how to write a marketing plan in a business plan

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Blog Marketing What is a Marketing Plan & How to Create One [with Examples]

What is a Marketing Plan & How to Create One [with Examples]

Written by: Sara McGuire Oct 26, 2023

A marketing plan is a blueprint that outlines your strategies to attract and convert your ideal customers as a part of your customer acquisition strategy . It’s a comprehensive document that details your:

• Target audience:  Who you’re trying to reach
• Marketing goals:  What you want to achieve
• Strategies and tactics:  How you’ll reach your goals
• Budget:  Resources you’ll allocate
• Metrics:  How you’ll measure success

In this article, I’ll explain everything you need to know about creating a marketing plan . If you need a little extra help, there are professionally designed marketing plan templates that’ll make the process much easier. So, let’s ditch the confusion and get started!

Click to jump ahead:

What is a marketing plan?

How to write a marketing plan .

• Marketing plan v.s. business plan
• Types of marketing plans

9 marketing plan examples to inspire your growth strategy

Marketing plan faqs.

A marketing plan is a report that outlines your marketing strategy for your products or services, which could be applicable for the coming year, quarter or month.  

Watch this quick, 13-minute video for more details on what a marketing plan is and how to make one yourself:

Typically, a marketing plan includes:

• An overview of your business’s marketing and advertising goals
• A description of your business’s current marketing position
• A timeline of when tasks within your strategy will be completed
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) you will be tracking
• A description of your business’s target market and customer needs
• A description of how you will measure the performance of the strategy

For example, this marketing plan template provides a high-level overview of the business and competitors before diving deep into specific goals, KPIs and tactics:

Learning how to write a marketing plan forces you to think through the important steps that lead to an effective marketing strategy . And a well-defined plan will help you stay focused on your high-level marketing goals.

With Venngage’s extensive catalog of marketing plan templates , creating your marketing plan isn’t going to be hard or tedious. In fact, Venngage has plenty of helpful communications and design resources for marketers. If you’re ready to get started, sign up for  Venngage for Marketers   now. It’s free to register and start designing.

Whether you’re a team trying to set smarter marketing goals, a consultant trying to set your client in the right direction, or a one-person team hustling it out, Venngage for Marketers helps you get things done.

As mentioned above, the scope of your marketing plan varies depending on its purpose or the type of organization it’s for.

For example, you could look for performance marketing agency to create a marketing plan that provides an overview of a company’s entire marketing strategy or simply focus on a specific channel like SEO, social media marketing, content marketing and more, like in this example:

A typical outline of a marketing plan includes:

• Executive summary
• Goals and objectives
• User personas
• Competitor analysis/SWOT analysis
• Baseline metrics
• Marketing strategy
• Tracking guidelines

Below you will see in details how to write each section as well as some examples of how you can design each section in a marketing plan.

Let’s look at how to create a successful marketing plan (click to jump ahead):

• Write a simple executive summary
• Set metric-driven marketing goals
• Outline your user personas
• Research all of your competitors
• Set accurate key baselines & metrics
• Create an actionable marketing strategy
• Set tracking or reporting guidelines

1. Write a simple executive summary

Starting your marketing plan off on the right foot is important. You want to pull people into your amazing plan for marketing domination. Not bore them to tears.

One of the best ways to get people excited to read your marketing plan is with a well-written executive summary. An executive summary introduces readers to your company goals, marketing triumphs, future plans, and other important contextual facts.

Basically, you can use the Executive Summary as a primer for the rest of your marketing plan.

Include things like:

• Simple marketing goals
• High-level metrics
• Important company milestones
• Facts about your brand
• Employee anecdotes
• Future goals & plans

Try to keep your executive summary rather brief and to the point. You aren’t writing a novel, so try to keep it under three to four paragraphs.

Take a look at the executive summary in the marketing plan example below:

The executive summary is only two paragraphs long — short but effective.

The executive summary tells readers about the company’s growth, and how they are about to overtake one of their competitors. But there’s no mention of specific metrics or figures. That will be highlighted in the next section of the marketing plan.

An effective executive summary should have enough information to pique the reader’s interest, but not bog them down with specifics yet. That’s what the rest of your marketing plan is for!

The executive summary also sets the tone for your marketing plan. Think about what tone will fit your brand ? Friendly and humorous? Professional and reliable? Inspiring and visionary?

2. Set metric-driven marketing goals

After you perfect your executive summary, it’s time to outline your marketing goals.

(If you’ve never set data-driven goals like this before, it would be worth reading this growth strategy guide ).

This is one of the most important parts of the entire marketing plan, so be sure to take your time and be as clear as possible. Moreover, optimizing your marketing funnel is key. Employing effective funnel software can simplify operations and provide valuable customer insights. It facilitates lead tracking, conversion rate analysis, and efficient marketing optimization .

As a rule of thumb, be as specific as possible. The folks over at  VoyMedia  advise that you should set goals that impact website traffic, conversions, and customer success — and to use real numbers. Complement your goals with website optimization tools (e.g., A/B testing speed with Nostra – check Nostra AI review to learn more) to further improve conversions.

Avoid outlining vague goals like:

• Get more Twitter followers
• Write more articles
• Create more YouTube videos (like educational or Explainer videos )
• Increase retention rate
• Decrease bounce rate

Instead, identify  key performance metrics  (KPI) you want to impact and the percentage you want to increase them by.

Take a look at the goals page in the marketing plan example below:

They not only identify a specific metric in each of their goals, but they also set a timeline for when they will be increased.

The same vague goals listed earlier become much clearer when specific numbers and timelines are applied to them:

• Get 100 new Twitter followers per month
• Write 5 more articles per week
• Create 10 YouTube videos each year
• Increase retention rate by 15% by 2020
• Decrease bounce rate by 5% by Q1
• Create an online course  and get 1,000 new leads
• Focus more on local SEO strategies
• Conduct a monthly social media report to track progress

You can dive even deeper into your marketing goals if you want (generally, the more specific, the better). Here’s a marketing plan example that shows how to outline your growth goals:

3. Outline your user personas

Now, this may not seem like the most important part of your marketing plan, but I think it holds a ton of value.

Outlining your user personas is an important part of a marketing plan that should not be overlooked.

You should be asking not just how you can get the most visitors to your business, but how you can get the right visitors.

Who are your ideal customers? What are their goals? What are their biggest problems? How does your business solve customer problems?

Answering these questions will take lots of research, but it’s essential information to get.

Some ways to conduct user research are:

• Interviewing your users (either in person or on the phone)
• Conducting focus groups
• Researching other businesses in the same industry
• Surveying your audience

Then, you will need to compile your user data into a user persona  guide.

Take a look at how detailed this user persona template is below:

Taking the time to identify specific demographic traits, habits and goals will make it easier for you to cater your marketing plan to them.

Here’s how you can create a user persona guide:

The first thing you should add is a profile picture or icon for each user persona. It can help to put a face to your personas, so they seem more real.

Next, list demographic information like:

• Identifiers
• Activities/Hobbies

The user persona example above uses sliding scales to identify personality traits like introversion vs. extroversion and thinking vs. feeling. Identifying what type of personality your target users tend to have an influence on the messaging you use in your marketing content.

Meanwhile, this user persona guide identifies specific challenges the user faces each day:

But if you don’t want to go into such precise detail, you can stick to basic information, like in this marketing plan example:

Most businesses will have a few different types of target users. That’s why it’s pertinent to identify and create several different user personas . That way, you can better segment your marketing campaigns and set separate goals, if necessary.

Here’s a marketing plan example with a segmented user persona guide:

The important thing is for your team or client to have a clear picture of who their target user is and how they can appeal to their specific problems.

Start creating robust user personas using Venngage’s user persona guide .

4. Conduct an extensive competitor analysis

Next, on the marketing plan checklist, we have the competitor research section. This section will help you identify who your competitors are, what they’re doing, and how you could carve yourself a place alongside them in your niche — and ideally, surpass them. It’s something you can learn to do with rank tracking software .

Competitor research is also incredibly important if you are starting a blog .

Typically, your competitor research should include:

• Who their marketing team is
• Who their leadership team is
• What their marketing strategy and strategic marketing plan are (this will probably revolve some reverse-engineering)
• What their sales strategy is (same deal)
• Social Media strategy (are they using discounting strategies such as coupon marketing to get conversions)
• Their market cap/financials
• Their yearly growth (you will probably need to use a marketing tool like Ahrefs to do this)
• The number of customers they have & their user personas

Also, take as deep a dive as you can into the strategies they use across their:

• Blog/Content marketing
• Social media marketing
• SEO Marketing
• Video marketing
• And any other marketing tactics they use

Research their strengths and weaknesses in all parts of their company, and you will find some great opportunities. Bookmark has a great guide to different marketing strategies for small businesses  if you need some more information there.

You can use this simple SWOT analysis worksheet to quickly work through all parts of their strategy as well:

Click the template above to create a SWOT chart . Customize the template to your liking — no design know-how needed.

Since you have already done all the research beforehand, adding this information to your marketing plan shouldn’t be that hard.

In this marketing plan example, some high-level research is outlined for 3 competing brands:

But you could take a deeper dive into different facets of your competitors’ strategies. This marketing plan example analyses a competitor’s content marketing strategy:

It can also be helpful to divide your competitors into Primary and Secondary groups. For example, Apple’s primary competitor may be Dell for computers, but its secondary competitor could be a company that makes tablets.

Your most dangerous competitors may not even be in the same industry as you. Like the CEO of Netflix said, “Sleep is our competition.”

5. Set accurate key baselines & metrics

It’s pretty hard to plan for the future if you don’t know where your business stands right now.

Before we do anything at Venngage, we find the baselines so we can compare future results to something. We do it so much it’s almost like second nature now!

Setting baselines will allow you to more accurately track your progress. You will also be able to better analyze what worked and what didn’t work, so you can build a stronger strategy. It will definitely help them clearly understand your goals and strategy as well.

Here’s a marketing plan example where the baselines are visualized:

Another way to include baselines in your plan is with a simple chart, like in the marketing plan example below:

Because data can be intimidating to a lot of people, visualizing your data using charts and infographics will help demystify the information.

6. Create an actionable marketing strategy

After pulling all the contextual information and relevant metrics into your marketing plan, it’s time to break down your marketing strategy.

Once again, it’s easier to communicate your information to your team or clients using visuals .

Mind maps are an effective way to show how a strategy with many moving parts ties together. For example, this mind map shows how the four main components of a marketing strategy interact together:

You can also use a flow chart to map out your strategy by objectives:

However you choose to visualize your strategy, your team should know exactly what they need to do. This is not the time to keep your cards close to your chest.

Your strategy section may need to take up a few pages to explain, like in the marketing plan example below:

With all of this information, even someone from the development team will understand what the marketing team is working on.

This minimalistic marketing plan example uses color blocks to make the different parts of the strategy easy to scan:

Breaking your strategy down into tasks will make it easier to tackle.

Another important way to visualize your marketing strategy is to create a project roadmap. A project roadmap visualizes the timeline of your product with individual tasks. Our roadmap maker can help you with this.

For example, this project roadmap shows how tasks on both the marketing and web design side run parallel to each other:

A simple timeline can also be used in your marketing plan:

Or a mind map, if you want to include a ton of information in a more organized way:

Even a simple “Next, Now, Later” chart can help visualize your strategy:

7. Set tracking or reporting guidelines

Close your marketing plan with a brief explanation of how you plan to track or measure your results. This will save you a lot of frustration down the line by standardizing how you track results across your team.

Like the other sections of your marketing plan, you can choose how in-depth you want to go. But there need to be some clear guidelines on how to measure the progress and results of your marketing plan.

At the bare minimum, your results tracking guidelines should specify:

• What you plan to track
• How you plan to track results
• How often you plan to measure

But you can more add tracking guidelines to your marketing plan if you see the need to. You may also want to include a template that your team or client can follow,  for  client reporting ,  ensure that the right metrics are being tracked.

The marketing plan example below dedicates a whole page to tracking criteria:

Use a task tracker to track tasks and marketing results, and a checklist maker to note down tasks, important life events, or tracking your daily life.

Similarly, the marketing plan example below talks about tracking content marketing instead:

Marketing plan vs. marketing strategy

Although often used interchangeably, the terms “marketing plan” and “marketing strategy” do have some differences.

Simply speaking, a marketing strategy presents what the business will do in order to reach a certain goal. A marketing plan outlines the specific daily, weekly, monthly or yearly activities that the marketing strategy calls for. As a business, you can create a marketing proposal for the marketing strategies defined in your company’s marketing plan. There are various marketing proposal examples that you can look at to help with this.

A company’s extended marketing strategy can be like this:

Notice how it’s more general and doesn’t include the actual activities required to complete each strategy or the timeframe those marketing activities will take place. That kind of information is included in a marketing plan, like this marketing plan template which talks about the content strategy in detail:

Marketing plan v.s business plan

While both marketing plans and business plans are crucial documents for businesses, they serve distinct purposes and have different scopes. Here’s a breakdown of the key differences:

Business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines all aspects of your business, including:

• Mission and vision
• Products or services
• Target market
• Competition
• Management team
• Financial projections
• Marketing strategy (including a marketing plan)
• Operations plan

Marketing plan on the other hand, dives deep into the specific strategies and tactics related to your marketing efforts. It expands on the marketing section of a business plan by detailing:

• Specific marketing goals (e.g., brand awareness, lead generation, sales)
• Target audience analysis (detailed understanding of their needs and behaviors)
• Product:  Features, benefits, positioning
• Price:  Pricing strategy, discounts
• Place:  Distribution channels (online, offline)
• Promotion:  Advertising, social media, content marketing, public relations
• Budget allocation for different marketing activities
• Metrics and measurement to track progress and success

In short, business plans paint the entire business picture, while marketing plans zoom in on the specific strategies used to reach your target audience and achieve marketing goals.

Types of marketing plans that can transform your business strategy

Let’s take a look at several types of marketing plans you can create, along with specific examples for each.

1. General marketing strategic plan / Annual marketing plan

This is a good example of a marketing plan that covers the overarching annual marketing strategy for a company:

Another good example would be this Starbucks marketing plan:

This one-page marketing plan example from coffee chain Starbucks has everything at a glance. The bold headers and subheadings make it easier to segment the sections so readers can focus on the area most relevant to them.

What we like about this example is how much it covers. From the ideal buyer persona to actional activities, as well as positioning and metrics, this marketing plan has it all.

Another marketing plan example that caught our eye is this one from Cengage. Although a bit text-heavy and traditional, it explains the various sections well. The clean layout makes this plan easy to read and absorb.

The last marketing plan example we would like to feature in this section is this one from Lush cosmetics.

It is a long one but it’s also very detailed. The plan outlines numerous areas, including the company mission, SWOT analysis , brand positioning, packaging, geographical criteria, and much more.

2. Content marketing plan

A content marketing plan highlights different strategies , campaigns or tactics you can use for your content to help your business reach its goals.

This one-page marketing plan example from Contently outlines a content strategy and workflow using simple colors and blocks. The bullet points detail more information but this plan can easily be understood at a glance, which makes it so effective.

For a more detailed content marketing plan example, take a look at this template which features an editorial calendar you can share with the whole team:

3. SEO marketing plan

Your SEO marketing plan highlights what you plan to do for your SEO marketing strategy . This could include tactics for website on-page optimization , off-page optimization using AI SEO , and link building using an SEO PowerSuite backlink API for quick backlink profile checks.

This SEO marketing plan example discusses in detail the target audience of the business and the SEO plan laid out in different stages:

4. Social media marketing plan

Your social media marketing plan presents what you’ll do to reach your marketing goal through social media. This could include tactics specific to each social media channel that you own, recommendations on developing a new channel, specific campaigns you want to run, and so on, like how B2B channels use Linkedin to generate leads with automation tools and expand their customer base; or like making use of Twitter walls that could display live Twitter feeds from Twitter in real-time on digital screens.

For B2C brands, you can target Facebook and Instagram. Gain Instagram likes to build trust for your brand’s profile and post engaging content on both platforms. Leverage AI social media tools to automate and scale your content plan..

Edit this social media marketing plan example easily with Venngage’s drag-and-drop editor:

5. Demand generation marketing plan

This could cover your paid marketing strategy (which can include search ads, paid social media ads, traditional advertisements, etc.), email marketing strategy and more. Here’s an example:

1. Free marketing plan template

Here’s a free nonprofit marketing plan example that is ideal for organizations with a comprehensive vision to share. It’s a simple plan that is incredibly effective. Not only does the plan outline the core values of the company, it also shares the ideal buyer persona.

Note how the branding is consistent throughout this example so there is no doubt which company is presenting this plan. The content plan is an added incentive for anyone viewing the document to go ahead and give the team the green light.

2. Pastel social media marketing campaign template

Two-page marketing plan samples aren’t very common, but this free template proves how effective they are. There’s a dedicated section for business goals as well as for project planning .

The milestones for the marketing campaign are clearly laid out, which is a great way to show how organized this business strategy is.

3. Small business marketing strategy template

This marketing plan template is perfect for small businesses who set out to develop an overarching marketing strategy for the whole year:

Notice how this aligns pretty well with the marketing plan outline we discussed in previous sections.

In terms of specific tactics for the company’s marketing strategy, the template only discusses SEO strategy, but you can certainly expand on that section to discuss any other strategies — such as link building , that you would like to build out a complete marketing plan for.

4. Orange simple marketing proposal template

Marketing plans, like the sample below, are a great way to highlight what your business strategy and the proposal you wan to put forward to win potential customers.

5. One-page marketing fact sheet template

This one-page marketing plan example is great for showcasing marketing efforts in a persuasive presentation or to print out for an in-person meeting.

Note how the fact sheet breaks down the marketing budget as well as the key metrics for the organization. You can win over clients and partners with a plan like this.

6. Light company business fact sheet template

This one-page sample marketing plan clearly outlines the marketing objectives for the organization. It’s a simple but effective way to share a large amount of information in a short amount of time.

What really works with this example is that includes a mission statement, key contact information alongside all the key metrics.

7. Marketing media press kit template

This press kit marketing plan template is bright and unmistakable as belonging to the Cloud Nine marketing agency . The way the brand colors are used also helps diversify the layouts for each page, making the plan easier to read.

We like the way the marketing department has outlined the important facts about the organization. The bold and large numbers draw the eye and look impressive.

8. Professional marketing proposal template

Start your marketing campaign on a promising note with this marketing plan template. It’s short, sharp and to the point. The table of contents sets out the agenda, and there’s a page for the company overview and mission statement.

9. Social media marketing proposal template

A complete marketing plan example, like the one below, not only breaks down the business goals to be achieved but a whole lot more. Note how the terms and conditions and payment schedule are included, which makes this one of the most comprehensive marketing plans on our list.

What should marketing plans include?

Marketing plans should include:

• A detailed analysis of the target market and customer segments.
• Clear and achievable marketing objectives and goals.
• Strategies and tactics for product promotion and distribution.
• Budget allocation for various marketing activities.
• Timelines and milestones for the implementation of marketing strategies.
• Evaluation metrics and methods for tracking the success of the marketing plan.

What is an executive summary in a marketing plan and what is its main goal?

An executive summary in a marketing plan is a brief overview of the entire document, summarizing the key points, goals, and strategies. Its main goal is to provide readers with a quick understanding of the plan’s purpose and to entice them to read further.

What are the results when a marketing plan is effective?

When a marketing plan is effective, businesses can experience increased brand visibility, higher customer engagement , improved sales and revenue, and strengthened customer loyalty.

What is the first section of a marketing plan?

The first section of a marketing plan is typically the “Executive Summary,” which provides a concise overview of the entire plan, including the business’s goals and the strategies to achieve them.

Now that you have the basics for designing your own marketing plan, it’s time to get started:

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6 Steps to Create an Outstanding Marketing Plan [Free Templates]

Published: July 23, 2024

Without planning, marketing can get messy. It’s hard to estimate budget for projects, hiring, and outsourcing over the course of a year — especially if you don't have a marketing plan, email schedule, or social media marketing plan template.

To make creating your plan easier, I've put together a list of what to include. I’ve also compiled a few different strategic marketing plan templates where you can easily fill in the blanks.

In this article, we're going to discuss:

• What should a marketing plan include?

Marketing Plan Timeline

How to create a marketing plan, hubspot’s free marketing plan template, one-page marketing plan template.

• Simple Marketing Plan Generated by AI

Strategy-specific Marketing Plan Templates

• Marketing Campaign Plan
• Digital Marketing Plan
• Product Marketing Plan
• Social Media Marketing Plan

Free Marketing Plan Template

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

• Pre-Sectioned Template
• Completely Customizable
• Example Prompts
• Professionally Designed

Download Free

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You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

What should a marketing plan include? [Marketing Plan Outline]

A marketing plan is a roadmap that businesses like yours use to organize, execute, and track their marketing strategy over a given period.

The marketing plan outline we discuss will help you create an effective plan that easily generates buy-in from stakeholders.

Download This Marketing Plan Outline for Free

Marketing plans can get quite granular depending on your industry and how big your digital presence is. This is true whether you're selling to consumers (B2C) or other businesses (B2B).

Despite these nuances, here are the essentials I’ve found should be present in every marketing plan or marketing planner template:

Business Summary

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How to Write a Marketing Plan

By Joe Weller | March 28, 2024

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A  marketing plan is a guide for achieving marketing initiatives on a set timeline. It includes analysis of a company's target audience, competitors, and market sector. Teams can build an organized strategy with that information to reach their goals.  

Inside this article you’ll find a detailed, step-by-step guide to writing a marketing plan, with a free, downloadable  marketing starter kit for beginners .

A  marketing plan includes analysis of the target audience, the competitors, and the market so that teams can determine the best strategy for achieving their goals. The plan’s length and detail depend on the company's size and the scope of the marketing project. A marketing plan is useful for all types of marketing, including digital, social media, new product, small business, B2C, and B2B. Follow the steps below to write a comprehensive marketing plan. 

1. Prepare for Success 

Before you begin writing your marketing plan, set yourself up for success by conducting thorough market research and assembling a team with diverse skills in marketing strategy, content creation, digital marketing, and data analysis. Be sure to consult all your team members as you progress through these steps. It might also be helpful to assign leaders to complete different sections of the plan, depending on their areas of expertise. For example, you might assign the market analysis section to a team member with strong analytical skills and experience in data analysis.  

2. Use a Marketing Plan Template

Download a free  marketing plan template  to ensure consistency and thoroughness in your final marketing plan.

For more template options, see this collection of  free marketing plan templates and examples.

3. Identify Your Target Customers

To identify target customers for your marketing plan, collect information about their location, demographics (such as age, gender, and income), interests, values, and purchasing behaviors. This knowledge enables you to focus your marketing goals and tactics to meet their specific needs and preferences.

A  customer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer that provides valuable insights for strategic decision-making. Use one of these  customer persona templates  to craft a detailed profile of your ideal customer.   

4. Conduct a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is an important part of any marketing plan, because it helps identify a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in relation to the market environment. To start, divide a page into four quadrants and label each as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Next, brainstorm with your team to fill in each section. Be as honest and specific as possible, considering factors such as market trends, competition, and your own resources and capabilities. This information will allow the team to capitalize on strengths, prepare for challenges, and make sound strategic decisions throughout the marketing plan. 

See this collection of  marketing plan SWOT analysis templates  for additional guidance.   

5. Conduct a Market Analysis 

A  market analysis is an assessment of a market's size, growth, trends, customer segments, and competitor dynamics. Include it in your marketing plan to provide critical insights for strategic decision-making, helping to tailor products to customer needs, differentiate from competitors, and identify new opportunities. 

To conduct a market analysis for your marketing plan, determine each of the following factors:    

• Market Size: This is the total potential sales that a particular product or service can achieve within a defined market. Determine the market size by estimating the number of potential buyers for a particular service and multiplying that by the estimated number of purchases over a specific timeframe. (Number of Target Customers) x (Number of Purchases in a Given Time) = Market Size Imagine your company sells wireless headphones, and you estimate that the average consumer purchases a new pair every two years. If your market includes 1 million target customers, and assuming each customer buys one pair of headphones every two years, the calculation for annual market size would be as follows: (1 million target customers) x (0.5 purchases per year) = 500,000 pairs of wireless headphones per year   
• Market Growth Rate:  This measures the change in a market’s size over a specific time period and is typically expressed as a percentage. To determine the market growth rate, use the following formula: [(Current Market Size − Previous Market Size​) ÷ Previous Market Size] × 100% = Growth Rate For example, if the market for wireless headphones was worth $1 billion last year and is worth $1.1 billion this year, the market growth rate would be as follows: [($1.1 Billion – $1 Billion) ÷  $1 Billion] x 100% = 10%  

Market Share:  This is the percentage of total sales in an industry generated by a particular company over a period of time. It provides a benchmark for assessing performance relative to competitors. Use this formula for calculating market share: (Company’s Revenue ÷ Total Industry Revenue) x 100% = Market Share  

Tip:  Keep in mind that the market size, share, and growth rate are all estimates. It’s impossible to be exact. To obtain the most accurate numbers, review the latest industry reports and seek insight from experts.  

• Market Demand:  This is the amount of a product or service a consumer is willing to purchase and how much they are willing to pay for it. To determine market demand in a market analysis, begin by conducting comprehensive research on consumer behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns related to your product or service. Use tools such as surveys, SEO analytics, and interviews to gather data on potential customer interest and willingness to pay, and analyze competitor pricing and offerings.  
• Market Trends:  This is the growth or decline direction of a product or service’s price over a specific timeframe. To identify a market trend, monitor industry developments, consumer behavior, and technological advancements over time. Review industry reports and expert analyses to understand broader market movements and future projections. Summarize these observations and include them in your plan to highlight the direction in which the market is heading.        

Market Segments:  The broader market includes specific groups, categorized by shared characteristics. Generally, there are four types of market segments: geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral. In your marketing plan, detail how you'll target each segment by adapting your strategies to their unique characteristics. This targeted approach ensures more effective engagement with each segment.   

• Competitor Analysis:  A competitor analysis involves examining your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, market positioning, product offerings, and marketing strategies. Describe how you'll conduct a comprehensive evaluation of key competitors by analyzing their market share, pricing, distribution channels, and promotional tactics. For more guidance, try downloading this competitor analysis template. Use it to identify areas where your rivals succeed and why. Their strengths indicate areas for improvement, while their weaknesses indicate opportunities.  

6. List Your SMART Goals 

Include SMART goals in your marketing plan to ensure that objectives are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound, providing a clear direction for strategic actions and performance evaluation. Start by identifying key performance areas that align with your overall business strategy. Then, for each goal, apply the SMART framework. 

Here are two examples of SMART marketing goals:   

• By Q4 end, increase search results page (SERP) position from 14th to the top three for keywords pertaining to our brand and lead to more organic traffic. 
• Increase social media following, reach, and engagement by 25 percent in six months and 50 percent in one year.

Learn more about SMART goals and find a customizable  SMART goals worksheet  in this comprehensive  guide to writing SMART goals . 

7. Create a Marketing Strategy

A  marketing strategy is the plan for achieving your SMART goals.   

“A marketing plan should include strategic and tactical elements,” says Gayle Kalvert, Founder and CEO at  Creo Collective , a full-service marketing agency. “From a strategic standpoint, it is critical that the marketing plan aligns to the overall goals of the organization. Tactically, what initiatives will the marketing team execute, and why? Tactics with no strategy lead to spotty results and poor-quality leads.”

Use one of these  marketing strategy templates to get started. A successful marketing strategy will include the following elements: 

7a. Customer Buying Cycle

The  customer buying cycle is the path a potential customer follows from first having exposure to a product or service to becoming an advocate for it. Understanding this process allows marketers to effectively target communications and strategies at each stage in their marketing plan. 

Pro Tip: “Consider your persona’s buyer's journey and ensure marketing has a role at each stage of the journey, especially after the close,” says Kalvert. “That is when customers can become advocates, sources of referral, and great subjects for marketing content for future buyers.”

7b. Unique Selling Proposition

A  unique selling proposition (USP) is a specific benefit or advantage that sets your product or service apart from the competitors. By including a USP in a marketing plan, you help ensure that the team communicates why customers should choose your offering over others. 

For example, Google’s USP is its powerful and accurate search algorithm that delivers relevant search results faster and more efficiently than its competitors.

7c. Branding 

Branding is the development of a unique identity, image, and experience for a company. Marketers convey a brand through messaging, tone, logo, colors, and web design. The marketing strategy needs to align with the company’s brand in order to maintain consistency in messaging and experience, which ultimately builds customer trust.

7d. Marketing Mix A marketing mix refers to the set of actions that a company takes to promote its brand or product in the market, typically encapsulated by the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. Go through each of these steps when including the marketing mix in your strategy:  

• Product: Describe the product and the problem it solves for your target customers. What makes your product or service different from the competition? Why is it special? 
• Price: Explain how much your target customer is willing to pay for the product or service based on its real and perceived value. What do your competitors charge for a similar product? Will you run any seasonal promotions or discounts? 
• Place:  Describe where your product or service will be available for purchase by your target customers. Will you sell it online, through retail partners, or both? How will you manage logistics and supply chain to ensure your product is accessible to your target market?
• Promotion:  Detail the strategies you will use to communicate your product’s value to consumers. This includes advertising, public relations, social media marketing, email campaigns, sales promotions, and direct marketing tactics.    

7e. Channels 

Identify the specific mediums and platforms — or  channels — where you’ll share your message to your target audience. These should include distribution channels, communication channels, and engagement channels. 

As you list them, explain how they will be used to effectively reach and engage with your target audience. For example, if you’re marketing a new fitness app, one distribution channel would be a direct download from the App Store to reach fitness enthusiasts directly on their smartphones. An engagement channel could be an in-app community feature for users where they can share progress.

Here is a brief list of popular marketing channels:  

• Affiliate marketing
• Email marketing
• Social media
• Website marketing

7f. Tactics Tactics are the specific actions you will take to reach the goals outlined in your strategy. They cover everything from the creation and distribution of marketing materials to the scheduling of campaigns to the platforms used for advertising and engagement.  Detail the specific actions and tools you will use to execute your marketing strategy, along with timelines, responsibilities, and budget allocations for each activity. This includes specifying the exact steps for product promotion, customer engagement, content creation, digital marketing efforts, and any other methods chosen to reach and convert your target audience. “Equally as important as using data is to build in time and resources to be flexible,” says Kalvert. “The marketing landscape is evolving at such a rapid pace. Tactics that worked last year may not work this year. Be open to experimenting with new tactics and adjusting your approach based on feedback and results.”

8. Determine the Budget 

Start by estimating the costs associated with each tactic and channel outlined in your strategy, taking into account factors such as content creation, platform fees, and personnel costs. Next, prioritize spending based on the expected ROI for each tactic. Finally, document the budget in a clear, detailed format within your marketing plan, including an itemized list of costs for each tactic, total expenditure, and a contingency fund.

For more resources and help estimating marketing project costs, take a look at this collection of helpful free  marketing plan budget templates . 

9. Create a Calendar

Create a calendar to schedule and track deliverables. Include time for brainstorming, planning, executing, and analyzing results. List objectives, start dates, end dates, due dates, and responsible parties. Keep the calendar in a central location so that team members can easily access it.

10. List Marketing Tools and Technology

List any marketing tools or technologies your team will use to help achieve their goals. These can include email marketing software, blogging software, social media management software, or any other programs you plan to use.

11. Identify Metrics and KPIs

Identify the metrics for measuring and tracking your marketing goals. Metrics and KPIs eliminate ambiguity so that you can accurately measure progress. Select indicators that directly reflect the success of your marketing objectives, such as conversion rates, website traffic, lead generation, and customer acquisition costs.

12. Write an Executive Summary

Once you’ve completed all the sections in your marketing plan document, return to the first section to write the executive summary. Completing this section last ensures that you have a thorough understanding of all key elements before summarizing them. 

Concisely highlight the main objectives, target market, and key strategies of the plan, providing a snapshot of the market analysis and expected outcomes. Outline the budget, resources required, and the metrics for measuring success. This section serves as a compelling overview, enticing stakeholders to delve into the plan.

For more detailed information on executive summaries, see this guide to  writing an effective executive summary.  You can also download a helpful template from this collection of  free executive summary templates

Marketing Starter Kit for Beginners

Download Marketing Starter Kit for Beginners

Get everything you need for creating a marketing plan with this free, downloadable marketing plan starter kit. The kit includes an executive summary template, a customer persona worksheet, a SWOT analysis template, a competitor analysis template, a SMART goals worksheet, a marketing strategy template, and a calendar template with a budget tracker, all in one easy-to-download file.

In this kit, you’ll find the following:  

• An  executive summary template  for Microsoft Word to help you introduce the content of your marketing plan.    
• A  customer persona worksheet  for Microsoft Word to collect information about your ideal customer.  
• A  SWOT analysis template for Microsoft Word to guide strategic decision-making based on the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 
• A  competitor analysis template  for Microsoft Word to help you compare and evaluate your competitors. 
• A  SMART goals worksheet  for Microsoft Word to ensure each marketing objective follows SMART guidelines. 
• A  marketing strategy template  for Microsoft Word to outline the plan for achieving your goals. 
• A  calendar template with budget tracker  for Excel where you can organize, track, and manage marketing deliverables and their costs. 
• A  marketing plan template for Microsoft Word  to ensure consistency and thoroughness in your final marketing plan.

