"Online Marketing Maintenance Plan"
by Jim Daniels

Okay, get out your schedules. It's time to pencil in the most important "appointments" you MUST attend as a small business owner.

I'm sure you've heard over and over that as a small business owner, most of your time should be spent on marketing. And while this is true, pinning down the specifics can be a daunting task. Unless you have a regular routine you can follow, your efforts will yield inconsistent results at best.

So how do the most successful marketers keep up with the constant chore of promotion? They follow a regular schedule and attend their own "marketing maintenance appointments!"

Based on my own promotion, I've worked up a mock schedule for you. This stuff really works for me, and may work for you too. Naturally I don't expect you to follow it to the letter, but this should help you develop your own "online marketing maintenance plan."

Here we go...

Daily:

- Answer email.

If this is not already your number one priority online, it should be. People expect answers quickly in cyberspace. If you show them that you are ready and willing to help, you'll earn their trust and their business.

- Perform one marketing-related task.

Even if it is fifteen minutes to register at a search engine or post to a bulletin board, make a commitment to perform at least one marketing-related task per day.


Weekly:

- Add a page to your website.

Even if it is a short report about your area of expertise, adding pages regularly will increase your exposure by giving your site more points of entry. This will also show customers that your site is not stagnant.

- Add a dozen or so search terms to your goto.com account. You DO have a "goto" account don't you? www.GoTo.com lets you buy targeted clicks to your site for as little as a penny. This marketing strategy is gaining popularity rapidly among many prominent marketers. One of our private site members has utilized this strategy and added 15,000+ visitors by spending $150 a month. He never pays more than $0.01 for any click! Enough said.


Monthly:

- Submit any new web pages you've added to at least 5 new search engines.

Once you're in the major engines like AltaVista, InfoSeek and Excite, go for the "next level" engines like Thunderstone, MetaCrawler, LookSmart. These engines are included in searches from multi-engine search sites such as dogpile.com and others. Your site needs to be listed with as many search engines as possible.


- Find one new ezine to advertise in.

Advertising in most ezines is still one of the biggest bargains on the internet. In many cases your cost of advertising is recouped with just one or two sales. A few ezines I've advertised in with excellent results are DEMC and Web Marketing Today. If you have not tried ezine advertising you may be surprised at the results. Each time you find one that works, just add them to your regular advertising schedule and before long you'll see a steady incline in profits. (Why not start with the one you're reading right now - if YOU are reading it, your target audience may be reading it too!)


- Submit an article to a list of targeted ezine publishers.

Here's how effective this can be. Just last month I released a tip I wrote for my BizWeb E-Gazette. The following week it appeared at internetday.com and generated over 2000 visitors to my site. Talk about effective promotion. Article submissions need to be on your schedule.


Quarterly:

- Set up one completely automated marketing tool.

What is an automated marketing tool? Something you implement, which promotes your site 24 hours a day and does 100% of the work. (Isn't the web a great place to do business!) Here's an excellent example of how to use this strategy... http://www.letemknow.com - This site sets up a referral form for you to post on your site. Your visitors can then refer their friends and associates to your site with a few clicks. letemknow.com builds the forms for you in seconds and it'll take you just a few minutes have the referral service on your site. Unlike many similar services, this one isn't interested in grabbing your traffic. It simply helps you generate countless referrals to your site.


- Sign on one joint-venture.

Joint ventures work great on the internet. There are two ways you can utilize this to add profits. First, you can contact webmasters who market similar products and services and ask them if they would be interested in offering yours. Give them 25% - 50% of the profits and it's a win-win situation. Another way to use this strategy is to promote another webmasters' product or service (something you can get behind) to your subscribers or customers. No matter which method you choose, doing this quarterly can double your yearly income. If you haven't tried it yet, start by keeping a notebook of possible joint venture candidates and contact them on schedule.

There you have it. A real marketing maintenance schedule that works. If you don't already have your own schedule, I invite you to print this one out and use it as your own. As you find new marketing resources that work, add them in and remember, always keep your appointments!