By: Bob Osgood
We hear it said that in order to be in business, you must be
developing a marketing plan, and this is
true. Without one, you are like a person in a dark room trying to find
something. Eventually, you may stumble across it, but how much time
did you waste in the process? If you had turned on the lights, the
odds are you would have found it a lot faster.
The Internet provides a great number of opportunities that allow
someone to get into business quickly, but many folks who try, is like
that person stumbling about a dark room. A good business plan requires
that research be done on whether it will work prior to getting
started. Once a product or service is settled on, the next major step
is developing a marketing plan.
At the risk of oversimplification, when developing a marketing plan,
one must get
information about your product or services to those who are able and
willing to buy them. You will be competing with "droves" of others
however; who are trying to accomplish the same goal, so the steps you
take here will either make or break your business. Let's see if we can
turn on a light or two.
The first part of your marketing plan should be to identify your
potential market. Again, this sounds like a simple process. But it is
amazing how many people don't. A campaign aimed directly at your
target market, will produce results.
Don't believe the ads you read about how mass email is the road to
success. Nothing could be further from the truth. If someone receives
a lot of junk email (spam) about a particular product or opportunity,
it leaves a bad taste in their mouth.
If you are into Network Marketing or represent an Affiliate, what
better place to advertise yours, than where they are trying to market
theirs? They have already made a decision about this being a viable
field, and many are looking to diversify. So here we have identified a
potential target market.
Are there ezines or newsletters that go out to these people, or others
who might be considering this? If so, this is a must. How about web
sites that accept ads which are similarly targeted? You should
definitely have representation there.
What about cost? There are thousands of places (FFA) where you can
place a free web ad. In fact, there is software that will post your ad
automatically to them. The majority of these however, only keep a
limited number of ads up there. When new ads come in, the older ones
get rolled off. Your ad there has a life, which is usually measured in
seconds. Hardly worth your time, not to mention the expense of the
software.
The real agenda here is that the FFA sites don't care if
anyone sees your ad. Their business is collecting targeted email
addresses that they then market. If you don't believe this, place an
ad in one, and watch the spam that arrives daily in your mail multiply
faster than you thought possible.
While we're on this, how about the ezines that allow free ads. This is
could be a further waste of time and effort. Yes, there is even
software to place your free ad automatically to these, again by the
thousands. Many of the people placing ads this way never even see the
publication they submit to. Some require you to subscribe before
accepting your free ad, and this helps build their subscriber base.
There is however, little if any loyalty to the publication, and many
times, the only reason they subscribe is to be able to place their ad.
If they bother to read it, they might make a cursory scan to ensure
their ad is there, and then delete it.
So what should you do? First, find a few ezines and web sites that
accept paid ads, and most are relatively inexpensive. You can get your
message out to thousands of potential customers this way. Don't think
a "one time" ad however will work. It can take 5 - 7 or so exposures
to your ad before you can expect results.
One other mistake you should avoid is to assume that the larger the
subscriber base of the publication, the better the results will be. An
ezine with only a few thousand targeted subscribers, many times will
produce better results than some that have several hundred thousand
that are not.
So, when developing a marketing plan for your business, do a little
research. Don't stumble around in the dark, hoping to find something
that works.
