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A failure to plan is a plan to fail. Online everything is so easy to do. It's just takes a few seconds to click over there and add this widget to you blog and a few more to add another friend to a social networking site. Unfortunately, this leads to wasted time and the important things to your business never getting accomplished. If you don't have a marketing plan for your online business, I can almost guarantee you are struggling. In this article we're going to cover some basics on how to develop your own marketing plan and make the internet 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. Rate each task on a scale from 1-5 on how important or effective each task is. If you're promoting a blog, blog commenting might rank a five, as would submitting to blog carnivals. Networking on video web sites might rank a one. Initially you need to decide from your own experience or, if you're unsure, use other's experience to how effective each task is toward meeting your marketing goals. Make sure you rank each one honestly. A list of all fives is not going to help you when you go to plan out the month ahead. We all want to do everything, but most of us are limited by the time we can spend on each task.

On to actually building the plan for the next month. Limit yourself to five day work weeks for four weeks to start. Take the ranked list and start putting the tasks ranked five into your calendar first. I suggest using Wednesday for the fives, with overflow onto Tuesday or Thursday. These days are least likely to be disrupted by holidays or long weekends and thus will increase the likelihood they are finished each week. Tasks ranked five will be done every single week. Once you have filled in the fives, insert the fours and threes more toward the edges of the week and most likely only done every other week. Next come the twos and ones and they will be done on Mondays and Fridays and at most once a month. Once the calendar is finished you should see a clear pattern of spending the most time on the fives and the least on the ones.

The next step is to ensure you take action. Put your plan to use. Make sure it's hanging somewhere you can see it everyday and do the allotted task for the day before you do anything else. Put off checking email, phone messages, surfing, gossiping until the tasks are done. Then you can relax and do some other tasks for the rest of the day. But, only do the task allotted on the days you specify. Do not get caught commenting on forums or blogs on the days when you haven't allocated the task because these things, while important, are serious time drains.

At the end of the first month, review your plan. Ask yourself, which tasks moved me closer to my goals and which ones did not? Which ones need a while longer to come to fruition and which ones are just complete duds? Go back to your original list and change the rankings for each of your tasks. Then revisit your plan and based on the new rankings, add or delete instances of tasks. Also, if you have issues with writing on Mondays, for example, and those tasks aren't being accomplished then move those tasks around so they are accomplished. Keep refining your plan month after month and then start outsourcing the tasks making you the most 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!

«Visit my blog and learn the art & science of putting your internet business on complete autopilot.» -Steven Lohrenz. Here is the URL: Internet Business Automation

- Steven Lohrenz