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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 inbound 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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Featured Reads

• Marketing |
• 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

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Smooth product launches are simpler than you think

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

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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.

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How to Create a Complete Marketing Strategy in 2024 [Data + Expert Tips]

Updated: March 29, 2024

Published: October 26, 2023

Creating a marketing strategy is essential to effectively nurture your customers, improve your business’s bottom line, and increase the ROI of your efforts.

A marketing strategy is especially critical if you want to use the highest ROI trends for 2024 : short-form video and social media. To get powerful results, you must carefully weave both emerging trends and proven strategies into your plan.

Let’s dive into the critical components of a complete marketing strategy in 2024, followed by some examples for inspiration.

Table of Contents

• What is a marketing strategy?

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

Marketing strategy components, why is a marketing strategy important, marketing strategy process, recommended resources, examples of successful marketing strategies, what to expect after following your marketing process steps, marketing strategy.

A marketing strategy covers a company’s overall approach for promoting its brand to a target audience. The process involves research, goal-setting, and positioning.

A completed marketing strategy typically includes brand objectives, target audience personas, marketing channels, key performance indicators, and more.

A marketing strategy will:

• Align your team to specific goals.
• Help you tie your efforts to business objectives.
• Allow you to identify and test what resonates with your target audience.
• Empower you to capitalize on emerging trends.

The last one is especially important. Keeping up with marketing trends is important for your strategy, but it could be a full-time job.

Why? Because almost 80% of marketers say this industry changed more in the last three years than it has in the past five decades.

Add to that the fact that 50% of marketers believe their marketing strategy in 2023 was only *somewhat effective,* which means there’s plenty of room for improvement.

In short, what worked for your marketing strategy in the past might not fly today.

A marketing strategy outlines the long-term goals and overall approach, while a marketing plan covers the specific actions and tactics to achieve those goals.

Phrased another way, marketing strategy guides the overall marketing efforts of a business. It includes goal-setting, market and competitor research, as well as messaging and positioning for a brand.

For example, say you’re creating a marketing strategy for a new fashion brand. Your strategy might target young urban professionals and position the brand as trendy and affordable.

But a marketing plan is a detailed tactical roadmap. It outlines the specific actions and tactics that should achieve the marketing strategy’s goals.

For example, the marketing plan for the fashion brand mentioned above might include:

• Targeted social media campaigns.
• Influencer partnerships.
• Online advertising timeline.

Both a marketing strategy and a marketing plan are essential for a business’s success.

To succeed in the fast-paced marketing world — and maintain a sense of relevance with your audience — it’s vital to stay ahead of the curve.

To help ease some of that uncertainty, we’re going to show you step-by-step how to create a comprehensive marketing strategy. But first, let’s go over the individual components that make up a strong marketing strategy.

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• Marketing Mix (4 Ps of Marketing)
• Marketing Objectives
• Marketing Budget
• Competitive Analysis
• Segmentation, Targeting, & Positioning
• Content Creation (Including Trending Content)
• Metrics & Key Performance Indicators

1. Marketing Mix

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10 Marketing Plan Examples to Inspire Your Campaigns

What do hiking a trail, driving to a friend’s house, and executing marketing campaigns all have in common? Each requires you to closely follow directions.

Directions are a critical part of our daily life. Used correctly, they can guide decision-making processes, make labor more efficient, and get where you want to go as quickly as possible. 

But failing to keep track of directions could cost you — and not just gas money. When it comes to marketing strategies, not having a clear goal tanks web traffic, dissipates brand interest, and costs companies across the United States a whopping $400 billion a year.

Designing a marketing plan is certainly no easy task, but it can be made easier with best practices, strategic tips, and concrete examples from successful businesses all over the world.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a strategic document that acts as a guide for marketing campaigns and strategies. These critical road maps detail where you are, where you’re going, and how you plan to get there.

The average marketing plan consists of seven major sections:

• Writing an executive summary
• Discussing the mission statement
• Listing marketing objectives
• Performing a SWOT analysis
• Completing market research
• Designing a market strategy
• Determining a budget

The more detailed a marketing plan is, the more efficient it will be at accomplishing its goals. 

As you might imagine, marketers who bother to write a concrete marketing plan enjoy several benefits :

• Organized marketers have a 674% higher chance of reporting success
• Marketers who set goals are 377% more successful than those who don’t

It’s clear that a successful marketing plan opens pathways to other forms of business success — although the process is underutilized at best. More than three out of four small business owners lack an overarching marketing plan if they don’t have a clear path of growth. Creating a holistic marketing plan is absolutely necessary to scale brands at any level of development.

10 marketing plan examples from every industry

It’s much simpler to design a plan of action when the groundwork already exists. Below are 10 marketing plans sourced from real companies and brands around the world, highlighting unique approaches to researching, crafting and implementing a marketing strategy . 

1. Contently

Popular SaaS Contently developed a visual marketing plan for developing future campaigns. The strategy depicts its plan in a “waterfall” format, with goals blending into methods of application that eventually lead to success metrics. Although far more casual than other examples on this list, the work provides an excellent overview of a marketing plan’s necessary components.

2. Visit Baton Rouge

The Baton Rouge area of Louisiana generates millions of dollars every year from tourism alone. The Visit Baton Rouge marketing plan was born from a need to better position the area and create long-term strategies for generating interest. This 38-page document goes into detail describing different destinations, events, and calendars, including recommended measurements for success.

Created by SaaS company HubSpot , this template includes a business summary, SWOT matrix, market strategy, budget, and other important aspects of a marketing plan. By filling it out, you can make informed decisions about your company’s positioning and your marketing in general.

4. Evernote

Evernote provides a comprehensive marketing plan template for businesses of any size. Create a plan that walks through overviews, timelines, research, personas, and all other elements of an airtight campaign. If desired, you can also implement this template into your Evernote account to start developing a marketing plan almost immediately.

5. University of Illinois

Even educational institutes need marketing plans. The University of Illinois created a very straightforward document that encapsulates its market context, research efforts, and current campaigns. Objectives and success metrics are completed in the third section, with about 40 pages overall. 

6. Monday.com

Monday.com is a project management platform providing in-house templates to all active users. This marketing plan offers various categories and subcategories that track project progress with data visualizations. Detailed objectives and KPIs can be identified in-app, including columns for a projected cost range.

Popular health and hygiene brand Lush released a comprehensive marketing plan walking through some products, positioning, and a marketing calendar for upcoming product releases. One of the highlights includes a detailed SWOT analysis with easy to read graphics. This is particularly helpful for brands in the personal care industry, among others.

8. Coca-Cola

Industry titan Coca-Cola released a strategy video that encompasses all seven elements of a holistic marketing plan. The proposal primarily explains the major content initiatives for the coming year, and focuses on how the brand’s initial ideas can be practically implemented into the existing strategy. 

9. Naperville Park District

Publicly funded recreational parks often have limited access to resources, which is why the Naperville Park District created a strategic marketing plan right at the beginning. This extremely detailed document walks through the company’s mission, situational analysis, strategy, and budget, on a micro-level.

10. Starbucks

Unlike the longform documents we’ve seen already, Starbucks takes a more concise approach. This six-page release details a strategy to elevate CX and brand ambassadors around the world. The marketing plan touches on individual strategies and tactics, as well as the methods used to ensure success. It’s important to note the detailed customer journey profiles that fit into a five-year strategy.

How to approach a marketing plan

Now that you know what a marketing plan looks like, it’s time to explore the initial stages of drafting and publishing your very first plan. Once you establish some basic starting points, a little research is all you need to get started.

Determine your goals

Directions simply don’t matter without an endpoint in mind. Craft some meaningful goals for your marketing campaign that envelop your brand’s values, objectives, and year-end plans. It’s best to use the SMART goal framework:

The more specific your goals are, the more effective your marketing plan will be.

Check your competitors

Staying abreast of your competitors and market share is critical in the early stages of a marketing plan. Using competitive analysis tools or an internal process, take some time to evaluate the approach that others are using — and how you can do better.

You might want to:

• Perform a competitive analysis
• Keep a close eye on industry news
• Browse competitor social media content

Keep in mind that it’s possible to hire freelancers to perform competitive analysis for you, depending on your needs and time constraints.

Identify your audience

Understanding your target market — including their goals, ages, values, and demographics — is the golden rule of marketing. This can be done several ways, either by using data, creating personas, or outlying features in a document.

It’s best to consider everything that may be relevant to your audience in the marketing plan, including how products can be positioned in a way that makes them relevant. For example, a customer with a degree in IT would be more interested in ads that speak to their experience and industry pain points.

If you don’t have a target audience in mind yet, consider using programs like Google Analytics or in-platform insights from Facebook to identify specific segments.

Craft final KPIs

The difference between a good marketing plan and a great marketing plan starts with key performance metrics (KPIs). These will be used to measure the effectiveness of your campaign and provide detailed information about what worked, what didn’t, and what you can change in the future.

Every marketing plan should rely on its own unique set of metrics, all fitted to individual needs. If you’re looking for specific examples, you might want to try:

• Raising the number of followers on a social media account
• Generating a certain amount of website leads 
• Achieving higher email open rates 

Keep in mind that your final metrics should adhere to the SMART method for best results.

Perform your revisions

The marketing plan is a living document and must be updated regularly to remain current. The average plan only has a shelf life of one to five years , on average, and should receive regular revisions in the meantime.

Take a closer look at your past goals, competitors, audience, and KPIs. Are any of these outdated or ill-aligned? What has changed for the company since its initial publication date? Make these adjustments accordingly (and hopefully with members of a team or committee).

Create marketing plans that guide your business well

It’s not enough to just write a marketing plan. In an increasingly competitive world of iron-clad strategies, marketing pros should take their time developing a plan that lasts. The above examples are a great place to start, especially as you craft an approach that is catered to your industry. 

Keep an eye on the growth of your business once your marketing plan hits the shelves. Continue to find new ways to optimize, refine, and otherwise make what you have even better than before. With an airtight marketing plan by your side, the possibilities are virtually limitless.

Want to learn more?

• How to Create a Killer Social Media Marketing Plan
• The Complete Guide to Getting Started With Influencer Marketing
• 7 of the Best Landing Page Examples to Learn From
• Instagram Marketing Tips to Shoot Up Your Sales

Strategic Marketing Plan Template & Examples

Imagine setting out to climb Mt. Everest guided only by intuition. You wouldn’t make it very far without a detailed plan (and an experienced sherpa) to guide the way. 

Marketing may not be an extreme sport with life-or-death consequences, but you’ve got big goals to reach nonetheless. And your team’s success relies on a lot more than gut instinct. 

That’s why a strategic marketing plan is a must, no matter your industry. Think of it as the roadmap that gets your business where it needs to go each and every year. 

Drafting your first marketing plan can feel intimidating, but don’t worry. We’ll walk you through the basics, show you what a strategic marketing plan looks like, and even give you a couple of free templates to get started. Here’s what we’ll cover:

What is a strategic marketing plan?

Essential elements of a strategic marketing plan, free marketing plan templates and examples.

Let’s start from square one and define what a strategic marketing plan is. 

A strategic marketing plan is a formal document that guides your team’s marketing efforts throughout the year. It maps your annual marketing goals to your company’s overall business objectives, while also outlining how you’ll spend your yearly marketing budget.

A good marketing plan clearly outlines:

• Your target market and key competitors
• Major goals for the year and how they’ll help you get ahead
• Key results that serve as indicators for success
• How you’ll use your money and resources to meet your goals 

Keep in mind that your plan may vary based on your industry and goals. Length and format don’t matter as much as the details you include. Do your research, and make it as easy as possible for company leaders to understand how your strategic marketing plan helps business grow.

What’s the difference between a marketing strategy vs. marketing plan?

A marketing strategy details how you’ll execute a piece of your marketing plan with a specific tactical goal in mind. You might do this by launching an email or social media campaign, publishing a blog series, offering a special promo, or hosting a live event. 

A marketing plan , on the other hand, is the high-level framework that drives all your marketing strategies. It’s a big-picture look at the who, what, and why behind your marketing goals, with a focus on tying them to larger organizational objectives. 

No two marketing plans are exactly the same, but they do share some common threads. Here are 6 important elements you’ll want to identify and research before you build out your next strategic marketing plan.

• Business objectives

Everything you do as a marketing team should support your company’s overall strategy and goals. So summarize your organization’s business objectives, and let it serve as your marketing plan’s true north. Your team and stakeholders should be able to clearly see how the marketing strategies and goals you outline in your plan align with your company’s top priorities.  

• SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis breaks down your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This enables you to assess both the internal and external factors that influence your success so you can build targeted strategies that close gaps and drive results. 

• Strengths and weaknesses : Take stock of your organization’s inner workings. Where does your team or company really shine? What’s working well, and what needs to be improved? Do you have any resource limitations?
• Opportunities and threats : Now look outward to consider your market and competition. Where do you have a chance to push ahead? Where are you struggling to keep up? Are there any market changes to consider?
• Market research

Research is the core of any marketing plan because it’s what you’ll use to shape your goals and strategy. Don’t be afraid to dive deep into the details here. A well-researched marketing plan is worth the time invested. 

Focusing your research energy on these areas will equip you with a solid base for smart marketing decisions.

It’s important to understand major movements in the industry you’re marketing to so you have a feel for the pulse of the market. Thoroughly research the industry your organization works in, and be sure to report on the general climate, as well as any noteworthy happenings. If your company serves any subindustries, don’t forget to include them in your analysis too. 

Target market

Marketing to the masses rarely pays off. That’s why narrowing down your target audience is a must for any marketing plan. Consider it the filter you run every marketing strategy through. 

The more specific you can get, the better. Answering questions like these can help you paint a clear picture of your ideal buyer so you know how to focus your resources for a bigger impact on the people you want to reach.

• What are your ideal buyer’s key demographics (e.g., age, location, job title)?
• What do they care about (e.g., interests, values)?
• What are their biggest challenges or pain points? 
• Where does your ideal buyer hang out (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, industry conferences or events)?

