Age Gracefully: The Life of Your Online Marketing Plan

Age Gracefully
The Life of Your Online Marketing Plan

By Lisa Evenson

We fight age tooth and nail not only in our bodies and faces, but also in our businesses. We know the value of image, branding, and marketing. Just like our January workout goals, plans never work when drafted once - and forgotten.

Browsing the eIcons lately, its obvious popular favorites have lost touch with their initial innovative foresight. What were once groundbreaking ventures are now stale visions of a generation past. Because a generation, in Internet age, lasts only about 12 months, its even more important for online marketers to carefully draft and revisit their plan.

Which eIcons show the most visible signs of neglect? I direct your browsers to Yahoo and Amazon. Will the great Botox injection propel these wired wonders into the new eras soon? Relying solely on out-dated HTML and textural links even a 12-year old could develop, many would question their credibility were it not for their timeworn name and reputation. What worked five years ago hardly stands competitive in the age of flash.

Have these companies grown so large so fast that the entrepreneurs weren't able to keep up with all aspects of their business? Have the simple tasks of attracting new customers, retaining loyal customers, and competing in the market been forgotten?

The answer is no. Both companies have worked diligently devoting time and efforts into growing their empires. This growth is measured by the expansion of: 1.) An online bookstore into a wired Walmart selling DVDs, Trojan Her Pleasure Lubricated Latex Condoms with Spermicide, and (for those unsuccessful with that product) baby toys, and 2.) A portal service into a jack-of-every-single-trade including chat rooms, tax services, personals, and mom-and-pop shop centralization. These growth initiatives are not free.

Many marketers downplay the importance of business planning when building an online image. They assume simply staking an online property and posting something will bring a net of anxious visitors. Yet, regardless of the online/offline ratio, as even full ecommerce sites have human beings working at some offline location, online marketing plans must include detailed milestones and benchmarks. A web site doesn't simplify marketing. When launched correctly, it brings an entirely new set of responsibilities to the table.

In devising your online marketing plan, consider the following questions and revisit them, at the minimum, annually. If anything changes, revisit your web site approach immediately with fresh eyes – and execute.

1. What's the current macro-economic environment?

2. What opportunities and problems are you facing?

3. What business objectives do you expect to achieve?

4. What exactly does you business sell?

5. Who are your customers?

6. How computer-suave is your customer now? In one year from now?

7. Why should your customers buy your product or service instead of a competitor's?

8. How will you communicate your product or service to your customers?

9. Who will do what, when?

10. How will you measure progress?

11. What internal trends do you see (sales volume by month and annually, revenue, profits, traffic and conversion, usability)?

12. Who's your competition?

13. Who's your current customer (segmentation, attitudes, and behavior)? Who's your customer a year from now?

14. What are your distribution channels (direct and indirect)?

Armed with these answers and a keen sense of your customer's outlook a year from now, evaluate your online (as well as offline) marketing Initiatives – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. What changes should you make to stay ahead of the competition? Begin today to achieve the customers of tomorrow.

As with every other media outlet, the Internet has become a blur of blinking advertisements and pop-ups with continually sinking value-add. Will this hold eIcons up in the long-term? This is yet to be seen. But as average American, age fighting, brand loving, dream seeking, online-shoppers, we should expect a bit more class for our money and a lot less commercials.

Copyright 2003, Lisa Evenson, http://www.visualcontent.com and http://www.pulpbits.com, Burlington, Vermont. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.

Lisa Evenson earned her B.A. in English from California State University, San Bernardino. She's taken additional MSA courses in finance, public relations and total quality management from Saint Michael's College and business writing from Jones International University. Lisa is co-founder of Visual Content, http://www.visualcontent.com, and PulpBits, http://www.pulpbits.com. Her career experience spans Investor Relations, Corporate Communications, and Marketing

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