Planning is the Key to Successful Online Communications

So, you’re the marketing manager for a new type of customer relationship management (CRM) software, and you are looking to generate online exposure for the product. Should you buy a banner ad on the Wall Street Journal homepage? How about sending a mass email to all of your current customers and prospects? Think Overture’s pay-per-click or Google AdWords might be a good idea? Well, your choice of online media rests squarely on what you are trying to accomplish with your online presence. A good online communications plan is the most important factor to your online marketing success. Without a good plan, you won’t know where you have been, where you are going or if you are already there and just don’t know it. A good online communications plan is similar in many respects to a traditional company strategic plan, including: a situation analysis, setting objectives, establishing a strategy, setting budgets, selecting the media to deliver your message, creating effective messages and then tracking what you’ve implemented. A communications plan is an extension of the strategic plan and its goals are specific to the communications area.

Situational Analysis
A proper situational analysis (or SWOT) will tell you where your company is in relation to the competition…inside and out. A SWOT analysis refers to determining your company’s internal strengths and weaknesses and its external opportunities and threats. This process yields the marketing and promotional issues facing your company or brand. A situation analysis also gives you important information on what market segments to target, your product or service features and benefits, your company’s and competitors’ brands and ideas on how to properly position your brand.

Strategic Objectives
Based on the SWOT analysis, you can rank and set strategic objectives and a timetable for achieving them. Remember, all objectives should have a timetable for completion and should be measurable. Measurability is very important when tracking the results of your online communications. Online communications strategic objectives evolve from the company’s overall marketing plan and are rooted in its marketing objectives; they are not the same as marketing objectives. Marketing objectives state what is to be accomplished by the overall marketing program over a specific time period, and advertising goals are based on the specific communications tasks required to deliver the right message to the target audience. For example, one marketing objective might be to increase market share by 10% over the next three years. But, a communications objective might be to increase website leads by 5% over the next six months or increase brand awareness by senior IT managers in Dayton, Ohio by 50% over the next nine months. With online communications, you can generally expect a combination of three results: increased visitors to your website (usually to gather further information about your company, product or service), increased brand awareness and direct sales.

Tactics
Once you have determined your objectives, you have to decide how you are going to achieve them. While there are many ways to achieve a certain goal, this part of the plan determines what exact tactics you will select. For example, one of your goals might be to increase pre-qualified visitors to your website. While a banner ad, pop-up ad or button ad can all lead to increased website visitors, you must decide which tool best achieves your objective of increased qualified visitors. In this case, maybe a pay-per-click ad would be more efficient for generating quality visitors to your site because you will not waste a lot of money by throwing away impressions on those not in your target market. Pay-per-click allows you to only pay for those very interested in learning more about your company. You should establish tactics that will achieve each of your objectives, and remember that each tactic should focus on only one of the three possible objectives of online communications (increase awareness, increase visitors/prospects and direct sales). Also, every tactic must support your overall online communications objectives and your company’s strategic plan.

Establish Budgets
Once you determine which tactics will accomplish your objectives, you must determine your budget. There are literally hundreds of methods for determining your online communications budget, and you can find many good books on the subject. Just remember no matter what method you choose, make sure your budget is large enough to deploy the tactics necessary to achieve your objectives. But, the correct tactics and a significant budget won’t bring you success without the proper selection of media and effective ads.

Select and Purchase Appropriate Media
As technology advances, there are more and more online media choices, including: banners, buttons, pay-per-click opportunities, mass emails, pop-up ads, online games and contests, among many others. It is very important that you pick targeted, tightly-focused media. You want to get in front of your exact target audience without wasting money on those with no interest in your product or service. Seek cost-effective, targeted media that support your tactics and pay for the media in a way that supports your objectives. For example, if you are trying to build awareness, then a standard banner ad on a targeted website billed by cost per thousand (CPM) for impressions may be suitable. But if you are trying to develop cost-effective, qualified leads, a click-through rate (CTR) pricing structure would be more effective.

Create Effective Ads
Remember, not all ads are created equal…far from it. And, you need more than pretty picture. Pretty pictures are good for grabbing attention, and an effective ad must grab attention. But, an ad must also quickly deliver your key value proposition (why you stand out from the competition and why your prospects should care…which is determined by your marketing planning process) and then make a call to action. Give prospects a reason to want more information. Not only is an effective ad a necessity, but the effective ad must include tracking abilities that are implemented at the onset of your campaign. Track website visitors by entry page, measure the click-through rate on banner and button ads, measure clicks on a pop-up ad, obtain demographic information from online gamers and contest entries, etc. The more tracking information available, the better you can target your communications in the future.

Track ROI
You must frequently measure your results to track progress toward the objectives you set at the outset of the planning process. You will have to constantly tweak your online communications to achieve the best results. Tracking systems will allow you to determine which ads are working and which ads need to be altered. Tracking also allows you to justify your advertising expenditures.

Remember, online communications plans should be organic. A plan is never set in stone because internal and external forces cause change in forecasts and corporate strategy. As these forecasts and strategies change, so to should your communications plans. As you measure and track the results of your communications, you will have to adjust ad layouts and reevaluate your media choices, as you learn what works for your product or service. Planning is the key to your online communications success. Have you unlocked the door?