Internet Marketing Plan Outline

A. The Basics

1. Define company/organization
• Name
• Mission Statement
• Find Domain Name/URL that is the company/org. name or unique key words that fit the mission statement
• Consider purchasing all URLs associated with the originating one; sample URLs include the “.com”, “.org”, “.net” extensions, as well as (find the others); international registration of domain names

I. Business Overview & Executive Summary
• Internet marketing plan introduction
• Company overview
• Products and/or services overview: What do you do?
• Market or industry
• Section summary (risks in relying solely on traditional marketing activities)

II. Applicable Internet Market Statistics
• On-line users: numbers and percentages (can use current survey & general internet statistics on worldwide users)
• Section summary (how market reports advocate Internet marketing for your company)

2. Design and Produce coherent, easy-to-use Web site / Site Architecture
• After site is produced, test it with outside, objective and interested parties for usability
• Also check for dead links, site structure, spelling, appropriate content per page and section of the site

3. Give to the Community
• How does the site reach the community? What is your community? Defined by geographics?
• Is it’s intent to reach customers directly?
• Is it’s intent to be a business-to-business site?
• Whether it reaches customers and/or b-to-b, what else, if at all, does the site offer to the community?
• Is your “community” geographically local to the company’s main location? Regionally? Nationally? Internationally?
• Do you have a way (email, online form, phone, fax) for the community to contact you?

4. Proclaim URL/Web address

1. Online placement: search engines; there are 10-15 top search engines that your URL(s) should be registered with. Some charge for additional services; some charge for placement in searches. Entries of URLs into search engines are contingent on superb META tags and their content located in all HTML files. It is not always necessary to place your URL on your web site since most people will either bookmark it when they get there, but it can’t hurt. Recommend placing it on the home page and probably the second and/or third level down. Research other online Web sites that might consist of newsgroups and listserv listings that you can submit your URL to; you should also routinely check the placement of your URL through specific Web sites.

2. Offline placement:

• Traditional stationary (letterhead, business cards and envelopes)
• Brochures, marketing and sales literature
• Presentations (i.e., PowerPoint, overheads, videos, multimedia, CDs; depending on if it has packaging, it should be on the packaging and on the product, as in a CD)
• Advertising (i.e., print, radio, TV; from ads promoting the co./org. to personnel issues)
• PR (every press release should have the minimum of the company/org. URL, if not their own dept.’s URL and maybe URLs based on what you’re promoting)
• E-mail: add a special “signature” to an employee’s email; name, title, co./org. name, address, phone no. , fax no., cell phone no., URL, and a brief description of what the company/org. does. Signatures can be targeted per recipient or groups that you’re sending them to.
• Anything else that is sent out to the external world as well as internally, especially if you have an intranet and/or an extranet.

III. Marketing Communications Strategies
• Objectives and Goals
• Specific strategies for achieving these objectives and goals
• Section summary
• Traditional and internet marketing strategies, comparisons and contrasts
• How use of the Internet will strengthen your overall marketing goals

IV. Internet Marketing Budget
• Traditional marketing budget overview
• Estimates on Internet marketing
• Web development costs
• Revenue opportunities
• Section summary
• An assessment of the financial impact of your Internet marketing program on other traditional media expenditures
• Before and after charts: traditional and Internet marketing
• Bids from outside vendors and suppliers
• Other recommendations and support for Internet marketing

V. The Internet Marketing Task Force
• Task force overview
• Details (leadership, staffing options: marketing, sales, tech support, customer service, temp personnel agency, outside vendors and services)
• Section summary
• How internet marketing will affect staff and operations
• In-house versus outsourcing considerations

5. Coordinate & Write Specific AutoResponders
• How do you respond to email that is sent to the company/org?
• Specific autoresponders can be written, per dept., for incoming emails.

B. Generating Traffic: Being Found

1. Optimize Site via Search Engines
• Keywords are “key” to a search engine’s ability to find you; they are part of the META tags in the beginning of your code
• Keywords, and phrases, which are used by some search engines, should be unique to EACH web page within a site
• Another META tag, is the “description” tag; this is usually what the search engine uses under the “title listing” when it searches for a site
• Web page text content: whatever text, not as a graphic, is used on your web page (per page), a search engine will also use, sometimes, in it’s searches and thus listings

2. Link Friends
• Whoever your site can link with that is not competition, inquire of them, usually thru their webmaster, that you would like to put up reciprocal links
• State exactly which pages you would put their link (where does their link best fit your site as far as content?) and give them suggestions as to where a link to your site would fit on their pages and site specific examples and why

3. Advertise Your Site
• Depends on your organization type … profit or non-profit … as to what you can do; also depends on your internal policies, outside reputation, and to research who else, like yourself, is doing what
• Banner advertising’s click-thru rate has declined sharply in the last two years; the Internet changes by the second and thus traditional methods of advertising do not apply to the Net
• Classified ads: best used for intranets/extranets

4. Join Affiliate Programs
• Again, depends on your organization and what your internal policies are and research of what other entity types are doing
• An Associate Program is a revenue-sharing program, like one with Amazon.Com – also known as referral, partner or affiliate programs – to make money from your web site. What types of programs first fit with your organization’s mission statement, internal policies and possibly ethics? Then pick program that fit your site, possibly per dept., for the best strategic alliance.

