Internet marketing plan

How to Use This Template

An internet marketing plan describes and guides all aspects of a company or organizations online

marketing efforts.

This template will help you produce a complete end-to-end marketing plan quickly. The template is

generic enough for use with an extremely wide variety of businesses. It is useful for information (virtual)

product businesses, businesses with physical products, service oriented businesses, and even local

businesses serving local customers.

This template includes general business topics that are important in developing a great marketing plan.

These topics include competitors, opportunities, and much more.

This template is delivered as a standard Word document, allowing you complete freedom to edit it and

use it as you see fit. You can easily edit or delete sections as appropriate for the particular situation.

The only restriction is that you do not have PLR rights to sell it as a template to other people. You may

use a completed marketing plan with your own business, or for your consulting clients.

Using this template will help make sure that the entire range of internet marketing options are

covered.

Using this template will make developing a complete internet marketing plan go faster because

much of the common boilerplate text is included. You do not have to rewrite the standard text

from scratch.

Using this template will make developing a complete internet marketing plan go faster because

it is already formatted for delivery.

Using this template for your own business will help you market your business and gain more

customers.

Using this template as a tool for consulting for other businesses will help your reputation as an

internet marketing expert.

Using this template as a tool for consulting for other businesses will help you gain ongoing

business. You will be the natural person to implement the marketing plan that you deliver to

your customer.

I recommend that you use this template as part of a complete internet marketing effort in four phases.

1. Phase One – Information Gathering During this phase, you gather all of the information required to complete the internet marketing plan.

You need to understand the business, its products, its current marketing efforts, its competition, etc.

The template will help you make sure you cover all the areas you need to cover to do a great job.

2. Phase Two – Analysis This phase adds the most value. You take the raw data gathered in Phase One and analyze it to create a

complete understanding of the business, its current operations and marketing, and a detailed plan for

how to market the business on the internet.

The template will guide the analysis process to help you create the most effective and complete plan.

3. Phase Three – Documentation This phase is where you create the actual document for your own use and/or to deliver to your client.

You are able to delete or modify sections to ensure your ability to deliver during the implementation

phase.

Using the template allows you to avoid all the boring repetitive work involved, and to concentrate on

the highest-value part of planning.

4. Phase Four – Implementation This phase follows after the plan is totally completed. Based on your abilities, the available budget, and

the wishes of your client (if applicable), you are then able to accomplish the tasks outlined in the

marketing plan. Of course, you can outsource (at a profit) tasks which you either do not want to do, or

are not able to do.

Using the template gives you a complete plan to follow with milestones and steps for implementation.

Internet Marketing Plan for [client name]

Prepared by

[name]

Version [x.x]

[preparation company name]

[date]

Internet Marketing Plan

Original template from leowadsworth.com

5. Table of Contents 1. Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ 4

2. Document History ............................................................................................................................ 6

3. Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................... 7

4. Terminology .................................................................................................................................... 7

5. Business and Products Analysis ........................................................................................................ 8

5.1 Business Analysis...................................................................................................................... 8

5.1.1 Overall Internet Business Summary .................................................................................. 8

5.1.2 Traffic ............................................................................................................................... 8

5.1.3 Conversions ...................................................................................................................... 8

5.1.4 Economics ........................................................................................................................ 8

5.2 Products Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 8

5.2.1 Products Descriptions ....................................................................................................... 8

5.2.2 Unique Selling Proposition (USP) ...................................................................................... 8

5.2.3 Value to Customers .......................................................................................................... 8

5.3 SWOT Analysis ......................................................................................................................... 9

5.3.1 Strengths .......................................................................................................................... 9

5.3.2 Weaknesses ..................................................................................................................... 9

5.3.3 Opportunities ................................................................................................................... 9

5.3.4 Threats ............................................................................................................................. 9

6. Market Analysis ............................................................................................................................. 10

6.1 Current Markets ..................................................................................................................... 10

6.2 Competitors ........................................................................................................................... 10

6.3 Future Markets ...................................................................................................................... 10

7. Persona ......................................................................................................................................... 11

7.1 Demographic Factors ............................................................................................................. 11

7.1.1 [Name of First Persona, demographic factors] ................................................................ 11

7.1.2 BIO ................................................................................................................................. 11

7.1.3 Interests / Needs ............................................................................................................ 11

7.1.4 Specific Benefits ............................................................................................................. 11

7.2 Keywords ............................................................................................................................... 12



7.2.1 Research ........................................................................................................................ 12

7.2.2 Initial Selection of Keywords ........................................................................................... 12

