There's really no way to point at any one type of online service as "online marketing." Google, Microsoft, and Apple have taken all the pieces of the internet and woven them together. Ultimately you should be involved with all social networks, mobile ads, search ads, e-commerce, and a fantastic website. Achieving all of that is the hard part.
If you started from scratch, this is how it would work:
1. Set a long term business goal
This could be to sell online or just to attract customers to the store. Ambitious goals are always more expensive and I prefer my clients to create websites that can be expanded over time.
2. Plan a website that will support the business goal
This requires an understanding of how the design of a website will funnel people toward your goal. But it also includes creating a website that is flexible enough to change when future usability testing identifies problems.
3. Identify how you will measure the success or failure of your goals
There are many types of tracking software for your website. I always use the free Google Analytics, but other paid services are available. You will also need to plan how you will track results in your store. There should be a very specific way that you identify when a sale is the result of your online and offline advertising.
4. Gather, or design the content that will be on the website
Time and time again my team has designed a website only to have the jeweler supply us with product images and artwork that simply will not work in the chosen design. For this reason you should think about where you will get photos from, who will write the content on the website, and how it will look on the website. Frequently, this content also includes videos like this one.
5. Learn from the content gathering step above to plan for the future
How will you continually create new content after the website is launched?
Once your website is launched you will need to continually update the products, add blog posts, and announce all the special events happening in your store. Once you work through the step above you will know if you need to hire a photographer, a writer, and someone to update your website, or if you simply want to outsource all that work.
6. Plan a social media marketing plan that attracts people to your website so they eventually achieve your goal
You need to figure out what social networks your local customers use. From experience I know that Pinterest is good to attract your wedding customers, and Facebook can be good if you can establish a following. Google+ helps attract more organic visitors. Twitter can be good, but only if you are dedicated to it; and of course Instagram is a great way to show off the latest jewelry in your store.
More advanced social networks include YouTube, podcasts through iTunes, Foursquare, and Google+ Hangouts.
Involvement in each social network requires a dedicated amount of time from you or for you to outsource the service to an agency.
7. Plan your paid advertising
This includes all offline and online ads for 12 months. You don't have to specifically design all the ads, just put some thought into what ads you will need to do so you can set up a marketing schedule.
That marketing schedule is then used to plan out deadlines for ad creatives so they can be used in social media marketing activities, online ads, offline ads, and website updates.
Unless you plan this all out 12 months in advance you will find yourself incredibly rushed and disorganized throughout the entire year.
8. Build the website
It might seem odd that building the website is this late in the marketing plan, but this really is where it belongs.
You should never design the website without knowing what type of content you will put in it and how it will relate to your overall marketing. The best business marketing strategy is one that ties all the online and offline ads together into a single message on your website that can be elaborated on through many blogs, product catalogs, and as much information as the customer is willing to read.
9. Add content to the website
Once the website is designed and built it's now time to enter the content. Either you or your website developer will have to enter the content. Uploading your product catalog will take a long time, but you need to spend the time doing it because your customers will want to see them and it's good for your ranking.
10. Activate the measurement and tracking process
I usually install Google Analytics right before a website is launched to the public. There are additional paid tracking services that I use for heatmap monitoring and usability testing. At the time I wrote this Nugget one of those services was crazyegg.com.
11. Launch the social media marketing
This is where you start working on the social media marketing you planned in Step 6. By this time you will have decided if you are hiring an agency to do the work for you or if you are doing it in house.
I strongly recommend that you handle all your social media marketing on your own. Give me a call if you want help learning how to do this. If you simply don't have the time to manage your social activity, then you must commit to hiring an agency to do it for you.
In 2013 I worked with a few local agencies that were charging between $300 to $400 per month to manage Facebook alone. If you want to work with a company that specifically works with jewelry brands then give me a call.
Regardless who you get to manage your social media marketing, make sure to follow the main marketing plan you outlined in Step 7 with additional content posted on a regular basis.
12. Launch the paid advertising
Paid advertising will include local print ads, newspapers, direct mail, billboards, radio, TV, as well as Facebook ads, Google AdWords, and even Twitter ads.
Each paid method needs to be coordinated with your website and the established tracking from Step 3.
You're going to need an offline agency that will work well with your online agency, or, if you're lucky, a single agency that does both for you.
13. Implement the continual content creation process
How often will you update the website?
It needs to be updates at least as often as your 12 month marketing plan has outlined.
Additionally, you should be adding new products on a regular basis, writing new blog posts, and sharing all this new content to the social networks.
14. Analyze your tracking and adjust any strategy needed to better achieve your goals
There is a continual process of monitoring the effectiveness of your website and changing the design slightly to improve how visitors turn into customers.
This analysis should happen monthly. You should be working with someone who is tracking all your data and making improvements to your website. Also, a new website won't need extensive SEO services to fix previous mistakes, but it's good to make sure an SEO Pro is monitoring all the ongoing updates to make sure they are correctly recognized by the search engines.
Hopefully you can see that the 14 steps outlined are actually an outline for a real marketing plan rather than simple "online marketing plan."
It all sounds very complex, but as a small business each step can be simplified for your specific needs.