Competitive analysis

It’s also important to understand who and what you’re up against when it comes to attracting your perfect buyer. Identify the key players in your space, and give a brief rundown of what they’re doing to win. This groundwork will make it easier to see how to differentiate yourself from the competition. 

• Strategic marketing goals

Now that you’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time to talk strategy. Outline your strategic marketing goals for the year, and briefly explain how these strategies support company-wide goals. Use a gantt chart to establish a timeline for each goal and monitor results along the way. This is an easy way to set expectations and keep your team and stakeholders in the loop.

• Key marketing metrics

Metrics are where the rubber meets the road in your marketing plan. Use your market research to define specific KPIs or key marketing metrics that will serve as your measure for success. This will help you track progress so you know if you need to change course mid-project to ensure you hit your strategic marketing goals.

• Marketing channels

Marketing channels are the vehicles you’ll use to reach your target audience and grow your brand. Choose your channels wisely based on where you expect to get the most bang for your marketing buck. Briefly explain the purpose of each channel and how it supports your overall marketing strategy and business goals. 

Want to build a more detailed plan for each marketing channel so you can bring your ideas to life? Check out our free social media strategy plan and editorial content plan templates for more information on planning by channel. 

Marketing budget

Establishing a monthly budget for your marketing plan—and tracking it along the way—helps you maximize ROI and identify wasted spend before it drains your marketing dollars. 

Start by listing any ongoing expenses you have so you know what you can afford to spend on new initiatives. Then do your best to estimate any new costs you expect in the coming year. Don’t forget to account for any new hires, freelance workers, or third-party agencies you might need to rely on to get the work done. 

Not sure where to start? We’ve got you! Here are a few examples of how you might structure a marketing plan so you can easily start writing your own. 

Your marketing plan may shake out differently depending on the industry you work in or the goals you’re focused on. Use these marketing plan templates and samples as a guide to jumpstart the process and come up with a marketing plan structure that works for you. 

Google Docs marketing plan template and example

The most common way to create a marketing plan is simply to write it out as a text document. This format enables you to freely elaborate on any research findings you gathered during discovery, while also making a clear case for the marketing goals you’ve set for the year.

We put together a free Google Docs marketing plan template to help you save time so you can get your planning process off the ground faster. This marketing plan example is perfect for documenting and sharing the full scope of your strategic marketing plan with your team and stakeholders.

Here’s a basic breakdown of what the Google Docs marketing plan template covers:

• Company mission

Save a copy of the template to your Google Drive or download it as a Word document, and customize it to fit your own strategic marketing plan needs.  ‍

Use template in Google Docs

Gantt chart marketing plan template and examples

A plan’s no good if you set it and forget it. That’s where a gantt chart comes in handy. Use this free gantt chart marketing plan template to track your strategic marketing plan all the way to success. 

A gantt chart is a great way to lay your marketing plan out in a simple, visual timeline that’s easy to update as work progresses. It gives you a high-level view of your plan’s major goals and strategies, while enabling you to collaborate on and share your plan with your team and stakeholders.

How you use a gantt chart to put your plan into action is up to you. Build a timeline for the tasks you need to complete as you develop your marketing plan, like the example below. 

Once you’ve fleshed out the details of your marketing plan, you can use a gantt chart to define and track your strategic marketing goals. For example, you could break your marketing plan down by quarter to show when specific objectives will come into play and update progress as you close in on your goal. Here’s how that might look.

Use template in TeamGantt

Ready to build a strategic marketing plan of your own? 

We’ve created a free marketing plan template for you in TeamGantt so you can jump right in!

Customizing the template is quick and easy, thanks to TeamGantt’s drag and drop simplicity. And since everything’s online, your whole team can collaborate on activities in real time.

Here are a few pointers to help you get the most out of our free TeamGantt strategic marketing plan template.

Drag and drop tasks to schedule your plan

Configuring your marketing plan is as easy as dragging and dropping tasks—or entire task groups—into their new rightful place. Click and drag the edges of each taskbar to set a new task duration. 

Communicate with comments 

Collaboration is easy with TeamGantt's discussion feature . Share documents and chat with your team directly from a task’s Comments section. Use Notes to communicate important information—like goals, target audience, and budget—at the project level. 

Have a more formal marketing plan document? Attach the file or link to your project so everyone has easy access to it.

Share a copy with stakeholders

Plans are meant to be shared, so we made it easy to keep even the most inquisitive stakeholders in the loop. Export your plan to a printer-friendly PDF , or share a view-only link to your project so stakeholders can see your marketing plan progress in real time. 

Sign up for a free TeamGantt account today , and save time on project setup with this free marketing plan template!

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How To Write a Marketing Strategy for Your Business Plan

Potential investors want to see how you plan to sell

Alyssa Gregory is an entrepreneur, writer, and marketer with 20 years of experience in the business world. She is the founder of the Small Business Bonfire, a community for entrepreneurs, and has authored more than 2,500 articles for The Balance and other popular small business websites.

How Marketing Strategy Fits Into Your Business Plan

The 4 ps: product, promotion, price, and place, 7 tips for writing a marketing strategy, the bottom line, frequently asked questions (faqs).

Bulent Ince / E+ Collection / Getty Images

A marketing strategy is important for all businesses because it clearly outlines how they'll find new customers and promote their products and services to ultimately achieve more sales. You can use the marketing strategy as a stand-alone tool, as part of a marketing plan, or as part of a business plan, all with slightly different components.

Let's focus on some marketing strategy examples for your business plan. 

• A solid marketing strategy addresses the four Ps: product, promotion, price, and place.
• Your success can depend on understanding your clients’ needs and being flexible enough to find a way to meet them.
• Keep your budget in mind. You can only do what you can afford to do, and you should plan for accommodating periodic shortfalls.

The marketing strategy section of your business plan builds upon the market analysis section . The marketing strategy outlines where your business fits into the market and how you'll price, promote, and sell your product or service. It can also act as a source of important information for potential investors who are analyzing your business.

You can break down the key information in the marketing strategy section using the 4 Ps of marketing concept: product, promotion, price, and place.

Product can refer to either a physical product or a service that you plan on offering. Some of the product areas that fall into this section include:

• Related products or services
• Functionality

Promotion covers the various aspects of how you plan on marketing your product or service. The areas you should address include:

• Advertising
• Marketing budget
• Promotional strategy
• Publicity and public relations
• Sales force
• Sales promotion

This addresses the way you plan on pricing your product or service. The aspects of pricing you should address are:

• Bundling (if you have related products/services)
• Pricing flexibility
• Pricing strategy
• Retail price
• Seasonal price (if applicable)
• Wholesale (volume) price

Also known as distribution, this part is all about the delivery of your product or service to your customers. Some areas you should cover include:

• Distribution centers
• Distribution channels
• Inventory management
• Order processing
• Transportation
• Warehousing

Keep seven things in mind as you write the marketing strategy section of your business plan to make it as effective and relevant as possible.

Show How Unique You Are

The foundation of your marketing strategy should be your unique selling proposition (USP). This is the statement that outlines what differentiates you from everyone else in the market. Create your USP first, then build upon it by relating it to each of the 4 Ps.

The common thread through each part of your marketing strategy should be how your business solves a problem or meets a need better than anyone else.

Know Your Customers/Clients

The information you include in your marketing strategy should incorporate all the research you conducted in your market analysis . Make sure you have a clear idea of who your ideal customers or clients are, what they like, what they need, and what they expect. This will make your marketing strategy more accurate and applicable to your target audience.

Be Flexible

The 4 Ps of marketing work well for physical products, but you may have to tweak them a bit for services. For example, you might use your website instead of a physical location for the place section. Your website should also be a part of your promotion section, as should any social media platforms that you participate in.

Do Your Research

When you’re determining your pricing, you should have plenty of data to back up your decision when you're determining your pricing. Include industry reports, competitor ads, and comparisons that demonstrate the research you conducted and how you came to the conclusion that you're pricing your product or service correctly.

Use Visuals

As in other sections of your business plan, using charts, graphs, and images to illustrate your facts can make them easier for your audience to absorb and understand. Is your pricing right at the median of the industry? Are you planning to use a four-step distribution process?

Use visual aids to drive your point home.

Remember Your Budget

You'll outline the financial analysis of your company in another section of your business plan but keep those numbers in mind as you write your marketing strategy. Your marketing process may look good by itself, but you'll have a difficult time meeting your goals unless you tie it directly to your financial status.

Include Your Collateral

You should include samples as exhibits if you're going to talk about your marketing collateral in your marketing section. These might include brochures, fact sheets, videos, and photos.

Your marketing strategy is your overall plan for how you're going to make your business profitable. Larger enterprises might have different strategies for various arms of their operations. Sole proprietors carry the weight of a single plan on their own. But addressing all these components will increase your odds of success in any case.

What are the four types of marketing strategies?

Many consider the four Ps to be the basic types of marketing strategies, but others focus on four possible ways you can reach clients and consumers: search engine optimization, paid advertising, content marketing, and sales.

What are the seven Cs of marketing?

The seven Cs organize your marketing strategy. They can vary depending on who you talk to and the nature of your business, but you can tailor yours to best meet your goals and needs. Most include customer, consistency, creativity, and communication. Some include other factors, such as convenience, competition, credibility, culture, and change.

American Marketing Association. " The Four Ps of Marketing ."

Notes Learning. " 7 Cs of Marketing ."

OBC. " The 7 Cs of Marketing: How to Apply Them ."

Don't bother with copy and paste.

Get this complete sample business plan as a free text document.

Marketing Strategy Business Plan

Start your own marketing strategy business plan

Cambridge Strategy Group

Executive summary executive summary is a brief introduction to your business plan. it describes your business, the problem that it solves, your target market, and financial highlights.">, opportunity.

The start up businesses in Cambridge are in need of a consulting firm that helps them decide how to market themselves and build themselves to a successful business. Research shows that many of these businesses fail since they don’t have the resources to make the right choices. Helping them keeps people employed and the economy going strong. 

The Cambridge Strategy Group (CSG), L.L.C. is dedicated to providing marketing and management consulting services to small and emerging businesses looking for opportunities to increase their potential for success. 

The target market is defined by the customer needs that create the market, the structural forces that govern operation within the market, and the attractiveness of the market based on strategic value, market size, market growth, and potential for profit.

Competition

There are many rivals in the Cambridge area that fall into 4 categories: segment rivals, market rivals, generic rivals, structural rivals.

The Cambridge Strategy Group is focused specifically on helping small and emerging businesses maximize their potential for success. 

Expectations

The market for Cambridge Strategy Group’s services is enormous. Initially, the three founding members intend to work part-time on this venture while maintaining full-time positions with other corporations. As we determine how best to enlarge our operations, we will consider expanding the business as defined in our strategy.

Financial Highlights by Year

Financing needed.

The three managing directors will contribute $115,000.  John Gordon is contributing $40,000, Todd Kuczaj will be contributing $40,000 and Ben Cordell will be contributing $35,000. 

Problem & Solution

Problem worth solving.

The new businesses in the area  were started by an entrepreneur with a solid idea, but little experience in creating the formal business strategies or marketing deliverables necessary to turn their idea into a successful business. With recent IPOs giving back much of their initial valuations, companies are now being forced to demonstrate profitable business models in order to maintain strong valuations. Venture capitalists need to focus on making their existing companies successful instead of simply prospecting for the next great idea. To accomplish this, founders need to effectively define and communicate their value propositions. Since this is not a core competency for many entrepreneurs, there is an opportunity to provide this skill set through outsourcing arrangements. Additionally, founders need experience in sales and marketing to exploit market opportunities and create early revenue wins. Finally, no business currently exists with dominant mind-share as a "small business consulting" firm.

Our Solution

The Cambridge Strategy Group is focused specifically on helping small and emerging businesses maximize their potential for success. We differentiate ourselves in the following ways:

• Focus on small business:   Our mission is to help small businesses of today become the leading corporations of tomorrow. Cambridge Strategy Group will attempt to own the words "small business" in the minds of our potential clients.
• Cost-effective personal interaction with local consultant presence: We will target new regions with local consultants, allowing us to personally interact with small businesses without needing to bring consultants to the region.
• A diverse network of consultants and alliance partners:   By relying on a nationally distributed talent base coordinated to work together remotely, we will be able to bring together a variety of skills to meet the needs of our clients.

Target Market

Market size & segments.

Market Segmentation

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS The following factors define the environment in which CSG hopes to succeed.

• Physical:  New businesses are being formed across the United States every day. Providing consulting services to these businesses will require local presence. North Carolina’s Triangle Area has recently been rated as one of the top three metropolitan areas for small businesses by Dun and Bradstreet’s  Entrepreneur  magazine.
• Legal:  The creation of the Limited Liability Company has made it very simple for new businesses to organize as formal business entities. Limited Liability Companies are ideal for small businesses as they avoid the double taxation characteristic of C Corporations, while providing limited liability for the company members.
• Economic:  Current economic conditions are continuing to challenge investors’ views regarding the potential for return. The market is no longer rewarding entrepreneurs solely on the strength of their ideas. Instead, business owners and Venture Capitalists are expected to show profitability before they will be allowed to reap the rewards of their hard work. While small business owners bring innovative ideas and possibly leadership qualities to their organization, they will need to rely upon skills from other disciplines, including marketing, to succeed.
• Social:  According to a Small Business Administration report, U.S. small business is at an all-time high  (The Facts About Small Business, 1999) "interest in owning or starting a small business has broken new records [between 1993 and 1998]." While recent stock market corrections may have frightened a segment of potential entrepreneurs, the opportunity for financial reward keeps many small business owners diligently chasing their dreams.
• Technological:  Recent advances in technology have greatly enhanced the ability for distributed teams to work together on common projects. The proliferation of the Internet facilitates data sharing and communication. Voice-over-IP technology reduces the cost of conversation between CSG members working across the country.

With these conditions in mind, CSG will concentrate on initially building clients in the North Carolina area before expanding into other areas. We will be concentrating on all businesses that employ less than 100 individuals. CSG will not segment its market to any greater degree since the company wants to build clients as quickly as possible. Therefore our market analysis chart below reflects this initial strategy.

