Top 5 Rules To Follow When Creating Your Marketing Plan

As the famous saying goes “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. This is very true especially when you are going to start your own business venture. When you have a solid marketing plan, you set yourself towards success because you will be able to clearly know your goals and then focus on your tasks at hand.

Too many online marketers start out without a plan and work blindly trying to make a living online.

The promises that you get from gurus are mostly coming from marketing materials and are designed to sound ‘good’ in order to entice you to buy their products. The next thing you know, you jump in and bite into the bait without any second thoughts.

Good successful business entrepreneurs almost always have a plan up their sleeves. So if you are serious about making an income online, you too should consider planning ahead before it is too late.

The Goal Of The Plan.

It is essential for all planners to know clearly what their ultimate end goal is. A good goal should be precise, clear and attainable. First ask yourself what is the true reason that made you want to start your own business? The answer to this is important because this is usually what drives you to work hard to achieve your dreams.

Next ask yourself what is it that you want to achieve with your online business? Would you prefer to provide a service or would you prefer to sell a product to your clients? After that the next obvious question is what how much budget is required for this project or business which you wish to start.

Being able to understand your own financial situation early helps you spend more carefully. This also helps you understand your marketing options better, and helps your marketing strategies to be more effective.

Who is your target market?

Knowing your target markets is very important because marketing via the shotgun approach will only waste all your budget in a flash and hence leaving you broke and soon you will find yourself unable to continue your business.

Therefore, it is really important for you to be able to define your target market with as many details as possible. Is your target market female or male? Or does your product suit both genders? Knowing this demographic alone is huge to your marketing efforts because you can potentially save a lot of money, and energy from marketing to the wrong crowd.

Your next best demographic would be your target market age. Knowing the age group of your potential clients is essential to help you when you are looking for sites to advertise one. Different age groups usually hang out on different ‘interest’ sites. For example, younger audiences would naturally view sites that are gossip based, and more mature people would usually hang out on news sites. Knowing this, you can easily reach your target market online.

Branding

Many smaller marketers will argue that there is no point in branding for smaller businesses. However, that is largely because they think that branding by itself is very expensive. People seem to think that branding has to do with large advertisements and expensive ads everywhere. However, that is a misconception.

Branding can be as small as your business name and logo. In some cases, you can be the brand itself especially if you are a consultant or if your business relies on you a lot.

Using branding early in your marketing can be very beneficial because if you do it right, people will take you as the leader in your niche / field which in return will bring you more sales. And because you branded yourself early, your prospect will turn to you ‘first’ whenever they needed your product or services.

It is said that people generally make the decision to purchase only when they are exposed to your products or services at least seven times. What this ultimately is that the more they see you and your product, the more the impression and trust for you grow. And that is all art of your branding plan.

Traffic Generation Strategies

One of the biggest challenges you will face online will be getting traffic. In fact, this tedious feat alone is responsible for countless failures online. It is hard to get a lot of traffic at the lowest cost possible let alone targeted traffic, which is why you really have to have a solid plan to get the right traffic strategies as early as possible.

Generally, there are two types of traffic generation strategies available online. One would be the paid traffic generation strategy and the other would be a free traffic generation strategy. Generally, it is said that paid traffic should be used if you need to get fast traffic and it takes less work but the cost is large. Free traffic takes time and it usually involves a lot of work.

Some of the more common traffic sources would be Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay per Click (PPC), Banner Advertising, Media Buys, Cost per View (CPV), Email Marketing, Forum Marketing and etc.

No matter what your traffic strategy is, you should try to stay within your budget and time frame that you have set for yourself during your planning. Ideally, you should aim for the lowest cost possible and the fastest return possible.

Leverage by using a team.

If you take a look at successful business owners, you will notice that they rarely achieve success alone. They have a team of experts who does what they do best, and they will contribute to the business every day for your business to grow.

Trying to do everything yourself will almost always spell disaster and most probably you won’t have enough time to do everything yourself. Hence the smart thing to do is get yourself a partner and try to outsource some of the work to people who are capable. Free some time for yourself and you will have more time to manage and grow your business.

If you are low on budget, you can try to search to get the work done via Fiverr.com as you can usually get quality work done at a low price of $5.

Making money online is a ‘real’ business, and you will do well by treating it as one. What this means is that there will be work, and there will be costs. There are even risks of losing money. The good thing is you can always plan ahead to pave a smoother road for your journey.