An online marketing plan is an essential part of any small businesses business plan and a critical element to growing your business in today’s marketplace. In years past the local small business success or failure was largely a function of that businesses ability to find new customers and entice them to purchase products and services with through a variety of advertising messages directed at the targeted audience. The advertiser was completely in control of the message content, delivery platform and selecting the target audience. The marketing plan user would select the type of advertising platform they wanted to use to deliver their message as directed in the plan. Today we call this outbound marketing.
Consumers are in Control
Today consumers are much more in control of the marketplace. Social networking and the Internet in general have made communicating, searching, sharing and comparing information much easier for consumers. Consumers are able independently share referrals, read reviews, compare prices, and find out more information before they even think about shopping for the product or service they want to buy. Armed with more information they are smarter and more demanding. For a local small business to compete in this marketplace they must implement an online marketing plan that enables potential customers to easily find them on the Internet.
Implementing a Plan
An Internet based marketing plan is not hard to implement. In fact there is a marketing plan template that will help you integrate the power of traditional word-of-mouth networking with the speed and efficiency of the Internet. The beauty of this type of marketing plan is that it integrates naturally into your daily routine so that in a very short time it becomes a part your daily routine and you don’t even realize you are doing it. The hardest part is setting up your online tools correctly so that they all are working congruently to improve your local business online visibility continuously.
The first step in implementing a successful online marketing plan is to set your goals and objectives. Then do some research and decide what keywords best describe how people looking for your products and services online would find you. Take those keywords and attach them to all your local business directory listings, use them within your website content and your landing page value proposition to potential customers. Then set up your social networking profile on Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ and Twitter and the foundation for your online marketing program is set.
Click on the links to learn more about how to Create a Local Business Marketing Plan.
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