THE MARKETING PLAN

Creating a good marketing plan is the best thing that you can do to help assure a new web-based business’s growth. Your marketing plan should be your guide on which you base your marketing decisions and it will help to ensure that everyone involved in marketing your website works toward the same goals. A properly drawn up and instituted marketing plan not only provides a guide for the growth of your web-based business, but also how to spend your promotional dollars. Optimally a marketing plan and its budget (which is an integral part of your business’s overall budget) should cover promotion and advertising for 6 to 12 months.

Don’t forget to include in your plan’s budget a sizable allotment for market research. What you know about your target market and the information gleaned from marketing research will give you the basis for your marketing strategy. Research is the only way you will know what is necessary to design your marketing plan to reach the 25-35% of your website’s customers that are not brought to your site by search engines and directories. The plan should lay the groundwork for campaigns that will encourage customers to place an order, or to take some kind of action, that will allow you to respond — thereby establishing a relationship with another potential customer.

Preparation

Develop market objectives that are realistic and specific. If possible, hire consultants to assist you in identifying the available market, to understand who will be competing with you for that market share, and to formulate a realistic projection for your share of that market. Most of this information can be gathered from:

• Your internal records.
• Published market information from government statistics, chambers of commerce, newspapers, magazines, trade journals, banks, utility companies, city and county planning organizations, colleges and universities.
• Surveys, mail responses, telephone and personal interviews, opinion polls, market testing, and customer feedback.

Analyze your site from a promotional point of view. Then, with your marketing hat on, look at your site with a fresh eye and consider:

• What would a visitor consider as the main purpose of your website?
• Who would be interested in your website?
• How does your website stand out from other websites?

Now look at the competition:

• Are potential customers using the Web now?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the competition?
• What can be done to make the campaign’s overall message superior to your competition’s message?
• What message would be most effective in drawing potential customers to your website?
• What would cinch the conversion of potential customer into an actual customer?

This research will give you a good idea as to how you should go about reaching your current and potential customers — in other words, where you should spend your advertising dollars: banner ads, targeted opt-in email, newsletters (online or email), surveys, traditional advertising methods (print, radio, television), and incentives such as discounts, gift certificates and contests.

Now you have a good starting point for your strategic marketing campaign.

As you formulate your marketing plan consider:

Competitive Forces: Who are your major competitors now and who is likely to be your major competitors in the future? What response can you expect from those competitors to any change in your marketing strategy? How does the structure of the industry affect competitive forces in the industry?

Economic Forces: What is the general economic condition of the country or region where the majority of your customers reside (demographic research)? Are your consumers optimistic or pessimistic about the economy? What is your target market’s buying power (demographic research)? What are the current spending patterns of your target market? Are your customers buying less or more from your website and why?

Socio-cultural Forces: How are society’s (and your targeted market’s) demographics and values changing and how will these changes affect your web-based business? What is the general attitude of society regarding the Internet, your business, and its products/services? What ethical issues should you address?

Legal and Regulatory Forces: What changes in various government regulations (domestic and foreign) are being proposed that would affect the way you operate? What effect will global agreements such as NAFTA and GATT have on your web-based business?

Technological Forces: What impact will changing technology have on your target market, if any? What technological changes will affect the way you operate your website, sell your products/services, and conduct marketing activities?

Identify Target Market: What are the demographics of your target market, i.e., characteristics such as, sex, age, income, occupation, education, ethnic background, family life cycle, etc.? What are the geographic characteristics of this market, i.e. its location, accessibility, climate? What are the psychographics of your niche market, i.e., attitudes, opinions, interests, motives, lifestyles? What are the product-usage characteristics of this market?

Needs Analysis: What are the current needs of your target market? How well is your website and its products/services meeting these needs? How are your competitors’ meeting these needs? How are the needs of your niche market expected to change in the near and distant futures?

Market Positioning

Your website and its products/services cannot be all things to all people. Look at margarine or aspirin, for example, and the extremes that have been taken to create brand awareness and product differentiation. Marketing requires continual vigilance. Your marketing position must be able to change to keep up with the current conditions of the market. Constantly monitor what is happening in your “space” so that you always have up-to-date knowledge of your marketplace. After you accumulate accurate information about your customers, the segments they fit into, and the buying motives of those segments, you can select the marketing position that makes the most sense.

Performance Analysis

At this moment, how is your website performing in terms of sales volume, market share, and profitability? How does this compare to other websites in your “space”? What is the overall performance of your entire competitive marketplace? If your website’s performance is improving, what actions can you take to ensure that it continues to improve? What are your web-based business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats? (In marketing circles these four terms are commonly lumped together into the acronym — SWOT.)

Marketing Objectives

Once you have answered the above questions, you are ready to set out your marketing objectives. Define your current marketing objectives. Are your objectives consistent with recent changes in the marketing environment and/or needs of your target market? What is the specific and measurable outcome and time frame for completing each objective? How does each objective take advantage of a strength or opportunity and/or convert a weakness or threat? How is each objective consistent with your web-based business’ goals and mission?

Marketing Strategy

Next comes your marketing strategy. Once you have completed the research on your target market with specifics such as demographics, geographics, psychographics, product-usage characteristics, justifications for the selection of this target market, and your competitors in this market. Next consider your marketing mix (pricing, distribution and promotion strategies). How does this marketing mix give you a competitive advantage in your niche market? Is this competitive advantage sustainable? Why or why not?

Other Elements to Consider

Some other elements that fit within a good marketing plan are:

• Distribution channels.
• Pricing and terms of sale.
• Promotion and advertising plan.
• Marketing budget.
• Inventory selection and management.
• Visual merchandising.
• Customer relations.

When drawing up your marketing plan, think about where you want your business to be in three years and how you plan to get there — that’s your marketing plan in a nutshell. Marketing your web-based business is a never-ending task. Once you have your information and your marketing plan in place, you must continuously revisit, revise, refine, and revamp it to accommodate changes in your marketplace.

With a marketing plan in place you have a considered strategy to outmaneuver your competition by capitalizing on their weaknesses and emphasize your web-based business’s strengths. By increasing market awareness of the offerings of your website, you acquire new customers.