The very first sentence of the author’s introduction captures the mood driving the need for this book: “A feeding frenzy has surrounded marketing on the Internet.” From all the buzz, one might think marketing on the Internet is a major, even the major, force today. This is not the case. Internet marketing is tiny in comparison to traditional channels. Even a cursory survey of current business-to-business or business-to-consumer marketing practice indicates that this will not be the case for long. Everyone, from giant financial services firms and multinational corporations to the local pizza shop and individual consultants, is considering the Internet for at least part of their future marketing. A marketing plan using the Internet is similar to a marketing plan using another channel to reach customers, however. The Internet is basically just a channel, albeit a powerful one.

This book covers each step in preparing a marketing plan, including market research and statistics gathering, development of communication strategies, budgeting, staffing, campaign design, preparation of literature, development of an identity, public relations, sales support, trade shows, and measurement. It is best suited for people unfamiliar with developing marketing plans. The Internet dimension is woven into each topic. Experienced marketers can skim for the Internet-related  content. 

The book is well written and has good illustrations. It comes with a disk containing templates for a marketing plan and a budget, many forms, 28 figures from the text, and a Netscape bookmark file of more than 200 URLs for marketing-related Internet resources mentioned in the text.