In order to facilitate clear and efficient thinking about the future of your business, you need to start by knowing where you are now, so the first stage of writing your marketing plan is an honest situation analysis.
This should include a study of the market you work in, a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) of your own business, and an honest appraisal of your competitors. You should look at their strengths, weaknesses, sales figures if possible and any other information you can get hold of about them, especially any marketing materials. The market analysis should include an overall market forecast, sector segmentation, information about potential customers, and a market needs and trends analysis.
Some questions to ask yourself could be:
These are straightforward questions, but the underlying problem here is getting it done. This job takes time and someone to drive it. Not doing this research and analysis is the reason many marketing plans and consequently many businesses fail. You need to get the help of your team, together with objective market figures from publicly available sources. The best way to achieve this is to give it to someone who can dedicate the time to do the job and make them responsible for reporting back to you at an agreed time.
Now you should have a clear picture of the size and potential of the industry, how many competitors you have and how good they are. You should have a good idea about what products and services you can realistically sell at decent enough volumes and margins to make it worth while. Most importantly you should now have a clear understanding of what your strengths and weaknesses are as a business.
Now, you are ready move on to the next stage of the process.