What’s Your 12-Week Online Marketing Plan?
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What Is Your 12-Week Goal? What Are You WANTING To Accomplish and What Specific Steps Can You Take In The Next 12 Weeks That Can Move You CLOSER To That Goal? This is How You Build Your Online Marketing Plan! The GOOD NEWS Is There's STILL TIME!
In my surveys of customers, I've found most don't have an online marketing plan that is written down. Today, I want to get you on track to fixing this.
We're at a critical part of the YEAR. It's time you make plans NOW for a big push to accomplish some of the things you set out to achieve at the BEGINNING of the year. We all start the year with goals. But sometimes as the year wears on, we lose focus and get off track.
Sometimes we run into obstacles and get discouraged. At other times, we just get sidetracked. Maybe your family responsibilities occupied much of your attention. Or you had some health issues. Or you dug into a project that didn't turn out as you wished. Maybe you procrastinated and never got started!
Well, whatever the situation, the GREAT NEWS is we have a little over 12 weeks to make the final push of the year! There is still time to figure out what you WANT between right now, today, and the end of the year. And make one final push to make it happen.
Either YOU decide what YOU WANT and make it happen. Or stuff happens to YOU and you don't get what YOU want. There are always things to distract you from getting what you want. The key is to put a plan in place strong enough to motivate you to overcome those distractions.
I'm here to remind you of that and to encourage and support you in getting closer to what YOU want and what YOUR GOALS are in the next 12 weeks for your ONLINE MARKETING BUSINESS.
Here's the problem with that:
1. Without a written online marketing plan, you're subject to chasing every new offer that sounds faster, simpler or easier than the one before and the one before that.
The problem with this is it literally ruins your success. What I've found is that almost nothing works right at first! Success is the result of iterating your goals. Stated more simply, it's the result of planning your work and working your plan. What I mean is, you have your goal. Then you have your plan or HOW you're going to accomplish your goal. Then you work your plan. You get one of three results:
Positive result: Your plan worked and you moved closer to your goal or objective.
For example, your goal is to generate 10 leads or subscribers to your email list per day.
You put up your email capture page (see definitions) and run your Facebook ad. You average 4 opt-ins per day. This is good. You have a positive result you can IMPROVE on.
Neutral result: You run your ad and get just a few opt-ins or none.
Negative result: Not only do you not get new subscribers but the ones on your list unsubscribe!
This is NOT good!
Whatever the result you get when you work your online marketing plan, you do NOT see it as failure. You see it as FEEDBACK. You adjust your plan and go to bat again. If you're a member of my Level One Training, I've recently greatly beefed up Module 4 or 5 on this process and written about it in detail. You'll want to re-read your Module.
2. Without a written online marketing plan, you're just shooting in the dark and unlikely to get the result you want
If you know anyone who is a runner and takes it seriously, they probably keep a little notebook where they keep track of their results and their plan for improvement. By actual tracking and statistics, this increases the chances you reach your goal. There is a considerable amount of research that proves this.
3. Without a written plan, you decrease the chances you take action and stick to it
I don't know why, but the act of writing alone tells our subconscious mind we're serious about something. It sends a signal of “pay attention to this.”
Without a written marketing plan, you probably don't take action. You increase your chances of procrastinating. Then when you procrastinate and don't take consistent action, you don't get results. This then means that the people in your life who don't believe in what you're doing to start with have additional fuel to prove their point. They criticize you, and you don't have results to show them and make 'em shut up. You start feeling discouraged. This means you then have less energy to do what needs to be done.
It's a cycle that leads to no results, frustration and quitting.
There's nothing positive about it.
On the flip side, WITH a written plan for your online marketing success, you increase the chances you take action. You spend more time focusing on the few things you can do that will get you the most results for the time you invest. You avoid draining the time you have on activities that lead to nothing.
The Question Is, Why Don't We Have Written Internet Marketing Plans?
Here are a few reasons I believe we don't have written plans to boost Internet sales or get them to start with.
Reason one: We don't have confidence that our plan will work
This is natural and normal. Anytime you're doing something new, there WILL be doubt and uncertainty BECAUSE confidence only comes from success! Since it's a new activity, obviously you don't have success yet.
Solution: The solution can be to borrow a plan from someone else that you have confidence in.
Reason two: We don't want to get “boxed in” and miss out on a big opportunity
The irony of this is you can't chase every opportunity. It's very true you could miss out on a better opportunity by focusing on one. But if you never focus on an opportunity, you absolutely guarantee you will NOT get results — EVER! For the rest of your life you'll be like a hamster running on a wheel getting nowhere at all. Is this the future you want?
Solution: Limit the LENGTH of your plan. I recommend 12 weeks, and then break that up into six 2-week goals. The reason for that is, a week is a short time period and it can be frustrating if something unexpected comes up. Two weeks gives you a little longer period of time. I've found that MOST people have a real problem focusing longer than 10 days! Believe it or not, this is true.
The SOLUTION is to create a 10 or 12-week plan, then break it down into sub-steps. By putting things in a larger picture, you're more likely to plan your work and work your plan.
