How to Develop an Internet Marketing Plan

The development of any marketing plan must start with thinking about your target audience. An accurate understanding of who your target audience is critical to developing your on-line strategy. Some of the following questions will help us to develop insights into your customers and your marketplace.. Take as much time as necessary to answer the questions that follow.

Getting to know you

• What is your organization's main product or service.
• What other advertising and marketing does your business do and how often?
• What distinguishes you from your competitors?
• What is your unique selling proposition?

Your Unique Selling Proposition
A unique selling proposition (also known as a unique selling point) is a marketing concept first proposed as a theory to explain the pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940’s. The campaigns studied had made unique propositions to customers which successfully convinced them to switch brands. Today, many successful businesses and corporations use unique selling propositions as a basis for their marketing campaigns.

A unique selling proposition must be based on an actual benefit to the customer. It cannot contain superlatives such as "we are simply the best". The proposition must be based on something that the competition cannot or does not offer. The proposition must be strong enough that it motivates customers to switch to your brand.

Here are a few useful examples:

• Domino's pizza: You get fresh hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less or it's free
• FedEx: When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight
• M&Ms: The taste that melts in your mouth not in your hand
• Head and shoulders: you get rid of dandruff

The possibilities for unique selling propositions are unlimited. However you must adopt a unique selling proposition that dramatically addresses an obvious void in the marketplace that you can actually fill.

How to understand your target customer

• What is the age? (Determining the age of your audience informs everything from the kind of language used in your ad copy to the type of media used in your campaign to reach them.)
• What is their gender?
• Where do they live? What geographical area are you targeting?
• What are their interests?
• How much money do they earn?
• What problems are they facing?
• What do they want?

Any insight into what is on your customers mind will ultimately help you to connect with them.

Key thought: Brand Perception

When we study a Brand perception in the marketplace we begin to understand how people associate with, or view with that brand. We discover what the personality of the brand is in the eyes of the consumer. Perhaps our product is strong. Perhaps our product is reliable. Perhaps our product is familiar and comforting or part of the family tradition.

Of course, if you're marketing a new product your brand personality has not been established all. By looking at your unique selling proposition you can determine what the quality or personality of your product and service is. Refer back to the section on developing a unique selling proposition if you haven't already. Select qualities which your competitors in the marketplace do not, or, cannot compete with.