Since the online marketing is relatively a new discipline, online marketers spend more time “performing“activities and less time to plan them. This happens as a result of little formal education and information available regarding this discipline and planning on the go does work for many, if not all. However, this strategy misses out on the broader picture, the medium and long term game plan, and most importantly the discipline to achieve goals and objectives.

A search engine marketing plan comprises all activities that fall under the online marketing discipline.

  • Search Engine Marketing usually done to achieve some objective
  • Search Engine Marketing activities are start by first identifying the target market.
  • To achieve your goal in search engine marketing indentify key players in the industry is critical.

Once the target market and marketing objectives are outlined, its time to identify the marketing channels that will be used to communicate and deliver the message. A comprehensive Search Engine Marketing plan would comprise:

Search Engine Advertising (Pay Per Click)

Implementing this requires extensive keyword research, advertisement group’s creation, creating landing pages and overall performance monitoring. The benefit of search engine advertising is instant, relevant traffic on the website. On the other hand, it is expensive and requires some training and understanding of how most pay per click (PPC) advertising systems work.

Search Engine Optimization

The plan should include the long term strategy of creating onsite and offsite popularity online. Strategy may include keyword research, link building strategies, and ongoing monitoring and maintenance.

Banner Advertising

Various online advertising networks provide targeted reach for rich media and plain banners. With good planning, the banner networks can deliver the message to target segments in a cost-effective manner. The banner networks usually work on cost-per-impression (CPM) model.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing strategies involve creating an attractive affiliate program through which potential affiliates would want to promote the affiliate program through various advertising networks. The process also involves recruiting and managing the affiliates.

Social media marketing

New social media marketing strategies use social networks such as Facebook , YouTube, MySpace etc. to build and maintain strong communities. Social networks are also useful for spreading interesting news and important information about the brand and the business.

E-mail Marketing

E-mail Marketing strategies involve building an opt –in base of users who are willing to accept e-mails, identifying the software and technology to send e-mails, and software to track e-mail deliveries. Some marketers may also choose to buy opt- in e-mail lists from list providers.

Building Alliances

Building strategic business alliance is a great way to promote the business while generating revenue. Strategies involve identifying potential alliance and contacting them for a mutually beneficial partnership.

Online Public Relations

Strategies to utilize online media channels, social media networks and electronic publications to create awareness and maintain a positive image of the business is a critical part of the online marketing plan. Strategies including identifying key industry publications, forums and influential bloggers to contact when there is news to spread.

Blogging

Strategies include creating the kind of content that could be promoted through blogs and blogs networking with influential blogs grants instant access to a large targeted audience. Three factors should be determined for each of the marketing channels mentioned above.

  • The cost of bringing a visitor to the website.
  • Conversion rate
  • The profit expected from each sale.

Before using any channel, the campaign’s conversion rate should be established. The table below illustrates an example of acceptable conversion rates for some online channels.

Conversion rate depend on a large number of factors and the figures shown above should not be benchmarks. For example, a popular brand or services will always have better conversion rates compared to a new entrant. Tools like Google Analytics give comprehensive conversion tracking information and should be used to measures the effectiveness of a channel. Some channels might work better for some marketers and not for others. Testing experimenting and measuring is inevitable.

The actions and results that determine success should be identified while making an electronic marketing plan. This could be sales revenues, brand awareness and so on. Proper feedback mechanisms and regular views enable assessment of the particularly dynamic and rapidly changing are. Tools such as Google Analytics provide a wide array o reports and are helpful with measuring such results.