Stages in developing your e-marketing plan Develop an e-marketing plan It is important to recognise that planning for e-marketing does

not mean starting from scratch. Any online e-communication must be consistent and work with the overall marketing goals and current marketing efforts of your business. The main components of an e-marketing plan will typically include the following stages: Identify your target audience - if you identify multiple targets, rank them in order of importance so that you can allocate resources accordingly. Profile each target group and understand their requirements and expectations. This type of customer segmentation will help you choose the right tactics for your plan. Understand your competitors - profile your competitors and the market in which you operate. What types of online marketing do your competitors use and how well do they perform? This type of benchmarking will help you understand the environment in which you are operating. See the page in this guide on planning - situation analysis. Set your objectives - possible objectives could include raising awareness of your brand, improving sales or online registrations, improving customer retention, providing greater internal efficiencies such as decreased marketing costs and reduced order-taking and fulfilment costs. The objectives that you choose depend on your business needs. For more information see the page in this guide on planning - objectives and strategy. Plan your tactics - once you have a top-level strategy including your overall objectives, you need to identify the tactics that you want to use. The plan can also cover any other non-internet marketing activities that are being undertaken. Think about how you will measure your success - build in feedback mechanisms and regular reviews to enable you to assess the performance of your e-marketing activities and identify areas for improvement. For more information, see the page in this guide on planning tactics. Agree a budget - careful budgeting allows you to prevent costs spiralling out of control. Identify the returns you expect to make from your investment in e-marketing activities and compare these with the costs in order to develop a cost/benefit analysis. For more information, see the page in this guide on planning - budget.

E-Marketing Plan Template Crown copyright 2011

E-Marketing Template

Contents Page

Develop an e-marketing plan.........................................................................................1 Stages in developing your e-marketing plan..............................................................1 E-Marketing Template...................................................................................................2 Contents Page.................................................................................................................2 Executive Summary.......................................................................................................2 Situation Analysis..........................................................................................................2 SWOT.........................................................................................................................3 4 Cs...........................................................................................................................3 Summary of Key issues..............................................................................................3 Objectives and Strategy..................................................................................................3 Tactics............................................................................................................................4 Budget............................................................................................................................4
Add your business name here: Executive Summary

Provide a short introduction outlining the following: Brief summary of the immediate environment The key issues that have emerged Key objectives of your online marketing plan Overview of strategies and tactics to be used Projected outcomes and return on investment

This summary should be very top level and no longer than a page in length. Add notes here.

Situation Analysis

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The situation analysis needs to set the context for the plan. It should include an analysis of the micro (internal) and macro (external) environment. Address each of the following: Digital specific SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) A summary of the 4 Cs (focussed on digital): o Customer (characteristics, behaviours, needs, wants) o Company (benchmark your current online proposition) o Competitors (benchmark your competitors performance) o Change (Political, Economic, Social and Technological factors) Summary of the key issues that have emerged.

Where possible use qualitative and quantitative data to support your analysis. Use images, charts and graphs to illustrate your findings. SWOT Strengths Weaknesses Opportunity Threats

4 Cs Customer Company Competitors Change

Summary of Key issues Objectives and Strategy

The objectives for your plan need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely). When defining these objectives think about the following:

E-Marketing Plan Template Crown copyright 2011

What the Return on investment will be? This may include increased customer spend, greater brand awareness, an increase in visits and online registrations, etc. How you quantify and measure the success of your plan will depend on your business and marketing objectives. This will differ from business to business. Define objectives for each part of the customer journey - Awareness, Acquisition and Conversion. Your plan needs to look at the whole customer journey.

Make sure that your objectives reflect exactly what you will be measured on (KPIs). Once your objectives have been defined, you need to provide a top level summary of your Strategy outlining how you are going to use digital marketing to meet them. The strategy should summarise the bigger picture without yet going into the detail. It should explain the concept behind the tactics, providing a general overview of the techniques to be used. Add notes here. Tactics The tactics will define the channels and tools that you will use. In this section you will add the detail to your strategy. Your tactics should define your goals for each tactic, how they are aligned to your main objectives, and how you will measure performance. This part of the plan should provide the implementation details. If employing an agency to carry out specific parts of your online marketing activity, get them to feed into this section. Think about how your tactics are going to play out across the year. Keep this section to the point and think about breaking your tactics up into awareness, acquisition and conversion. Provide specific detail on the following: What tactics you will use and how they will be integrated Operational factors, justification and customer targeting An indication of cost this can be top level as detail will be provided in the Budget What you will be measuring and projected outcomes (KPIs)

Budget The final section of this plan will outline your budget. This is best presented as a single spreadsheet with tactics broken down by awareness, acquisition and conversion. Provide specific detail on the following: Your total cost breakdown (overall spend across tactics) Monthly phasing of budget spend across all tactics Any financial KPIs and milestones that need to be reached Phased return on investment across tactics
E-Marketing Plan Template Crown copyright 2011

A concluding top level summary of benefits

For the last bullet point you need to estimate projected channel outcomes. This will include estimates on how much traffic will be generated from each tactic and the number of prospects that will likely go onto convert. In addition a Sales and profit analysis can be used to help you quantify the net profit that your eMarketing plan will generate. Add notes here.

E-Marketing Plan Template Crown copyright 2011