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There's a quote: "A failure to plan is a plan to fail". I've found it to hold true. When things are done ad hoc or willy-nilly, they almost always end up in the wrong place. A marketing plan can give your online business focus and resolve to accomplish the important things while leaving out the unimportant. If you don't have a marketing plan, it's very likely you're struggling to make money and make your business a success. In this article, I'm going to cover the basics of putting together a marketing plan that will work for you.

First, you need to know the tasks you need to be doing to market your products. Are you going to focus on social networking or PPC? Maybe you'll optimize your sites for the search engines or an affiliate army. Come up with a list of no more than 15-20 ways you want to market your products. Make sure they're tasks. Something like "Front Page Of Digg" is actually a lot of other tasks - writing intriguing articles, networking with other Diggers, etc. List them all in a spreadsheet.

Next, rank each task. Rank the task on a scale from 1-5 based on how effective the task is at bringing you closer to your goals. If you're focusing on getting to the top of social bookmarking sites, writing articles and headlines are going to get a five rating as is networking on those sites. Other tasks, like video promotion might only receive a one. I can't say for sure what is working or what will work for you, but based on your best guesses at this point rank them all. Be sure you're fair in your assessments and priorities. A straight ranking of fives for everything is not going to help you determine where you need to focus your effort and time.

Now make a plan for the next month. For simplicity, just assume a five day week for the next four weeks. From the list above, sort it so the fives are on top. I suggest putting the fives into the middle of the week, Tuesday, Wednesday, and/or Thursdays. Mark these tasks down for every week. Now the fours and threes can go out to the edges of the week, most likely every other week. And the twos and ones will get some time at most once a month. When you're done you should see you'll be spending the most time on the tasks rated 5 and the least on the tasks ranked one.

Now that we have a bright new shiny plan, act on it. It's not going to do very much good if it's sitting around gathering dust! Each day look at your plan and do the tasks on it and what is on it until it is done. Do not check emails, answer support calls or other tasks. You need to get your marketing done as quickly and efficiently as possible. No distractions.

Once you've worked your plan for the first month, it's review time! Now go over all the tasks you accomplished for the month and determine which ones drew you closer to your marketing objectives and which ones did not. Once you know this review your list and change any rankings needing changing. Next change the calendar so any new fives are being done every week and those having fallen out of five favor are more sporadically done. Once you've gone through a few cycles, you'll have a good feel for which are making you money and which are not. Once you know this, start outsourcing the ones making you money.

Making a marketing plan isn't very difficult if you take it step by step. And having a plan is very often the difference between success and failure. So start planning for your success today!