Free business plan template

A business plan is a written document outlining your company's goals, strategy, sales, marketing, financial forecasts and more.

It serves as a roadmap for growth and a tool to secure investment.

This template is easy to build and edit, with each page dedicated to helping you outline everything investors or creditors want to know.

Executive summary

Your business plan is a detailed overview of your business and your future prospects.

Start with a short statement of around 200 to 300 words to let your investors/creditors know what your business is and what the opportunity is for them.

Things to include

• The problem in your industry or the case study for your business ("what" you're trying to fix).

• The solution: your product/service.

• Timelines: when you're expecting to deliver a prototype or to launch a new service.

• Finance: keep to one or two main figures and skip any granular detail (for example, mention you're "expecting revenue more than £x").

• Growth: sell your potential.

• Market research: talk about your potential clients but keep this to big picture figures rather than specific customer personas.

Business brief

Tell investors about your business, from where the idea came from to how you've structured it into a viable business.

Your mission

Describe what your business stands for outside of the product or service you're selling.

Tell investors about your mission and values and explain what you realistically expect your business to become.

This should be an inspiring section of your business plan. Look at the bigger picture while keeping your ideas grounded to give your investors an idea of the potential of your business.

Define the three to five words that describe your business and use them throughout your introduction to this section. Then, keep the following in bullet lists for easy reading.

Market research

Set the scene of what's happening in your industry before you tell investors about how your product/service can disrupt or fix a problem.

There are plenty of resources on how to conduct your own market research.

You can do a quick online search or dig for more information as needed. The key thing to keep in mind is to make it sound authentic and ensure the data you present is accurate.

Product or service overview

Explain to your investors the details of your product or service.

Marketing strategy

A key part of any business plan is to outline what you're planning to do with your marketing or sales strategy.

This tells investors how your product or service reaches its audience and what you're expecting to spend – along with the return on investment (ROI) from any marketing spending.

You should also include any organic/unpaid marketing channels and if you already have an audience, such as your social media following or any revenue from selling at local markets.

Risk assessment

Any reasonable investor thinks about risk before making a decision on whether your business is viable for their current investment strategy.

Detail the risks your business might face. This can be anything from supply chain disruption to changing attitudes in your customers or relying heavily on a single product or marketing channel, such as only using Instagram to promote your business.

Explain the actions you're taking to mitigate any risks and make sure to reassure investors how your business can stay afloat even if challenges occur.

Finances

For an investor, this may just be the most important part of your business plan.

Detail how much you expect to spend and how you plan to fund your business.

This is a good opportunity to outline the granular aspects you haven't mentioned in the executive summary. You can keep this information together or create a separate budget and funding section.

If you can, mention the expected ROI so that your business plan is focused on the value it brings to whoever you're pitching to.

How to use the business plan template

You can download this template above and edit it as needed for your business.

Keep in mind that you can remove the examples provided and add your own logo. Just insert your image into the document, move it to the right spot and pull the corners to resize to fit.

Download the template

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