How to build a marketing plan

How the marketing plan helps you

It is easy to think in scattered ways when marketing your web shop, starting from individual channels rather than what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. But with a marketing plan you can get a grip on the whole and make sure everything hangs together, it helps you "start at the right end" and connect the different aspects of your marketing: objectives, audiences, messaging, channels, content, timeline, budget and evaluation.

Sounds good, right? And it does not have to be complicated! If you are a beginner (and not a marketer by background) we recommend skipping advanced templates, definitions and plans for every single piece of news/campaign, make an overall plan for your shop's needs and make the parts as comprehensive as you can/want right now. The result may not be a textbook "marketing plan", but the important thing is that it gives you value. Use the following steps:

1. Set goals

Goals drive all your marketing. So think them through carefully and figure out what, concretely, you must achieve to reach your next sales target. It could be that you need to:

• Increase reach and awareness to get more visitors.
• Improve the shop to convert more.
• Create more engaging content to get more loyal customers, both by getting them to buy more (higher average order value) and getting them to buy more often (higher purchase frequency).

You can of course work toward several different goals, especially if you build an overall marketing plan for a six-month period, or pick just one. But whichever you pick, you need to put numbers on it.

Example: You currently have around 10,000 visitors and around 100 orders per month (~1% conversion rate), with revenue of half a million. Your next goal is to reach one million, and (simplified) you need to either double conversion to 2% or double visitors to 20,000, assuming the rest stays the same.

You decide to focus on conversion and set the goal "double conversion rate to 2% within six months".

2. Define audiences

Your goals drive who you want to reach. To increase reach and awareness you need to reach new people in a specific audience (what do those who shop with you have in common?), while you target existing customers if you want them to become loyal. It sort of goes without saying, but it is easy to lump together or mix different audiences.

Here are some general audiences relevant for most online stores:

• (New) potential customers. People who could be customers but you have not reached yet. Usually defined in one or more groups based on certain "variables" like gender, age, education, income, interests and behavior. If you sell exclusive, eco-friendly skincare you likely target the audience "people who are beauty-interested and eco-conscious", where women with higher income aged 25-45 may be the most purchase-ready.
• Visitors. Those who have visited the shop but not bought. Can be split by what they did and/or how engaged they were. It is common to target marketing (often reminder emails or retargeting ads) at visitors who added items to cart but did not complete the purchase.
• Customers. People who have shopped in your store one or a few times.
• Loyal customers/ambassadors. Those who shop repeatedly and recommend you to others.

Example: If your main goal is to double conversion in the next half-year, you obviously target visitors to your shop and need to make changes that improve their experience there. But you can also work on marketing to potential customers to try to get more qualified visitors.

3. Plan activities

It is only NOW, with goals and audiences set, that it is time to talk concrete marketing. Which messages, channels and types of content do you need to create for your audiences to reach your goals? With a six-month plan you cannot plan every single post on social media, but you can do it at a high level. You can, for example, plan which marketing channels to use for each goal or audience, and what kind of content to create.

Example: You sell exclusive, eco-friendly skincare and want to double conversion in the next six months. You feel you could improve marketing to potential customers to get more qualified visitors, which should bring more customers. The plan is to:

• Be clearer about the shop's benefits and shipping/delivery time, already in the ads.
• Advertise on and partner with niche beauty sites with an eco focus, rather than the big, broad beauty channels.

4. Lock in a timeline and budget

With a list of "activities" in front of you, set dates and a budget on them so they actually happen. Think about when things should occur, how often, and what they can cost.

Our tip is not to be too optimistic, set realistic deadlines that hold over time. And when it comes to budget, allocate enough to truly test things, a Facebook ad with a $5/day budget over three days does not give a fair picture. At the same time, "press" the costs and make sure they are reasonable relative to the value you expect: rule of thumb is that the cost per new customer should be roughly a third of what a customer is worth to you.

5. Think about follow-up

To see whether your marketing and various efforts are giving the results you want, you need to evaluate and measure different metrics. By tracking different activities it also becomes clearer how different marketing efforts affect each other, which helps you lift the marketing even more next time.

Some fundamental numbers to keep an eye on:

• Click-through rate (CTR) = the share of those who saw an ad/link and clicked.
• Cost-per-click (CPC) = what each click cost you, calculated as total cost divided by clicks on your ad/link.
• Number of conversions (CV) = how many took a desired action, e.g. buying in your shop.
• Conversion rate (CV rate) = the share of those who saw something and then took a desired action. Usually refers to the share of visitors who completed a purchase, but can apply to other things too.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC) = average cost to gain one new customer, calculated as total acquisition cost divided by new customers over a period.

Does it not feel logical? That is the beauty of a marketing plan: it structures your marketing and then helps you keep a cool head day-to-day, when there is plenty else to think about. Reassuring and effective!