10 steps to create your marketing plan on the Internet

10 steps to create your marketing plan on the Internet

10 steps to create your marketing plan on the Internet :

If you own a small business services, have a solid Internet marketing plan in place can both increase your name and brand recognition locally in your area, as well as expose you to a new set potential customers around the world.

If you have a business plan or vision that is written, you just have to integrate this Internet marketing tool in the existing plan. However, if you are like many of my clients, you carry your business and marketing plans in your head without bothering to commit anything to paper.

Here are ten considerations you need to do as you complete your Internet marketing plan:

1. Purpose of Internet marketing plan:

What do you accomplish by using Internet marketing? To find new customers? Provide services and information to existing customers? Sell products or services? Educate your target market or your staff about your product or service? Create an online community for your target market? How much money to have to spend each month on Internet marketing plan? Have a purpose and a budget in mind will make your marketing more effective.

2. Marketing funnel:

Most business owners have a successful online marketing funnel (think of it as an upside down triangle) through which they "funnel" clients. The process starts at the top end of the funnel, representing low-cost products or free gifts, and moving clients down through the funnel to the narrower portions which represent gradually increasing investments from clients high price for your products and services. What products and services you currently offer? Are they at different prices that create a funnel effect? What plans do you have to increase your product or service online? Are these gaps new offers to plug your marketing funnel?

3. Your competitors:

Know and understand where you stand among your competitors can help you strengthen your marketing message. Search by keyword for the terms someone might use to find your business online. Note the URL of your top 5 competitors. How popular and relevant are their sites? You can check their ranking with Alexa traffic, traffic http://www.alexa.com/ # and see the other sites link to them. Your competition offer something unique? Where are the gaps in the service or product offering?

4. Target Market:

Instead of trying to marketing to everyone (the shotgun marketing approach), to find a clearly definable target market that you can easily describe and locate. Are they men or women? What age group? What industry? What socio-economic group? Where do they spend time on and offline? What do they read? To what groups and associations (real and virtual, personal and professional) do they belong? How much money do they? Can they easily afford your product or service? What keywords are they using to find businesses like yours online? (Note - you can do a keyword research with free downloadable software, http://www.GoodKeywords.com).

5. Solution to a problem:

The reason someone will buy your product or hire to provide you with a service is to solve a particular problem they have. What are the problems and issues plague your target market? How does your product or service to solve this problem? How does your solution different from your competitors? What makes you uniquely qualified to provide the solution to their problem?

6. Branding your business:

Your domain name can either help you be memorable or cast you in a sea of "unbranded" solutions. At a minimum, you'll want to buy both your personal name and the name of your company in the version com., If available. So buy com versions. Of your product names and programs. If you use a fully qualified domain registrar, you will be able to point and mask these domains to internal pages of your website, or use them as stand-alone sales letter pages.

You can also think about the problems your target market or solutions you provide and buy domain names in the version com. Of those as well. Internet Marketing Dean Jackson brands his ebook on how to stop a divorce by owning the domain name, StopYourDivorce.com, is a convincing solution to its target market - men who have ignored the complaints of their wives to marital dissatisfaction and come home one day to an empty house and a note saying she filed for divorce.

7. Evaluate Your Web Site.

Your website must be visually appealing, with a primary font for text and a simple primary color scheme, with an easy to navigate layout, and easily identifiable buttons to link to other pages. Your content needs to focus and address the problems of your visitors and how your product or service can help solve their problems. Rather than listing the features of your product or service, detail the benefits they will gain from purchasing your product or service. People rarely buy features - they buy benefits. Do not rely on your web site designer to write your content - which is best done by you, as you know your business and your target market better than anyone.

Present a clear call to action that is clearly indicated on each page of your site. In an online business, your call to the main action must be to get the visitor's name and primary email address by asking him subscribe to your ezine or providing access to a free ecourse, special report, the audio recording, or ebook. Finally, abundace provide information readily available to demonstrate your expertise (articles, blogs, free downloads, gifts, contests). Your visitor is always asking WIIFM (What's in it for me) - make your website your visitors, not you.

8. Online Business Technology Management:

Do you have access to appropriate services and technology that will help you sell your product or service online? At a minimum, you need a merchant account (allows you to take payments by credit card) that includes a virtual gateway (enables you to process online transactions) and a complete shopping cart that allows you to sell products both physical and electronic to create a series of autoresponders to follow up with buyers and non-buyers. Depending on your marketing plan, you may also want to consider e-mail newsletter distribution services, online services nominated, self autoresponders, blogging software, sites, article submission, online services Press Release distribution services site content management and links exchange management services and software.

9. Internet marketing strategies:

How will you create traffic to your website? There are countless ways to do this, including: pay-per-click purchases (in which you buy a keyword for a search engine and pay for placement on the search engine for that keyword and pay for each visitor who clicks on this link and is sent to your site) rank organic search engine listing (in which your site gets to the top of the list of non-sponsored search engine by having keyword rich descriptions in the page title and page desciption meta tags and then optimizing each page no more than 3 keywords in the first 250 words on a page) well written newsletter that is published on a regular basis, the submission of articles on topics related to your target market to article submission directories, posting regular blog entries to one to your target market, full of content discussing issues related to this target market series of podcasts containing interview with experts of interest to your target market, ongoing series of teleconferences containing value-added content for your target market, the submission of online press releases with new tips information for your target market exchange relevant links with others in different industries with the same target market;

10. Building a team:

You will never be able to do this alone. Business owners the most successful are not even trying. You must add to your team of experts who are great at what they do so you have time and energy to go out and do what you do best - selling your products and services to your market target. Some great experts to add to your team includes a virtual assistant or online business manager, an online business coach, a web designer, a graphic designer, a handwriting expert (editor, ghost writer, proof reader or copy writer), an accountant, and intellectual property consultants, to name a few.

To conduct a successful marketing campaign on the Internet, you need to integrate your plan in terms of marketing / business overall vision you have for your business service. Some companies can thrive outside of Internet marketing alone, but for the most part, Internet marketing simply complements and enhances your offline marketing strategies.