Target Market 

The target market is defined by the customer needs that create the market, the structural forces that govern operation within the market, and the attractiveness of the market based on strategic value, market size, market growth, and potential for profit. Each of these areas is described below.

STRUCTURAL FACTORS Particular market forces affect the ability of the Cambridge Strategy Group to succeed. These forces are identified below:

• Buyer Power:  With almost 900,000 new businesses starting each year, there is ample demand for consulting services. If any particular business chooses to work with another consulting firm, there are still a large number of firms that can be targeted by CSG. Buyers have power in this market, but the size of the market makes it unlikely that buyer power will have any significant negative impact on the consulting firm.
• Threat of Conventional Competitors:  No other conventional competitor owns the idea of "small business consulting" in the minds of today’s business owners. A number of high-profile management and marketing consulting firms exist, yet most of these firms have a reputation for being expensive and much too theoretical for small business owners who have practical, short-term concerns. Still, there is potential for these firms to open distinct teams of consultants focused on this market place. These teams would have particular strength in an area where the competitors already have an established consulting presence, such as the major U.S. cities. By beginning our efforts in the Triangle Area of North Carolina, Cambridge Strategy Group will exploit an area that has a very strong market of small businesses, yet does not have many high-profile competitor offices outside of tax specialists. No smaller competitor has emerged in this area.

• Supplier Power:  Suppliers have minimal power over a consulting firm. The www.cambridgestrategy.net website URL as well as all of the Cambridge Strategy Group email addresses are owned by CSG. Our Web-hosting provider can be changed quickly in the event of any disruption of service. CSG intends to work with third party alliance partners to fulfill client projects. For example, CSG is in the process of entering into an agreement with a Web development firm. This supplier will provide website development for the www.cambridgestrategy.net website in exchange for first right of refusal for future client projects. Contractual stipulations have given the Group legal remedies to terminate the contract due to cost, quality, or time issues with the supplier. By crafting supplier contracts in a careful manner, we hope to limit our exposure to risk due to suppliers’ power.
• Threat of Substitutes:  Potential substitutes are a very real threat. Venture Capitalists could add more consulting services to their portfolio in order to have more points of contact with the new business. Additionally, non-profit groups such as the Council for Entrepreneurial Development offer basic business plan services, primarily focusing on pre-Angel businesses. Cambridge Strategy Group intends to form relationships with each of these potential substitutes. By working with Venture Capitalists, CSG is able to provide a set of core competencies in marketing and business strategy that complements the VCs funding and business model assessment competencies. Also, by becoming more involved with the Council for Entrepreneurial Development and other non-profit organizations, CSG will gain access to a number of firms who will be potential prospects for marketing consulting once they receive their initial funding.
• Threat of New Entrants:  This threat is significant as there are very few barriers to entry in a consulting market. Consulting firms do not normally have significant intellectual property that can be patented, and the requirements for creating these firms are minimal. Fortunately, the size of the new business market should sustain a number of firms in this area. The Cambridge Strategy Group will focus on gaining ownership of the idea "small business consulting" in the mind of the market. By owning that idea, CSG will minimize its exposure to new consulting firms with similar targets. Owning this idea is an expensive task that will have to start locally and move from one city to another as the company expands.

Current Alternatives

Competitors to the Cambridge Strategy Group fall into four categories:

• Segment Rivals:  Segment Rivals offer the exact same services as the Cambridge Strategy Group. These firms must focus exclusively on small businesses and offer marketing and/or management strategy services.
• Market Rivals:  There are a number of available Market Rivals who compete with the Cambridge Strategy Group while having slightly different business focuses. Examples of market rivals include start-up focused branches of Big Five Consulting Firms, Management Consulting Firms, and Venture Capitalists who also provide business services.
• Generic Rivals:  Generic Rivals represent alternative solutions. The main alternative to outsourcing work to a consulting firm is performing the work in-house.
• Structural Rivals:  Structural Rivals are the forces inherent in the market through which the firm must operate. These forces were described in the previous section entitled Target Market Analysis.

Our Advantages

Key Success Factors:   After exploring the opportunities and threats that permeate this market, the following Key Success Factors emerge as the requirements to be successful at providing marketing and management consulting services to small businesses.

• Local presence in a strong small business market;
• Affordable pricing structure/minimal costs;
• Clear value proposition, communicated into target market;
• Core competencies in marketing and strategy;
• Recognition as leading "small business consultants" or, no other firm claiming that title;
• Venture Capitalist relationships.

Keys to Success

UNIQUENESS OF SERVICES The Cambridge Strategy Group is focused specifically on helping small and emerging businesses maximize their potential for success. We combine Blue Chip training with small business experience and local presence. We differentiate ourselves in the following ways:

• Focus on small business.  We place our best people on small business customers. Our mission is to help small businesses of today become the leading corporations of tomorrow. Cambridge Strategy Group will attempt to own the words "small business" in the minds of our potential clients.
• Cost-effective personal interaction with local consultant presence. Personal interaction provides small businesses with a level of comfort not available with remote consultants. There may be many occasions where the small business founders may ask the consultant to simply "stop by," to react to a new development, or to answer a question. While this local presence and personal interaction is highly valued, business owners are often unable to afford the cost associated with bringing consultants to them from other areas.
• A diverse network of consultants and alliance partners.  Solving the unique problems that face small businesses today demands a wide range of skills and experiences. By relying on a nationally distributed talent base coordinated to work together remotely, Cambridge Strategy Group will be able to bring together the skills required by a particular client without incurring the expense of physically bringing all of the individuals together. In the book,  22 Immutable Laws of Marketing , authors Al Ries and Jack Trout note that being first in the customer’s mind is more important than being the overall leader. In the world of small business, this is particularly true. With 898,000 small businesses starting each year, there is a significant opportunity for a consulting firm such as Cambridge Strategy Group to become the "first" consulting firm dedicated exclusively to small businesses in the minds of a number of these potential clients.

Marketing & Sales

Marketing plan.

We have a number of ways to promote We will use a number of relationships to promote the Cambridge Strategy Group.

Through participation in the North Carolina Chapter of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development, we will make contacts with key Venture Capitalists, small business founders, and small businesses resources in the area. Once we have helped our first few clients, we will then explore relationships with local newspapers. Participating in local chambers of commerce will also help us to get increased exposure. In every method of communication, we will constantly reinforce our differential advantage:

• Focus on helping small businesses start moving in the right direction;
• Practical, actionable, short-term marketing and business strategy help;
• Local presence for availability and minimization of costs;
• Broad skill base combining Fortune 500 training with small business experience.

The 20 projects averaging 200 hours each listed represents approximately two person-years of work. However, additional time must be included for finding new clients and building Venture Capitalist relationships. For this forecast to become a reality, it will require either: (a) additional consultants to join the firm or (b) some members of CSG to work full-time on group activities. Note that "projects" are not synonymous with "clients." Any given client may require multiple projects from CSG.

The Cambridge Strategy Group understands the importance of implementing the technological components of a small business as soon as possible in order to facilitate communication between the company and its clients, employees, and partners. Therefore, we offer assistance in email enablement as well as phone and fax set-up. CSG also offers expertise in constructing an Internet presence through Web development and Web hosting.

Milestones & Metrics

Milestones table.

Key Metrics

Our Key Metrics are: 

• Total clients per month 
• Average billing per engagement. 
• Repeat business vs. new business. 
• Facebook likes, Twitter follows. 

Ownership & Structure

The company is organized as a manager-managed Limited Liability Company. Initially, we will have three members with equal equity stakes in the company making all voting decisions. An executive director who is one of the managers will be identified to run meetings and provide some form of order to ongoing discussions. Additionally, we will hire consultants as needed to help our clients. Consultants will be paid on a per-deliverable basis.

Management Team

The CSG management team brings a broad range of industry experience and training from both energetic small firms and experienced industry leaders.

John B. Gordon, Executive Director: John has worked in marketing, business development, and corporate strategy for a number of small and large firms, including EMC Corporation, IBM Corporation, and Larscom, Incorporated. John’s participation on the North Carolina Council for Entrepreneurial Development, plus his experience providing consulting services to small businesses, catalyzed the formation of the Cambridge Strategy Group.

Todd D. Kuczaj, Managing Director: Todd has worked in Internet consulting, Web design/development, financial services, and media publications for a variety of companies, including a Big Five consulting firm, Integrated Information Systems Inc., SunAmerica Securities Inc., and the Foothills Sentinel. Todd currently functions as an experienced analyst for a Big Five consulting firm, working with Fortune 100 and Fortune e-50 firms to solve their business and technology issues.

Ben S. Cordell, Managing Director: Ben has worked in business development, account management, systems engineering, marketing, and product development positions at LifeServ and ONE Co. (formerly DC Systems). Ben currently functions as a corporate strategy specialist at LifeServ, discovering and developing merger, acquisition and strategic partnership opportunities.

The Cambridge Strategy Group will create an advisory board to bring insight into new areas including consulting management, finance and accounting, venture capital, and local media. The Founders of CSG have a number of contacts that could certainly provide useful guidance in our future operations. We will determine the value and compensation for the advisory board in future discussions.

Personnel Table

Financial Plan investor-ready personnel plan .">

Key assumptions.

Below is a list of assumptions that define the short-term business model:

• Year 1 will  be spent preparing and learning how best to approach clients and building relationships with VCs;
• All managers will hold full-time positions with other companies;
• We will focus on business opportunities in NC until we create sufficient revenue to open foreign LLC’s in other states;
• year 1  financial model represents only three managers;
• All revenue is realized when a project is finished

Revenue by Month

Expenses by month, net profit (or loss) by year, use of funds.

Our Startup Expenses are: 

Start-up Expenses

Stationery etc.$100

Brochures$150

Insurance$200

Other$4,000

TOTAL START-UP EXPENSES$4,650

Sources of Funds

Our 3 owners will contribute to our startup: John Gordon is contributing 40,000, Todd Kuczaj is contributing 40,000, Ben Cordell contributed 35,000. The total from the owner investment is 115000

Projected Profit & Loss

Projected Balance Sheet

Projected Cash Flow Statement

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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.

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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.

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• Produce beautiful, effective marketing content quickly even without an extensive design skillset
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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

Image Source

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.

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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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12 Free Marketing Plan Templates to Build a Marketing Strategy

Senior Content Marketing Manager

February 14, 2024

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Marketing used to be simple.

A tuppence on a town crier and maybe an ad in the local newspaper, and you were pretty much set. Nowadays, things have gotten a little bit more complicated.

Marketers plan elaborate campaigns that sync across several mediums in real life and the digital world. This can include ads on social media, search engines, blog content, in-person events, and much more. All of this marketing requires a lot of project planning .

You can’t just throw something together and call it a day. And that’s where marketing plan templates come in. These handy little tools help you plan and coordinate your marketing strategies by doing some of the leg work for you.

Obviously, these templates can’t do everything. It’s still up to you to make big brand decisions, like whether Rihanna or Ariana is the right person to head up your event. But templates can make planning that engagement easier, set out clear to-do lists for your team, and make cross-department execution a breeze.

So regardless of whether you’re an entrepreneur dipping your toes into the world of marketing or a multinational company needing help keeping your marketing efforts organized, there’s a marketing plan template for you.

This list of 12 marketing plan templates is a great place to get started. Each has its own focus, so take a moment and find which ones will help you plan your next big marketing move.

What is a Marketing Plan Template?

What makes a good marketing plan template, 1. clickup marketing plan template, 2. clickup agency client health tracker by zenpilot, 3. clickup quick start: marketing template, 4. clickup content management template, 5. clickup content production scaling template, 6. clickup campaign & promotion management template, 7. clickup event marketing plan template, 8. clickup okr folder template, 9. the clickup marketing plan template, 10. clickup marketing action plan template, 11. clickup social media template, 12. clickup sales and marketing plan template, benefits of having a strong marketing strategy, how to write a marketing plan.

A marketing plan template is an essential tool for any business to have when creating and executing a successful marketing strategy. It provides the roadmap for your marketing activities, from setting goals to choosing channels and measuring success.

These templates can also be tailored according to the needs of each organization, allowing you to focus on specific areas that need attention and provide direction for your marketing efforts. So if you need some help planning out your social media campaigns and posts for the next quarter, there’s a template ready to make that process just a little bit easier.

A good marketing plan template can be summed up in three words: organized, specialized, and helpful.

One of the main goals of any marketing strategy template is to add some much-needed order to the chaos that comes with your average marketing department. These templates help keep you organized and on track, allowing you to stay focused on what matters most: achieving success.

Great templates should also specialize in a certain kind of marketing type or task you need help with. For instance, a template could specialize in designing a marketing action plan for your company or in helping you map out your future marketing initiatives.

Doing everything in one template would be near impossible, so specialization allows each template to be thorough without being overwhelming.

Finally, a template needs to be helpful.

The whole reason you need a template is to save you time or to help you complete a marketing task you’re less familiar with. If the template doesn’t come with smart formatting, data importation options, or expert advice, then it might just be easier to do it on your own.

12 Best Marketing Plan Templates

Marketing plans are a crucial way for businesses to create and execute a top-notch marketing strategy.

However, the process of planning can be overwhelming without the right tools. This list of 12 marketing plan templates provides an excellent starting point for any business looking to create a comprehensive and effective marketing strategy.

The ClickUp Marketing Plan Template is a powerful and customizable tool that can help teams plan and execute successful marketing strategies. This template simplifies the process of coordinating and planning your marketing efforts , allowing you to easily create an overview of your campaigns and track progress and results.

This template includes helpful sections that allow you to fill in deadlines, statuses, effort levels, impact tags, and more. It also provides real-time collaboration features so teams can easily track tasks and ensure they’re all on the same page.

Plus, this template is completely customizable based on your team’s specific needs. Add or remove any sections you need and organize your marketing plan in whatever way works best for you.

