Note: The following is meant to provide you with a frame of as well as a sample of what an internet marketing plan might look like. However, each internet marketing plan needs to be customized to your individual business. We also suggest you test your plan in your market before rolling it out fully to ensure it works as you expect.
A free sample internet marketing plan
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Objectives and Goals. In other words, what do you hope that the plan and campaign achieves for you? A few thoughts on what you might use as a starting point are listed below.
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Traffic and Exposure – In other words, how many people do you want to visit your site and be exposed to your organization?
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Leads – In other words, how many customer's do I want to contact me? Note: This is less applicable when you are selling products where interaction with a sales person and follow-up required is minimal (business example: www.amazon.com )
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Sales – How many sales do I expect to generate as a results of my efforts? How will you quantify this, dollars, transactions, etc?
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Profile your audience. Who's my target? Be as specific as possible as it is a lot easier to plan to reach a specific group than a broad, unrelated mass.
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List the profile(s) of those who the campaign will be targeted towards. Who is the campaign intended for? Who will it help? Humanize the target. Are they soccer moms? NASCAR dads?
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If you are driving a longer sales cycle with in person interactions, be sure to identify the decision maker(s) you would likely need to convince.
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Select the focus of your campaign. What theme, topic, content, etc. are you going to build you internet marketing campaign?
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Build a table of ten possible ideas related to a product or service you sell. Research those topics using discussions with your customers as well as keyword research. Prioritize and pick one that is a priority for them, receives lots of internet search traffic – since traffic is a good starting point, and that is related to a profitable product or service you sell.
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Note: Content marketing might be the best course of action for you as a small business. Focusing your marketing efforts around content will allow you to achieve organic search rank more quickly and also build your credibility as an expert.
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The value proposition. What is the value proposition for the customer? In other words, what is the tangible benefit that your content is delivering to them. Why are you a credible organization to provide this? What is the real reason they should believe what you have to say? A great way to get this information or validate your assumptions it to talk with your customers.
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What is the value proposition for your organization?
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What would you like to get out of the internet marketing campaign?
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Media Mix. What channels will you use for distribution of your content? A few rules to keep in mind:
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Ensure that the channel is credible and won't undermine your organization.
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Ensure that the channel has traffic.
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Focus. Don't try every channel at the same time. Pick one, whether it is search engine optimization, search engine marketing, etc. and spend some time on it before you implement another channel.
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Research. You are going to have to hit the internet and understand what's out there and what is working for your competitors.
What specifically should you look to understand about a channel?
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Type (seo, sem, ppc, social media, online pr, content marketing)
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Site name
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Site url
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How the channel will be used – advertising, content placement, PR, etc.
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Where will they land after they click through? How many landing pages will you need? Be sure to identify each landing page and when it will be complete.
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Schedule. What's your time line? Build a detailed project plan that holds you accountable and identifies the necessary steps. You will see a brief example in the sample we provide below.
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Placement Log. You need to keep track of what channels you are using. This will be used to help you track the effectiveness of each channel.
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Ad, post or content title
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Site name (where ad, post or content is placed)
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Site url
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Date placed
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Views by month
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Referrals (aka traffic sent to website) by month
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Leads generated by month (aka conversions or contacts generated)
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Sales resulting
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Counted as a backlink?
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Measurement. What's your plan for measuring success and how to you plan to make adjustments if things are not working.
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What analytics tool will you use? Choose one and install it. Google analytics is a great free service.
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Set a series of dates to review the results recorded in your placement log vs. your goals.
A real life, sample internet marketing plan
About the sample internet marketing plan. Given our experience, results we have achieved and understanding of what it takes for small businesses to be successful marketing on the internet, we have focused this plan around content marketing – which ties together the various pieces of internet marketing (seo, sem, ppc, online PR, etc.) nicely.
This sample internet marketing is a combination of a real internet marketing plan as well as some fictitious elements to serve as a more succinct example and protect the clients identity.
Plan For: Broker selling health insurance to small groups (not individuals).
Background Information and Context: For the small group health insurance broker, the sales cycle is long. Often times, it is four to six months. This is in part due to two factors. One, small groups and even large groups only make a buying decision once per year, as group health insurance products are typically sold in year coverage blocks. Two, for the small business, the decision to offer health insurance is a big one, as is the decision to change, given the relative share that these cost make up of the businesses total expenses.
Objectives and Goals: Acquire high quality leads in the small group health insurance account market in the firms geographic area of service. Given the size of this market, the firm is looking for 40 new leads per month to split amongst three brokers. Of these 40 leads, they expect a 25% close rate or 10 new clients per month on a consistent basis once the sales cycle runs its initial course.
Profile of Audience / Decision Maker: CEO of Organizations with under 250 employees.
Background Information and Context: We arrived at this conclusion through an understanding of the small group health insurance space. Sure the small organization, less than 250 employees, may have an HR person. However they are likely swamped, worrying about payroll, compliance, etc. Health insurance to them may be an afterthought. Furthermore, in a small organization, the buck ultimately stop with the CEO. The CEO is more than likely to sign every check. As a result, even if you “sell” the HR person, you are more than likely also going to have to sell the CEO. Or worse, you are going to have to rely on the HR person to “sell” the CEO for you. Also, don't forget that in sales you should always start higher and work your way down if needed. You can never start too high. While in a large organization a CEO might be unapproachable, in a small organization, this is not the case. Many people deal directly with the CEO. Furthermore, the CEO is very likely to be concerned about health insurance and its rising cost. Each year he is seeing it grow as an expense item as well as a key employee retention tool. If you are able to show him how you can reduce his cost or the cost to his employees without impacting coverage, he will be all ears.
