, you’ll fully understand your business’ nitty gritty details and how all of its moving parts should work together to contribute to your business’ success.
Culina Sample Business Plan
Culina’s sample business plan is a great template to use if you just want to fill in your information. You can also use this template as a guide while you’re gathering important details. After looking at this sample, you’ll have a better understanding of the data and research you need to do for your own business plan.
LiveShopBuy Sample Business Plan
With this business plan, the focus is the investment opportunity. This is an excellent template to use if you’re going to use your business plan as a means to receive funding. The investment opportunity section is placed right up front and is several pages long. Then, the plan goes into more detail about the company synopsis industry analysis.
When you’re first getting starting on your business plan, it can be daunting. That’s why it’s important to make sure you understand the format and information you’ll want to include. Then, you can use a template to guide your process.
HubSpot’s Downloadable Business Plan Template
The template is designed as a guide and checklist for starting your own business, so you’ll learn what to include in each section of your business plan and how to do it. There’s also a list for you to check off when you finish each section of your business plan.
Strong game plans help coaches win games and help businesses rocket to the top of their industries. So if you dedicate the time and effort required to write a viable and convincing business plan, you’ll boost your chances of success and even dominance in your market.
BPlan’s Free Business Plan Template
One of the more financially oriented sample business plans in this list, BPlan’s free business plan template dedicates many of its pages to your business’ financial plan and financial statements.
After filling this business plan out, your company will truly understand its financial health and the steps you need to take to maintain or improve it.
HubSpot’s Complete Guide to Starting a Business
If you’re an entrepreneur, you know writing a business plan is one of the most challenging first steps to starting a business. Fortunately, with HubSpot’s comprehensive guide to starting a business, you’ll learn how to map out all the details of your business by understanding what to include in your business plan and why it’s important to include them. The guide also fleshes out an entire sample business plan for you.
If you need further guidance on starting a business, HubSpot’s guide can teach you how to make your business legal, choose and register your business name, fund your business, gives information about small business tax, and provides marketing, sales, and service tips.
Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template
The Small Business Administration offers several free business plan templates that can be used to inspire your own plan. Before you get started, you can decide what type of business plan you need — a traditional or lean start-up plan.
Then, you can review the format for both of those plans and view examples of what they might look like.
Plum Sample Business Plan
This is one of my favorite sample business plans, because you can see how implementing visuals can help tell the story of your brand. The images in this template are cutting edge, which makes sense for an innovative company like Plum. When you create your own business plan, make sure that the pictures and design you use make sense for your branding.
Additionally, the financial charts included are incredibly helpful if you’re not sure what financial information to include.
Market Research Methods
The two main ways to gather information and collect actionable data about your products are the primary and secondary research methods.
If you’re unsure which methodology is right for your business, here is a detailed view of each to help you.
Primary Research
Primary research is the process of gathering first-hand information about your target market. You can get this data from varying sources, including focus groups, surveys and questionnaires.
Primary research is an excellent way for small businesses to understand what people think about their brand. It also reveals the actual user experience a customer has with a product or service.
Primary research includes:
- In-depth interviews: One-on-one discussions to get more insights into a participant’s beliefs on a particular topic or product. They can be face to face, online or over the phone.
- Observational research: You can opt to observe people quietly in a natural environment to gather critical information. For instance, you can watch how a retail shop handles its customers as they walk in and out of the store.
- Surveys: Customer surveys are among the most common methods product managers use while conducting a research study.
You obtain survey data by asking questions, so you get to discover people’s opinions, attitudes or perceptions towards a product. You can conduct feedback surveys online, on the phone or by mail.
- Focus groups: A focus group is a carefully selected group of participants brought together to discuss a topic. This research is ideal when physical interaction with a product or service is necessary to collect data.
You can have them watch a demo, test new products or answer specific research questions.
Secondary Research
Secondary research uses public data and information other people have collected, including reports and market statistics. That might also include your business’s internal sales and marketing records.
Secondary research is beneficial for getting a general view of market trends and customer behavior throughout your product’s launch.
Here are a few common sources for secondary research:
- Public sources: Government statistics are the most common public sources of market research. The U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor & Statistics are valuable sources of information if you’re starting a new business. The U.S. Census Bureau business and economy page can help you get population data and understand how much people spend on your target product in specific areas.
For startups looking to minimize costs, these resources are useful. You can also find some of the information in your local library’s business reference section.
- Internal sources: You can get credible insight from the data your business already has. Your business’s previously collected data, including employee interviews, sales and marketing campaigns data, can help draw conclusions you can turn into decisions.
- Commercial sources: These are mostly market reports with industry-specific insights compiled by research agencies. You usually have to pay to use and download these.
Conclusion
Do you need a simple and easy-to-understand template to help you formulate a robust and comprehensive market research business plan? Then the Market Research Business Plan Template is for you!