The ClickUp Marketing Plan Template is perfect for entrepreneurs, small businesses, or large companies who need an easy-to-use and comprehensive tool to organize their marketing strategies.

As a bonus, it pairs well with many of our more specific templates included on this list.

Effective marketing requires deep insights into your clients’ needs and preferences. That’s why the ClickUp Agency Client Health Tracker from Zenpilot Template is such a valuable tool for businesses. This customizable template allows agencies to track the health of their customer relationships, making it easy to manage client info and ensure that marketing efforts align with client needs.

With the ClickUp Agency Client Health Tracker, agencies can track a range of important marketing analytics , including client satisfaction levels and feedback. Armed with this information, businesses can tailor their content marketing strategy to better meet the needs of their clients.

By understanding each client’s unique preferences, businesses can create targeted campaigns that drive engagement, deliver value, and ultimately drive customer satisfaction.

Looking to get your marketing strategy off the ground—like, right now?

The Quick Start Marketing Template has been meticulously crafted to expedite your initiation into ClickUp, ensuring a seamless and efficient experience.

This particular template is equipped with an array of features that are indispensable for executing an effective marketing strategy. It includes a comprehensive marketing plan, well-structured campaigns, a content calendar for systematic planning, an asset library for easy resource management, and a team wiki to promote knowledge sharing among team members.

Take the reins of your marketing efforts and amplify your brand’s resonance today with this holistic toolset.

ClickUp serves as an all-encompassing project management tool, which enables you to strategize, coordinate, and collaborate on your projects within a singular platform. The software’s fully customizable nature empowers you to tailor every facet of your content workflow to your specific needs and preferences.

Amongst the plethora of ready-to-use templates, one that particularly excels at content planning is the ClickUp Content Management Template . Its flexibility and customizability make it a top choice for managing your unique content workflow—even if it spreads across marketing channels.

This template comes equipped with a comprehensive content calendar, facilitating seamless tracking of your content across various channels such as blogs, social media platforms, websites, or emails. A standout feature is its provision of separate calendar views for each channel.

The Content Management Template offers extensive insights into every stage of content creation and management. From receiving initial requests and constructing a detailed plan with pertinent documents to managing an editorial calendar and delivering the final content—this template has it all covered.

Let this template work as your ultimate hub for creating and managing content across multiple marketing channels, with the added advantage of having dedicated calendar views for each channel.

The ClickUp Content Production Scaling Template provides a tactical insight into the strategies employed by ClickUp’s own content team on how they successfully scaled their blog content production.

While the template primarily focuses on blog content, its versatile production workflow can be adapted for any content type. Content scaling is a highly strategic approach, favored for its effectiveness in enhancing organic traffic, lead generation, brand visibility, revenue, and much more.

And this template facilitates the continuous creation of relevant content, positioning your brand as a dependable source of information. This asset is perfect for writers, editors, or content teams looking to architect their scalable production process in their marketing strategies.

For a deeper understanding of the eight steps outlined in this template, refer to our content production scaling blog ! This will enable you to strategize effectively and navigate the template with professional proficiency.

Need a comprehensive tool for managing campaigns and promotions that provides all the necessary resources for planning, tracking, and executing your marketing initiatives?

Look no further than the ClickUp Campaign & Promotion Template . This digital marketing plan template acts as your centralized hub and facilitates a complete workflow that begins with request intake, transitions into planning with campaign brief documents, moves on to project execution with subtasks, and culminates in running the marketing plan campaign.

This template simplifies this process by consolidating the planning, execution, and monitoring of your campaigns into a single platform. Utilizing our template will enable you to:

• Structure promotional projects using task lists, timelines, and assignees
• Monitor progress via automated workflows, promoting efficient team collaboration
• Evaluate performance using customizable reporting tools
• Facilitate data-driven decision-making in on central place

Whether your objective is launching a new product to a target market or executing a special promotion, this marketing template provides the ideal template to ensure seamless and effective implementation.

With so much happening in the world today, your company needs something special to get and hold people’s attention.

Big, spectacular events are perfect for doing just this. They allow you to stand in the spotlight for a moment and get your message across in a way that’s likely to stick with people for longer than any Facebook ad or blog post could ever hope to.

However, planning these events can take months. You’ll need coordination between multiple teams, marketing planning software , and maybe even outside contractors to pull it off.

That’s where the ClickUp Event Marketing Plan Template comes into play.

This digital marketing plan template template is the place for your team to plan your next big event. It includes tasks, budgets, and deadlines, along with multiple views, to help you track what needs to get done and who’s responsible for it across your marketing team.

Plus, this template is completely customizable if you need extra space for something more detailed—considering things like market research information, your marketing budget, or key performance indicators.

Bonus: Marketing tools for startups !

The ClickUp OKR Folder Template serves as an exhaustive planning instrument, crafted specifically to aid individuals and teams in establishing and accomplishing their objectives.

It incorporates a Planning Cadence that delineates the foundational structure for formulating OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Additionally, the template has OKR Lists that deconstruct goals into manageable tasks and continually track progression.

This systematic approach ensures teams maintain focus and direction throughout the year, ulitmately enhancing their potential for success. The digital marketing plan template is ideal to track your marketing activities to your marketing goals and metrics.

Detailing your marketing tactics is crucial—but having the numbers to back up your marketing budget or how your OKRs will help your digital marketing team reach your target audience more efficiently is crucial.

If you’re in the early stages of planning your marketing campaign or project, the ClickUp Marketing Plan Template is a fantastic resource to begin with. This customizable, user-friendly template is designed to expedite the development of your marketing plan.

Easily keep track of marketing initiatives, prioritize tasks, monitor targets, and document results.

A meticulously crafted marketing plan can be the deciding factor between success and failure in attaining your business objectives. This is why ClickUp made this template a comprehensive tool aimed at assisting you in planning, tracking, and optimizing your marketing campaigns in a singular location.

Utilizing this template allows you to:

• Establish attainable marketing objectives
• Organize tasks into actionable steps toward achieving these goals
• Monitor progress using integrated metrics and analytics

Say goodbye to disorganized spreadsheets and multiple tools. This marketing template offers the transparency and command you require to elevate your marketing endeavors to unprecedented heights.

Every good strategy needs a detailed plan, but do you need something to provide more details about how you’ll get it done?

If you want to market your product or service, you’ll need a marketing action plan to turn your ideas into actual marketing ROI . And a marketing action plan is a detailed document outlining the strategies and tactics a business will use to promote and sell its products or services.

It typically includes a target market analysis, business goals and objectives, pricing information, and any other pertinent information that may help execute the plan successfully.

ClickUp’s Marketing Action Plan Template has been designed to help you create a fully fleshed-out marketing strategy, even if you’ve never done this before.

It achieves this by running you through the main things you’ll need to understand and formulate before you can create your plan. These include:

• Defining your marketing goal s: Understand what the ultimate goal of your digital marketing plan
• Knowing your customers : Do target market and target audience research to understand what your customers are looking for, where they can be reached, and what kind of advertising might work best for them
• Auditing your current practices : Learn from what you’ve done in the past, both good and bad, to create an even better marketing strategy going forward in this marketing plan template
• Itemizing your plan : List every task that needs to be done for your strategy to succeed
• Reviewing and polishing : See if you’ve missed anything by running it by a colleague

Plus, once you itemize your plan, use ClickUp’s project management software to export those tasks and share them with your team so people can get to work realizing your marketing strategy.

It’s really that easy, and all you need to get started is this marketing plan template at the link below.

With social media marketing, consistency is key to hit your marketing goals. But creating multiple relevant posts across different distribution channels is easier said than done. The pain points and social media strategy that works on LinkedIn might not fare so well on Facebook or Instagram.

That’s why the ClickUp Social Media Template was created.

This powerful tool tracks planned posts across multiple social media platforms so you’re constantly reaching your ideal target audience on the right social media channel. Plus, since you house all of your planned content in one place, it’s easier for social media marketing or other digital marketing team members to see if you have any gaps in your social media calendar.

For instance, instead of assuming that someone else was working on the New Year’s Eve post this year, your team can see that there are no current plans on this template and fix the omission. Get your social media content calendar in order with the template below.

Although they broadly have the same goal, it can sometimes feel like sales and marketing teams live in different worlds. They have their own metrics, strategies, and processes to help the company sell more.

However, when these departments aren’t in sync, you’re missing out on an opportunity to truly leverage the power of your entire team toward your sales and marketing goals.

That’s why the ClickUp Sales and Marketing Plan Template was created. It provides a single platform for both departments to work from, allowing easier collaboration and better alignment of business objectives—whether it’s sharing market research, providing detailed insights into your content marketing strategy, or simply outlining your marketing plans to connect with sales.

This template includes sections for sales goals, marketing plans, campaign results, and more. This way, it’s clear what roles each department plays in the grand scheme of things.

For instance, your sales team probably frequently interacts with target customers and knows what pitches work best with which demographics. Your marketing team can use that knowledge to not only market better but also to identify leads that are more likely to convert.

Get your marketing and sales departments on the same page today with our Sales and Marketing Plan Template.

A well-thought-out marketing plan can bring multiple benefits to your business, including:

• Increased brand awareness : A strong digital marketing strategy can help you reach new customers and make more people aware of your brand, while collecting market research for future projects
• Improved customer engagement : By creating targeted and relevant content for your audience, you can engage with them on a deeper level and build stronger relationships
• Higher conversions : With a clear marketing strategy in place, you can attract more qualified leads and convert them into paying customers
• Better market positioning: A solid marketing strategy can help you stand out from your competitors and establish your brand as a leader in the industry
• Increased ROI : By tracking your marketing goals and efforts and refining your digital marketing strategy, you can see a higher return on your investment
• Enhanced teamwork and communication : With a marketing plan in place, all team members can be on the same page and work towards common goals, leading to better collaboration and communication

Now that you understand the importance of having a strong marketing strategy, here are some tips for writing and implementing an effective marketing plan:

• Define your business goals : Determine what you want to achieve through your marketing efforts, whether it’s increasing sales, improving brand awareness or launching a new product
• Identify your target audience : Understand who your ideal customers are and what their needs and preferences are. This will help you create targeted and relevant marketing campaigns
• Conduct a SWOT analysis : Evaluate your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to identify areas where you can improve and capitalize on potential opportunities with effective SWOT analysis
• Set a marketing budget : Determine how much you can realistically spend on marketing activities and allocate resources accordingly to reach your marketing goals
• Choose your marketing channels : Based on your target audience and business goals, select the most effective marketing channels to reach them
• Create a timeline and deadlines : Set specific timelines for each marketing campaign or activity to ensure that everything is completed in a timely manner
• Track and measure results : Continuously monitor the success of your marketing efforts and make adjustments as needed to improve performance.
• Communicate and collaborate with your team : Keep all team members informed and involved in the marketing process to ensure that everyone is working towards the same marketing objectives
• Regularly review and update your plan : As your business evolves, so should your marketing plan. Continuously review and update it to stay relevant and effective

Maximize Your Team’s Marketing Efforts With Marketing Plan Templates

No matter the size of your business, marketing success can be achieved with a well-thought-out plan. With ClickUp’s suite of powerful and easy-to-use templates, you’ll have everything you need to create an effective strategy.

Make it easier to meet all your goals, whether it’s marketing your product or onboarding your new client .  From content planning and event marketing to sales and website project management , these templates provide the tools needed for any digital marketer or entrepreneur looking to make their mark in the world today.

So don’t wait another minute—get started on upgrading your team’s marketing capabilities with ClickUp.

Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.

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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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12 Marketing Strategy Examples, How to Create One + Tips

What is a marketing strategy?

Marketing strategies vs. marketing plans vs. marketing tactics , types of marketing strategies, how to create the most effective marketing strategies.

• Top 11 great marketing strategy examples and 1 you shouldn't follow

Top tips for creating successful marketing strategies

• Marketing strategies make it more likely that you'll reach your goals

Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or just starting out on your very first small business venture, every company in the world needs an effective marketing strategy to build brand awareness and drive new customers to its products and services. However, if you’ve never been involved in successful marketing strategies, creating one can be easier said than done.

The most effective marketing strategies consider every aspect of the marketing flow, from a thorough understanding of your audience personas to a clear-cut marketing budget and so much more; there’s a lot to cover in a company marketing strategy.

In this guide, we’re going to look at some of the best marketing strategies of all time and explain how you can utilize different types of marketing strategies to maximize your returns in no time.

Before we tell you how to compose an effective marketing strategy, you need to understand what a marketing strategy is and how it can help you improve your advertising.

In simple terms, business marketing strategies are a tool marketers use to outline their various campaigns and marketing models. It’s the how of how you’ll get customers interested in your products and services.

To create an effective marketing strategy, you need to do four things:

• Understand who buys your products or services (who are your customers?)
• Understand how to motivate these people to buy/continue to buy your products or services
• Understand who your competitors are and what they’re doing to achieve the same objectives
• Understand how to measure the success of your marketing campaigns and efforts.

You can do it too.

Like a marketing plan, your marketing strategy should cover the five “Ps” of marketing:

• Product – What you’re trying to sell
• Price – Profit margins, marketing budget, etc. 
• Place – What channels or platforms will you use? (For example, will you be advertising on social media, utilizing email marketing, or going offline?) Consider where your customers already spend their time for the optimal marketing locations. 
• Promotion – What are you trying to achieve? (Are you hoping to build your social media presence, increase brand perception, promote a new product, or something else?)
• People – Who is your target audience? What drives them? 

Once you’ve answered these questions, you’ll be in a fantastic position to start building your company’s marketing strategy.

Although “marketing strategies” might seem relatively straightforward, there can often be some confusion when establishing whether you’re creating a marketing strategy, marketing plan, or marketing tactic. While all three of these marketing initiatives work together, they cover slightly different aspects and should not be used interchangeably.

Marketing plan

A marketing plan is an overview of all your marketing initiatives. This will include all the campaigns you intend to run over a set period of time, your goals and ambitions for the projects as a whole, and any research you’ve compiled to support these aims.