Reason three: We feel we need a FOOLPROOF INTERNET MARKETING PLAN before we take any action at all.
In other words, at some level, we're afraid of making MISTAKES. We let this stop us from taking action. We feel unsure of ourselves.
The SOLUTION is to view the actions you take as an EXPERIMENT you're conducting. There is no foolproof plan. You can certainly put the probabilities of success in our favor. That's what I do for you. That's why I exist. I'm here to help you avoid trial-and-error learning. But it can't all be avoided. Some of it is just part of the learning and growing experience.
What Mistakes Should You AVOID In Putting Together Your 12-Week Online Marketing Plan?
online marketing plan | fear mistakes
In assembling your plan for the next 12 weeks, you want to avoid the common mistakes:
Mistake one: Building a plan for what sounds good but isn't likely to work
Anytime you see these plans that float around on how to make $10,000 (or more) in 30 days — even if you're starting from scratch, have no skills or experience and don't know what you're doing, you're just not looking at something that's going to work for you.
It's TRUE. You CAN make $10,000 in 30 days. And some people do it when their income at the start was $0.00. But what you USUALLY find out is that person usually had a history of success at other related projects. And they were able to draw upon that experience. A lot of times you find out they HAD some good months in the past but then went through a dry spell. Their success story omits their past successes. Others have a history of selling big tickets or success in direct sales. All they really have to do is generate some leads then sell a big ticket over the phone. IF this is an existing skill they have, it's not that hard for them to make 10k in 30 days.
That's a VERY different scenario from the person starting from scratch.
Mistake two: Building out a plan that does NOT include list building
I see people do this quite a bit. There are a lot of plans floating around today that don't require list building. People point to big checks and earnings. For example, maybe right NOW they're crushing it with cpa offers, T-shirts or Amazon — without list building. But the chances that works for them LONG TERM, or even a year from now, isn't good. More often than not, everyone jumps on board because “it's easy” and then the whole thing flops.
What that means is a lot of time people WASTED TIME that could have been spent learning to build a front-end (definition), a LIST, and follow up email marketing. Build a list. Even if you do T-shirts, cpa marketing or Amazon whatever, you can STILL build lists. Then you can market additional products to those lists.
Mistake three: NOT building on a foundation of administration, production and promotion.
These are the 3 CORE ACTIVITIES you must excel at. They form the BACKBONE of any successful business, whether it's an ONLINE MARKETING BUSINESS or an offline business.
Your 12-week plan needs to have your core operations elements in it. Things like what outsourcers will you need? What will your product flow be? How will you install your feedback loops?
Then you need to have your production tasks. You're going to PRODUCE SOMETHING and people are going to pay you for it. Maybe that product is something on Amazon, a T-shirt, a service, advertising or something else. But if people are giving you money, you have to DELIVER something TO them for their money. We call this a “deliverable” or a product.
The idea here is we want to trade PRODUCTS for money, so we aren't always having to trade our own personal TIME for money as we do in JOBS.
What Steps Do I Take NOW To Create My 12-Week Plan?
By now I HOPE you're seeing the value of putting together a solid plan then acting on it. Here are a few steps you can take today:
Step one: Analyze what HAS and has NOT worked for you to date
Look over what you have tried or tested. Did ANYTHING get ANY result for you? If so, write that down. I don't care if you didn't get the big result you wanted. If it produced SOME results, that's something you can build on.
What did NOT work for you? Write those things down.
Step two: Plan to do more of what worked
Now you know what has and has NOT worked for you. Ask yourself WHY. Why did the things work? Can you do MORE of whatever worked? Can you do 5x or 10x more of it?
Step three: Create a new plan to reach a clear, definite 12-week goal
Set a goal for 12 weeks. Something you believe you can attain but that is a bit of a stretch.
Example: Get 100 subscribers to your email list
Example: Make your first sale
Example: Sell 10 products on a webinar
Example: Increase your income from $1500 a month to $2000.
Step four: Create a 3-phased plan
You have 12 weeks. That is 3 months of four weeks each. Divide your plan into 3 major steps of one month each.
Step five: Break down each phase into 2-4 steps
You can work on 1-week or 2-week “sprints.” Whatever works for you. The important thing is you know THIS WEEK what you want to get done, WHY and how it fits into your 12-week plan.
Write And Tell Me About Your 12-Week Goal
I'm INTERESTED in you, your goal, what you want, WHY you want it and what you'd like to get done in the next 12 weeks. I can only help you if I know what it is you WANT!
You can write and tell me your goal simply and easily.
1. Go here: http://hrmi.tenderapp.com/dashboard
2. Click “Start a Discussion”
3. Just enter your name, email and type your goal in the big text box
4. Write in the box and tell me your goal
Here are things I'm interested in:
a. What is your overall goal?
b. What would you like to do in the next 12 weeks?
c. Why do you want to do that in the next 12 weeks?
d. What's the #1 thing STOPPING you from doing that?
e. What is the #1 thing you have going for you to help you reach your goal?
5. Hit Create
It's that easy. You're done!
Marlon Sanders
PS: Your likes, COMMENTS, Facebook and Twitter shares are GREATLY appreciated and noticed!
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The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
