The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

Internet marketing is too important a task to leave to chance. It is important that you do a few things to set up your campaigns and measure your results along the way. Without measuring your results you cannot know what is working and what you need to change.

The first step to planning an effective Internet marketing campaign is to take inventory of your business. What are your strengths? What are you good at? How do you differ from your competitors?

You should write down your core values and mission statement. These are your guiding principles – offline and online.

After you have written down your core values and mission statement and discovered how you fit into your industry and how you differ from your competitors, you can begin to set your budget and line out how you will market yourself online. Your Internet marketing plan should contain, at a minimum, the following details:

• Your website – The hub of your Internet marketing plan. How many pages will you need? What keywords will you target? Figure out your approach to search engine optimization and build from there. Make sure your website design represents your core values and mission statement.
• Pay Per Click Marketing – Will you incorporate a pay per click campaign into your Internet marketing strategy? If not then state so in your plan. If so then you need to set a budget and plan your keywords.
• Social Media Marketing – Will you use social media? If so, which sites will you benefit from the most? What percentage of your overall marketing budget will be devoted to social media? Be specific in detailing your social media marketing plan.
• Blogging – Will you benefit from a blog? Include the details of your blogging strategy into your plan as well.
• Video Marketing – Will video be a significant part of your Internet marketing strategy? Will you embed video on your website or simply use it as a traffic generation tool? Outline your video marketing plan in as much detail as possible.
• Other Marketing Initiatives – What else is important to your Internet marketing strategy? Include it in your plan. Whether you plan to use article marketing or mobile marketing, put it into your plan. If there is anything you plan to incorporate into your online marketing plan then it needs to be written down.

Don’t worry about whether you’ll stick to your plan completely. At this stage you are simply making a plan. You can change it later. You can modify it as needed. But failing to plan is planning to fail and no one wants to engage in Internet marketing only to fall on their face. Least off, you.

Every day almost you hear about a successful viral marketing campaign. Many times they just happen. They’re not planned. And sometimes it isn’t even something that is marketed. It’s just a video or an article that becomes popular for some reason. It’s like serendipity.

But can you plan a viral marketing campaign? Are those things plannable?

Well, every marketer would like to think so. And, in truth, yes, you can plan a viral marketing campaign. But planning something and seeing it through to completion are two different things. Sometimes the plan just doesn’t work out.

So what’s it take to make a viral marketing plan work? It takes more than a plan. I guarantee you that.

However, it starts with a plan. If you don’t plan for the viral marketing campaign – and I mean every detail down to where you intend to submit your content and who your target audience is – then you might as well plan for it to fail. You can’t leave it to happenstance. Or serendipity.

That said, don’t expect your viral marketing campaign to succeed just because you planned it. You have to also monitor your efforts, and your results.

When you’re ready to build a viral marketing campaign and see it through to completion, find a viral marketing expert to guide you through the maze.