Your Internet Marketing Plan
The Lipstick blog – smart marketing to women online has a great post about the questions to ask for your business’s internet marketing plan. Please comment on your favorite tools. I’ll work on this as I go along. I added my comments. Some may not apply to you but this is a great excercise.
Site Stats
Web site metrics – many of these questions can be answered if you have Google analytics on your site (free). 10xMarketing used to offer a great deal for Omniture but they are out of business. Omniture is geared towards a large enterprise.
How many unique visitors do you have? (see this post about unique visitors from Omniture)
How many should you have based on your industry? (I don’t know how to get this info)
How many page views? How many should you have?
Who are your top three referral sources?
What are the top three search terms people use to find your site?
What is your Alexa ranking? (type in your web address then click on traffic details). This site is pretty new, it has a rank of 197,207.
How many incoming links does your site have? type this into google to find out: link:www.yourwebsite.com
What/which search terms do you “own”? what software can tell you where you rank on your keywords for different search engines?
Email mailing list
are you doing email marketing? what product do you use?
How many people are on your email mailing list?
How subscribers many do others in your industry with comparable experience have?
What is the percent increase from last month?
What’s a good percentage to increase?
How many conversions can you expect from one mailing?
How often do you send a mailing?
What are the best days and times to send a mailing? Worst?
How often should you send mailing?
How profitable is your list?
How much is an average subscriber worth?
What is your promotion to content ratio?
What should it be?
Web site lead generation.
Does your lead generation tool (what tools do you like to use?) deliver the “lead trinity”? 1)Positions you as an expert. 2) Qualifies the lead as a quality lead for your business. 3) Gives you permission to market to them again.
If not, what lead generation tool would? again, suggestions anyone
Does your web site automatically produce leads regularly?
How many in an average month?
Historically, what are your most active months for leads?
Do you have a solid, automatic system in place to follow-up with those leads on a regular basis?
Web site usability
Is your navigation leading people through your site?
Are you using your home page and web site real estate efficiently and effectively?
Does your copy make people want to connect?
Do you alienate or engage potential clients with technology?
Product/marketing funnel
Do you put potential clients in the position of either working with you or not?
Do you have freebies for them to sample – without signing up?
How many should you have and what topics should they cover?
Do you have “advanced freebies” for them to sample that do require a sign-up?
Do you have low-cost products so that people can, with minimal investment – sample your value?
How many should you have and what topics should they cover?
Do you have alternatives for people who cannot afford to work with you one-on-one?
Blog activity.
How many visitors and how many posts per week do you post on average?
What are the industry standards?
Are you meeting your blogging goals? (do you know what they are?)
Which blog posts have earned the most money for your business? (and I don’t mean Ad Sense dollars!)
How many comments does your blog average?
What trends do you see when analyzing your blog?
Are you actively using your blog to vet new ideas/concepts/approaches?
Online marketing
How many original articles are you posting online?
How much time are you spending adding thought leadership content about your area of expertise?
How many people in your industry are you getting to know?
Who are your centers of influence?
How many strategic alliances do you have?
How many do you need to meet your goals? What results do your alliances bring you?
Online sales
How much revenue do you make solely online?
How much should you make?
Which is your most profitable product/service?
Which is your least profitable product/service?
Who are your top 10 clients/customers?
Who are your worst clients/customers?
What is your average sale?
Which months are peak sales months?
Overall direction
Where are you going with your business online?
Why?
How?
For how long?
By when do you need to ‘get there’?
Who can help you get there faster, easier?
What are your KPIs (key performance indicators) – measurements you can use to see if you’re on-track?
3 Responses to “Your Internet Marketing Plan”
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March 5th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
That’s a good exercise you’ve outlined there. I think it would be helpful for a lot of the would-be Internet entrepreneurs who’ve heard that “you can make a lot of money on the Internets” to go through something like this before they start spending money on web design and business cards. If you don’t understand what most of those questions are getting at, it might be a good idea to spend some more time learning before getting in over your head. (Of course, on the other hand, many people learn much better by jumping in and swimming.)
Anyway, my real reason for posting is to point out that 10x Marketing isn’t actually out of business and if you still want the great deal on Omniture’s SiteCatalyst, you can contact tom -at- 10xmarketing.com. It’s a great deal, even if you discount the regularly insane prices for SiteCatalyst based on the majority of the featureset that most people don’t use.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Tom- I am glad that you commented about 10xMarketing. I was also under the impression that you guys were out-of-business. ~Paul
March 6th, 2007 at 12:22 am
[...] I know that I have blogged a lot about NewsPaperGrl (hey, she got me started, I have to show my thanks somehow), but she has a great post entitled, “Your Internet Marketing Plan,” with a section particularly on Email Marketing. This is a good read and Janet offers some questions that I wish more people would ask themselves before beginning. [...]