Master Your Marketing Plan with Real-Time Work Management in Smartsheet

The best marketing teams know the importance of effective campaign management, consistent creative operations, and powerful event logistics -- and Smartsheet helps you deliver on all three so you can be more effective and achieve more. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Improve your marketing efforts and deliver best-in-class campaigns.

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Featured Reads

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• How to create a winning marketing plan, ...

How to create a winning marketing plan, with 3 examples from world-class teams

A marketing plan helps leaders clearly visualize marketing strategies across channels, so they can ensure every campaign drives pipeline and revenue. In this article you’ll learn eight steps to create a winning marketing plan that brings business-critical goals to life, with examples from word-class teams.

To be successful as a marketer, you have to deliver the pipeline and the revenue.”

In other words—they need a well-crafted marketing plan.

Level up your marketing plan to drive revenue in 2024

Learn how to create the right marketing plan to hit your revenue targets in 2024. Hear best practices from marketing experts, including how to confidently set and hit business goals, socialize marketing plans, and move faster with clearer resourcing.

7 steps to build a comprehensive marketing plan

How do you build the right marketing plan to hit your revenue goals? Follow these eight steps for success:

1. Define your plan

First you need to define each specific component of your plan to ensure stakeholders are aligned on goals, deliverables, resources, and more. Ironing out these details early on ensures your plan supports the right business objectives, and that you have sufficient resources and time to get the job done. 

Get started by asking yourself the following questions: 

What resources do I need? 

What is the vision?

What is the value?

What is the goal?

Who is my audience?

What are my channels?

What is the timeline?

For example, imagine you’re creating an annual marketing plan to improve customer adoption and retention in the next fiscal year. Here’s how you could go through the questions above to ensure you’re ready to move forward with your plan: 

I will need support from the content team, web team, and email team to create targeted content for existing customers. One person on each team will need to be dedicated full-time to this initiative. To achieve this, the marketing team will need an additional $100K in budget and one new headcount. 

What is the vision?  

To create a positive experience for existing customers, address new customer needs, and encourage them to upgrade. We’ll do this by serving them how-to content, new feature updates, information about deals and pricing, and troubleshooting guides. 

According to the Sales Benchmark Index (SBI) , CEOs and go-to-market leaders report that more than 60% of their net-new revenue will come from existing customers in 2023. By retaining and building on the customers we have, we can maintain revenue growth over time. 

To decrease the customer churn rate from 30% to 10%, and increase upgrades from 20% to 30% in the next fiscal year. 

All existing customers. 

The main channel will be email. Supporting marketing channels include the website, blog, YouTube, and social media. 

The first half of the next fiscal year. 

One of the most important things to do as you create your marketing strategy is to identify your target audience . As with all marketing, you need to know who you’re marketing to. If you’re having a hard time determining who exactly your target audience is, try the bullseye targeting framework . The bullseye makes it easy for you to determine who your target audience is by industry, geography, company size, psychographics, demographics, and more.

2. Identify key metrics for success 

Now it’s time to define what key marketing metrics you’ll use to measure success. Your key metrics will help you measure and track the performance of your marketing activities. They’ll also help you understand how your efforts tie back to larger business goals. 

Once you establish key metrics, use a goal-setting framework—like objectives and key results (OKRs) or SMART goals —to fully flush out your marketing objectives. This ensures your targets are as specific as possible, with no ambiguity about what should be accomplished by when. 

Example: If a goal of your marketing plan is to increase email subscriptions and you follow the SMART goal framework (ensuring your objective is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) your goal might look like this: Increase email subscription rate from 10% to 20% in H1 . 

3. Research your competition 

It’s easy to get caught up in your company’s world, but there’s a lot of value in understanding your competitors . Knowing how they market themselves will help you find opportunities to make your company stand out and capture more market share.

Make sure you’re not duplicating your competitors’ efforts. If you discover a competitor has already executed your idea, then it might be time to go back to the drawing board and brainstorm new ways to differentiate yourself.  By looking at your competitors, you might be surprised at the type of inspiration and opportunities you’ll find.

To stay ahead of market trends, conduct a SWOT analysis for your marketing plan. A SWOT analysis helps you improve your plan by identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 

Example: If your competitor launches a social media campaign identical to what you had planned, go back to the drawing board and see how you can build off their campaign. Ask yourself: How can we differentiate our campaign while still getting our message across? What are the weaknesses of their campaign that we can capitalize on? What angles did they not approach?

4. Integrate your marketing efforts

Here’s where the fun comes in. Let’s dive into the different components that go into building a successful marketing plan. You’ll want to make sure your marketing plan includes multiple supporting activities that all add up into a powerful marketing machine. Some marketing plan components include: 

Lead generation

Social media

Product marketing

Public relations

Analyst relations

Customer marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Conversational marketing

Knowing where your consumer base spends the most time is significant for nailing this step. You need to have a solid understanding of your target audience before integrating your marketing efforts. 

Example: If your target audience is executives that spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, focus your social media strategy around placing branded content on LinkedIn. 

5. Differentiate with creative content

Forty-nine percent of marketers say visual images are hugely important to their content strategy. In other words, a clear brand and creative strategy is an essential component to every marketing plan. As you craft your own creative strategy, here are some tips to keep in mind: 

Speak to your audience: When defining your creative strategy, think about your audience—what you want them to feel, think, and do when they see your marketing. Will your audience find your creative work relevant? If your audience can’t relate to your creative work, they won’t feel connected to the story you’re trying to tell. 

Think outside the box: Find innovative ways to engage your audience, whether through video, animations, or interactive graphics. Know what screens your creative work will live on, whether desktop, mobile, or tablet, and make sure they display beautifully and load quickly across every type of device. 

Tie everything back to CTAs: It’s easy to get caught up in the creative process, so it’s important to never lose sight of your ultimate goal: Get your audience to take action. Always find the best way to display strong Calls to Action (CTAs) in your creative work. We live in a visual world—make sure your creative content counts.

Streamline creative production:   Once you’ve established a strong creative strategy, the next step is to bring your strategy to life in the production stage. It’s vital to set up a strong framework for your creative production process to eliminate any unnecessary back and forth and potential bottlenecks. Consider establishing creative request forms , streamlining feedback and approval processes, and taking advantage of integrations that might make your designers’ lives easier.

Example: If your brand is fun and approachable, make sure that shows in your creative efforts. Create designs and CTAs that spark joy, offer entertainment, and alleviate the pressure in choosing a partner.

6. Operationalize your marketing plan

Turn your plan into action by making goals, deliverables, and timelines clear for every stakeholder—so teams stay accountable for getting work done. The best way to do this is by centralizing all the details of your marketing plan in one platform , so teams can access the information they need and connect campaign work back to company goals.  

With the right work management tool , you can: 

Set goals for every marketing activity, and connect campaign work to overarching marketing and business objectives so teams focus on revenue-driving projects. 

Centralize deliverables for your entire marketing plan in one project or portfolio .

Mark major milestones and visualize your plan as a timeline, Gantt chart, calendar, list, or Kanban board—without doing any extra work. 

Quickly loop in stakeholders with status updates so they’re always up to date on progress. This is extremely important if you have a global team to ensure efforts aren’t being duplicated. 

Use automations to seamlessly hand off work between teams, streamlining processes like content creation and reviews. 

Create dashboards to report on work and make sure projects are properly staffed , so campaigns stay on track. 

With everything housed in one spot, you can easily visualize the status of your entire marketing plan and keep work on track. Building an effective marketing plan is one thing, but how you operationalize it can be your secret to standout marketing.

Example: If your strategy focuses on increasing page views, connect all campaign work to an overarching OKR—like “we will double page views as measured by the amount of organic traffic on our blog.” By making that goal visible to all stakeholders, you help teams prioritize the right work. 

See marketing planning in action

With Asana, marketing teams can connect work, standardize processes, and automate workflows—all in one place.

7. Measure performance

Nearly three in four CMOs use revenue growth to measure success, so it’s no surprise that measuring performance is necessary. You established your key metrics in step two, and now it’s time to track and report on them in step eight.

Periodically measure your marketing efforts to find areas of improvement so you can optimize in real-time. There are always lessons to be learned when looking at data. You can discover trends, detect which marketing initiatives performed well, and course-correct what isn’t performing well. And when your plan is complete, you can apply these learnings to your next initiative for improved results. 

Example: Say you discover that long-form content is consistently bringing in 400% more page views than short-form content. As a result, you’ll want to focus on producing more long-form content in your next marketing plan.

Marketing plan examples from world-class teams

The best brands in the world bring their marketing plans to life every day. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out these examples from successful marketing teams.

Autodesk grows site traffic 30% three years in a row

When the Autodesk team launched Redshift, it was initially a small business blog. The editorial team executed a successful marketing plan to expand it into a premier owned-media site, making it a destination for stories and videos about the future of making. 

The team scaled content production to support seven additional languages. By standardizing their content production workflow and centralizing all content conversations in one place, the editorial team now publishes 2X more content monthly. Read the case study to learn more about how Autodesk runs a well-oiled content machine. Trinny London perfects new customer acquisition 

In consumer industries, social media is crucial for building a community of people who feel an affinity with the brand—and Trinny London is no exception. As such, it was imperative that Trinny London’s ad spend was targeted to the correct audience. Using a work management tool, Trinny London was able to nail the process of creating, testing, and implementing ads on multiple social channels.

With the help of a centralized tool, Trinny London improved its ad spend and drove more likes and subscriptions on its YouTube page. Read the case study to learn more about how Trinny London capitalized on paid advertising and social media. 

Turn your marketing plan into marketing success 

A great marketing plan promotes clarity and accountability across teams—so every stakeholder knows what they’re responsible for, by when. Reading this article is the first step to achieving better team alignment, so you can ensure every marketing campaign contributes to your company’s bottom line. 

Use a free marketing plan template to get started

Once you’ve created your marketing strategy and are ready to operationalize your marketing plan, get started with one of our marketing templates . 

Our marketing templates can help you manage and track every aspect of your marketing plan, from creative requests to approval workflows. Centralize your entire marketing plan in one place, customize the roadmap, assign tasks, and build a timeline or calendar. 

Once you’ve operationalized your entire marketing plan with one of our templates, share it with your stakeholders so everyone can work together in the same tool. Your entire team will feel connected to the marketing plan, know what to prioritize, and see how their work contributes to your project objectives . Choose the best marketing template for your team:

Marketing project plan template

Marketing campaign plan template

Product marketing launch template

Editorial calendar template

Agency collaboration template

Creative requests template

Event planning template

GTM strategy template

Still have questions? We have answers. 

What is a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is a detailed roadmap that outlines the different strategies your team will use to achieve organizational objectives. Rather than focusing solely on the end goal, a marketing plan maps every step you need to reach your destination—whether that’s driving pipeline for sales, nurturing your existing customer base, or something in-between. 

As a marketing leader, you know there’s never a shortage of great campaign and project ideas. A marketing plan gives you a framework to effectively prioritize work that aligns to overarching business goals—and then get that work done. Some elements of marketing plans include:

Current business plan

Mission statement  

Business goals

Target customers  

Competitive analysis 

Current marketing mix

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Marketing budget  

What is the purpose of a marketing plan?

The purpose of a marketing plan is to grow your company’s consumer base and strengthen your brand, while aligning with your organization’s mission and vision . The plan should analyze the competitive landscape and industry trends, offer actionable insights to help you gain a competitive advantage, and document each step of your strategy—so you can see how your campaigns work together to drive overarching business goals. 

What is the difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy? 

A marketing plan contains many marketing strategies across different channels. In that way, marketing strategies contribute to your overall marketing plan, working together to reach your company’s overarching business goals.

For example, imagine you’re about to launch a new software product and the goal of your marketing plan is to drive downloads. Your marketing plan could include marketing strategies like creating top-of-funnel blog content and launching a social media campaign. 

What are different types of marketing plans? 

Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, what your timeline is, or which facet of marketing you’re driving, you’ll need to create a different type of marketing plan. Some different types of marketing plans include, but aren’t limited to:

General marketing plan: A general marketing plan is typically an annual or quarterly marketing plan that details the overarching marketing strategies for the period. This type of marketing plan outlines marketing goals, the company’s mission, buyer personas, unique selling propositions, and more. A general marketing plan lays the foundation for other, more specific marketing plans that an organization may employ. 

Product launch marketing plan: A product launch marketing plan is a step-by-step plan for marketing a new product or expanding into a new market. It helps you build awareness and interest by targeting the right audience, with the right messaging, in the right timeframe—so potential customers are ready to buy your new offering right away. Nailing your product launch marketing plan can reinforce your overall brand and fast-track sales. For a step-by-step framework to organize all the moving pieces of a launch, check out our product marketing launch template .

Paid marketing plan: This plan includes all the paid strategies in your marketing plan, like pay-per-click, paid social media advertising, native advertising, and display advertising. It’s especially important to do audience research prior to launching your paid marketing plan to ensure you’re maximizing ROI. Consult with content strategists to ensure your ads align with your buyer personas so you know you’re showing ads to the right people. 

Content marketing plan: A content marketing plan outlines the different content strategies and campaigns you’ll use to promote your product or service. When putting together a content marketing plan, start by identifying your audience. Then use market research tools to get the best insights into what topics your target audience is most interested in.

SEO marketing plan: Your SEO marketing plan should work directly alongside your content marketing plan as you chart content that’s designed to rank in search results. While your content marketing plan should include all types of content, your SEO marketing plan will cover the top-of-funnel content that drives new users to your site. Planning search engine-friendly content is only one step in your SEO marketing plan. You’ll also need to include link-building and technical aspects in order to ensure your site and content are as optimized as possible.

Social media marketing plan: This plan will highlight the marketing strategies you plan to accomplish on social media. Like in any general or digital marketing plan , your social media strategy should identify your ideal customer base and determine how they engage on different social media platforms. From there, you can cater your social media content to your target audience.  

Related resources

How Asana streamlines strategic planning with work management

Write better AI prompts: A 4-sentence framework

What is content marketing? A complete guide

Smooth product launches are simpler than you think

Create a Detailed Marketing Plan With 6 Effective Templates

Want to make costly marketing errors and waste time and resources? Start without a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is not only an essential part of your business plan, but it is the roadmap that will provide your team focus and direction in all their marketing efforts.

A good marketing plan is backed by research and facts. Below, we’ve covered the steps you need to follow when creating a marketing plan that will help you attract potential customers to your product and services and convince them to buy.

Understand Your Current Market and Market Position

Set your smart marketing goals, outline your marketing processes, set a budget for your marketing activities.

• Marketing Strategies and Tactics

Advanced Strategies for Experienced Marketers

Ready to create your own marketing plan.

Pricing, promoting and creating brand messages , all depend on your current market and your position in it.

When understanding your current market position, there are a few things that you need to look into;

Understand Your Product

This is where you look into the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with your product.

With your team and a SWOT analysis , this will take only a few hours. Once you understand your product in terms of these four areas, it’ll be easier to understand your market position.

To create a SWOT analysis template for Marketing Plan:

• Define your objective.
• Gather relevant information.
• Use a SWOT analysis template.
• Analyze strengths (internal factors).
• Evaluate weaknesses (internal factors).
• Identify opportunities (external factors).
• Assess threats (external factors).
• Analyze results and look for insights.
• Develop strategies based on findings.

Understand Your Customer

Everything – from what words you use to communicate your message to what marketing channels you use to promote your product – depends on who your customer is.

How old are they? Are they employed? What are their interests? While you need both quantitative and qualitative data on your customers, you can collect them via email surveys, direct interviews, questionnaires, and research.

Using the data you collect, create several user personas based on user segments. You can refer to these whenever you are developing a marketing strategy.

To create a buyer persona template for Marketing Plan:

• Research your target audience.
• Define key characteristics.
• Give the persona a name and image.
• Describe background and demographics.
• Detail goals and motivations.
• Outline challenges and pain points.
• Document preferred channels and information sources.
• Capture buying behavior and decision-making process.
• Add additional relevant details.
• Create a visual template for easy reference.
• Validate and update regularly.

Understand Your Competitors

This is where you identify your top competition, assess their strengths and weaknesses and analyze their marketing strategies in the market. The information you collect can be used to build effective strategies to improve your competitive advantage.

Once you conduct research, gather and analyze data on your competitors, you’d be able to understand whether you are a leader or a follower in the market.

To create a competitor analysis template for Marketing Plan:

• Identify key competitors.
• Determine evaluation criteria.
• Gather information.
• Create a table or spreadsheet.
• Analyze each competitor.
• Compare and contrast.
• Identify competitive advantages.
• Make strategic decisions.
• Update regularly.

Understand Your Brand Positioning

Your brand position is how you want your customers to perceive your brand. In order to determine this, you need to

• Know what your customer wants. The target market research you did earlier will help you with this.
• Understand what your brand’s capabilities are. Again refer to the SWOT analysis you did of your product.
• Understand how your competitors are positioning their brands in the market. You can figure this out with the help of the competitor analysis you did earlier.

Hence, your brand positioning should resonate with your consumers, can be delivered by you and should be different from that of your competitors. Keep these in mind when you are setting your marketing goals.

The Brand Asset Scorecard

Compare your brand with the average brands in the market by scoring each of the following five brand asset categories using a 20-point scale with a maximum possible score of 100. This way you can derive a score that indicates the relative strength of your brand against your competitors.

To create a brand asset scorecard template for Marketing Plan:

• Identify brand assets.
• Define evaluation criteria.
• Determine rating scales.
• Evaluate brand assets.
• Calculate scores and summarize.
• Identify improvement areas.
• Set action plans.
• Regularly review and update.

Now that you know where you stand in the market, it’s time to define your marketing goals. They are the only way to measure the success of the effort your marketing team is putting in.

Based on your current performance and your marketing objectives, your goals might change, but make sure that they align with the SMART goal criteria .

To create a SMART marketing goal template for Marketing Plan:

• Start with a specific objective.
• Make it measurable with clear metrics.
• Ensure it’s achievable with the allocated resources.
• Check if it’s relevant to business goals.
• Set a time-bound deadline.
• Document in a template.
• Review and track progress regularly

Once you know the goals you want to achieve, you can easily outline the steps that you need to take to accomplish them.

With a process map or flowchart , you can map the tasks you need to complete in order to achieve each of your goals. Once you’ve diagrammed your strategy, you can share it with your team and analyze whether the process needs to be improved or not.

Whether it is to run a social media campaign or to get an ad published in a newspaper, you need to spend money.

Now that you have identified the tasks/ steps you need to take, figure out how much money you’ll have to spend on each activity and where you’d take the money from. Having planned how you spend money earlier will help you keep track of your finances.

Before winding up, let’s also take a look at popular marketing strategies and tactics you can use and implement along with a marketing plan.

Different marketing strategies and tactics may be more effective depending on your industry, target market, and business goals. It’s important to regularly assess the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives, make any necessary adjustments, and monitor results. Here are some examples of marketing strategies and tactics commonly used by businesses.

• Target Market Segmentation

Based on demographics, psychographics, or other relevant factors, divide your overall market into smaller, more manageable categories. Customize your marketing messaging and strategies to engage and effectively reach each category.

Content Marketing

To attract and engage your target audience, produce and distribute relevant material, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, or whitepapers. Focus on delivering helpful information, resolving issues, and building your reputation as an industry expert.

Social Media Marketing

Use well-known social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn to promote your goods or services, build brand awareness, and interact with your audience. To achieve your marketing objectives, combine organic posts with sponsored adverts, influencer partnerships, and community engagement.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Increase the visibility of your website and online content by optimizing it. To increase your website’s visibility and organic traffic, conduct keyword research, provide high-quality content, optimize meta tags and descriptions, and develop quality backlinks.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Run targeted internet advertising where you only pay when someone clicks on them on search engines (like Google advertising) or social media platforms (like Facebook Ads). For your campaigns to be as effective as possible, set specified budgets, target keywords, demographics, or interests, and keep an eye on them.

Email Marketing

Create an email list of prospective or current clients and send them targeted, customized emails. To cultivate leads, promote conversions, and increase customer loyalty, use email newsletters, promotional offers, product updates, or automated drip campaigns.

Influencer Marketing

To promote your business or products, collaborate with influential individuals or popular social media personalities in your industry. These influencers can create content, share reviews, or endorse your offerings, helping you reach their dedicated audience and increase brand awareness.

Referral Programs

You can encourage your current clients to recommend your company to their friends, relatives, or coworkers by providing rewards or incentives. Create referral programs that give discounts, exclusive access, or loyalty points to both the referrer and the new consumer.

Event Marketing

Participate in or organize trade exhibitions, conferences, events, or webinars that are relevant to your field. These events provide opportunities to network, showcase your products, share knowledge, and generate leads.

Personalization and Customer Segmentation

Tailor your marketing messages and offers to individual customers or specific customer segments based on their preferences, behavior, or purchase history. Deliver personalized experiences across numerous channels by utilizing customer data, analytics, and marketing automation tools.

Advanced strategies require a deep understanding of your target audience, extensive data analysis, and ongoing experimentation. To ensure optimal performance and maintain an edge over the competition, it’s critical to regularly assess the outcomes, iterate, and change your methods.

• Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Tailor personalized marketing campaigns to specific high-value accounts, using personalized content, targeted advertising, and outreach to engage and convert them.
• Marketing Automation: Streamline marketing processes with automation tools, automating tasks, nurturing leads through personalized workflows, and leveraging data and analytics to deliver targeted content and offers.
• Predictive Analytics: Use large datasets and machine learning to gain insights into future customer behavior, enabling data-driven decisions, anticipating needs, and personalizing marketing efforts effectively.
• Retention Marketing: Focus on retaining existing customers through personalized communication, loyalty programs, exclusive offers, proactive customer support, and targeted upselling or cross-selling campaigns.
• Omnichannel Marketing: Create a seamless customer experience across multiple channels, integrating online and offline marketing efforts for consistent messaging and customer interactions.
• Data-driven Personalization: Utilize customer data and advanced segmentation to deliver highly personalized experiences, tailoring marketing messages, recommendations, and offers based on individual behavior and demographics.
• Influencer Relationship Management: Build long-term relationships with influencers and thought leaders, collaborating beyond one-off campaigns for continuous brand exposure and audience engagement.
• Customer Advocacy Programs: Encourage satisfied customers to become brand advocates through incentives for sharing positive reviews, referrals, or user-generated content, leveraging their influence and social proof.
• Account-Based Retargeting: Combine ABM principles with retargeting strategies, using personalized ads and email campaigns to engage key accounts that have shown interest but have not converted.
• Experimental Marketing: Take calculated risks and experiment with innovative tactics, channels, or technologies to discover unique growth opportunities, such as virtual reality experiences, chatbots, voice search optimization, or emerging social media platforms.

A marketing plan doesn’t necessarily need to contain hundreds of pages. What is important is that it provides your marketing team the roadmap to get started.

Make use of the visualization techniques we looked at when discussing each step to make things clearer to your team.

And don’t forget to share your ideas on how to create a marketing plan with us.

Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.

FAQs About Marketing Plans

• Provides direction: It helps align marketing activities with business goals, ensuring all efforts work cohesively towards achieving desired outcomes.
• Increases efficiency: By defining objectives, strategies, and tactics in advance, it helps prioritize tasks, allocate resources effectively, and minimize wasted efforts.
• Facilitates decision-making: A marketing plan provides a framework for evaluating different marketing opportunities, making informed decisions, and adjusting strategies based on market conditions.
• Enhances focus and accountability: It sets clear targets, timelines, and responsibilities, allowing team members to stay focused and accountable for executing the marketing plan.

While the components of a marketing plan can vary, here are some common key elements:

• Executive Summary
• Market Research and Analysis
• Competitive Analysis
• Marketing Objectives
• Implementation Timeline
• Budget Allocation
• Measurement and Tracking Metrics
• Risk Assessment and Contingency Plans

To measure and track the effectiveness of a marketing plan, consider the following approaches,

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Define relevant KPIs such as sales revenue, website traffic, conversion rates, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, social media engagement, or email open rates.
• Analytics and Tracking Tools: Utilize web analytics tools, CRM systems, social media analytics, or email marketing software to gather data and insights on customer behavior, campaign performance, and ROI.
• Regular Reporting and Analysis: Review and analyze the collected data regularly to evaluate the success of marketing activities, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions for adjustments or optimizations.
• Limited Resources: Insufficient budgets, time, or manpower can hinder the execution of planned marketing activities.
• Competitive Landscape: Competitors' actions or market dynamics may require adjustments to the planned strategies.
• Changing Consumer Behavior: Shifts in consumer preferences, trends, or technologies may demand adaptability and flexibility in marketing approaches.
• Measurement and Analysis: Difficulties in accurately measuring and attributing the impact of marketing activities to business outcomes.
• Internal Alignment: Ensuring that the marketing plan is well-communicated and aligned with other departments within the organization.

Addressing these challenges requires flexibility, ongoing monitoring, agility, and effective communication within the marketing team and across the organization.

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Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. She is an avid reader, a budding writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics.

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What Is a Marketing Plan and How To Write One (+ Template)

Learn the key elements of a marketing plan, access templates to get started, and get tips on how to write an effective plan.

No matter how much you stick to a plan, things go wrong. As the famous quote by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower goes: “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

When it comes to ecommerce, consumer trends shift, circumstances change, and initial experiments don’t always go as planned. All of these things impact your marketing plan. 

Research shows that marketers who proactively write a marketing plan are 356% more likely to report success. So, what does a realistic ecommerce marketing plan look like? And how do you handle unexpected obstacles and overestimations that threaten your company’s marketing strategy? This guide shares the answers.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is the strategy a business uses to get its products or services in front of its target customer. It includes who the target market is, the channels used to reach them, and the messaging that will help the business sell its products. 

The purpose of a marketing plan isn’t to create a step-by-step, never-fail manual. Rather, it’s a roadmap to help you accomplish the best-case scenario, while also maintaining realistic expectations for your marketing initiatives and establishing backup plans if something doesn’t work.

Marketing plan vs. business plan

A business plan paints a bigger picture of how you plan to run your business. It includes a mission statement, products you’ll launch, and market research. A marketing plan, on the other hand, is a specific document that details how you plan to achieve these wider goals through marketing . 

Marketing plan vs marketing strategy

An overarching marketing strategy details how marketing will drive business results. A marketing plan is the route you’ll use to get there. It’s more specific than a strategy and includes a practical roadmap on how you’ll put your marketing activities into play. 

Free marketing plan template to help you get started

Creating your own marketing plan is no small job. You put hours into customer and competitor research to find the channels likely to have the biggest impact on your marketing goals. You can check out marketing plan examples , but when it comes to creating your own, you can save time with a template.

Ditch the intimidating blank screen by building a marketing plan using Shopify’s free marketing plan template. Use it to guide your marketing strategy, tweaking the template to meet your business needs.

Download the template now

Types of marketing plans

Digital marketing plan.

A digital marketing plan is a specific type of marketing plan that revolves solely around online channels like social media, email, and search engines. It doesn’t include offline channels like billboards or radio ads.

Social media marketing plan

A social media marketing plan focuses specifically on how a business will use social media to reach its target market. It gives you a framework of which channels you’ll use, the types of content you’ll create, whether you’ll invest in social media ads, and how you’ll drive product sales. This can take place either through your online store or a social media storefront such as Facebook and Instagram Shops .

Content marketing plan 

A content marketing plan details how you’ll produce content that turns people into paying customers. This can span multiple formats, including an email newsletter, infographics, product documentation, and user-generated content (such as social media posts). 

Alongside the more traditional elements of a marketing plan, a content-marketing-specific strategy would include:

• Keywords you plan to target
• Who you’ll use to create the content (e.g., freelancers or in-house marketers)
• How you’ll promote and repurpose your content

Offline marketing plan

An offline marketing plan details how a business will reach its target market without using digital channels. This might include billboards, radio ads, direct mail, event sponsorships, and outdoor advertising. 

How to write a marketing plan

Detail your unique value proposition, outline your buyer personas, run a swot analysis, detail product features and benefits, set key performance indicators, outline your marketing funnel.

• Define your marketing channels

Decide on your content formats

• Plan your marketing resources

Create a measurement and optimization plan

A unique value proposition underlines your entire marketing plan. Regardless of the channels and formats you plan to use, consistency is key. Mixed messages on what you sell and what your brand stands for will only confuse potential customers.

A simple way to refine your messaging is to focus on your unique selling point. Costco, for example, is cheaper than its competitors. Harper Wilde’s products are comfier than any other bra retailer. Find the marketing channels each retailer uses and you’ll see messaging centered around its adjective.

Consult your customers if you’re unsure what your value proposition adjective should be. Research is the biggest part of any copywriting process . Survey people who’ve already bought from you, run an Instagram poll to discover why people follow your brand, and see where your competitors’ weaknesses lie. Look for adjectives that crop up frequently during the process.

What overarching goal are you trying to accomplish with the business? Why does it exist? Summarize it in one sentence, and you’ll have a mission statement to inform everything you do, which includes your marketing strategies .

Going overboard with assumptions is a common mistake among marketers. The end result is a marketing plan that doesn’t actually result in revenue.

While data won’t give you a foolproof plan, every assumption is one more bit of uncertainty you’re folding into your marketing goals . If an amazing plan has a 40% chance of holding up to real-world scenarios, one without much rigor—and lots of assumptions—might hold up 10% of the time.

Consult your customer segments and buyer personas to get as much information as you can about the person buying your products, such as: 

• Demographic data (location, age, and income level) 
• Interests, goals, and challenges 
• Channels they use to discover new products

Be careful not to confuse this with your target audience . Children would be the target audience of a toy brand; parents are the buyer persona. The latter is who you’ll be reaching out to with your marketing plan. 

A SWOT analysis helps uncover your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats relative to your competitors. It’s useful to include one as part of your marketing plan because it can help anticipate problems you might encounter, make more data-driven decisions, and spot areas where you can get ahead of your competitors. 

Dive deep into the data you already have about your customer base by investigating marketing analytics , social media audiences, and customer surveys . It reiterates who you’re trying to reach—and more importantly, the triggers that would make them buy your product over a competitor’s.

Remind yourself of your unique selling proposition (USP) throughout this process. Tailor your marketing plan around key takeaways from these. 

Include any special features, competitive advantages, or customer favorites your marketing plan will lean on.

You could have the best mattress in the world—one made with 100 springs and cotton stitching, vigorously tested by sleep experts. But you’d struggle to market it if you lean too heavily on product features. A customer cares more about getting a peaceful night’s sleep than detailed product specifications.

“Every great marketing plan needs one thing first: a product that is 10 times better than the next,” says Nick Saltarelli, co-founder of Mid-Day Squares . “Once you have that, marketing is about deep human connections.”

Nick says, “It felt obvious that there was a sweet spot somewhere in between: people who wanted to follow along, and a true behind-the-scenes look into building a massive chocolate business from the ground up.”

As a result, the Mid-Day Squares marketing plan doesn’t prioritize product promotion. The brand instead “focuses on getting people to fall in love with us, the founders, to scale the human connection,” Nick says.

What are you trying to achieve with your marketing plan? Create both short- and long-term business goals that relate to financial metrics like revenue growth, retention , or new customers .

Most marketers measure success using return on investment (ROI) —the revenue you expect to generate after spending your marketing budget. It’s every marketer’s dream to get $100,000 in sales from $1,000 in marketing spend. While that isn’t the most realistic expectation, knowing your target ROI will prevent overspending. If your ROI is hurtling beyond your predictions, you can better allocate that budget to be spent elsewhere.

But there’s more to marketing measurement than dollar returns. Revenue isn’t always the end goal. Brand awareness, website traffic, and social media followers are short-term marketing objectives that aim to get new people into your marketing funnel. Nail them early on and you set your business up for success later down the road.

Not everyone will see your products and convert into a customer instantly. Most people progress through a sales funnel. Content that will make someone progress to the next stage depends on the one they’re currently in. 

If you were to use Facebook ads to sell your products to a generic audience modeled on your buyer persona, for example, you might not get the highest conversion rate. These people don’t know who you are, what you stand for, or why they should choose you over a competitor. 

But if you used Facebook ads to specifically target people at the bottom of your marketing funnel, you could use retargeting ads to show items someone had in their shopping cart. You’re bound to get a better return on your investment with this strategy because you’re only investing money into reaching people who just need a final nudge to convert. 

Let’s break down how you might outline your marketing funnel in a marketing plan. 

Top of the funnel (TOFU)

People at the top of your marketing funnel don’t understand who you are or what you sell. Social media, podcasts, and video content play huge roles here. Each channel is used by potential customers looking to learn or be inspired.

For this stage, prioritize metrics that give insight into how people are engaging with your top-funnel content, such as:

• Video views
• Website clicks
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Cost per click (CPC)

Middle of the funnel (MOFU)

People reach the middle of the funnel when they know they have a problem that needs to be solved. Look at the marketing channels and formats you’re using to target these people. Most often, it’s search engines and retargeted ads.

