Creating A Strategic Marketing Plan
A strategic marketing plan is one of the greatest assets a network marketer can have. Sadly, few network marketers truly take the time to develop a master plan for their marketing, instead leaving their activities to chance. This leaves the business owner to wander around aimlessly, jumping from one strategy to another while they look for the magic button that is going to turn their business around. Having a strategy is critical to building a thriving business and a strategic marketing plan is a key component in that overall strategy.
Using Time Horizon To Create Your Strategic Marketing Plan
The starting point for developing your strategic marketing plan deals with the effective time horizon of different strategies. Ideally, you will want your strategy to address short term, mid range and long term marketing goals. Let me further clarify these distinctions for you, so that this makes more sense.
Short term marketing strategies are those strategies that will bring nearly instantaneous results. In the world of online marketing, pay-per-click advertising would be the greatest example. In a pay-per-click marketing strategy, keyword directed traffic is exposed to your advertisement and clicks on those ads are delivered immediately to your site.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjqkoCd3xbg[/youtube]
A mid range strategy produces results that take longer to manifest, but could produce greater long term value. An example of this type of strategy might be the use of a list builder system. In this type of marketing repeated exposure creates an impulse on the part of the viewer. This exposure may be to a lead capture page, banner or some other mechanism meant to produce a response on the part of the viewer. This type of marketing can be very effective if done consistently over a period of time, so that the viewer is continually exposed to the marketing efforts of the business owner.
The final piece this type of marketing plan deals with the long term. Long term marketing strategies will take more time to put together and see results from; however, once those strategies are in place their effects are residual. Typically this piece of your marketing plan deals with content based marketing. This would include such things as blog posts, article submissions and video based content. In these types of marketing there is both the time for content creation and the time needed for search engine indexing. Once a piece of content is created and indexed it can produce long lasting results for months if not years.
Developing A Strategic Marketing Plan Around Methodology
In addition to time based planning, it is also important to consider methodology in that planning. In the online world there are 3 primary methodologies that should be addressed in your strategic marketing plan. These methodologies include: Paid advertising, content marketing and social media. A well rounded marketing plan will address all 3 areas simultaneously. For instance, I blog several times per week to create a continual flow of new content to feed the search engines. At the same time, I syndicate my content through social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, plus I engage my audience through those channels as well. My strategy is rounded out by the use of paid advertising, primarily in the forms of pay-per-click and solo ads. The paid strategies introduce my business to a new audience, that is ultimately directed back to the initial two forms of marketing through my blog and social media interaction. By adopting this strategy, my prospects continue to encounter my marketing presence in a wide array of online settings.
Taking the time to develop your strategic marketing plan will be well worth the effort, allowing you to enjoy residual marketing momentum for years to come.
