-         Define target market. Which customers are your best prospects?

-         Is my perfect customer male or female?

-         Does my perfect customer have a specific ethnic background?

-         What is the job profile of my perfect customer?

-         What is the net income of my perfect customer?

-         What level of education does my perfect customer?

-         Where does my perfect customer live?

-         What age is my perfect customer?

-         How do my perfect customers use my product/service? Is it for themselves or a gift? What do those customers need?

-         Does my perfect customer spend a lot, some or minimal time on the Internet?

-         Where does my perfect customer look for my product/service? Online? Physical locations? Print?

2.      Define Marketing Methods.

- Which marketing tools will you use? What combination of tools will they respond best to? Will you advertise in print, use Internet marketing, radio (define types of radio audiences, hip hop, MPR, Spanish radio), coupons or direct mail?

- What are they reading and watching; where are they going?

- What types of events are your customers attending?

- Consider complementary sites for cross promotion.

- Look at factors such as traffic, search engine placement, quality of ads, external linking for Internet marketing.

- Monitor your conversion rates by tracking the number of hits, clicks and sales to see which promotions are effective.

3.  Budget

- Determine how much time and money are needed to work the plan, including events, that you are creating.  

- Best if created after analysis of targets and costs associated with perfect customers.

-  Prioritize the ads in terms of exposure.

- Is your business seasonal?

- Typically one to three percent of sales dollars go into marketing plans.

4. Creating Your Ad Content - Messaging

- What is the message you want to convey to this market about how you can help them?

- What distinguishes your product or service from the competition?

- What are your strengths? Weaknesses?

- Pick one or two products/services that are good sellers to your target market.

- Ask, what exactly am I selling? It’s rarely a product or service but more of a benefit, something that registers at the emotional level.

- Create several emotional keywords associated with the product and use them in the ads. Use practical keywords for online searches.

- Coupons and Internet links are effective tools because they can be tracked.

- What is the point behind your messaging? Is there a call to action or is branding/name recognition your main goal?

5. Tracking and Monitoring Your Ads

- Define what you expect to accomplish in a specific time period.

- Use specific coupon or sales codes for each ad placement.

- Track them on a tracking sheet to look for trends or patterns.