Google Analytics is your best bet here. While the dashboard can feel overwhelming for a lot of people, you don’t need to look at every report. Use the following metrics to see how people engage with your middle-funnel content:

• Bounce rate
• Pages per session 
• Users by traffic source
• Email subscriber conversion rate 

To track the data above, especially for advertising campaigns, add the Meta pixel to all pages of your store.

Bottom of the funnel (BOFU)

Going for the hard sell? For marketing messages where the only goal is to convert your audience into paying customers, consult the back end of your ecommerce store. It’s home to sales and product-related data that helps you understand whether your marketing plan is successful, such as:

• Added to cart conversion rate
• Average order value (AOV)
• Number of orders
• Reached checkout conversion rate
• Sales conversion rate

Post-funnel and retention

Planning to build a steady stream of paying customers off the back of your ecommerce marketing plan? It's easy to assume revenue growth comes from audience growth. But oftentimes, the easiest way to grow your revenue is by focusing on the people we forget about: existing customers.

Resist the temptation to focus on flashy metrics like social media followers and YouTube subscribers. Instead, involve existing customers in your marketing plan. Use them as a source of testimonials and word-of-mouth referrals.

“Happy customers have been powerful word-of-mouth catalysts for our brand, and it has made sense to keep them engaged,” says Chris Campbell, partner at The Charming Bench Company . “We’ve been getting a steady stream of five-star ratings on websites and social media, which we then share on our Facebook, X [formerly known as Twitter], Pinterest, and Instagram profiles. It’s a great alternative to pushing loud sales messages that don’t always work.”

Define your marketing channels 

Channels are the platforms you’ll use as part of your marketing plan. Go back to your market research and uncover the online and offline channels your target audience is using to shop and get entertained or inspired.

Some of the most popular channels for ecommerce businesses include:

• Social media . Social media is used by more than six out of 10 people . Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are free to use (on the whole) and help brands reach their target audience. 
• Search engines . Some 44% of online shoppers start their product research on search engines. By making search engine optimization (SEO) part of your marketing plan, you can generate new business by reaching people when they’re actively looking for your products or services.
• Email marketing  and  SMS marketing . Email and text message inboxes are two of the most sacred places for a marketer to reach. A phone number or email address gives you a direct line of communication with your target customers, if they opt in to hear from you.
• Podcasts . Record conversations you have with your team, customers, or experts in the industry and share them with your audience. By establishing yourself or your brand as a thought leader in your industry, you’ll inspire confidence that in turn builds trust in your products.
• Offline channels. While digital marketing is vital in today’s world, offline and in-person marketing efforts can be equally powerful. Get in front of people when they’re not online, using channels like word-of-mouth recommendations , radio, billboards and outdoor advertising , or TV marketing campaigns.

There’s a sweet spot to how many channels your marketing plan should include. Go too wide and you burn resources on channels with poor returns. But become too reliant on one channel and you’re at risk.

Algorithms power most digital marketing channels. They’re praised as the type of technology that delivers personalized experiences for their users, but any changes to an algorithm can make marketing plans utterly useless overnight.

“If you rely on SEO, then any algorithm updates could potentially cut your revenue for months before you recover,” explains Marquis Matson, VP of Growth at Sozy . “If you rely on paid ads, then any changes to privacy policies can cut your revenue. If you rely on email marketing, then any ESP  [email service provider]  policy changes can cut your revenue. Diversifying your acquisition is crucial in a fast-paced digital marketing world.”

Footwear brand Hippy Feet is one ecommerce brand that failed to diversify channels. “The original marketing plan was to drive traffic to our Shopify store through ads—relying heavily on paid Facebook and Instagram traffic,” says Sam Harper, Hippy Feet’s co-founder and CEO. “While this is still a major component of our marketing strategy, the decreasing effectiveness of these ads has forced us to expand our marketing efforts.

“A diverse media strategy is crucial to helping an ecommerce business survive in this highly-dynamic market. By driving traffic through SEO, email, and media coverage, we’re more resilient and less impacted by a single tech platform changing their algorithm.”

For each channel, define which content formats you’ll use to capture attention and drive website traffic. That could include:

• Audio. Reach podcast and radio listeners with audio content. 
• Images. Capture visual learners and shoppers on visually dominant social media sites with infographics, GIFs, and memes.
• Video. Get listed on YouTube , the world's second largest search engine, with explainer videos and product demonstrations. Many social media platforms— Instagram and TikTok included—are also evolving to prioritize video content. 
• Written content. Most search engine results retrieve links to optimized written content, such as blogs , transcripts, or landing pages .

Content marketing is a beast that constantly needs to be fed. Customers want newer, fresher, more exciting content on a regular basis. That’s demanding for a small business to keep up with.

If this sounds unsustainable, consider a content marketing strategy that collects user-generated content (UGC) from existing customers. The more they share their experiences with others, the more content you have to repurpose on each channel. It’s an effective route to scale your content marketing plan and stretch your editorial calendar if your marketing department has limited resources. Don’t have time to invest in promoting the content you create? Partner with popular influencers in your niche—those whose loyal audience overlaps with your target market .

Your marketing budget is the dollar amount you expect to spend executing your marketing plan. If you’re bootstrapped, you can run a marketing plan on a tight budget .

As part of your own marketing plan, state whether you intend to use each channel organically or boost it with advertising. Most channels allow businesses to run sponsored content, which is guaranteed to reach your target market across online and offline channels, like door-to-door sales , social media, TV, billboards, and radio.

“I apply for any competitions, press opportunities, and awards to get my small business out there at any given opportunity,” says Terri-Anne Turton, founder of The Tur-Shirt Company . 

The strategy has worked: The Tur-Shirt Company has won a Junior Design Award for best fashion newcomer and a shoutout from media entrepreneur Steven Bartlett after entering his #DeserveToBeFound competition with Facebook.

“I focus on those my target market knows of to build credibility,” says Terri-Anne. “Plus, most of the awards I enter are free or low-cost; they just need some time investment and creativity to take part. It proves my USP to my target market—that my kids’ clothing products are unique—without investing thousands into advertising.”

While you can run a strategy with little to no budget, this section of your marketing plan needs to account for more than any planned advertising spend. Time is a resource that needs to be managed and accounted for. Be sure to detail how much time you plan to spend executing your marketing strategy.

If you have a designated marketing team, it’s also worth noting who will be responsible for each element of your marketing plan. Who’s responsible for this marketing plan? Which team members are executing it? What experience do they have with marketing?

More importantly, detail what you expect from the resources you’re putting into your marketing plan. If you plan to spend $40,000 throughout the coming year, how much revenue will you get in return? If you’re producing a marketing plan for a large or public company, this is what stakeholders really want to see.

Go back to the KPIs (key performance indicators) you set in the earlier section of your marketing plan. How will you determine whether you’ve met these KPIs? What happens if you’re exceeding or falling short of your target? It’s good to have a plan of action for either case.

Let’s put that into practice and say you expected to increase sales by 20% through your social media marketing plan. Detail exactly how you’d measure this, for example, you could say, “we’ll look at our Shopify sales report once per month and analyze which channel is meeting this KPI. If a channel falls behind, we’ll evaluate why and either adjust our marketing plan or deprioritize it in favor of more effective channels.” 

The best marketers approach their plans with an open mind. The hypothesis you started with might be proven wrong. Don’t take that as a negative. You just got closer to finding what will work. 

Tips for creating your marketing plan

Set conservative expectations.

While it’s good to approach your marketing goals with confidence, high expectations often lead to disappointment when we fail to meet them. That disappointment is magnified in a marketing plan, as stakeholders or founders will have already bought into unrealistic predictions and business objectives.

Start small

Don’t overwhelm yourself and your team by trying to generate results with all marketing tactics at once: running Facebook ads, tweeting like crazy, writing daily blog posts for SEO, and making constant changes to site and content strategy to improve your conversion rate.

If you’re very lucky, one of these tactics will bring you consistent traffic and sales. But more often than not, trying everything at once will make you extremely busy without anything to show for it.

Take it from Jameela Ghann, owner of Alora : “When we first started Alora, 10 years ago, our marketing plan was unrealistic. We were just a couple of people making plans that were good on paper but almost impossible to execute with a small team.” 

Originally, Jameela’s team planned to invest in several marketing channels—online and offline advertising, PR, trade shows, influencer marketing, and blogging included. However, the team changed its marketing plan. They went deep on one channel instead of spreading resources too thin by trying to be everywhere at once.

“We stuck to one course of action that was where our customers were, and ready to buy, and easiest for us to see a good ROI,” Jameela says. “What really worked for us was focusing on a handful of channels that we knew we could do well.”

Go back to your audience research and identify three channels your target audience uses most often. Put most of your energy into perfecting those before overcomplicating things with a more comprehensive marketing plan.

Use historical data as a guide

Past performance can help you temper your expectations for your marketing plan. If you know your click-through rate (CTR) for Facebook ads is 0.1%, don’t stray too far from that baseline with your social media marketing .

The same goes for website content optimized for search : If you’re currently getting 10,000 visitors per month from Google, scaling your traffic up to a million is a tough battle. Instead, 50,000 visitors is a more achievable goal.

Allow for flexibility

The purpose of a marketing plan isn’t to create a never-fail manual. Whether your marketing team has fallen victim to completion bias or focused too heavily on one channel, sticking rigidly to your original plan can be a big mistake.

Imine Martinez, assistant manager at Rainbowly , says: “Our regular campaigns targeting mainly birthday celebrations and anniversaries offered poor return on ad spend and inconsistent results over the months.

“That said, during festive seasons, such as Christmas or New Year’s, our targeted campaigns were particularly profitable, achieving five times return on ad spend with much cheaper cost per click and impression.”

Continuing with the same marketing strategies despite this data would only have resulted in heartbreak. Rainbowly would be pouring money down the drain on ads that wouldn’t perform, just because its marketing plan said to do so.

Creating a marketing plan is the first step

A lot of hard work goes into a successful marketing plan. To create an attainable one, you’ll need to spend hours diving into competitive research, audience data, and channels your target market consults when researching new products.

Most importantly, know that marketing is unpredictable. There are thousands of scenarios that fundamentally change the marketing strategy that’s best for your business. Global pandemics, PR crises, and the emergence of new social media platforms are unpredictable.

Treat your marketing plan like the best-case scenario. Plan SMART goals and strategies but remember to be flexible to give your marketing the best chance of success.

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Marketing plan FAQ

How much does a marketing plan cost, how often should a marketing plan be reviewed, what are the 4 steps of a marketing plan.

• Conduct market research
• Outline your marketing channels and formats
• Create goals and measure performance

Why is marketing plan important?

What are some marketing plan mistakes.

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How to Write a Marketing Plan (with Templates and Example)

Written by Dave Lavinsky

What is a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a roadmap that explains how your business will generate more leads and sales. It includes every key marketing strategy that will affect your marketing results from your brand positioning and pricing to your promotional efforts.

Download our Ultimate Marketing Plan Template here >

It’s important to remember that a marketing plan is not something you create in one sitting. This is an ongoing project that requires research, planning, and revision over time before it can truly be finalized.

Although creating a marketing plan can seem like a daunting task, it can actually be quite simple if you know what information should be included in your marketing plan template and where to find examples. Below you will learn everything you must include in your marketing plan so you can effectively grow your business.

What are the Key Components of a Traditional Marketing Plan?

For a comprehensive marketing plan, you should include the following 11 key components:

Executive Summary

Target market segments, unique selling proposition (usp), pricing and positioning strategy, distribution strategy, marketing materials, promotions strategy, digital marketing plan.

• Conversion, Referral and Retention Strategy

Financial Projections

Each of these sections is explained in detail below along with examples.

How to Write a Marketing Plan + Examples

The executive summary is the first section to appear and the last to be written in a marketing plan. The contents include a condensed version of all the findings of the rest of the marketing plan.

The executive summary may include:

• What does the marketing plan intend to accomplish? Why?
• Who handles the daily operations and execution of the marketing plan?
• How will you measure success to determine the effectiveness of the marketing plan?

Keep the executive summary brief and to the point so anyone who reads it immediately understands the salient points.

Marketing Plan Executive Summary Example

TechSmart is an electronics company that specializes in the production of quality products at reasonable prices. A unique selling point (USP) is that our quality products are competitively priced to allow our target market to be able to purchase the items they need without breaking their budget. After assessing my current distribution strategy, we will continue the development of more localized stores in order to cater to the high-earner segment of our market.

A more localized approach will also help support our business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategy. We can work with various schools and universities to implement training measures that teach technicians the proper ways to use our products for a variety of applications. This is important because it will give us a larger market share by cementing ourselves as a go-to company for this segment, which in turn boosts sales overall.

After reviewing the insights from our research, we decided on some broad target markets based on income levels, age brackets, and other variables that might affect their spending power. To start, we want to focus primarily on B2C marketing strategies with these segments while sending out newsletters promoting upcoming products and discounts. In order to reach out to these new segments, we will need to promote our products and services based on the differentiation of their quality and affordability.

TechSmart plans to spend $10,000 a month on marketing activities in order to develop its business within the next six months. Currently, TechSmart has been operating on a small marketing budget while focusing more on its B2B marketing strategy, but it has achieved limited success with this approach. After assessing its current situation, TechSmart’s market research suggests the company needs to shift towards a more consumer-focused B2C marketing strategy in order to achieve growth and reach out to more potential clients that might be interested in purchasing its products or hiring its services.

In order to build awareness for our product line, we plan to launch large-scale online marketing campaigns as part of an integrated multimedia strategy as outlined in the Digital Marketing Plan section. This will allow us to target potential customers who might be interested in our products while promoting awareness of our brand through engaging social media outlets.

To determine success, the Marketing Team will measure whether or not our marketing plan is effective by tracking consumers who buy our products online through the company website; how much revenue was generated from each promotion; what percentage of users signed up for the mobile app, and any other relevant data that helps us track progress towards reaching our marketing goals. We will communicate our success to the C-suite at quarterly reports and work with them to track any changes in revenue from year to year.

To successfully market something you first need to analyze the market’s needs to figure out where the right opportunity exists. Unless you have this information, you will be shooting in the dark and your marketing ROI (return on investment) will suffer. So, start with a detailed analysis of your target customers and their wants and needs.

For example, if you are selling a teeth whitening product, you may identify your customers as single men aged 30 to 40, making between $50,000 and $60,000 per year, living in Manhattan, and own dogs.

What are their needs? In the above case, their primary need as related to your product could be to convey an attractive and professional appearance. Other needs for different products or services could include safety, convenience, ambiance, price, variety, and exclusivity. Finding out the key problems of your target audience will effectively direct all other marketing decisions.

For each customer segment, create a unique buyer persona that will help you develop the appropriate content marketing to speak to their unique needs. Buyer personas can help you sit in your customers’ shoes and understand their perspectives when it comes to buying products and services.

You also must note the 80/20 rule when creating your buyer persona. The 80/20 rule states that 20% of your customers will generate 80% of your revenue.

The point is this….clearly some people who buy from you will not fall neatly into the detailed description of your target customer. That’s ok. By focusing on marketing to and serving your core customer, you’ll get more of the 20% you want and thus much more “bang for your marketing buck.”

Marketing Plan Target Market Segments Example

TechSmart is an electronics company that specializes in the production of quality products at reasonable prices. The TechSmart target market consists of two segments: high-earners with children, and busy parents.

Our primary market is high-earners with children. These customers are parents who are either working or staying at home, and they have money to spend on their children. They are making roughly $150,000-250,000 annually and they want to provide the best for their kids. They also care about quality when it comes to electronics. When these parents shop, they will carefully analyze what needs to be purchased for their child in order to provide the best quality of life.

The high-earners will be the ones looking at the offer of complementary products like headphones, tablets, and games which can be used with our products. They also will be more likely to sign up for the warranty through the mobile app so they get access to freebie offers through holidays like Christmas and Independence Day.

The busy parents segment of TechSmart’s target market typically exhibit the following shopping behaviors:

• They prioritize a good bargain over trendy styles.
• They want to spend as little time as possible at the store.
• They shop for children and themselves.
• They use the internet for product comparison, but will still go to stores to buy items from brands they trust.

Your product and/or service’s USP helps put them ahead of similar offerings made by your competitors – think of it as your competitive advantage. Therefore, it is vital that you create a strong and memorable USP that will make your product and/or service more desirable. A USP could be physical in nature like a product’s form, quality, durability, design, or features. It could also be the additional services you provide when a customer buys your product like delivery, customer service, or installation. Your target market research will come in handy here as it will tell you exactly the kind of products and services your target group needs and desires the most.

Here are some more USP examples used by local businesses:

• We are the only car repair shop that will buy your car if you are not 100 percent satisfied (USP of customer service)
• Delivered in 30 minutes or less (USP of speed)
• Our recipe is so secret, only three people in the world know it (USP of exclusivity)

If you are having trouble identifying your business’s USP, complete a SWOT Analysis to identify your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This will help you determine the best strategy to capitalize on your strengths and opportunities while you address the weaknesses and threats. Use the SWOT Analysis template below to help you.

Continuing with our TechSmart example below, their USP focuses on the quality of their products.

Marketing Plan Unique Selling Proposition Example

The TechSmart unique selling point (USP) focuses on our quality products that are competitively priced to allow our target market to be able to purchase the items they need without breaking their budget.

Your pricing strategy attempts to fulfill one or more of the following marketing goals: improve sales, market share, or profits, get ahead of a competitor or create barriers for any new entrants. Focus on what your most pertinent business objectives are and formulate your prices accordingly.

Furthermore, the strength of your product’s USP also influences your pricing flexibility. More unique products can legitimately quote higher prices, while a product with a more generic USP will have a hard time doing so.

Pricing strategy can also influence the value of your business from a buyer or investor’s perspective. Companies that are able to secure ongoing revenue streams in the form of subscriptions or monthly recurring payments tend to generate higher valuations as there is greater revenue certainty in these models.

Positioning your product and/or service a certain way also will determine its perception among your customer base. For example: Even though both Hondas and Mercedes cars can safely and effectively transport you from point A to point B, Hondas are positioned as value purchases and therefore priced lower than more exclusive Mercedes vehicles.

Marketing Plan Pricing & Positioning Strategy Example

The main concern of my high-income earners is that they want to provide the best for their children and that means quality consumer products. But we know that it can be difficult to make high-quality products and still make them affordable. We want our customers to feel comfortable spending their money on our products, but we also care about providing quality.

Your distribution strategy details how customers will buy from you. It could include a brick-and-mortar store, an e-commerce site, wholesale distributors, retail stores, mail catalogs, or some combination of the above. Base your decision on customer research. That is, find the methods or places your customers find most convenient to buy from and offer your product through those marketing channels.

For example, consider the California cannabis brand Dosist. Dosist distributes through a highly curated network of partner boutique dispensaries as well as through two flagship brick-and-mortar stores. Through its flagship stores, it provides consumers an in-person way to experience the brand. Through its retail partnerships, it gleans wider distribution than it could in a single location.

Marketing Plan Distribution Strategy Example

TechSmart will continue identifying new target market opportunities within our region and build out additional localized stores in order to expand our distribution to our target audience in other high-income areas of the region.

To further distribute our products, we will partner with several retail stores. Location number one is close to a high-income area and is in the mall. Location number two is located near schools that house young parents who are also students at the university across the street.

Offers like buy-one-get-one-free, discounts, and guarantees are classic offers that when leveraged correctly attract new customers and maintain the loyalty of existing customers. Ideally, you can position offers in a way that makes them a win-win for your business and customers.

For example, Package Free Shop, an e-commerce store dedicated to providing reusable and earth-friendly everyday products, regularly offers discounts on products if you sign up for a subscription to those products. This offer is attractive to the consumer as they can get the same product for less and don’t have to remember to reorder. It’s attractive to Package Free Shop because it provides more certainty around cash flow on a monthly basis than one-off purchases.

You can use different marketing methods like the official website, mail catalogs, or brochures to help spread offers, identify what offers and materials might resonate most with your target audience, and spend your resources accordingly.

Marketing Plan Offers Example

TechSmart will run various offers that will allow customers to obtain a set of complementary products if they purchase the specific product mentioned in the offer. Offers will apply only in-store.

Each offer will vary in terms of the purchased product and the complementary set offered. The offer will be valid until it reaches the available quantity provided to each store or until a specific deadline is reached, whichever comes first. The details of each promotional offer will be detailed in the weekly e-newsletter, on our website, and through promotional print materials in-store.

Your marketing assets include the visual and tactical representation of your brand. These items include your logo and other visual identity elements; your website and social media accounts; signage, brochures, or other print collateral; and case studies and testimonials.

Having brand guidelines in place ensures that the look and feel of all assets are consistent between the materials themselves and with your overall brand. This consistency means customers will recognize and feel familiar with your brand, whether they are walking into your brick-and-mortar store, browsing your mobile app, or using your product.

Sample Brand Guidelines

Marketing Plan Marketing Materials Example

All TechSmart marketing assets will utilize our Brand Guidelines. Methods of marketing may include TV commercials, a Social Media Marketing Strategy – organic and paid advertising, promotional flyers for in-store shoppers, also available digitally on our website, and billboards.

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Your promotions strategy will determine how you communicate with your customers about your product and/or service. Your strategy could include advertisements on TV, billboards, radio, catalogs, product placements in movies, and more. Your choice of promotional channels must be influenced by who your target market is and how it likes to consume information. For instance, if your target customer base is adolescents then taking out an ad in a newspaper would largely be ineffective.

When detailing your promotions strategy, be sure to include a description of each tactic, the estimated cost involved, and how / when you will evaluate ROI and determine whether to modify the tactic or switch course entirely.

Marketing Plan Promotions Example

TechSmart’s promotional strategy targets high-income earners who want quality products for their children, but at the same time not break the bank. TechSmart will offer various promotions so that people can get a sense of what they are buying before they buy it, and free events where consumers can play with the products before they buy them. These events will be promoted through social media, primarily Facebook and Instagram, and through banners and/or pop-ups on our website.

Online marketing should be a central component of most any business’ marketing plan today as customers of all types increasingly spend time online transacting or evaluating potential transactions. There are several components to a successful online marketing strategy: your website, social media accounts, and supporting paid and organic web traffic efforts.

Your website is an extension of your business and should be consistent with the spirit of your brand and easy to interact with. A clunky, cluttered website will quickly turn off customers, who seldom give second chances when it’s as easy as a click of a button to move onto a better option.

Maintaining an active social media presence or leveraging influencers in your space to promote your product enables you to reach broad swaths of prospective customers. Your accounts must be engaging and attractive to your target market as well as content-specific to the platform itself.

For example, your LinkedIn account might include postings on a recent fundraise or supplier partnership, whereas your Instagram account might include beautiful, high-quality photos of your product.

These core pieces of online real estate are then supported by your paid and organic online advertising efforts. By including content-rich blog posts, articles or videos that include your industry’s key terms or words, you will boost your organic visibility in customers’ search results. Similarly, by investing in paid advertising you ensure that you appear in those same searches, but as an advertised result.

Marketing Plan Digital Marketing Strategy Example

TechSmart will use digital marketing to increase its brand awareness in the competitive marketplace. Digital marketing is an inexpensive way to advertise to a large number of potential customers in many different regions with minimal resources.

Generally, TechSmart will use Facebook and Instagram for social media posts about new products or store events. We will also run retargeting campaigns for website visitors and other engaged consumers. We are also considering launching a YouTube channel for tutorials on how to use various types of computer accessories, electronic devices, gaming platforms, and/or popular games.

We will also use Google Adwords to promote shopping ads when people are searching for similar items in our targeted market.

TechSmart will also participate in Influencer Marketing by working with bloggers with large followings in the target market who would be willing to provide reviews or advertise our products on their channels.

Conversion, Referral, and Retention Strategy

In this section of your marketing plan, you should detail each of your customer pathways and the resulting conversion from each path. For certain pathways (like an e-commerce site) this data will be more readily trackable and easier to discern. For other more qualitative marketing efforts (such as the purchase of an ad in a magazine), it may be more difficult to quantify your conversion results.

Think through and identify how you might improve your conversions across various pathways. For example, would showcasing the glowing reviews and ratings of past customers increase your conversion rate on your e-commerce site? Would placing small, trial-size products right next to the cash register in your brick-and-mortar store tick up your average purchase size?

Also, think through in this section what you can do to increase the conversions of referrals from past customers. Can you incentivize your happiest customers to leave you a great online review, gift a sample of one of your products to a friend or recommend you reach out to a family member who might benefit from your services?

All of the efforts outlined above will ensure you retain your best existing customers and build loyalty with them.

Marketing Plan Conversion, Referral, and Retention Strategy Example

To increase our conversion of new customers, we will add a function to the website where people can sign up for emails about upcoming promotions and store events. We can also add links to shop in popular social media marketing channels like Facebook and Instagram. People who visit the site without buying anything will be able to chat with one of our associates if they have any questions or concerns about his/her purchase.

We will also promote samples of games and apps so kids can try out before they buy them, and free events where parents can play with the products their children want before they buy them at home. To encourage past customers to refer friends and family members, we will offer discounts and exclusive offers for repeat, as well as publish reviews from happy customers on our website and social media.

To increase conversions of people who visit the site but do not buy anything initially, we will highlight products that are currently on sale or offer special discounts for first-time customers. We will also create content that explains how to use common devices like laptops, tablets, and smartphones. This will increase our conversion rates by ensuring people are familiar with the products they want to buy before arriving on site.

Our referral program can offer discounts or free samples of products if customers recommend us to friends and family who make a purchase within 24 hours. We can also advertise special deals like time-sensitive giveaways or contests for referrals through social media marketing on Instagram and Facebook. People who already shop with us frequently are likely to be more receptive in encouraging their friends and family members to do so as well.

We will contact past customers via email periodically asking them how they enjoyed their experience at the store, what they thought about specific items they purchased, or how they heard about our store in the past. If they mention that they found out about us through another customer, we will ask them who it was and thank them for their referral so we can send a small gift or coupon to the person they recommended.

This strategy ensures that we continue to offer competitive prices on our products while also increasing people’s trust in our company by implementing new policies and procedures across all pathways.

Every well-researched marketing plan must include projections that will estimate the overall cost of engaging in certain marketing strategies including the results of their implementation in terms of new sales, profits, and customers. Even though these will just be estimates they will still highlight which strategies have the potential to gross the highest ROI.

Your projections need to be revisited time and time again to assess how well the marketing plan has been implemented and what can be done better. Analyzing metrics like cost per sale, average ticket price and retention rates will help you understand which marketing tactics are working and which need to be revisited.

Marketing Plan Financial Projections Example

New Customers:

We project to acquire 160 new customers in Year 1 at a cost of $6,400. This means that the cost per customer acquisition is roughly $40.00.

Existing Customers:

We have 30 clients who are extremely valuable and spend more than once every two months on average. These loyal customers generate an average profit of $2,080 each time they purchase from TechSmart for an ROI of 5%. The total amount projected for existing customers is 120 transactions worth $24,000 or 4% of our revenue goal. With these calculations, it should be clear that investing resources into acquiring new users will result in better returns than capitalizing on people who have already purchased from us but don’t come back often. Furthermore, spending money to keep people returning for future buys is more effective than trying to convince the same person to purchase again after they have already done so once before.

Using these estimates, TechSmart will generate $138,000 in revenue in Year 1 with an average ticket price of $1,350. This equates to around 160 customers purchasing one item each or 320 transactions for a total of $138,000.

Marketing Plan Template

Below is a free strategic marketing plan template to use. Simply answer the key questions below to complete your plan:

• Our target customers are:
• Our unique selling proposition is:
• Our pricing and positioning strategy is:
• Our distribution strategy includes:
• The key offers we will use to attract customers include:
• The marketing materials we will use are:
• The promotional methods we will use to attract customers include:
• Our online marketing strategy includes:
• The strategies we will use to increase our customer conversion rates, referrals and customer retention include:
• Our key financial projections from implementing our marketing plan include:

Marketing Plan FAQs

What are the different formats used for a marketing plan.

Marketing plans can be made using one of four formats: the traditional marketing plan, the digital marketing plan template, the marketing mix, and the product launch.

When it comes to choosing a format, consider what factors are most important for your business. There is no right answer here as you'll have to choose what's best for you. If you want help, use the information below as a guide:

• The traditional marketing plan provides a comprehensive marketing strategy based on your business goals. This type of marketing plan involves research and analysis of the target market segments, unique selling proposition, pricing and positioning strategy, distribution and promotions strategies, and more. If you are seeking to really grow your business, it is helpful to provide this type of plan to provide the details of how you will bring your target audience to your business to generate more revenue. 
• The digital marketing plan focuses on planning steps and milestones to achieve success in your online marketing. Note that even if you are solely marketing online, there are many exercises, like improving your unique selling proposition, that are still critical. With a digital marketing plan template, you'll break your marketing plan down into these essential steps: objective, strategy, tactics, and measurement.
• The marketing mix plan focuses on the 4Ps of marketing: product, price, promotion, and place. If your business sales are driven by physical products or services, this is likely the best format for you. However, if you depend more on media and informational products (like a blog or an eBook), then this type of plan won't be as helpful for you.
• The product marketing plan focuses on launching and/or growing a single product. While the product will be unique, it generally will be branded under your company name so there are elements of the traditional marketing plan the are not required in developing it.

How Do You Develop a Marketing Plan?

First, choose a format for your marketing plan. Please refer to the 1st FAQ question for more information regarding marketing plan formats.

Now that you've chosen a format, it's time to start filling in the blanks. Keep in mind, though, that like any other type of writing (or planning for this matter), your document should be organized and easy to follow. 

To make sure your marketing plan is clear and concise:

• Create an outline . Using your chosen format as a guide, start creating an outline of the sections and subsections you'll include in your marketing plan.
• Fill out each section . Next, fill in the subsections composing each section of your plan. Keep them short and concise so you don't overwhelm yourself or your readers.
• Include examples . Use any relevant data or case studies you've collected to provide examples of strategies and tactics that will work with your business. It can be helpful to include screenshots for social media posts, images of ads, or infographics in sections where they're most relevant.
• Designate a timeframe . For each section, also decide on a timeframe for when you'll achieve the goals outlined for that particular section.
• Revise and update . No document is ever truly complete so it's important to remember to update your marketing plan over time. The work involved in planning, developing, and revising your marketing plan can be daunting at times but it will pay off in the long run when you have a thorough, detailed marketing strategy.

What Should Be Included in the Different Marketing Plan Formats?

You'll need to include different content in your marketing plan depending on which format you choose. When it comes to the digital marketing plan template, for example, there are three main topics that should be covered:

• Digital Marketing Strategy & Overview   - this section provides an overall view of how you're planning to use digital marketing in your campaigns. It includes information like how many channels (and which ones) you will use and why what budget has been set aside for marketing activities and your marketing objectives. This part will act as a roadmap for your digital campaign so make sure it's detailed enough - but not too long!
• Business Market Analysis - this section will help potential investors understand your business and its context. Here you'll include information about your competition, market trends, and industry growth. You'll also mention the opportunities and threats that your company faces so that viewers can get a sense of how it will operate in the future.
• Marketing Strategy - this section is where you explain your specific marketing strategy such as who's involved, what needs to be done and when, etc. Remember to break down each step into smaller chunks so that marketing activities are easier to follow throughout the year or quarter.

When writing content for any other format, simply remember: Keep it brief - no one likes reading long documents! Below we give examples of marketing plan templates for different types of marketing objectives, which should provide some guidance on the content.

Product Marketing Plan Template

• Company introduction & summary of company history (include any key milestones)
• Product description, including how it's different from other similar products offered by your competition
• Product usage statistics and potential markets
• Overview of the marketing strategy, including campaign timeline and key milestones. Also include information about product promotion strategy, pricing strategy, and distribution strategy.
• Summary of expected outcomes for the proposed marketing plan. Include financial projections where possible.
• References to product launch marketing plan template that the writer has used as reference

Marketing Mix Marketing Plan Template

• Description of brands & products within market category (include which brands you're using as competitive references)
• Description of marketing strategy, including marketing objectives and key action steps/tasks to achieve those objectives
• References to marketing mix example that the writer has used as reference

Digital Marketing Plan Marketing Plan Template

• The business overview, including a summary of your digital activities and achievements
• Digital marketing overview, including a description of how you use digital technologies in your business and a time frame for future plans
• References to a digital marketing plan that the writer has used as reference

What is the Difference Between a Marketing Plan and a Business Plan?

The main difference between a marketing plan and business plan is that a marketing plan is focused on customer satisfaction, while the business plan describes how the business will achieve its goals. Other differences include the marketing plan's focus on consumer demand, thorough market research and forecasting, while the business plan also includes financials and production details.

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

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Your Guide to Creating a Small Business Marketing Plan

Follow these templates and guidelines to get started on your business's marketing plan.

Table of Contents

To have a successful business, you need a well-thought-out marketing plan to promote your products or services. Although making a few social media posts or blasting a few promotional emails may seem simple enough, disjointed marketing efforts not only confuse your target audience, but can ultimately harm your business. 

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a strategic road map for how you communicate (online and offline) with your target audience to successfully promote your products or services. Depending on your goal, marketing plans can be extremely basic or highly detailed.

