Failure to plan is a plan to fail. That was alway drilled into my head during my days in the Army. Do you have a plan for your business? Are you working the plan? If you have no plan or are not working the plan, this could very well be the reason you are failing to succeed in your marketing efforts. I'm going to cover some basic guidelines to help you more efficiently market your blog, website or products.

The first step is compiling a list of all the tasks you need to accomplish for your marketing efforts. Online this means things like: blog commenting, social networking sites, forum commenting, using StumbleUpon, article submissions, etc. You should be able to come up with a list of 15-20 ways to market your business online fairly quickly. Google "Online Marketing", if you have any trouble. You must ensure each one is a task with definable objectives. Also make sure they are broken down into their component pieces. An example of a non-task is "Front Page Of Digg" - accomplishing this objective involves a whole slew of other things, writing engaging articles, getting Digged, networking with other Diggers, etc. Put these tasks all in a spreadsheet.

Next, rank each task. Rate each task on a scale from 1-5 on how important or effective each task is. If you're promoting a blog, blog commenting might rank a five, as would submitting to blog carnivals. Networking on video web sites might rank a one. Initially you need to decide from your own experience or, if you're unsure, use other's experience to how effective each task is toward meeting your marketing goals. Make sure you rank each one honestly. A list of all fives is not going to help you when you go to plan out the month ahead. We all want to do everything, but most of us are limited by the time we can spend on each task.

Now you construct the plan for the next month. For most people, we can assume four weeks with five working days in each. Now take your ranked list from above and sort it so the fives are on top. Starting from the top, start putting the tasks into your calendar. I suggest you mark off Wednesday for fives as this day is less likely to be missed by long weekends and holidays. Mark the fives down as a task in every week, if you run out of time on Wednesday, put other fives on Tuesday or Thursday. The fours and threes then go more toward the edges of the week and are only done every other week. The twos and ones go on Mondays or Fridays at most once per month. When you're finished you should be spending the most time on the five ranked tasks and the least on the one ranked tasks.

Once you have the plan finished, put into practice! Accomplish the tasks for each day before doing anything else. Don't let email, phone calls, pet or other tasks distract you before you've finished. Once it's done, you're free to work on other business related tasks or take some time off. This is just a suggestion, as different people work differently, but the important bit is to make sure you finish the tasks for the day on the day. Work your plan!

Once you've worked your plan for the first month, it's review time! Now go over all the tasks you accomplished for the month and determine which ones drew you closer to your marketing objectives and which ones did not. Once you know this review your list and change any rankings needing changing. Next change the calendar so any new fives are being done every week and those having fallen out of five favor are more sporadically done. Once you've gone through a few cycles, you'll have a good feel for which are making you money and which are not. Once you know this, start outsourcing the ones making you money.

Making a marketing plan isn't very difficult if you take it step by step. And having a plan is very often the difference between success and failure. So start planning for your success today!