3 Simple Steps To Creating A Marketing Plan

Developing a marketing plan is much easier than you think it would be. While most people spend hours upon hours putting together even the most simple and basic marketing plan, you don't need to. If you follow this 3-step process for creating a marketing plan, you'll find it much easier and simpler in the future.

The first step in creating a marketing plan is defining your target audience. Who is your product or service going to serve? What benefits is it going to give them? What fears or frustrations is it going to take away?

Remember, in order to truly help your audience, you must know them on a very intimate level. This is absolutely CRITICAL if you want your marketing plan, and your business, to be successful.

Doing this is simple. First, you should already have a basic understanding of your target audience. To get an even deeper understanding, I like to simply go to forums and read about the very detailed experiences people in that niche are having. Spend an hour per day for a week or two and you'll understand your customer better than 90% of your competitors!

The second step in creating a marketing plan is to develop a line of products or services you'd like to offer that target market. After all, there's no point in creating a marketing plan if you're not absolutely clear on a LINE of products/services to offer that market.

By line of products, I mean various products instead of just one Ebook, for example. This way you can help them achieve their goals in a variety of different ways. For example you can have a low-end Ebook, a higher cost audio and video program, followed by a much more expensive home-study course.

You can also do one-on-one coaching, group coaching, or consulting with them. The choice is yours and depends on the style of teaching you like to do.

The third step in developing a marketing plan is putting together a strategy for getting traffic to your website. This is the part most people struggle with. They develop a product or two, understand their target market, and then fail to get any traffic!

Here are 6 free, and easy ways to get traffic that you can use.

1) Article marketing
2) Guest blogging
3) Email ad swaps
4) Forum marketing
5) Blog commenting
6) Affiliate marketing

If you simply stick with those 6 traffic sources and don't worry about doing anything else, you'll do fine.

As you can see, putting together a marketing plan really isn't very difficult. Can you go into more detail than this? Sure you can! But the mistake too many people make is putting too much on their plate at once.

I always recommend starting simple, making some money, and then increasing the complexity of the business as your revenues grow. Do this and a marketing plan seems to form almost naturally depending on where you business is headed.