According to Molly Maple Bryant, vice president of marketing at Vibrent Health, a marketing plan is not simply a list of things you want to accomplish. Instead, it should list the outcomes you seek — measurable and contextual, like the pipeline you’re developing, or leads you’re generating — and it should explain the high-level strategies you will use to achieve those outcomes. Developing strategies can be complicated, but they make a major difference in keeping you on track and avoiding diversions, also called scope creep .

“Once you have an agreed-upon plan, you are able to compare any incoming requests against your strategies to determine ‘Yes, this adheres to my strategy so we can add it,’ or ‘No, this sounds good in theory, but it doesn’t adhere to our agreed-upon strategy, so we won’t adjust resources,'” Bryant told us.

Types of marketing plans

There are several different types of marketing plans you can use based on certain strategies that make sense for your organization. Your business will likely need a combination of the following marketing plans to create an effective, comprehensive marketing strategy:

• Advertising plan
• Branding plan
• Content marketing plan
• Customer acquisition plan
• Direct marketing plan
• Email marketing plan
• Public relation plan
• Print marketing plan
• Reputation management plan
• Retention plan
• Search engine optimization plan
• Social media marketing plan

Why is it important to have a marketing plan for your business?

A marketing plan is a crucial resource for any small business because it helps you identify the market needs your product or service meets, how your product is different from competitors, and who your product or service is for. Marketing plans also serve as a road map for your sales strategy, branding direction and building your overall business. This is important for successfully conveying your brand messaging to your target audience .

Another significant benefit of a marketing plan for your company is that rather than simply guessing metrics, it forces you to sit down and do the math about your business goals and how to realistically fulfill them. When you look at your growth outcomes, you can delve further to determine what it will take to get to those numbers.

Bryant offered the following example: “Need $100,000 in revenue? How many sales is that? If 10, what’s your close rate? Let’s say 10 percent from lead to closed deal. Now you have a metric to start with — to get to 10 sales, we need 100 leads. Where will they come from, and what strategies will you use? The plan helps you put it all on paper so you can map out resources and tactics later with a lot of preparation and realism,” said Bryant.

When analyzing outcomes and resources, you can save time and avoid scope creep by focusing only on strategies that are relevant to your marketing plan. A marketing plan helps you think realistically about your strategies, gets your stakeholders on the same page, and holds your marketing team accountable for their decisions.

“When everyone’s tasks and goals are laid out for the stakeholders and company partners to see, it is much easier for the entire team to feel at ease about reaching sales goals and allowing the marketing team the space and freedom needed to execute work without constant supervision,” said Cassady Dill, digital marketing consultant and owner of Ethos Agency.

Additionally, Dill said a marketing plan should be easily understood by your entire team, executives and outside departments. Your plan should also serve as an easy guide for future marketing managers and team members to understand and implement.

What are the key elements of an effective business marketing plan?

A marketing plan should be customized to fit your business; however, Dill said, all marketing plans contain five essential functions:

• Your business goals
• Key metrics (how you quantify and measure success)
• Strategies (an overview of implementation and how that will achieve goals)
• A plan (the details of execution and the human resources, departments and software that will be involved)
• Reporting (what reports of progress will include and/or look like)

We broke down those five functions into 10 actionable categories to help you create a marketing plan that is unique and effective for your business.

1. Executive summary

The executive summary is a great place to give the reader of your plan an overview of your business’s mission or goals, as well as the marketing strategy you’re looking to employ. An executive summary is often written after you’ve completed the rest of the marketing plan, to ensure it covers all the important elements of your plan. If the executive summary is the only part of your marketing plan that someone reads (which is highly possible), you want to be sure they understand the most crucial details.

2. Mission statement

The mission statement , not to be confused with a vision statement, is a statement that encompasses your company’s values and how they relate to your overall goals as an organization. Here are some good questions to get you thinking:

• What does your company do today?
• What’s important to your company?
• What would your company like to do in the future?
• What is your brand identity?
• What’s your culture like ?
• How does your company benefit customers, employees and stakeholders?

3. Target markets

Identifying your target market is one of the most important parts of your marketing plan. Without a defined target audience, your marketing expenses will be wasted. Think of it like this: Some people need your service or product but don’t know it exists yet. Who are those people?

Here are some other questions to help you brainstorm your target market :

• What is the demographic of your customers (gender, age, income, education, etc.)?
• What are their needs and interests?
• What’s their psychographic profile (attitudes, philosophies, values, lifestyle, etc.)?
• How do they behave?
• What are some existing products they use?

4. Products and services

In this section, don’t just list what your product or service is. Think critically about what you have to offer your customers and what that value proposition means to them.

• What do you make or provide for customers?
• What are your customers’ needs?
• How does your product or service fulfill customers’ needs?
• What value do you add to your customers’ lives?
• What type of product or service are you offering?

5. Distribution channels

At this point in your report, you should transition your thinking into actual marketing theory and practices. Distribution channels are the avenues you’ll use to reach a prospective customer or business . Think of all current and potential sales channels on which your specific target audience is active. One distribution channel that works great for one organization may be useless to another. For example, one company may host their website for free on a site like HubSpot and solely rely on that as their sales channel, while another company may have a whole team of people using Pinterest to drive sales. [Learn how CRM systems can help track your marketing leads based on various distribution channels.]

Examples of sales channels include the following:

• Mobile text message marketing
• Social media
• Print (newspapers, magazines, brochures, catalogs, direct mail)
• Broadcast (TV, radio)
• Press releases
• Trade shows, product demonstrations, event marketing

6. Competitive profile

One of the major aspects of your marketing plan is developing your unique selling proposition (USP). A USP is a feature or stance that separates your product or service from competitors. Finding your USP is all about differentiation and distinguishing your company as a sole proprietor of one type of good or service. Conduct a competitive analysis to identify your competitive profile and how you stack up against the competition. It is important to remain unbiased when conducting this analysis.

Here are some ideas to consider:

• What’s your USP?
• Who are your competitors? What do they offer?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of your competition?
• What needs of the market (or customer) are not being served? What can you do to meet those needs?

7. A pricing strategy

Consider pricing when drafting your marketing plan. Developing the right pricing strategy helps you better market your product. Think about your current and projected finances when developing a long-term marketing strategy that is realistic and beneficial for your business. Here are some key questions to ask yourself about your pricing:

• What are reasonable margins to make a profit and cover production costs?
• Is there a market for products or services at your projected price point?
• Are you willing to sacrifice profit margins in return for a greater market share?
• What are your marketing and distribution costs?

8. Objectives

Consider your objectives when developing a marketing plan. This aspect of your plan should involve specific goals related to market penetration and revenue targets. Be sure to keep your marketing objectives on-brand with your business. Here are some things to consider:

• Sales quotas
• Number of new customers gained
• Customer retention percentages
• Revenue targets
• Market penetration
• Brand awareness
• Website traffic

9. Action plans

With all of the above items outlined, determine what steps need to be taken to enact your marketing plan. This includes determining the proper steps, setting goals, breaking down responsibilities, and establishing an overall timeline.

It’s also important to brainstorm potential roadblocks your business could face and some solutions to overcome them. Your research is useless if you don’t have an actionable plan that can be realistically implemented to carry out your ideas.

10. Financial projections

This last step allows you to establish a realistic marketing budget and better understand your marketing plan from a cost perspective. In addition to setting a budget, consider the overall return on investment as well. Here are some other financial projections to consider:

• Cost of implementation
• Cost to produce product or service
• Existing and projected cash flow
• Projected sales
• Desired profit margin on projected sales

What is a template for creating a successful marketing plan?

The internet is full of useful tools, including paid and free marketing plan templates, to help you build a successful marketing plan .

Whether you are looking for a free template generator to build a new marketing plan or a benchmarking tool to evaluate your current strategies, several great resources are available. Keep in mind that the best marketing plan for your business will be a customized one.

“Ultimately, you should design a marketing plan that best serves the needs of your team as you see fit,” said Dill. “Don’t force yourself into a plan that doesn’t fit your team. Use templates to shorten the workload time, but then adjust it for a more custom plan.”

Here are some tools and templates to get you started:

• Free marketing plan template : business.com has developed a free template that is fully customizable based on the needs of your business. Each section provides in-depth explanations, examples and resources to help you create an impressive marketing plan.
• Smart Insights: In addition to offering marketing plan templates, some companies, like Smart Insights, offer marketing benchmarking templates to help you evaluate your strategy performance. These are accessible with a free Smart Insights membership.
• GERU: Similarly, GERU offers a funnel-planning, profit-prediction and simulation tool to help you assess mock business ideas and simulations. This can help you identify weak points in your marketing strategy that need improvement. Although GERU requires users to sign up for a paid account, you can access a free trial to test it out.

What mistakes should you avoid when creating your marketing plan?

When creating an effective marketing plan, you need to avoid falling for common missteps and mistakes. For starters, failing to identify any of the 10 actionable categories above is an obvious mistake.

Here are some other key mistakes to avoid:

• Setting unrealistic budgets: Underestimating the costs of marketing activities or setting an unrealistic budget can limit your ability to execute your plan effectively. Marketing can be expensive, so it’s important to fully understand the estimated cost and budget before building a marketing strategy that you can’t afford.
• Focusing on quantity over quality: “More” doesn’t always mean “better” if you are posting on irrelevant marketing channels or your efforts are bringing in unqualified leads. Prioritizing the quantity of marketing activities over their quality can lead to superficial engagement and a lack of meaningful results.
• Not testing campaigns: Launching large campaigns without testing can lead to wasted resources if the messaging or tactics don’t resonate as expected. Test out your new campaigns to ensure they achieve your intended goal.
• Ignoring customer feedback: You may be tempted to ignore negative feedback, but disregarding customer comments and failing to address their concerns can lead to negative perceptions of your brand. Instead, use customer feedback to your advantage to improve your product and marketing efforts.
• Overpromising and underdelivering: Setting unrealistic expectations in your marketing messages that your products or services can’t fulfill can damage your brand’s reputation.
• Ignoring seasonality and trends: Failing to account for seasonal trends and market changes can result in missed opportunities for timely marketing efforts.
• Not reviewing and updating your plan: A rigid marketing plan that doesn’t allow for adjustments in response to market feedback and changing conditions can hinder your success. A marketing plan should be a living document that is regularly reviewed and updated to reflect changes in the market and your business’s goals.

Avoiding these mistakes and missteps can help you create a more effective and successful marketing plan that drives results for your business.

How can you take action with your new marketing plan?

Before you dive into marketing plan templates, it’s important to understand how to think about a marketing plan.

A good marketing plan targets who your buyers are, establishes the service or product you are offering, and determines your unique selling proposition. From here, you will tackle the marketing planning process and develop the best way to get your product in front of buyers who want your product or service.

Dill created a simple four-step process for how small businesses can take action with creating a marketing plan.

• The first step is to hold a marketing meeting with all the marketing team and executives or stakeholders. This gives them time to offer questions, concerns and criticisms you haven’t thought of so you can go back to the board room and revise your strategy or plan.
• Next, add a timeline to all your tasks and assign team members and all the help you’ll need to execute that plan.
• Once your plan is in action, hold weekly check-ins in person or by email to keep everyone on track.
• Share a weekly progress report with all parties involved and execs to ensure you are moving in the right direction.

In addition to drafting your own plan, you can work with a digital marketing agency or use internet marketing and pay-per-click management services to leverage your online presence.

Once you’ve established a general road map, update it annually. Developing an evolving marketing plan sets your business up for continued success because it allows you to prepare for the unexpected and establish a connection between your brand and your audience.

Matt D’Angelo contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

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What Is a Marketing Plan? Guide to Write One for Your Brand

June 18, 2024

by Jordan Wahl

Why do you need a marketing plan?

Marketing plan vs. business plan, types of marketing plans, how to write a marketing plan.

In today's data-driven landscape, random promotions simply don't cut it.  

The cornerstone of successful marketing lies in strategic planning, built on a foundation of deep customer and business insights.  This translates into a comprehensive marketing plan that crafts targeted campaigns with messages that resonate with your ideal audience.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan for a business is a strategic blueprint that outlines the target audience, defines the marketing goals, and details the specific tactics to achieve them. This plan ensures that efforts are targeted, measurable, and aligned with the overall business objectives.

Some businesses may have the internal expertise to craft a winning marketing plan. But for others,  especially those starting out or facing complex challenges, partnering with a marketing strategy agency can be a smart move. 

This article will guide you in crafting a marketing plan that transforms your marketing efforts from a potential meltdown into a marketing marvel. Let's learn! 

A marketing plan separates scattered, ineffective efforts from targeted campaigns that drive real results.

But a marketing plan goes beyond just tactics. It helps you to:

• Monitor performance: Track your progress and identify what's moving the needle.
• Adapt to market changes: Stay nimble and adjust your strategies as the market evolves.
• Maintain a competitive edge: Continuously optimize and improve to stay ahead.

Think of it as your roadmap to customer acquisition. A well-crafted plan keeps you laser-focused on your ideal audience and goals, allowing you to allocate resources strategically and measure what's working.

 A business plan is like a blueprint for your entire business. It encompasses financial projections and operations to staffing and (of course) marketing. It's a comprehensive document to secure funding, guide decision-making, and map out your company's future. In contrast, a marketing plan focuses on how you'll reach your target audience and achieve your marketing goals. It elaborates on the marketing elements within your business plan, outlining strategies, tactics, and budgets for specific marketing channels like social media or email marketing. 

There are many different types of marketing plans, each with its own specific focus and goals. Here are some of the most common:

Annual or quarterly marketing plan

Such marketing plans provide a strategic roadmap for a set period, typically a quarter or a year, outlining your main objectives and the methods to achieve them within that timeframe. Setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals is crucial in this phase. To create an effective marketing plan, you must first identify your target audience and establish your budget. Then, select the most effective channels to reach your audience, such as social media, email marketing , or content marketing . These plans enable you to make informed decisions and allocate resources efficiently, ensuring that you meet both your short-term and long-term objectives. By following a well-structured marketing plan, you can optimize your efforts, drive better results, and ultimately achieve sustained business growth.

Tip: Use marketing automation tools to streamline tasks, personalize communications, and measure campaign performance.

Social media marketing plan

A social media marketing plan involves selecting the most relevant channels based on your audience's demographics and preferences. It guides your team toward crafting engaging content tailored to each platform and implementing strategies to foster community engagement and brand advocacy.

A social media marketing plan also includes metrics for tracking performance, such as reach, engagement, and conversion rates, to evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts and optimize future campaigns.

Influencer marketing plan:

Influencer marketing uses the influence and authority of trusted individuals in your industry or niche to significantly enhance brand awareness, customer engagement , and conversion rates .

It involves identifying relevant influencers whose audience aligns with your target market, establishing mutually beneficial partnerships, and co-creating authentic content that resonates with their followers.

The plan also encompasses campaign objectives, performance metrics, compensation structures, and strategies for evaluating the return on investment (ROI) of influencer collaborations.

New product launch marketing plan:

A comprehensive marketing plan is essential when introducing a new product to the market to maximize its impact and adoption.

This plan outlines your target audience segments, the unique value proposition of your new product, pricing strategies, distribution channels, and promotional activities to generate buzz and drive sales.

It also incorporates market research to identify customer needs and preferences, competitive analysis to differentiate your product, and a launch timeline with milestones for tracking progress and adjusting tactics as needed.

Product relaunch marketing plan:

When relaunching an existing product, a tailored marketing plan is crucial to reignite consumer interest and perception.

This plan emphasizes the enhancements or innovations introduced with the relaunched product, communicates compelling reasons for customers to reconsider their purchase decision, and employs targeted messaging and channels to reach the intended audience effectively.

Additionally, it includes strategies for addressing potential challenges or objections, leveraging customer feedback to inform improvements, and measuring the relaunch's impact on sales and brand perception.

Direct mail marketing plan:

Direct mail remains a valuable marketing channel for reaching specific audience segments with personalized messaging and offers.

A direct mail marketing plan defines your target audience based on demographic, geographic, or behavioral criteria, outlines creative strategies to capture attention and evoke response, and details mailing list acquisition, printing, and postage logistics.

It includes a budget allocation for production and distribution costs, as well as metrics for tracking response rates, conversion rates, and overall campaign ROI. With careful planning and execution, direct mail marketing can complement digital efforts and drive tangible results for your business.

From defining objectives to selecting appropriate strategies, each step is important to ensure clarity and effectiveness in your marketing efforts.

Marketing plan outline

1. Introduction

• Executive summary
• Company background

2. Market analysis

• Industry analysis
• Competitive analysis
• Customer analysis
• SWOT analysis

3. Marketing objectives and strategies

• Segmentation and target market
• Brand positioning

4. Marketing mix  (The 4Ps)

• Place 

5. Budget and Financial Projections

6. Implementation and Evaluation

7. Conclusion .

Let’s elaborate on some of the more complex components of your marketing plan. Below are the key steps you’ll need to take to start writing your marketing plan.

Step 1: Define your goals

When outlining goals for your business, it's essential to follow the SMART goals approach, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. 

• Specific: Ensure your goals are clear and precise, addressing key questions like what, why, who, where, and which. 
• Measurable: To track progress and determine success, establish measurable metrics that serve as benchmarks. 
• Achievable: Set realistic and attainable goals, considering the skills and resources available to you. 
• Relevant: Ensure your goals align with your broader business objectives, contributing meaningfully to your company's vision and mission. 
• Timely: Assign each goal a timeframe to create a sense of urgency and focus. Establishing deadlines helps you stay on track and prioritize tasks effectively.

Step 2: Research your industry landscape

It's important to have a deep understanding of your business and its place within the industry.

This step is crucial when crafting a marketing plan for your business, and fortunately, you're already an expert in your field.

• Mission statement: Your business's mission statement defines its purpose and values. Understand what drives your top performers and the core values that guide your organization.
• SWOT analysis: Conduct a SWOT analysis to identify your company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Use the SWOT analysis template  to organize your findings and gain insights into your business's internal and external factors.

• Industry growth: Learn about the annual growth trends of your industry. Determine whether the industry is expected to continue growing and at what rate. 
• External drivers: Identify external factors influencing the industry's state. Consider current and potential future contributors to industry dynamics. 
• Barriers to entry: Assess the barriers to entry within your industry. Determine whether these barriers are high or low and evaluate the market concentration. 

Step 3: Define your target audience

Understanding your target audience is crucial for crafting an effective marketing strategy. After all, without a clear understanding of your audience, your marketing efforts may fall flat.  Start by examining demographic details such as age, gender, and other pertinent factors.

However, delving deeper into your ideal customers' behaviors and decision-making processes is equally important. One effective method for this is market segmentation, which involves dividing your market into distinct subsets based on various criteria:

• Demographics: This includes age, gender, income level, occupation, and education level.
• Psychographics: These encompass your audience's attitudes, values, lifestyle choices, interests, and personality traits.
• Geographics: Consider where your target customers are located geographically. This could be as broad as global regions or as specific as neighborhoods within a city.
• Behavioral: Examine how your customers behave in relation to your product or service. This could include their purchasing habits, brand loyalty, usage patterns, and responses to marketing messages.

Once you've segmented your market into these groups, you can identify which segments align most closely with your business goals and target them strategically. This enables you to tailor your marketing efforts to resonate with each segment's unique characteristics and preferences.

Step 4: Create a customer profile

Once you've identified your target group, creating customer profiles , also known as buyer personas, is essential. These personas represent your ideal customers based on thorough market research and real data from your existing customer base.

Here are key elements to consider when crafting your customer profiles:

• Location: Determine where your ideal customers reside and areas they don't. This insight helps tailor your marketing strategies to specific regions or locales.
• Age: Define your target audience's age range, which influences their preferences, behaviors, and communication styles.
• Gender: Understand the gender distribution within your target market to customize your messaging and product offerings accordingly.
• Interests: Identify the interests and hobbies of your ideal customers, enabling you to create relevant content and engage them effectively.
• Income level: Understand your target customers' income range, which influences their purchasing power and spending habits.
• Language: Determine the primary languages your target personas speak to ensure effective communication and localization efforts.

By creating detailed customer profiles encompassing these elements, you better understand your target audience's characteristics, preferences, and motivations. This, in turn, enables you to tailor your marketing strategies and offerings to better meet their needs and drive engagement and conversion.

Step 5: Competitor analysis

Establishing a competitive edge in your industry is crucial for sustained growth and success. One effective way to achieve this is by gaining a deep understanding of your customers and competitors. Here's how you can conduct a comprehensive competitive analysis:

Identify your competitors

Begin by identifying who your main competitors are in the market. Whether you're operating in a niche or facing numerous competitors, understanding who you're up against is essential. Conduct thorough research to pinpoint your top competitors by analyzing the landscape from a consumer's perspective.

Analyze competitors' content

Examine your competitors' content strategy, quality, and frequency of distribution. Pay attention to different content types and assess what resonates with their audience.

• Search engine optimization (SEO) analysis: Evaluate how your competitors use keywords across various elements of their online presence, including page titles, URLs, headers, content, internal links, image alt text, and meta descriptions. 
• Social media marketing strategy: Assess how your competitors use social media to market their brand. Analyze the type of content they post, their engagement with users, and the overall appearance of their social media profiles.

Conducting a thorough competitive analysis can provide valuable insights into your industry landscape, allowing you to identify opportunities for differentiation and improvement. 

Step 6: Develop your marketing strategy

Now that you've laid the groundwork by defining your target customers, analyzing competitors, and setting goals, it's time to craft a marketing strategy that aligns with your objectives.

At the core of your strategy lies the marketing mix , often called the 4Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. By carefully crafting each element of the marketing mix, you can create a cohesive and impactful marketing strategy that drives success for your business.

Let's delve into each element:

• Product (or service): Ensure that your product or service meets the needs and desires of your target market. It's essential to offer something that fills a demand in the market and provides value to customers. 
• Price: Set a price that reflects the value of your product or service while remaining competitive in the market. Finding the right balance is crucial—too high a price may deter potential customers, while pricing too low might undermine the perceived quality of your offering. 
• Place: Determine the most effective distribution channels to make your product or service accessible to your target market. Understand your customers' preferences and behaviors to select distribution channels that align with their purchasing habits. 
• Promotion: Develop a comprehensive strategy to raise awareness and drive demand for your offering. Promotion tactics should be tailored to your product, target market, and budget. Explore a mix of marketing channels, such as public relations, advertising, direct mail, and social media, to reach your audience effectively. 

Remember, your marketing mix is dynamic and may evolve over time as market conditions change and new market opportunities arise. Regularly monitor and adjust your strategy to ensure it effectively achieves your business objectives.

Step 7: Set the budget for your marketing plan

Budgeting is a critical aspect of effective marketing planning, ensuring that resources are allocated strategically to maximize returns.

While some companies operate with an annual marketing budget, others may need to estimate based on previous spending patterns. However, the more detailed your budgeting process, the better equipped you'll be to execute your marketing plan effectively. A useful approach is to align your budget with your return on investment (ROI) goals. By setting clear ROI targets, you can employ an ROI formula to determine the appropriate amount to allocate to your marketing efforts.

ROI =  (Net Profit from Marketing Investment / Cost of Marketing Investment) x 100 

To calculate your marketing budget based on ROI goals, follow these steps:

• Determine your desired ROI: Set realistic goals for the return you expect from your marketing investment. This could be a percentage increase in sales, customer acquisition, or other relevant metrics.
• Estimate your marketing expenses: Based on your planned campaigns and tactics, estimate the costs associated with each initiative. Consider expenses such as advertising, promotions, content creation, and marketing technology.
• Calculate your required marketing investment: Use the ROI formula to calculate the amount of money you need to invest in marketing to achieve your desired ROI.
• Refine your budget: Compare the calculated cost of marketing investment with your available budget. Adjust your marketing plan and budget to align with your financial resources while striving to meet your ROI goals.

Step 8: Implement your marketing plan

Once you've developed your marketing plan, it's time to roll up your sleeves and put it into action.

Remember your SMART goals as you embark on implementation. Each element of the marketing mix will likely have its own timeline and required level of attention and effort.

Assign clear responsibilities for each aspect of the plan and establish specific implementation dates. Stick to this plan diligently, but be prepared to adjust if necessary as circumstances evolve.

Step 9: Evaluate your marketing plan's performance

After implementation, it's crucial to assess the success of your marketing plan. Refer back to the measurable details outlined in your SMART goals. Utilize the metrics established to measure your efforts and determine whether your plan achieves the desired outcomes.

Don't wait until the end of the year to evaluate your plan's effectiveness. Plan to measure progress regularly, whether quarterly, monthly, or even more frequently, depending on the specifics of your marketing plan. This ongoing assessment allows you to course-correct as needed and ensures you stay on track to meet your goals.

You should also plan to measure progress along the way, not just at the end of the year. Depending on the specifics of your marketing plan, assess your progress quarterly, or even monthly.

Free marketing plan template

So, I’ve walked you through the steps of creating a marketing plan, now it's time to create your own!  Stop winging it and skyrocket your profits with a strategic marketing plan! Our free, downloadable marketing plan template will guide you through the process, step-by-step.

Whether you're building a new plan from scratch or refining your existing strategy, this template is your one-stop shop for marketing success. And the best part? It's completely customizable! Choose between a printable PDF format or a Google Doc for easy editing to fit your business needs perfectly.

Get your free marketing plan template now!

The secret of marketing success? It's all in the planning. Get your free marketing plan template and craft a strategy that drives results for your business.

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The journey is as important as the destination

Crafting a marketing plan guides you toward your target audience, equips you with the right strategies, and helps you avoid potential roadblocks. But remember, a map isn't the destination itself. The true magic lies in continuously refining your marketing plan as you gather data and navigate the ever-evolving marketing landscape. Embrace a data-driven approach, analyze your results, and be prepared to adapt your tactics based on what resonates with your audience. So, buckle up, keep your marketing plan by your side, and prepare for an exciting adventure!

 Learn more about how marketers can use buyer intent data and craft highly targeted campaigns that convert

Stop wasting time and money on marketing tactics that don't work. Partner with a marketing strategy agency today.

Jordan Wahl is a former content manager at G2. She holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She loves anything that puts her in her creative space. including writing, art, and music.

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A marketing plan outlines your marketing strategy, which includes how you’ll attract new customers, retain current customers and promote your products or services. Creating a marketing strategy is key to ensuring you’re making the most of your money while targeting the right people through the right channels so you can grow your business.

When you create your business plan, the marketing plan will be an important component. Within a business plan, the marketing plan helps to explain how your business fits into the market, who your competitors are and how you’ll stand out. Small-business marketing is all about how you will promote your products or services to increase sales through customer engagement.

1. Research

The first step when learning how to write a marketing plan for your business plan is research. You want to look at your market as a whole , your competitors, their marketing strategies and past marketing strategies you’ve used — if any. Your research will inform who your target customer base is, how to price your products , what marketing channels will best serve your business, how you want to interact with customers and what your marketing budget will be.

While not all your research will be included in your marketing plan, it will help to inform your marketing strategy. The final product will be a much condensed and synthesized version of what you discover from your research.

2. Know your business

To create an effective marketing strategy, you need to understand the ins and outs of your own business. What makes your products or services unique? What’s your company’s mission? Why did you start this business in the first place? Reminding yourself what makes your business special will help you inform your marketing strategy and show potential customers why they should choose to work with you. Plus, looking at your business from the viewpoint of a potential customer may help you uncover some unique selling points you hadn’t previously considered.

» MORE: Can your small-business idea actually make money?

3. Understand your customer

Beyond your business and the products or services it offers, you also need to take your customer into consideration when writing your marketing plan.

Understand your customer: who they are, what they like, their pain points, how your product or service solves their problem, how and where they consume media and how to communicate with them. Much of the success of your marketing strategy depends upon knowing and communicating well with your customers.

Identify your target market and narrow your scope to a specific demographic — like athletes or parents, for instance — to help you pinpoint the best way to reach them. If you cast your net too wide, you may come off as insincere and struggle to attract any customers.

4. Highlight your unique selling proposition

Your business’s unique selling proposition, or USP, is the thing that makes you stand out. If you want your product or service to sell well, you need to make sure it offers something your competitors don’t. To do that, you need to find your USP.

You likely have a good idea already of what your USP is, but it’s time to synthesize all of the great ideas you gathered in the previous steps into an easily shareable description. Consider this your elevator pitch. You want to be able to tell someone why your product or service is best in less than 30 seconds. You may also find a catchy slogan comes out of this, as well.

5. Check out the competition

While you need to make decisions that are right for your business based on internal information, you also should have an understanding of what your competitors are doing and how it’s working for them.

Take a look at their products, pricing and marketing strategies. Check out their customer reviews to see what people like and dislike about their business. Then use this information to make your business — and marketing strategy — even better.

6. Know your numbers

A marketing strategy will cost money; however, it doesn’t have to be a lot. In fact, there are plenty of free marketing ideas you can try. However, you will likely need to spend some money if you want to make money in the long run. Understanding your business financials to come up with a realistic marketing budget is crucial before you can decide on your concrete marketing plan.

7. Show, don't tell

If you have any marketing collateral already created, such as logos, ads or social media posts, be sure to include them in your marketing strategy. This will show potential investors or lending partners that you’ve made concrete progress on your business’s marketing plan.

8. Test your strategy and talk to customers

The only way to truly know whether your marketing strategy will work is to show it to real people and get their opinions. While you don’t need to have your entire marketing plan created to get feedback, it’s a good idea to run some general ideas past a focus group to get their input. These can be potential customers or friends and family — just make sure you’re getting their honest feedback. Use the results to tweak your strategy to better suit your customers.

» MORE: Common startup mistakes and how to avoid them

What to include in a marketing plan

Now that you've done the research for your marketing strategy, you need to synthesize it into an easily digestible plan that shows yourself and potential investors that you know how to market your business. You can use the following components as a sort of marketing plan template to organize your research:

Product or service overview. If your business sells products, include specifics like sizes, types, colors, features and pricing. For services, detail what they are, what problems they solve, why they will be in demand and what they cost.

Target customer personas. Who are they? How old are they? Where do they live? How much do they make, on average? Are they married or single? Do they have kids and/or pets? What are their interests, wants, and needs?

USP. Through researching the market, your competition and customers, you know how your business stands out. Be sure you can explain what makes your business unique.

Marketing budget. Outline how much of your overall business budget you’re planning to allocate to marketing. Based on your research, you can also include projections for how this budget will grow your sales.

Marketing channels. For a fully comprehensive marketing plan, you’ll likely use a combination of several channels — email , social media, SMS , local , digital , etc. Detail which you'll focus on, the budget for each, expected returns and what numbers you'll track (views, clicks, subscribers, etc.).

Conversion and retention strategy. Outline a plan for converting leads into paying customers — and for retaining those customers and getting their repeat business. New customers are important, but so is customer retention. After all, it’s more expensive to find a new customer than it is to foster a relationship with an existing one.

Marketing collateral. In the interest of space, you may want to include just a couple of items within the marketing plan section itself, and you can include the rest in the business plan appendix.

» MORE: Best marketing tools for small businesses

A version of this article originally appeared on Fundera, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.

On a similar note...

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How to write a marketing plan.

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President of the  Bradford Dalton Group , Jeff is a former journalist with 30+ years of experience as a public relations professional.

Ready to reinvigorate your marketing? First, you need a plan. In this article, I’ll outline how to create a marketing plan for your business.

It is important to know what other people besides you think about your company, so spend some time before writing your marketing plan talking to employees, customers, shareholders and community members — anyone who is touched by your company. Probe to find out what they truly think and how they feel about the company. This cache of valuable information will form the basis for the SWOT analysis portion of your marketing plan.

Competitive Analysis

During your research, be sure to ask people who they think your competitors are, and how your company stacks up against them. Then, to learn more, conduct secondary research by carefully reviewing competitors’ websites and reviewing any news coverage about them. Then, use a website like Semrush or Ahrefs to find out how well their websites perform: how many keywords they rank for, how many visitors they attract per month, what their authority score is, etc. Throughout this research, look for ways in which your company is similar to and different from competitors. Rank them from most to least competitive.

SWOT Analysis

You can’t get where you want to go if you don’t know where you are. That’s why you want to start writing your marketing plan with an analysis of your internal situation (your company’s strengths and weaknesses) and the external situation in which you operate (the opportunities and threats in the marketplace). Mine the research you conducted, as well as your own insights, for this information. Be brutally honest. This is the basis for your entire marketing plan, so if you lie to yourself here, your marketing plan will likely be ineffective.

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The goals section of your marketing plan clearly lays out how you want your business to be different after the marketing plan has been carried out. And make sure they are SMART goals — specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound — so you’ll be able to clearly know whether or not they were met. For example, a SMART goal would be: “Increase annual sales by 10% by the end of the year.”

Objectives are the milestones you must hit in order to achieve your goals. Unlike goals, which are strategic — meaning that they bear directly on the success of your company — objectives are more tactical and generally pertain to the implementation of marketing tactics. For example, an objective might be: “To reach 5,000 sales prospects with an email campaign that has an open rate of at least 30% and a click-through rate of 5%.”

