If you’ve just recently started a new business, you may or may not already have some ideas for marketing your products or services. Regardless, if you’ve searched the Internet for ways to begin your marketing journey, you’ve probably read about a marketing plan — the big, intimidating document that requires a significant amount of research and consumes time that could be spent diving head-first into your work. However, even if you plan to hire a marketing team right away, it will be beneficial for you to begin writing a marketing plan yourself. And don’t worry — it’s not as difficult as you might think. Together we’ll explore the ongoing process of marketing and some key research topics that will give you an excellent start to a marketing plan for your new business.

As of July 31, 2022, Intuit will close the books on its QuickBooks Online Advanced (QBOA) partnership with Fathom. If you use QBOA, you were likely already notified of this. Fathom is a software that provides data analytics and visualization, and its integration with QuickBooks greatly enhanced the value and readability of a bookkeeper’s client reports. If you weren’t familiar with Fathom, then this bad news has no effect on you!