Your online marketing plan is what you make of it. You can have the perfect strategy in place, but if you don’t back it up with enough content, you’re just wasting your time. To avoid this, you need to sit down and make a plan and work out what you’re going to do to promote your online store. We’ve put together a step-by-step guide to help you make the most of your plan and get the very most out of your online marketing efforts.

Make A Plan

The first and probably the most critical step to taking your online marketing plan seriously is to make a plan. This should include everything from a strategic approach to marketing to a detailed content schedule. Without a clear plan, you’re just shooting in the dark; you might have a strategy, but you’re not sure if it’s going to work or not. Too much planning can also mean you’re over-planning, and that’s never a good idea. Make sure that you plan enough but don’t plan too much. You need to be able to adapt and change as your business grows and new opportunities arise.

As part of your plan, you should also think about creating an editorial calendar so that you know when the content you’re creating is going to be published and for how long. This will help you keep track of everything and ensure that you don’t end up with content that’s outdated because you didn’t plan ahead. It also gives you the opportunity to look back at the performance of previous content and decide whether or not to re-purpose it for future campaigns. To create an editorial calendar, simply pick a date and decide how long you’re going to keep the content published for. You can add a due date to the end of the week so that you have a nice little reminder to check off the content as you go along.

Launch A Website

The next step in the process is to launch a website. While you could certainly make do with just a blog page on your existing website, you might want to consider whether or not you need a dedicated domain name and online platform to fully deploy your marketing plan. Launching a website independently means you’re responsible for the upkeep of the site, as well as ensuring that it’s filled with content that’s relevant and engaging for your target audience. It can be difficult to keep a blog page fresh and interesting when you’re constantly updating it with new content, but having a dedicated website where you can post different content at your leisure means that you can keep the quality high while also allowing for more variety than a blog page. You can also use the site to host your podcast or record your video courses for free.

Create Blogpost Timelines

Once you’ve got your website up and running, it’s time to start creating blog post timelines. Simply pick a starting date and work your way forward ten or so posts (in your case, this will be different for each product or service, but you get the idea). When you’ve reached that point, it’s time to step back and evaluate how you’re doing. Was the content successful in getting you more customers? Did you get the word out about your store to a bigger audience than you had previously reached? Were you able to boost your conversion rates? Identify the responses you received and make a note of what you’ll do next time to make the content more effective. Don’t forget to add in content that isn’t related to your niche either; you never know what might inspire an idea or offer a new perspective for your audience. You can also use the blogposts to start a conversation with your readers about a product or service that they might find valuable. As you’d expect from an online marketer, your blog should always be striving to provide value to your audience and encourage them to engage with you and your blog on a regular basis. In case you’re wondering, a blog post that’s valuable to your audience is generally considered to be between 500 and 1,000 words. A lot of white space around the content is also considered to be valuable; it offers the reader a chance to really absorb the content and make the most of it.

Determine Keywords

Once you’ve got your blogging platform set up and you’ve launched your website, it’s time to start looking for keywords. Using keywords is an easy way to make your content more discoverable by potential customers. When someone searches for a product or service that you offer, your website should come up as a result. Naturally, you don’t want to use keywords simply to do this, but it’s a good idea to get to know the keywords that people use most frequently when searching for your products or services. Once you’ve got these, you can start building your content around them. You don’t want to stuff your content full of keywords; it should always be a natural and organic extension of the content itself. Make sure that your choice of keywords is relevant to what you’re writing about and does not just consist of random letters and numbers. This is also an easy step to take if you’ve already got a large number of blog posts; simply go through them all and look for instances where you’ve used a particular keyword. When you find these instances, replace them with the appropriate keyword.

Create Keyword-Rich Headings

When you’ve found a suitable keyword, it’s time to come up with some headings for your blog posts. There’s a widely accepted practice in online marketing of using keywords in the headings of your blog posts. It’s a good idea to do this not only for the sake of keeping track of your content but also for potential customers who are searching for products or services that you offer. When someone is searching for a product or service, the order of the headings can make a difference in their interpretation of the content. Make sure that the headings you choose are relevant to the content and don’t just consist of words and numbers. Picturesque headings can help too.

Create Descriptions For Product Images

The final step before you start creating content is to decide on the descriptive details for each product or service you’re featuring on your website. While you don’t need to go overboard and add in every single detail about each product, you should at least add in enough information for the customer to know what they’re buying. It’s a good idea to write down all the information that might be useful for the customer so that you can easily find it when you need it. Think of all the details you might need to provide about a product or service and make a list of them. Once you’ve got this list, start adding in the necessary information so that the customer knows what they’re buying without having to click through to the product itself. Remember that the more details you add, the more your customers will love you for it. A good rule of thumb is to write down everything that might be beneficial in the least bit.

Once you’ve got all these details about your products and services, it’s time to start creating content. Make sure that you put in the time to do this; creating content for your own website effectively takes time and effort. Don’t expect to be able to crank out a couple of quick blog posts every week and then call it a day’s work. It takes time to make content that’s worthwhile and will keep your customers interested. To get the very most out of the content you create, it’s important to regularly review it and evaluate how you could make it better. Remember that your customers could always do with more content and that having something to fall back on when you run out of fresh ideas could be valuable. This is also a good opportunity to re-purpose content you’ve already created; you might see something that you can use for a future campaign or to highlight a product that’s new to your business.

Once you’ve got a good chunk of content, it’s time to think about promoting it. At this stage, you might want to consider looking into affiliate marketing or making money from online sales in some way. You could set up a landing page for a product that’s similar to what you’ve written about or feature a special offer or discount for the customer. When you promote content like this, you’re essentially just getting the word out there about your content for the sake of increasing its reach. You don’t need to go overboard and spend a lot of money, but simply engaging with your audience on social media or setting up a short-notice sale can be a way of making money from online marketing.

Build A Following

One of the biggest mistakes that new business owners make is believing that simply having a website will do the trick in terms of getting customers. While it’s true that having a website is a good way to get the word out there about your business, you’ll only be able to convert this into actual sales if you’ve got a sizable audience already. Simply having a blog isn’t enough to establish your business as an authority in your industry; you’ll need to actively engage with your audience and encourage them to do business with you.