A failure to plan is a plan to fail. Online everything is so easy to do. It's just takes a few seconds to click over there and add this widget to you blog and a few more to add another friend to a social networking site. Unfortunately, this leads to wasted time and the important things to your business never getting accomplished. If you don't have a marketing plan for your online business, I can almost guarantee you are struggling. In this article we're going to cover some basics on how to develop your own marketing plan and make the internet work for you.
First, you need to know the tasks you need to be doing to market your products. Are you going to focus on social networking or PPC? Maybe you'll optimize your sites for the search engines or an affiliate army. Come up with a list of no more than 15-20 ways you want to market your products. Make sure they're tasks. Something like "Front Page Of Digg" is actually a lot of other tasks - writing intriguing articles, networking with other Diggers, etc. List them all in a spreadsheet.
Next, rank each task. Rank the task on a scale from 1-5 based on how effective the task is at bringing you closer to your goals. If you're focusing on getting to the top of social bookmarking sites, writing articles and headlines are going to get a five rating as is networking on those sites. Other tasks, like video promotion might only receive a one. I can't say for sure what is working or what will work for you, but based on your best guesses at this point rank them all. Be sure you're fair in your assessments and priorities. A straight ranking of fives for everything is not going to help you determine where you need to focus your effort and time.
Now you construct the plan for the next month. For most people, we can assume four weeks with five working days in each. Now take your ranked list from above and sort it so the fives are on top. Starting from the top, start putting the tasks into your calendar. I suggest you mark off Wednesday for fives as this day is less likely to be missed by long weekends and holidays. Mark the fives down as a task in every week, if you run out of time on Wednesday, put other fives on Tuesday or Thursday. The fours and threes then go more toward the edges of the week and are only done every other week. The twos and ones go on Mondays or Fridays at most once per month. When you're finished you should be spending the most time on the five ranked tasks and the least on the one ranked tasks.
Once you have the plan finished, put into practice! Accomplish the tasks for each day before doing anything else. Don't let email, phone calls, pet or other tasks distract you before you've finished. Once it's done, you're free to work on other business related tasks or take some time off. This is just a suggestion, as different people work differently, but the important bit is to make sure you finish the tasks for the day on the day. Work your plan!
At the end of the first month, review your plan. Ask yourself, which tasks moved me closer to my goals and which ones did not? Which ones need a while longer to come to fruition and which ones are just complete duds? Go back to your original list and change the rankings for each of your tasks. Then revisit your plan and based on the new rankings, add or delete instances of tasks. Also, if you have issues with writing on Mondays, for example, and those tasks aren't being accomplished then move those tasks around so they are accomplished. Keep refining your plan month after month and then start outsourcing the tasks making you the most money.
Making a marketing plan isn't very difficult if you take it step by step. And having a plan is very often the difference between success and failure. So start planning for your success today!
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