Marketing strategies

Marketing strategies at first glance appear very similar to the overarching marketing plan. However, the strategies will take a closer look at just a few select parts of the marketing plan.

For example, if your marketing plan is to promote a new product or service, you might have a strategy dedicated to how you’re going to use email marketing to support these broader goals. Every marketing plan will most likely produce several marketing strategies as part of the broader plan.

Marketing tactics

While the marketing plan and strategies are committed to explaining what you’re going to do, marketing tactics go deeper again and establish how you’re going to do it.

Using the above example, the marketing plan is to build awareness for a new product. The marketing strategy is how you’ll utilize email marketing as part of this. The marketing tactics will detail the specific actions you’ll take as part of the marketing campaign.

Now we understand some of the different marketing terms, it’s time to zone in on marketing strategies and how these work as part of your business plan.

There are numerous different types of marketing strategies you can use depending on your business needs. While we’re not going to cover every marketing strategy type today, these are some of the main ones that you’re likely to come across:

1. Social media marketing strategy 

Today, social media marketing is a huge part of any business’s marketing plan as it’s a hugely compelling way to drive traffic, build brand awareness, and take advantage of the social selling revelation that’s taking over online marketing. 

According to recent data, around 54% of social media users use social platforms to research brands and products, and 89% of consumers who follow a particular brand will purchase from that brand. 

With these figures, if you’re not utilizing an effective social media marketing strategy, you’re missing out on untold rewards.

2. Email marketing strategy

Anyone who’s ever told you “email is dead” is dead wrong. Capturing your customers’ emails and browsers should be an essential part of your marketing strategy and is an excellent way to continue a conversation with people who have expressed interest in your brand.

There are loads of email marketing tools available to help you in this area. However, you still need an effective email marketing strategy to produce consistent, compelling emails that convert readers into buyers. 

3. Inbound marketing strategy

An inbound marketing strategy is all about pulling customers in and driving traffic to your website or products. Rather than using “disruptive” marketing techniques (like TV advertising), inbound marketing is about lead generation using people who have shown interest in your products, services, or brand as a whole.

Email marketing can be a good example of an inbound marketing strategy. If someone has subscribed to your mailing list, chances are they’re at least somewhat interested in what you have to say. This enables you to take a softer approach to your marketing, as these leads are already more likely to become sales.

Another inbound marketing strategy could be blog posts. People will only see blog posts relevant to their search terms and interests, meaning they’ve expressed a need that at least somewhat relates to what you’re selling.

4. Content marketing strategy

A content marketing strategy is likely to overlap with an inbound marketing strategy, but it is more specific. With content marketing strategies, you focus on content creation that will draw people in and build interest.

This is likely to cover blog posts and white papers and can even overlap with your social media marketing.

Effectively, any part of your marketing campaigns that require content will require an effective content marketing strategy.

5. Editorial strategy

Taking an editorial approach is a particularly vital marketing strategy for advertising companies as it highlights the content formats, workflows, and channels you’ll be utilizing to hit your marketing goals.

It’s similar to the sort of marketing strategies you would expect to see in a news or media organization and can be essential for brand publishers or advertisers to keep their marketing efforts and ideas in focus.

6. Marketing communications strategy

Your marketing communications strategy should be primarily focused on your brand’s message and value proposition . It’s all about how you’re going to say what you need to say. 

For example, is your tone of voice serious or humorous? Are you marketing yourself as an expert in your industry? What is the message you want to get across?

7. Digital marketing strategy

Digital marketing probably doesn’t need much introduction… This marketing strategy will encompass all your online marketing, SEO , social media lead generation, performance marketing , and more…. Effectively, if it’s online, it should be covered by your digital marketing strategy. 

8. Internal marketing strategy

Although internal marketing will be less vital for SMBs, it can be a vital part of the marketing efforts for large companies. A good example of an internal marketing strategy would be an internal email that lets employees know they’re eligible to become shareholders or asks existing shareholders to support a new initiative.

Internal marketing can also cover more mundane issues, such as keeping staff up to date on any changes to the company, branding, or internal procedures.

9. Public relations strategy

If you’re in business, you’ll probably know how complicated PR strategies can be. Not only does getting PR right ensure you keep your customers happy, but it’s also vital for protecting your brand image in the eyes of your stakeholders, the media, and even governmental bodies or other influential institutions.

Any large business should have a dedicated PR team in charge of the brand’s public image. In addition to protecting it, good PR can also offer invaluable word-of-mouth advertising.

10. SEO strategy

SEO should form part of all the different marketing strategies. Still, you may find it beneficial to have some of your marketing efforts explicitly dedicated to SEO, as this is likely to be your primary source of lead generation.

SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is pretty much what it says on the tin: the art of using keywords and phrases to boost your visibility when users search for relevant terms on the internet. Getting SEO right is arguably the best way to drive traffic to your website and should be front of mind in all your digital marketing and content marketing strategies.

Naturally, SEO goes beyond just keyword optimization and considers a plethora of other aspects to help you rise on those search engine results pages (SERPs). So, it’s a good idea to have at least one marketing team member dedicated to the latest SEO trends so you can rank #1 on Google.  

When it comes to strategic marketing strategies, there isn’t always a one-size-fits-all solution. Strategies can take many different forms, from word documents to flowcharts to slides… But although they can look different on the outside, the most effective marketing strategies will always have a few things in common.

If nothing else, your marketing strategy should cover the following questions:

Who are you trying to reach? 

For this section, you need to really get into the mind of your target audience. This includes building detailed buyer personas and user personas, with information including their demographics, age, location, employment status, interests, passions, pain points, and anything else you can think of. The more detail you can include in your target market research, the better you will understand and communicate with your audience. 

Where will you reach your potential customers? 

As part of your research into your target audience, you should also spend some time considering the places (online and offline) where they spend their time. For many businesses today, most of your marketing strategies will probably be focused on social media. Still, even once you’ve narrowed this down, it can also be valuable to create marketing strategies for the various social media platforms and any other marketing channels you would like to use. 

What action do you want people to take?

The answer to this question will fuel your Call - to - Action phrases and is essentially nailing down the goals of your entire marketing campaign. Do you want to drive more website traffic? Increase sales? Raise awareness for a new product? Get more followers on social media? Boost your search results rankings? Whatever your goals are, having them clearly laid out as part of your digital marketing strategy is essential. 

How will you inspire potential customers to take action?

The next question leads off this, and it’s about how you’re going to convince or inspire consumers to take the desired action. This could incorporate discount codes, summer sales, referral programs, or you could even let your brand, product, or service speak for itself if you’re just hoping to build awareness.

How will you measure success? 

If you have no KPIs or objective method for measuring the success of your marketing campaign, you really have no way of monitoring whether or not your campaigns are working! Having clear, measurable goals and precise targets you can see whether you’re hitting are essential for an effective marketing strategy. For eg, if your target is to get more followers on Instagram for your brand… It’s easy to see when you’re on track. However, you’ll want to dive deeper than this, with goals for conversions, weekly and monthly targets, etc.

Top 11 great marketing strategy examples and 1 you shouldn’t follow

Now you have an idea of what a marketing strategy is and how to write some of the best marketing strategies, we wanted to give you some great marketing strategies examples so you can see how these work in the real world.

These examples of marketing strategies of a business will provide you with plenty of inspiration for your own campaigns and help you ace the advertising industry. Plus, we’ve included a bonus example of when a marketing strategy didn’t quite go to plan… Take a look!

1. Spotify: offering an alternative user experience

Spotify is the go-to music streaming service for most people around the world, but what is it that makes them stand out?

Spotify’s key marketing efforts focus on how the brand is different from other services, providing users with the chance to discover new music with ease and even lets you filter tracks by mood as well as genre. The artificial intelligence in Spotify’s algorithms provides users with carefully curated, bespoke playlists that actually suit their tastes and manages to turn playing music or listening to a podcast into a whole new experience.

2. Nordstrom: Retargeting campaigns

Nordstrom is well-known for dominating when it comes to marketing, and this campaign was remarkably successful. Employing the latest retargeting technology and tactics, Nordstrom was able to dramatically boost its bottom line and reduce cart abandonment. This campaign primarily utilized abandoned cart emails alongside social media ads that were activated following a website visit from the user.   

3. GoPro: User-generated content

GoPro certainly isn’t the first – or the last – company to achieve success with a user-generated-content-led marketing strategy, but that doesn’t make it any less effective or worthy of inclusion in our list! As a brand dedicated to creating on-the-go, fast content, the product lends itself nicely to this marketing tactic, so GoPro can benefit from a “spectacular” Instagram feed without needing a huge budget to take the images itself. And what’s more, each user-generated image that ends up on the feed motivates others to snap pics and share their experiences.

4. Sephora: Loyalty programs

Loyalty programs are a bit of a tale as old as time for maximizing customer retention, but that doesn’t mean all loyalty programs are created equal. Sephora discovered the trick to innovative, inspiring loyalty programs with its tiered approach and generous rewards. These rewards provide plenty of incentive for users to buy and are a fantastic way of increasing word-of-mouth marketing.

5. Rainforest alliance: “Follow the Frog.”

These days, the top online stores all offer information about how they engage in sustainable practices, have cruelty-free manufacturing, and/or how they support charities and initiatives around the world. Rainforest Alliance’s “ Follow the Frog ” campaign tapped into this priority by offering B2B and B2C organizations the chance to demonstrate their commitment to the environment and sustainability with a green frog seal on their products and website. This became a well-known symbol that’s highly desirable to other brands in all industries.

6. Twitch: Niche-specific marketing

Many brands make the mistake of trying to market their product or service to a target audience that’s simply too broad. But that only leads to a confusing message and few real customers. Instead, follow the lead of the social streaming service, Twitch. This company wasted no time or money advertising to people who won’t be interested in what makes the brand unique… Instead, all its efforts went into establishing precisely who the niche market is and how to attract them.

7. Nike: “Just Do It” – promoting values

We are all familiar with Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan , but have you ever given the marketing plan behind it any thought? Well, Nike used to be a brand dedicated to providing athleticwear to athletes… But they changed their model to appeal to the masses and put values first. The “Just Do It” and “*If you have a body, you’re an athlete” campaigns have been instrumental in Nike’s prolonged success by making everyone feel included and welcomed.

8. Chipotle: Fun contests

Contests are always an effective way to build brand awareness or promote a new product. Chipotle’s 2020 social media contest came at a perfect time and gave the audience a fun and unique way of interacting with the brand. The contest was called “Chipotle Royalty” and involved users posting a TikTok video explaining why their Chipotle order was the best. The prizes? A chance to win $10,000 and have their order become a permanent menu fixture. Definitely worth a video!

9. Red Bull: Putting identify before products

Similar to Nike’s values before products , Red Bull prioritizes experiences and identity of risk-taking front-and-center when it comes to marketing. With Red Bull sponsorships covering everything from Red Bull Stratos (seriously, take a look, it’s really cool) to rallycross racing to Formula One, and so much more, Red Bull had made its identity and brand persona clear… And ensures we won’t forget it any time soon! 

10. Starbucks: Making coffee into an experience and a lifestyle

Selling coffee certainly doesn’t sound like a unique endeavor, but Starbucks’ marketing team worked hard to create an experience that wasn’t just about the coffee. With an incredibly famous logo that can be spotted worldwide, Starbucks created a feeling of comfort, inclusion, and home that cannot be rivelled. Coschedule has an interesting, deep-dive article looking at Starbucks ‘ marketing strategy in more detail. 

11. AllBirds: Humorous, transparent, sustainable

Allbirds’ goal was to create “the world’s most comfortable shoe.” And while they did seem to manage this, it’s not why we’re highlighting their marketing strategy. This strategy really stands out because of the consistent tone of voice and values visible in every piece of marketing, every web page, and every interaction with the brand. The quirky and humorous voice is highly memorable and matches the values of transparency, sustainability, and comfort.

12. Segway: Failed to identify pain points

Now we’ve considered some of the best marketing strategies of all time, we also wanted to look at one brand that didn’t do quite so well. When Segway was first introduced, the idea was that it would replace walking as the primary A-to-B method and could go up to 12.5mph. The primary reason Segway failed is because people didn’t want to stop walking, running, or cycling (among others). So, the pain point the device was built to solve wasn’t really a pain point at all, and Segway offered little benefit to users. 

The lesson here? Do your target market research thoroughly , and don’t just build a product because you think it looks cool.

No matter how big or small your ad campaigns are, it’s essential to always support them with marketing strategies that summarize how you will convert browsers into consumers. To give you a head start at employing the best and most effective marketing techniques, ensure every strategy you create does the following:

Set specific goals

SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-based) goals are essential for an excellent marketing strategy. These will not only give you something to aim for, but they’ll also help you monitor your progress and hold you accountable.

Identify your target audience.

Correctly identifying your target audience, their passions, and their pain points is vital. As we learned from Segway, not having a thorough understanding of your audience and what they need/want is only ever going to be a recipe for disaster.

Identify your competition

There’s a lot to be learned from the competition. On the one hand, you can check on other businesses in your industry to see what they’re doing well and what their audience responds to. On the other hand, identifying your competition’s weaker points can be a brilliant springboard to help you find your unique selling proposition and help you stand out. 

Choose the most effective platform

There’s no point in shouting about your products in a location your customers never visit. As part of your market research, you should also investigate where your customers spend their time online and offline. Then, build a marketing strategy using the platforms and channels your customers are already using.

Marketing strategies make it more likely that you’ll reach your goals

You don’t need to be a Fortune 500 company to invest in an effective marketing strategy and reap the benefits. Even small businesses need marketing to build brand awareness and get people interested. After all, even with the best products in the world, nobody will buy them if they don’t know who you are!

As the famous quote goes, “failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” And the research backs this up, with 313% of marketers being more likely to report success when they have a documented marketing strategy than those without. 

So, don’t waste your precious time and money investing in poorly thought-out marketing campaigns. Instead, take the time to build a detailed plan and strategy with marketing tactics for success, and you’ll be sure to maximize your ROI in no time.

How do you create a marketing strategy?