Target Markets

In this section of the plan, specify whom you intend to reach through your marketing efforts. Generally, this is your customers and prospective customers, but it could also be employees and prospective employees, if the goal is to find qualified job candidates, or community and government leaders, if you are seeking to deal with burdensome regulations or disgruntled factions of the community.

The message is what you want members of the target markets to know about your company in order to cause the behavior you are seeking, such as buying your product or service. Generally, the message is some form of the company’s unique selling proposition, or USP, which states the unique benefits your company offers and thus the reason for doing business with you instead of your competitors.

Tactics are the heart of a marketing plan — these are what you will actually do and how you will do it. The key is selecting the tactics that are most appropriate for your business and the goals you want to achieve. Selecting the best tactics generally requires the assistance of an experienced marketing professional.

Here’s a fairly exhaustive list of marketing tactics: awards and professional recognition; blogging; case studies and white papers; collateral such as brochures, flyers, sales sheets, etc.; digital advertising such as pay per click, banner ads, affiliate marketing, websites and remarketing; direct mail; email marketing; events including parties, seminars and panel discussions, and product and service announcements; inbound marketing; infographics; your logo and branding; native advertising and advertorials; promotions and contests; publicity; search engine optimization; speaking engagements; specialty advertising and swag; strategic partnerships; surveys; telemarketing; trade shows; traditional television and print advertising; videos; webinars; and word-of-mouth marketing.

Generally a month-by-month schedule of what will happen, a timeline lays out when each tactic will be deployed and for how long, and which tactics will run simultaneously in order to enhance their overall effectiveness.

In the budget section of your marketing plan, delineate how much money you will allocate for each marketing tactic.

It is possible, of course, to market without a plan — your marketing is just not likely to be effective without one. Unfortunately, the marketing efforts of many small businesses seem to largely be the result of sales efforts by advertising salespeople — that is, many business owners buy whatever they think is the best deal proffered by the local newspaper, radio station, television station or digital advertising agency. These totally unplanned, uncoordinated efforts can produce sporadic results, but usually not sustained growth. To get the most out of your marketing dollars, create a plan and stick to it.

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What Is a Marketing Plan?

Understanding marketing plans, how to write a marketing plan, marketing plan vs. business plan.

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What Is a Marketing Plan? Types and How to Write One

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A marketing plan is an operational document that outlines an advertising strategy that an organization will implement to generate leads and reach its target market . It details the outreach and PR campaigns to be undertaken and for how long, as well as the ways in which the company will measure the effect of these initiatives. It reflects a company’s overall marketing strategy.

Key Takeaways

• The marketing plan details the strategy that a company will use to market its products to customers.
• The plan identifies the target market, value proposition of the brand or product, campaigns to be initiated, and metrics to be used to assess the effectiveness of marketing initiatives.
• The marketing plan should be adjusted on an ongoing basis based on which efforts are having an impact and which are not.
• Digital marketing shows results almost in real time, whereas TV ads require rotation to realize any level of market penetration.
• A marketing plan is part of a business plan, which describes all of the important aspects of a business, such as its goals, values, mission statement, budget, and strategies.

The terms “marketing plan” and “marketing strategy” are often used interchangeably because the former is developed based on an overarching strategic framework. In some cases the strategy and the plan may be incorporated into one document, particularly for smaller companies that may only run one or two major campaigns in a year. The plan outlines marketing activities on a monthly, a quarterly, or an annual basis, while the strategy delineates the overall  value proposition .

The components of a marketing plan include:

• Market research – This provides information to support pricing decisions and new market entries.
• Tailored messaging – This involves targeting certain demographics and geographic areas and can include the use of affiliate marketing with third-party publishers who bring customers to the table.
• Platform selection – This looks at the best vehicles for disseminating product information for each advertising campaign: traditional venues such as radio, TV, newspapers, and commercial and trade magazines; digital methods such as websites, online ads, search engine results, informational videos, social media groups (Facebook, YouTube, etc.), email, and text messages; or any mix of these platforms.
• Performance metrics – Metrics accurately assess the results of marketing efforts and their reporting timelines and are crucial to the success of the plan.

The four most important social media networks in 2023 for global marketers were, in descending order, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

Types of Marketing Plans

There are a variety of marketing plans that suit different businesses and their needs. These include:

• Product Launch – A product-launch marketing plan outlines how a new product will enter the market, the audience it will target, and the advertising methods used.
• Social Media – A social media marketing plan focuses on the advertising strategies on different social media platforms and how to engage with their users.
• Time Based – Time-based marketing plans, such as those that are executed quarterly or annually, focus on the time of the year, the current condition of the business, and the best strategies in that period.
• Content Based – A content-based marketing plan looks in detail at what kinds of content (blogs, videos, graphics, etc.) will reach the target audience.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – An SEO marketing plan is all about getting the most hits online. It involves keyword research, content optimization, link building, and more, all with the goal of drawing customers to your website.

Mission and Value Proposition

The mission and value proposition is a statement that articulates the value that a product or brand will deliver to a customer. It should appear front and center on the company website and any branding materials.

The value proposition should delineate how a product or brand solves the customer’s problem, the benefits of the product or brand, and why the customer should buy from this company and not another. The marketing plan is based on it.

Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Establishing your key performance indicators (KPIs) will allow you to measure the success of your marketing plan in relation to your company’s value proposition. In other words, they track the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. For example, if your goal is to engage with a certain demographic in a certain region, you can track social media impressions and website visits.

There are a number of KPIs that help you measure success including the search engine ranking, click-through rate, cost per click, return on investment (ROI), and conversion rates, which tracks the percentages of visitors to your website that make a specific action such as buying a product or becoming a newsletter subscriber.

In 2023, Facebook and Instagram were tied for having the highest ROI across social media platforms for global marketers, while YouTube fell next in line.

Identify Your Target Market

The marketing plan identifies the target market for a product or brand. Market research is often the basis for a target market and marketing channel decisions. For example, whether the company will advertise via social media, online ads, or regional TV. 

Knowing to whom you want to sell and why is an extremely critical component of any business plan. It allows you to focus your business and measure its success. Different demographics have different tastes and needs; knowing your target market will help you market to them.

Strategy and Execution

The marketing plan includes the rationale for these decisions. The plan should focus on the creation, timing, scheduling, and placement of specific campaigns and include the metrics that will measure the outcomes of your marketing efforts. For example, will you advertise on social media or TV? What time will you schedule your marketing if they are through email newsletters? The strategy may include flighting scheduling , which includes the times when you can make the most of your advertising dollars.

Set Your Budget

A marketing plan costs money. Setting a budget will allow you to create a workable plan, prevent runaway costs, and properly allocate your funds.

Adjust Your Plan

A marketing plan can be adjusted at any point based on the results from its metrics. If digital ads are performing better than expected, for example, the budget for a campaign can be adjusted to fund a higher-performing platform, or the company can initiate a new budget. The challenge for marketing leaders is to ensure that every platform has sufficient time to show results.

Without the correct metrics to assess the impact of outreach and marketing efforts, an organization will not know which campaigns to repeat and which to drop. In short, maintaining ineffective initiatives wastes money.

Digital marketing shows results almost immediately, whereas TV ads require rotation to realize any level of market penetration. In the traditional marketing mix model, a marketing plan would fall under the category of “promotion,” which is one of the “ four Ps ,” a term coined by Neil Borden to describe the marketing mix of product, price, promotion, and place.

A business plan is a roadmap that details how a business will operate and function in its entirety. It should cover the goals, missions , values, financials, and strategies that the business will use in day-to-day operations and the achievement of its objectives. Among its many elements are an executive summary, the products and services sold, a marketing analysis, a marketing strategy, financial planning, and a budget .

As mentioned, a business plan should include a marketing plan, which focuses on creating a strategy for creating awareness of the company’s product or service, reaching the target market, and generating sales.

Example of a Marketing Plan

Consider the following marketing plan framework that is designed to help direct marketing objectives:

• Executive Summary: Describes company mission, key executives, and where it is headquartered.
• SWOT Analysis: Describes strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for the company. This helps you define how to build on your strengths and how to find ways to improve on your weaknesses. It also helps a company analyze their competitors and how they may achieve an advantage based on their unique value proposition.
• Business Initiatives: Outlines the goals of the marketing plan, such as the number of impressions, Google rankings, or email subscribers.
• Customer Analysis: Describes your target market and audience characteristics based on market research. These may include age, pain points, and location, among other variables.
• Competitor Analysis: Outlines the companies providing similar goods or services to your target audience. In addition, it describes their strengths, market share, pricing structure, and most importantly where your company can fill an important gap.

What Is a Marketing Plan Template?

A marketing plan template is a guide for writing a marketing plan. It contains all the important elements needed to create one, including its goals and KPIs, marketing channels, budget, content type, teams involved, and design.

What Is an Executive Summary in a Marketing Plan?

The executive summary is a nutshell description of the marketing plan. It should contain the key findings of the market research, the company’s objectives and marketing goals, an overview of the marketing trends, the description of the product or service being marketed, information on the target market, and the plan budget.

What Is a Top-Down Marketing Strategy?

A top-down marketing strategy is a traditional one, in which a business decides how best to sell its product or brand, and customers are then spurred to take action through advertisements, generally found on radio and/or television. It is usually determined by company executives, which is then communicated with management to delegate to employees. These employees then develop tactics to meet the strategy's objectives.

What Is a Bottom-Up Marketing Strategy?

In comparison to a traditional top-down marketing strategy, a bottom-up strategy begins with employees who formulate marketing tactics based on their analysis of customer preferences and needs. This then may lead to collaboration with other employees to develop a concrete marketing plan, which is sent to executives for review.

Today’s consumer wants to relate to a product or service in a meaningful way, and a bottom-up marketing strategy seeks to achieve this through customer-centric tactics.

How Much Does a Marketing Plan Cost?

The cost of a marketing plan will vary based on the company, the plan’s complexity, and the length of the overall strategy. In 2023, marketing costs made up 10.1% of corporate revenues on average. The consumer packaged goods sector spent the most, at 18.5% of revenues while the mining and construction sector spent the least, at 1% of revenues.

A separate analysis shows that the cost can range anywhere from $10,000 to over $40,000 for a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is the advertising strategy that a business implements to sell its product or service. It determines the target market, how best to reach it, at what price point the product or service should be sold, and how the company will measure its efforts.

Constantly monitoring and adjusting a market plan is an important part of running a business, as it shows the most effective ways to generate sales. As the consumer landscape evolves, it is important for businesses to adapt in order to meet customer needs and better achieve their marketing objectives.

Statista. " Marketing Worldwide – Statistics and Facts ."

American Marketing Association. " What Is a Marketing Plan and How to Write One? [Easy Guide] ."

HubSpot. " The 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report: Data from 1400+ Global Marketers ."

Deloitte. " The CMO Survey: Managing Marketing Technology, Growth and Sustainability ." Page 16.

Laire. " How Much Does a Marketing Plan Cost? "

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How to create a marketing plan in 2024

7 steps to creating an effective marketing plan for businesses of all sizes

A marketing plan is a bit like a job description for your company. Everyone should have one, but they’re often not fit for purpose, out of date, and reviewed infrequently...

Research has shown that businesses with plans succeed, outperform competitors, and retain staff, more than those with no plan.

Without a plan there’s no direction for the company or its employees, decisions can be uninformed, opportunities can be missed and threats can damage or destroy the business.

Whether you are looking at creating a traditional marketing plan or a multichannel digital marketing plan, we've got resources to help you.

Free marketing plan template aimed at small businesses

In this article, Annmarie Hanlon recommends 7 simple steps for structuring a classic marketing plan. But for an SME or SMB, you need a little more detail about prioritizing your investment of time and money in your communications channels as we've mentioned.

Our Free marketing plan template download , by our co-founder Dr. Dave Chaffey who developed the RACE Planning Framework, provides a little more detail needed for a 'real-world' plan to grow a business.

Free marketing plan template download

Use our simple three-page Microsoft Word template if you work for a small business who needs to create a simple, practical marketing plan quickly. It's structured in three sections of steps using the acclaimed RACE Growth System for improving marketing results

Access the Free marketing plan template

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is your place to document the process of defining and implementing your marketing strategy and creating a roadmap for future growth and business development. A marketing plan should be customer-centred, focused on your target audience and the value propositions you will deliver to them.

The key element of marketing strategy within the plan that you need to compete effectively is the Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning strategy for your brand, known as STP for short. These stages in target marketing strategy development that should be central in your marketing plan are summarized in Figure 4.10 in Digital Marketing: Strategy, Development and Planning created by Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights.

Your plan must reference Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning as essential sections you must cover in a classic marketing plan for a large business. However, for smaller businesses, you also need more practical strategies for how you will reach and engage your audiences using the key digital marketing channels today including search, social media and email marketing and then how you will persuade and convert your audience on a website or on your social pages. So, for a small or medium business (SME or SMB depending on where you are reading) your marketing plan must also include communications strategies to help you achieve your goals. That's why Smart Insights created the RACE planning framework to give guidance on how to best plan and action best practices for these channels.

How to create and structure a marketing plan

To structure your marketing plan, we recommend utilizing the Smart Insights RACE Growth System, an easy-to-use strategic marketing framework that helps you identify opportunities, strategies, and actions to help you drive growth, at each stage of your marketing funnel.

As the visual shows, our OSA process, of which you can see examples in different sectors in our editable Word plan templates, is structured in three parts:

• Opportunity : Situation review including marketplace analysis (customers, competitors and channel partners), performance analysis and Vision and SMART Objective setting based on forecasting (spreadsheet tools available in our templates)
• Strategy : Segmentation, Targeting and Positoning (STP) and the tactics forming the 7Ps of the marketing mix.
• Action : Budget, resourcing including team and tools and marketing technology (Martech) and 90-day action plans.

As a marketer, every activity will fall into either an opportunity, strategy, or action. With a strong marketing plan in place, you will be able to measure each of these elements, and more importantly, ensure all marketing activities remain integrated.

Some marketing plans, such as this Chartered Institute of Marketing recommendation on How to write a marketing plan define more stages, but particularly for smaller businesses we believe the simpler  Opportunity > Strategy > Action enables you to communicate your plan better!

Identify marketing opportunities

Let's now look at what you need to include in your plan, starting with your opportunities. A marketing plan is not just a list of activities to work on! To identify the opportunities to prioritize and challenges to overcome. You need to start with internal audits, external analysis, and goal setting - to give your marketing a purpose. We recommend summarizing your key issues based on a TOWs analysis which is a powerful form of SWOT analysis explained in our post giving SWOT analysis template examples .

Through our RACE Planning Framework, you can access tools and templates designed to help you optimize across 25 opportunities, integrated across each stage of RACE, which you can see in the infographic below:

Starting with these holistic approaches, you will quickly identify opportunities for growth and can plan strategies and actions that help you achieve your vision for your business. That's why opportunities are the first step in our OSA cycle.

Identify marketing strategies

Now you know what you want to do, strategy is working out how to achieve your goals in an efficient and effective manner. To do so, you'll likely lean on guides, templates, and models to inform your strategy.

Making good business decisions to inform your budgets, investment priorities, and key metrics are all elements of a successful marketing strategy.

Marketing plan actions

Of course, the final stage of any marketing strategy is putting it all into place!

To help you manage your time and marketing outputs, our RACE Growth System is structured around short 90-day planning cycles. This means you will see quarterly growth, as well as setting longer-term annual goals.

Quarterly measurement and reporting allow marketers and business owners to spot trends and make optimizations in a shorter timeframe too, to keep cycling customers through your dedicated marketing funnel experience.

Example marketing plan structure

It can be daunting to develop a marketing plan for the first time, so let's walk through the basics together. If you're looking for a practical, simple, data-driven marketing plan, these 7 factors will help you create and action your plan with success.

Step 1. Customer analysis (Opportunity)

A good plan starts by asking 'Where are we now?'. Gain an overview via your customers, but don’t forget to ask the right questions. One of my pet hates is the ‘hypothetical question’ e.g. A hotel asking “if you would stay here again?” It’s possible you would stay there again, but if it’s been a one-off visit it’s very unlikely it will actually happen. Removing hypothetical questions ensures you capture facts, not fiction.

If you’ve got a start-up business or are looking at a marketing plan for a totally new area, many other research resources are available including online reports, insights via trends and conferences. This informs your business decision and ensures the plan is fundamentally sound.

Step 2. Marketing audit (Opportunity)

After you’ve captured customer insights, the next step is a comprehensive review or audit of the business. Most countries publish statistical data on businesses in their region. This can tell you the number of businesses in specific sectors, average numbers of employees, average earnings, average income per household and more. This valuable information highlights market values, market potential and opportunities. This enables you to understand where your business sits in its market sector and the market share available.

A key element of the audit is the SWOT and whilst you and many marketers are familiar with the SWOT analysis, you may be less familiar with the McKinsey 7S framework of business. Taking a holistic look at the business, thinking about Strategy, Structure, Systems, Staff, Style, Skills and Shared values forms a base for your SWOT. Business members can access a 7S and SWOT template in the smart insigths Business marketing plan guide .

Part of a marketing audit is competitor benchmarking. Really understanding what the competitors offer. The more you understand how they work, the more likely you are to be able to predict their next move. You won’t be one of these companies that says “we never saw it coming”. Tools such as Google Alerts help you embed this as an automatic ongoing process.

One of my clients ensured they always got the early news on their key competitor by buying some of their shares! It meant they had access to latest reports, and newsletters and could attend annual meetings to hear what other shareholders thought. This was all for an investment of £150.

Step 3. Create sustainable objectives: Where do we want to go? (Opportunity)

It’s easy to create general objectives; it’s harder to develop SMART objectives.

Taking this one stage further, businesses that use numbers alone often miss key values inside the business. It’s easy to become numbers-driven; it’s harder to create ‘softer’ objectives. In Emarketing Excellence (2022), Dave Chaffey and PR Smith developed the 5s model, initially as a mechanism for reviewing websites. I’ve used this for many years to develop business objectives. It tends to challenge the thinking within a business and gets the owners and managers considering the business as a whole, rather than sales alone.

Look at your business. Do you have SMART objectives for:

• The sales forecast; sales figures, number of new clients wanted?
• Customer service; how can you improve the service to customers?
• Communication (speak) providing information to clients?
• Saving time, increasing your business efficiency and reducing costs?
• The wow factor! Adding sizzle to make your business stand out from the crowd?

Step 4. Segment your customer base (Strategy)

Key strategic initiatives for your business will include one or more of these options:

• Enter new markets
• Develop new products
• Improve the competitive position of the business
• Maintain the competitive position
• Harvest part of the business
• Exit the business

When you know the strategic initiatives the business is taking, it’s easier to segment your customer base, whether you’re B2B, B2C or a blend of both. You can use the mnemonic SUPERB to identify your customer segments:

• Size – Is the market large enough to justify segmenting?
• Unique – Do measurable differences exist between segments?
• Profits – Do anticipated profits exceed the costs of additional marketing plans and other changes?
• Easy Access – Is each segment easily accessible to your team?
• Reaction – Is the market able to react to your communications?
• Benefits – Will the different segments need different benefits?

Step 5. Target new customers and position your business (Strategy)

Growing a business always involves finding new customers, this may be different segments or markets and may encourage your business to look at product development.

What opportunities are there in your business to:

• Sell more of your existing products or services to your existing customer base? (Market Penetration Strategy)
• Introduce your existing product range to a new customer group? (Market Development Strategy)
• Augment or improve the existing product offer? (Product Development Strategy)
• Move into a new market with a new product offer using the skills within the business? (Diversification Strategies)

Pricing is a critical area in any business. Kotler (1988) described nine marketing mix strategies on price quality, which we look at in detail in the Business marketing plan guide for Business members, to support your pricing strategy development.

A pricing matrix is a really useful tool for product marketers or managers because it helps you identify opportunities within your product and pricing strategies. Don't forget to research which of these strategies are your main competitors using too and make sure to use key messages to help differentiate yourself.

Step 6. Create your marketing action plan (Action)

The key to making it happen is to create a detailed marketing action plan. If you don’t have time to conduct each step yourself, you can explore other options and contract out specific tasks to an external consultant or agency.

I have found that an Action Plan that includes more detail, nominates someone to do the work and sets dates by when it should be completed, is more likely to get done than a loose set of instructions. A good action plan becomes ’work instructions’ for different people.

Busy marketing managers may enlist support from the admin team who often relish the opportunity to carry out new tasks, as long as they have a detailed brief. Or for more specialized work, marketing managers may wish to enlist an Agency.

Step 7. Monitor, manage and improve (Action)

The final step is about monitoring action, managing the process and measuring results. The 7 steps to make your plan happen are:

• It is essential to maintain the impetus, start the plan today, not tomorrow.
• Appoint one person to monitor the entire plan and give them the authority to do so.
• Regular meetings should be held to review the plan. These could be 20-minute meetings at the start of the week.
• If you don’t do it today, your competitors will start tomorrow.
• If one item is difficult to start, move on to the next area.
• At the end of each quarter, review what has taken place and where more help is needed.
• The most successful businesses stick to the plan and make it happen – whilst still getting on with the day job.

Other types of marketing plan

As the world of digital marketing continues to develop, many find that particular functions within marketing require their own planning document. See examples of where this may be useful below:

• New product marketing plan: Launching a new product requires its own planning, this process can be make or break for your product. Find out about the product launch plan that generated $1 billion in 60 days .
• Content strategy: 98% of marketers believe 'having or following' a content strategy is 'important for marketing success'.
• Nich marketing strategy: Niche marketing considers the narrow category into which your business falls and targets specific subsets of customers accordingly.

But, remember, it is recommended to define one flagship plan for the whole team, for governance and accountability, before branching out into secondary planning.

One final tip; set a start and an end date for creating and launching the marketing plan , if not, the audit stage could continue indefinitely! Download your free guide and get started today.

Use our simple three-page Microsoft Word template if you work for a small business who needs to quickly create a simple, practical marketing plan quickly. It's structured in three sections of steps using the acclaimed RACE Growth System for improving marketing results

By Annmarie Hanlon

Annmarie Hanlon PhD is an academic and practitioner in strategic digital marketing and the application of social media for business. Dr Hanlon has expertise in the strategic application of social media for business and the move from digitization, to digitalization and digital transformation for business. Her expertise spans consumer touch points, online customer service, the use of reviews, the role of influencers, online engagement and digital content. You can follow her update on Twitter https://twitter.com/annmariehanlon

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Written by Jesse Sumrak | May 28, 2024

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Marketing is an often misunderstood profession. Peers often stereotype marketing with massive budgets, loosey-goosey timelines, haphazard tactics, high-profile influencers, and Snapchat filters. In reality, modern marketing plans are more complex and orchestrated than a Premier League-winning football team.

Businesses have big goals to hit and fine margins to walk—and they need realistic, yet imaginative, marketing plans to make it happen. Sure, bigger companies can spend all willy-nilly hiring Taylor Swift for a commercial op and dropping a quarter million on Facebook advertising, but small businesses and startups have to get downright strategic with every dollar they spend.

If your business is trying to stretch every penny, you’ve come to the right place. This article will show you how to create a marketing plan in 2024 that actually works with a down-to-earth budget. We’ve included step-by-step actions, outlines, examples, and more to give you everything you need to take an idea to the market with laser precision.

Table of Contents

What is a marketing plan?

How to create a marketing plan

Marketing plan template

Marketing plan example

Marketing Plan FAQs

What Is a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a documented roadmap for how you plan to drive awareness, sales, signups, attendance, or other marketing initiatives. It outlines your KPIs, budget, and timeline, dictating everything from the critical milestones to the nitty-gritty to-do items.

Marketing plans come in all shapes and sizes. You could build an overarching marketing plan to document and guide your entire department’s annual goals and strategies for the upcoming year. Or you might create a marketing plan detailing the launch strategy for the brand-new product release coming out next quarter. Big plans can even include small plans, just like an adorable collection of Russian nesting dolls.

Plans can be short, long, fat, or thin—just remember what your plan is trying to accomplish. If you’re trying to pitch an idea to a team of venture capitalists or a local bank, you might need a chunky document with accompanying spreadsheets and financial figures. However, if you’re trying to communicate the plan to your marketing team leads, you’ll want to skip straight to the point with tactics, deadlines, and deliverables.

Regardless of your use case, the next section will give you the building blocks you need to create a marketing plan that works.

How to Create a Marketing Plan

This section will show you the 7-step process to creating a marketing plan. Plans are fluid and versatile, so we don’t recommend filling out one of these with pen and paper—get your eraser ready because a marketing plan is never perfect from the get-go.

Here’s an overview of the 7-step process:

• Establish Your Marketing Goal
• Identify Your Audience and Competitors
• Set Your Marketing Budget
• Determine Your Deadline(s)
• Pick Your Marketing Channels and Tactics
• Outline the To-Do List and Make Assignments
• Track Performance and Review Analytics

Don’t worry too much about making it all nice and pretty right now. Later, you can use our provided marketing outline to copy, paste, and format a more articulated version for widespread distribution. For now, just focus on hashing out each section and answering the thought-provoking questions.

1. Establish Your Marketing Goal

Define exactly what you’re trying to achieve. Do you want to drive more sales? How much? What about recurring customers? How many? Do you need to increase brand awareness? To whom and by how much?

Work out the details of what you want to accomplish, why, and how you’re going to measure it. Establish your KPIs early on to measure the success of your marketing campaign. You’ll refer to these numbers throughout the rest of your marketing plan, so get specific.

For example, how many website visitors you’re trying to drive will affect your marketing budget, deadlines, and tactics. And if you’re targeting a specific demographic, you may need to engage different marketing teams to use the appropriate channels and messaging.

Fine-tune your marketing goal so that you can communicate it simply in a single sentence. For example: “The goal is to drive 25,000 key decision-makers to the new product page by the end of October with a limited marketing budget of $75,000.”

2. Identify Your Audience and Competitors

Explain who this campaign is targeting. If you’ve already built out your buyer personas, you’ll just plug in the persona appropriate to this campaign. However, if this is your first time thinking long and hard about your target audience, really get to know the person you’re marketing to.

Depending on your product, industry, and market, you’ll want to know demographics like:

• Marital status

These details help you identify a broad audience, but you’ll want to narrow it down with psychographics.

Psychographics dig deeper . They cover your audience’s:

• Influencers
• Shopping behaviors

Demographics explain the “who,” while psychographics explain the “why.”

Think about if you were trying to sell a baseball glove. How you market that glove is going to be very different depending on the buyer. Are your messaging and channels targeting a college athlete, recreational youngster, mom, dad, or low-income family? It’s hard to know what to say and how to say it unless you know who you’re talking to.

Don’t just gloss over this section. Without a target audience, you’ll be blindly throwing darts at a board—sure, some plans might work out, but it’ll come down less to strategy and more to sheer luck. A target audience and replicable formula make your success a science and not a game of Russian roulette.

Once you’ve identified your audience, you need to figure out who’s also targeted the same people. Competition research is a way to understand who you are up against for eyeballs, SEO rankings, and influence, but it also can serve as an opportunity to fill gaps in our needs that your competitors are missing.

One easy way to do this is to look at comment sections or reviews of similar companies in your industry. Look for:

• Frequent complaints about product design.
• Consistent issues with customer service.
• Ads or branding language that falls flat.
• If the competitor hasn’t made a product their customers are asking for.

By identifying your competitor’s weaknesses or gaps their missing with their customers, you’ll have a treasure trove of marketing copy to use in order to differentiate your business from the pack.

3. Set Your Marketing Budget

Marketing plans need budget constraints. Without a cap, plans could hypothetically include:

• 60-second Super Bowl commercial
• Cristiano Ronaldo as a celebrity endorser
• Billboard advertisements along the entirety of Route 66

For most startups, that’s just not a possibility.

And it’s not where the magic happens. Powerful marketing plans turn tiny marketing budgets into impressive ROI. They prioritize the right channels, messaging, and tactics to stretch every dollar to the max.

Decide beforehand how much budget you’ll need to allocate to meet the goals you set in Step 1. When push comes to shove, you may need to throw additional money at the campaign later to get it across the finish line, but stay strong and do your best to create a marketing plan that works with the budget constraints.

Tight on budget but full on creativity? Check out our Small Business Marketing Guide: From Scratch to Success .

4. Determine Your Deadline(s)

Deadlines create the boundaries to your marketing campaign—you can’t have a plan without them. No deadlines mean there’s a never-ending period to achieve your objective, and it’s probably not a good idea to have a 20-year free pass to accomplish that sales goal you set.

Set your deadline. Be realistic, but also be ambitious. The faster you achieve this goal, the faster you can move on to the next one—and each progressive goal should be moving your business forward.

Establish the final deadline for achieving your primary KPI. Then, set the necessary milestones along the journey. For example, you might set milestones for launching different aspects of your campaign, such as hosting 4 webinars, publishing 10 supporting blog posts, or earning a callout in 2 prime news outlets.

Finally, set the start date for when you’ll need to get the ball rolling to meet your deadlines. Don’t assume it’s ASAP—you might have a few weeks to get your ducks in a row instead of immediately heading off into a chaotic marketing battle.

5. Pick Your Marketing Channels and Tactics

This is arguably the funnest part of creating a marketing plan. This is the step where you get to choose the channels, tactics, and deliverables. The right channels and tactics will vary depending on your audience and product or service, but here are the most popular ones to consider:

• Email Marketing: Email marketing is one of the tried-and-true tactics of the digital marketing world. It generates an average ROI of $40 for every $1 invested —you can’t get much more bang for your buck than that. (Check out our complete email masterclass to learn how to conquer this lucrative channel.)
• Social Media Marketing: Whether you’re running organic strategies or targeted paid campaigns , social media marketing is an excellent modern-day tactic for reaching consumers where they’re most comfortable: Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, or TikTok.
• PPC Marketing: Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing lets you run advertising campaigns on search engine pages and other websites across the internet. It’s a competitive way to get your content in front of the right eyeballs.
• Content Marketing: Content marketing paired with a solid search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is a long-term tactic that can drive organic traffic (read: free) to your website for years to come.

And do you know what all these channels have in common? They each give you the ability to monitor your results and track your progress to prove if a channel is worth your time and money. Unlike traditional outbound advertising and its estimated impressions and influence, you know exactly what you’re getting with these digital marketing strategies.

6. Outline the To-Do List and Make Assignments

Here’s where you get into the nitty-gritty of your marketing plan. Step 6 is where you’ll outline everything that needs to get done:

• Launch meeting
• Recurring meetings and syncs
• Creative assets
• Promotional channels
• Post-mortems

And that’s just the start. Outline everything that needs to happen to make your plan a reality. Once you know what needs to happen, it’s time to start making assignments. Someone needs to be responsible for every deliverable.

Here’s where you may run into roadblocks. You may discover that your creative team is overwhelmed and won’t be able to handle the creative requests until later, or you may find that other email campaigns or social media advertisements are the top priority.

If that’s the case, go back to Step 4 to revisit your timeline. Make adjustments to ensure there’s bandwidth available to make your marketing plan a reality.

7. Track Performance and Review Analytics

No marketing plan will go off without a hitch. That’s why you need your ear to the ground to understand what’s working. Through analytic tools, you can understand if your marketing plan’s target audience, messaging, or creative needs adjusting. Thankfully, most digital tactics allow you to do this on the fly.

Make sure you familiarize yourself with these basic marketing analytics tools:

• Facebook Ads Manager
• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Semrush or Ahrefs for SEO

For more on analytics, read our marketing metrics guide .

Marketing Plan Template (Copy/Paste)

Marketing Plan Template: [Name of Project]

Marketing Plan Example (Filled Out)

Here’s a fake content marketing plan example for a fictitious shoe company.

Marketing Plan Template: [Project Zeus Running Collection]

Marketing Goal Drive $200,000 in sales for the new Zeus running collection within the first 4 months of launch day.

Target Audience The primary audience is 35 to 50-year-old male recreational runners who tend to run 30-40 miles a week at an average page of 8:00-10:00 minutes per mile. They’re not overly competitive, but they like to race 5K and 10K races occasionally throughout the year and are always trying to beat their personal best. Many have experienced mild injuries over the last few years that the Zeus Running Collection can help alleviate.

Marketing Budget We have a budget of $40,000 for the initial launch period. If we can prove out the Zeus Running Collection, we’ll allocate additional budget after the first 4 months.

• Launch Day: June 1
• Marketing Assets Ready to Go: May 28
• Pre-Launch Teaser: May 24
• Creative Assets Finished: May 21
• Product Beta Tester Reviews Submitted: May 10
• Written Content Creation Period: April 12 – May 7
• Enlist Beta Testers: April 12
• Project Kickoff Meeting: April 5

Marketing Tactics

• Social Media Marketing: Target runners on Instagram and Facebook with paid ads featuring our endorsed runner racing in the shoe.
• Email Marketing: Email existing customers with a 15% off discount code on the new Zeus Running Collection. Email prospects with a link to the product breakdown page with a code for free shipping.

Responsibilities and Assignments

• Lizzy K: Creative assets
• Mark B: Blog post announcement + product page
• Spencer S: Beta tester outreach
• Larry G: Email and social media marketing campaigns
• Carly M: Project manager

Do I need to write a marketing plan for everything?

