If you are one of these people the answer is very simple. You need a bit more information, or maybe a whole lot of more information. The marketing plan should be up there at #1 or #2 in your business plan because it helps you with everything, attracting the right executives, landing investors, getting loans, not to mention selling your product or service, getting it to your customers and providing spectacular service.
If you don't know where to start it's a good thing you are here, reading along. Your marketing plan and strategy should be at the center of your company's culture. You should have best practices, training, "image police", and all of the bells and wistles.
Please don't concentrate first and foremost on your product and then try to market it and sell it. This is in my experience the No. 1 problem in business; at least for my customers. They try to find a great product or import it or develop it and manufacture it. They spend a lot of time and money on it, on designs, development, on refining the product. Once they spent the money, many times even produced the product, they say, "ok, it's time for the marketing plan". NOOOOO!!!
It's backwards! First you do some marketing in the form of market research to see if your product is ready for the market or, in better words, if the market is ready for your product. Is there is any competition, what the best price is for your products, who is your potential customer, where are they? Any distribution strategies, and more.
One of the best ways of doing this quick research is with competitors. OK now, please don't tell me "But Jorge, I don't have any competitors?Really". I've heard that many times and every single time without fail I find at least 5 competitors in less than 5 minutes of research. IMPORTANT: --It does not matter if you think or don't think you have competitors, it matters if your potential customers perceive another company as being your competitor or a competitor to your product-- You can quote me on this one!
Back to the issue at hand, your Marketing Plan. My first recommendation is to do a bit more research, study more, read some articles, case studies and books (read some of mine!). After you have a better idea of what marketing is about you will be 100% ready to start your marketing plan. Don't forget to involve others in the process, your sales team, production team, shipping, accounting, everyone. It's important to make marketing a team effort. After all, you are in business to market, in other words, to produce money from the marketplace.
The process of internet marketing becomes very easy if you have a pre-planned business plan on paper, here you would only be required to implement it into the existing marketing plan. But if you don't have any specific prior planning and just a wild idea about it in mind, then you have to do it strategically for its accomplishment.
The first step is to decide the aim of the online marketing plan. The tasks that you want to achieve, do you want to give information, provide services or sell products, etc have to be made clear. It may also include decisions regarding creation of online community, the budget planning for online marketing, clear goals and budget makes the end result more practical and profitable.
Usually the products/services offered are exhibited in a funnel format, where the free offers form the top most layer and they have more number of clients to have them. As it goes down to premium offers where the investments are high-priced forms the base of the internet marketing funnel. Do you have planning for your company? If not you may consider having one.
Studying your competitors business and their online marketing techniques would help in designing yours so that your position in the market becomes strong. See to it your present position in comparison to your competitor. Go through the top 10 websites of your competitors and their popularity statistics. You can also check out in Google about their web traffic ranking and the sites that backlink them. The reasons why they score well online should be known to you in order to create an effective internet marketing plan.
Have clear information about your target market and customers. It would aid in clearly defining the marketing tactics in order to lure them. Customers? geographical location, age group, sex, industry, socio-economic groupings, their preferred areas of interest, preferences, etc if known serves to be extremely beneficial and easy for crafting the online marketing plan. What keywords they are most likely to search for your website type if known can put your site at higher SEO rank.
Above were some initial and most basic points to be followed for better online marketing plan!!
Both Jorge Olson & Alan L Smith are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Jorge Olson has sinced written about articles on various topics from How to Sell on Ebay, Trucks and The Internet. Jorge Olson is a and business owner. He’s been a successful VP of Marketing and CEO for several companies and now helps others with their. Jorge Olson's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.
Alan L Smith has sinced written about articles on various topics from The Internet, Web Development and Computers and The Internet. SPINX Los Angeles offers professional web design, website development, web design,. Alan L Smith's top article generates over 40500 views. to your Favourites.