Marketing Campaign

Marketing Campaign Planning Checklist

Before you begin your market research campaign, use this form to analyzethe costs.Print ShareThis Get the Mag Weekly Updates[-]Text Size[+]

Before you launch a marketing campaign, answer the following questionsabout your business and your product or service.

Have you analyzed the market for your product or service? Do you knowwhich features of your product or service will appeal to different marketsegments?In forming your marketing message, have you described how your product or service will benefit your clients?Have you prepared a pricing schedule? What kinds of discounts do youoffer, and to whom do you offer them?Have you prepared a sales forecast?What type of media will you use in your marketing campaign?Have you planned any sales promotions?Have you planned a publicity campaign?Do your marketing materials mention any optional accessories or addedservices that consumers might want to purchase?If you offer a product, have you prepared clear operating and assemblyinstructions? What kind of warranty do you provide? What type of customer service or support do you offer after the sale?Do you have product liability insurance?Is your style of packaging likely to appeal to your target market?If your product is one you can patent, have you done so?How will you distribute your product?Have you prepared job descriptions for all of the employees needed tocarry out your marketing plans?

Are you planning for explosive sales this year through an effective,organized Internet marketing campaign or are you maintaining your statusquo and hoping for the best?A planned, organized Internet marketing campaign with rotation through avariety of targeted sites, directories and venues is not hard to coordinate,does not need to cost a great deal of money and can generate traffic and salesfaster than search engine submissions alone. It takes a bit of research and asolid knowledge of your target customer, but you can plan and implement asimple marketing campaign in the space of a dedicated day.A Five StepMarketing Planfollows, created by in the trenches experiencewith Internet marketing for small business. By doing each of the actions,you'll end up with an effective holiday marketing campaign, creating amarketing plan that can be implemented immediately and begin reaping yousales successes.

Internet Marketing Plan Step 1 - Defining Your Customer

Defining your customer is as important as defining your products or namingyour business. If you have not yet done amarketing planwithin your business plan, then you need to do this exercise. If you already have this inyour business plan, you can skip ahead to Step 2.

Action:

Answer these questions as honestly as you can. In other words, don't projectyour expectations or hopes on them. What is your perfect, solid customer really like?

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Is my perfect customer male or female?

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Does my perfect customer work out of the home or in the home?

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What is the job profile of my perfect customer - an executive,manager, worker, entrepreneur, stay-at-home parent, etc.

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What is the net household income of my perfect customer?

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What level of education does my perfect customer have?

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Does my perfect customer have room in her spending budget for my product/service on a one time, occasional or constant basis?

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How do my perfect customers use my product/service - do they buy itfor themselves or as a gift?

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Does my perfect customer spend a lot, some or minimal time on theInternet?

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Where does my perfect customer look for my product/service? Bothonline and in physical locations?Once you have this written out, you should have a good picture of where tostart looking to place your message and how to write your message copy.

Internet Marketing Plan Step 2 - Choosing Your Targets

Now, where are you going to post your ads? A coordinated effort acrossseveral sites and venues commonly frequented by your customers is themost effective marketing campaign. If you are seen in several places your visibility and retained message is much stronger. Complementary sites thatyou can help cross-promote to your visitors, who will then see you there too,will provide excellent reinforcement of your message. Holiday specific sitesthat are well promoted are excellent areas to consider.When considering a site or newsletter for your ad, look at factors such astraffic, search engine placement, external linking (how many places link toit), quality of current ads and types of messages being presented in currentads. Are there many competitors of yours already or is the advertising of acomplementary nature to your business? Are the ads completely unrelated toyour business and to the intended traffic of the site? These are all clues tomeasure a best fit of your message to the traffic of the site.Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is another consideration for your Internetmarketing campaign but can be daunting for someone new to this form. If you're new to PPC, stick to places that allow you to set limits on dailyexpenditures. Google is a good example. This will also help you toexperiment and determine the most effective keywords by paying closeattention to the statistics of the PPC campaign.Conversion rates are an important measuring tool. What you need to do isdetermine what exactly you want to measure for your marketing campaign.