If you haven’t got an internet marketing plan you’re stacking the odds against you.

It’s a bit like going on a long journey without a sat nav or a map. Sure, you’ll probably get to your destination but you may well encounter detours and delays along the way.

Ready made internet marketing plans can work OK but they’re best treated as a starting point rather than the final item.

The reason for this is that we all work slightly differently and one person’s internet marketing plan won’t necessarily work brilliantly for you.

Which means it makes sense to create your own internet marketing plan. Either on your own or with the help of a trusted friend.

How much time can you devote to your internet marketing?

Be realistic about this.

If you can spend an hour or two most days, that’s good.

If you intend to spend half your weekend working on your internet marketing, that’s OK.

There’s no “correct” answer.

It depends on you.

But your answer will affect the remainder of the process of creating your internet marketing plan: for instance, if you can only spend an hour a day on your internet marketing at first, you won’t be able to create and upload 8 hours of videos to YouTube every day without outsourcing most of the process.

What is your target market?

You need to know who you’re targeting.

It’s much like an animal will mark out it’s territory.

This could be a niche that you enjoy and would like to earn some extra money from you.

Or it could be connected to your main business.

Or near enough anything else.

The thing to do is to drill down.

If your answer to the question of who you’re targeting is “everyone” then you haven’t done this part of the process properly. Apart from air and water there’s nothing that everyone in the world needs or wants.

Even food doesn’t encompass everyone – because different diets or food tolerances will mean that not everyone in the world could be in your niche.

Take the time to drill down.

Within reason, the narrower your niche the better.

Because you’ll be able to form a picture of your target market and will be able to reach them better.

For instance, if you were producing a weight loss program for people with an intolerance to wheat and peanuts, you’d have a much better chance of finding prospects than if you just targeted anyone who was overweight whether or not they considered themselves to be carrying “a few extra pounds”.

That’s important.

When you’re thinking about your target market, ask yourself whether they are likely to want what you’re offering.

Notice I said want not need in that sentence.

Going back to the overweight example, people in that market need to eat less food. But, almost by definition, they don’t want to do that.

So you’d need to find the people in that niche who had a desire to lose weight and who wanted to lose it the way you were showing (low carb, juicing, intermittent fasting, whatever).

Ask yourself whether there are people out there who want what you’re proposing to offer them.

If the answer is no, put your thinking cap on again.

If the answer is yes, you’re ready to move on to the next section of your internet marketing plan.

What are you going to offer and where are you going to sell it?

This could be your own product or service.

Or it could be products or services produced by other people and offered by you in return for a commission.

Or it could be getting a commission for introducing potential customers (leads) to other businesses.

Any of those options can work.

You need to decide which route you want to work on.

A lot of businesses offer their own product or service – window cleaners, gardeners, computer fixers, etc. Or it could be bigger products and services – almost anything you can buy!

You can use internet marketing to attract more business to your business and make it more likely that people will find you.

Other businesses mainly offer products and services created by someone else.

Most retailers do that – Amazon delivers books and other things that have been produced by other people. Their Kindle device is manufactured by someone else even though it has their name on it.

Some retailers hold stock, others have display models and take orders for products, others have the raw materials and create the product once it’s been ordered – coffee shops spring to mind for that example.

If you decide to sell products online then you’ll need some kind of store front.

That could be your own web site or you could piggy-back on ready made marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay or Craigslist.

If you plan to offer information, you might decide to create your own product.

That could be in written form – a Kindle book, a downloadable ebook, web pages, etc.

It could be videos or audios or seminars (online or held in a building) or any other way that you can best deliver your information to your target audience.

And, again, you could distribute your newly created product via your own website or through one or more of the many different channels online.

Now work out the detail of your internet marketing plan…

By this stage of your plan, you should have a good idea of what you want to sell and who you’re going to sell it to.

Next, you need to work out how you’re actually going to do that.

Some methods will work better than others.