As stated earlier, marketing plans can come in all shapes and sizes. But that doesn't mean you need one for every single Facebook ad or whitepaper your team creates. The best marketing plans serve as a source of truth for your team to reach a goal. Within the marketing plan, you should have enough wiggle room to adjust your strategy and tactics. Marketing is an art and science, so there are bound to be surprises once you start executing your plan.

How do I know if my marketing plan is a success?

One of the most common mistakes marketers make is creating a seemingly perfect marketing plan and then going off script as soon as there's a sign of trouble or distraction. Using the SMART goal method (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound) is a simple way to ensure your marketing plan is applicable. Every marketing plan should be a success, whether you hit your goal or not, because you'll learn something new about your customer, tactics, and business throughout the process.

Who should make a marketing plan?

If you're reading this article, ideally you. A marketing manager or marketing team member typically writes marketing plans, but marketing strategy should start at an enterprise level. The more people understand the marketing plan for your business, the more you can work together (not in silos) to achieve a common goal. You'll see this happen in larger organizations where the marketing team works plan that the product or sales team have no idea about.

Plan It Out—Make It Happen

Every great campaign starts with an even better plan. Don’t leave your startup’s success up to chance—give it all the thought and attention you can.

With the right plan in place, you won’t be crossing your fingers on launch day or during the quarterly review. You’ll be sitting confidently, knowing that everything is running according to plan.

Need a high-level plan for your startup? We got you covered with our foundr+. Get access for $1. .

About Jesse Sumrak

Jesse Sumrak is a writing zealot focused on creating killer content. He’s spent almost a decade writing about startup, marketing, and entrepreneurship topics, having built and sold his own post-apocalyptic fitness bootstrapped business. A writer by day and a peak bagger by night (and early early morning), you can usually find Jesse preparing for the apocalypse on a precipitous peak somewhere in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

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MARKETING INSIGHTS

Marketing plan template: step-by-step guide plus examples

• Merav Kanat
• Feb 21, 2021
• 12 min read

If you have a business you want to promote, there are so many directions you can go with your marketing efforts - build your own website , post on social media, send out email blasts and more. With a plethora of both free and paid options for promoting your business online, marketing has become easy and accessible for everyone.

Still, it’s no secret that marketing requires time and money. You’ll need to use your resources wisely if you want to scale efficiently and have a high return on investment. For that reason, it’s wise to avoid haphazard promotional efforts, and come up with a marketing plan: a cohesive operation that aligns all your marketing efforts and directly ties back to your business’s goals.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to create a marketing plan - including a template you can use to write your own. By outlining your objectives as a company, defining your KPIs , and then unifying your marketing strategies accordingly, this type of plan streamlines your promotional efforts and yields results.

Start building your online presence with Wix .

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a roadmap that helps you manage, implement and track your various marketing efforts. In other words, it’s a structured framework that links together all your marketing activities into a single, cohesive operation.

Typically, a marketing plan takes the form of a report that gives an overview of your marketing strategy for the upcoming year, quarter or month. The report defines your company’s goals over a given period of time, and clearly outlines the steps you’ll need to take to achieve them. It's an essential part of any SMBs marketing efforts.

Here’s just a taste of what a marketing plan includes:

An analysis of your competitors and your stance in the market

A description of your target audience and their needs

Your company’s unique selling proposition

An overview of your marketing and advertising goals

A timeline of the various tasks that need to be completed

The key performance indicators (KPIs) that you’ll be tracking to measure success

Creating a marketing plan is the most efficient way to generate demand for your product. Whether you’re running an online T-shirt store, working as a business consultant, or launching a blog for moms, mapping out your strategy in advance will help you drive people through the marketing funnel and get customers.

Types of marketing plans

Before we dive into the specific elements of a marketing plan template, let’s briefly touch on the different types of marketing plans, which can vary depending on your company. They include:

Annual, quarterly or monthly marketing plan: Marketing plans are typically annual, but they can be quarterly or monthly depending on your business’s goals. This type of plan will highlight all your promotional activities within the specified period of time.

New product launch marketing plan: This is a specific type of marketing plan that focuses on the strategies and tactics you’ll use to promote a particular product.

Social media marketing plan: This kind of marketing plan provides a comprehensive outline of your goals, channels, and tactics for promoting your business on social media.

Content marketing plan: Similarly, this type of plan provides a comprehensive outline of your various content marketing strategies and goals.

Media marketing plan: This focuses on building a strategy using all media types: owned media (your own website, app or email marketing tools), paid media (advertising campaigns), and earned media ( word of mouth marketing , organic traffic, viral content) to support an integrated marketing approach.

In this article, we’ll talk about the broadest type of marketing plan. This will outline all of your small business marketing efforts and help you map out a clear strategy.

Using this marketing plan as a guide, you can then create more specific plans - such as a content marketing or social media marketing plan - based on the areas you want to focus on.

How to create a marketing plan in 7 steps

Analyze your market and competition

Research your target audience

Set goals and KPIs

Write a unique selling proposition

Choose strategic marketing channels

Brief your team

Monitor your analytics

01. Analyze your market and competition

The first step in writing a marketing plan is to identify your competitors. This is important so that you know who you’ll be marketing against, and how you can outshine them with your promotional strategy.

Take into account that different competitors will be stronger in different areas. Your biggest competitor on social media, for instance, might be different from your competitor with the best SEO.

With that in mind, do a SWOT analysis of your competition. Using this acronym - which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats - gives you a systematic way to identify your competitors’ performance in your field:

Strengths: What are the competitors’ advantages in the industry? What are they excelling in?

Weaknesses: What could this company be doing better? What processes of theirs could be improved?

Opportunities: Are there any new trends or upcoming events that are relevant to your industry? Identify them, and seize the marketing opportunity before your competition does.

Threats: Are there external factors such as new government regulations, declining customer interest, or industry shifts that are threats to your competitors’ success? If so, find a way to navigate these threats and avoid making the same mistakes as your competition.

Even if you’ve already done a SWOT analysis in the past, it’s important to reassess the playing field as you write your marketing plan. In particular, anticipate whether anything new is about to happen in the coming year or quarter, such as a change in government policy or the emergence of a new competitor in your market.

And, of course, keep an eye out for niches your competitors haven’t gotten to yet. For instance, if you’re selling products to new moms, a SWOT analysis might reveal that none of your competitors are creating products for new dads. In this case, that would be an opportunity for you to expand your audience, attract new customers, and grow your revenue.

As you create your SWOT analysis, use this free SWOT analysis template to guide you, and make it a part of your marketing plan:

02. Research your target audience

Just as you research your competitors, you’ll need to look into your target audience . This is the specific group of people at which your product or service is aimed - and, as such, they’re the primary audience of your marketing strategy.

If you’re unsure of who your target audience is, there are a few different ways to gather this information. First, think about which needs your product fulfills and which types of people it caters to. You can also use your SWOT analysis to point you in the right direction. Look at competitors’ websites, blogs and social media channels to determine the types of people they’re marketing to.

To hone in on your audience even further, analyze your existing customers to understand which kinds of people you’ve attracted in the past. Talk to your current and potential customers as much as you can. Get their feedback, use focus groups, and analyze the data to figure out their shared behaviors and characteristics:

Age: Does your product seek to address the needs of people of a certain age - for example, older adults or millennials?

Location: Are your target customers within a specific country or region? Where are they, and what languages do they speak?

Spending power: How much money are your target customers able to spend? Are they seeking out luxury, or could money be an issue when deciding whether to purchase?

Stage of life: Can you identify your target customers based on their stage of life, such as new parents, college students or retirees?

Hobbies and career: Can you group them based on certain hobbies, career paths, or other lifestyle interests?

Track this information in an orderly way by creating buyer personas , or detailed descriptions of specific types of customers. Each buyer persona should reflect both existing or potential customers, based on the factors above: demographics, location, job title and more.

Be sure to include this information at the beginning of your marketing plan, side-by-side your SWOT analysis, to provide a thorough assessment of the market in which your company is operating. Ultimately, these various audience types will represent customer segments - groups of people you can target with different marketing materials depending on their interests.

03. Set your goals and KPIs

Next, set your business’s goals. What do you want to achieve next quarter? How about by the end of this year? 5 years from now?

The more ambitious the goal, the more time, effort and money you should dedicate to it. Determine each goal, and break it down into small steps, either by month, quarter or year, depending on your time frame. Not only will this help you build a clear timeline, but it will also help you allocate your budget.

Once you divide up your big goals into small goals, consider how to measure them. In other words, how will you know whether you’re meeting your goals, or falling short?

This is where KPIs - key performance indicators - come into play. Essentially, KPIs are the specific metrics used to monitor your progress in achieving your goals.

For instance, if you want to create an active online forum for pop music creators, then your KPIs should be site visits, your number of active visitors, and your number of returning visitors. Your position in Google search results for niche keywords, such as “pop music creator” or “music production software,” would also be a relevant KPI.

Whichever KPIs you choose, include them in your marketing plan alongside your goals and write down the metrics you’ll use to measure your success. For example, if your KPI is to make more sales, you might want to track metrics like lead generation and conversion rate .

By checking your achievements every quarter compared to your KPIs, you’ll learn about the pace and abilities of your businesses. If you achieve your KPIs relatively easily, you can set more ambitious goals. On the other hand, if you’re falling short of your KPIs, you might consider recruiting more people to help you get there.

04. Write a unique selling proposition

If you were to give a 30-second marketing spiel to a potential customer, what would you say? Come up with a statement that would appeal to your target audience’s interests and increase demand for your business.

If you’re already a market leader that offers high-quality products, you can claim that you’re “the best solution for” a particular need. On the other hand, if you’re still a relatively small player in the market, you can position yourself as being innovative and groundbreaking - the brand that offers fresh, modern solutions. Many smaller businesses tend to find that creative, funny, or even unorthodox branding gives them the attention boost they need from their audience.

When targeting multiple audiences, you may find it challenging to create a single message that resonates with everyone. One tip for attracting many types of customers at the same time is to create slightly different messages for each buyer persona. Going back to the product lines for new moms and dads, you may find that you need to split your messaging between a few different customer types:

New moms: Target them with the message that they need high-quality products for their babies.

New moms who want their spouse to be involved in childcare: Target them with a new message that they’d have more time to relax if their spouse also used the product.

New dads: Target them with a different message that these products can help them become good fathers and supportive partners.

Be sure to record this messaging in your marketing plan so that you can use it throughout your various promotional efforts.

05. Choose strategic marketing channels

Once you come up with your core messages, decide which marketing strategies you’ll use to spread the word. There’s an abundance of options here, both paid and free. Some popular paid channels include:

Social media ads (Facebook, Instagram and more)

Online ads on other sites

Press releases

Partnerships with other companies

Outreach marketing

Guerilla marketing

Email campaigns

Offline media such as magazine, billboard and radio ads

Facebook ads are a particularly effective option because they reach almost every type of audience and can be targeted based on demographics and interests. They’re fairly simple to make, especially if you already have a Facebook business page. And, depending on your website platform, you can even create Facebook ads directly through your site .

Paid channels are a reliable choice, but it’s also worthwhile to couple these efforts with free promotional options as well. These take a little more time to develop, but they’re also a valuable way to get more exposure and build a loyal audience. They include popular inbound marketing tactics such as:

Website SEO

Creating company social media pages

Being active in online forums and Facebook groups

When choosing what channels to use, it’s important to think about which ones will actually reach your target audience. If you’re marketing to elderly folks, for instance, then Instagram ads may not be the way to go.

Similarly, build a strategy for the timeline of your campaigns. Take into account any holidays and other special events, such as elections or the Super Bowl, that you can use to your advantage when crafting marketing content.

And remember - not all your campaigns will be planned in advance. You’ll need to set aside budget for on-the-fly campaigns, also known as real-time marketing (RTM). This involves taking advantage of precious opportunities like global events and new internet trends. For instance, the January 2021 Bernie Sanders meme was a great chance for companies to get easy attention, earn free media coverage, and go viral. Ikea even used the meme to promote its folding chair and oven mitts.

Pro tip: Once you’ve established the right channels and timeline, you may be eager to launch your campaigns right away - especially if unexpected marketing opportunities arise. Resist the temptation until you’re absolutely sure your product is ready, with at least 85% positive feedback from users. Asking for a second chance will cost you much more than nailing a great impression the first time around.

06. Brief your team

One of the main reasons to create a marketing plan is to develop a unified operation that your whole marketing department can participate in. For this reason, it’s critical that you keep everyone in the loop.

Update your marketing team, as well as the suppliers that create the marketing materials for you. The best way to ensure everyone is aligned is to create a marketing brief - a one-page document that summarizes the market research, company goals, messaging, and action items established in your plan.

You can use the marketing brief template below to create a quick, efficient overview of your plan. It includes guiding questions to help you analyze your competitors, determine your target audience, identify your KPIs, and craft a compelling company message. Fill out this document, and share it with anyone who works with you so that they’re on the same page about your strategy and goals:

07. Monitor your analytics

Once you start implementing your marketing campaigns, you’ll need to closely monitor the results. To ensure your strategy is effective, continuously track your KPIs and see how the numbers stack up against your goals. That will allow you to adapt the marketing plan based on the goals you’re achieving and those you aren’t. Customer analytics can help you in this process.

There are two places to monitor analytics: Google Analytics and your website.

Google Analytics can easily be connected to your company website, and it’s a helpful way to track your site visitors and evaluate the performance of marketing campaigns.

Wix Analytics is another useful tool that provides a comprehensive analysis of your performance, and it’s conveniently located within the Wix website dashboard. This tool allows you to create custom audiences based on their demographics, geographic location, or other defining features, and you can access it directly from your website.

Using these two tools, look at the data. If the numbers indicate that you aren’t meeting your objectives, brainstorm action items for how to improve. If, for instance, you notice that some of your website visitors are located in Europe, try creating a multilingual website; it may just help convert them into customers. Likewise, if you’re getting traffic to your website or blog but are lacking in conversions, try creating content campaigns around specific products.

Don’t be discouraged if, after two quarters, you aren’t reaching your goals. This happens to the best of us, and it’s simply an indicator that you’ll need to refine your marketing plan and go back to Step 1.

Marketing plan template

Now that you know how to create a marketing plan, use this marketing plan template to walk you through the process. It’s free for download and use, and can easily be adapted for any business.

Marketing plan examples

While the marketing plan template above provides you with everything you need, it may also be helpful to look at other examples for inspiration. If you’re seeking additional resources, use these marketing plan examples to guide you:

01. Marketing Plan Template from SBA

The Small Business Administration provides a highly detailed marketing plan template that can be downloaded as a PDF and easily adapted to suit your company. The plan covers all the must-haves, like an explanation of your products and an analysis of your target market, but it supplements those with finer details like location analysis and product packaging.

02. Marketing Plan Template Generator from HubSpot

Unlike most marketing plan examples, this isn’t a file that you print out and fill in. Instead, it’s an online generator - a fill-in-the-blank template that walks you through the creation process page-by-page. The generator feels almost like an AI bot, asking you to fill in your name and then replying “Awesome! It’s great to meet you, [Name]!” This is a great way to make the marketing plan process more dynamic and fun.

03. Marketing Plan Microsoft Word Template from More Business

The advantage of More Business’s marketing plan template is that it’s downloadable for Microsoft Word, allowing you to fill in each section directly on the document. The document not only contains different strategies that you can use to inspire your own marketing efforts, but it also comes with examples of tables and charts for your marketing plan.

04. One-Page Marketing Plan Template from SmartSheet

This template is available for download on Microsoft Word, Google Docs and SmartSheet, but we particularly like that it’s available as an Excel version. As a one-pager, it’s short and sweet - ideal for getting your marketing plan started without getting lost in too much detail from the beginning. It’s a helpful sheet for brainstorming, or for summarizing your marketing plan once it’s complete.

05. Marketing Plan Slide Deck Template from Slidesgo

This marketing plan template comes in yet another format - an attractive slide deck that’s downloadable for both PowerPoint and Google Slides. This includes all the essentials, but in a more visual format, making it a useful asset for turning your marketing plan into a presentation.

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How to Write a Marketing Plan For Beginners

• by Lightspeed

minute read

In this retailer’s guide to creating a marketing plan, we’re covering:

What is a marketing plan and why is it important?

• The differences between a marketing plan and a business plan

How to write a marketing plan

Get ready for the holiday rush..

Learn everything you need to know about how to prepare your retail business for the upcoming holiday season, including how to plan your marketing campaigns.

A marketing plan is a document that describes how you’re going to promote your business to customers. Creating one is important because it serves as a compass that guides your company’s marketing efforts.

Without taking the time to research your target market, check out what the competition is up to and formulate a marketing strategy, it’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day tasks and ignore your marketing efforts. Putting your marketing strategy down in writing helps you stick to your goals, and holds you accountable.

Plus, if you’re looking to bring business partners or investors into your company, they may ask to see your marketing plan in addition to your business plan .  

How is a marketing plan different from a business plan? 

A strategic marketing plan is different from a business plan because it focuses specifically on marketing efforts, whereas a business plan contains more generalized information about a company. While a business plan may include a section that summarizes the company’s marketing strategy, a marketing plan explores that strategy in depth.

Marketing plans and business plans also have a lot in common. Primarily, they both serve as blueprints for the company to follow. A business plan covers the overall strategy of the business, its organizational structure, financial standing and products and services. A marketing plan reveals competitive research, market research, audience personas and more. 

Without further ado, here’s an overview and in-depth look at how to write a marketing plan. Your marketing plan should include the following sections:

Business introduction

Swot analysis, competitive research, market research, audience personas.

• Branding and messaging

Marketing channels and strategy

Marketing team.

Use the introduction to your strategic marketing plan to provide an overview of the business. The business summary helps provide context to external stakeholders who may not be as familiar with your business as you are.

Include details like:

• What the business does
• How long it’s been around
• Where it’s located (if it has a brick and mortar presence ) and/or its URL
• What products it offers
• Mission statement and values
• Business model

If you already have a business plan, feel free to borrow the company introduction you’ve written for it for your marketing plan. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel!

Conducting a SWOT analysis simply means exploring your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal attributes, while opportunities and threats are external factors.

Here are some questions to ask as you complete this exercise, and sample responses:

Strengths : 

• Ex: We offer sunglasses in unique shapes that aren’t available anywhere else.
• Ex: Women’s accessories.
• Ex: The shop is in a prime location.

Weaknesses :

• Ex: It doesn’t have eCommerce capabilities yet.
• Ex: Men’s accessories.
• Ex: Staff to work busy weekend shifts.

Opportunities :

• Ex: Add eCommerce capabilities and a pop up shop in a new city to test out a new market.
• Ex: Expand into the children’s market by developing a sunglasses line for kids.
• Ex: More people are shopping online.
• Ex: High tariffs on Chinese imports have made our costs increase.
• Ex: Competitors are starting to offer similar styles at lower prices.
• Ex: Pandemic lockdown restrictions mean fewer people are shopping in person.

Do your research on your competition to find out:

• Which shops in your area offer similar products.
• Which eCommerce shops sell similar products.
• What competitors are charging for their products. Are your prices higher, lower or about the same?
• The advantages your business has over the competition.
• The advantages the competition has over your business.
• What marketing strategies the competition is using to attract customers.

Explain how your marketing efforts will match or stand out from the competition’s. Refer back to this competitive research developing your marketing strategy later on in the marketing plan writing process.

Conduct market research to find out what consumers want. There are a number of ways to collect such research, including:

• Informally observing customers while they shop and noting their behavior, what they buy, what they seem interested in but put back, etc.
• Asking customers to fill out surveys about their shopping experiences and what they want to see more of.
• Referencing the reporting tools built into your eCommerce platform or website.
• Hiring mystery shoppers : undercover customers who shop at your store, interact with sales associates and report on their experiences to you.
• Hiring a market research firm , which will use a number of the above techniques, plus focus groups, to find out what customers want.

Once you’ve conducted market research, you’ll be better equipped to figure out who your ideal customers are. Write buyer persona profiles to describe these customers and bring them to life. Give each customer segment a name and a back story, explain their challenges and behaviors and describe how you’ll market to these customers.

For example, one of your audience personas could be a millennial, stay at home dad named George who watches YouTube videos to keep up with the latest best practices in parenting. You’d market your organic, natural baby food to him by creating pre-roll video ads for YouTube and partnering with parenting vloggers to review and talk about your baby food.

Branding and messaging 

Brand guidelines are a critical component of any strategic marketing plan. Make sure to include:

• Your brand style guide , including visual identity components like your logo, colors and fonts.
• Messaging guidelines that cover the dos and don’ts of how you write about your brand. 

Now it’s time to combine all of your research and convert it into an actionable marketing strategy. Use this section of your marketing plan to describe which marketing channels your shop will be active on, and how you will use them to attract and retain customers .

Consider the following marketing channels, tactics and platforms:

• Get found online with digital marketing
• Organic social media: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok
• Social media ads
• Influencers
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Google My Business
• Leverage traditional marketing to attract customers
• Public relations
• Boost sales with in-store marketing
• WiFi marketing
• Signage and window displays
• Customer loyalty program

Check out these retail marketing tips to learn best practices for using these marketing tactics and platforms in your strategy.

Describe the financial considerations associated with your marketing strategy. What is your marketing budget for the upcoming quarter or year? How do you plan to split up that spend across marketing initiatives?

For example, you may have a $40,000 marketing budget for the year and plan to spend $20,000 on social media advertising, $10,000 on in-store marketing and $10,000 on hiring a public relations agency.

Include financial details from previous marketing campaigns you’ve conducted (like how much you spent), and insights you learned (like customer acquisition costs and return on investment). 

Write down who will be responsible for managing your business’s marketing efforts. Will you hire a full-time team member dedicated to marketing? Will an existing team member execute marketing strategies in a part-time capacity in addition to their regular duties?

If you plan on outsourcing marketing, will you hire a marketing agency to take care of all of everything, or will you engage several freelancers who have different areas of expertise, like influencer marketing or social media marketing for small business.

Knowing how to write a marketing plan can propel your retail business towards success

Do you need to write a marketing plan to run a retail business? No. But will having one help you understand your customers, competition, and opportunities and keep you focused? Absolutely. 

Whether you’re just starting your store or have had it for many years, it’s never to learn how to write a marketing plan, put your marketing research and strategy on paper and reap the benefits.

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What is a Marketing Plan & How To Write One? [Easy Guide]

What is a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a strategic guide that helps businesses map out their advertising and promotional strategies to attract prospective customers and connect with their intended audience. It offers clear and detailed direction on how to achieve business objectives through targeted marketing efforts. 

Marketing Plan vs. Business Plan

Understanding the distinction between a marketing plan and a business plan is crucial for any organization aiming to navigate the complexities of strategic planning and resource allocation.

• Marketing Plan: This is a focused document dedicated to the marketing segment of an organization’s strategy. It meticulously outlines the marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics that will be employed to achieve the desired market presence and customer engagement. 
• Business Plan: A business plan has a broader scope, encompassing every facet of the company’s operations. While it includes marketing, it also delves into finance, operations, human resources, and more, providing a comprehensive overview of the entire business. 

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

Differentiating between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan is essential for implementing effective marketing operations within a business. These two elements, while closely related, serve distinct functions in the marketing process.

• Marketing Strategy: This aspect defines the overarching approach and long-term vision for a company’s engagement in the market. Each element of the marketing strategy is designed to align with the company’s top-level goals and contribute to realizing its vision statement. In essence, the marketing strategy answers the “what” and “why” behind a company’s marketing efforts, outlining what the company aims to achieve and why those goals are important.
• Marketing Plan: In contrast, the marketing plan focuses on the “how” of reaching strategic objectives. It is a practical document that outlines specific actions, timelines, and resources required to execute the marketing strategy. It details the campaigns, channels, tools, and tactics that will be used to achieve the strategic goals outlined in the marketing strategy. 

3 Hours | 25 Modules | Beginner

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Learn from Inc. Magazine’s prize-winning editorial content about the basic concepts of digital marketing, including targeting, value proposition, and more.

Types of Marketing Plans

Marketing plans vary depending on their focus, scope, and objectives. Understanding the different types of plans is crucial for businesses aiming to target their marketing efforts and resources effectively. Here are some of the key types:

• Go-to-market/Product Launch: This plan is specifically designed to introduce a new product. It outlines the target audience, market entry strategy, and advertising tactics to be employed.
• Social Media : A social media plan is tailored to the unique dynamics of social media platforms. It details the advertising strategies to be used on these platforms, focusing on engaging with users and leveraging specific features to maximize reach and impact.
• General Marketing Strategic Plan / Annual Marketing Plan: This comprehensive plan covers a company’s overall marketing activities for the entire year. It encompasses various marketing efforts and campaigns, outlining a cohesive strategy that supports the company’s annual goals.
• Content Marketing Plan : Focused on content creation and distribution, this plan outlines the strategies, campaigns, and tactics for using content to achieve business objectives. It details how different types of content (blog posts, videos, infographics) will be used to attract and engage the target audience.
• SEO Marketing Plan: Dedicated to search engine optimization, this plan outlines the strategies and actions to improve a website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). It focuses on keyword research, content optimization, link building, and other tactics to drive organic traffic to the website.

Benefits of a Marketing Plan

Having a structured plan is invaluable. It acts as a strategic roadmap, guiding businesses toward achieving their goals through well-organized and monitored marketing activities. 

Here are five important benefits of creating a marketing plan:

• Goal Setting: It allows your business to define clear marketing objectives and set measurable targets. This facilitates focused efforts toward lead generation, sales increase, market share expansion, brand awareness, and customer acquisition.
• Strategic Direction: The plan provides a detailed outline of your promotional strategy, helping identify the target audience, their preferences, and the best methods to reach and engage them effectively.
• Competitive Advantage: A plan helps you articulate and leverage your unique selling proposition (USP), ensuring you stand out in the market and secure a competitive edge.
• Consistency and Integration: The plan fosters consistency and integration in marketing efforts, ensuring a unified brand message and customer experience across all marketing channels and touchpoints,
• Long-term Sustainability: A comprehensive plan not only focuses on immediate goals but also lays the groundwork for sustained growth and adaptability to market evolution, customer demands, and emerging trends.

How To Write a Marketing Plan

• Create a mission statement

The foundation of any effective marketing plan begins with a clear and concise mission statement. This crucial step sets the stage for all subsequent planning by articulating the core purpose and direction of your company’s marketing efforts. A mission statement serves as a compass, guiding your marketing strategies and ensuring they align with your organization’s broader goals.

Developing a mission statement is more than just a formality; it’s a strategic exercise that clarifies your marketing vision and sets a purposeful path for your team. With a compelling mission statement in place, you can craft a plan that resonates with your audience and drives your business toward its long-term objectives.

• Set your goals/KPIs

Establishing clear goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) is a pivotal step in crafting a marketing plan that aligns with your company’s value proposition and ensures measurable success. This stage involves setting financial and non-financial objectives to guide your marketing efforts and evaluate their effectiveness.

Marketers who set specific goals are significantly more likely to report success. By defining financial and non-financial objectives, you create a comprehensive framework for guiding your marketing strategies. This dual focus not only drives economic value but also fosters qualitative improvements in your marketing efforts, ensuring a balanced approach to achieving your company’s vision.

• Identify Your Target Market

Pinpointing your target market is a crucial step in any marketing plan. Understanding who your product or service is for and why forms the backbone of your marketing efforts and influences decisions on marketing channels, content creation, and overall outreach strategies.

A key outcome of market research is the development of buyer personas. These semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers are crafted based on real data and insights about your existing clientele. Buyer personas detail your target market’s characteristics, needs, and motivations, offering a detailed profile that guides your marketing strategies.

• Conduct Competitive Analysis

Conducting a competitive analysis is integral to crafting a robust marketing plan. This process involves identifying your main competitors, understanding their strategies, and evaluating how your business can establish a distinctive and superior position in your niche. Through this analysis, you’ll gain insights into the competitive landscape, helping you to leverage your own strengths and identify areas for improvement.

Understanding both the internal and external factors that influence your market positioning is crucial. They include:

• Internal factors: Examine what could impact your competitive advantage, such as your team’s expertise, proprietary technology, or customer service practices.
• External factors: Look beyond your immediate competitive environment to broader market conditions that could affect your position. This includes economic trends, regulatory changes, and technological advancements.
• Economic considerations: Assess how the current economic climate might influence consumer purchasing behavior and, consequently, your market strategy.
• Sociological trends: Understand shifting societal values, lifestyles, and consumer behaviors and how they offer new market opportunities.
• Industry trends: Keep an eye on overarching trends within your industry, including emerging technologies, shifts in consumer preferences, and new regulatory frameworks.
• Set Your Budget

Your marketing budget is the planned amount of money you’ll spend to achieve your marketing goal. Knowing the financial resources you have available for marketing activities allows you to craft a plan that maximizes impact while maintaining fiscal responsibility. This financial foresight prevents overspending and ensures that every dollar spent contributes to achieving your marketing objectives.

This overview should include all sources of funding and any constraints or stipulations attached to them. Having a comprehensive understanding of your financial resources sets the groundwork for all subsequent planning and decision-making.

• Execute your Plan

Execution involves the detailed scheduling of marketing activities, assigning responsibilities to team members, and setting deadlines that align with the marketing plan’s timelines. It’s about bringing the plan to life through a series of coordinated efforts, from launching advertising campaigns to engaging with customers on social media platforms. This phase is where the theoretical aspects of the plan, such as target audience engagement and brand messaging, are put into practice through concrete actions like content creation, digital marketing, and promotional events.

In conclusion, a well-crafted marketing plan is the linchpin of successful marketing efforts, offering a strategic blueprint that guides businesses through the intricate landscape of market engagement and customer interaction. From the initial stages of understanding the marketing plan’s scope and its relationship with the overarching business strategy to the detailed planning and execution of marketing activities, each step is vital in steering an organization toward its desired market position.

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Create a Marketing Plan [+20 Free Templates]

Written by: Mahnoor Sheikh

In this article, you'll find a step-by-step guide on how to create a  marketing plan that will work for almost every kind of business. We've also included 20+ free marketing plan templates throughout the post to help you get started on the right foot.

Here's a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit marketing plan templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more below:

Want to skip the tutorial? Create your marketing plan right away with Visme. Use ready-made marketing plan templates , download them as a PDF or share online.

Better yet, use Visme's AI Document Generator to create a fully designed marketing plan that aligns with your content. Prompt the generator with what you’re looking for, choose one of the styles and let the AI do its magic. Afterward, you can customize and finalize as you wish.

Table of Contents

What is a marketing plan, types of marketing plans, 10 marketing plan templates to get you started, why your business needs a marketing plan, how to create a marketing plan, marketing plan examples, marketing plan faqs.

A marketing plan is a roadmap that helps you set goals, understand your target audience and optimize the impact of your marketing campaigns.

• There are several types of marketing plans depending on the objective. Some examples include social media marketing, influencer marketing, video marketing, and email marketing.
• Your business needs a marketing plan to understand your business, align marketing goals with business goals, ensure everyone is on the same page, stay focused on what’s important and make better decisions.
• Learn how to develop a marketing plan in 7 steps, starting with the executive summary and ending with a digital document ready to share with a live Visme link.
• Discover 20 ready-to-use templates for different marketing plan types and get started straight away.

In simple words, it helps you get a clearer view of the what, why and how of all your marketing activities.

A good marketing plan also helps you communicate the “big” strategy and the different tactics involved to your marketing team . Last but not least, it lets you track the success of your campaigns.

A marketing plan should ideally include:

• Your long-term and short-term marketing goals
• A description of your target audience or buyer persona
• One or more high-level marketing strategies and tactics

Take a look at this one-page marketing plan template as an example.

Create your Marketing Plan with this easy-to-edit template! Edit and Download

If your plan is more detailed, you can also consider including:

• An overview of the current market situation
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Any budget or financial considerations
• An execution timeline or roadmap

A marketing plan is usually presented as a PDF document, but you can also whip up a more creative version of it. For example, you can create an infographic , presentation and even an interactive web page to share your plan.

Or you can create a single-page marketing plan similar to the one above.

Scroll down to the end of this post to access seven full marketing plan templates.

Marketing Plan vs. Business Plan

Marketing plans and business plans are both essential pieces of business strategy, but their purpose is different. The terms are often used interchangeably or together: marketing business plan. But each plan is different and here's what sets them apart.

Business plans cover a business's overall strategy, from the branding strategy to the company-wide marketing strategies. A marketing plan solely concentrates on a specific marketing strategy or a branch of the overall department.

For example, one marketing plan can be for digital marketing strategies, while another can be for billboards. Likewise, a marketing plan can be for a single campaign, covering all marketing channels.

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

A marketing strategy and a marketing plan are key pieces in the company’s marketing puzzle. However, they serve different purposes.

A marketing strategy is the overall framework guiding a company's marketing efforts. It outlines how your organization will position itself in the market, target ideal customers, and create value for them. A marketing strategy is often long-term and forms the foundation for all your marketing activities.

A marketing plan is a detailed roadmap for organizing, executing and tracking your marketing strategy within a specific timeframe. It provides a step-by-step guide for achieving specific objectives, such as increasing sales, improving brand awareness, or entering new markets.

Simply put, a marketing plan translates your strategy into actionable steps with timelines for implementation and metrics for measuring success.

