Wall Directory - FREE ONLINE MARKETING PLAN

The key to online marketing is to micro-market. You can’t focus on one area of the internet, but you can’t spread yourself too thing. Before you even start with a single email or ad, you have to determine one important resource – your time. How much time do you have in a given week to devote to marketing? Once you know this answer, you can make some very basic allotments and prioritize.
In the very beginning
-If you are launching or re-launching a business model, allot about 50% of your marketing time to developing consistent branding, headlines, themes, and list of benefits that you want your customers to recognize with your business name.
-Develop a minimum of 3 unique qualities that you provide.
-Develop 3 more should your competition copy or evolve into similar benefits as yours.
-Establish if you are creative and capable to design and write your own marketing tools. Then, act accordingly. You won’t save any money at all in your marketing if no one is impressed by it. If you’re not a good writer or if you have no design skills whatsoever, why would you think that customers would be drawn to your advertisements? Spend the money to hire someone. A passionate freelancer or an aspiring college student may become a life-long asset to your business.
Keep a log
If you don’t think that organization is your strength, it needs to become one soon. Keep a basic Word document open with dated entries explaining what you have done, where, and when in you marketing plan. You can’t assess results if you don’t have timeframes.
Assessment
Monitor your marketing via your leads and sales. You shouldn’t become “married” to a marketing strategy if it is not working for you, even if it is working for others. You have to be willing to change quickly. Assess results on a weekly basis, and make changes, when appropriate, on a monthly model. In other words, look at results per week for the slightest show of leads and sales. Keep doing what works. Plan to remove what does not work for the following month. Each month should serve as a distinct marketing plan within any given year. This is how you can track different seasonal effects on your business. Note that you can go back and forth using a marketing strategy that worked and stopped working. Consumers are influenced by holidays and weather. You have to think like your customer in order to reach your customer. What are you going through right now? Is your customer in the same situation?
Basic Online Marketing Plan
1.      Create a standard email. Why? If you do things right, you’ll have a hard time keeping up properly with questions and lead requests. Create a paragraph of 3-5 sentences that neatly covers your “mission” as a business or service. Don’t sell in this email. Invite. Keep a tone of helpful information being given for free to the curious consumer. The other benefit of a standard email is that you will say the same thing to everyone, and you will have an easily-referenced source of consistency to develop future communication.
2.      Have a website. This may or may not be expensive or immediately possible, but if you are online posting ads and wanting people to “visit your business,” you have to use your head. Not having a website and then proceeding to promote online is a bit inconsistent. It looks like you’re not “ready.” You can get cheap websites for $10 through Global Domains, and on other sites. You can also use an online networking profile, like MySpace or LinkedIn to inform customers. You can’t really use Facebook for this purpose, since you’ll want to develop fans first and you don’t want to look like a business that can only get 10 people to be a fan. Create an online presence, regardless of your budget, even if you have to change it eventually. This is how customers can Google and research your validity. If you don’t have an online presence, you do not exist. That is the internet.
3.      Offer information for free. When people are online researching or looking into information, the odds are that they will not reach you by specifically searching your name. They will mainly be looking for something related to your business. You have to determine your associated words. Then, provide free information for your customers. This is why having a site is key. Writing one helpful “article” and posting it to your site or profile will make it possible for someone to visit your business for a valid reason. In turn, they can become a customer, or even better, a referral. Write a how-to or some other credible advice of value.
4.      Post ads on a weekly basis. Pick about 5 different ad venues, like Craigslist or GoogleAds, for example, and post your ad (the same one) on each. Maintain a different site each day of the week so that you can more easily time manage you changes as needed. If Monday is MySpace day, then, it will be easier to develop quality on MySpace. Tuesday is another day for another possible advertising opportunity. Change your information and/or refresh your ads each week.
5.      Rest on the weekends. It is true that people are online and relaxing much more on the weekends, but unless you’re using the Sunday morning paper, no one is searching for your business on Saturday night on AOL. People email and fiddle around watching videos and reading blogs – fun stuff – on weekends. Do the same as them. There’s no need to stop marketing, however, when you are resting! Answer emails more personally. Go on message boards and chat. Read blogs and make comments. Be a normal person so that you get normal customers with good intentions.
6.      Avoid blogging. Yes, you read right. Unless you are a good writer, and by good, I mean, interesting, what makes you think that wasting your time writing a daily or weekly blog is going to help your business? Many business owners embark on blogs without real quality content. Then, customers search and get led into information that is useless to them, or worse, no one gets led to your blog at all, because it is has no keywords. If you’re going to blog, keep it short and regular. Develop expectation. If you write Freddy’s Friday Blog, you better hope that every Friday at 8 AM a new entry for Freddy’s Friday Blog has posted on the web! Understand? If you can’t commit to a blog, don’t do it.
7.      Use keywords. This concept eludes most people. What are keywords? Keywords are searchable content words. If you are a customer, you will search on Google for some specific words or phrases. Your leads will do the same. Make a list of 20 keywords and phrases that will remain consistent in all of your marketing. Include the 20 words and you will create a tight online image for your brand.
The key to online marketing is to maintain and change. Although contradictory, maintaining marketing is about time. You must not quit. You must change when results are not desired. Try new ideas.
Here a few ideas to come on the web for marketing:
-Pixel advertising (such as Walldirectory.com)
-Newsletters (sending a regular emailed newsletter to quality leads)
-Networking (register on all popular networking sites to make “friends”)
-Articles (write for free on sites, such as Helium)
-Blogs (build a readership on Blogger)
To help you get started, below are some sample words that may help your business image. Just personalize them to your services/products.
1.      New
2.      Original
3.      Free
4.      Improved
5.      Results
6.      Personal attention
7.      Commitment
8.      Service
9.      Love
10. Money
11. Save
12. Quality
13. Relax
14. Enjoy
15. Family
16. Time
17. Latest
18. Trends
19. Technology
20. Happy