subject: 7 Steps To Develop An Internet Marketing Plan To Boost Your Website Business [print this page] An Internet marketing plan can help launch a new business or improve profit
margins of an existing business. In either case, an Internet marketing plan
will only be effective if it has all the necessary ingredients.
7 Steps to Develop an Internet Marketing Plan to Boost Your Website Business
Step 1 DETERMINE YOUR GOALS
Where do you want to be in one year? How about in five years? Think about the
vision and mission of your business. If profit is your sole motivation for
making a business, this may not be enough to drive your business to the top.
You need a deeper, and possibly more selfless, reason to do business and
succeed in it.
Determining goals and objectives also gives your business direction and
ensures that it doesnt swerve off its chosen path. A well-written Internet
marketing plan can act as a guide or a map to ensure that you get to your
desired destination in the quickest and easiest way possible.
Make sure you have stated both long and short-term goals in your Internet
marketing plan. Naturally, short-term objectives should be in line with your
long-term objectives.
STEP 2 DETERMINE YOUR TARGET MARKET
Who will most likely purchase your products or services? More to the point,
who will most likely be attracted or inclined to purchase them? In
determining your target market, you need to know as much information as you
can about them.
Determine their age range, gender, race, preferences, and income or social
level.
STEP 3 PERFORM A SITUATION AND COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Lets start with studying from within. Identify your strengths and weaknesses.
From here, youll get an idea of what your competitive advantages are.
Simply put, a competitive advantage is what you have and other companies don
t.
Now, examine the external environment. What kind of opportunities and threats
are present? If you are just starting out, determine the entry barriers that
you might face once you launch your business.
Take a look at your competitors next. Make a benchmark study. Compare
yourself at every level. Is the quality of your products and services
superior or inferior to theirs? Are you selling your items more cheaply or
expensively?
Step 4 DETERMINE STRATEGIES AND TACTICS
If you dont have a website yet, then creating a website, and a good one at
that, should be included in your strategies. If you have an existing website
already then you must evaluate its performance. Is it working for your
business? Does it fit with your Internet marketing plan? Will it help you
attain your goals?
Strategies are general courses of action that would involve the whole company.
They will be later on divided into tactics. Strategies are to ensure that
you obtain long-term goals while tactics are there to help you obtain your
short-term goals.
All your strategies and tactics will revolve around your website. At this
point, you need to learn how to design your website using HTML and make use
of search engine optimization or SEO techniques. If you are not willing to do
any of these, you should hire the services of a competent web designer and
SEO specialist. It is impossible to have an effective website without at
least a functional layout and SEO.
Lastly, dont forget to ensure that your strategies and tactics are designed
to match the preferences of your target market, take advantage of your
strengths while downplaying your weaknesses.
Step 5 DETERMINE THE MOST SUITABLE ADVERTISING AND PROMOTION OPTIONS FOR THE
BUSINESS
There are many ways to advertise about your website and some of them wont
even require you to shell out money like posting product or service-related
entries in blogs and forums. Paid forms of advertising include purchasing
click ads and participating in affiliate marketing networks. Make sure your
ultimate choices will have the greatest access to your target market.
Promoting means intentionally creating buzz and hype about your website. You
can do this by creating a contest, giving away freebies, and so forth.
STEP 6 IMPLEMENT THE NECESSARY CHANGES
Put your plan into motion. Do it by the book as much as you can but dont
hesitate to make a few tweaks here and there because there will always be
gaps between what you expect to happen and what will happen.
STEP 7 MONITOR AND EVALUATE CONSTANTLY
Review the results after one, three, and six months. There are numerous
tracking software programs to help you monitor the performance of your
website. Do this regularly and make sure to implement the necessary changes.
