Market Research for Business Plan

[oekpeh]

Hi there everybody,

I am new to this site and love all the information and advice up here.

I am currently in the process of starting up a small business offering a service to companies to try and promote their products / brand. The service that I will be providing is below the line marketing, like leaflet distribution and road shows etc.

I am currently trying to get my business plan together and I am stuck on "market research". Does anyone know where I can find some free information or data on this subject? Like how much money was spent on below the line marketing last year in the UK? Who are the top performing companies? Who are the top performing companies in Yorkshire? This would be a great help for me as I have spent so many hours trying to find this information.

Any advice would be beneficial.

[S_Sabur]

I'm not sure if they'll have exactly what you're looking for but I think it would be worth asking the Office for National Statistics and/or the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (formerly BERR, formerly DTI!). I was in touch with both of them when I was doing my research on SMEs' use of IT and they were both very helpful.

[oekpeh]

Hey S Sabur,
Thank you so much i have checked out the websites you gave me but unfortunately they don’t have the information that i require.

If anyone else thinks they know of anywhere that i can gather all the relevant information from it would be a great help!!

Thank you. x

[Indizine]

I imagine DFS are the top performing Yorkshired-based company! (where not owned by a parent company based elsewhere) mind you, that's just a stab.

what do you mean by top performing? Profits for this year? Contracts won for this year?

[oekpeh]

Hi There,
Yes i mean the companies who made the most profit and who won a lot of contracts. Thanks for the info!

[Indizine]

That's not anything formal, it's down to whether anyone has published such results. Like the Times Rich List, etc.

But by the way, having approved hundreds of business plans for millions of pounds of funding, I wouldn't expect to see such data in a business plan

[oekpeh]

Yes the information is out there but i have to pay for it. I dont have the spare funds to pay for the information. Thats why i am trying to find the info for free.

I have been to see Business Link and been on serveral courses that they offer. All the advisors told us that we need to go into great detail regarding our market research.

This is very confusing as different people tell you different things. One person who i knew wrote an 8 page business plan and another person who i knew wrote a 32 page business plan.... both of them received funding.

As i am offering a service not a product i thought i should go really deep into market so any funder would understand the business idea, and that it is profitable.

[oekpeh]

Just to let you know i have found the relevant information ... many many hours of searching!! If anyone else needs this info here is the link
marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/wide/869232/

[Indizine]

I cant imagine why any figures off there would help your business plan in any way whatsoever.

[virtuallysorted]

I know that most business plans ask you about the size of your market and what the potential is.... Mine sure did anyway! But realistically if you are a web designer and web design in the UK billed £700 million pounds then you can't translate that into 0.0001% of the market and estimate your turnover. (that would be nice though wouldn't it????)

You should base you business plan on real figures where ever possible. So if you already have a contract to supply leafleting to a company @ £500 every 2 weeks and you think you can get another 2 companies to sign up by targeting similar clients from a list of 25 leads which you have, then factor your sales based on this. As long as you justify where you have got the numbers from they won't mind. I'd certainly value your real data over a government Mintel report any day....

Does that help?
Caroline