Writing Internet Marketing Plans

As Internet marketers, you can imagine that we spend a good deal of time developing strategies. We typically do so based around the pre-conceived plans, goals or intentions of our clients (every now and then throwing in our own assessments of how realistic those plans/goals/intentions really are). ;->

What I get asked often by the average Internet start-up, however, is, “How do I write an *Internet* marketing plan?” Since marketing on and for the ‘Net can be anything but traditional, this is a good question.

The “Internet Marketing Plan” we’re talking about here is not necessarily the detailed Internet Marketing Strategy, but rather the plan a company would want to include with its business plan in its efforts to secure funding. It also guide the initial marketing efforts, at least until the reality of its intentions can be measured.

Since other folks have done a good job of organizing and explaining Internet Marketing Plan writing far better than I ever will, why re-invent the wheel? Instead, I’m going to steer you in the direction of some resources to help you write your Internet marketing plan. But before I do, I’m going pose and answer a few other typical questions I get about plugging numbers into this kind of plan.

Here are some of the questions about numbers and costs that I typically get asked:

What are the costs to hire an Internet marketing agency?

Costs obviously vary from firm to firm and ought to be based on the requirements and size of the client. A larger, more demanding client will typically require equally more time. In general, however, costs for a full-service Internet marketing firm can range from several thousand dollars per month on the low end, to tens of thousands of dollars per month on the high end. For the purpose of writing your plan and budgeting accordingly, you may want to plug in a middle-of-the-road figure like $10,000/month.

How much money should we budget for advertising?

If I feel like being a wise-ass that day, I’ll say, “How much money do you want to spend?” In all sincerity, there are infinite numbers of ways to spend advertising dollars and the advertising media are all greedily ready to take your money. To put some realistic dollars behind this, maybe you’d be better off working backwards: determine the kinds of advertising media you think would work best for YOUR particular site to reach YOUR particular target audience, then get some cost ranges for those mediums.

Online advertising expenses can range from several thousand dollars per opportunity up to tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars (AOL is great at negotiating long-term, multi-year, multi-million dollar deals!). Again, for practical, plugging-in-a-number purposes, use a nice round number like $500,000.

What are the average click-thru rates for online advertising?

I get asked this by people who are trying to put some kind of return on investment to their advertising expenditure. Here are some of the latest stats:

Banner Ad Click-Thrus: 0.3% - 0.8% (this is all less than 1%)
Rich Media: 3.8% (source: eMarketer)
Opt-In Email: 5 - 18%
Affiliate Programs: 4% (source: Forrester)

Since I could probably go on forever reciting the kinds of questions I field all week long, in an effort to stop rambling, I’m going to stop now and provide you with those Internet marketing plan resources. Enjoy!

More Business
Sample Dot Com Plan from BPlans.com Intelichild.com (you’ll want to look at section 5.0)
Planware’s Online Strategic Planner Tool
Garol (a British site with a downloadable PowerPoint presentation)
Successful.com

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