See The Forest Not The Trees

In my last article I laid out an effective way to create a marketing plan skeleton. These were the steps needed to take when bringing your business online or if you wish to further hone an existing web property.

-Let’s take a quick look at that outline again.

I) Foundation – MRPFDDA

• Marketing Mindset

• Market Research

• Marketing Plans

• Business Formation

• Develop Product

• Design Website

• Automate Business

II) Promotion – COSAP

• Content Creation

• Site Optimization

• Social Media

• Product Affiliates

• Pay Per Visitor

III) Monetization – CAES

• Ad copy

• Web Analytics

• Email Promotion

• Marketing Surveys

Firstly and foremost before you get involved with marketing a business it is highly important to gain a broad brush stroke of information on the principles which make up the foundations of a solid mindset. I call this mindset marketing. This will include an overall understanding of how marketing plans, strategies and tactics work.

Mindset marketing is also your state of mind which will drive you and your web business towards success. It is the basis of whether you will empower yourself or drag your company into the garbage. Both of which I have experienced by the way.

Market research as I am defining it here is both the study of your market and the use of tools which will lend maximum information about your niche. Market research is seen by savvy marketers as the cornerstone to everything else you do going forward.

In researching your niche you will uncover all the important information which allows you to build the components of your business. This includes: your unique promotable advantage, type of products to offer, price to offer it at, where to offer it, whom to offer it to, your audience and more. These first two blueprint factors are definitely the most important in my mind, because without them you will fail even if you are great at everything else.

The third and also incredibly important step of defining your internet business is to have a marketing plan which lays out the steps and strategies your company will follow to get to the end of a phase towards profit. Obviously as the saying goes: “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail”.

As you can well see I am laying these steps out in logical order of what to do and in which order. People often confuse and overlap these steps. I will further clarify them as to why they must be done this way in an upcoming report.

So you must fourthly begin company formation and I will not give out any advice on this area whatsoever except to say that there are tools and sources of advice which you definitely need to seek out. These will be covered step by step in my report as well.

Once your head is full of ideas from studying your market and researching you will decide on what product to develop. You will come to some realizations about the value or potential market value of various types of products within your niche.

How will you know? Your market data shows you exactly where the money is changing hands or your prospects will reveal to you possibilities. Product development is the marketing planning process which comes easily after your market researching is done.

You may do step four or five in reverse order. The thing is the marketing research you did will help you to define your service and or products. Once you have ideas for these it will become apparent what to name your company and products as well. There is a method to all this which when followed increases the leverage of each previous step.

Site design now comes into play, and all I will say on this subject is to make it look good. First impressions of your site to your visitors can make or break your level of success. There are many things to speak of in regards to this area.

The only thing you need to know is it should not be done by you unless you have simple and brilliant tools. Outsourcing a web designer is crucial if you want artistic value. If you have the flair by all means do it yourself, but either way make sure that your concepts are being represented by getting directly involved in the process. There is a great movie called “Lost In Translation” and that is what your idea will be if you don’t actively manage the site design.

The final thing we will discuss now is business automation. I cannot even begin to stress the importance of automation. It will give you more: time, flexibility, peace of mind, reliability and speed to market.

Speed to market is a concept which says: “The more rapidly a step which produces money for you can be done; The more rapidly it can be done again.” business automation is the lever which can have you working on your business more and not in it as much.

All these concepts from the MRPFDDA Foundations and the other two major blueprint marketing planning categories will be explained at length in my report which you can grab freely…soon. Stay tuned as I discuss the other blueprint categories and sign up to receive it via email, feed reader or cell phone sms.

Marketing Planning Blueprints Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBLog

Next Article: Sample Marketing Plan

A Marketing Strategy Blueprint That Makes Sense

Have you read different authors works on how to create marketing plans for your online business? Did it leave you with too many unanswered questions? Do you know why you might have felt a bit cheated? Am I asking too many questions?

The thing that many marketers find when trying to build their online business is that the various marketing strategies and tactics out there are just that…strategies and tactics.

A business marketing plan is usually defined as a 1-5 year set of actions required to implement a strategy or to reach a marketing objective. In the case of most business owners it is more likely a one year plan if they can even follow it for one year.

The following list is a product of many years of following the jargon, tactics, plans and strategies of marketers. It is my blueprint for laying out a new web business or revamping an old one.

This is a general online marketing plan that is not a fully filled in plan, but it is a great outline and compass for seeing how various things can be sorted or mapped out. It is by no means a daily agenda, but more of an outline of steps which will lead to a functioning business model. You can see how I am categorizing my map and using acronyms as I describe on our home page.

I) Foundation – MRPFDDA

• Marketing Mindset
• Market Research
• Marketing Plans
• Business Formation
• Develop Product
• Design Website
• Automate Business

II) Promotion – COSAP

• Content Creation
• Site Optimization
• Social Media
• Product Affiliates
• Pay Per Visitor

III) Monetization – CAES

• Ad Copy
• Web Analytics
• Email Promotion
• Marketing Surveys

Now let me explain what all this means. First I placed all the foundation category bullet points there because these are the main concepts you need to build a foundation of knowledge as well a solid business foundation online. This may be missing some important point, but as you will see as this blog progresses most of those fall under one of these bullets.

The next major category you are probably aware of when selling online is promotion. Many would categorize it as website traffic. This category then includes the major areas of site promotion which will be covered on this blog.

The final category listed is monetization and basically encompasses all four of the items listed in so far as the way we are defining it. Monetization of course occurs to some level once the first two categories are built out and you have a working site. However, let us define it as meaning anything which helps to increase your website sales.

We will rap the blueprint up in the next article. Subscribe to our RSS feed or email list to receive upcoming content as it unfolds.

Internet Marketing Plans Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

Next Article: Marketing Planning Blueprint