You finally got the epiphany that will switch your dreams to reality! You are realizing that you want to stop being an employee for someone else and that it’s better to start your own business.
Making money you deserve to change your life, taking advantage of your skills would be the right path: how can I start my business online? If like thousands of potential businessman, you are looking to have the best answer to that question, you landed on the right article.
The first step would be developing a marketing plan, in order to make your goal accomplished. Follow the next paragraph to have a better idea of how to make a marketing plan and download a marketing plan example to identify your main goal.
Watch Tim Mahoney explaining the Volkswagen strategy started from an easy concept
Why a Marketing Plan Example?
Downloading a marketing plan example should drive your stunning ideas into some steps to follow, in order to organize your business online. You need it, otherwise, you can take the risk to make some wrong decisions.
Follow the simple plan I realized through an infographic and adapt it to your case. It’s important having a clear idea on what you want to market, you should sell something you really believe on: who is going to buy something that you are not even going to buy as a client? That’s the first step to make a perfect marketing strategy!
You are the first client of your product/service: believe it! What you are selling, what you are about to introduce on the market is stunning for you and will be for anyone else!
Francesco Mercuri – The Marketing Predictor Guy
After you have gathered all the information you need you can definitely say: this is the right product for the market! If you want to sell something that is already available, you should consider segmenting the market, trying to reach clients from a particular niche.
Those are the answers your marketing research/survey should give and also how to get customer feedback would be really important from now on to improve your marketing plan.
Define Your Budget and Goals
It’s something that you cannot avoid to consider because it can affect your business since the beginning: define a budget to accomplish your goals! Consider splitting your budget into 2 parts: organic and paid. Organic is a marketing way to reach your clients using some free tools and free marketing channels.
They can be email marketing, SEO-friendly content and posting on social media. The paid side of your growth can be paid adverts, boosting a post on social media, either participating business show.
As I mentioned above, it’s important to have a marketing plan, organized by short-term and long-term goals. Are you ready to start planning your number of leads? It’s really important including your budget in your plan, you will be able to track and check your strategy, organic or paid, evaluating which one is performing better.
According to that, you can fix your budget on your long-term marketing strategy, and on your short-term, based and results. You cannot plan the number of your leads based on the strategy you are making in place, of course, but with experience and some mistakes, you will be able to estimate the leads number.
How much are you willing to spend to boost your business? #PaidAdverts or #OrganicTraffic? Share on XDownload a Marketing Plan Example
Basically, in the following marketing plan infographic, that you can easily download with a few mouse clicks, you find an example about how to start and plan a shop online that fits for everyone and every business.
It’s something that you should think about and make before starting your business online. We defined it “Stellar Business” because you will nail it, taking it to a high level.
Download the marketing plan example made for an online shoes shop that would be easily adaptable to your business plan:
What’s the meaning of it? In the following chapter, you will get some explanations in order to understand every bullet and to know how to adapt it to your personal marketing plan.
Don’t forget that you can drop a comment if you have some concerns or some ideas to make it better, and hit me up if you need some help.
Analyze Your Product
You should know what you are about to sell. Also during your daily job, if you still are an employee, you cannot market, or promote, something that you don’t know perfectly. Having, and knowing, a product that is reliable, will help you to make the perfect strategy.
Your marketing research gave you all the info you need on the product/need that the market is asking and that people are willing to buy. In the example, shoes are something that is really popular online as a market and it’s risky to compete with big brands.
Better going for a niche product, identifying first a particular niche segmenting the market: sports shoes to perform on artificial grass. For your new business, you should find a niche that can give you a chance to market your product without competing with big brands, avoiding a niche difficult to market!
Low competition means better results! #MarketingTips Share on XIdentify Your Target
Another question to ask yourself would be: who is going to buy my product? Selling sports shoes for artificial grass is too general and it’s better to create another market segmentation going deep into the niche.
Professional athletes would be great to identify your shoes, making a stunning product that is not for everyone, just for high competitive performers in sports.
You are also creating a brand voice, that’s will be the secret of your business. Based on your product/service you should identify the characteristics of the person that would buy your product, in order to have an optimized strategy.
Create a Segment
Maybe you are thinking that your shoes are not only for professional
We chose to sort by age, but the segmentation can be also based on geolocation, if you see that in a particular area there is a lack of professional athletes shoes for people with more than 24 years old.
Adapt this concept to your marketing plan and you will see that you are reaching out people that will buy your product because you have to compete only with a few companies on the market, easy to beat implementing some inbound marketing strategy that we will see in the next chapter.
Target Your Audience
It’s time to take action starting to target your audience that you identified during the previous steps: how can you target your audience? It’s time to use your marketing skills improved reading the articles included in this blog.
Maybe at the beginning, considering the example, sending a pair of shoes for free to a popular influencer on Instagram to boost the business merging an offline strategy with an online one would be difficult, but you can start hitting your audience online creating a blog and social media channels, in order to spread your brand everywhere following the best practices always.
Grow your audience and target it: the conversion rate is going to grow as well because marketing statistics don’t lie!
Francesco Mercuri – The Marketing Predictor Guy
Convert Your Leads
You can be in the situation that you are not converting all leads crossing your marketing funnel: it doesn’t matter, because you are growing your email list, with information and behaviors about your potential clients.
Why don’t you target your leads with a newsletter, either an email blast mentioning a promotion? Your first email marketing campaign should start soon, creating a marketing flow that fits for your business.
Considering again our online
Conclusion
This article has been written considering a basic marketing plan approach that fits, in general, for every product/business. For a better application of the concept described, would be better considering the type of product that you want to market using some specific marketing strategy online.
After 3 months you run the strategy would be ideal evaluating the results, implementing the plan.
Recap: Review a marketing plan example for your business
Screen the market
- Identify the lacks of the market
- Analyze what product can be ideal to introduce in the market
Your product is your best friend
- Get yourself informed about the product you want to market
- You need to know everything
about what you are selling
Implement your marketing funnel
- Propose your product/service targeting the right audience
- Make in place some inbound marketing strategies
- Improve the quality of your leads and the number
- Optimize your conversion rate
Checking numbers
- Tracking and A/B testing is mandatory to implement every marketing plan
- Reporting in order to make a new marketing strategy and to check what it’s working
- Review your plan after 3 months
- Having long term goals will give you the best result