Building a marketing strategy isn’t that different from writing a marketing plan… It’s just more detailed and niche than the overarching plan and focuses on one/two platforms at a time.

How do you write a marketing strategy example?

It’s worth (if you can) taking a look at some other successful marketing strategy examples from similar companies in your industry before writing your own if you’re not sure where to start. This will give you an idea of what has/hasn’t worked in the past and will enable you to cultivate a better strategy than the one before. Even if you can’t view the marketing strategy document, plenty of research is always necessary for any advertising campaign; the more information you have before you start, the better your marketing strategy will be.

What are the five marketing strategies?

The five “Ps” of marketing are Product, Price, Promotion, Place, and People. These “Ps” are essential to quality marketing efforts and should all be covered in your marketing strategy example.

• What is a Marketing Plan, How to Write One & 5 Great Examples
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• 10 Low-Cost Marketing Strategies for eCommerce Startups

I'm a content manager at sixads. I'm fiery about marketing, writing and traveling, so you can often find me scribbling away in some unknown corner of the world. If you want to know more ways to increase traffic and attract buyers to your online store get in touch with sixads on one of the channels bellow.

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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.

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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.

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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MARKETING PLAN GENERATOR

This high-level template will help you outline your annual marketing strategy, identify your most important initiatives, and track the right metrics all year long. Tell us a little about your marketing goals and you’ll receive a 12-month plan in less than 10 minutes.

Press enter/arrow keys (or swipe on mobile) to continue

You smart planner, you. We're so excited to help you create a marketing plan that will drive big results!

Let's start by getting acquainted. What's your name?

Awesome. it's great to meet you .

We'll be diving into some questions about your company, what you do there, and what your team's goals are for this year. These questions will help us customize your plan to fit your company's exact needs. If you're not 100% sure how to answer a question, that's okay. Just put in a quick answer for now — you can always go back in and edit your answers later.

Where do you work?

Very cool how many employees work at your company .

A written mission helps align your team around common goals. Patagonia's mission is to "build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis." Want another example? Click here.

What's your company 's mission?

Just add a few words outlining your direction. You can always change this answer later.

Sounds like a great place to be . What exactly do you do at your company ?

74% of marketers say that converting leads into customers is their company's top priority over the next 12 months.

State of Inbound 2016

What's your team's main focus this year?

What key objectives do you want to achieve? Remember: You can always come back and change this answer later.

Select up to 3 initiatives your team should prioritize this year to help carry out that focus:

(Scroll for more options)

• Build Brand Awareness
• Close Deals
• Create a High-Quality Pipeline
• Create Content
• Create Paid Advertisement Program
• Decrease Churn
• Decrease Customer Acquisition Cost
• Define or Update Personas
• Differentiate Brand From Competitors
• Diversify Promotion Efforts
• Grow Event Attendance
• Grow International Brand
• Grow Paid Users
• Grow Revenue
• Grow Social Media Reach
• Improve Customer NPS
• Improve Lead Quality
• Improve Sales Rep Productivity
• Increase Clickthrough Rate
• Increase Conversion Rate
• Increase Leads
• Increase Product Adoption
• Increase Traffic
• Introduce New Product/Service
• Optimize Sales Cycle
• Recruit Top Talent
• Scale Company Culture
• Shorten Sales Cycle
• Unify Products/Services

What are your goals for these initiatives?

Example: Grow lead generation by 1,000 leads per month

( Enter options on previous slide to view content )

Which initiatives would you consider for a future year?

Now that you have your top priorities in place, it’s time to select 1-3 initiatives that, while valuable, will only distract you from achieving this year’s goals. These could be considered later on, but for now, you don’t have the resources in place to focus on them.

Well, would you look at that! You're almost finished. That wasn't so hard, was it?

One final thing: How do we get in touch to discuss your goals for next year?

We're committed to your privacy. HubSpot uses the information you provide to us to contact you about our relevant content, products, and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For more information, check out our Privacy Policy .

What is in the Marketing Plan Template?

HubSpot's marketing plan generator offers a template displaying your company's mission, strategy, and initiatives following the information entered in the tool while also identifying future opportunities. The project planner tool delivers a 12-month marketing plan template dividing actions for your team into initiatives, measurement metrics, and goals. This free resource for your business can be downloaded as a CSV file and shared with your team.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the marketing plan template generator do.

The Marketing Plan Generator uses the information you provide about your marketing goals to create a personalized 12-month plan that will help your business reach new heights of success.

How Does the Marketing Plan Template Generator Work?

As a marketing plan software, it uses the answers you provide in the assessment to generate your company marketing priorities for the year to come. It identifies relevant initiatives to prioritize following the goals entered and delivers a practical template.

Why is a Marketing Plan Important?

Developing a marketing plan is crucial as it allows you to determine what to focus on by setting clear objectives. It also helps in managing resources better and maximize the impact of every marketing action. This is in a nutshell why you need a marketing plan.

When Do You Need to Use a Marketing Plan?

When your product is ready to be marketed, which is most likely right now as you are reading these lines! Instead of an example, why not spend some time taking our MPTG assessment and discover what you can do today to improve your marketing?

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11 Marketing Strategy Examples to Inspire Your Next Campaign

Kristen dahlin.

• November 10, 2022

Table of Contents

Marketing can be difficult to accomplish correctly. It takes a lot of care and attention to understand what challenges your target audience is going through, learn how to solve those problems, and present a solution that works for them. 

Your brand is critical to your business’s success. Without a well-planned marketing strategy, it’s hard to make the strides you need to succeed, hard to develop your brand, and hard to stay consistent in how you present your brand across marketing channels.

However, in the end, it’s incredibly rewarding! Your brand has incredible potential, you only need to unleash it with the right tools and marketing efforts! 

In what follows, we’ll talk about some marketing strategy examples that you can use as inspiration for your next campaign. We’ll discuss why a marketing strategy is so important, real-life successful marketing strategy examples, and how to measure your success.

What is a Marketing Strategy? Do You Need One?

A marketing strategy is a plan where a company or firm implements promotional tactics with the aim to win prospective customers over to become customers.

Some examples of marketing strategies include promoting brand awareness on the Internet via social media platforms and search engines. 

Marketing strategies are powered by a cycle of goal setting, planning, execution, and tracking. They typically include the channels that a company will use to reach its ideal audience, as well as budget constraints, and key performance indicators to monitor for success.

To have an effective marketing strategy, a business must deeply understand its prospects and goals, form a plan to achieve those goals, execute it, and measure its progress quantitatively along the way.

For smaller businesses, this might sound a bit overkill. However, it’s extremely important in a company’s growth and in expanding ground in a competitive marketplace, even if you’re small!

Marketing strategies help businesses stay within their budget and adjust their marketing tactics for effectiveness. Without a marketing strategy and measurement plan, it’s difficult to know what specific efforts are succeeding.

Every business needs a way to know if the latest spike in sales came from their newest social media posts, content marketing, or a jump up in search engine results pages!

If you can measure your progress with data, you can adjust as necessary to achieve your overall marketing goals.

Marketing strategies are needed for your business to thrive, so let’s talk more about some examples of marketing strategies to help you learn how you can make the best use of them!

11 Successful Marketing Strategy Examples

The most successful businesses use marketing strategies tailored to their needs.

What you’ll see below most likely won’t work for your business out of the box, as they are built around an entirely different business’s marketing goals.

Instead, consider these examples as ideas to inspire you to augment your own strengths, audience, and assets to your advantage.

Marketing Strategy Example 1: Marriott

As the world’s largest hotel chain by the number of available rooms, Marriott has solidified its position in the market.

To maintain that position and to advance new features and offerings to its guests, the company needs to connect with its audience. One way of connecting with your audience is to partner with people that are already influential with that audience.

Marriott demonstrated this idea through their campaign with YouTube star Jeana Smith ( @PrankVsPrank ) to celebrate surpassing one million check-ins on their mobile app.

From this campaign, they threw a huge party for their one-millionth mobile check-in guest at the hotel in Los Angeles! Aside from making that guest’s night much more special, teaming up with Jeana Smith enabled the whole ordeal to be experienced by millions of PrankVsPrank subscribers.

Key Takeaways

Influencer marketing like Marriott’s partnership with Jeana Smith can work extremely well for businesses that want to connect with their audience. It not only can be rewarding for a prominent member of a community, but it can help elevate your brand’s image! Since influencers like Jeana are already well-perceived by their audience, associating with them can heighten your image as well.

Brands have a lot to learn from influencers. Prominent community members like Jeana Smith already know how to connect with their audience. Teaming up and listening to their ideas and suggestions can help you succeed.

Influencer marketing isn’t just for big brands! If you are a small business look for micro-influencers to partner with. And, consider a tactic that has worked for start-ups like Tailwind and BuzzSumo — begin your influencer marketing by swapping mentions on social media, or including references to influencers in your content marketing strategy.

Marketing Strategy Example 2: Balenciaga

As a high-luxury fashion brand, Balenciaga finds it difficult to target a larger audience. However, it found unique success thanks to a brilliant marketing strategy using memes! This ‘meme baiting’ strategy involved creating outrageous products for stratospheric prices. These products are silly, but they bait a larger audience into paying the soaring prices to take part in the joke.

Balenciaga succeeded by taking advantage of social network sharing online. The more people who saw their ridiculous products like the T-shirt shirt, the more popular the campaign became. Quickly many people became willing to spend upwards of a thousand dollars! Through humor, Balenciaga was able to bridge the gap between its audience and its towering prices.

Balenciaga proves that good marketing can help you sell anything! However, it requires a deep understanding of your audience and your brand. Knowing how to take advantage of how information can travel within your audience is incredibly important for your success. Take advantage of social media channels to help your content spread to the people who need to see it. Engage with them and watch your brand grow!

Marketing Strategy Example 3: Nordstrom

As a luxury department store chain, Nordstrom is known for its high-quality products. This reputation extends to social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.

Nordstrom saw the opportunity to integrate these two social media platforms to help sell its products in-store and online.

The strategy they chose is called Retargeting, a way of showing visitors content on social media or your website based on the content they had previously seen on your website.

It’s an ingenious way to engage with your audience to help them find what they need!

One of the most important parts about the company strategy was to integrate their Instagram and Pinterest accounts to share the same content. Users would first see the item there, and then they were encouraged to visit one of the company’s physical locations to purchase any item that they saw online.

One of the most important reasons why this campaign by Nordstrom was so successful was that they deeply understood their customer’s journey. They had a vision of the funnel from discovery on social media all the way to checkout.

By better understanding your audience in this way, you can build better loyalty which increases the chance that a customer will return to buy more.

For example, many audiences seek inspiration on social platforms like Instagram and Pinterest to help them find what interests them. If they encounter a brand’s content while browsing social, they may search for it later in an organic traffic channel like Google, and if search ads are part of your marketing budget, you can snag people who are searching for terms related to your brand.

By meeting your target where they spend time, Nordstrom built better relationships with their audience to achieve success! You can do the same thing with your audience!

Marketing Strategy Example 4: Allbirds

This eco-friendly footwear and apparel company makes waves with its audience through consistent and on-brand communication across all channels. No matter where you look, Allbirds uses its recognizable humor and tone of voice.

Not too long ago, this billion-dollar shoe company was a simple startup that worked its way up in the world. Aside from its consistent brand presentation, there are a few other ways that their marketing strategy carried them to success:

·       Unique value proposition: sustainable high-quality shoes.

·       Listening to feedback on social media: improving their products based on audience voices

Allbirds highlights its unique brand proposition consistently in all its social media promotions. They also actively engage with their audience and respond to their questions.

The above conversations show that whoever is at the reins of the Allbirds Instagram account knows how to care for their audience!

Having a consistent brand image across all channels is essential for your success. Although the strategy Allbirds uses may not fit your business perfectly, following that basic principle is extremely important.

In addition, be transparent. Sharing information that matters to your audience will build trust with them and will raise the quality and recognition of your brand.

Marketing Strategy Example 5: Twitch

As one of the world’s most popular video streaming platforms, Twitch has built an empire of active users. The platform has heavily capitalized on the fear of missing out (FOMO), a pain point that livestreaming can resolve. This is effective because Twitch creators build entrenched relationships with their audience.

The language that Twitch uses to advertise their platform is synonymous with event marketing. Phrases like “don’t miss” are common.

This doesn’t just apply to gaming. Twitch’s breadth allows it to focus down to many different niches to attract audiences. Health and fitness, fashion, cooking, and more are topics that users leverage Twitch for every day.

The fear of missing out is a pain point for an audience. Every business’s audience has unique pain points. It’s your responsibility to identify those pain points and come up with ways to resolve them. Putting yourself in your audience’s shoes by considering their problems is a fantastic way to learn how to connect with them more effectively.

PRO TIP: When building your marketing strategy, think about ways to increase FOMO for your audience. This is especially effective for Bottom of the Funnel campaigns like sales or special offers. Don’t be afraid to remind your audience that time is running out! At Tailwind, our marketing team includes a “last chance” message whenever we have a special offer. We have tested the results over time and offers that include this kind of urgency always perform better than those that don’t. “I used to hate adding urgency to our marketing campaigns,” says Susan Moeller, Tailwind marketing director. “But our data has convinced me that keeping an eye on FOMO is good for our bottom line. Now, it’s a big part of our marketing strategy.

Marketing Strategy Example 6: BuzzFeed

Over the years BuzzFeed has become universally recognizable around the world for its content. Their marketing strategy has narrowly segmented its audience by interests for its content, especially in its email marketing campaigns. In fact, it gives users the power to choose exactly what they want to receive in their inbox.

For example, Buzzfeed provides numerous newsletters that users can opt into such as cooking recipes, style tips, news, and learning courses. Users can also choose how often they want to receive content to their inbox. This accomplishes the following:

• Allows users to receive content they want and are excited about.·      
• Content is highly targeted, allowing for more effective promotions.

It’s no secret that delivering content that’s relevant to your audience can be challenging.

Diving deep and learning about their interests is time-consuming. For a more niche audience, this is achievable and rewarding. However, for a company the size of Buzzfeed trying to deliver content to a huge audience with a variety of different interests, this is much more difficult.

