Do you have a coherent strategy for your business?

Have you ever written anything down that functions as your plan or roadmap to where you want to go?

In fact, do you even know where you want to go?

If you met a random person at a party and were asked to describe your business, what would you tell that person in 30 seconds or less?

These are thought provoking questions, and if you’re serious about what you’re doing online, they should not be taken lightly. Speaking from personal experience, I believe that most ‘internet marketers’ have zero strategy for their business. Neither do they have goals, and if asked what their business does, couldn’t give an accurate answer.

Shouldn’t be so!

Let’s look at a hypothetical IM’er… let’s call him Joe. Like any good marketer, he likes to keep his ear to the ground, and so he’s on a number of gooroo lists. In fact, in the interests of self-improvement, he’s actually ‘invested’ in several of their offerings. In reality, he’s become addicted to his inbox and the ‘investments’ have been left gathering digital dust… unopened, unconsumed, and un-acted upon.

Part of the problem with the gooroos and their interminable launches is that there’s always another marketing trick landing in the average internet marketer’s inbox. It seems there’s always a ‘next generation strategy’ that is being hyped.

Problem is, our hapless IM’er, Joe, has never once sat down and perfected any strategy at all.

He bounces around from project to project. Here a little, there a little.

Over time, he’s got a lot of littles scattered all over the place.

It’s time for Change!

For me, the big turning point in my business was when I began to throw all my eggs in one basket, figuratively speaking. Rather than stretching myself thin across multiple niches, I decided to focus on one niche.

I laser targeted down and picked a small little sub-niche, and started creating products, sites and content, and feeding all of that with PPC traffic. Now I’ve got a BHAG for my business (that’s Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and I can now evaluate every new gooroo product launch and determine whether or not what they’re offering matches the direction I’m going, or perhaps more importantly – if my business is at the stage where I can profitably add the strategy they’re offering to what I’m currently doing without any other part suffering as a result.

You see, having goals and objectives gives you a means with which to stay focused. Not only are they great for focusing on, but they’re great for deflecting the gooroo temptations.

One of the strategies I had tried previously was mini-site creation. I’d read about a lot of guys that made a lot of money by having all of these micro-sites working for them. Well, previously I was randomly making mini-sites for all kinds of different niches.

Now, I’ve actually started using the mini-site strategy again, however this time it is in such a way that it serves my larger goal. I’ve chosen my market, and now I know that mini-sites anywhere in that niche will over time become a great asset and source of traffic.

Same strategy, or perhaps should I say tactic, but a very different implementation. Now all my mini-sites will be somewhat relevant to each other, as they’re all in the same overall market, and can really lend link juice to each other. Most importantly of all, I’m using them to grow my list, which is critical to my long term business plan.

So what is your goal for your business? How are you going to get there (strategy), and what means are you going to use to do that (tactics)?

It’s a question worth asking.