Have you created a marketing plan for your Website? If not, it is time to think about developing one. An Internet marketing plan helps you make the right day-to-day and long term decisions. Without a marketing plan, it is more likely your Website will be a drain on finances rather than a business builder.
Creating a marketing plan need not be scary or difficult. It does not require a marketing degree or a lot of experience. You do, however, need to put some quality time into writing your plan. There are different ways to write a marketing plan, one of which is to create a marketing plan outline (or single summary page) through a five step process.
Those five steps are:
1. Gather and Analyze Information
2. Verbalize Your Main Challenge(s)
3. Develop Your Website Objective(s)
4. Create Strategies
5. Choose Marketing Programs
As you create your marketing plan, fill in the knowledge you gained while developing the five steps.
You will need information about your company, competitors, customers, and other industry players to reference while creating the plan. This includes all you can find about how the Internet is currently being integrated in your industry with respect to products, promotions, pricing structures, and distribution channels. From this information, you can complete industry and SWOT analyses as well as identify your target customers.
Write down the main Internet related challenges you want to overcome as a result of your plan. Referring to these main challenges will help keep you focused while creating your marketing plan. You may even want to write your challenges down in question form - "How do we _____________?". When your marketing plan is completed, it will answer the question "How do I address these challenges?"
The objective addresses the "big picture". Your objective answers the question "How will I overcome my main marketing challenge(s)?" in broad, general terms. If your company