8. Marketing Strategies...................................................................................................................... 13

8.1 Marketing Objectives ............................................................................................................. 13

8.2 Budget ................................................................................................................................... 13

8.3 Products and Pricing Strategy ................................................................................................. 13

8.4 General Strategy .................................................................................................................... 13

9. Marketing Implementation ............................................................................................................ 14

9.1 PPC marketing ........................................................................................................................ 14

9.2 Other Internet Advertising ..................................................................................................... 14

9.3 Website ................................................................................................................................. 14

9.4 SEO Marketing ....................................................................................................................... 15

9.4.1 Summary ........................................................................................................................ 15

9.4.2 SEO Philosophy ............................................................................................................... 15

9.4.3 Keywords ....................................................................................................................... 15

9.4.4 Off-Site SEO .................................................................................................................... 15

9.4.5 Viral SEO......................................................................................................................... 15

9.4.6 Social SEO ....................................................................................................................... 15

9.4.7 Site-Wide SEO ................................................................................................................ 15

9.4.8 On-Page SEO .................................................................................................................. 15

9.4.9 Local SEO ........................................................................................................................ 15

9.4.10 Search Results SEO ......................................................................................................... 15

9.4.11 CMS SEO......................................................................................................................... 15

9.4.12 Implementation .............................................................................................................. 15

9.5 Affiliate Marketing ................................................................................................................. 16

9.5.1 Training and Materials .................................................................................................... 16

9.5.2 Sources for Affiliates (Such as former customers) ........................................................... 16

9.5.3 General Affiliates ............................................................................................................ 16

9.6 Email (Newsletter) Marketing................................................................................................. 16

9.7 Email (Lists) Marketing ........................................................................................................... 16

9.7.1 Opt-In / Generated Lists ................................................................................................. 16

9.7.2 Purchased Lists ............................................................................................................... 16



9.7.3 List Growth ..................................................................................................................... 17

9.7.4 Autoresponder Development ......................................................................................... 17

9.8 Press Releases ........................................................................................................................ 17

9.9 Social Media Strategy (Facebook / Twitter) ............................................................................ 17

9.10 Reputation Enhancement / Brand Building ............................................................................. 17

9.10.1 Whitepapers / Peer-Reviewed Publishing ....................................................................... 17

9.10.2 Blog ................................................................................................................................ 17

9.10.3 E-Zine Article Marketing and Guest Blogging .................................................................. 17

9.10.4 Forums ........................................................................................................................... 17

9.11 Offline and Other Marketing .................................................................................................. 17

9.11.1 Material Preparation ...................................................................................................... 18

9.11.2 Personal / Current Marketing ......................................................................................... 18

9.11.3 Tradeshows .................................................................................................................... 18

9.11.4 Salespeople .................................................................................................................... 18

10. Calendar and Timing ...................................................................................................................... 19

10.1 Milestone One ....................................................................................................................... 19

10.2 Milestone Two ....................................................................................................................... 19

11. Sales Tracking ................................................................................................................................ 20

12. Contingency Planning .................................................................................................................... 21

12.1 Success Criteria ...................................................................................................................... 21

12.2 Risk Mitigation ....................................................................................................................... 21

13. Action Items / Next Steps............................................................................................................... 22

6. Document History Version 1.0 – initial draft delivered [date]



7. Executive Summary This is a template for an internet marketing plan, prepared by Leo Wadsworth Consulting (LWC),

http://leowadsworth.com, email: [email protected]. While this plan focuses on internet

related marketing, it does touch on offline marketing as well. However, this is not a business plan, but is

specifically focused on marketing related data and plans.

While it is impossible to absolutely guarantee a particular outcome, especially in this highly varying and

depressed economy, it is strongly believed that this marketing effort will result in tuned controllable

strategies capable of delivering more customers than can be properly serviced with the current

infrastructure. This should cause the limits to be driven by business capacity, rather than lack of

customers.

8. Terminology It is important that we use the same vocabulary to retain precision in our communication. This section

will detail specific terms used in this document.

Conversion – this represents an actual purchase – something where a customer actually gives us money.

Keywords are the words and phrases used by people when they search. A keyword is not necessarily a

single word, but rather a single search.

Organic Traffic – this is traffic coming to the website from normal search results, as opposed to ads. As

we improve the website, we intend to increase this free traffic.

