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E-marketing Articles
How to Create Your Web Site Marketing Plan
Copyright 2002 Herman Drost
Creating a web site without developing a web site marketing plan is the same as
planning for failure. A web site marketing plan is essential not only just to
survive but to continue to thrive and expand your business. You should spend 80%
of your time marketing your web site. It's the life blood of your online
business.
When to create your web site marketing plan. Most of us probably create a web
site first before we plan to market it. However just like a business plan, you
should prepare your marketing strategy ahead of time.
What's the benefit of doing this? The further you plan ahead the easier will all
the pieces of your web site fall into place.
Give me an example please Recently I was working on an ebook. Before creating
it, I worked on creating the sales page for the web site. This meant I had to
think first of all the benefits the ebook would be to my customers plus research
appropriate keywords to weave into my web copy for my web page to rank well in
the search engines.
If I had done this backwards and created the ebook first, I would have wasted
hours of time redoing my web copy to fit my web site marketing plan.
Here are 7 steps to creating your web site marketing plan:
1. Begin with the end in mind - create a vision what you want your web site to
accomplish. Define a vision statement i.e. “I will develop a highly profitable
web site within 6 months”.
2. Set doable goals - depending on your product or service, write down one or a
set of goals you BELIEVE you can accomplish i.e. “I will turn a profit of
$500/month at the end of 6 months”.
3. Choose a few marketing strategies - based on your research, pick a few
strategies to begin with that you know you can accomplish. This could include
optimizing your web site for the search engines, placing an ad in an ezine, or
writing an article to submit to online publications. Subscribe FREE to Marketing
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4. Create a time line and set a deadline - create a horizontal line on paper or
on a white board (where you can easily view it each day) and divide this line up
into days, weeks or months (or whatever duration you decide) of your marketing
campaign. Then mark the beginning and ending dates of your campaign, plus what
type of marketing method you are using.
5. Track your results - if you are running an ad either on the Internet or
offline, track its effectiveness. Use ad tracking software like adtrackz to
track all the links you place online. To know how visitors arrived at your web
site and what keywords they searched on to get there, analyze your web site
statistics (read my article “How to analyze your web traffic".)
With offline ads, use a different code for each ad. If one ad doesn't work well,
rework your copy and try it again. Once you find one that works, expand your
advertising to other publications.
6. Calculate your return on investment (ROI). - don't just blindly throw money
into an ad and hope for the best. Keep track of how much money you initially
invested in the ad and what profit you made in return. i.e. if you received $7
back in profit for every dollar you invested in your pay per click strategy,
then you are running a very successful marketing campaign.
7. Constantly evaluate your results - after each marketing campaign, evaluate
which strategies worked best and which ones did not. Repeat those marketing
strategies that are profitable to get maximum results from them. Throw out or
refine the ones that did not work well and try some different ones.
Tips Write your vision, goals, strategies and time line on a piece of paper.
Keep this next to your computer so you can refer to it from time to time so you
don't lose your focus. It's easy to get distracted, particularly when it's no
longer fun to act on your marketing plans and they just become a chore to do.
Be disciplined - stay focused on your vision, goals, strategies and dead lines.
Staying on track with your time line and accomplishing your deadlines, will give
you a great sense of accomplishment. You also can be assured you are making
progress towards achieving a profitable web site.
Try a number of strategies at the same time - by utilizing a few different
strategies together, you have a better chance of getting more visitors to your
website. For instance each week you could place an ad (free or paid) in an ezine
and write an article. Daily you could participate in the various popular forums,
newsgroups and message boards on the Internet and include a link to your web
site in your signature file.
Conclusion - creating, executing, tracking, testing and evaluating your concrete
web site marketing plan will greatly enhance your chances of building a
profitable online business.
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Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com
Affordable Web Site Design and Low
Cost Web Hosting
Subscribe to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter for more original
articles. subscribe@isitebuild.com.
You can read more
of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles
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Aticle reproduced with kind permission from Herman Drost
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