your opening promotion plan exceeds your budget, youll need to go back and revise your Capital Spending Plan to allow for the promotional expense. If thats your situation, complete this chapter, then go back to Chapter 7, Section B, and revise the cash totals.     Are my methods of promotion cost-effective? Once youve estimated the cost of reaching all your target customers with the first message, compare that cost with the amount of money in your budget. Your job is to get the most exposure for the least outlay. Making that final decision may mean that you have to refine your promotion cost estimates from rough guesses into bids and quotes from suppliers. Normally, unless youre really unsure of promotional costs, you shouldnt take the time to obtain those quotes for now. Just balance your wish list against your budget to develop your marketing plan.     Have I allowed enough money in my monthly expense budget for ongoing advertising and promotion? Take a look at the advertising expenses you forecast in the Profit and Loss Forecast in Chapter 6, Section D. If that amount needs changing, youll need to change both your Profit and Loss Forecast and the Cash Flow Forecast (Chapter 7, Section C). If thats your situation, do it after you complete this chapter. But, if youre not sure about how much money to allow for monthly advertising and promotion, go back and reread the discussion about advertising in Chapter 6, Section D, line 4d, Marketing and Advertising.     To create a marketing plan, start by listing each of the promotional items you decided on for your pre-opening promotion together with their costs. Then add up the pre-opening promotional costs and fill in the total.     Next, list each of the promotional items you plan to use during the first two years of your business together with the monthly cost of each.     Those two groups of specific actions and costs, pre-opening promotion and monthly marketing, advertising and promotional costs, will become the blueprint for your marketing plan.     Antoinettes Dress Shop:Marketing Budget Antoinettes Dress Shop:Marketing Budget             Pre-opening promotion       Despite Antoinettes well-thought-out marketing plan, her original budget allowed nothing for an opening promotion and $1,000 per month for ongoing advertising. She could, however, decide to take some of the $15,000 contingency and use it for pre-opening promotions. It looks like Antoinette needs to make some hard choices about which marketing tools to drop and by how much to increase the marketing budget. Well leave her now to solve that problem in peace and quiet while we move along to the next step.     If youre in the same predicament, take your time to balance costs and effectiveness the best you can, and then move ahead to the next step.     7. Write Your Marketing Plan