Do you have a written business plan for your website? I am guessing the answer is a big “No”. I’m constantly reviewing sites, and I constantly find sites that don’t even have a tag line. Think they have a business plan? I think not, but maybe the owner has one worked out in their head.
Keeping your business plan in your head is a poor platform at best. It’s too easy to edit. It’s good to have change and keep up with the times, but your site needs to be highly focused if you want visitors to know what your site is about. If you desire action out of your visitors, like making a purchase, it’s even more essential. Are you marketing without a business plan? That would be absolutely crazy.
Business Plans Do Things
If you have never spent the time to create a business plan know that you are missing out. Business plans do things. A common occurrence in building a plan is new realizations. Here in an example I like to use based on a road rage site I did back in 2004. I was spending my marketing budget by advertising on Google. It worked, I got visitors, but after studying my business plan I was able to recognize a weakness within that plan. It was expensive, and it didn’t produce long term visitors. It also rarely produced backlinks. I then realized that spending my marketing money on PR, and doing the occasional press release was far more beneficial. I received more targeted traffic, and I also received lots of backlinks.
A plan also helps develop realistic goals. Don’t be surprised if your expectations don’t drastically drop after doing a market analysis. Sometimes seeing that even the best sites in your niche don’t accomplish what you are dreaming of can be a major awakening.
Writing Your Business Plan
A business plan could or should take as much time as building your site. It should be a work in progress, and require regular reading if you are actively making adjustments to your site.
A simplified outline of a business plan:
- Company summary
- Services offered
- Market analysis
- Product or sites benefits, advantages
- Marketing strategy
- Sales strategy
- Actual, and future target milestones
- Financial plan
ariel (1)
Chris (1)
Curtis (1)
That was a well written article, very interesting,thank you for a good read.
I really liked your 8 points at the end, it is a really good level of abstraction compatible with almost any possible case out there.