PPC – Pay Per Click advertising, typically on Google (Adwords), but also includes Bing/Yahoo. The ads

are sold using an online automated auction model for a given keyword.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization, efforts we take to improve how your website appears in the search

results from Google and Bing and Yahoo.

http://leowadsworth.com/

mailto:[email protected]



9. Business and Products Analysis

9.1 Business Analysis

9.1.1 Overall Internet Business Summary

This summary is about the overall internet component of the business.

9.1.2 Traffic

How is the traffic to the business?

9.1.3 Conversions

How are conversions (both as raw numbers, and as % of traffic)

9.1.4 Economics

How is the economics of the business? Making/losing money? Is there any obvious areas for significant

improvement of efficiencies? Outsourcing opportunities?

9.2 Products Analysis

9.2.1 Products Descriptions

Describe the products or services to be sold.

9.2.2 Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

What makes the offering unique? List unique items as well as items other might have but you have in a

unique combination.

Item 1

Item2

9.2.3 Value to Customers

What are the specific benefits for your customers? This is not a list of features, but rather what benefits

the customer receives.

Benefit 1

Benefit 2

Benefit 3

Benefit 4

Benefit 5



9.3 SWOT Analysis

9.3.1 Strengths

Strengths involve items which are internal to the company and its methods and products. These are

things which contribute to strength in the marketplace.

Strength 1

Strength 2

9.3.2 Weaknesses

Weaknesses involve items which are internal to the company and its methods and products. These are

things which weaken CTM’s strength in the marketplace. These weaknesses are viewed both internally

(things which we know about because we are part of the company) and externally (things which would

appear from a customer’s perspective).

Internal

o Weakness 1

o Weakness 2

Extenal

o Weakness 1

o Weakness 2

9.3.3 Opportunities

Opportunities are things both internal and external to the company which represent opportunities for

improvement or advancement in the marketplace.

Internal

o Opportunity 1

o Opportunity 2

Extenal

o Opportunity 1

o Opportunity 2

9.3.4 Threats

Threats are external to the company, and typically represent actions or potential actions by competitors.

Threat 1

Threat 2



10. Market Analysis

10.1 Current Markets What is the current market? Example: demographics of current customers, size of market, etc.

10.2 Competitors Who are your main competitors? You may want to do a SWOT analysis on each one if there are just a

few. It is also wise to see who is advertising or ranking on Google for similar services.

10.3 Future Markets Are there opportunities / markets that you can serve in the future that you are not currently serving?

Some of these may be appropriate to go after immediately, while others may be deferred until later.



11. Persona Using persona can be a powerful way to help analyze and understand your market and your customers.

A good introduction to the use of persona can be found here: An introduction to personas and how to

create them

11.1 Demographic Factors In developing the persona it is appropriate to consider a number of different demographic factors, such

as sex, age, financial status, etc. This section details the demographics which were appropriate for this

marketing plan.

Typically 4-5 persona are appropriate. Often it takes significant effort to get it down to this number, but

the effort is time well spent because it sharpens the marketing focus and effort.

11.1.1 [Name of First Persona, demographic factors]

Insert Picture – using a “picture” of the fictional person helps the client really make a connnection to the

persona

11.1.2 BIO

insert a short “biography” of the persona

11.1.3 Interests / Needs

What are the general interests and needs of the person?

11.1.4 Specific Benefits

How are you able to benefit this person?

http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_personas/index.html

http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_personas/index.html



11.2 Keywords

11.2.1 Research

This effort is to determine the keywords that we will use, both in optimizing the website and in the PPC

(pay per click) advertising campaign. In many ways, the right keywords drive the entire marketing effort

so it is important to choose these carefully. By choosing keywords which are relevant to our products,

we enhance both the initial click and the conversion rates because our audience is matched to our

offerings.

The long tail of a keyword represents a far greater number of searches than the head. In a 2008 report,

Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, revealed that for any given topic, the top 100

keywords account for just 5.7% of all website traffic - while long tail keywords account for the remaining

94.3%!

There are two ways to utilize the long tail. One is to use broad matches on a few keywords and then to

have an extensive custom exclude list. The other is to use a long list of keywords. Both have advantages

and disadvantages.

There are two specific advantages to using long tail keywords. First, they are more targeted to the

specific audience. For example, we will make sure that “free” is NOT part of the search term,

eliminating folks doing searches that are not related to us.

Second, they have less competition for advertisements than the head keywords, resulting in cheaper ads

for us.

11.2.2 Initial Selection of Keywords

This section describes the process used, and the initial keywords.