They creatively got around this by giving users a variety of content categories to choose from for themselves.

By choosing these newsletters, Buzzfeed can learn more about its audience. Look for opportunities to take advantage of the different niches that exist within your audience.

It can be daunting for small businesses to think about adding email marketing to their strategy. But, it’s worth the effort!

Need a little help with your email marketing plans? Consider an AI tool that will write part or all of the content for you. Tailwind’s Ghostwriter includes a full suite of AI-powered email copywriting.

Marketing Strategy Example 7: Zara

As an international retailer from Spain, Zara’s fast fashion may surprise you in that it spends almost nothing on advertising. Instead, Zara focuses on market segmentation. The company leverages a tool called a BCG matrix.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Matrix is a way of understanding a company’s position and the influence they have on their audience:

Each quadrant of the BCG matrix refers to a product category sold by Zara. They involve two dimensions: market growth rate and relative market share.

The most valuable quadrant is the stars, which have a high relative market share and high market growth rate.

Zara understands which products fit each category and how its products impact its customers with data.

Instead of directly advertising to their audience, they place products exactly where they need to be at in-person stores.

This is how they are so successful at having customers come to them for products instead of pitching products to them through advertising.

Zara’s success hinges on understanding its audience and how to engage with them. Apply qualitative and quantitative techniques to your marketing strategies to achieve comparable results. Understand what your product means to each part of your audience.

Be aware as well of positioning of your products and your audience. You need to know where they are located geographically, and how you can best reach the most valuable parts of your audience.

PRO TIP: Touch base regularly with your customers, paying attention to the language they use to describe your products and why they buy from you. This information can supercharge everything from search engine optimization to paid advertising to social media marketing.

It’s a powerful thing to speak to your audience with the same tone and style they use to describe you!

Marketing Strategy Example 8: Etsy

Taking advantage of the demand for handcrafted goods, Etsy is an e-commerce powerhouse. The company takes advantage of digital marketing, especially through email marketing .

The key component is how they cater to audience pain points that drove them to Etsy in the first place. For example, much of their audience is searching for gift ideas for loved ones or house decorations.

Etsy is focused on cutting down on spam and adding more value to its emails. In fact, Etsy offers an entire field guide  on how its creators can utilize marketing to engage with their customers! By empowering its creators to use email marketing for themselves, Etsy benefits by capturing the many niches of its larger audience.

Just as Etsy educates its creators on how to use email marketing successfully, you can incorporate those lessons into your own campaigns. Avoid spam, and especially avoid only being promotional in your emails.

Give users quality content that’s relevant and useful to them. After you’ve gotten their attention, promote your content to engage with your audience effectively.

PRO TIP: Center your marketing efforts on helpfulness wherever possible. From TikTok, to Instagram, to Pinterest and email, people love getting information that will make their lives easier or solve their problems. When your brand does that, you will become a go-to source for your audience, and sales will follow.

Here’s an example of a TikTok post that reflects one of our marketing objectives for that channel. It’s part of a series we are calling Marketing 101. In it, we are answering some of the basic questions people have about marketing.

We recognized that our own favorite posts on the For You results page were all helpful/actionable tips. So we developed a series of TikToks covering marketing basics. If paid ads are part of your marketing strategy, don’t forget to reuse organic social content that performs well in your ads campaigns!

Marketing Strategy Example 9: Airbnb

As one of the largest online marketplaces for finding places to stay, Airbnb is highly influential in the market. One of the most important marketing elements that has contributed to its success is its use of social media ads.

The company does a fantastic job of generating sales with attractive social media ads that showcase destinations and places to stay. They specifically target travelers and potential new hosts. In these ads and sponsored posts, Airbnb often takes advantage of user generated content.

Airbnb also utilizes retargeting to connect with social media users. If users have visited the website but not yet made a reservation, the company can retarget content to those users to encourage them to make their first reservation.

Airbnb succeeds thanks to its understanding of audience preferences. The company also does a great job of understanding how to use the communication channels that its audience favors. This helps them find exactly what their customers need.

The platform also has the unique advantage of having user-generated content to leverage for their ads. This gives the company a unique advantage in that they can save money on marketing by utilizing content created by its hosts. Understanding how you can use the resources you have at your disposal is important for your success.

PRO TIP: If your potential customers are on TikTok, consider Spark Post Ads — these enable you to easily advertise existing User Generated Content created about your company by other TikToker’s!

Marketing Strategy Example 10: 67 Shades of Dior Campaign

Dior is a luxury fashion house from France, a part of the largest luxury group in the world, LVMH. In celebration of Dior’s Forever Foundation product line launch, the company decided to present an ambassador that represented each of the 67 new shades.

They chose influencers to be these ambassadors which created content that was later shared on Dior’s social media channels. The campaign launched with the goal of representing the world’s diversity.

When considering all the influencers together, the 67 Shades of Dior Campaign had an audience reach that totaled up to 2.66 million. The campaign resulted in 1.85 million impressions and 592 thousand different engagements.

67 Shades of Dior connected emotionally with a substantial audience. It’s important to acknowledge the power of engaging audiences with real world social issues. Combining this strategy with influencer marketing helped Dior reach a wider audience that could relate to their new products. Learn what your audience cares deeply about and connect with them on those issues.

Marketing Strategy Example 11: Glossier

Founded in 2014, Emily Weiss’s company is a remarkably successful cosmetics startup. The brand committed to Instagram early on, netting themselves 13,000 followers before the release of their first product.

Glossier works hard to deeply understand and dedicate themselves to their audience’s needs and wants. Their tagline “Beauty products inspired by real life” reflects its marketing style as well. Instead of wildly edited photo content, Glossier instead opts for a more realistic approach, depicting real people in ordinary situations.

As an example of this in action, for a product launch, Glossier gave away the product for free to 500 fans who promoted it on their accounts. This resulted in an authentic and successful social media campaign.

It’s important to connect with how your product alleviates the pain points of your audience. Think carefully about how to do this through your audience’s main communication channels. In addition, it’s important to consider that the social capital that you raise may be just as important as sales. Glossier demonstrated that gaining a following can even precede sales. Building that following can be extremely beneficial for your business.

How to Measure Success

Now that we’ve looked at examples of successful marketing strategies in the real world, it’s time to see how you can measure your success! Tracking your results and progress is important for knowing if your marketing strategy is working. This is especially important for building a marketing strategy for social media. There are two elements you should monitor to keep track of your progress:

• Activities and times
• Key Performance Indicators

Let’s talk about each of them!

Activities and Time

This is all about stuff you put on your calendar for your marketing strategy.

List Activities

It’s important to make a list of all the activities and events you plan to put on for your marketing strategy.

At the end, examine all the activities and events that you’ve held. Think about if they’ve gone according to plan or if things didn’t turn out like you expected. If not, consider why that might be.

PRO TIP: Develop a retro habit as part of your marketing strategy work. At Tailwind, we try to conduct retros for specific campaigns as well as monthly, quarterly, and annual lookbacks. It can be remarkably helpful to gather all of your key learnings from a specific marketing campaign into one place. The next time you run a similar campaign, you won’t be starting from scratch!

Set Deadlines

This is a critical component in keeping your marketing strategy time bound. At the end, think about if you’ve managed to meet your expected deadlines for your marketing strategy. If deadlines shifted, think about what caused those changes.

Delegate Responsibilities

Delegating responsibilities is an important part of executing your marketing strategy. At the conclusion of the strategy, reflect on how everything was carried out. If responsibilities needed to be covered by people that you didn’t expect, consider reasons why.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Measuring KPIs is critical to quantitatively evaluating your marketing strategy’s performance over time.

Businesses have unique metrics that matter to them. If you aren’t sure what to measure as a marketer, talk to others in your company about the overall business plan. Think carefully about what metrics you want to keep track of over time to set as your KPIs.

Set a Cadence to Measure

Consider how often you want to keep track of your KPIs. This may be weekly or monthly.

Adjust Strategy Accordingly

If things aren’t going well, adjust your marketing initiatives. If things are going well, study your data to discover why. This is the key to growing your brand.

Build Your Own Marketing Strategy!

Now that you have seen examples of marketing strategies in the real world and have a sense of how to track your progress, you’re ready to build your own marketing strategy for your brand! Every business has unique needs and audiences, so it’s natural that you’ll have a unique marketing strategy. However, it’s a good idea to find inspiration in other successful campaigns to help guide your own.

If you’re looking to make the process of setting up your marketing campaign even easier, consider using social media management tools like Tailwind to help you schedule and optimize your content for your audience!

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Marketing Strategy Business Plan

Marketing is one of the key components of any business organization. Without marketing, companies would never succeed and will definite go bankrupt in a span of months. The importance of a marketing plan cannot be understated, that is the reason why marketing plans are formulated by both small enterprises and large corporations.

• 9+ Project Action Plan Examples
• 13+ Museum Strategic Plan Examples

To help you create your own marketing strategy business plan, we have provided some tips on how to write one as well as examples (in PDF format) you can use as a reference.

Marketing Strategy Business Plan Example

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What Is a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a document that identifies and analyzes what marketing tools the company should use to achieve maximum profitability. A simple marketing plan incorporates all campaigns that will be used, in which the said campaigns will also be monitored and measured. A marketing plan is also involved in the following functions:

• Create market research to support pricing decisions and new product lines
• Disseminate the main message of the product to demographics and geographic areas
• Choose from numerous platforms to promote products and services (i.e. digital, radio, Internet, magazines, television, print media, or a combination of those platforms)
• Set up results metrics and reporting timelines

Marketing plans and marketing strategies are often used interchangeably. This is because a marketing plan cannot exist if there is no strategy (or strategies) that is implemented in the said plan. There are instances where a marketing plan and marketing strategy can be merged, although it is more applicable for smaller companies since they only run very few marketing campaigns in a year.

But take note that marketing plan outlines the the company’s marketing activities while the strategy is only a tool that is being used to achieve the goals of the marketing plan.

When creating a marketing plan, the value proposition of the business should be considered and the plan should have a set time period. When identifying a target audience, market research is often used. Market research is also used to identify which marketing channel should be used (for example, online ads, radio, social media, and TV advertising spots).

The general marketing plan also describes the overall marketing strategy and lists down the rationale for each marketing decision. Additionally, the plan should also focus on the creation, timing and placement of specific campaigns, and how the outcome of those campaigns will be measured.

For a marketing plan to be properly executed, the marketing plan should be adjusted at any point and at any time based on the results. For example, if your digital ads are performing better than it was initially expected, the budget for digital ads can be increased to fund the platform that is performing at a more effective rate. You may also see simple business plan examples .

Marketing leaders often face the challenge of ensuring every platform has sufficient time to show results, a challenge in today’s fast-paced digital world.

Going back to the digital ads example, digital marketing shows results in near real-time, while traditional television ads still undergo a long process before it can be aired, which results in a longer time for results to be collated and analyzed. You may also like business plan examples .

A marketing plan would fall under the category of “promotion” in a traditional marketing mix model. Promotion is one of the Four P’s of Marketing   (a term coined by famous American professor Neil Borden), together with product, price, and place.

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Tips in Creating a Marketing Strategy Business Plan

Here are some tips in creating a marketing strategy business plan. Remember to incorporate the tips listed below to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing plan.

1. Situation analysis

You first need to determine the position of your business before you start developing a plan. Your company might want to move into a new market segment but you are still meeting your financial goals on your current market. Remember that any marketing plan will not be of help if your employees or untrained.

Most of the data you create for your situation analysis is mostly found in your company reports. If the said information is not available, you can always conduct a SWOT analysis to identify potential issues. You should be clear on what makes your company stand out from the competition.

2. Define the ideal customer

No business owner in his right mind will say that “everyone is my client” and “I cater to all types of markets.” Demographics is very important in determining the ideal customer base of a company. Not all market segments purchase the same products. For example, senior citizens are not the ideal market for smartphone manufacturers. You may also see business plan examples .

Similarly, teenagers aging 12 to 16 years old should not be the target market of antibiotic medicine for life-threatening diseases. It should be priority for you to do research first to identify your target market or ideal customer. Once you have identified your ideal customer or market segment, define how your products solve a need in that group. You may also like importance of business plan .

3. Establish marketing goals

The end goal of marketing should be sales. You should list down how your marketing efforts will improve revenues. For example, you can give discounts to customers who have already purchased your products more than once, or give out gift certificates to your loyal customers. Set a time frame so that you can be specific in the goals you want to achieve.

4. Select marketing tools

Your marketing tools will determine how you deal with your customers or clients. Choose from digital or traditional marketing methods, but you can always choose both although it will be more expensive on your end. Also, keep in touch with your customers via professional email , postal letter, or phone call/text.

5. Budget funds

Every commodity costs money. That is the reason why you should establish a budget for each marketing strategy you create. You should also monitor results to determine the effectiveness of the strategies you formulated, and do not hesitate to adjust the budget if you feel some marketing campaigns are not working in your favor.

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Components of a Marketing Strategy Business Plan

Before you start writing your marketing strategy business plan , make sure to incorporate the components listed below. They are essential to the success of your marketing plan.

1. Market research

Research is the backbone of any marketing plan. There are numerous online resources where you can gather important information for your strategy business plan (consumer buying habits, market size, market growth or decline, current trends, etc.). You may also see how to make a business plan .

2. Target market

The target market is essentially the demographic of customers where you will be selling your product. But take note that selling to a single market segment will not be advantageous to your business. Diversify your portfolio to fit multiple market segments. You may also like business plan outline with examples .

3. Positioning

Positioning is the perception of your product or brand in the marketplace. Basically, your business will never profit if you position yourself in an identical way as your competitors. Take priority in developing your company’s brand and clearly communicate to your target market on how you want your business to be perceived. You may also check out maintenance strategy plan examples .

4. Competitive analysis

Identify your competitors and analyze how your products provide a competitive advantage. Competitive analysis and positioning are similar as you will developing a brand that will give an an edge against your competitors.

