Like most business and marketing professionals, I find myself planning and budgeting for 2009 today.   And as I do, one of my objectives is to find new ways to help clarify what’s needed in our industry of Online Marketing and simplify what is a very complex space.   So, lacking the creative energy, I took our old 4 Ps of traditional (which TRULY do not apply to Online… would love to hear comments on that) and turned it around to the 5 Ps of Online Marketing on which I will be basing our Tracks and “Field Guide to Online Marketing” for the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego this upcoming February.    Moreover, if I have enough positive feedback from this post, then I will have myself and other experts expand on each area each week to really dive deep into the “How”.

Philosophy
Simply put, most organizations fail at online marketing because the right mindset or philosophy does not permeate the entire decision making process and individuals in that process.  Remember you can not ask for more budget or head count to beef up your Online Marketing efforts if those controlling the budget do not understand the importance of online and the leverage it has over all marketing efforts. So, give em a good book, article or research to digest leading up to your meeting to get these folks embracing the right philosophy.

Priority
The multitude of options and opportunity of Online Marketing are endless.  And the need to improve for most companies in every discipline are equal in number, so the key will be to prioritize your efforts and as Stephen Covey says “Put first thing first”.   An example of prioritizing is social media plans.  Many have a great deal of enthusiasm and energy about such…rightfully so, but we must remember if we layer in Ratings and Reviews or add a blog to our website, and that site has a user experience that is poor, all the social media concoctions you come up with will not matter, like painting over a rusted spot on your car, that RUST will show through and look even worse than it did prior to.  So, make sure you are executing fundamentals before you get into the new stuff. It is these fundamentals that will provide the highest rate of return and in turn free up more budget later when you measure success.

Plan
Intuitive as it may seem, many of us do not have really well structured plans for Online Marketing.   Much is done in a “campaign silo” mentality where we say something to the effective of “We need to get more assertive with our Search Efforts” or “Let’s really focus in on Email Marketing”.   Reasonable thoughts, but the real key is to build a plan on how all these efforts Search, Email, Website, Tracking/Analytics, Social Media will play together and move over how they will support your company wide initiatives as well as your overall marketing plan.    So the a la carte add on of elements will make it harder for your to realize ROI, harder to get internal buy off as a stand alone and harder to execute without the support of all marketing efforts and staff.

Proof
Take a Sunday afternoon to find some research and case studies (3 usually the magic number to have folks believe your numbers are not just one off anaomolies) to really paint the picture of what is possible if you do this right.    Much of what we are doing with the Online Marketing Council is just that, collaborating on everyones’ success story to support one another’s internal selling efforts.  So do some research online,  check out an association site or feel free to ask me about the Council (sorry for the shameless plug, had to do it…)

Proliferate
Many marketing professionals are starting to come of age and have been doing a decent job of the 4 Ps above and carry a decent track record of success in many areas of Online Marketing.  And for these folks, it’s time to proliferate.   Going from Good to Great, would be a great way to say it if Jim Collins wouldn’t be to mad for the plagerism.  If we are doing well on email, search, website conversions, etc… then it’s time to say, what’s working and why and let’s aggressively improve it.    With so much market share to be had,  those that have executed well so far, have the best chance to see real exponential gains if willing to put forth the effort to get better AND explore areas of weakness or newness (ex: User Generated Content).

So there you have it…. the 5 Ps.  I invite feedback to determine whether we will dive deep into each of these categories to give you concrete information  on how to leverage each P.

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