How to Write a Website Marketing Plan That Will Lead You to Success

Your ideal website marketing plan lies here in this article. Come take a look at it and learn how to write marketing plans for website yourself.

Have you ever found yourself in an unpleasant situation where you think “Gosh, I should’ve thought of this before”? As much as I wish you haven’t, I have a strong suspicion you have – just like me and millions (or, dare I say, billions) of other people.

These unpleasant situations can be pretty much avoided if you have a plan. Speaking of digital marketing (and website marketing specifically), we also mean that there’s money at stake. Therefore, having a plan can save you not only time and regrets, but also money.

Money saved = money earned

and that’s what any business is about.

What Is a Website Marketing Plan?

Website marketing plan is a document that outlines the actions you are going to undertake to achieve the goal for your website (whether it’s growing traffic, increasing conversion, or simply earning a certain amount of money).

Most people (especially designers) cringe when they hear about a website marketing plan, but, in fact, it may be your single most effective and powerful marketing tool.

This is where all the magic happens – a well-written website marketing plan can drive your business to success the same way a poorly executed plan can sink it.

Another important thing to mention is that the only person truly responsible for the website marketing plan is you, website owner. Not the designer, not the programmer, and even not the guy from the house across the street who drives a better car than you do. 😉

The responsibility is fully yours, but so is the success, and so is the (potential) failure.

Why You Need to Create It for Your Website

Well, simply because it’s easier that way. Instead of dwelling in an uncertainty, you can have a firm direction and focus – that’s what a marketing plan gives you.

Website marketing plan (just like any other plan) is designed to answer these three simple, yet difficult questions:

• Where is my website now?
• Where should I go with my website?
• How do I get there?

The reason I called these questions simple and difficult at the same time is because, despite being short, they may take quite some time to find the answers to. But once you find the answers, it all becomes suddenly so clear.

This brings me to my next question, which is “What makes a solid website marketing plan?”

What Makes a Solid Marketing Plan for a Website?

Right off the bat, I can name three main components of a perfect website marketing plan. They are:

1. Overall website/business goals
2. Marketing strategy
3. Marketing tactics

If you take a look just a few paragraphs above, these three components align nicely with the website marketing plan questions.

Seriously, the overall business goals let you realize your current place and position yourself on the market in the future, thus setting the marketing goals. Marketing strategy outlines the ways of reaching those goals, while “marketing tactics” section lists the methods you’re going to use to reach the goals (let’s call these methods “objectives”).

Website Marketing Plan Components

Let’s take a closer look at each of these three components and how they make your website marketing plan complete.

1. Overall Website/Business Goals

Perhaps, your website is just a part of your larger business. Or maybe, your website IS your business. Whatever the case may be, you need to answer the question “What is it that I want to achieve with my website?”

Possible answers may include “earn X amount of money,” “increase market share from X% to Y%,” “sell 1,000 units per month” etc.

Any goal is a good goal as long as it’s SMART. It’s an abbreviation that stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound. Let’s take a look how that nice little abbreviation works if applied to your website marketing plan.

– Specific

There’s no reason you should set abstract “let’s make everyone feel a little better” type of goals. The more specific you get with your goal, the better. Even more so, try not to set multiple goals at once. Instead, create one main goal and a few sub-goals or milestones.

Bad goal example: outsell my competitors

Good goal example: sell minimum of 1,000 units of product X per month

– Measurable

A goal is not a goal if it can’t be measure. The reason for this is quite simple: if you can’t measure your goal objectively, how do you know if you’ve reached it?

Therefore, you should formulate your goal in a way that makes it easily measurable. On this stage, you will probably get rid of any vague or loose ideas or concepts you might have had before. They simply won’t stand the test of measurability.

Bad goal example: become a market leader

Good goal example: become a market leader with a share of at least 38% as of current year

– Attainable

Being reasonably ambitious is a good thing. Being recklessly adventurous is, however, not.

Despite what many great company leaders say about having “change the world” as their initial goal, it’s not true. Yes, some of them may have ultimately changed the world, but it was done during the course of a few decades, one small step after another.

For your website marketing plan, you should set only realistic and down-to-earth goals. Remember – there’s too much at stake. You risk your (or, what’s even worse, someone else’s) money, reputation, and time.

Bad goal example: reinvent the gaming experience with my new game app

Good goal example: reach #1 in “Hot New Games” chart in Google Play Market and stay on top for at least 4 weeks straight

– Relevant

This one is pretty obvious. Don’t go beyond what you can’t change or influence. You’re not an alchemist and your goal is not to invent an elixir of immortality. Stay down-to-earth. 🙂

Also, don’t try to formulate your goals in a way that suggests “making someone do something.” Focus your efforts on your own wishes and capabilities.

Bad goal example: put my competitor out of business and make him stop releasing his awful product for people 🙂

Good goal example: increase my daily product downloads to 1,000 units

– Time-bound

Last, but not least. Every goal should have a certain time to complete. Otherwise, it’s not a goal, it’s more like positive thinking.

Having a deadline concentrates your efforts and makes them oh so meaningful. See for yourself in the example below.

Bad goal example: earn 10,000 dollars from my website

Good goal example: earn 10,000 dollars by the end of current year

Now that you know what SMART goals are, it’s time to move on to the next part of your website marketing plan – marketing strategy (or strategies).

2. Marketing Strategy

I like to think of a marketing strategy as a way to implement your goals. Different goals can have different strategies to align with. It’s not an uncommon thing for a website marketing plan to have the main goal with a few sub-goals (milestones), each of which has its own strategy.

Marketing strategy does tell you what to do, but it doesn’t tell you how to do it because that’s what marketing tactics are for.

Here are some of the marketing strategies examples:

• optimize my web-page to make it SEO-friendly
• increase conversion of my landing page
• post guest articles on my partner websites’ blogs
• increase organic/paid traffic on my website
• increase the number of subscribers on my Instagram product page

Well, you get the idea.

3. Marketing Tactics

That’s where all the fun is. In this section of your website marketing plan, you formulate the actual marketing activities that align with the corresponding marketing strategy and, of course, goals.

Here are the key components for a typical marketing tactic:

– Brief Description

Nothing too fancy here – just a short of what you’re going to do.

For example: launch a two-month PPC campaign on Google to increase website traffic from 1,000 unique daily visitors to 5,000 unique daily visitors (I have, in fact, a great article about PPC called “What is PPC? Learn How to Set Up Successful Pay Per Click Campaign”).

– Goals That This Tactic Aligns With

Take a look a few paragraphs above, where we discussed the goals.

For example: earn $10,000 from my website by the end of the current year

– Marketing Strategy That This Tactic Aligns With

Same as with the goals, just make sure it logically follows your marketing strategy.

For example: increase paid traffic to my website

– Resources Required

Every task requires three types of resources: time, people, and money. Write down, how much of each of these three resources you are going to spend on your exact tactic.

For example: time – 4 hours to set up a PPC campaign, 2 months to complete; people – me and a freelance PPC specialist; money – approximately $1,000, give or take another $100.

– Metrics

How are you going to measure your results? Whether it’s conversion rate or simply net profit, be precise and make sure you’ve done your preliminary calculations.

Conclusion

Today you’ve learned what a website marketing plan is and how to write your own plan. Remember to “measure twice, cut once,” as they say in the construction business.

The right thing to do would be share this article with your friends on the social networks – just click on one of the icons of social media, it’s that easy.

If you have further questions on the subject, please write them in comments – I’ll be glad to answer.

If you’re interested in developing your own sales strategy as well, be sure to check my another articles: