7. Implementation and control: consist in series of activities that must be performed in order to run marketing plan in accordance to objectives set by marketer. At this stage, it is critical to gain support of all members if organization, especially when marketing plan is due to affect organization from its grounds.

8. Performance measurement: constitutes last but not less important stage of marketing plan, since we can achieve only what we can measure. In order to measure performances achieved through marketing plan, we need to constantly monitor each previous stage of plan.

The marketing plan that has a feedback cycle, from 8th stage back to 4th. That is because sometimes during planning process, we might need to perform stages 4 to 8 several times before final plan can be written.

III. The e-marketing plan

The e-marketing plan is built exactly on same principles as classical plan. There is no different approach, but there might be some formal differences given by uniqueness of internet environment. Many of these differences come from necessity to ensure a high rate of responsiveness from customers, since e-world is moving faster and requires faster reaction from its companies, compared to traditional offline marketplace.

Even though it is perfectly acceptable and is a common practice to use 8-stage classic model for e-marketing plan as well, you might want to consider simplified version proposed by Chaffey, who identifies four major steps to build e-marketing plan:

1. Strategic analysis: consists in continuous scanning of macro- and micro-environment. The accent should fall on consumers' needs that change very rapidly in online market, as well as on surveying competitors' actions and evaluating opportunities offered by new technologies.

2. Defining strategic objectives: organization must have a clear vision and establish if media channels will complement traditional ones, or will replace them. We must define specific objectives (don't forget to check if they are SMART!) and we must also specify contribution of online activities to organization’s turnover.

3. Formulating strategies - we do that by addressing following essential issues:

- develop strategies towards target markets;

- positioning and differentiating strategies;

- establish priorities of online activities;

- focus attention and efforts on CRM and financial control;

- formulate strategies for product development;

- develop business models with well-established strategies for new products or services, as well as pricing policies;

- necessity for some organizational restructuring;

- changes in structure of communication channels.

4. Implementing strategies: includes careful execution of all necessary steps to achieve established objectives. It could refer re-launching of a website, promo campaigns for a new or rewritten site, monitoring website efficiency and many more.

Note: a common strategy to achieve e-marketing objectives is communication strategy. The steps to built a coherent communication plan will be presented within a further article.

IV. The e-marketing plan (sample titles)

1. Executive Summary a. overview upon present conjuncture; b. key aspects of strategic e-marketing plan.

2. Situational Analysis a. characteristics of e-market; b. possible factors of success; c. competitors’ analysis; d. technological factors; e. legal factors; f. social factors; g. possible problems and opportunities.

3. The e-Marketing Objectives a. product profile; b. target market; c. sales objectives.

4. The e-Marketing Strategies a. product strategies; b. price strategies; c. promotion strategies; d. distribution strategies.

5. Technical Issues a. website content; b. website "searcheability"; c. logging security (for customers and staff); d. customer registration procedure; e. multimedia; f. autoresponders; g. order forms and feedback forms; h. access levels to online resources; i. credit card transactions; j. website hosting; k. website publishing; l. technical staff (size, requirements)

6. Appendix

7. Bibliography

Example: "our business must grow" is an obscure, non-measurable objective. What exactly should we measure in order to find out if objective was met? But if we change it to "our business must grow in sales volume with 20%", we've got one measurable objective: measure being percentage sales rise from present moment to given moment in future. We can calculate this very easy, based on recorded sales figures.

3. Be ATTAINABLE!

Some use term "achievable" instead of "attainable", which you will see it is merely a synonym and we should not get stuck in analyzing which one is correct. Both are.

It is understood that each leader will want his company / unit to give outstanding performances; this is spirit of competition and such thinking is much needed. However, when setting objectives, one should deeply analyze first factors determining success or failure of these objectives. Think of your team, of your capacities, of motivation: are they sufficient in order for objectives to be met? Do you have means and capabilities to achieve them?

Think it through and be honest and realistic to yourself: are you really capable of attaining goals you've set or are you most likely headed to disappointment? Always set objectives that have a fair chance to be met: of course, they don't need to be "easily" attained, you're entitled to set difficult ones as long as they're realistic and not futile.

Example: you own a newborn movers company and you set objective of "becoming no. 1 movers within state". The problem is you only have 3 trucks available, while all your competitors have 10 and up. Your goal is not attainable; try instead a more realistic one, such as "reaching Top 5 fastest growing movers company in state".

4. Be RELEVANT!

This notion is a little more difficult to be perceived in its full meaning; therefore we will start explaining it by using an example in first place.

Imagine yourself going to IT department and telling them they need to increase profit to revenue ratio by 5%. They will probably look at you in astonishment and mumble something undistinguished about managers and way they mess up with people’s minds.

Can you tell what is wrong with objective above? Of course! The IT department has no idea what you were talking about and there's nothing they can do about it - their job is to develop and maintain your computerized infrastructure, not to understand your economic speech. What you can do it setting an objective that IT department can have an impact upon, and which will eventually lead to increase you wanted in first place. What about asking them to reduce expenditures for hardware and software by 10% monthly and be more cautious with consumables within their department by not exceeding allocated budget? They will surely understand what they need to do because objective is relevant for their group.

Therefore, quality of an objective to be "relevant" refers to setting appropriate objectives for a given individual or team: you need to think if they can truly do something about it or is it irrelevant for job they perform.

5. Be TIMELY!

No much to discuss about this aspect, since it is probably easiest to be understood and applied.

Any usable and performable objective must have a clear timeframe of when it should start and/or when it should end. Without having a timeframe specified, it is practically impossible to say if objective is met or not.

For example, if you just say "we need to raise profit by 500000 units", you will never be able to tell if objective was achieved or not, one can always say "well, we’ll do it next year". Instead, if you say "we need to raise profit by 500000 units within 6 months from now", anyone can see in 6 months if goal was attained or not. Without a clear, distinct timeframe, no objective is any good.