12. Marketing Strategies

12.1 Marketing Objectives The primary objective of this marketing plan is to …

12.2 Budget ***It is absolutely crucial that the budget be determined for the marketing effort. It is VERY easy to

spend lots of money on ads without anything to show for it. Knowing your budget and tracking your

progress and effectiveness is important to avoid going out of business.***

12.3 Products and Pricing Strategy This section details the exact products and pricing to be used, including discounts and promotions.

12.4 General Strategy This section states the general strategy, including coordination with offline marketing.



13. Marketing Implementation

13.1 PPC marketing PPC stands for “Pay Per Click”. The largest target (by far) for PPC advertising is Google AdWords. These

are the ads you see alongside the search results when you search using Google.com. Advertisers (like

us) pay Google based upon the number of clicks generated sending people to our site.

The nature of PPC campaigns is to always tweak and improve them and monitor them for changes and

ways to improve them, but the initial effort should provide a robust base framework.

Resource: a great resource is “The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords”, a $49. e-book available from

http://perrymarshall.com.

There are certain things to watch closely in a PPC campaign. First, you watch and track the cost you are

paying per click closely. As your advertisement “quality score” goes up with Google over time, you can

often reduce your bid per click and retain your ads positions and effectiveness at lower cost. Because

Google wants good quality ads and results, they reward such ads according to their own algorithms.

Next you need to watch the percentage of clicks versus ad impressions. You want to optimize your ads

to generate the most clicks for the least impressions. More clicks per impression will mean less money

spent on ads because it affects the quality rating of the ad. This typically involves testing multiple ads to

determine what works best. Small changes in the ads can make huge differences. Here’s an example

from Perry Marshall of an ad where a small change results in a 63% improvement in results.

Simple Self Defense

For Ordinary People

Easy Personal Protection Training

www.tftgroup.com

Response rate: 0.8%

Simple Self Defense

For Ordinary People

Fast Personal Protection Training

www.tftgroup.com

Response rate: 1.3%

Yes, changing one word from “Easy” to “Fast” made a huge difference.

Finally, you need to watch the conversion rate on your website. The ad will send people to a custom

landing page, which will pitch them to buy the product. The better the landing page / sales pitch, the

more people will actually buy the product. You have the advantage that the folks coming to the landing

page have already expressed interest – you “just” need to close the sale. Better conversion rates mean

lower costs. This is another area for continuous testing and refinement.

13.2 Other Internet Advertising There are many other opportunities for advertising on the Internet, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

13.3 Website This section describes issues concerning the website of the company, including any changes to be made.

http://perrymarshall.com/

http://www.tftgroup.com/

http://www.tftgroup.com/



13.4 SEO Marketing

13.4.1 Summary

Summary of the overall SEO Marketing effort.

13.4.2 SEO Philosophy

Describe your SEO Philosophy

13.4.3 Keywords

Re-iterate the keywords selection area, along with any specifics related to SEO

13.4.4 Off-Site SEO

Things which are done off-site (primarily backlinks) to improve SEO

13.4.5 Viral SEO

Things which are done to encourage others to link to your site organically (such as link bait or viral

content)

13.4.6 Social SEO

Things to be done with the social media to enhance SEO results

13.4.7 Site-Wide SEO

Things to be done on entire site for SEO, such as domain name selection, subdomain and subdirectory

selection, sitemap.xml, robots.txt, etc.

13.4.8 On-Page SEO

Things to be done on each page for SEO such as URLs, title of page, meta description, keywords in

content, LSI keywords in content, etc.

13.4.9 Local SEO

Things to be done to help local SEO, such as Google Places

13.4.10 Search Results SEO

Things to be done that help your search results look better, such as wording of your page title (typically

used as the link) and page metadescription (typically used as the description)

13.4.11 CMS SEO

Things to be done with their CMS (such as WordPress or Drupal) that can help SEO efforts.

13.4.12 Implementation

Specifics regarding their implementation



13.5 Affiliate Marketing Affiliate marketing is a process in which other people sell your products or services for a commission.

They are not “employees,” and do not earn a base salary. Typically they do not work full-time, instead

working a few hours as they have time. Much of affiliate marketing takes place online – through the

affiliates own ads and websites.

13.5.1 Training and Materials

Affiliates need to be supplied with training and promotional materials, as well as developing an

appropriate affiliate program and agreement.

13.5.2 Sources for Affiliates (Such as former customers)

Former customers may be an outstanding source for affiliates. They already know the product and its

benefits. They also are likely to have contacts in the market groups we are trying to reach.

13.5.3 General Affiliates

There are various companies specifically designed to help connect affiliates with companies that want to

use them. It is also possible to set up and advertise our own general affiliate program.

