I've shared my personal cook book for creating a successful online marketing plan. With this you can create your own marketing strategy and create a plan which will follow you throughout the implementation of that strategy.

1. The Complete
Cook Book
Build Your Online Marketing Plan
SimilarGroup © 2009-2014. All Rights Reserved

2. Why Are We Sharing Our Marketing Plan?
SimilarWeb prides itself for being a Digital Insight Platform for the
online marketing community.
As such, we strive to give not only traffic statistics for any website, but
also the required tools for navigating through the confusing world of
online marketing.
We find ourselves in an interesting place where we’re both
the providers and our own clients. That's one of the reasons we
understand our users and their needs.

3. Why Are We Sharing Our Marketing Plan?
One such need is a "cookbook" for baking your online marketing
strategy.
As with most recipes, everybody likes something slightly different so you
should use the base and change the toppings to suit your needs.
We've used real examples of what we went through to try and put
everything in context.

4. The Cook Book Principles
Stage 1 – The Basics:
• Measurement
• Discovering the unique uses of your product
• Finding the main target audiences
• Finding main target markets
• Building the conversion funnel
• Setting up the billing system

5. The Basics
1
STAGE
Analytics is the heart of any online business. Without it you’re blind to any marketing action you take. Most
people use Google Analytics and there are more advanced tools like Adobe and Coremetrics (by IBM). There
has also been a new movement towards BI (Business Intelligence) as it enables you to track the individual
journeys of users onsite as opposed to Analytics which only provides aggregations.
In SimilarWeb we’ve tested several options, but ultimately recommend these two:
• Piwik – open source site’s analytics
• Google Analytics
* For event tracking - MixPanel is a platform that specializes in such solutions.
Main Tip:
Use more than one system, so you always have a backup in case one fails!

6. Discovering The Unique Uses of Your Product
1
STAGE
To find out who uses SimilarWeb PRO, we got in touch with our clients and interviewed them about it. We
also sent out an email asking our clients to rank the latest updates we’ve added to our platform. The results
helped us prioritize the following updates we’ve made.
Some of the main uses we came up with after asking our clients were:
• Affiliate managers looking for new affiliates
• Media buyers trying to determine where to spend their display ads budget
• SEO and PPC campaign managers looking for new keywords
• Product managers who are in the stages of industry research and competitive analysis
Main Tip:
Don’t hesitate to ask your users what they like best about your product!

7. Finding The Main Target Audiences
1
STAGE
• Talk with your existing clients and get to know them
• Guide your sales team to be attentive to characterizations and needs of clients and potential
clients
• Get your Product team to shadow you sales and client services team to gain a better
understanding of what goes on
At SimilarWeb we’ve identified several types of audiences who use, or can use, our platform. However,
we’ve chosen one audience to concentrate our initial efforts on – online marketing professionals
Main Tip:
Focus, Focus, Focus! The way to take over the world is with one target audience at a time!

8. Finding Main Target Markets
1
STAGE
• Research your competitors – find their strong and weak points. You might decide to go with
markets you know are working well for them, but will probably prove very competitive. Or you
may take a chance with untouched markets, which you don’t know for sure will work, but might
hold less competition.
At SimilarWeb we used our own platform – SimilarWeb PRO, for researching our competitors and
finding markets we want to focus on. This helped us to single out the markets with the biggest
potential and least competition.
Main Tip:
Starting with few markets gives you better allocation of resources and minimizes error costs!

9. Building The Conversion Funnel
1
STAGE
When building a conversion funnel you need to consider which stages must be included:
On one hand, you want to give the user enough information about the product in order for them to
feel comfortable purchasing it. On the other hand, you don’t want to overcomplicate the purchase
funnel and cause a high desertion rate.
Main Tip:
Using A/B testing here will help you come up with the most optimized funnel!

10. Building The Conversion Funnel
1
STAGE
Conversion rate expert – a consultancy company for building conversion funnels. If you’re not sure about the
direction to take here, contact experts to either consult you or give tailored solutions.
At SimilarWeb we’re constantly testing different conversion funnels, gathering statistics and collecting users’
feedback. One example of a great result from these tests was moving from a 24 hours trial (which required a
credit card), to a free demo on SimilarWeb PRO.
We got amazing feedback from our users and a significant improvement in our conversion rate.
Main Tip:
Register to the conversion rate expert newsletter. It provides a wealth of case studies for free!

11. Setting Up The Billing System
1
STAGE
Choosing a billing management platform – it’s crucial to know which target markets you’re aiming at.
Each of the platforms out there specializes in specific countries and has issues with others.
At SimilarWeb we started with one company that didn’t work well for our target markets and caused
us to lose some key transactions. We eventually moved to Recurly. The move was painful and costly,
but in the long run it was worth it.
Main Tip:
Make sure your chosen billing system offers support to your target markets before starting to work with them!

