Your business will face obstacles to success in addition to those posed by the competition. Half of the battle of overcoming these external obstacles is understanding them. And half of the key to benefiting from "lucky breaks" is being on top of developments and events that can be used to your advantage.

Threats and Opportunities (from Outside)
Identify, and rank by order of importance, any threats or opportunities your business may face from outside influences. Threats and opportunities come from a variety of sources including:

The economic outlook of your market's economy -- Are you starting your business in a healthy economy? If not, can your product still thrive?
Product innovations -- How will changes made to the products of your competitors affect you? What's happening with products that are "complementary" to yours? (If you write software that runs on Windows, IBM PCs would be "complementary products" to you.)
Technological advancements -- What changes in technology will impact you?
Environmental issues -- Is your product earth-friendly?
Government regulations -- What impact does complying with government regulations have on your business? Is there any pending legislation that may impact you?
Barriers to market entry -- Are there high or low barriers to market entry in your field? What would it take for a competitor to start a business in your field? Could a competitor start up overnight (low barrier) or does you business require special knowledge, expensive machinery, etc. (high barrier)?

Strengths and Weaknesses (inside your company)
Identify internal strengths and weaknesses of your company. For example, your education, experience and reputation in your area of expertise is most likely a strength. A weakness if you plan to have employees, might be a lack of supervisory experience.

Summarize the Main Issues in an Issues Statement
Finally, determine which issues are most significant and integrate them into an Issues Statement. Use your carefully researched Issues Statement as you set your marketing objectives and strategy.

Here's an example of an issues statement:

While there are few barriers to entry to offer public relations counseling to small business owners (a telephone and computer is all that's required), the 30 years combined experience of the partners of Miller Public Relations is its competitive advantage. No other PR agency in the area Miller serves offers a comparable depth of experience.

A professional manager is being recruited to compensate for the owner's lack of experience and interest in supervising employees. This person should be in place by November.

What do you want to achieve? - Marketing Objectives
Marketing Plan Components: Marketing Objectives & Strategies

Meeting marketing objectives should lead to sales. (If not, you need to set different marketing objectives.) They should:

• be clear
• be measurable, and
• have a stated time frame for achievement.

Examples of marketing objectives follow:

• Increase product awareness among the target audience by 30 percent in one year.
• Inform target audience about features and benefits of our product and its competitive advantage, leading to a 10 percent increase in sales in one year.
• Decrease or remove potential customers' resistance to buying our product, leading to a 20 percent increase in sales that are closed in six months or less.

If you have multiple objectives, make sure they are consistent and not in conflict with each other. Also, be sure that the remainder of your marketing plan components-the marketing strategy, budget, action programs, controls and measures, etc.-support your marketing objectives.

Setting your marketing objectives and finalizing the remaining components of your marketing plan may serve as a reality check: Do you have the resources necessary to accomplish your objectives?