Google Affliate Network (formerly DoubleClick Performics Affiliates)

Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com/) one of the oldest / biggest of the folks that connect affiliates

with companies

AdKnowledge Affiliates (http://www.hydragroup.com/#advertise) seems like a good company

13.6 Email (Newsletter) Marketing A common, effective marketing technique is to provide a regular newsletter available for free

subscription to anyone that wants it. This is an inexpensive thing to provide, however it is a bit labor

intensive.

It is quite useful to use a vendor for newsletters, so that all of the appropriate laws are obeyed. One

great company is mailchimp.com.

13.7 Email (Lists) Marketing

13.7.1 Opt-In / Generated Lists

Discuss any use of opt-in mailing lists or lists to customers, etc.

13.7.2 Purchased Lists

It is possible to purchase lists, both email and snail mail lists, of particular groups, including opt-in

groups of email addresses. I am not talking spam, but rather emails sent to particular groups who have

requested items to be sent to them.

One resource for opt-in lists for purchase is at http://www.usadata.com/

http://www.cj.com/

http://www.hydragroup.com/#advertise

http://mailchimp.com/

http://www.usadata.com/



13.7.3 List Growth

Discuss how the list be grown. JV Giveaways?

13.7.4 Autoresponder Development

Discuss what you are going to do regarding Autoresponder sequences and list segmentation.

13.8 Press Releases Most companies produce press releases at fairly regular intervals. Properly done, this can result in great

publicity. However, there are effort and costs involved in the production of good press releases.

13.9 Social Media Strategy (Facebook / Twitter) This section covers how the business will use Social Media (Facebook/Twitter) for promotions.

One thing that can be very powerful but difficult to pull off is viral marketing, where an ad or video is so

engaging and fun that it is shared by people with all their friends, and creates a huge buzz very quickly.

Most attempts at viral marketing are lame instead of successful.

13.10 Reputation Enhancement / Brand Building There are several worthy activities which can be pursued in order to build the reputation and brand of a

company or product.

13.10.1 Whitepapers / Peer-Reviewed Publishing

Whitepapers, and especially papers published in peer-reviewed journals can help to establish subject

matter expert status in the field.

13.10.2 Blog

It is common for a company to have a blog which is used to inform customers and potential customers

about things that are going on. However, the best blogs have fairly regular updates in order to develop

and keep a following.

13.10.3 E-Zine Article Marketing and Guest Blogging

It is possible to write and submit articles for publications and to blog on other people’s sites. These are

both good things to establish reputation and to gain additional links to your website which can help your

positioning in the organic search results.

13.10.4 Forums

Posting as an expert in subject-related forums is another way to gain and establish a following and

reputation as a trusted resource.

13.11 Offline and Other Marketing

Networking-Go where your market is, Chamber of Commerce, BNI, etc. Direct marketing using sales letters, brochures, postcards, flyers, etc. Advertising-Print media, directories, billboards, yellow pages, radio, TV Training programs-Seminars that you give to increase awareness

http://www.bni.com/

http://www.instantsalesletters.com/go/geispc27



Write articles for magazines, your local newspaper, and other publications read by your industry. Doing this will help you to become known as an expert

Direct/personal selling Publicity/press releases Trade shows Referral programs Co-marketing with businesses that share your target market Barter

13.11.1 Material Preparation

This section describes how material for offline marketing will be prepared.

13.11.2 Personal / Current Marketing

The current marketing efforts and business should be continued as much as possible, including natural

expansion where appropriate.

13.11.3 Tradeshows

Tradeshows represent a specific opportunity to promote the business to targeted groups. However,

good tradeshow participation takes time, preparation, sales materials, and ability to track/contact the

links generated at the tradeshow. Also, typical tradeshow participation involves purchasing and

distributing branded items, such as pens, cups, shirts, caps, etc.

13.11.4 Salespeople

This section describes how salespeople will be used.

http://www.prweb.com/whyprweb.php



14. Calendar and Timing This section describes the calendar and timing for the marketing efforts.

14.1 Milestone One

14.2 Milestone Two



15. Sales Tracking This section describes how sales will be tracked and metrics used.



16. Contingency Planning

16.1 Success Criteria This describes what criteria should be used for gauging success.

16.2 Risk Mitigation How will you mitigate risk? What are the tradeoffs you can use in case one type of marketing doesn’t

work?



17. Action Items / Next Steps What are the action items and next steps to be taken?

Internet marketing plan

Education

Transcript of Internet marketing plan