To create an effective competitive analysis, you should answer these questions: “What are the prices of the products your competitors are selling?” “To which market segment are they catering to?” “What are the distinct features of their products or services?” “How long have they been in the industry?” “What technology are they implementing in their products?” You might be interested in networking strategy plan examples .

5. Market strategy

Revenue goals is the ultimate professional goal of market strategy. Identify and apply methods that you think will reach your customers in the most accessible and convenient way possible, and the methods should always translate to revenues for your business. You can choose from traditional or digital methods, or you can implement both in your market strategy.

As similar to almost all types of business activities, budget is needed to maintain a market strategy business plan. A sizable budget is not mandatory though, as you just need to be smart on how you handle your resources. A budget action plan or schedule is also beneficial as you budget your marketing activities.

Metrics is very helpful in tracking the results of your marketing activities. One software you can use is Google Analytics. This software tracks website visits, the demographics of your website visitors as well as their location, and other visitor information. The great thing about Google Analytics is that the free version does not hold back on the functionality which is very beneficial if you can’t afford the paid version. You may also see website strategy plan examples .

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Creating a marketing strategy business plan should be on the top of your priority list when identifying and analyzing the marketing activities of your company. A business, either a small enterprise or large corporation, will not be able to last in the industry it’s operating if it does not implement an effective marketing strategy business plan.

We hope you found this article to be informative as well as helpful when you will be making your own marketing strategy business plan. We have also provided some examples in PDF format for your reference.

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Develop a project timeline for a middle school science fair.

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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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How to Create a Complete Marketing Strategy in 2024 [Data + Expert Tips]

Having a well-defined marketing strategy is more critical than ever. The complexity of consumer behavior, digital platforms, and market dynamics demands a comprehensive approach to stay ahead of the competition. This blog will guide you through the essentials of crafting a robust marketing strategy for 2024, enriched with data insights and expert tips. We will cover everything from the definition of marketing strategy to the key components of marketing strategy , and provide a clear distinction between marketing strategy vs marketing plan .

Definition of Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy is a long-term plan designed to achieve specific business goals by understanding customer needs and creating a unique value proposition. It involves identifying target markets, positioning products or services, and developing tactics to reach and engage customers. The definition of marketing strategy encompasses various activities that align with the overall business objectives, ensuring that every marketing effort contributes to the company’s growth and success.

Marketing Strategy vs Marketing Plan

It’s crucial to differentiate between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan, as they serve distinct purposes. A marketing strategy outlines the overarching approach and goals, providing a framework for all marketing activities. It answers the “why” behind your marketing efforts. On the other hand, a marketing plan is a tactical document that details the specific actions, timelines, and resources required to execute the marketing strategy . It focuses on the “how” and “what” aspects.

Key Differences:

• Marketing Strategy : Focuses on long-term goals, market positioning, and value proposition.
• Marketing Plan : Emphasizes short-term actions, specific campaigns, and execution details.

Understanding the marketing strategy vs marketing plan distinction is vital for creating a cohesive and effective marketing approach.

Components of Marketing Strategy

A comprehensive marketing strategy includes several critical components, each contributing to the overall success of your marketing efforts. Let’s delve into these essential elements:

1. Market Research

Conducting thorough market research is the foundation of a solid marketing strategy . It involves gathering data about your target audience, competitors, market trends, and industry dynamics. Utilize both primary and secondary research methods to gain insights into consumer behavior, preferences, and pain points.

2. Target Audience Identification

Identifying your target audience is crucial for tailoring your marketing messages and tactics. Develop detailed buyer personas that represent your ideal customers, including demographics, psychographics, and buying behavior. This ensures that your marketing strategy resonates with the right audience.

3. Value Proposition

Your value proposition is a clear statement that explains how your product or service solves a problem or fulfills a need better than the competition. It should highlight the unique benefits and advantages that set your brand apart, driving customer engagement and loyalty.

4. Competitive Analysis

Analyze your competitors to understand their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis). Identify gaps in the market that your brand can fill and leverage your unique selling points to gain a competitive edge.

5. Marketing Channels

Choose the most effective marketing channels to reach your target audience. This may include digital platforms (social media, email, SEO, PPC), traditional media (TV, radio, print), and other channels (events, partnerships). A multi-channel approach ensures broader reach and higher engagement.

6. Messaging and Positioning

Craft compelling messaging that aligns with your brand’s values and resonates with your target audience. Position your brand in a way that highlights its unique benefits and appeals to the emotions and needs of your customers.

7. Budget Allocation

Allocate your marketing budget wisely, ensuring that you invest in the channels and tactics that provide the highest return on investment (ROI). Regularly review and adjust your budget based on performance metrics and changing market conditions.

8. Measurement and Analytics

Implement robust measurement and analytics tools to track the performance of your marketing efforts. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates, engagement metrics, and customer acquisition costs help you assess the effectiveness of your marketing strategy and make data-driven decisions.

Importance of Marketing Strategy

The importance of marketing strategy cannot be overstated, as it provides a clear roadmap for achieving business goals and driving growth. Here are some key benefits:

1. Direction and Focus

A well-defined marketing strategy provides direction and focus, ensuring that all marketing efforts are aligned with the overall business objectives. It helps prioritize activities, allocate resources efficiently, and avoid ad-hoc or inconsistent marketing efforts.

2. Competitive Advantage

A strong marketing strategy enables you to differentiate your brand from competitors and create a unique market position. By understanding customer needs and market trends, you can develop innovative solutions that offer superior value and attract loyal customers.

3. Customer Engagement

Effective marketing strategies are centered around the customer, ensuring that your brand delivers relevant and personalized experiences. This fosters customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty, ultimately leading to higher retention rates and lifetime value.

4. Resource Optimization

By identifying the most impactful marketing channels and tactics, a marketing strategy helps optimize the use of resources, maximizing ROI. It ensures that your marketing budget is spent on activities that drive measurable results and contribute to business growth.

5. Adaptability and Resilience

In a dynamic market environment, a marketing strategy provides the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions and emerging opportunities. It enables you to stay ahead of trends, respond to competitive threats, and maintain a resilient market position.

Marketing Strategy Process

Creating an effective marketing strategy involves a systematic process that encompasses several stages. Here is a step-by-step guide to developing a comprehensive marketing strategy in 2024:

Step 1: Situation Analysis

Conduct a thorough situation analysis to assess your current market position, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This includes a SWOT analysis, market research, and competitor analysis.

Step 2: Goal Setting

Define clear and measurable marketing goals that align with your business objectives. These goals should be specific, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART goals).

Step 3: Strategy Development

Develop a high-level marketing strategy that outlines the key approaches and tactics to achieve your goals. This includes defining your target audience, value proposition, positioning, and messaging.

Step 4: Tactical Planning

Create a detailed marketing plan that specifies the actions, timelines, and resources required to execute your marketing strategy . This includes selecting marketing channels, developing campaigns, and allocating budgets.

Step 5: Implementation

Execute your marketing plan, ensuring that all activities are carried out as planned. Coordinate with internal teams and external partners to ensure seamless execution and alignment with your marketing strategy .

Step 6: Monitoring and Evaluation

Continuously monitor the performance of your marketing efforts using analytics and KPIs. Evaluate the results against your goals and make data-driven adjustments to optimize your marketing strategy .

Step 7: Optimization

Regularly review and refine your marketing strategy based on performance insights and market changes. Implement continuous improvement practices to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of your marketing efforts.

Examples of Marketing Strategy

To illustrate the practical application of these principles, let’s explore some examples of marketing strategy from successful brands:

1. Nike: Customer-Centric Branding

Nike’s marketing strategy focuses on creating a strong emotional connection with customers through inspirational messaging and storytelling. By aligning their brand with values such as athletic excellence, innovation, and social responsibility, Nike engages customers on a deeper level and builds brand loyalty.

2. Apple: Innovative Product Positioning

Apple’s marketing strategy emphasizes innovation and premium quality. By positioning their products as cutting-edge and user-friendly, Apple attracts a loyal customer base willing to pay a premium for the latest technology. Their marketing campaigns highlight the unique features and benefits of their products, reinforcing their market leadership.

3. Coca-Cola: Global Consistency with Local Adaptation

Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy combines global consistency with local adaptation. Their global campaigns maintain a consistent brand message, while local campaigns are tailored to resonate with regional cultures and preferences. This approach ensures broad appeal and relevance across diverse markets. Creating a complete marketing strategy in 2024 requires a deep understanding of market dynamics, consumer behavior, and technological advancements. By following the steps outlined in this blog and incorporating the key components of marketing strategy , you can develop a robust and effective approach that drives business growth.

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Get More Bang for the Buck from Your Strategic Marketing Planning Process 

by Trisha Gallagher | August 21, 2024

If your business doesn’t have a strategic marketing plan—and you don’t think you need one—think again.

Data from a Coschedule survey suggests: 

• Marketers who document their strategy are 4x more likely to report success vs their peers. 
• Those who set marketing goals are nearly 4x times more likely to succeed. 
• And those who develop proactive plans are 3x more likely to report success.

Despite these outcomes, many businesses can forgo the strategic marketing planning process or don’t give it the proper time and attention. By understanding how to approach strategic marketing planning effectively and avoid the most common pitfalls, you’ll generate a much better return on your marketing investment. 

Why Strategic Marketing Planning Has Never Been More Critical  

Economic instability and a volatile geopolitical environment are forcing businesses to control costs, optimize efficiencies, adjust pricing, and take other measures to stay competitive. While it might seem tough to plan with confidence in these uncertain times, a strategic marketing plan is one of your best defenses, because it enables you to align marketing with your business goals even as you stay nimble in the face of change. 

The fast pace of digital transformation also makes it makes it more challenging but more vital to engage in strategic marketing planning. The evolution of AI is a prime example: Most businesses are grappling with how to employ AI for measurable business impact across different functions, including marketing. Strategic marketing planning helps you identify opportunities to use AI and other technologies to drive marketing efficiencies, propel faster growth, and better integrate marketing with sales, service, and other functions that participate in generating revenue.  

Strategic marketing planning can even help you combat labor challenges. Incorporating employer branding and workforce development efforts into your marketing plan improves your ability to attract and retain the talent you need to thrive. 

The Challenges of Strategic Marketing Planning  

To ensure you develop a strategic marketing plan that achieves your goals, your planning process needs to start with discovery and due diligence. Be prepared to engage with your marketing partner as they take a deep dive into your company and your industry—interviewing your management team, talking with customers to understand their pain points and their buying journey, analyzing the market and the competitive landscape, conducting a SWOT analysis, and assessing your digital footprint. 

Then your partner will analyze the findings and develop a strategic marketing plan that outlines the strategies and approaches that will help you hit your targets. The plan serves as your roadmap, documenting your business and marketing objectives, ideal buyers and their personas, overarching marketing strategy, targeted marketing campaigns , execution timeline, technologies and other resources needed to support the plan, budget, and key performance indicators (KPIs). 

This methodical process is proven to optimize marketing results by ensuring the strategic marketing plan is research-based, data-driven, and grounded in strategy. Yet, businesses don’t always give the process its proper due for reasons like these: 

• Lack of patience. When you can get your Amazon order the next day, it’s only natural to expect immediate results from marketing. That mindset causes some companies to shortchange the strategic marketing planning process and jump straight to a laundry list of tactics they hope will generate results (but don’t). 
• Lack of alignment. The key decision-maker who launches a strategic marketing effort is likely to be on board with the process, but that’s not enough. Everyone who’ll participate needs to be aligned on the need for a strategic marketing plan, willing to do the work, and in agreement on the business objectives the plan ladders up to.  
• Lack of ownership. Effective marketing planning demands that everyone involved is clear on their responsibilities and willing to own their piece of the process. For example, every functional group needs to be open to sharing information during discovery.  
• Lack of collaboration. Working in silos is always counter-productive, and especially during the strategic marketing planning process. You can’t develop an effective plan unless the right stakeholders work together, focused on common goals and priorities.      
• Resistance. Some stakeholders resist the discovery process because they believe they already know enough about their market, customers, and competitors. But everything that impacts your marketing is in constant flux. And if you only view the world through your internal lens, you’re likely getting a skewed impression. Your strategic marketing plan will only be effective if it’s based on an up-to-date, reliable source of truth.   

Proven Ways to Improve Your Strategic Marketing Planning  

If you’re committed to engaging in marketing that yields strong results, tips like these can help you make the most of the strategic marketing planning process. 

• Start with measurable goals. “Building awareness” is important, but it’s complicated to measure and it’s not the top priority for most companies. Go beyond high-level metrics and establish specific KPIs that align with your business goals. That’s the best way to ensure a high ROI on the time and money you spend on marketing.  
• Use a consistent framework company-wide. Every functional group will want marketing support, but resist the temptation to let each group create their own, disconnected plans that don’t align and don’t ladder up to the corporate objectives. A common framework ensures your plan is cohesive, integrated, grounded in the same strategy, and focused on the right goals.   
• Build in scenario planning. Rather than wait and react to change, use the planning process to anticipate what could happen and plan accordingly. If the economy stabilizes, is it worth boosting your marketing investment in certain areas? If we don’t achieve a soft landing, or a new entrant disrupts your market, how will you respond? Thinking through the what-ifs positions you to pivot faster. 
• Define how you’ll track and report on success. Make sure your marketing partner has the data analytics capabilities to monitor and report on progress toward your KPIs. Marketing ROI is more measurable than ever, as long as it’s in the hands of experienced marketers using the right analytical tools.  
• Revisit the plan. Your strategic marketing plan should be a living document, not a once-and-done effort. Review the plan regularly and adapt it based on how your market or your customers are evolving and how your campaigns are performing.       

Running a middle market business can stretch you thin, especially in challenging times. But if you invest some time upfront on strategic marketing planning—and you commit to giving the process proper attention—you’ll reap the rewards many times over by truly moving the needle on your growth goals. 

Schedule a call with Deb Andrews to learn how Marketri can develop a strategic marketing plan that drives predictable revenue for your B2B company. 

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