Many marketers and companies like to talk about creating an online marketing strategy plan. Most of them stop there since they believe development and execution of the plan is too daunting a challenge.

Unfortunately, without an online marketing strategy, consistent business growth is quite difficult to achieve. As we like to say, marketing strategy without execution is a waste of time and marketing execution without strategy is a waste of money. Only by aligning both strategy and execution together with the goals of the business can growth be maximized.

Part of any plan includes aspects of project management that help the business stay on schedule with the relevant marketing initiatives and follow through on their execution. It is easy to focus on making products, fulfilling orders, talking with customers and forget to work on marketing the business. One cannot wait until the sales pipeline dries up to do some “marketing” stuff and hope to gain new customers.

To create that marketing system that helps you stay consistent with your marketing, you can break the activities into four stages: plan, execute, track and measure.

Stage 1 – Plan

Having a great marketing plan is critical to your success. Your marketing plan:

Is the road map for achieving your goals and guiding your decisions throughout the year.

Details what types of marketing activities you will do over a 90 day period to achieve your goals.

Helps you understand how each activity aligns and supports other marketing activities.

Ensures you remain consistent with messages, branding and strategies.

It’s not difficult or time consuming to write a marketing plan – just a few hours is all you need. Once the plan is in place, it will continue to guide you throughout your marketing journey.

Tools to help you plan

If you need help creating a marketing plan, there are many templates available. However, look for a template that is specifically created for a small business and not a corporate enterprise. Make sure the template is simple and asks important questions.

I personally like a spreadsheet model that allows me to lay out my mission and purpose, target market, product or service offerings and the pricing and packaging strategies.

This part of the marketing plan seldom changes unless:

You are evolving the business, adding new products and changing your model.

The market environment is changing (i.e. new competitors, changing economy, etc).

It is important to review this part of the plan quarterly to make sure things haven’t drastically changed.

Once you have the above identified, then create a second worksheet for your action plan to lay out your outcome goal, marketing goals, the performance-based projects and tasks to achieve my goals. Visually this is a hierarchy that flows from the outcome goal down to the tasks.

Stage 2 – Execute

The real key to success in marketing is the ability to execute the plan, working on each activity until you have attracted more clients than you can handle. I’ve seen many businesses put together a plan then don’t follow through, wasting so much time and missing real opportunities to build a successful business.

Execution is what you do on the field of play. To be consistent in your efforts, you need to put an action plan together that lays out the projects and tasks that will lead you to your outcome goal. Your action plan is what you commit to doing in a two week period only.

By breaking things down into “sprints” with specific projects and tasks, you are more likely to get more done because you aren’t overwhelmed with too much on your to do list.

Marketing Action Plan Worksheet

Tools to help you execute

Everyone is different in how they work, but here are some tools that can help you be more productive.

Block time in your calendar to work on your marketing projects. Treat that time as you would a client meeting. Book whatever time you think you need, shut off the phone and email and commit to working on the project that was assigned. Make these appointments at the same time so they become a habit.

Engage an accountability partner – Working solo can make it too easy to forget to market your business. Have someone hold you accountable. Knowing you will have a weekly meeting with someone who will ask what you were able to get done helps keep you focused. This could be a marketing coach who can help you build out the right plan or another business owner that can provide valuable input and keep you moving forward (and vice versa).

Plan your day the night before – Reviewing what you got done today and planning what you are going to work on tomorrow (and block time to do it) will help you stay focused. Keep your two-week action plan visible to keep reminding you of what you committed to work over the two weeks.

Stage 3 – Track

Develop a system for tracking your results. Have a way to measure your activities to ensure they are working and worth continuing.

Digital marketing makes it much easier to track your marketing activities. But even if someone randomly calls you, you could simply ask how they found your business. You can also put the question on your website as part of the contact form.

You need to establish what your metrics are for each of your marketing activities as goals. Then track your results and adjust as needed.

Tools to help you track

For online marketing, things you should be tracking include:

Website traffic – Use Google Marketing Platform to track website traffic. Track your traffic from paid search ads using Google Ads.

Keyword ranking – Keywords Everywhere and Keyword Surfer browser extensions help you generate keyword ideas. SEO Powersuite enables you to run reports to see how you are ranking for your important keywords. There is a free version available.

Inbound leads – Keep track of visitors that convert to a lead via your web forms.

Email opens – Mail service provides track opens and clicks on all your email marketing campaigns.

New business from new customers – Track your leads to conversion by calculating the customer conversion rate. You can calculate this by taking the number of new customers and dividing it by the number of leads.

Knowing what is working and what will not help you make budget decisions when you get an opportunity and you need to “find” some money in the marketing budget.

Stage 4 – Measure

Measuring your marketing is key to seeing what works and what doesn’t. The two week sprint model encourages continuous feedback loops. By looking back at the data over the two weeks, you can determine if what you are doing is actually delivering results. Then you can keep doing what you’re doing or adjust.

Although your outcome goal is firm and fixed, your performance based projects and tasks can be flexible and adaptable when necessary. By looking at your results every two weeks, you can change what you are doing, update something that isn’t working well or stay the course.

Ways to measure your marketing

There are many types of key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can use to measure your effectiveness. For small businesses, you might want to measure website traffic, visitor to lead conversions or cost per lead. All of these are good ways to measure marketing campaigns and are simple calculations.

However, return on investment (ROI) is a better measurement because it shows exactly what each campaign is contributing to your revenue.

To calculate ROI, take what you spent on a marketing activity and subtract it from the sales revenue generated by the campaign. If you spend $1000 and generate $10,000 in sales, your ROI is 900%.

Continuous Cycle

Marketing is a process that never ends, and it takes time for marketing activities to bear fruit. Don’t expect instant results from your marketing activities or you’ll get discouraged and give up too quickly.

Each activity plants a seed. Every activity reinforces the previous one. Persistence and patience are the keys to successful marketing. If you implement the two week sprints, use the data you collect from the feedback loops and adjust where necessary, you’ll find that your marketing becomes more effective. Being flexible and adaptable with your plan helps you make adjustments that increase your success along the way.

Please contact us for help developing an online marketing strategy plan or to find out about our marketing strategy and SEO services.