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When a business owner creates a business plan, oftentimes he or she is also creating the marketing plan – all in one document. A big part of starting any business is the marketing plan because financial backers want to know how you’re planning on getting customers in your door.

The usual marketing plan begins with a description of the product or service being offered and then the marketing strategies that will be implemented to get that product or service to market. This has been referred to as “hope marketing.” You plan and then hope for the best.

Not exactly something ground in science, but at least it’s a plan, right?

How about writing a marketing plan where the product or service comes last? If that sounds a little crazy, hear me out (or read me out, I guess I should say!). Internet marketing maven Ed Dale has created a different approach to creating a marketing plan by thinking of the product specs last. Here’s a brief overview of his approach, which contains four parts.

Part 1: Market research. Before you introduce a new product to the market, you have to find out if there’s a need for it. In this first stage, or part, you identify a niche market and get to know the market, understanding what they need and what their problems are. Also, this lets you know how much competition you have. If the market is already saturated with doohickeys, adding one more doohickey to the market may not be your winning strategy.

Part 2: Dale refers to this as “traffic.” This part is when you figure out how you will communicate to your market. Will you get to them online, offline or with integrated strategy of both? If you can’t reach your target market effectively and affordably, you’ll want to rethink your approach. Don’t rely on your product to sell itself – you need to choose the right marketing channels for it.

Part 3: Conversion. This is the selling part. Once you figure out how your “traffic” will flow – online or off? – you can start thinking about how you will “sell” your product or service to people. What are your product’s main selling points? Dale makes a point here of saying you might “test the water” by trying to sell a competitors’ product. If it’s hard to make sales, you may need to reconsider your original plan.

Part 4: Your product or service. Finally, we get to the good part! Now that you’ve figured out all the info that answered the first three parts, you can intelligently present your product. You’ve figured out the marketplace and where you fit in; you’ve decided how to communicate to your market; and you know your product’s selling points.

Now with this marketing plan, you’ve thought of a lot of the potential roadblocks (saturated marketplace) ahead of time and can plow right through them (tweak your product). This plan should help you be more relaxed so you can focus on implementation instead of planning.