By: Bobette Kyle
www.WebsiteMarketingPlan.com
For those new to marketing
planning, the thought of completing a plan from start to finish may
feel daunting. It need not. The level of detail you choose to include
in your marketing plan will depend on your resources and situation. If
you have extremely limited manpower or other resources, you may be
constrained to a "broad brush" approach. If your plan must support
your Web site’s validity to others in the company, a lot of back-up
detail may be appropriate.
Basic Marketing Plan Content
Include a summary at the beginning. Like any business report,
your plan write-up should begin with a summary. The traditional
executive summary is one option. I prefer to include - either in
addition to or instead of the executive summary - a one-page table.
The table makes everyday
use of your plan easier. In one glance you can be reminded of your
main challenge, objective, strategies, and tactics as well as budgets
and deadlines. Also, as your plan evolves throughout the year, the
table makes it easier to strategically modify the plan.
Explain your reasoning.
Make some reference to why
you chose the specific objective(s) and strategies in your plan. This
will make it easier to justify the plan to others (if necessary). It
will also help you make smarter, strategic decisions.
Identify your target customers.
By doing so, you will be
better able to develop effective advertising messages.
Write one or more positioning statements. In the statement(s),
specify the customer needs you are fulfilling, benefits your
products/services offer, and features that deliver those benefits.
Explain key issues and opportunities. These can best be
identified through industry and/or competitive analyses.
Include preliminary budgets and timelines for your action
plans.
Expanded Content for Your Marketing Plan
You can also expand your marketing plan write-up to include detailed
analysis and arguments to substantiate your plan:
Describe the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
your business and/or Web site face (SWOT analysis).
Explain the online business environment. What are your
competitors’ Web strategies? How do your customers use your site,
competing sites, and the Internet in general? What potential
substitutes are available?
Include the trends in your industry and how they affect both
online and offline activity. Show growth projections.
Detail the financial aspects. Include break even analysis for
your site as well as for the tactics included in your plan. Discuss
assumptions made when completing your financial analysis. Show how
implementation of your plan will be profitable to your business.
Include a calendar of events that shows milestones in the
coming weeks or months.
You can be as detailed or top-line as needed with the final marketing
plan write-up. In any case remember that your marketing plan is always
a work in progress. It may be current, but it is never "done".
Marketing Plan Resource
The target marketing plan and Web promotion guide How Much for Just
the Spider? Strategic
Web Site Marketing explains how to create an effective marketing
plan.
