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Title: Exploding Your Online Sales - Your 5 Step Plan to an Effective, Affordable Online Marketing Campaign (short version)
Article Summary: Are you planning for explosive sales this year through an effective, organized marketing campaign or are you maintaining your status quo and hoping for the best? How are you going to boost your profile online to get those money-in-hand buyers firing their orders to your store? Discover this 5 Step Plan created by in the trenches experience of online marketing for small business. You will quickly and effectively create a plan that can be implemented immediately and begin reaping your sales successes.
Word Count: 875
First Published: 2004

Contact Info:
Paula Polman
paula@TheLearningCenterForEntrepreneurs.com
780-270-8146 MST
Edmonton AB Canada


Are you planning for explosive sales this year through an effective, organized marketing campaign or are you maintaining your status quo and hoping for the best? If you're serious about your business, then sales growth is always dominant in your mind.

A planned, organized campaign with rotation through a variety of targeted sites, directories and venues is not hard to coordinate, does not need to cost a great deal of money and can generate traffic and sales faster than search engine submissions alone. It takes a bit of research and a solid knowledge base of your target customer, however, you can plan and implement a simple campaign in the space of a dedicated day.

This 5 Step Plan has been created by in-the-trenches experience of online marketing for small business. By doing each of the Steps, you will quickly and effectively create a plan that can be implemented immediately and begin reaping your sales successes.

Step 1 - Defining Your Customer

Defining your customer is a important as defining your products or naming your business. If you don't know who you are selling to and what your product is doing for them you might as well close up shop now.

Write out a description of your perfect customer covering the five W's. Once you have this written out in front of you, you should have a good picture of where to start looking to place your message and how to write your message copy.

Step 2 - Choosing Your Targets

A coordinated effort across several sites and venues commonly frequented by your customers is the most effective. If you are seen in different several places your visibility and retained message is much stronger. Holiday specific sites that are well promoted are excellent areas to consider for this time of year.

When considering a site or newsletter for your ad, look at factors like traffic, search engine placement, external linking (how many places link to it), quality of current ads, types of messages being presented in the current ads. Are there many competitors of yours already or is the advertising of a complimentary nature to your business or are the ads completely unrelated to your business and to the intended traffic of the site. These are all clues to measure a best fit of your message to the traffic of the site.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is another consideration but can be daunting for someone new to this form. If you're new to PPC, stick to places that allow you to set limits on daily expenditures. Google is a good example of this. This will also help you to experiment and determine the most effective keywords by paying close attention to the statistics of the PPC campaign.

Step 3 - Budget

You probably already have a figure in mind of how much you can really spend, so back to your campaign sheet and total up the costs of all the ad spots you'd like to do. Chances are that total will exceed your overall spending limit. You'll need to then go through that list and prioritize your spending. Remember as the results and begin to show you can begin to expand into that secondary list. Don't forget to consider ad swaps and bartering as part of your payment and marketing budget. Many sites will swap newsletter ads or banner ads for similar placement in your site.

Step 4 - Creating Your Ad Content

Online marketing works best when you focus only on one or two things. You may have a variety of products but pick one or two items that are good sellers and have a solid appeal to your target market.

Next ask yourself, "what am I selling"? It's rarely the product or service. You are selling a benefit something that registers at the emotional level. If you are selling fishing rods for example, you're selling the excitement of successfully landing that monster in the lake.

Coupons are an effective marketing tool to also consider. They can be easily tracked either manually or by an automated shopping cart system. Use different codes for different advertising locations and you'll quickly see which ones get the best attention.

Step 5 - Tracking & Monitoring Your Ads

Tracking and reacting to your campaign's successes are critical in maintaining an effective marketing campaign. From your website stats to PPC stats, there are many ways to determine what is working and what isn't. By paying attention you'll learn volumes about your ads and how to hone them for best results.

Tracking tricks include using specific coupon or sales codes for each ad placement, setting up separate entry pages on your site for each ad, utilizing a service that helps track activity - for example a mall directory like Under the Awning ( http://www.UnderTheAwning.com ) that gives you performance stats on your product listings. There are advertising management services that help you to track ad performance, such as phpAdsNew ( http://www.phpAdsNew.com ), a free service that is relatively easy to implement and gives powerful ad tracking management and support.

Successful online marketing campaigns are within the reach of any business, no matter what your budget. By following these basic steps and committing to the follow-through, you can create a cost effective campaign with a substantial return on investment.

Good sales to you!

Paula Polman, B.Sc. has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, in areas including teaching, IT, natural cosmetics & toiletries, travel and event & conference planning. She is now involved in offering online instructional courses for small business at The Learning Center for Entrepreneurs, supporting the growth of small business thorugh extended learning. Email her at paula [at] TheLearningCenterForEntrepreneurs [dot] com or visit http://www.TheLearningCenterForEntrepreneurs.com

Attn Publishers: there is a longer version of this article, 1675 words, found in the Free Articles list at http://www.frostbitelodge.com/freearticles.php

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