5. Link to “Portals”
• What is currently “hot” but might not be for long is what’s called “portals” or a one-stop “shop” on the Web for a variety of content; search engines have become portals…they don’t want you to leave their site for another one. Thus, links from a portal site would be great to have but is tough to acquire; probably requires payment for a certain “billing”.

C. Generating Traffic: Soft Consulting

1. Discover Arenas for Online Participation
• This represents newsgroups, listservs, and chat rooms
• Should be reviewed by other entity types as to what has worked for them and in what areas before you sample each type
• Needs to be monitored.

2. Develop, Plan & Implement Online Communities
• How can this work for you? Can it? Review your internal structure and who your clients are? Past and future? Would they be interested in an online chat session on how to buy stocks online? Knowing other alumns are in the state of Texas and what they’re doing?
• These can be set up at specific times, with special “monitors”/speakers, and advertised months in advance in your marketing publications

3. Recruit Web Site Evangelists
• Who in your organization would naturally market your site? Would need to based on their function within the organization?
• This goes back to offline and online marketing as stated above.

4. Target & Develop Unique E-Newsletters
• A big deal in the Internet biz, but don’t bore people and back it up with plenty of interactivity
• Time your newsletters so that it’s not an overload; daily ones are overkill. Survey your clients if need be thru your web site.
• Specific, targeted e-newsletters can be very useful with appropriate data on clients very useful

5. Create Offline, Traditional PR Program
• Anytime someone in your organization/company participates in an idea that would fit a targeted publication, write it up and submit it WITH your URL.
• Send out Press Releases anytime you add new sections to your Web site with all pertinent URLs as well as the home page URL of your company
• Participate in reporters inquiries of specialties within your company that can be written and include your URL

VI. Supporting Documents
• Press clippings
• Research reports
• Other

VII. Internet Marketing Program Implementation
• Implementation Overview
• Marketing communications
• Program launch
• Section summary (a summary of your entire marketing communications program, including how traditional and Internet activities will supplement each other)

D. Generating Traffic: Additional Marketing Tools

VIII. Internet Marketing Plan Summary
• Overall recommendations for action
• Why your company should execute a new or enhanced Internet marketing program
• Why we should take action now: timing

1. Generate E-Mail Marketing
• Collect email addresses into a database for future marketing plans

2. Conduct Contests & Giveaways
• Buy running a survey, as stated below, you can create a giveaway prize for that; it brings traffic to the site and valuable customer /demographic data

3. Archive Online Press Releases
• Put all of your company/organization press releases online for the press; archive them by your fiscal year/ seasons

4. Create Online Coupons
• Again, depends on your organization/company and what their mission statement proclaims as well as what your product/service is that you offer as to whether you need to offer online coupons; research your competitors and/or the companies that offer these services to see if anyone within your field offers it…it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t, you just should do your homework.

5. Post Web Awards
• Not everyone should have web award “icons” on the bottom of their site; it depends on first, who the award is from; second, will it add a certain recognition or prestige to your “name” and/or site?; third, does it look tacky? And/or unprofessional?

6. Develop an Online Auction
• the hottest thing going but be careful with the companies that offer them if you want to do your own; check out their references thoroughly…otherwise, go thru the nationally recognized sites to auction your valuables or you can contract a firm to customize an auction for your site and implement it into your marketing plan for the best time(s) in your fiscal/calendar year

7. Host Classified Ads
• depending on the company, probably best used with an intranet and/or an extranet

8. Conduct Surveys
• How are your viewers “seeing” your site? Can they navigate thru it easily? Do they leave the moment it takes more than 30 seconds to download the home page? What else are you missing from your site that your visitors are looking for? All valuable questions that can be asked, along with name, email address (as stated above), optional mailing address (if you have a prize) or phone number. Surveys can be hard to prepare so that you don’t lose your audience so have it reviewed by objective viewers and people who know the business.

9. Develop a Unique Search Engine
• just for your site; can be custom created or can use free software thru search engines like Excite, Lycos and Alta Vista

10. Create Free-for-all Web Page(s)
• again, depending on the company and what your “product” is; might only be useful for an intranet and/or extranet