I recently met with the CEO of a 20-year old business with $10 million in sales. Profits were good because this man was very frugal with his expenses. Sales were slipping, however, and the competition was heating up. He wanted me to create an Internet Marketing plan for his business.

This man told me he had no idea what an Internet Marketing plan was.  "You're the expert," he said. "I want you to use the Internet deliver a "knockout punch" for my business." I probed further... 

It turns out this gentleman knew more than he initially let on. He knew that the Internet was the "silver bullet" his business needed to double sales overnight. He knew everything on the Internet was free and that all anyone needed was a simple templated website and a Facebook account to sell 24 hours a day. He knew that it couldn't be hard to kickstart a flood of orders because according to what a friend had told him, frivolous businesses were making millions. Since his was a real business, it would be a snap for anyone to achieve his goals. 

While I was confident Internet Marketing could indeed be the "silver bullet" he was looking for, my sales 6th sense told me it would be a long and difficult battle managing this person's expectations. I declined his business. 

Out of courtesy, I wanted to leave this person with some understanding of what an effective Internet Marketing looked like. I figured it would be easy to find an article on the web and share the link in my email follow-up to our meeting: a few definitions and a checklist of tools and techniques he should consider.

Many hours passed as I skimmed one online reference after another. If it exists, I couldn't find a simple framework for an Internet Marketing project. So I wrote one.

This simple Internet Marketing Scorecard is intended to:

• help people who have little or no idea about Internet Marketing understand the key issues so they can get started
• guide people who have started an Internet marketing initiative regarding next steps

How do you use it? Just score your current Internet Marketing efforts on each Internet Marketing technique. Zero means you are not using a particular Internet Marketing technique at all. A top score means you/your employee/your contractor, is a recognized expert.  Overall, the scorecard should give you a good feel for how your business is doing from an Internet marketing perspective.

Notes:

• Interent Marketing is part of the overall marketing mix.  An effective Internet Marketing plan depends on a solid understanding of your target market, competition, etc.
• the tools and techniques involved in Internet Marketing evolve quickly.  Some techniques, especially those employed by contractors who promise "instant success", can lead to your business being banished from major search engines. 

Internet Marketing Scorecard