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

Just as there are several types of marketing strategies, there are numerous types of marketing plans. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Quarterly or Annual Marketing Plan

Quarterly and annual marketing plans are high-level plans for all the marketing activities that will happen in the next quarter or year. From this overarching plan, your team will create smaller, more detailed plans according to specific strategies. These could be daily, weekly or monthly marketing plans.

Social Media Marketing Plan

Social media marketing plans highlight the goal and objective of a brand’s activities on social media that are geared toward marketing. This plan includes campaign information, repurposing guidelines across social media channels and who’s in the social media team.

Content Marketing Plan

A content marketing plan outlines all the content pillars for the brand and what content types need to be created for each pillar. Any content marketing strategies planned out for the brand’s content are detailed in the plan, along with a roadmap and goals.

New Product Launch Plan

In a new product launch plan, the pages lay out all the steps toward a successful launch. Separated into pre-launch, launch and post-launch, the different teams will know what they need to do to complete the plan’s objectives.

Growth Marketing Plan

Growth marketing plans are specifically geared toward brand growth. This plan document lays out all the strategies to undertake in order to grow the brand name online, locally or some other way.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing plans concentrate on outlining all steps to implement an influencer strategy. Sections include the list of potential or chosen influencers and what will be asked and expected of them to reach the plan’s goals.

Market Penetration Marketing Plan

A market penetration marketing plan highlights all the activities involved in marketing existing products to existing customers.

This marketing strategy is considered the most popular in business models. Some examples include discounts on favorite products or new features and updates.

Market Development Marketing Plan

In market development plans, existing products are marketed to new customers and niches. These strategies focus on business objectives like developing distribution channels and increasing brand awareness.

Product/Service Development Marketing Plan

Product development plans outline the activities dealing with marketing new products to existing customers. These marketing plans include examples such as product launches and market insertion plans.

Diversification Marketing Plan

In diversification, marketing plans focus on strategies to launch and promote new products or services to new markets and customers. These marketing plans are on the ambitious side.

Need help putting together a full marketing plan?

Here is our handpicked collection of 10 marketing plan templates for various types of businesses.

Pick the one that best fits your industry and start customizing it in the Visme editor right away. Replace the colors, fonts, text, images, icons and more with a few clicks. Use the dynamic fields option to edit repeating content across slides and create more efficient templates for your team with custom dynamic fields.

You can also tap into a free library of stock photos and add animated characters, illustrations and gestures for advanced customization.

If you’re still on the fence about using Visme for your marketing plans, look at what one of our users has to say:

“I feel that for anyone who wants to improve efficiency and effectiveness at the workplace, VISME gives you the extra edge to take things forward.

It's an apt tool for quickly converting your thought process into a unique communication.” - Autumn | Finance Manager

1. Real Estate Marketing Plan Template

This tailored marketing plan template is perfect for all kinds of real estate and property businesses, complete with a professional “About” section and SWOT analysis.

It has a modern feel to it with a clean layout and corporate color scheme. You can easily switch it out for your own brand colors if you want.

2. Social Media Marketing Plan Template

A good social media strategy needs a marketing plan of its own, which is why this template is a must-have for any business trying to win at this game.

Customize this social media marketing plan template to lay out your goals for the next year or quarter, and outline the key points of your strategy for each social channel.

Add a dose of interactivity by creating a clickable menu or building an interactive table of contents. Interactive plans make a positive impression on team members and stakeholders, improving work satisfaction and productivity.

3. Digital Marketing Plan Template

Create your Marketing Plan with this easy-to-edit template. Edit and Download

Create an actionable marketing plan covering your digital channels with this detailed template.

This digital marketing plan has a classy design and layout, and features key headings like an executive summary, a SWOT analysis, key performance indicators and even a nice table of contents.

4. Product Marketing Plan Template

Creating an effective product marketing plan requires in-depth research of your target market, company strengths and weaknesses, as well as an effective marketing plan design.

This product marketing plan template covers all those basics, along with a detailed budget planner that you can edit with your own financial data.

5. Personal Marketing Plan Template

Hiring someone to help build a powerful personal brand?

This personal marketing plan example is perfect for that purpose. It’s a simple, three-page document with a professional resume detailing skills and experience, followed by a goals page.

6. Marketing Plan Presentation Template

This marketing plan presentation template is a great way to share your marketing goals, SWOT, strategy, timeline, deliverables and more with your team and the management.

You can easily get the slides printed later and share the copies with your team. Edit this marketing plan presentation online in Visme and create a slideshow that's powerful and effective.

7. Retail Marketing Plan Presentation Template

Here is another marketing plan presentation template you can use. This presentation template is especially relevant and useful if you're in the retail business.

Customize this marketing plan template online and download it in PDF or PowerPoint format, or save the slides separately in image format. You can also present this presentation online using a link — no downloads needed!

8. Restaurant Marketing Plan Template

Designing a marketing plan doesn’t have to be daunting. With this template, you can create a comprehensive marketing plan for your food business, whether it’s a small cafe, a big fancy restaurant or a fast food joint.

This marketing plan example features stock photos of food that you can replace with your own. Additionally, you can edit any images with the AI Edit Tools to remove backgrounds or unwanted objects or upscale/unblur less than perfect photos.

This template also has a versatile design that can be tailored to your own brand style and even an entirely different industry.

9. Content Marketing Plan Template

Content is a key element of inbound marketing. This content marketing plan template is carefully designed to match the needs of SaaS and other businesses that want to focus on taking their content strategy to the next level.

If your marketing goals are to drive traffic, generate leads and grow sales through publishing insightful content , this marketing plan will help you organize your editorial calendar.

Take advantage of the fact that you’re already logged in to Visme, and use the resources at your disposal to execute a content marketing plan.

Design blog graphics, infographic visuals, social media content and videos right inside your Visme editor. Share and schedule posts to social media directly from the integrated social media calendar .

10. Marketing Plan Infographic Template

If you're not looking to create a detailed or formal document with several pages, this to-the-point marketing plan infographic template is a great pick.

It's a quick way to share the marketing plan for a one-off project and contains all the necessary details.

I’ve already mentioned how a marketing plan can help you better understand your company’s marketing goals and how to achieve them, but that’s not where the benefits end.

A well-researched marketing plan can help you:

• Understand your business. Conducting thorough research on current market conditions and where your company stands can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business, as well as new opportunities.
• Align marketing goals with business goals. Without a plan, it can be easy to lose your sense of direction. A marketing plan helps you ensure that your marketing goals are aligned with the vision, mission statement and goals of your business.
• Ensure everyone is on the same page. Having a working document of your marketing makes it easier for not just your team, but also the entire company to work together towards a common goal.
• Stay focused on what’s important. A marketing plan is a constant reminder of your goals and strategies, which keeps you from getting sidetracked.
• Make better decisions. Planning ahead of time can prevent you from making hasty decisions when difficult situations arise.

Hey marketers! Need to create scroll-stopping visual content fast?

• Transform your visual content with Visme’s easy-to-use content creation platform
• Produce beautiful, effective marketing content quickly even without an extensive design skillset
• Inspire your sales team to create their own content with branded templates for easy customization

Sign up. It’s free.

There’s no one way of creating a marketing plan, but there are some key components that should go inside a winning one. Follow the steps below to create an effective marketing plan.

1. Start with an executive summary.

The executive summary usually goes at the beginning of your marketing plan. It’s basically a short summary or brief overview of your company and the key takeaways from the entire marketing plan.

Here’s an executive summary template you can edit and use for your own business.

The template above is a great example of an executive summary that highlights the key function of a business and the purpose of its marketing plan.

You can also include company achievements and future plans for your business in your summary.

Remember, your executive summary should be concise and to the point. Instead of boring your readers to sleep, it should grab their attention and get them excited about the rest of the plan.

2. State your company’s mission, vision and values.

Before you dive into all the marketing stuff, it’s a good idea to revisit your company’s values, vision and mission. This helps put all the information inside your marketing plan into perspective.

It answers the question of why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Here’s a neat mission, vision and values template to edit and use.

For anyone who reads your marketing plan, this section is important to educate them about the ultimate aim of your business so they can make better sense of your marketing goals, activities and future plans.

3. Identify the market and competition.

The next step is to build a marketing plan is back it up with solid research.

This is often achieved by analyzing your current market situation with a market analysis , by studying your competition and most importantly, looking into your own company’s strengths and weaknesses.

Here’s a market share template that can help you visualize that information and share it with your colleagues and stakeholders.

You can customize this template according to your own brand colors and input your own information. Use it on its own as part of a marketing plan or in a report or presentation .

Here’s another cool design to help you present your market research. Use this SWOT analysis template to highlight your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Instead of adding a boring table that no one wants to read, use a well-designed SWOT like the one above to draw attention to your research.

Here's another worksheet-style SWOT analysis template that you can print out and fill, or edit using Visme before adding to your marketing plan document or presentation.

You can also conduct a SWOT analysis of your competitors, which takes us to another key component of your market research — the competitor analysis .

Studying your competition is crucial to the success of your business. You need to know what they’re doing, what’s working for them and how you can do it better.

Here are a few things to research about your competitors:

• Their marketing and leadership team
• Their growth and financials
• Their best-selling products or services
• Their top-performing blog posts (use a tool like Ahrefs or SiteChecker to do this)
• Their video marketing strategy
• Their social media marketing strategy

Here's a competitive analysis template you can use and add to your marketing plan.

A template like the one above can help you organize and visualize important information about your competitors. In turn, this can help you identify opportunities and set goals.

4. Define your target customer.

Differentiating the target audience and the target market will help you better understand the position of your business within the market. Therefore, it’s important to identify who your buyer or ideal customer is so you can create more informed and tailored marketing strategies.

Naturally, the target customer for every business is different. But the goal is the same — to increase customer awareness.

You may also have more than one kind of customer. For example, a clothing store could be making products for both teens and older women at the same time.

Check out this target audience template to visualize your various customer segments. Use it to better understand your potential customers' attitudes and habits.

You can edit this template and use it as part of your marketing plan layout or presentation. It’s a great way to present the different types of your audience in a way that’s easy to understand.

The pie chart helps identify which chunk makes the bigger part of your customer base so you can focus most of your marketing efforts in that area.

If you’re looking for a more creative approach, take a look at the buyer persona template below.

This infographic template is a fun way to visualize your buyer’s demographic details, habits and goals, i.e.,  whether they're interested in online learning options like digital marketing courses or if they prefer in-person.

Another cool way to create a customer persona is to design it like a resume . This is useful for adding more information in one page without cluttering up the design.

Here’s a resume-style customer persona template you can edit.

This type of buyer persona design makes use of icons and data widgets , like progress bars.

In the end, the goal of creating a buyer persona is to better organize and understand key information about your customer. Use the template that works best for your business.

5. Outline your marketing goals.

In this part of the marketing plan, you need to specify what you aim to achieve.

Outline your marketing goals and objectives, and make sure you use actual numbers instead of writing vague statements.

For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic , mention the exact target so you can track to see if you achieved it or not.

Here’s a marketing goals template you can use as part of your marketing plan.

Remember to create SMART goals for your marketing plan and strategy. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound.

In the template above, notice how the target is defined as a percentage. You can also add a deadline to your marketing goal to make it time-bound.

If you want to share your marketing goals in an infographic format, here’s another template you can edit and use for your own company.

The template above is a more detailed goals infographic with three different phases, which makes it ideal for SaaS companies and mobile apps.

6. Present your marketing strategy.

Now comes the good stuff. In this step, write down one or more marketing strategies and the tactics to execute for each one. Make sure you include:

• How to do it
• The channels to use

This is best presented visually so the entire team can understand each step. You can divide your activities into stages, and present them using a marketing strategy template like the one below.

Another way to present your marketing strategy is by attaching deadlines to it. This can be easily done using a timeline or a Gantt chart .

Another way to present your marketing strategy is with the help of a roadmap. A roadmap outlines the tactics involved in your overall marketing strategy, and can be designed to look similar to a Gantt chart.

Here's a marketing roadmap template you can use for your own business.

If you want to do things differently, you can also use an infographic to visualize your marketing strategy.

An infographic is eye-catching and can be added to any of your presentations and reports. You can even share it on its own with your marketing team or other colleagues.

Here’s a marketing infographic template that divides your execution strategy into four phases.

Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

Another way to visualize your marketing strategy is with the help of a mind map. Mind maps are great for providing your team with an overview of the different elements that are involved in your marketing strategy.

Here's a mind map template that shows how this can be done for a Twitter content marketing strategy.

You can easily build mind maps using our mind map maker .

Keep in mind that your marketing strategy should be actionable and detailed. Explain each step clearly and don’t leave out any information just for the sake of design.

7. Define your marketing budget.

Last but not least, detail your marketing budget considerations in your marketing plan.

This is important so you don’t lose sight of the financial aspect of things during execution and implementation. After all, marketing is costly and there are tons of hidden expenses involved.  You need a budget template to lay out your financial projections.

Here’s an editable marketing budget template you can use.

Including a detailed marketing budget also helps in hiring the right staff and choosing between paid resources so you don’t exceed a certain amount.

You’re probably wondering: What does a marketing plan look like? In this section, we’ll share 5 real-life examples of marketing plans from companies.

1. Visit Baton Rouge

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This marketing plan is an example of how to create a well-structured and eye-catching marketing plan. The plan has a sophisticated design adorned with captivating images and a rich blend of bright colors.

The proposed marketing plan starts with a situational analysis and review of the previous year. The following pages take a deep dive into key sections, like

• SWOT analysis
• Target Audience
• Overall goals
• Different marketing strategies

Each of the different marketing strategies has individual goals, strategies and detailed plans of action. Additionally, the plan features a comprehensive event calendar and evaluation criteria. This makes it easier for the marketing team to stay organized, implement and track progress.

2. Safe Haven Family Shelter

If you're looking for a template for a marketing plan that will be presented to internal stakeholders at all levels of your organization, this is a perfect example. Although created by a non-profit, it can be adapted for startups and growing businesses.

This comprehensive plan includes everything you need to get started, from SMART marketing goals and deadlines to action steps, long-term objectives, target audiences, core marketing messages and metrics.

This marketing plan example follows a simple format. The content is mostly presented in a list and tabular format, making it well-organized and easy to scan. Readers quickly grasp the organization's strategic direction for its upcoming marketing initiatives.

3. University of Illinois

This detailed marketing plan example is encased in a document format with a bold, eye-catching design. The stunning image and energetic orange color on the cover page immediately grab attention and communicate the brand's dynamic personality. This comprehensive market plan example from the University of Illinois has three key sections.

• Section I provides context on population definitions, admissions funnel stages and core knowledge of the students informing their strategy.
• Section II captures upcoming market research efforts that will inform future strategy.
• Section III takes a deep dive into their strategic plan. This includes objectives, detailed marketing programs to achieve those objectives, and success metrics.

We love that the plan effectively dissects the high-level components of its overall strategy and pairs them with concrete, actionable marketing tactics. Another standout feature is that the pages are filled with compelling visuals, engaging copy and informative graphs and maps that convey their strategic vision and roadmap for marketing efforts.

4. Wright County Economic Development

One of the standout features of the plan is its ease of readability. The sections are clearly organized, allowing readers to quickly scan and identify the most relevant information. It contains key sections, including partners, goals and marketing initiatives—attraction, retention and community relations.

Additionally, the plan offers a thorough breakdown of projected costs per marketing initiative, a crucial detail for upper-level management and stakeholders. This feature makes it easier for decision-makers to understand the financial implications of the proposed plan and allocate resources accordingly.

Overall, Wright County Economic Development's plan serves as a valuable example for marketers looking to develop a practical and effective marketing plan.

5. Visit Oxnard

Being a leisure and lifestyle business, Visit Oxnard infuses captivating designs and vibrant photos that showcase the beauty and excitement of landscapes, landmarks, adventure and resorts. Their innovative plan puts a spin on traditional tourism marketing by focusing on the business side of travel.

This marketing plan example begins with a marketing plan overview, company overview, mission, and goals. Then it dives deeper into the framework and approach the company will take to continue on a positive path forward to economic recovery and growth. Other key sections highlighted in the plan include

• Market Research and Findings
• Customer Personas
• Diverse Offerings
• Earned Media
• Owned Media
• Industry Relations and more

This approach by Visit Oxnard demonstrates how creating actionable marketing plans can help forward-thinking companies capitalize on untapped opportunities.

Still not convinced about the use of marketing plans for your business? Here are some frequently asked questions that can help you make a final decision.

Q. What Is a Marketing Plan Template?

A marketing plan template is a customizable document with placeholder content that can help you get started quickly. Creating a marketing plan from scratch takes too much time. Using a template not only sets up you for faster designing but it also inspires creativity.

Beautiful internal communications inspire delight in coworkers, making it more enjoyable to check off lists and follow processes. Marketing plans on plain white documents just get lost in email threads. Visme marketing plan templates are the solution.

Q. What Is an Executive Summary in a Marketing Plan?

The executive summary in a marketing plan is a superpowered table of contents. In an executive summary page or slide, you share the notable points to be discussed in the subsequent content of the plan in question. An executive summary is comparable to the Quick Read section at the top of our articles.

Q. What Is a Top-Down Marketing Strategy?

A top-down marketing strategy is a traditional strategy with a broad target and brand messaging. Think of the marketing funnel and how at the top it’s wide open. Top down marketing strategies work up there, catching as many people as possible with a message that appeals to a wide audience.

Q. What Is a Bottom-Up Marketing Strategy?

A bottom-up marketing strategy is a targeted strategy for a product or service that meets the needs of a specific audience. Bottom-up marketing strategies are more common in small businesses and startups that don’t yet have large audiences.

Q. What Are the 4 C’s of a Marketing Plan?

The 4C’s of marketing are:

• Customer: The most important factor in a marketing strategy. It’s essential to know what the customer needs and wants.
• Cost: Includes all expenses related to marketing and selling products and services for the company.
• Convenience: The customer shopping experience must be as simple as possible for the client.
• Communication: Includes all interactions between the brand and the consumer. Brand touchpoints are excellent communication opportunities.

These four are called the "marketing mix. Another marketing mix you should know is the 4 Ps or the Four Principles of Marketing .

Q. What Makes a Good Marketing Plan?

For a marketing plan to be good, it doesn’t take much. But for a marketing plan to be great, make sure you check off this checklist:

• Develop targeting and positioning assessments for the strategy and give clear guidance in the marketing plan as to how the messaging will be targeted in marketing copy.
• Share clear promotional tactics per channel, touchpoint or activity. Explain how to repurpose marketing content with intent and tailor promotions to their destination.
• Include a scope assessment and a simple scope management plan for the marketing strategies in the marketing plan.
• Keep the marketing plan document alive by updating and referencing it during the strategy’s lifecycle. Be ready for pivots and changes in the scope.
• Turn your marketing plan into an online digital experience that no one needs to download, print or keep in storage. Visme has an endless array of features to help you create the most engaging business communication.

Q. What Is the Most Important Part of a Marketing Plan?

The most important part of a marketing plan is the targeted consumer, specifically their needs and wants. The entirety of your marketing plan serves the purpose of how your company will use marketing strategies to sell solutions to the customer.

Q. How Can I Make a Marketing Plan With My Team?

With Visme, you can create marketing plans collaboratively in a number of ways. Brainstorm and strategize the plan together in the infinite whiteboard and then design together in the editor. The Visme whiteboard can have multiple pages to control brainstorming iterations and organize meeting results.

Invite members to the whiteboard or workspace by clicking the person+ icon on the top right. They’ll need to have their own Visme account to access the editor or whiteboard you’re inviting them to.

You can also use the workflow feature to assign entire projects or specific tasks to different team members and work on a project together. Keep track of what’s being worked on, leave feedback comments and support each other through the process.

Q. Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan: What’s the Difference?

A marketing strategy is a document or plan that outlines how your organization will deal with market positioning, ICPs and other strategic aspects of a marketing scheme. They can be long- or short-term strategies that form the foundation of all marketing activities.

Marketing plans, on the other hand, are detailed roadmaps that organize how to execute and track a marketing strategy. They provide a guide to achieving the outlined objectives. Marketing plans turn your strategy into an actionable, step-by-step timeline and a foundation for measuring success.

Create a Winning Marketing Plan for Your Business

For most businesses, operating without a solid marketing plan results in ineffective campaigns, reduced ROI and unexpected costs. And nobody wants that.

A custom marketing plan helps you align your marketing objectives and activities with your overall business goals and brings entire teams together on the same page.

Ready to create a professional marketing plan of your own? Get started from scratch or choose one of our marketing plan templates today.

Create effective marketing plans that makes you stand out using Visme

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About the Author

Mahnoor Sheikh is the content marketing manager at Visme. She has years of experience in content strategy and execution, SEO copywriting and graphic design. She is also the founder of MASH Content and is passionate about tea, kittens and traveling with her husband. Get in touch with her on LinkedIn .

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How to Write a Marketing Plan

Experts know that careful planning is integral to marketing success. here's your guide to crafting a thorough marketing plan - and learning more about your customers along the way..

There's no question that most entrepreneurs thrive on action. But as the Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero so aptly put it: "Before beginning, plan carefully." Careful planning is precisely the goal you should have in mind when crafting a marketing plan for your company's products or services. "A marketing plan is good for focusing your energy towards the right actions that will deliver on what you want to accomplish," says Deb Roberts, CEO of Synapse Marketing Solutions  based in Denver. "The whole idea of doing one is to try and understand your customers and take action towards delivering your product or service to them." And there's no need to over-think it, Roberts says. For small businesses, it's best to think of a marketing plan as a way to tell a concise story that covers all the key points of your strategy going forward. So keep it brief: The best plans can be told in 15 pages or fewer. Before you begin, it could be helpful to establish three items: A completion date : A deadline you set in advance for when you want to complete your first draft of the plan. It's important to remember that establishing an effective plan will be an iterative process. You can count on your plan changing. The responsible parties : Establish your team's roles and responsibility. In other words, make sure you identify who is doing what and when they need it completed. Your budget : When it comes to putting together a marketing strategy, it's critical to establish ahead of time how much do you have to spend, as that can have a major impact on the strategies you decide to implement. Once you have these items in hand, you're ready to put your plan together. Dig Deeper: Inc.com's Marketing Plan Guides Writing a Marketing Plan: Setting Your Objectives The first step in developing your marketing plan is to establish the marketing objectives that will accomplish your business goals, says Karen Albritton, president of Capstrat , a marketing agency in Raleigh, North Carolina. "If your business goal is to grow revenue, what marketing objective will accomplish this? Adding more customers? More repeat customers? Higher expenditures?" One of the steps you can take to create your objectives is to first create a vision statement , which is basically the long-term mission for your business that is both timeless and immediately inspiring for organization stakeholders. Every business has is it's own brand , so in setting your vision, you should identify the attributes of your product or service that define the brand and its long-term positioning. Another step that can help set objectives is to perform a S.W.O.T. analysis, where you identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing your business. By conducting such an analysis, you should identify the key insights and strategic plans that will drive your business over the next one-to-five years. This includes understanding, your five C s-;the consumer, channel, company, competition, and climate-;deeply enough that when you finish, you should understand your point of difference in the market and where your opportunities lie," Roberts says. This should inform how you set your objectives. Once you have your vision and a better sense of the opportunities and threats facing your business, you can begin establishing S.M.A.R.T. objectives - specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound - that will help you drive to your tangible goal, such as profitable growth or market share. The key is to be realistic and specific, but also set a limited number of marketing goals related to what you think is your target market . Dig Deeper: Creating a Vision Statement Writing a Marketing Plan: Do your Research Many businesses fail to use research to shape their plans by conducting market research and market analysis , says Albritton. "It's either overlooked or perhaps small businesses feel it is a cost they can't afford," she says. Marketing plans that do not consider such research, however, will almost certainly waste money. The goal is simply to better understand who and where you customers are - something known as market segmentation . One of your primary goals in conducting research is to set focus areas, which are the discipline in your plan, says Albritton. "It's easy to fragment your efforts without discipline," she says. "So set a clear definition for the type of customers you want." At this point you should tackle your priority geography and begin focusing on the product and service offering you do best.

Conducting research these days, though, does not have to be expensive. Anyone can access a wealth of information online from sources such as trade associations, media organizations, chambers of commerce, and other business groups. In addition, customer focus groups or roundtables can be a valuable - and relatively inexpensive - form of research.

Dig Deeper: How to Profit from Market Research Writing a Marketing Plan: Define the Strategies you Need Strategies are the how in your plan, Albritton says. This is the point where you begin to address questions such as:

• How will you position your business against other business?

• What target markets are your best prospects to achieve your goals?

• How will you price your offerings to achieve your goals? Strategies should be also broad enough to capture several specific tactics, says Roberts, such as "Build Brand Awareness" or "Deliver Unmatched Customer Service." "Ultimately, all work done on the business should fall into these strategies,' Roberts says. "If the work doesn't satisfy the strategies, then it shouldn't be done." Dig Deeper: More Marketing Strategies from Inc.com Writing a Marketing Plan: Outline your Tactics Tactics are the what in your plan, says Albritton. Start by thinking about what you should do first to achieve the best results. That may be as simple as putting together a very good presentation. Start small and build tactics one-by-one. For each tactic you develop, note how it fits your areas of focus, your strategies, and your objectives.

An example of a tactic could be, according to Roberts, to reduce days from order to delivery as a way to accomplish a strategy of "delivering unmatched customer service."

You should also develop a forecast , for each tactic: Identify the expected volume of sales to flow from each marketing effort, the cost of goods sold attached to that sales volume, the budget, and any other financial figure that you expect to achieve as a result of accomplishing your plan. Dig Deeper: Developing a Forecast Writing a Marketing Plan: Build in Measurement for Each Tactic In solid plans, tactics are thorough, all the way down to details concerning execution and measurements of success, such as launch dates and expected reach, Roberts says. The point is that you need to begin measuring whether the tactics are successful at delivering your objectives. You may even choose to stagger your tactics so that you can evaluate their effectiveness and learn which ones work best for your business. Units of measurement can range from web traffic to retail foot traffic to increases in sales volume, Albritton says. Basically, you should strive to measure anything you can track to judge whether a tactic has made a difference. Dig Deeper: Valuing your Prospects Writing a Marketing Plan: Develop the Plan and Stick to It Your plan is only as good as its implementation, so also create a plan for precisely how you are going to execute on it, Albritton advises. Where appropriate, look to partner with other organizations to help with implementation. You may be able to find interns from nearby universities, for example. "These days, even high school students have amazing talents in technology and design," she says. If your plan includes advertising or events, sometimes the vendors will help with implementation. Depending on your area of business, you may also consider bartering services with other businesses. If you don't currently have the resources available to take action, find someone who does. Dig Deeper: Setting Realistic Projections Writing a Marketing Plan: Implement the Plan - and Stay Flexible Never forget that the opportunities and risks you established in your S.W.O.T. analysis might dictate that the objectives you've established in your plan might not happen "as planned," Roberts says. A whole host of variables could come into play that you never considered in the beginning, such as changes in consumer demand, channel expansion, customer contracts, competitive responses, and supply costs. That's why the best advice is to rough out a plan and then put it down in detail with action items on a monthly calendar, Albritton says. Set a time to review the calendar each month, assess results and determine next steps. Dig Deeper: Discipline vs. Flexibility and Creativity Writing a Marketing Plan: Additional Resources

American Marketing Association A source that some 30,000 marketers turn to every day for information/resources, education/training and professional networking.

2010 Marketing Plan + Calendar If you're looking for something to give you a daily to-do list in constructing your marketing plan, look no further. Also, check out the related blog here . Off-The-Wall Marketing Ideas: Jump-Start Your Sales Without Busting Your Budget By Nancy Michaels. Adams Media, 1999. A guide to incorporating creative ideas for selling products and services into a marketing plan. The Little Blue Book of Marketing: Build a Killer Plan in Less Than a Day By Paul Kurnit and Steve Lance. Portfolio, 2009. An easy-to-follow advice guide that encourages collaboration between any company's key players in marketing, research and development, sales, financial, legal, and senior management in constructing a marketing plan. Streetwise Marketing Plan By Don Debelak. Adams Media, 2000. A straightforward guide to putting your marketing plan together quickly and cheaply. Dig Deeper: Inc.com's Complete Marketing Resource Guides

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Start » startup, 5 alternatives to writing a traditional business plan.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by traditional business plans, or your business model needs a refresh, try one of these five business plan alternatives.

Starting a business without a plan is like taking a cross-country road trip without a map. You don't necessarily need a formal, traditional business plan. Many alternatives are less resource-intensive, simpler, and more flexible, making them ideal for pitch meetings.

Here are five alternatives to traditional business plans to help you get your strategy written down and ready to present.

Agile business plan

Traditional business plan methodology follows one long plan focused on a large-scale goal or strategy rather than adapting as changes occur. An agile business plan is more flexible, addressing changes by setting short-term plans based on your current needs.

An agile business plan complements a long-term strategy by focusing on immediate actions, broken down into manageable steps with deadlines. It should leverage current data and focus on both annual targets and the top company priorities, including departmental and individual objectives. You can adjust your plan based on market conditions and any changes that may arise to support your overall, long-term goals.

[Read more: 5 Steps to Adapting Your Business Plan to Stay Nimble ]

Business concept statement

A business concept statement is a summarized version of a formal business plan condensed into one to two pages. It outlines your overall plan, clarifies your solution to a consumer problem, and illustrates your business's value and market fit. A business concept statement makes it easier for businesses to understand their direction and develop a plan for a clear path forward without as much detail as a traditional business plan requires. A well-crafted business concept statement should start with a concise, one- to two-sentence summary of your idea. It should detail the specific gaps in the market and describe how your business aims to fill them.

The plan should also recap your business model, underscoring what sets your business apart. It should also include a review of your competitors and an outline of your marketing strategy.

A lean business plan aids businesses when they need to swiftly change course and update their plan as needed to stay on track with their goals.

Business model canvas

A business model canvas defines your target market and business strategy, highlighting financial details on a single page. This visual alternative is sectioned into nine parts:

• Key partners.
• Key activities.
• Key resources.
• The value proposition.
• Customer relationships.
• Customer segments.
• The cost structure.
• Revenue streams.

The business model canvas is designed to pinpoint a company's strengths and weaknesses. The left side of the canvas lists the internal operations; the middle details the value propositions, which outline customer benefits; and the right side of the canvas lists the external market and customer dynamics.

It's easy to share a business model canvas among employees and stakeholders, ensuring everyone is on the same page about company objectives and goals. Plus, it can easily be adjusted as needed to meet changing market demands.

[Read more: How to Write a Startup Business Plan ]

Lean business plan

Lean business plans focus on distinct areas of your business: your revenue generation plan, stakeholder responsibilities and deadlines, the overarching company strategy, and the strategy implementation plan. As its name suggests, this business plan doesn't require much writing. Instead, it uses short notes to highlight these specific areas of your business, helping to drive decision-making and growth.

This type of business plan is easy to follow — and relatively straightforward to create — regardless of the business's background. It enables you to closely monitor your business and its competitors. Due to its simplified nature, a lean business plan aids businesses when they need to swiftly change course and update their plan as needed to stay on track with their goals.

Startup pitch deck

A pitch deck is a visual representation, often presented using Microsoft PowerPoint or a similar presentation program, of your business model and strategy. This alternative is especially useful when pitching your business to investors or others. The visual aspect offers an enticing way to represent your company's mission and other necessary key details to aid stakeholders in making informed investment decisions.

For a pitch deck to be successful — and to keep your audience's attention — it must have a modern and sleek design reflective of your business's brand. It should be thorough, addressing all potential questions, while presenting information simply and clearly. The presentation should outline your target market's problems and your business's solution. It should also provide viewers with information about your audience, products, competitors, team, financials, and media strategy.

[Read more: How to Use AI Tools to Write a Business Plan ]

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How to Plan for a Marketing Campaign in 7 Simple Steps

• Email Marketing

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Need a clear way to plan for a marketing campaign? This guide will walk you through 7 simple steps to set goals, reach your audience, and measure your results.

Key Takeaways

Setting clear, measurable goals is essential for guiding a marketing campaign, allowing for alignment with business objectives and progress tracking.

Identifying and understanding the target audience through segmentation and persona development enhances engagement and campaign effectiveness.

Developing a compelling campaign concept and choosing the right marketing channels are crucial for driving audience action and achieving desired outcomes.

Set Clear Campaign Goals

Clear campaign goals are the cornerstone of any successful marketing effort. Without well-defined objectives, your marketing can quickly become disorganized and ineffective. Clear goals help prioritize tasks and allocate resources, ensuring every team member knows their target. Moreover, these goals motivate team members and provide direction, making it easier to measure progress and celebrate achievements.

Aligning your campaign goals with broader business objectives ensures relevance and cohesion. For instance, if your business goal is to increase market share, your marketing campaign plan might focus on customer acquisition or brand awareness. Develop specific, measurable goals for your marketing campaign, such as increasing website traffic by 20% in six months or generating 500 leads. Accompany these goals with key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress using a marketing campaign template.

