The Seven Critical Steps To A Strategic Plan

Strategic Plan

Having a strategic plan is of critical importance to all internet marketers.

The process of developing a valuable product or service that you intend should contribute substantially to your multiple strands of residual income cannot be a wishy-washy ‘what do I need to do next?’ type of process.

Among all the technology it is easy to forget that internet marketing is a business just like any other.  It obeys all the same rules as any other business and needs to be developed, nurtured, monitored and guided towards its destination like any other business.

That means that to end up with a finished product you have to have a plan – and the more detailed the better.

Remember the sixth step towards riches in Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" is organised planning; the crystallisation of desire into action.

If you want to arrive at your destination with a product or service that people are going to want to buy then you have to plan the way to your destination and that means working through a methodical process.  Broken down into stages you end up with the 7 Critical Steps and here they are:

Step One.

Write down your Mission statement.  This can be quite general at this stage because you will define it more accurately in the later steps.  What is the purpose of your plan?

Step Two.

Refine your mission into an objective by being – well, objective.  Put measurable figures onto your mission statement.  How many copies do you want to sell?  When do you want to sell them by?  How much profit do you intend to make?

Getting rich is not an objective, it’s a mission.  Making a profit from your business of $500,000 dollars by 31st December this year is an objective or goal and your success or failure can be measured, so be specific.

Step Three.

Take a Strategic View

Now think about what strategies you are going to use to achieve your objective.  What strength or weakness have you seen in the marketplace from which you can gain an advantage?  What strength or weakness have you seen in your competitors?

You may find this stage a little difficult to complete but just write down what occurs to you and come back to it later to refine it.

You might find mind mapping useful for this step and, of course, you will review your seven steps at regular intervals so that it accurately reflects the changing nature of the marketplace.

Step Four.

What tactics do you intend to use?  Strategies are long term, broad brush approaches whereas tactics are more detailed and may be necessary as part of a strategy.  You may have a strategy of gaining massive link power and your tactics for achieving this would be by obtaining links from directories by link submissions, plus reciprocal links with relevant sites plus links from forum posting and blog commenting.

Each of these tactics may require different tools, infrastructure and knowledge.  So it is important you identify them because your next step is to identify the resources you need in order to implement them.

Step Five.

You have identified what you are going to do and how you are going to do it.  Now you need to identify the infrastructure you need to make it work.  Do you need hosting, domain names, software, online services?  Do you have them already or do you need to acquire them?

Step Six.

Not only must you know what infrastructure you need but you also need to identify what knowledge you will need to know to achieve your strategies and tactics.   You may decide that you intend to use Pay Per Click advertising to obtain traffic.

But if you don’t know how to do PPC advertising effectively then your project will either come to an abrupt halt due to a lack of traffic or you will lose a lot of money on your PPC campaign – or more probably both.

Donald Rumsfeld, onetime US Secretary of Defence once famously rambled about ‘…the things you don’t know you don’t know.’.  These 'unknowns' can be very dangerous to the health of your project.  So give some thought to identify what skills you will need to carry out all of the tasks you have identified.

Then focus on the ones where your skills are lacking and identify any additional training time you may need to build into your project to learn the skills you need.  If you are not going to do it yourself then you need to add additional costs to outsource the task to a professional.

Step Seven.

Identify any other elements you might need.  Maybe third party, online services that you have to tap into, marketing resources or methods you intend to use.

Jigsaw Of Requirements

By following these seven steps you will by now have written down precisely what you want and how you are going to get it.

You know the infrastructure you need to achieve it as well as the knowledge you need to apply to the task, whether you have it now or need to acquire it.

You have also identified any other elements you might need to complete the jigsaw of your planned success.

The seven steps have helped you to crystallise your thoughts and dreams into a to-do list of actions and a shopping list of needs for those resources you do not currently have available for your internet marketing project.

These 7 steps are the critical starting point for any business.  You now know ‘what’ you are going to apply to the task.  The next step is to turn ‘what’ into ‘when’ by drawing up a project plan.  Then add a costing by putting a price both on your time and any resources your 7 steps have identified you may need to buy in.

The What, When and How Much are the 3 elements that give you a complete picture.  But it all starts with the seven critical steps to a strategic development plan.