Campaign Focus: As we have focused this particular plan around content marketing, the overarching topic for the content we have selected is health insurance for the small group. To get more specific and give it a slant, we have narrowed it to choosing the right health insurance product for your small group. In support of this choice, keyword research reveals that there are thousands of searches per day for terms related to health insurance, affordable health insurance, small group insurance, etc. It is therefore clear that people are being forced to research health insurance, need guidance on selecting the right policy for their small organization and are using the internet as their starting point.
A few keywords and phrases resulting from our topic search that should be included in the content for rank and search purposes are as follows:
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health insurance
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affordable health insurance
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small business health insurance
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group health insurance
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health care
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blue cross blue shield
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united health
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cigna
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aetna
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oxford
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HMO
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PPO
These words will be tightly integrated into the content created – whether articles, blog posts, blog comments, forum posts, links, etc.
Value Proposition - The value proposition to be delivered via the content for the CEO of the under 250 person firm is two fold:
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They will be better informed and therefore able to select the health coverage that will keep employees happy
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They will be better informed and able to choose the right health insurance based on a consideration of employee needs and cost, saving the organization money
The firm is credible to provide this information as they are a brokerage firm that has specialized in small group health insurance for twenty years, helping thousands of clients choose the right health insurance while saving money.
The value to the firm is that we will be better positioned as an expert in the small group market. We will also obtain new client leads. New leads will come as a percentage of those that find and read the content online, turning to the firm for free advice and their free evaluation.
Sample Ad, Article, Post, Comment, Forum or Content Closing: Jim Smith is founder and managing partner of ABC Brokers. For twenty years ABC Brokers (www.abcbrokers.com) has helped small businesses and groups find the right health insurance at an affordable rate. Contact us info (at) abcbrokers (dot) com for a free, no obligation cost and coverage evaluation of your current policy.
Medium Mix:
The initial internet content marketing campaign will focus on (remember – its important to start with a limited subset):
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Type
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Site name
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URL
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Content to be placed
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Content marketing
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ezine articles
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aritcle(s) on:
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Content marketing
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eHow
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Forum marketing
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Start Up Nation
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Social media marketing
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Ryze
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Online PR
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Business Wire
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Following click thru on all content, readers will arrive at a landing page that contains sales copy related to the free, no obligation health coverage analysis (note: For ABC Brokers, this is the easiest way for them to get their foot in the door), additional information on how the coverage analysis works, a contact form as well as contact information for interested small business to request a coverage analysis, links to additional resources on the different types of health coverage (PPO, POS, HMO, HSA and CDHP) and a link to a request a quote form. This page will be located at (http://freesmallbusinessevaluation.abcbrokers.com).
Project Schedule:
Topic: How to choose the right and affordable coverage for your small business and group (Note: This should be driven by the table created to outline the medium mix. Also note the inclusion of keywords in the title.) As this is just meant to be a sample, we did not include the full project plan and schedule.
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Subtopic / topic
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Type
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Responsible
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Due
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PPO, POS, HMO, HSA... Health Insurance Alphabet Soup : How to choose the right plan for your small group.
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Article
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Jim Smith
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8/15
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Blue Cross Blue Shield, United, Cigna and Aetna. How to choose affordable health insurance coverage for your small business.
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Article
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Jim Smith
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8/22
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Press release on XYZ Brokers Free Health Coverage Analysis
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Press release
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Jim Smith
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8/29
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Placement Log
Given the somewhat combined semi-fictitious / case study like nature of the work above and to protect the client's identity, we have not included the placement log or the actual results of any work from which the information above was derived. However, here is a template for what you might like to see in the placement log.
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Title
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Site Name / URL
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Live Date
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Views
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Referrals
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Leads
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Sales
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Link Backs
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Title of ad, post, etc.
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Name and web address of site where placed
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Date made live
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Number of page views (for content marketing this would be the number of view of the post or thread)
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Amount of traffic sent to your site from the ad
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Number of leads received
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Sales derived from the leads
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Have any links back to your content resulted?
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Thanks for this. This is extremely helpful as I look to build my own internet marketing plan. Question though, can you add some information about content marketing and how it relates to this plan?
Without creating an extremely long comment, content marketing would simply be one of the channels you could use as part of your media mix. Content marketing can tie together the other elements as it makes content the focal part of your marketing efforts. It is also a good way to keep it low cost while reaching potential customers with extremely relevant adverts.
this was really helpful, thanks! Ill be sure to pass it along. And yet, I will try integrating content.
Great guide, John! This is a really helpful reference for the newbies who might stumble upon here. Above all these, I'd like to stress one trait that every marketer should have - FOCUS. Some online marketers just rely heavily on the shotgun approach, which in turn does not really produce good results. Add hardwork and patience, and you're all good to go. Cheers!