12. The Cook Book Principles
Stage 2 – Actions Items:
• Identifying goals
• Choosing the main message
• Choosing the right KPIs
• Choosing marketing channels
• Timetable and resources allocation

13. Identify Goals
Create
Awareness
Increase
Traffic
Improve
Conversion Flow
Increase
Subscriptions
Increase
Stickiness
2
STAGE
Identifying goals can vary between different businesses.
However, there are some goals which you’ll
find in most.
Here are the basic goals for a business
in its first stages:

14. Choosing The Main Message
Our main marketing message is what we want people to think of first when considering our service or
product.
This message will guide us throughout our marketing strategy, especially in the first awareness stage.
The message doesn’t have to be set in stone – you can start with one and switch to another at a later
stage. At SimilarWeb we started with ‘Love Your Competitors!’ and later switched to:
Digital Insights for the Online Marketing Community
2
STAGE
Main Tip:
As you move forward with building your brand, your main message might change!

15. Choosing The Right KPIs
KPIs – Key performance indicators are your tool for checking your success or failure in reaching your
set goals. For example, KPIs for SEO might be – organic and direct traffic, ranks in SERP, number of 404
errors. PPC KPIs might be CPC rate, CTR percentage, conversion rate.
At SimilarWeb we constantly check our KPIs to measure progress. We sometimes update them
according to our gathered BI.
2
STAGE
Main Tip:
Beware of vanity KPIs. If a KPI doesn't directly help you make a decision, you shouldn't be using it.

16. Choosing Marketing Channels
When you’re trying to decide the best way to allocate your quarterly marketing budget, your decisions
must be based on educated guesses. These guesses are based upon your own BI or Competitive
intelligence. We’ve already talked about personal BI, so we’ll focus here on competitive BI.
There are many tools for online competitive intelligence. We’ve included a map here of the main ones,
plus their core functions and uses.
2
STAGE

17. Potential Resources for Research
Similarweb.com
• Competitors
Website Traffic
Analytics
• Referring
Domains
• Referring
Keywords
• Industry Analysis
• Top Websites
• Similar Sites
MajesticSEO
• Research
Incoming Links
• Check Majestic
Trust And
Citation flows
Google Tools
• Google Keyword
Planner
• Google Trends
• Google Analytics
• Google
Webmaster Tools
SERP
• Search Engine
Results Page -
Organic And
Paid Results

18. Choosing Marketing Channels
After researching your own analytics and your competitors’ traffic statistics, you need to make your
decision. There are so many online marketing channels, with new ones appearing every few months,
it’s hard to keep track of all the options out there.
We’ve included a comprehensive map with the main online marketing channels and their formats.
2
STAGE

19. Choosing Marketing Channels
Content Marketing
• Blog Posts
• Guest Blog Posts
• E-books
• Email Newsletters
• Slideshows
• Podcasts
• Standard Videos
• Micro-videos (i.e.,
Vine)
• Social Media Posts
• Webinars
• White Papers
• Press Releases
• Content Sharing
Hubs
PPC/CPM Accounts
• Google AdWords
• Bing Ads
• Social Media – FB,
Twitter, Reddit,
Stumbleupon,
LinkedIn, etc.
• Display Ads
Viral Marketing
• Approaching
Opinion Leaders
• Forums – Paid And
Free Listings
• Organic Social
Marketing (FB,
Twitter, G+,
LinkedIn, etc.)
Affiliates
• Hand Picking
Through:
• Search Engine
Results Page -
Organic And Paid
Results
• SimilarWeb PRO -
Referral Traffic
Section
• Affiliate
Management
Programs
Email Marketing
• Blog Newsletter
• Product Updates
• Special Offers
• Engagement
Follow Up Emails

20. Timetable and Resources Allocation
While choosing between different optional online marketing channels; you need to take into account the followings.
• Time cost/potential value - value should be defined according to collected BI stats
• Expenses/potential revenue – should be defined according to Competitors’ BI or personal previous experience
• Tech resources
• Goals priority
• Current status of brand/product visibility
*It’s important to frame each marketing channel within a specific time frame with goals and KPIs per channels
2
STAGE
Main Tip:
If none of your goals and KPIs fit a marketing channel, it’s the not right one for you!

21. Online Marketing Strategy Ready
Time to start working..!

22. Appreciate Your Time!
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Digital Insights for the Online Marketing Community
SimilarGroup © 2009-2014. All Rights Reserved