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What happens if you do not have an Ecommerce Marketing plan in place? A short answer would be that you fail to grow your store online, as you struggle to determine strategies that help you bring in new customers, retain current customers, and increase average spend.

Marketing plans are made to give you crucial guidance along your journey. In theory, you could think of an Ecommerce Marketing plan as your blueprint for success. Without this blueprint, how will you know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it?

Why You Can’t Afford to Skip Your Ecommerce Marketing Plan

If you assumed that you did not really need an ecommerce marketing plan to grow, here are a few of the biggest reasons that you should skip your plan.

• You waste time on channels that are not converting sales. One of the biggest risks of not having a plan in place is wasted time. Realistically speaking, not every single channel will provide genuine value. You may find that certain channels work better for your audience than others. You may realise that time spent on one thing could be better used for something else. If you are shooting in the dark without a clearly defined plan, you will end up doing your efforts more harm than good. Essentially, a well-crafted plan will act as your guide when deciding on which ecommerce marketing activity to focus on, and which activity to avoid.
• You waste your budget on non-converting strategies. Along with wasting time on strategies that are not showing signs of conversion, you will also end up wasting your marketing budget as well. If you are spending a small fortune on AdWords, sponsored social media posts, press releases, guest posts and other channels, it quickly starts to add up. A plan will help you determine the channels that offer the most value. This, in turn, reduces wasted spend, while optimising your efforts for genuine growth.
• You lose out on the chance to perfect and grow. Finally, another major risk of not having a plan in place is that it takes away your chance to tweak, perfect, and grow. A good marketing plan is not set in stone. Instead, it is designed to adapt as you scale your online store. Without a solid foundation, however, it will become almost impossible to scale your marketing strategies. This means that you may end up missing out on opportunities for growth or even running the risk of stale campaigns that are not driving improvements.

Simply put, you may somehow manage to get somewhere without a plan if you are lucky. Chances are, you will more likely flounder. This is what makes your ecommerce marketing plan something that you cannot afford to ignore.

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