--- title: "How To Develop an Online Marketing Strategy: The 7-Sentence Marketing Plan" description: "An online marketing strategy should be at the core of your online marketing and social media marketing activities. Guerrilla Consulting’s 7 Sentence Marketing Plan is an easy and effective..." url: https://www.boxcarmarketing.com/how-to-develop-an-online-marketing-strategy-the-7-sentence-marketing-plan/ date: 2011-01-21 modified: 2025-10-10 author: "Crissy Campbell" categories: ["Marketing Strategy & Tips"] type: post lang: en --- # How To Develop an Online Marketing Strategy: The 7-Sentence Marketing Plan [!(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2722/4326359067_ec0abfbcc9_m.jpg)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/beaub/4326359067/) An online marketing strategy should be at the core of your online marketing and social media marketing activities. (http://www.guerrillaconsulting.com/7-sentence-marketing-plan.html) is an easy and effective method that focuses your strategy. A 7-Sentence Marketing Plan answers the following questions: - Sentence 1: What is the purpose of your marketing? - Sentence 2: How will you accomplish your purpose? - Sentence 3: Who is your target market? - Sentence 4: What is your niche in the marketplace? - Sentence 5: What tools and tactics will you use to carry out your marketing? - Sentence 6: What is your business identity? - Sentence 7: How will you measure success and allocate time and budget? Here’s the 7-Sentence Marketing Plan in further detail. You can use this template to create your own marketing strategy. **1. The purpose of our marketing is:** a. What are your goals? (Check those that apply OR add your own goals) - Reach a new audience - Promote an event - Build excitement prior to event - Get people to take a particular action (contest entries, voting, download file, buy, sign-up) - Draw traffic to a particular URL - Build your email list - Build a community around an event/topic - Get press coverage - Get sales b. Identify the top 3 goals. Tailor them to be specific to your client/project. Be as specific as possible (i.e, Drive people to FB page who will enter the contest and Like the page.) **2. How will you accomplish your goals?** - What are you going to do? (i.e, set up a Facebook page to host the contest, execute an outreach campaign by contacting bloggers and influencers…) **3. Client’s target audience (or audiences) is:** - Who are the people you want to reach? - Create (https://www.boxcarmarketing.com/defining-your-target-audience-with-personas/) for them: what kind of people are they, characteristics, what social media channels do they use, how do they engage online? (see (https://www.boxcarmarketing.com/social-media-plateau/) for how people participate online). **4. Client’s niche in the marketplace is:** Use **S.P.H.E.R.E.** acronym: (for more on S.P.H.E.R.E. read (https://www.boxcarmarketing.com/what-it-takes-to-run-a-successful-contest/)) - **So What:**  Why does your client’s product/service matter? What makes your client different from its competitors? (list competitors – name, URL) Why do consumers choose your client over someone else? - **Personality:** What are the adjectives that describe your client’s brand? - **Hook:** What’s your client’s story angle? Use phrases that are easy to remember to helps to spread your client’s story via word of mouth. - **Ego:** Who does your client need to engage with? Who can benefit from promoting the brand amongst their friends? Why do people want to engage with the brand? - **Relevancy:** What is the relevancy between the audiences’ motivations and what your client is trying to do? - **Effort:** What does your client need to do in order to keep the audience engaged throughout the campaign as well as after the campaign is finished? **5. Marketing tools we plan to employ are:** - List all the possible marketing tools or tactics that could be used to meet your desired goals. Use a variety. - Pick the ones that align with #1 – your business goals, marketing purpose. **6. The client’s business identity is:** - Describe in as few sentences or words as possible the feelings, voice and tone the company/brand evokes, and the brand attributes you want it to convey. (i.e. warmth, friendliness, reassurance, comfort, excitement, caring, honesty, humor, professionalism, intelligence, sophistication, reliability, and trustworthiness). **7. We plan to measure success and allocate time and budget by:** - Align this sentence with #1 and #5 – looking at your goals how will you measure the effectiveness of your tactics? List the key performance indicators (KPIs) - How much time and money will your client devote specifically to social media?