Regularly review and adjust your goals based on performance insights. This flexibility allows you to respond to unexpected challenges and capitalize on new opportunities. For example, if a particular tactic is not yielding the expected results, you can pivot and try a different approach. Clear articulation of goals also improves communication among team members, ensuring everyone is aligned.

Ultimately, clear, measurable, and actionable goals form the bedrock of successful campaigns. By defining what success looks like and how it will be measured, you set your team up for a focused and effective marketing effort. This clarity and direction will guide your entire campaign from planning to execution.

Identify Your Target Audience

Identifying your target audience is a critical step in the marketing campaign planning process. Understanding the specific consumers most inclined to be interested in your product or service helps create campaigns that are more engaging and relevant. This allows you to tailor your messaging and marketing tactics to resonate with your audience, ultimately leading to a successful marketing campaign.

Audience segmentation is a powerful tool in this process. Dividing your audience into segments based on interests, purchase intentions, demographics, and other factors, you can connect with people more personally and drive higher engagement. For instance, a product launch marketing plan might segment the audience by age, geographic location, or purchasing behavior to ensure the marketing message is highly targeted and effective.

Creating detailed personas based on data and insights is crucial. These personas are representations of your campaign audience and help your marketing team understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. Continuously revising these personas as new data becomes available keeps your campaigns relevant and effective.

Incorporating these insights ensures that your integrated marketing campaign is targeted, flexible, and responsive to your audience’s needs. This approach nurtures existing customers and attracts new ones, helping you achieve your campaign goals and business objectives.

Develop a Compelling Campaign Concept

A compelling campaign concept unifies your creative assets, messaging, and marketing activities, encouraging your audience to take action. Without a strong concept, your marketing efforts may lack effectiveness and cohesion, resulting in a campaign that fails to resonate with your target audience.

Different types of campaigns should be considered when developing your concept. Seasonal campaigns leverage specific times of the year, such as holidays or back-to-school seasons, to maximize engagement. Evergreen campaigns maintain brand recognition by being relevant at any time. Each type has its advantages, and the choice depends on your business goals and audience preferences.

Simplicity is often key in campaign concepts. Extravagant ideas are not always necessary; sometimes, straightforward and relatable themes work best. The most important aspect is relevance to your audience. Creative content that addresses their needs, interests, and pain points will always be more engaging than a generic message. Campaigns targeting significant life events, such as weddings or graduations, can also create a strong emotional connection with consumers.

Developing a compelling campaign concept ensures that all elements of your marketing campaign are aligned and focused on a common goal. This alignment helps create a seamless and effective marketing strategy that resonates with your audience and drives the desired outcomes.

Choose the Right Marketing Channels

Choosing the right marketing channels is crucial for reaching your target audience effectively. Different channels, such as email, websites, blogs, YouTube, and social media, can engage various segments of your audience in unique ways. Prioritize growing channels relevant to your audience when planning a social media marketing campaign. For instance, if your audience spends a significant amount of time on Instagram, focusing your efforts there can yield better results.

Understanding where your audience spends their time is essential for maximizing your marketing strategies. Assess current media channels for performance and customer presence to inform your selection. Audience preferences and engagement levels should guide your decisions, ensuring your marketing efforts are directed towards the most effective platforms.

Emerging marketing channels like SMS and live chat are becoming more vital for real-time engagement and support. These channels provide immediate communication opportunities that can enhance customer experience and satisfaction. Content marketing continues to grow, focusing on delivering valuable content to attract and retain audiences. Choosing the right marketing channels ensures that your message reaches your target audience effectively.

A multi-channel campaign approach can be particularly effective, allowing you to engage your audience across different touchpoints. This strategy not only increases your reach but also reinforces your message, making it more likely to resonate with your audience and achieve your campaign goals.

Plan Content and Creative Assets

Content and creative assets are the heart of any marketing campaign. They are the vehicles through which your message is delivered to your audience. Different content formats, such as video ads, press releases, and guest blogs, can reach diverse audience segments. The key is to identify which formats will be most effective for your campaign goals and audience preferences.

Streamlining feedback and approval processes enhances efficiency in production. Set clear guidelines for reviews and approvals, ensuring all team members are aligned and the content meets the campaign’s objectives. Campaign assets like visuals, messaging, and design elements can be repurposed across various channels, maximizing their impact and reach.

Creative assets should fit the campaign’s purpose, capture attention, and communicate the message visually while being professional. Identifying deliverables is essential for planning and ensuring quality work. By carefully planning your content and creative assets, you create a cohesive and compelling campaign that engages your audience and drives desired outcomes.

Map Out a Detailed Timeline

Mapping out a detailed timeline is essential for the successful execution of your marketing campaign. A well-structured timeline allows for effective management of resources and budgeting within marketing projects. It outlines necessary actions and helps teams understand when tasks will be completed, ensuring that everything stays on track.

Creating specific milestones within your timeline aids in tracking progress and maintaining team motivation. These milestones serve as checkpoints, allowing you to assess whether your campaign is on schedule and make any necessary adjustments. Project management tools can help maintain organization throughout the campaign, providing visibility into task progress and facilitating collaboration.

Establishing deadlines for each step in your timeline motivates team members to meet their targets and ensures that tasks are completed on time. Regular check-ins and progress reviews are essential to keep tasks on track and meet deadlines. By mapping out a detailed timeline, you ensure that your marketing campaign is executed smoothly and efficiently, ultimately leading to better results.

Allocate Budget and Resources

Allocating budget and resources effectively is a critical component of a successful marketing campaign. Small businesses often face unique challenges in budgeting due to limited experience and tighter financial constraints. A common guideline for budget allocation is the 70-20-10 rule, where 70% is for proven strategies, 20% for new initiatives, and 10% for experimental tactics. This approach helps balance risk and innovation.

Digital marketing represents nearly 60% of total advertising expenditures, indicating a growing need for budget allocation in this area. Tracking return on investment (ROI) is critical to evaluating the effectiveness of budget spending in marketing campaigns. Marketing budgets should accurately reflect all projected marketing expenses, including advertising, staff costs, and necessary software.

In-house handling, external help, and team availability must also be considered in resource allocation. Hidden costs in marketing, such as research and product testing, should be factored into the overall budget to avoid financial surprises. Utilizing a marketing plan template can help streamline the budgeting process by tracking expenses across various activities.

Carefully allocating your budget and resources ensures that your marketing campaign is well-funded and has the necessary support to achieve its goals. This strategic approach maximizes the return on your marketing investment and drives successful campaign outcomes.

Execute and Monitor the Campaign

Executing and monitoring the campaign is where all your planning comes to life. Establishing a precise launch date and coordinating efforts to ensure all team members are aligned is crucial for a smooth execution. Organized marketers are significantly more likely to report successful campaign outcomes. Using project management tools can improve execution efficiency, helping to keep everything on track.

Regularly monitoring campaign metrics is essential to measure success accurately. Focus on metrics that truly reflect effectiveness and avoid vanity metrics. Regularly measuring your marketing efforts helps identify areas for improvement, enabling real-time optimization. Setting up checkpoints along the way will help keep the campaign on track and allow for necessary adjustments.

Utilizing analytics tools, surveys, and customer feedback tools helps measure KPIs effectively. Communicating progress, successes, challenges, and the need for adjustments with the team is essential for maintaining alignment and focus. By executing and monitoring your campaign diligently, you can ensure it stays on course and achieves the desired outcomes.

Measure Success and Analyze Results

Measuring success and analyzing results is the final step in the marketing campaign process. Tracking data against set marketing goals throughout the campaign timeline is essential for understanding its effectiveness. Monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) helps assess campaign progress and overall success. This involves comparing the results against the KPIs established during the planning phase.

After the campaign ends, it’s important to identify what worked well and what could be improved. Analyzing campaign data increases the value of the data, assesses results, and reveals audience insights. By looking at data after a campaign, you can discover trends and which initiatives performed well. These insights can inform future campaigns, helping you refine your marketing strategies and achieve better results.

Conducting a retrospective meeting with the team to discuss possible improvements is a valuable practice. Apply the learnings from a completed marketing plan to the next initiative. Track and report on the metrics established earlier during the campaign to measure overall success. If the campaign goal is not met, analyze the data to assess why the metrics fell short and make the necessary adjustments.

In summary, planning a marketing campaign involves several critical steps, each contributing to the overall success of the campaign. From setting clear goals and identifying your target audience to developing a compelling concept and choosing the right channels, each step ensures that your marketing efforts are targeted and effective. Allocating budget and resources, mapping out a timeline, and planning content and creative assets are essential for a smooth execution.

Executing and monitoring the campaign diligently, followed by measuring success and analyzing results, completes the cycle, providing valuable insights for future campaigns. By following these steps, you can create a cohesive and effective marketing strategy that drives your business goals and achieves desired outcomes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to set clear campaign goals.

It is essential to set clear campaign goals as they prioritize tasks, allocate resources effectively, and align marketing efforts with broader business objectives. This clarity provides direction and motivation for the team, enhancing overall campaign effectiveness.

How do I identify my target audience?

To identify your target audience, focus on audience segmentation and develop detailed personas based on relevant data and insights. This will help you pinpoint the consumers most likely to engage with your product or service.

What makes a compelling campaign concept?

A compelling campaign concept is one that unifies all elements while remaining simple and relevant to your audience, effectively encouraging desired actions. It must also align with your business goals to ensure its effectiveness.

Why is choosing the right marketing channels important?

Choosing the right marketing channels is essential for effectively reaching your target audience and maximizing engagement. Prioritizing channels that align with your audience’s preferences ensures that your marketing efforts are impactful and efficient.

How do I measure the success of my marketing campaign?

To effectively measure the success of your marketing campaign, track data against established marketing goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). This analysis will reveal what succeeded and what areas need improvement, offering important insights for future efforts.

Are you interested in finding out more?   Browse the rest of our blog   for other marketing tips. If you’re ready to create your first email, survey, sign-up form, or landing page then  register for a free trial   to get the tools you need to build powerful marketing campaigns!

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Swot Analysis Marketing Plan

SWOT. Some of you may already be smiling when you read that, while others may be as confused as ever. Of course, it is understandable that some would be able to know while others would ask themselves what that means. You may have encountered this acronym before. You could even have associated it with business or even marketing . Any kind of business that you may do, you would always encounter the acronym SWOT. But what does this acronym even mean and why is it so important for people to take notice of? Why is it necessary to even know or use this to our advantage ? 

In addition to that, when we hear the word marketing plan, we know that it may sound or look like an action plan or a business plan. Adding the terms SWOT analysis to the mix, we would get a glimpse of what this acronym stands for. Strength, Weakness, Objective, Threat. These are the key elements that make up the SWOT acronym. But how are they of use? Let’s check out these 4+ examples for a SWOT analysis marketing plan. 

4+ Swot Analysis Marketing Plan Examples in PDF

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2. Agricultural Products Swot Analysis Marketing Plan

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3. Sample Swot Analysis Marketing Plan

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4. Tourism Market Swot Analysis

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5. Swot Analysis of E-Marketing Plan

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What Is a SWOT Analysis Marketing Plan?

A SWOT analysis marketing plan is a kind of marketing strategic plan that follows the method of analyzing the marketing procedure. This marketing plan gives a way to analyze in very careful detail of how you are going to be planning your strategies and if these strategies are enough or are possible enough to be done. We know that a marketing plan helps by giving you the right strategy to use for lesser risks and more opportunities. To add the SWOT method, it makes your marketing plan have a bigger success.

The main purpose of a SWOT analysis marketing plan is to lower down any risks that may affect the business . The SWOT analysis also helps make you see the strengths of your marketing plan, any weaknesses that need to be addressed, the opportunities that can be helpful and the threats that need to be addressed immediately before they get worse. When using the SWOT analysis method for your marketing plan, this gives you more of an edge as you are able to see where to go and what to do in case you encounter roadblocks.

How to Write a SWOT Analysis Marketing Plan?

Following the SWOT method, your SWOT analysis marketing plan would be in good hands. So this is why you need to know how to write the marketing plan as well. Here are your tips to get you from point a to point b.

1. Know Your Marketing Strengths

Get to know the marketing strengths of your business. What does your business need and what can you do to get it done? List down the steps that you believe are your strengths. See to it that all the steps you write are doable. This would be where your strengths lie.

2. List Down the Weaknesses of the Marketing Plan

Just as you list down the strengths of your marketing plan, you should also write down the weaknesses. These weaknesses include the roadblocks, the issues, and the risks that may threaten your marketing strategy. These weaknesses do not necessarily mean that your marketing plan would be a failure, rather it is there to make sure that you have a solution or a way to make these weaknesses your strengths.

3. Get to Know the Opportunities

What are the opportunities that you can do to make your marketing strategy better? Ask yourself what you need and what the company or business needs to be better. Opportunities are everywhere, but you must also ask yourself first before writing them down. As not all opportunities are best for your business, and not all opportunities are really opportunities to help your business grow.

4. Address the Threats of Your Marketing Plan

What better way than to be able to know the threats that may cause issues than to see them through the SWOT method? Addressing the threats means that you know there are going to be a lot of risks present when writing your marketing plan. This also means that you know what you are going to be doing, how to address them, and how to resolve any issues that can hurt or destroy your plan. With that being said, list all the threats and see to it that each threat has its own solution.

5. Write the Whole Summary Using the SWOT Method

Last but not the least, from the SWOT method, you may begin writing your whole marketing plan. Being able to break down the SWOT analysis method helps you by putting together a better marketing plan complete with the details to help you find a good or better solution.

What is a SWOT method?

A SWOT method is defined as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This method helps by analyzing any potential of the four elements that make up the method.

How do you use the SWOT method on your marketing plan?

By breaking it into four counterparts, you are able to check which belongs to the first category, second category, etc.

Why is using the SWOT method for your marketing plan useful?

Apart from it telling you the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing plan, it also gives you the chance to see the opportunities that can make your marketing plan even better as well as to avoid any threats that may destroy your marketing and your business altogether.

Writing SWOT for your marketing plan helps a lot. It helps by breaking down your marketing plan and addressing the weaknesses and turning them into strengths. It helps by showing you the threats and to find opportunities to make them better.

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From Zero to Viral: Your 2024 Social Media Marketing Strategy Handbook

Perhaps one of the biggest human flaws is that we tend to be a bit impatient.

We speed date, eat fast food, use emojis instead of words, pay for overnight shipping, and get started with social media without knowing why or what to expect.

The world is moving faster than ever before. New trends and technology seem to appear overnight, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep pace. So, you get the temptation to jump on the social media bandwagon without a clear picture in mind of what you want to achieve.

But, diving in without a sense of what it encompasses and how it can benefit your business can do more harm than good.

This comprehensive guide will teach you everything you need to know about how to build a social media marketing strategy that delivers value to your audience and helps your business grow.

Is social media marketing about engagement or selling?

The importance of social media for business, but what is social media marketing, what are the benefits of a social media marketing strategy, how do you create a social media marketing strategy for your business, should you outsource or keep it in-house.

“Social media’s” main role in this online marketing game is revealed by the first word in the  phrase. It is about engaging first and selling second. It is human and social. Do this well and selling your product becomes easier. Your content will define your brand. It is achieved with images, videos and content that humanizes your business.

Social media’s value is not always captured by first-click or last-click attribution models. This value includes:

• Brand awareness
• Customer loyalty
• Engagement through social conversations
• Engagement due to content
• Offline channel transactions
• Personal referrals due to awesome content that adds value

These are hard to put a value against but they are real but soft metrics and should be in your marketing tactics tool box.

Not too long ago, businesses considered social media as just a passing trend, a distraction for kids with nothing better to do with their time than to scroll through endless news feeds.

Nowadays, it’s becoming clearer every day that social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools businesses have ever seen.

Get this: there are 3.77 billion global internet users, and over 2.8 billion active social media users (related: marketing statistics ). If social media were a country, it would be the biggest nation in the world.

We Are Social

Don’t forget that due to its gargantuan size, social media can provide you with more exposure and brand awareness than any other traditional marketing tool out there. Some of the most popular platforms have become such an integral part of our lives that we are willingly telling the world about our needs, preferences, problems, and burning desires.

Savvy businesses know how to benefit from the huge amount of data that users generate in real time. Sure, the numbers are overwhelming  – every day, people send over  500 million Tweets , upload  95 million photos and videos on Instagram, and like  4.5 billion posts on Facebook . But, behind this mammoth amount of information, there are valuable insights about your customers: who they are, what they like, and what they are willing to pay for.

Social media has made it easier for brands to eavesdrop on the conversations their customers are having and take part in the discussion. Social networks can also help you gather information about your audience and create better marketing messages that fit their profile.

So, there’s no question that social media can benefit your business greatly.

Imagine you are taking your first scuba diving lesson. You are given the equipment without being told what each item is, how it works, and why you need it. You wouldn’t feel too comfortable diving into the deep dark depths of the ocean without knowing how to differentiate between your submersible pressure gauge and your dive computer.

The same stays true for getting started with social media marketing without understanding what it is or how it works.

According to Wikipedia , social media marketing refers to the use of social networks to promote a product or service.

That’s a rather broad and superficial definition, don’t you think?

Let me take a swing at it.

For me, social media marketing refers to the use of social media platforms to identify and connect with key audiences in a meaningful way.

Sure, your goal is to increase brand awareness, generate leads, and promote your products or services. But, you can’t do that without building meaningful relationships with your network first.

Unlike traditional marketing, where you bombard prospects with sales messages – social media is a two-way process. You need to listen, engage, show empathy, become involved, and provide value if you want to create a seamless relationship with your prospects that can eventually lead to sales.

If you can’t do that, your social media marketing is likely to fail.

Social media has become such an integral part of a brand’s marketing efforts, that over  97% of marketers are using it .

Unfortunately, not all businesses seem to understand the benefits social media can bring. Recent studies show that about  50% of small businesses aren’t using social media marketing to promote their products/services.

That’s huge.

More than that, 25% of those businesses say that they don’t even plan to use social media in the future.

Apparently, there is a big gap between those who understand the value social media can bring and those who still see it as a passing trend.

If you’re one of the few businesses that struggle to see the value of social media marketing, here are some benefits to consider:

Brand recognition

Consumers tend to buy from the brands that they recognize. Social media can get your business in front of the right people and entice them to engage with your brand even when they aren’t ready to make a purchase.

Humanizing your brand

Establishing yourself as an authority

Social media is an excellent platform to share helpful content that proves your expertise. Respond to industry-related questions, participate in discussions, and share valuable resources with your network to become an authority in your niche.

Improving your customer service

You may think that social media is a waste of time, but your audience expects you to be there. 67% of consumers go to social media for customer service. And, this statistic is four years old; you can only imagine that the numbers have increased since then. But that’s not all: consumers expect brands to respond to their request within 24 hours or even sooner. So, while you’re ignoring social media, prospects are talking about your business online.

This list could go on forever. Social media can also help drive traffic to your site, assist with link building for SEO, keep an eye on your competitors, and so on.

But the real question is how can you build and implement a winning social media marketing plan that will reap all of these rewards.

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin

This quote has withstood the test of time, and it’s never been more relevant than in the world of digital marketing and social media.

Unfortunately, many business owners and digital marketers approach social media haphazardly with no clear direction. They “need to have a presence”, so they set up pages on every social platform out there, and start publishing inconsistent content.

If you want to make the most of the social media for your business, first you need to understand what you are trying to achieve. Then you need to create a structured and specific approach for moving towards that goal.

Here are the key areas you should consider when putting together a social media marketing plan for your business.

Social media research

You know that understanding your audience’s needs and expectations are vital to social media marketing success. So it’s important that social media research becomes a key part of your ongoing social media strategy.

And, it makes perfect sense if you think about it: the more you know about your customers, the easier it becomes to create content that caters to their specific needs.

There’s just one problem: the volume of conversation on social media is so big that it can feel like an insurmountable task to look for potentially valuable insights.

Don’t panic yet. With the right approach, social media research is doable.

First, start by asking the right questions.

Imagine that you are a web design company and want to know what people are talking about when it comes to photography sites. Some of the possible questions you may ask are: How are people responding to this topic? What themes are the most popular? What are the other web design companies mentioned when it comes to photography site themes?

Now that you have your questions and topics, create a list of the possible words and phrases your audience might be using to discuss this area of interest. Keep in mind that people often use slang on the internet or misspell words, so try to include some fringe key terms in your list too.

Jump on social media, starting with the most relevant platform for your audience, and use the search feature to see what people are saying about your list of topics.

Here is an example search using Twitter, where you can quickly filter the information by people, geography, language and so on:

Look at your results and refine the list. Exclude anything that isn’t relevant to what you’re looking for or doesn’t provide any useful information.

With your data at hand, try to answer some basic questions, such as what is the overall sentiment for websites in this space, what audience categories are the most vocal about it, and so on.

Don’t be afraid to take your research a step further and explore what’s beneath the surface.

This information can frame your approach to marketing your product or service offerings to this group of people.

Paid vs. organic social media

If done right, social media marketing can help you grow your business without burning a hole in your budget. Of course, that takes time, patience, and a lot of hard work.

Perhaps paid social media advertising is a better option when it comes to increasing brand awareness, traffic generation, and customer acquisition.

Well, let’s find out, shall we?

Organic social media marketing can help you put your business in front of the right audience for free (apart from your time of course). That is if you learn the rules of the game and play by them.

Here’s the thing: just as with search engine optimization, the algorithm for each social network changes regularly. Facebook, for instance, has significantly dropped the  average organic reach for businesses in recent years and it plans to lower it even more in the future. The social network has made it clear that it will only show content that is useful, relevant, and valuable.

Here is an interesting graphic from AgoraPulse that gives you an idea of the organic reach on Facebook broken down by industry:

It’s no surprise that retail is sitting smack bang at the bottom of that list, given the direct response nature of buying products online and how it can be directly attributed to Facebook advertising spend.

Yes, cracking the algorithm and getting your content in front of your audience is becoming increasingly difficult, but there are a few advantages to relying on organic social media rather than paying attention straight away:

• Being consistent can benefit your business long-term by developing authority;
• If you have a tight marketing budget, it’s much more affordable;
• Your audience likely trust “organic” engagement and messaging, more than they do paid advertisements;

On the flip side, paid social media advertising can help you achieve your goals faster, but its longevity is limited. A paid campaign will stop driving traffic and leads the moment you switch it off, but evergreen social media content can generate ROI indefinitely.

In the end, there’s no absolute winner. You need to look at your metrics and budget to decide which option fits your business best. The reality is that each of the social networks is businesses themselves, and they need to monetize their audience to stay in existence. As this industry continues to mature, the ease of organic reach will continue to decrease. So if you think that social media is a “free” way to market your business, you will end up being disappointed.

Picking the right social media platforms

One of the biggest mistakes small business owners make is that they see “social media” as a homogenous entity. Sure, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are all social networks, but they are so different that everything from the audience to the style is unique.

So, how can you ensure that you’re focusing on the social networks that benefit your business’ goals?

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Consider User Demographics : Size isn’t always important. Instagram may be one of the fastest growing networks, but if you are a B2B company selling SaaS services to logistics companies, then it would make more sense to focus your resources on LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Resources: Do you have the skills or personnel to create the right content for the networks you’ve chosen? Instagram and Pinterest, for example, require creative images and videos while Twitter emphasizes quality articles.
• Time: Unless you have a dedicated social media marketing department, you won’t be able to post on every social media channel. Keep in mind that you should aim to post daily on each network.

In the beginning, focus your effort on the social network(s) that are MOST relevant to your customer group, and give them your best shot. As a rule, I’d recommend picking your customer’s top 3 most frequented networks and sticking to them to start.

How often you should post on social media

CoSchedule looked at 14 different studies and found the ideal social media frequency that allows you to engage with your network, drive engagement and traffic, and keep your business top of mind, without annoying your audience.

Here’s what that came up with:

• Facebook: Studies suggest that you should post just once or at most twice a day to Facebook. Anything more than that can come off as spam;
• Twitter: Neil Patel found that 15 Tweets per day is the sweet spot that gets you all the benefits of social media marketing;
• Pinterest: Between 15 and 30 posts per day will bring you the best results on this network;
• Google+: No, Google+ is not dead. In fact, it can benefit your SEO greatly. Just make sure to post relevant content at least twice per day;
• LinkedIn: One post per day is more than enough for LinkedIn;
• Instagram: Major brands post just 1-2 images per day on Instagram. If you have more content that you want to share with your audience, use the Instagram Stories feature;

That all seems like a lot of work, right? Posting consistently on social media is made far easier with social media scheduling tools such as AgoraPulse :

The best time to post on social media

Just like everything else in life, timing is crucial to social media marketing success.

Picture this: you’ve spent hours working on an article that is insightful and packed with helpful information. Excited about the result, you share it with your network. But, to your surprise and disappointment, almost no one notices it.

That’s how important timing is.

So, what’s the best time to post on social media?

Here are some numbers :

• Facebook: The best time to post on Facebook is on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The best hours are 9 AM, 1 PM and 3 PM.
• Twitter: The best time to post on Twitter is Wednesday between 5 and 6 PM;
• Pinterest: Saturdays are your best days for connecting with your Pinterest audience. The best hours are 2 PM, 9 PM, and even late at night (2 AM;)
• LinkedIn: Midweek posting (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) early in the morning (between 7 and 8 AM) or in the afternoon (5-6PM) is your ideal time;
• Instagram: One of the things that make Instagram so great is that users are active throughout the week. But, for maximum engagement, make sure not to skip Mondays and Thursdays at any time except for 3-4PM;
• Google+: The best time to post on Google+ is on Wednesdays, between 9 and 11 AM.

Again, you can pre-schedule content to be posted at these times rather than needing to be active all day every day yourself!

Using social media strategy to influence SEO

Google uses over  200 ranking factors to decide which content to show high in search engine results. Social media signals are among the less significant factors, but none the less can still impact your rankings.

According to Matt Cutts , the correlation between social signals and ranking position is extremely high. Sites that have numerous social signals perform better than those with fewer signals.

Sure, correlation is not causation, but the role social signals play in SEO is becoming more and more evident. If you create and share high-quality content on social media, people are more likely to like it, share it, and link to it. That builds your traffic, your credibility, and your reputation. All that can, in turn, lead to a higher ranking.

The other thing to consider is that your social media pages will most likely show up on page one of a search result when someone is looking for your brand. This is extremely important for authority and brand recognition.

Growing a social media audience

By now, you probably understand that social media is a fantastic way to promote and grow your business.

But, how do you attract those first fans and followers? How do you get started when you have no audience?

• Getting Likes, Followers, and Shares: You can do a lot of different things to increase your visibility. You can (and should) add links to your social media profiles to your site, engage with other people, leverage hashtags, add links to your social media accounts in your email signature, and so on. But, all your efforts will fail if the content you share with your network provides no value. Before anything else, ensure you create quality content on a regular basis .
• Facebook: At the moment, Facebook is all about video. Reports have shown that live videos get 29% times more views than traditional content. That can translate into a broad audience reach that will kick start your social media strategy. But just be aware that these trends come and go, and you will need to adapt with the changing times.
• Facebook Messenger: Messenger is trending at the moment, and a lot of marketers believe this is the future – a channel that could compete directly with email marketing. With Facebook Messenger you can use Chatbots to engage with prospects, and also expand your reach with Messenger Ads . It’s still evolving as a social media marketing tactic, but something you should keep an eye one.
• Facebook Pages vs. Facebook Groups: Both Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups have their advantages and disadvantages. However, unlike a Facebook Page, where some of your audience might be there just to benefit from discounts and coupons, in a Facebook Group people are interested and engaged in a particular topic. By joining one, you can take part in the discussion and prove yourself as an industry expert. Facebook Groups also get much better organic reach, compared to Business Pages, so it makes a lot of sense to combine the two in your strategy.
• Twitter: Twitter is a very interactive medium. Retweet, Like, Reply, and engage with followers and other users as often as possible to grow your audience. If you want to spark quick growth and sustain it over time, consider using a service such as Social Quant .

• Pinterest: “Collaboration” is the key term to Pinterest success. Invite bloggers and influencers in your niche to contribute to your boards. That way, you can increase your exposure and network.
• Snapchat: If you want to build an audience on Snapchat, then you should come up with a storyline. Don’t just post random photos or videos. Build a narrative that will keep users engaged.

Social listening & why it should be part of your social media markteting strategy

Do you know what the most underestimated (and under-utilized) element of a social media marketing strategy is?

It’s listening.

Here’s why: to be able to deliver high-quality content to your audience, you need to learn about their perspective. The only way to reach that level of understanding is to become a very good listener.

Everything from brand mentions, likes, comments, forum discussions, and even your competition can reveal something valuable about your prospects. This information can help you improve customer engagement, understand how your audience perceives you in comparison to your competitors, uncover pain points that no one is addressing, or identify industry influencers.

Make sure to monitor keywords, such as your brand name and handles, your competitors’ names, your product names, your campaign’s keywords, your hashtags, and the names of key people in your company.

Tools like Mention make this much easier than it was when social media first came about.

Social media community management

You can’t build a successful social media marketing plan if you’re ignoring your fans and followers. Yes, answering comments, sending welcome/thank you direct messages, and linking and sharing posts is time-consuming, but it’s what social media is all about.

One great example of this is Hilton Hotels who have a dedicated Twitter profile for customer support:

Carve out at least one hour per day to dedicate to social media community management. Make an effort to respond to those mentioning your brand – it will benefit you in the long run. Use tools such as AgoraPulse , or Mention to make it easier to schedule posts and to listen to conversations.

Social media advertising

I spoke briefly about the battle between paid and organic social media earlier, and it’s not a black and white outcome.

In fact, whilst most of my energy is put towards growing a social media presence organically, with the limitations of organic reach it is becoming more important to invest in social media advertising as part of your plan.

In reality, the customer journey is never a straight line. Prospects go through different stages before they decide whether they are interested in your products or not. If they encounter just one touch point, the chances they’ll convert are extremely low.

To get consistent outcomes from social media marketing, you need to create as many touch points as possible, and advertising provides the most controlled and measurable way of doing so.

Here’s an approach to social media advertising that makes sense in combination with quality content and an organic growth strategy:

• Create high-quality content and publish it on your website;
• Promote it organically to ensure it reaches the widest audience possible;
• Add a cookie (Facebook or Twitter pixel) to your website that captures the information of people who visit and engage with your content;
• Remarket your future content (and offers) to the audience that has shown interest in your brand;
• Generate qualified leads that already trust you;
• Rinse and repeat;

Social media management tools

Social media can get pretty overwhelming. You need to create content, schedule it, engage with your network, promote posts, share other people’s content, manage your community, and so on.

Fortunately, there are plenty of tools you can use to take some of the pressure off your shoulders. Some of the best one’s available today are: AgoraPulse , Buffer , HootSuite , and Social Oomph.

For a more comprehensive look at the best social media management tools available, read this post .

Social media reporting and ROI

The final piece of the puzzle to consider when constructing your social media marketing strategy, is to decide how you will track results.

A study from  Convince & Convert  found that 41% of companies had no idea whether or not their social media efforts were successful.

That’s unacceptable… Are you really going to invest all of that time and money into something that “might” be working?

Here’s a quick 3-step process for tracking the ROI of your social media marketing:

Step 1 – Set SMART goals

SMART goals are – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals.

Eg. Increase customer conversions from social media by 10% this quarter

Step 2 – Understand the metrics that contribute to those goals

What metrics will tell you whether or not your goal has been achieved?

For this to work, you need to set up a baseline set of metrics that tell you where you are currently sitting.

In the example above, you could set up a “Goal” in Google Analytics that tells you when someone converts into a customer, based on an event they trigger or page they visit. Then, if you use the appropriate URL parameters in your social media sharing, you will be able to determine how many people have converted into customers directly from social media.

Read this post for an in-depth look at setting up Google Analytics goals.

Step 3 – Track those metrics

Use Google Analytics, or any number of 3rd party social media monitoring and reporting tools, to track these metrics and improve your strategy over time.

For example,  AgoraPulse has some amazing reporting on your social media activity – such as post engagement, follower counts, interactions, impressions and clicks.

Choosing to outsource or hire in-house talent, to plan and execute your social media marketing strategy, can be a challenging decision.

There are a number of pros and cons to consider…

The pros of hiring in-house social media talent

• They understand your business more intimately
• They can take action (typically) more quickly when required
• They are immersed in your culture
• You have control of your marketing

The cons of hiring in-house social media talent

• They may not have the expertise, specialization or experience that an outsourced solution has
• The cost is more, and the risk is higher if you need to replace them
• It prevents you from being able to scale quickly
• It’s hard to find great talent

If you’re looking to hire someone in-house, here is a post about the essential skills of a social media manager .

Or, if you’re looking to outsource your social media marketing, PromoRepublic offer a done-for-you service that starts at $97 a month .

Creating a social media marketing plan from scratch can feel both exciting and overwhelming at the same time.

You know it will benefit your business, but there are so many factors you need to consider that it seems almost impossible to get started.

Hopefully, this guide will make it a little easier to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In the end, what choice do you have?

Your customers are online, they are engaging on social networks and expecting you to do the same. So you can ignore that fact, or you can embrace it.

Now it’s your turn…

What questions do you have on your mind about social media marketing? Leave them in the comments below.

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