by Frances Laing

Created on: August 05, 2009

There's lots of advice around about increasing traffic to your sites, but what you really need is a systematic and sustained approach to success. That's going to take time and hard work on your part.

Successful internet marketing means being prepared to write down your vision. Don't set yourself one goal. You need three groups of goals: short-term goals, medium term goals and long-term goals. It's like formulating a traditional business plan, but this is going to be a plan which is specifically tailored to the unique nature of the world wide web. With three groups of goals it will be easier to keep yourself motivated. Achieving effective internet marketing is rarely an instant phenomenon and setting yourself stages to success means you can celebrate every time you take a step towards your targets.

Your long-term goal might read: 'Create and sustain a viable internet-based business which will bring in enough income for myself and my family'. Or if you're a non-profit-making organisation you might write: 'Achieve a change in the law through campaigning and raising awareness about X.'. Those are your long-term goals and your vision. Your vision needs to be as concrete and definite as it can possibly be. Dare to dream.

Then you need to break this down and formulate the (smaller) steps you need to take in the medium and short-term that will help you achieve this. Make sure you include time-scales in your plan. Don't forget to review your plan at regular intervals to make sure you stay on course. As part of the review process you are going to need traffic analysis tools (installation of something like Google Analytics on your websites or blogs will help you - but you are going to need to know how to read these and what they mean).

Ongoing education and training will remain an integral part of the success of your internet marketing venture. The internet and the new media scene in general is changing so fast you're going to have to make a constant effort to keep up to speed. You'll need to keep making decisions about what you can do yourself and what you need to outsource.

Every penny you spend on educating yourself - is going to save you money in the long run - for example if you need to call in SEO marketing consultants at some stage - and you've spent time with SEO - you will already know the value of it in your internet marketing strategy and can be more specific in the brief you give your experts - you can tell them exactly what you want.

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