by Steven Lohrenz

There’s a quote: “A failure to plan is a plan to fail”. I’ve found it to hold true. When things are done ad hoc or willy-nilly, they almost always end up in the wrong place. A marketing plan can give your online business focus and resolve to accomplish the important things while leaving out the unimportant. If you don’t have a marketing plan, it’s very likely you’re struggling to make money and make your business a success. In this article, I’m going to cover the basics of putting together a marketing plan that will work for you.

The first step is compiling a list of all the tasks you need to accomplish for your marketing efforts. Online this means things like: blog commenting, social networking sites, forum commenting, using StumbleUpon, article submissions, etc. You should be able to come up with a list of 15-20 ways to market your business online fairly quickly. Google “Online Marketing”, if you have any trouble. You must ensure each one is a task with definable objectives. Also make sure they are broken down into their component pieces. An example of a non-task is “Front Page Of Digg” - accomplishing this objective involves a whole slew of other things, writing engaging articles, getting Digged, networking with
other Diggers, etc. Put these tasks all in a spreadsheet.

Now you’ll rank each task. Rank each one on a scale from 1-5 on how important and effective each one is to your marketing goals. People who are focusing on promoting a site via social networking will
obviously have different ranks for tasks than a person who is focusing on blogging. Ensure you have a fair distribution of each number. A list of all ones or fives isn’t going to help you plan where to focus
your time and effort in the forthcoming month.

Now make a plan for the next month. For simplicity, just assume a five day week for the next four weeks. From the list above, sort it so the fives are on top. I suggest putting the fives into the middle of the week, Tuesday, Wednesday, and/or Thursdays. Mark these tasks down for every week. Now the fours and threes can go out to the edges of the week, most likely every other week. And the twos and ones will get some time at most once a month. When you’re done you should see you’ll be spending the most time on the tasks rated 5 and the least on the tasks ranked one.

Now that we have a bright new shiny plan, act on it. It’s not going to do very much good if it’s sitting around gathering dust! Each day look at your plan and do the tasks on it and what is on it until it is
done. Do not check emails, answer support calls or other tasks. You need to get your marketing done as quickly and efficiently as possible. No distractions.

Once you’ve gone through one month of your plan, take a few hours and determine which tasks moved you closer to your goals and which ones did not. Did you get more traffic, sales or leads from some tasks and none from others. Switch around the rankings for each of the tasks and based on those rankings come up with another plan. Other things may factor into your plan, can’t seem to get up the willpower to write blog posts on Monday’s, but the will is there on Tuesdays? Switch it around then! Keep refining your plan until it’s working the best for you. Then start outsourcing the tasks making you the most money.

Making a marketing plan isn’t very difficult if you take it step by step. And having a plan is very often the difference between success and failure. So start planning for your success today!

About the Author:
Learn how to start and build your own successful & highly profitable Internet Business in 45 days… 100% Free! I’m Steven Lohrenz and I know from personal experience. Earn Money Online