Partially that depends on the product or service you’re offering.

And partially that depends on you.

No-one is good at everything.

And almost no product or service has a single way that it can be promoted.

For instance, I’m creating this in written form in my blog but I’ll then be turning it into a video, an audio podcast and a document share.

Other people might decide that they’d create the podcast or video first and then spin the other options out of that.

Yet others might prefer to post on niche forums or Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn.

And others may decide that commenting on YouTube videos and article directories and blogs was the way to go.

All of those will work – some will work better than others.

And some will work better for some people than others.

For instance, a few years ago I wouldn’t have been comfortable creating and narrating a long video but now I’m happy to do that.

If I put my mind to it, I could stand up in front of a room full of people and talk about internet marketing. I’d have to step outside my comfort zone for a while but once I started talking I know I’d be fine.

You need to work on the detail of your internet marketing plan.

What leaps out at you as the best way to implement it?

If the answer is “nothing does”, chances are your plan isn’t fully formed yet so you need to go back to the earlier steps.

If the answer is “everything” then you need to prioritise.

Sure, everything could work.

But what is likely to work best for you?

Do you enjoy writing content or is it a chore?

Does the idea of creating videos fill you with excitement or trepidation?

If you’re still not sure, apply the 80/20 rule – it doesn’t have to be precisely that ratio but spend most of your time on the one or two methods that you enjoy most and that get you most results.

Those two often go hand in hand.

Because the more you do something, the better you get at it and the more your name gets out there.

It’s what Sean Mize did when he created over 25,000 articles on EzineArticles.

With that quantity he’s single handedly responsible for almost 1% of their entire site despite being just one out of almost half a million people creating articles.

And even with the drop in traffic to article sites you can bet that he still gets traffic on a daily basis.

I’m not suggesting that you need that quantity of articles or other things for your internet marketing.

But I am suggesting that you concentrate on one or two methods as your main promotion so that you get more proficient at them and also there’s a higher chance of some of your content getting found.

Getting your content found on the internet is close to the old idea of finding a needle in a haystack but the more precise you make your content, the more likely it is that you’ll get found.

Your internet marketing plan needs to include as much detail as you’re comfortable with.

If you’re happy working with a broad approach where your plan just says that you’ll create a website of your own, add at least 3 pages to it every week and create at least 4 promotional pieces for it every week then that’s fine. That’s how I often work – I just keep a printed tick sheet with dates and I then tick off when I’ve done an article or a video or whatever.

If you’d prefer a plan that goes into more detail, that’s fine as well. If you’re just starting out it makes sense to do that so that you know in advance what you’ll be doing.

Here’s where a lot of people stall:

Most of the time, we know enough or can find out enough to be able to succeed.

But a lot of people stall at the final hurdle: doing things regularly for long enough for them to take effect.

If you flit from one thing to the next, that could be your biggest problem.

And changing from trying one thing today, a different thing tomorrow and different thing the day after that could be the final piece of the jigsaw.

Challenge yourself to keep to one or (at most) two things to push your internet marketing business forward.

And challenge yourself to keep to that for at least the next 30 days.

When you manage to do this, the chances are you’ll be an order of magnitude further ahead in a month’s time than you would be if your internet marketing path is in its regular state of being littered with half-finished projects.

Go public with your decision.

Post a message on your Facebook wall.

Text a few friends asking them to keep you on track.

Spend the first block of time you’ve set aside for your internet marketing doing whatever it is you’ve promised yourself you’ll do. No distractions or “I’ll just do this first” excuses!

Maybe post your commitment in the comments section below.

Do whatever it takes to stay on track.

If you need extra help on specific areas, take a look at this page. Chances are there’s something for you and, if not, feel free to send me a message.

And if you’d like more detailed help coming up with your very own internet marketing plan, click here or contact me for a Skype chat or other assistance.

If you’d prefer, you can watch a video of this article on YouTube: