business planner for marketing

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?

Back to top

More hubspot tools.

• Make My Persona
• Blog Idea Generator
• Website Grader
• Email Signature Generator
• Business Templates

• Product overview
• All features
• Latest feature release
• App integrations

CAPABILITIES

• project icon Project management
• Project views
• Custom fields
• Status updates
• goal icon Goals and reporting
• Reporting dashboards
• workflow icon Workflows and automation
• portfolio icon Resource management
• Capacity planning
• Time tracking
• my-task icon Admin and security
• Admin console
• asana-intelligence icon Asana AI
• list icon Personal
• premium icon Starter
• briefcase icon Advanced
• Goal management
• Organizational planning
• Campaign management
• Creative production
• Content calendars
• Marketing strategic planning
• Resource planning
• Project intake
• Product launches
• Employee onboarding
• View all uses arrow-right icon
• Project plans
• Team goals & objectives
• Team continuity
• Meeting agenda
• View all templates arrow-right icon
• Work management resources Discover best practices, watch webinars, get insights
• Customer stories See how the world's best organizations drive work innovation with Asana
• Help Center Get lots of tips, tricks, and advice to get the most from Asana
• Asana Academy Sign up for interactive courses and webinars to learn Asana
• Developers Learn more about building apps on the Asana platform
• Community programs Connect with and learn from Asana customers around the world
• Events Find out about upcoming events near you
• Partners Learn more about our partner programs
• Asana for nonprofits Get more information on our nonprofit discount program, and apply.

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

Write better AI prompts: A 4-sentence framework

What is content marketing? A complete guide

Smooth product launches are simpler than you think

all your locations, one content flow

content collaboration at scale

impress your clients and take on more

See customer stories

Create, plan, approve

Bring all your content together

Align your clients, team & content

Measure, report and strategize

• Pricing calculator for social media

Social media management

• Job title Quiz

Book a demo

Hello there

Noticed you’re on an iOS device. Get our mobile app for effortless planning on the go.

Noticed you’re on an Android device. Get our mobile app for effortless planning on the go.

Marketing calendar

Agency Workflows

Align your clients, team & content

Take a 1 minute tour to see how Planable works

For multi-location brands

For multi-brand companies

For agencies

“The team loved it from the start. Planable helps us overview the entire marketing efforts.“

Pricing Calculator for Social Media

Social Media Management Guide

Job Title Quiz

50+ Social Media Trends in 2022

Plan, review and schedule 6x faster

Planable for enterprises

Collaboration at scale

Planable for agencies

For you and your clients

Universal Content

For all marketing content

Table of contents

Marketing planner essentials: guide for strategic success.

Kseniia Volodina

Apr 8, 2024

No credit card required!

A marketing planner is an incredibly useful asset for any marketer. A single source of truth for the whole team, it helps you stay on track and maximize the impact of your efforts. Whether you’re dealing with one blog post a week or a multi-staged cross-department campaign, a planner is here to be your guiding light.

But how do you get the most out of your planner? In this article, I’ll guide you through the marketing planner types and a step-by-step manual on making a planner work to your advantage. Plus, with an integrated social media calendar, it becomes even more powerful in coordinating your online presence and engagement strategy. Let’s go!

What is a marketing planner?

A marketing planner is a tool instrument that outlines and coordinates all aspects of a marketing strategy , including setting clear goals, determining target audiences, selecting channels, and measuring impact. It acts as a dynamic guide, adapting to market changes and ensuring all efforts are aligned with broader brand objectives.

Types of marketing planners

Planners come in all shapes and sizes, from paper notebooks to spreadsheets to massive all-in-one specialized marketing platforms. Each has its perks and downsides, catering to different team sizes, brand capabilities, and scale of marketing activities.

Physical planners  offer a tangible and portable solution, allowing teams to sketch ideas and strategies on paper.  Digital planners , on the other hand, provide a more dynamic and collaborative platform for online accessibility and real-time updates.

Specialized software , like project management tools, enables detailed planning, tracking, and collaboration, ideal for larger teams or complex campaigns.  Integrated marketing management tools  offer comprehensive solutions — like a centralized platform for streamlined coordination.

Digital vs. physical planners

A physical planner can be very attractive, especially for analog writing fans like myself. However, we’re in a digital era, and physical planners — although usually super cute — are just not up to the task.

The biggest advantage of digital marketing planners is  collaboration . It’s much easier to share your plans and creative space with the entire team when it’s a digital spreadsheet rather than a notebook.

Besides that, finding the layout that suits your workflow can be challenging. A sound digital planner offers  customization features  you can leverage to make it fit your activities like a glove.

Content planner calendar in Planable

Sprinkle it with colorful tags, several views, and drag-and-drop scheduling to get a transparent single source of marketing truth. User experience, baby!

Specialized marketing software

After many experiments, I came to the conclusion that specialized marketing tools almost always win. Marketing is a distinctive field, and dedicated software caters to the peculiarities we face at work better than generic project management tools.

A marketing planner can help you  automate  routine tasks like scheduling, approving, and publishing content across multiple platforms.

Some also provide  built-in analytics tools  that unite your results across all channels for a better overview. Plus, you get to ditch Meta Business Suite and all other native analytics platforms — a major advantage if you ask me.

Benefits of using a marketing planner

A streamlined marketing plan is one of the cornerstones of successful integrated content marketing . Here’s how a planner can support your strategy and help in everyday work:

• Improved organization

A marketing planner is your single source of truth, providing you with a birds-eye overview of all your marketing projects. Many tools include customizable views, so you can easly organize your work in a calendar, kanban board or high-level list.

• Clear goals

Use the marketing planner to set clear and specific marketing goals, aligning them with the overall business goals.

• Smart resource allocation

When you have your marketing activities laid out, optimizing resources and laser-focusing your efforts content and budget-wise is easier. It also helps you identify potential bottlenecks and avoid overloading your marketing team.

• Team collaboration. 

A unified marketing plan eases coordination processes among team members. It’s especially handy in larger teams or cross-department marketing campaigns involving many people.

• Task management

Marketing planners help organize and prioritize tasks. They reflect deadlines, required assets, responsible departments, etc. In some planners, you can assign tasks and track progress to ensure your marketing team remains on track. No more missed deadlines or stressful product launches.

How to efficiently use a marketing planner to rock marketing strategy

A marketing planner can significantly ease your initial planning process and keep all your teammates on the same page. With this easy 4-step guide, you’ll be able to leverage a marketing planner to build a solid strategy for your brand.

Step 1: Set clear marketing goals

Marketing planning begins with identifying business objectives. Approach goal setting thoughtfully to ensure you have a strong foundation for your further marketing projects. Otherwise, you might be talking to deaf ears from the beginning.

There are many frameworks for goal-setting. I recommend using the OKR framework —  O bjectives and  K ey  R esults — for overarching, upper-level goals. They are transparent and specifically designed to be ambitious but realistic.

( Image source )

It’s quite easy to derive smaller and more specific goals and tasks from an overarching OKR goal. For instance, you want to gain a foothold in a market. Here’s what your ORK goal would look like:

Objective : Increase brand awareness in the target market.

Key Results :

• Achieve a 20% increase in social media followers within the next quarter.
• Generate 50,000 impressions per week on our online advertising campaigns.
• Secure at least 10 positive mentions in industry-related publications by the end of the quarter.
• Increase website traffic by 25% through organic search and referral sources.

Put these goals into your marketing planner as a guiding light — this is what we’re working towards this quarter. Some marketing planners visualize how close you are to achieving a specific goal.

Knowing where you stand against the desired result provides transparency that boosts morale and gives your team a purpose.

Step 2: Schedule your marketing plan

Once you have a handle on your goals, you can move to the action level and map out what you can do to achieve each key result.

Let’s consider the first key result — increased followers on social platforms. What can you do to achieve it? You’ll probably include a proper content strategy, targeted social media campaigns, and influencer collaborations .

Social media calendar in Planable

Jot down a plan and outline the main directions, stages, and tasks in your marketing planner. For example, if you’re about to run an influencer campaign , your marketing plan should include:

• The content. What will the campaign include: TikTok videos, Instagram posts, a full-scale YouTube review?
• The people. Who on your marketing team would participate in this project?
• The tasks. What has to be done, from sourcing the influencers to suit your target audience to distributing readymade content?
• The budget. How much money would that cost?

Use the marketing planner to lay out your plans, schedule your content , and gather content ideas for future campaigns. The planner is both a playbook and a tool: your marketing team can always consult it to know what’s coming next and track progress to ensure you’re spot on.

Step 3: Monitor progress and KPIs

How do you know if your marketing plan is working? By gathering analytics and constantly monitoring the KPIs. Marketing projects don’t end with content planned and posted — it’s only the beginning!

Your exact KIPs and specific metrics will differ from project to project. However, among the most popular metrics for marketing projects and marketing campaigns are:

• Brand awareness metrics 

For example, impressions, reach and mentions .  Impressions show how many times users saw your content, while reach is how many unique views your content got — or how many people saw it.

• Engagement rate

The engagement rate reflects how actively the audience interacts with your content. The formula is (Total Engagement (Likes + Comments + Shares)​ / Total Followers (or Total Reach))×100.

• Conversion rate

It measures the percentage of people taking a desired action out of the total number of visitors. The action can be whatever your marketing campaign targets — making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, registering for a webinar, etc.

• Traffic sources

Track the shares of your campaign traffic to understand which channels are working the best: organic search, paid advertising, social media, or other.

If you need more data to set realistic KPIs, consult the market’s benchmarks and marketing research. For example, if your marketing planning concerns SEO, check the latest reports on what a general bounce rate and conversion rate are. The FirstPageSage research for 2023 shows, that, say, a conversion rate for an IT business is 3.5% — aim for this number and iterate from it.

You can track progress using special marketing analytics tools or native analytics solutions social platforms offer. If you opt for a specialized marketing planner, chances are, it can also track analytics.

Step 4: Adjust your digital marketing strategies

Regularly review the performance metrics and data collected during the campaign. This will help you identify the successful tactics and adjust the failing ones. Your budget will thank you, and so will the target audience.

Tracking analytics enables you to tweak your marketing strategy according to the results and marketing landscape. Remember that your marketing planning is flexible. You can take action and stir from the initial plan as long as it’s a data-driven decision.

This is where a marketing planner helps a lot. Update it timely so that the whole team knows there’s been a change of plans. It’s a convenient source of up-to-date info that saves you a lot of unnecessary manual syncs, especially when you need to quickly adjust marketing plans.

Common mistakes to avoid in marketing planning

In marketing planning, trial and error is often the only way around. However, there are some common mistakes that you can steer clear of right from the start. Keep an eye out for these three mistakes:

• Poor goal setting

If marketing teams set poor goals from the beginning and don’t revisit them later, it significantly affects the whole project. It’s like putting a wrong course for a ship: eventually, it’ll run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere. Imagine spending months working on something that business didn’t need — pure nightmare.

• Lack of flexibility

We all like a good plan, but the market is an ever-changing landscape. Leave a little wiggle room for force majeur, situational marketing, or an excellent meme rising in popularity. Your marketing plan should be alive and evolving to bring results and ensure you reach your target audience.

• Ignoring marketing trends

Or relying on the said trends too much. Neglecting trends completely won’t do you any good in reach and conversions. Riding every trend will leave you with no brand personality and vague marketing plans. Trends are more like sprinkles on your solid marketing foundation. Jump on trends that resonate with your brand and complement your strategy.

What is the best marketing planner software?

The answer is — it all depends on the kind of projects you do. But if you’re focused on content marketing, Planable is your absolute must-try marketing planner.

Planable helps you create and manage marketing campaigns from planning to publishing. It supports all sorts of written content. Blog post, newsletter, social post, or any other type of marketing collateral — you can create it with your team right inside the platform, approve and schedule it.

Planable has the neatest content calendar with labels and multiple view options to get a general idea of your plans in one glance.

Content calendar with labels and multiple view options in Planable

The platform has all the formatting and collaboration features for long-form content. Campaign briefs, content templates, video scripts, anything fits in the universal content pages.

Suggestions feature in Planable

Besides that, you can refine and approve your content using automated multi-level approval workflows.

Multi-level approval process for the content team in Planable

Planable also supports pixel-perfect previews and direct publishing for the most important social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, TikTok, Google Business Profile, and Pinterest) and will soon release a social media analytics feature.

Maximizing the impact of your marketing planner

Integrating a marketing planner into your workflow helps you organize your efforts and focus your team on the tasks at hand. Choose a customizable, flexible planner to tailor it to your needs and ensure you get the most out of it.

Planable helps you control the marketing flow. Use the free 50 posts plan to try Planable’s marketing planner today .

Content marketer with a background in journalism; digital nomad, and tech geek. In love with blogs, storytelling, strategies, and old-school Instagram. If it can be written, I probably wrote it.

Try Planable for free

I want to know more, Schedule a demo

Build A Profitable EComm Business For Just $1

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content

A magazine for young entrepreneurs

The best advice in entrepreneurship

Subscribe for exclusive access, how to create a marketing plan in 2024 (template + examples).

Written by Jesse Sumrak | May 28, 2024

Comments -->

Get real-time frameworks, tools, and inspiration to start and build your business. Subscribe here

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.

Related Posts

5 Ways Personalization in eCommerce Can Enhance Customer Experience

Engaging Your Audience with Social Media Quizzes and Polls

Email Marketing Automation: Tools and Strategies for 2024

How to Find Influencers: 6 Ways to Discover Your Perfect Brand Advocate

What Is UGC and Why It’s a Must-Have for Your Brand

Ad Expert Phoenix Ha on How to Make Creative Ads without Breaking Your Budget

14 Punchy TikTok Marketing Strategies to Amplify Your Growth

How to Grow Your YouTube Channel and Gain Subscribers Quickly

How to Get More Views on Snapchat with These 12 Tactics

12 Instagram Growth Hacks For More Engaged Followers (Without Running Ads)

Create Viral Infographics That Boost Your Organic Traffic

How to Create a Video Sales Letter (Tips and Tricks from a 7-Figure Copywriter)

How to Write a Sales Email That Converts in 2024

What Is a Media Kit: How to Make One in 2024 (With Examples)

Namestorming: How to Choose a Brand Name in 20 Minutes or Less

FREE TRAINING FROM LEGIT FOUNDERS

Actionable Strategies for Starting & Growing Any Business.

• 1000+ lessons.
• Customized learning.
• 30,000+ strong community.

Create a Detailed Marketing Plan With 6 Effective Templates

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

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

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

Understand Your Current Market and Market Position

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

• Marketing Strategies and Tactics

Advanced Strategies for Experienced Marketers

Ready to create your own marketing plan.

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

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

Understand Your Product

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

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

To create a SWOT analysis template for Marketing Plan:

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

Understand Your Customer

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

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

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

To create a buyer persona template for Marketing Plan:

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

Understand Your Competitors

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

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

To create a competitor analysis template for Marketing Plan:

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

Understand Your Brand Positioning

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

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

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

The Brand Asset Scorecard

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

To create a brand asset scorecard template for Marketing Plan:

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

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

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

To create a SMART marketing goal template for Marketing Plan:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Target Market Segmentation

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

Content Marketing

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

Social Media Marketing

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

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

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

Email Marketing

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

Influencer Marketing

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

Referral Programs

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

Event Marketing

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

Personalization and Customer Segmentation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FAQs About Marketing Plans

What is a marketing plan, why is a marketing plan important for a business.

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

What are the key components of a marketing plan?

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

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

How do I measure and track the effectiveness of my marketing plan?

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

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Define relevant KPIs such as sales revenue, website traffic, conversion rates, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, social media engagement, or email open rates.
• Analytics and Tracking Tools: Utilize web analytics tools, CRM systems, social media analytics, or email marketing software to gather data and insights on customer behavior, campaign performance, and ROI.
• Regular Reporting and Analysis: Review and analyze the collected data regularly to evaluate the success of marketing activities, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions for adjustments or optimizations.

What are some common challenges in implementing a marketing plan?

• Limited Resources: Insufficient budgets, time, or manpower can hinder the execution of planned marketing activities.
• Competitive Landscape: Competitors' actions or market dynamics may require adjustments to the planned strategies.
• Changing Consumer Behavior: Shifts in consumer preferences, trends, or technologies may demand adaptability and flexibility in marketing approaches.
• Measurement and Analysis: Difficulties in accurately measuring and attributing the impact of marketing activities to business outcomes.
• Internal Alignment: Ensuring that the marketing plan is well-communicated and aligned with other departments within the organization.

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

More Related Articles

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

• Marketing Plans

Strategize to grow your business with the ultimate marketing plan template

Create Your Marketing Plan

• Choose a stunning plan template.
• Customize your plan to fit your goals and strategy.
• Showcase KPIs & targets with 40+ chart options.

Chosen by brands large and small

Our marketing plan maker is used by over 27,500,000 marketers, communicators, executives and educators from over 133 countries that include:

Powerful Presentation Features That Help You Shine

Access a free library of design assets.

Visme offers free access to millions of photos and videos, as well as thousands of icons and shapes. Turn your marketing plan interactive by adding links, buttons, hover effects, pop-ups, animated characters and illustrations, and more. Simply drag and drop graphics onto your marketing plan, and then resize, rotate or change colors as you see fit.

Data visualization made easy

Tell stories with data using Visme’s easy-to-customize data visualization tools. Select from 40+ charts and graphs, as well as exclusive data widgets like radials and thermometers. Upload data manually, import from an Excel file or connect to a Google sheet for live data.

Use our professional marketing plan template to give you a head start

Table of Contents

Evolution Timeline

New Section

Value Proposition

Market Share

Buyer Persona

SWOT Analysis

Competitor Analysis

Marketing Mix

Proposed Strategy

Budget Allocation

Share Your Marketing Plan

Ready to share your marketing plan with your team? Visme makes it easy to publish, download and get feedback on your marketing plan design. Simply download as a high-resolution image, PDF or PowerPoint file, or generate a shareable link to access it online.

LEARN ABOUT MARKETING PLANS

What is a Marketing Plan ?

A marketing plan is a written document or presentation that outlines marketing goals and strategy for the upcoming month, quarter or year. A good marketing plan clearly communicates KPIs and targets, key action items, information about the target market and budget considerations.

Why do I need a marketing plan?

A strong marketing plan that aligns with your business goals is key to generating leads and growing your business. It acts as a strategic roadmap that helps marketing teams organize, execute and track their marketing strategy throughout the specified period of time.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED + MORE

More Than A Marketing Plan Maker

Scale your marketing tactics and strategies with a well-defined marketing plan. Use Visme’s visual communication tools to organize, execute, and track your marketing strategy.

MAKE IT YOURS

Customize your marketing plan by seamlessly adding your brand. Upload your brand’s fonts, colors, images and logos, or have our AI-based Brand Wizard do it for you.

MAKE IT ENGAGING

Interactivity

Bring your marketing plan to life with interactive content and animation. Make your marketing plan dynamic with a flipbook effect and interactive hotspots.

VISUALIZE YOUR DATA

Data Widgets & Tables

Get a bird’s eye view of your marketing strategy with tables, charts and graphs. Add infographics and data widgets to visualize your marketing budget, buyer personas and other key marketing information.

HOW IT WORKS

How to Make a Marketing Plan in 5 Steps

If you are wondering how to write a marketing plan, you’ve come to the right place. Instead of creating your marketing plan from scratch, use our marketing plan templates to quickly get started with pre-designed layouts.

• Log into Visme and choose your favorite marketing plan template.
• Replace placeholder content with your own, and customize colors and fonts.
• Insert free images, icons and charts, or upload your own brand assets.
• Add, remove and rearrange pages or slides to match your content.
• Download your marketing plan in high-quality or share online with a link.

Questions About the Marketing Plan Template

How much does it cost to create a marketing plan with a marketing plan template, what types of charts and graphs are available in visme, can i use my brand kit to create my marketing plan with visme, are the marketing plan templates completely customizable, are the photos and icons in the library free to use, your marketing plans deserve to be beautiful and so does the rest of your content.

Sign Up Free

• Digital Marketing Strategy and Planning
• Content Marketing
• Digital Experience Management (Desktop/mobile website)
• Email Marketing
• Google Analytics
• Marketing Campaign Planning
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Social Media Marketing
• Agency growth
• Business-to-Business
• Charity and Not-for-profit
• E-commerce / Retail
• Managing Digital Teams
• Managing Digital Branding
• Managing Digital Transformation
• Managing Lifecycle Marketing
• Managing International Marketing
• Startup and Small Businesses

How to structure an effective marketing plan in 15 sections

Using the RACE OSA process to structure a marketing plan

A marketing plan is an essential tool to compete and grow your business since it gives focus to your marketing activities by setting realistic, achievable priorities within your budget.

It simply defines what you want to gain from your investment in marketing and how you will achieve these goals through selecting the best marketing strategies and channels to acquire and retain customers.

A typical definition of a marketing plan used by traditional marketers is:

" A marketing plan is a strategic document that specifies your organization’s target markets, marketing objectives, programs, and activities to achieve them, expected timescales, resources to be utilized, according to defined budgets, and how success will be measured ".

This is logical and simple and that's what we need to achieve through the structure of an effective marketing plan. However, for today's marketing where digital marketing channels are so important we need a marketing plan and template structure that are fit for purpose. That's why we developed the RACE Growth System since it details the communications activities that need to be used for success.

In this post, I will explain RACE OSA, a practical three-part marketing plan structure particularly suitable for small and medium businesses to rapidly develop comprehensive marketing plans. OSA stands for:

Opportunity > Structure > Action. 

For each of these 3 parts, I will summarize what you need to include and why. There are 5 steps in each part giving 15 sections in all. This is simple enough to make it quick and easy, but detailed enough to work in the real world.

You can download our Free marketing plan template based on this 15-step OSA structure!

Free marketing plan template

Our popular marketing planning template is structured across the Smart Insights RACE OSA Framework. Join Smart Insights as a Free Member to download our marketing plan template today

Access the Free marketing plan template

Many marketing plan templates were created long ago for larger businesses and aren’t so relevant to small and startup businesses competing in today’s marketplace where effective digital marketing is essential. Long plans with sections labelled ‘mission and vision statement’ and ‘corporate strategies’ are irrelevant for smaller businesses.

Our recommended format is far more practical since it relates to the real-world challenges and opportunities of a smaller business. The template shares the key features of our RACE Growth system since it is designed to be:

• Quick to create and implement an actionable plan with simple steps
• Data-driven, defining SMART objectives based on forecasts
• Practical to implement using a 90-day planning approach to give you focus
• Designed for smaller businesses, but relevant for larger businesses too

But first, we need to remind ourselves of the goals for our marketing plan and how it fits within the business as a whole. We will also introduce the Smart Insights RACE Growth System.

What is the purpose of a marketing plan?

The purpose of a marketing plan is to define strategies to engage audiences in order to achieve business objectives.

The goal of a marketing plan is to ensure marketing activities are structured, relevant, and timely to achieve an organization’s objectives.

It’s a plan defining your company's sustainable competitive position, structuring and setting marketing goals, and defining the resources necessary to achieve your business vision.

A marketing plan should include:

• The current performance , priorities , and direction of your organization
• Its marketplace position in relation to external environmental factors including competitors and PESTLE macro-factors
• A critical analysis of your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. We recommend using the powerful TOWs marketing plan analysis summary .
• Clearly defined SMART marketing objectives and a way to benchmark their success
• The means by which to achieve those objectives through strategies for STP: Segmentation, Targeting and Brand Positioning
• Relevant and timely actions and responsibilities by function, product or service, and market segment
• Investment in communications activities to reach your audience and convince them to convert including, all important always-on marketing activities .
• Investment in sales and customer service activities to encourage them to buy for the first time and repeat purchases.
• The finances and resources required and forecasted revenues
• Regular measurement of progress and outcomes against benchmarks

So, to summarize, a solid marketing plan outline has:

• Clear, realistic goals that you can be confident of hitting
• The best strategy  to achieve these goals against your competition
• Sufficient details of the tactics and actions  needed to translate the strategy into action
• A method to check  you are on track with your plans

The business context of a marketing plan

Where does the marketing plan fit within the business? Here’s another way of understanding the context of a marketing plan, to put it into context with other types of plans, as shown in this table:

When to use a marketing plan?

The process of marketing planning within an organization will differ, depending on whether a strategic marketing plan or an operational marketing plan is utilized. Here are the differences between the two:

• A  strategic marketing plan outlines the overall strategy within a market, connecting customers, competitors, and what the organization is capable of achieving.  It is typically created at divisional or company level.
• An  operational marketing plan outlines the marketing mix strategy that will be used to gain an advantage in the market.  It typically focuses on products; market segments and how marketing communications and campaigns achieve targets defined in the strategic marketing plan. It usually has separate sections covering tactics for customer acquisition and retention which will sometimes be covered in separate plans in larger organizations.

In an organization’s planning process, marketing links:

• Customers’ needs and wants
• Competitor value proposition and actions
• Strategic direction
• Organizational objectives

What should your plan include? Our recommended marketing plan structure

Before we get into the details, let's look at the big picture which defines the process you will follow to develop and implement your marketing plan.

3-step marketing plan outline

Within the RACE system, we call this process OSA to keep it simple - marketing plans don't have to be complex.  OSA stands for Opportunity, Strategy, Action. The visual outline shows some of the activities that are needed to plan for success under each stage of OSA.

Within OSA for a marketing plan format, these are the sections we recommend that are included in our template with more details on each.

Opportunity

• Audit performance
• Review marketplace
• Key issues summary
• Set objectives
• Review marketing and digital strategy options
• Assess budget / business case
• Prioritize and select strategic initiatives
• Plan 90-day activities
• Implement plans
• Review results

Use our free planning templates to get started with using RACE to grow your business. These will help you create a 90-day prioritized plan to improve your results from digital marketing. We recommend 25+ key marketing activities across RACE that are essential for businesses to compete by improving their digital marketing maturity.

Which types of businesses use marketing plans?

Marketing planning will assist in the day-to-day running of any size, type or age of business. The targets and milestones set will help organizations, from small start-ups to large corporates, to effectively:

• Allocate resources and budget
• Motivate teams
• Manage the performance of staff members and marketing efforts

Marketing plans for small businesses

In smaller businesses, the scope of a plan is typically annual and for the whole business. Typically, SMEs are working with smaller budgets and tighter turnaround times.

A marketing plan for a small business typically looks to identify where to prioritize the investment of time and available budget to generate results.

Smaller organizations typically have:

• Small market shares
• Owners involved in all aspects of strategic and operational management
• Independence
• A high degree of uncertainty
• Difficulty innovating owing to limited resources

Such differences between large and smaller organizations tend to be reflected in the development of marketing plans.

When establishing a small start-up, marketing planning is an essential element.  A small number of these businesses launch and grow, but for those that are successful, a strategic marketing approach will ensure continued development.

Marketing plans for large organizations

In large organizations, its focus will change, depending on the type of organization.  A separate marketing plan might be:

• Geographically-based
• Product-based
• Business unit based
• Focused on segmentation

A marketing plan in a large organization may integrate a number of plans, specific to individual parts of the business. It is practical planning that takes place at a divisional, business unit, or individual company level.

Larger organizations with clearly defined management structures and a wealth of resources will make use of marketing principles very differently from smaller organizations.

Structure an effective marketing plan with RACE

Did you know - nearly half of companies don't have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy ? These companies are missing opportunities for better integration and risk losing customers due to out-of-date processes.

Savvy marketers and Smart Insights members already recognize that a practical, integrated marketing plan is essential for business growth in 2024 and beyond.

If you're looking for a quick marketing plan structure to hone your performance and strategize your approach to marketing, why not download our free marketing plan template ?

How to format your marketing funnel

Although the techniques for marketing planning may vary between different sizes and types of organizations, the outcome is always the same: to implement the objectives, strategies, and activities in order to gain an advantage.

That's why our RACE Framework is structured across a simple 5-step marketing and sales funnel which can be applied to every size of business from startups to multinational corporations:

How does a marketing plan relate to other plans?

The plan should not be formulated or used in isolation; it should be informed by the corporate objectives identified in your organization’s business plan .

Integrated with a marketing plan may also be a digital plan, multi-channel plan and campaign plan, for example.  The marketing plan informs these plans and vice-versa.

An effective marketing plan will ensure the integration of activities, the scheduling of requirements, distinguishing responsibilities and the provision of benchmarks for measuring success.

Different organizations will utilize differing plans, covering different areas and timeframes. What is crucial in a business is that the plans being utilized, the timeframes allocated, and how they integrate with each other are collectively established.

Structure your marketing plan around a funnel proven to boost performance. Join Smart Insights as a Free Member for instant access to our Free marketing plan template to hone your skills and drive the results you need.

By Dave Chaffey

Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. 'Dr Dave' is known for his strategic, but practical, data-driven advice. He has trained and consulted with many business of all sizes in most sectors. These include large international B2B and B2C brands including 3M, BP, Barclaycard, Dell, Confused.com, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, M&G Investment, Rentokil Initial, O2, Royal Canin (Mars Group) plus many smaller businesses. Dave is editor of the templates, guides and courses in our digital marketing resource library used by our Business members to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here . Dave is also keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice . In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary . Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question .

Turbocharge your results with this toolkit containing 7 resources

• Marketing campaign plan template
• Campaign timeline/project plan template and example
• Editorial calendar spreadsheet
• View the Toolkit

The Marketing Campaign Planning toolkit contains:

FREE marketing planning templates

Start your Digital Marketing Plan today with our Free membership.

• FREE practical guides to review your approach
• FREE digital marketing plan templates
• FREE alerts on the latest developments

Solutions to your marketing challenges

• Digital Transformation
• Email Marketing and Marketing Automation
• Managing Digital Marketing Teams
• Marketing Strategy and Planning
• Multichannel lifecycle marketing

Expert advice by sector

• Business-to-Business (B2B)
• Charity and Not-For-Profit
• E-commerce and Retail
• Sector Technology Innovation
• Startups and Small Businesses

Improve your digital marketing skills with our FREE guides and templates

Join the Conversation

Recommended Blog Posts

Free 3-page marketing plan template for a small business

Use our simple, 15 section download to quickly create a marketing plan for your business Many marketing plan templates you will find online were created long ago for larger businesses and aren’t so relevant to small and startup business competing …..

How to create a marketing plan in 2024

A Marketing Plan is a bit like a job description for your company. Everyone should have one, but they’re often not fit for purpose, out of date and reviewed infrequently… Research has shown that businesses with plans succeed…

How do you choose the best marketing plan for your business?

Discover our top 7 recommended different types of marketing plan options for developing and streamlining your marketing planning activities Planning is a must for any business that wants to succeed, but choosing the right type of plan to define your …..

How to Write a Sales and Marketing Plan

2 min. read

Updated January 3, 2024

You’ve addressed what you’re selling and why in the products and services section. You now have an understanding of the market and an ideal customer in mind thanks to your market analysis. Now, you need to explain how you will actually reach and sell to them.

The marketing and sales section of your business plan dives into how you’re going to accomplish your goals. You’ll be answering questions like:

• Based on your audience, how will you position your product or service in the current market?
• What marketing channels, messaging, and sales tactics will you implement?
• What’s your business model and how will your business operate day-to-day?

By the end of this section, you should have an outline of what growth looks like, what milestones you intend to hit, and how you’ll measure success. Basically, you’re backing up the opportunity you’ve identified with a solid go-to-market plan.

What to include in the sales and marketing section

The sections you should include act as a useful framework for exploring and defining your marketing and sales tactics.

Create a positioning statement

How does your business differ? What do you do that others don’t? If you’re unsure, work through a handful of strategic exercises to create a simple but convincing positioning statement.

Outline your marketing strategy

A marketing plan brings together strategic goals with tangible marketing activities designed to reach and engage your target market—ultimately convincing them to purchase your product.

Craft your sales plan

A good sales strategy provides actionable steps to reach your goals. Estimate how much you intend to sell and outline a process that anyone else in your business can execute.

Optional sales and marketing information to include

The basics of a marketing and sales plan are fairly straightforward. However, it’s also the perfect place to flesh out any details that you think will make your outreach efforts successful.

Create a unique value proposition

What makes your business unique? How does the solution you provide stand out? This is your chance to point to what you believe potential customers will find more valuable about your business over the competition.

Don't forget digital marketing

While we don’t recommend creating separate traditional and digital marketing plans, it may be wise to explore and address them separately within your plan.

Build your promotional plan

How will you convince your customers to buy your products or services? While actual ads and promotions may be months away, it’s best to think through and even mock up designs now.

Conduct a SWOT analysis

With this simple analysis, you’ll better understand your strengths and weaknesses, along with the opportunities and threats you should account for.

Brought to you by

Create a professional business plan

Using ai and step-by-step instructions.

Secure funding

Validate ideas

Build a strategy

Kody Wirth is a content writer and SEO specialist for Palo Alto Software—the creator's of Bplans and LivePlan. He has 3+ years experience covering small business topics and runs a part-time content writing service in his spare time.

Table of Contents

• What to include
• Optional information

Related Articles

24 Min. Read

The 10 AI Prompts You Need to Write a Business Plan

10 Min. Read

How to Write a Competitive Analysis for Your Business Plan

How to Write the Company Overview for a Business Plan

How to Set and Use Milestones in Your Business Plan

The LivePlan Newsletter

Become a smarter, more strategic entrepreneur.

Your first monthly newsetter will be delivered soon..

Unsubscribe anytime. Privacy policy .

The quickest way to turn a business idea into a business plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

No thanks, I prefer writing 40-page documents.

Discover the world’s #1 plan building software

Free Marketing Plan Templates, Examples, and a Comprehensive Guide

By Joe Weller | June 27, 2016 (updated April 17, 2023)

• Share on Facebook
• Share on LinkedIn

Link copied

In this article, you’ll find a complete, step-by-step guide to developing a marketing plan that will provide your organization with a strategic course of action.

Included on this page, you’ll find examples of a marketing plan, as well as pre-built marketing plan templates to suit your needs, including a Small Business Marketing Plan , Digital Marketing Plan , Strategic Marketing Plan , and more. Then, our experts show you  how to create a marketing plan and what to include.

Marketing Plan Template

Download Marketing Plan Template

Word |  PDF | Google Doc | Smartsheet

A marketing plan is a high-level document that guides your strategic initiatives and ensures your marketing goals are aligned with your overall business objectives. Use this pre-built marketing plan template to outline the purpose your business serves, as well as its strategic goals, target market, and standards of performance, to ensure you have a thorough and deliberate plan of action.

One-Page Marketing Plan Template

Download One-Page Marketing Plan Template

Excel | Word | PDF | Google Doc | Smartsheet

This customizable one-page marketing plan takes the comprehensiveness of a formal marketing plan and pares it down to the key elements for easy scannability. This template has space for a concise business summary, overall objectives, target market, marketing strategy, financial requirements, and more. It also contains an action plan to detail marketing activities, role assignments, deadlines, and costs.

Business Marketing Plan Template

Download Business Marketing Plan Template

Word | PDF | Smartsheet

This template takes all of the essential elements of a marketing plan and organizes them into sections, but you can also add and remove components of the plan according to your needs. Use this customizable template to write your executive summary, mission and vision statements, marketing strategy, core capabilities, main goals, budget, and more, with an appendix included to back up your research and findings.

Small Business Marketing Plan Template

Download Small Business Marketing Plan Template

A small business marketing plan can be simple or elaborate, depending on your needs and the nature of your organization. This marketing plan template is fully customizable, and will guide your small business in the identification and description of your project , the mission and vision of your company, the problem you are solving, short and long-term marketing goals, the 4Ps of your marketing mix, marketing channel strategy, and more.

Marketing Plan Template for Startup Business

Download Marketing Plan Template for Startups

Word | PDF  

This pre-built marketing plan template for startups provides the savvy entrepreneur with a strong foundation from which to build his or her marketing strategies. This template will help you develop clear short and long-term business goals, identify your target market, learn your buyer’s buying cycle, pinpoint your unique selling proposition (USP), track standards of performance and measurement methods, and more, so you can feel confident in a solid plan of action.

Digital Marketing Plan Template

Digital Digital Marketing Plan Template

Excel | Smartsheet

This digital marketing plan template includes sections for online advertising and analytics, content marketing and SEO strategy, social media , and tools for tracking metrics. The template is divided into months, so you can create a timeline for your digital marketing plan. Use this template to create a comprehensive plan of action for online marketing.

Real Estate Marketing Plan Template

Download Real Estate Marketing Plan Template

This pre-built real estate marketing plan template is customizable, and comes ready to outline your strategic and tactical goals, conduct a SWOT analysis (including a competitor SWOT analysis), identify your target client type (e.g. first-time buyer, home seller, renter, etc.), define your marketing channels, provide financial forecasts, and more. It also includes a built-in plan of action for you to plan activities, assign roles, and set projected dates.

Marketing Plan Template for Nonprofit

Download Nonprofit Marketing Plan Template

Word | PDF 

This marketing plan template is tailored to meet the unique requirements of a nonprofit business. Use this customizable template to detail the organization’s background, funding climate, a comparative analysis of competitors, profile of stakeholders, short and long-term marketing goals, positioning statement, financial requirements, and more.

Strategic Marketing Plan Template

‌Download Strategic Marketing Plan Template

Excel | Google Sheets

This free strategic marketing plan template includes sections for online marketing campaigns , media relations, trade shows and events, other branding efforts, and sales campaigns. The plan clearly identifies objectives, along with target market and total costs. Months of the year are broken down into weeks for easy planning. You can modify this template to include any elements that are vital to your marketing plan.

Sales & Marketing Plan Template

Download Sales & Marketing Plan Template

This sales and marketing plan template facilitates planning around sales goals and promotional activities. This is an annual marketing calendar template that shows all 12 months on one worksheet. There are sections for public relations, online content marketing, advertising, and research. Monthly sales goals are defined at the top of the template, and there is space at the bottom for metrics to evaluate marketing effectiveness.

Tactical Marketing Plan Template

Download Tactical Marketing Plan Template

Keep track of the tactics that need to be completed as you implement your marketing strategy. This tactical marketing plan lists each task, the person responsible for the action, expenses, dates, and status. Use this template to keep your plan on schedule and to assess progress.

Product Marketing Plan Template

Download Product Marketing Plan Template

Excel | PDF | Google Sheets

This pre-built product marketing plan template enables you to differentiate your product offering from the competitors by homing in on your unique selling proposition. This template has space to detail the company’s vision, conduct a competitive analysis, define the target market, and establish the market position to ensure your marketing goals stay aligned with the company’s objectives.

Service Marketing Plan Template

Download Service Marketing Plan Template

Use this customizable service marketing plan template to clearly define your goals and initiatives, analyze your competitors, and outline the characteristics and preferences of your target persona. With space to detail your company’s vision at the top of the template, you can ensure your marketing strategy and initiatives support the mission and values of your company.

What Is a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a document that outlines your marketing strategy. It serves as a roadmap for how your organization aims to raise awareness about a product or service and how it plans to deliver that product or service to target customers. The fundamental purpose of a marketing plan is to align marketing goals with overall business objectives to aid marketing project managers in improving the success of your business or organization. 

What your marketing plan looks like will depend on the size and type of your business, but even small businesses and nonprofits can benefit from careful planning.

How to Write a Marketing Plan (and What’s Included)

In this section, you’ll find a comprehensive guide for creating a marketing plan, including an example of a marketing plan outline and links to pages containing free strategic marketing templates.

Pro tip: Save time by using one of the free marketing templates above as a start.

Step 1: Build Your Marketing Plan Outline

A marketing plan outline allows you to structure your plan in a way that makes sense with the product or service you are delivering, and can also serve as a table of contents for your finalized plan. Whether you are a business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) company, a small business, or a large enterprise, the details of your plan will vary based on the nature of your business and relative marketing position. 

Below, you’ll find an example of a basic marketing plan outline that you can modify to suit your organization’s needs:

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Mission and Vision Statement

Situational Analysis

5C Analysis

SWOT Analysis

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis

Core Capabilities

Target Market

Audience Persona

Information Collection

Pain Points and Solutions

Marketing Strategy

Buyers’ Buying Cycle

Unique Selling Proposition

Marketing Channels

Standards of Performance and Measurement Methods

Performance Standards

Marketing Metrics

Measurement Methods

Financial Summary 

Financial Forecasts

Breakeven Analysis

Assumptions

Research Results

Product Specs and Images

Step 2: Write Your Mission and Vision Statement

A mission statement is a brief summary of your company’s main purpose, and how your company provides value to its customers. In other words, it should convey your company’s reason for existence, and serve as a point of reference for future planning initiatives. Get started on developing your mission statement by using a free mission statement worksheet .

A vision statement details the future aspirations of a company or entity, and should serve as a framework for short-term and long-term strategic planning. The purpose of a vision statement is to guide internal decision-making for future courses of action. Create a compelling vision statement by using a free vision statement worksheet .

Step 3: Perform a Situational Analysis

Your marketing strategy will not be as effective without a clear picture of the overall health of your business. Gaining deeper insight into your organization’s internal and external environment will allow you to develop a plan that capitalizes on opportunities and reduces risk, and enables you to position your business in the market in a way that sets you apart from competitors. 

Three methods you can use to analyze the elements that impact the health of your business are a SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces Analysis, and 5C Analysis.

This method is one of the most commonly used tools for analyzing the internal strengths and weaknesses of a business, as well as the external opportunities and threats. When detailing the internal strengths and weaknesses of a business, keep in mind that these are the factors that your company has control over. By contrast, when defining external opportunities and threats, recognize that these are factors that impact your business from the outside, and that you cannot control. 

The main purpose of the of a SWOT analysis is to identify weaknesses that can be turned into strengths, and then to leverage strengths in order to take advantage of opportunities and mitigate threats in the market. Choose from a variety of free SWOT Analysis templates , including a SWOT Competitor Analysis template to see how you measure up to competitors.

Porter’s 5 Forces

This framework is used to evaluate your competitive landscape and to identify factors in your industry that may strengthen or weaken your position. The five forces include the following components:

• Industry Rivalry
• Threat of New Entrants
• Bargaining Power of Buyers
• Threat of Substitute Products
• Bargaining Power of Suppliers

Once you have assessed each of the five forces and rated them from low to high, you will be better equipped to pinpoint and enhance your organization’s competitive position within the industry.

This marketing framework is used to assess the five key drivers of marketing decisions for a business. The five Cs of the marketing mix include the following:

• Company: Identify the unique value proposition (UVP), or the sustainable competitive advantage that the focal business possesses. Some examples include economies of scale, cost leadership, and differentiation. This component of the assessment involves evaluating the products, services, culture, and brand perception of the business to determine if it’s in the best position to satisfy customer needs. 
• Customers: Having keen insight into who your customers are and what motivates them to purchase is essential before determining how you will meet their needs. Conduct research on who is buying your products, how customers interact with your business (including online), seasonal trends, and customer feedback to gain an understanding of the behaviors and preferences of your customer base.
• Competitors: Analyzing your competitors and learning about how they conduct business will enable you to strategize a plan that will beat them at their own game. Learn about your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, and market position by researching what differentiates them, what kind of content they’re producing, and how their customers interact with and review them. 
• Collaborators: Leveraging relationships with people, partners, and distributors that support your daily business operations is key. Since you rely on these collaborators in order to get your product in front of customers, they can be highly beneficial for helping your business run more efficiently. Create a list of all the key players that your business works with — from investors and stakeholders to shippers and photographers — to create strong relations and uncover opportunities.
• Climate: Getting a sense of societal, legal, and industry trends that could affect your business will allow you to make decisions proactively. Get an idea of where the market is heading by keeping a watchful eye on social and economic trends that could impact the way customers are buying, or new technologies like social media  that could change the way businesses operate.  

Performing a situational analysis by utilizing these methods will allow you to critically analyze your organization and industry landscape, identify opportunities, establish goals, and create a plan of action to take steps toward achieving those goals.

Step 4: Pinpoint Your Organization’s Core Capabilities

Once you’ve conducted your situational analysis and have a clear understanding of the internal and external factors impacting your business, identify the core capabilities of your organization that you can capitalize on to gain a competitive foothold. 

One way to home in on your core competencies is to gather feedback from your team by asking the following questions:

• What are our greatest strengths as a company?
• What are our greatest strengths as a team?
• What makes our product offerings better than that of our competitors?
• What makes us the best in our industry?

Your core competencies should be a reflection of your mission and vision statement, and these statements should be modified as core competencies change.

Step 5: Define Your Goals

Are you trying to raise brand awareness? Meet a sales quota? Achieve growth within a specific timeframe? Whatever your primary business, financial, or marketing goals may be, you must ensure they are detailed and data-driven, and that you have the resources needed to achieve them. In other words, you need to establish S.M.A.R.T. goals , which are defined as the following:

• Specific: Clearly convey the main goals you are trying to accomplish.
• Measurable: Determine key metrics you will use to track progress.
• Achievable: Ensure you have the capabilities and resources needed to reach your goals.
• Relevant: Verify that the marketing goals support the overall mission and vision of the business.
• Time-Oriented: Set milestones and deadlines for goals to stay on track.

If you’re feeling uncertain about the main goals you are trying to achieve, here are some questions you can ask yourself to get started on developing them:

• How do we want potential customers to feel about our brand?
• What key elements of our product or service should potential customers know about?
• What will motivate potential customers to choose us over our competitors?
• How is our business positioned in the industry?
• What is our year-to-date (YTD) growth?
• How can we best align our marketing plan with our overall business objectives so they support each other?

Once you’ve answered the above questions, develop and track your S.M.A.R.T. goals by downloading a free goal planning and tracking template .

Step 6: Identify Your Target Market

Once you’ve identified your main goals, the next step is to identify target customers that your business will direct its marketing resources to in order to achieve those goals. Since it isn’t efficient or practical to target everyone, the idea is to focus in on customers that are more likely to choose you over competitors, and to stay loyal to your brand. Read below for tips to help you define your target market.

• Look at the customers you already have: Find out who is already buying your products, and look for mutual interests, preferences, and pain points among those buyers to build customer profiles. Dive in deeper on returning customers, and those that are bringing in the most business, so you can strategize ways to target more buyers with shared characteristics. Another effective way to gain insight into your customer base is to collect information from them by way of focus groups, surveys, research, or simply asking for feedback. Learn more about customer profiles, and use a free customer profile questionnaire template to get started.
• Look at the customers your competitors have: Learn about the customers your competitors are targeting, and figure out what motivates them to choose the competition’s products over yours. Use this information to find niche markets or opportunities your competitor may be missing out on.
• Examine your products and services: Take each product or service offering and list out the key benefits they provide, and then detail how each of those benefits solve a specific problem. Use that information to identify who is most likely to have the problem those benefits provide a solution for, and then create a list of those people.
• Create a target persona: Once you’ve identified the types of people who will most likely benefit from your product, you’ll need to home in on those that are also more likely to purchase it — and choose your brand over the competition. Figure out what the demographics of each buyer looks like (e.g. age, gender, occupation), as well as the characteristics of said buyer (e.g. personality, preferences, lifestyle). Then, identify how your target persona will find your product, what will motivate them to buy it, how they will use it, and how it fits in with his or her lifestyle. Learn more about target personas, and download a free persona worksheet template to get started.

Step 7: Develop Your Marketing Strategy

Once you’ve established who you are targeting, you need to create a plan for how you will reach them and ultimately convert them into a customer. Ask yourself how you will get in front of your target audience to bring awareness to your product, and how you will convince them to purchase from you. Read below for effective concepts you can use to develop your strategy.

Identify your buyer’s buying cycle. 

Now that you’ve pinpointed your target buyer, the next step is to develop a content strategy to encourage the buyer through each stage of the customer’s journey. Understanding how your customers make purchase decisions will allow you to align your content strategy accordingly. The stages of the customer’s buying cycle include the following:

• Awareness: Prospective buyers have a problem and begin searching for solutions. This is the stage where a business invests its resources to make potential customers aware of the products and services it offers.
• Consideration: Prospective buyers are considering the various solutions available to solve their problem, and need to be convinced that they need to make a purchase in order to solve it. This is the stage where a business conveys in great detail the benefits the customer will receive after using the product, and how it is better than what the competition is offering. 
• Intent: Prospective buyers are convinced that they need to make a purchase to solve their problem, and begin to compare alternatives. This is the stage where a business reassures the customer that the product offered makes the most sense out of all the alternatives from an emotional, financial, or lifestyle perspective. 
• Purchase: Prospective buyers have made their decision on which company they will purchase the product from. Even if the buyer chooses your product, the process does not end here. The goal of your business is to develop a relationship with the customer to increase brand loyalty, and to find upsell opportunities based on purchase history.
• Repurchase: Buyers need to renew a perishable product (e.g. a supply of contact lenses) or a product subscription. The goal of your business is to foster the relationship with the customer by offering incentives to repurchase and to increase brand evangelism. An effective way to use content to retain customers is through email marketing campaigns. Find email workflow tips, examples and free templates to get started on developing your strategy.

Before creating content for each stage of the buying cycle, you must first establish your content goals for each stage, strategies to implement to meet those objectives, and the key metrics to measure results. 

Develop your content strategy for each phase of the cycle and choose from a wide variety of free content marketing templates . 

Determine the 4Ps of your marketing mix.

In order to effectively guide potential customers through each phase of the buyer’s lifecycle, use your marketing project management skills to create a strategy to get your brand in front of them, and then motivate them to purchase your product. As you develop your strategy, refer to the following 4Ps of your marketing mix:

• Product: This refers to the tangible good (or intangible service) that you are offering as a solution to meet the needs of the customer. Emphasizing the UVP and differentiating your product in the market are the first steps to setting yourself apart and positioning your brand.
• Price: This refers to the price your customer is expected to pay for the product. Understanding the perceived value (e.g. high quality versus low quality) of your product in the eyes of the customer is imperative before you can effectively set a price. Researching the price competitors are offering for similar products or alternatives is a great place to start. 
• Promotion: This refers to the communication aspect of your marketing strategy. Getting the word out about your product is the best way to raise awareness about your brand, with methods including press releases, trade shows, event marketing, videos , and advertising.
• Place: This refers to the place where customers can purchase your product. Will you sell exclusively online? Will customers need to come to a physical location? The marketing channels you will use to get the product from producer to customer (e.g. direct selling, mail order, online) are a part of your distribution strategy.

According to Justin Mares and Gabriel Weinberg, authors of the book Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth , some key marketing channels to use to raise awareness about your brand include the following:

• Relevant blogs
• Unconventional PR
• Paid Ads/Remarketing
• Offline Ads
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Trade Shows
• Speaking Engagements
• Marketing Events
• Community Events

Create your budget.

Setting a budget will give you parameters to work within as you are implementing your plan. It also enables you to prioritize your needs before your wants so you can dictate resources (e.g. talent acquired) toward high priority goals first. Here are some helpful tips you can use to create your marketing budget:

• Build your budget plan based on last year’s numbers, or build from scratch according to priority.
• Make a list of action items, and then come up with an estimated budget for each item based on marketing, distribution, and promotional expenses.
• Prioritize your needs before your wants. Whatever is leftover after your needs are fulfilled, funnel those funds toward your wants.
• Invest in areas with higher return on investment (ROI) (e.g., content marketing, email marketing) to increase your buying power. 

Find a wide range of free marketing budget templates to start planning your budget. 

Step 8: Create a Value-Complexity Matrix

Once you have established your marketing tactics and set out a budget to work within, you’ll need to prioritize your plan of attack by going after low hanging fruit. In other words, you need to act on the high value items that don’t require as much effort to complete, or the “easy wins.”

Take each initiative and assign it to a quadrant within the following matrix to determine if the time and resources needed to complete the initiative are worth the value it will return.

Step 9: Conduct Financial Projections

This segment of the plan shows the financial projections you have determined to be relevant to the project based on the research you have completed for your marketing plan. This component of the marketing plan is critical in order to gain buy-in from stakeholders and investors, and to guide your decisions throughout the duration of the project. 

Common financial data to add to your marketing plan include the following:

Forecasts (sales and expenses)

Break even analysis

Financial requirements

3 year financial projections

Income statement

Cash flow statement

Balance sheet

Find a free sales forecast template, financial projections template, and other templates to prepare your financial data by checking out this page with free startup plan, budget and cost templates . 

Step 10: Identify Standards of Performance and Results Tracking Methods

The primary purpose of setting performance standards is to communicate clear expectations and desired results for an organization’s marketing efforts. For example, a performance standard might be that the total budget for X will equal a specific percentage of the yearly promotional budget for the coming year. 

Before you can adequately measure the outcome of marketing initiatives, there are some steps you must take to lay the groundwork.  

• Determine your key performance indicators (KPIs): Define measurable marketing metrics and connect them to your established goals in order to track progress.
• Establish a baseline: Understand and document how your business is currently performing so you have something to compare future performance results to.
• Define your benchmarks: Acquire data about your competition and industry to develop standard measurements that indicate how you stack up against the competition.
• Decide which tools and platforms to implement: The results you analyze are only as good as the methods you use to track them. Find a  project management platform that provides real-time visibility into project status and performance so you have the ability to make timely, data-driven decisions. 

Once you’ve completed these steps, you can begin the process of tracking performance by doing the following:

• Establish guidelines on results tracking (e.g. what to track and how often), and determine who is responsible.
• Schedule meetings to evaluate results and determine where opportunities lie. Come to each meeting prepared by using a free meeting agenda template .
• Take inventory of your content and compile a list of the top performers. Compare the results of that content to your standards of performance to see if they align, and to identify what can be improved upon. In this article, you can choose from 60-plus content marketing templates , including a content inventory template, to help you plan and execute your content marketing strategy.
• When performance improves, identify what contributed to it and allocate resources accordingly.

Once you’ve identified the standards to use to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, the next course of action is to implement your plan, measure performance, and adjust accordingly.  

Step 11: Write the Executive Summary

Although the executive summary is placed at the beginning of your marketing plan, it is the final step to be completed. This section summarizes all the key takeaways from each segment of the marketing plan, and should ultimately answer each of the following questions:

• What are the overall business objectives?
• How do your marketing goals align with the business objectives?
• Which products or services will you market?
• Who is your target audience?
• What resources will you leverage (e.g. partnerships) to get your products in front of prospects?
• What gives you a competitive advantage?
• What problems are you solving?
• What solutions are you providing?
• What are the short and long-term goals of the company?

Learn more about how to create an effective summary, and find free checklists and templates to support your efforts by visiting “ How to Write an Effective Executive Summary to Yield Results .”

It’s important to remember that a marketing plan is not static, but rather a living document that should be referenced regularly, and updated as changes occur within your business and the larger business climate. 

Marketing Plan Examples and Samples

In this section, you will find examples of marketing plans created by established companies, along with sample marketing plan, to help guide you in your efforts in creating your own plan.

Lush Marketing Plan (provided by Calameo)

This first example is a marketing plan that was created for a cosmetics company. You will note that design elements throughout this plan are consistent to the brand, and sections are broken up by catchy graphics and illustrations.

RE/MAX Marketing Plan (provided by Calameo)

This example is a marketing plan that was created for a real estate company. This plan emphasizes the benefits that a customer receives by using their services, and details the promotional strategy used to connect customers to their business.

Marketing Plan Sample (provided by Houghton Mifflin Company)

This sample shows a marketing plan for a hypothetical company. Although this plan does not display any design elements or graphs, it breaks the plan up into the key components of a basic marketing plan.

Benefits of a Strong Marketing Strategy and Marketing Plan

A strong marketing plan can serve as a roadmap for your organization, and taking the time to write a formal plan — rather than relying on esoteric goals or vague strategy — can heighten the success of your overall marketing efforts. A marketing plan can help you accomplish the following:

• Pinpoint high priority initiatives.
• Eliminate projects that don’t move you toward your goals.
• Identify the right metrics to track.
• Give your team direction and alignment.
• Set realistic and measurable objectives.
• Answer key questions about your business (and how this effort fits into high-level organizational goals).
• Identify your target audience/customers and define how to best reach them.
• Develop a structured approach to building products and services that satisfy customers’ needs.
• Retain your customers.
• Save time and money.

Ultimately, your marketing plan acts as a reference document that will hold you accountable and help you execute your marketing strategy.

Best Practices for Creating a Strategic Marketing Plan

You can elevate the utility of your marketing plan by taking extra time to add elements and perform in-depth analysis of your audience, brand, and budget. Below are some tactical and analytical tips that will help you get the most out of your marketing strategy planning:

• Create a dynamic marketing plan . With so much information to cover, your plan might end up being a long, text-heavy document. Include a table of contents so that your readers can easily navigate through the plan, use bullet points to break up walls of text, and include visual illustrations that draw the eye. Also consider creating a one-page version that captures the most important high-level information.
• Back up your plan with research. All of the information provided in your plan will be more credible if you can back it up with research and facts before you go to market . Attach an appendix for any supporting material, and provide graphics (tables, graphs, pictures, etc.) to substantiate your statements and analysis.
• Understand your audience . A successful marketing campaign hinges on being able to connect your message with your target market. Use Google Analytics or another engagement analysis platform to identify your audience and their behavior, and consider creating audience personas so that you know who you are producing content for. 
• Ensure your brand is strong and stands out . This concept is complex and requires continual attention and iteration. From a marketing perspective, you can begin building brand integrity by defining your unique selling proposition, optimizing and designing your website and all other distribution channels, and creating great content. Be sure to elicit feedback from other departments so that the marketing material is in line with organizational messaging and goals.
• Create realistic financial goals . Like all other business concerns, success relies on sound budgeting. Define your budget early on to set expectations around spending and to identify any potential financial gaps, and create some metrics and KPIs that are related to financial success. In addition, make sure you can realistically support any special offers, discounts, or rewards that you offer.

You can also tap into several accessory activities to strengthen your marketing planning. These include the following:

• Promotions strategies
• Online marketing strategy
• Joint ventures and partnerships
• Referral strategy
• Strategy for increasing transaction prices
• Retention strategy

Design Tips for a Marketing Plan

Presentation is key when it comes to showcasing your marketing plan to potential investors and stakeholders. Below are some basic best practices to keep the look of your plan interesting and streamlined:

• Keep design elements and formatting consistent throughout the design brief and plan.
• Incorporate icons, charts, and infographics to make the plan more visually compelling.
• Use borders and colors (ensure consistency with your branding style guidelines) to section out your marketing plan.
• Emphasize key stats and metrics to make it scannable.
• Create a visual of your target audience persona.
• Use design elements that reflect your high-level marketing goals.
• Use a template to incorporate your own unique touch and branding.

Improve Your Marketing Strategy and Plan with Smartsheet for Marketing

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

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

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

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

Table of Contents

How to make a business plan

How to make a good business plan: step-by-step guide.

A business plan is a strategic roadmap used to navigate the challenging journey of entrepreneurship. It's the foundation upon which you build a successful business.

A well-crafted business plan can help you define your vision, clarify your goals, and identify potential problems before they arise.

But where do you start? How do you create a business plan that sets you up for success?

This article will explore the step-by-step process of creating a comprehensive business plan.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a formal document that outlines a business's objectives, strategies, and operational procedures. It typically includes the following information about a company:

Products or services

Target market

Competitors

Marketing and sales strategies

Financial plan

Management team

A business plan serves as a roadmap for a company's success and provides a blueprint for its growth and development. It helps entrepreneurs and business owners organize their ideas, evaluate the feasibility, and identify potential challenges and opportunities.

As well as serving as a guide for business owners, a business plan can attract investors and secure funding. It demonstrates the company's understanding of the market, its ability to generate revenue and profits, and its strategy for managing risks and achieving success.

Business plan vs. business model canvas

A business plan may seem similar to a business model canvas, but each document serves a different purpose.

A business model canvas is a high-level overview that helps entrepreneurs and business owners quickly test and iterate their ideas. It is often a one-page document that briefly outlines the following:

Key partnerships

Key activities

Key propositions

Customer relationships

Customer segments

Key resources

Cost structure

Revenue streams

On the other hand, a Business Plan Template provides a more in-depth analysis of a company's strategy and operations. It is typically a lengthy document and requires significant time and effort to develop.

A business model shouldn’t replace a business plan, and vice versa. Business owners should lay the foundations and visually capture the most important information with a Business Model Canvas Template . Because this is a fast and efficient way to communicate a business idea, a business model canvas is a good starting point before developing a more comprehensive business plan.

A business plan can aim to secure funding from investors or lenders, while a business model canvas communicates a business idea to potential customers or partners.

Why is a business plan important?

A business plan is crucial for any entrepreneur or business owner wanting to increase their chances of success.

Here are some of the many benefits of having a thorough business plan.

Helps to define the business goals and objectives

A business plan encourages you to think critically about your goals and objectives. Doing so lets you clearly understand what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there.

A well-defined set of goals, objectives, and key results also provides a sense of direction and purpose, which helps keep business owners focused and motivated.

Guides decision-making

A business plan requires you to consider different scenarios and potential problems that may arise in your business. This awareness allows you to devise strategies to deal with these issues and avoid pitfalls.

With a clear plan, entrepreneurs can make informed decisions aligning with their overall business goals and objectives. This helps reduce the risk of making costly mistakes and ensures they make decisions with long-term success in mind.

Attracts investors and secures funding

Investors and lenders often require a business plan before considering investing in your business. A document that outlines the company's goals, objectives, and financial forecasts can help instill confidence in potential investors and lenders.

A well-written business plan demonstrates that you have thoroughly thought through your business idea and have a solid plan for success.

Identifies potential challenges and risks

A business plan requires entrepreneurs to consider potential challenges and risks that could impact their business. For example:

Is there enough demand for my product or service?

Will I have enough capital to start my business?

Is the market oversaturated with too many competitors?

What will happen if my marketing strategy is ineffective?

By identifying these potential challenges, entrepreneurs can develop strategies to mitigate risks and overcome challenges. This can reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes and ensure the business is well-positioned to take on any challenges.

Provides a basis for measuring success

A business plan serves as a framework for measuring success by providing clear goals and financial projections . Entrepreneurs can regularly refer to the original business plan as a benchmark to measure progress. By comparing the current business position to initial forecasts, business owners can answer questions such as:

Are we where we want to be at this point?

Did we achieve our goals?

If not, why not, and what do we need to do?

After assessing whether the business is meeting its objectives or falling short, business owners can adjust their strategies as needed.

How to make a business plan step by step

The steps below will guide you through the process of creating a business plan and what key components you need to include.

1. Create an executive summary

Start with a brief overview of your entire plan. The executive summary should cover your business plan's main points and key takeaways.

Keep your executive summary concise and clear with the Executive Summary Template . The simple design helps readers understand the crux of your business plan without reading the entire document.

2. Write your company description

Provide a detailed explanation of your company. Include information on what your company does, the mission statement, and your vision for the future.

Provide additional background information on the history of your company, the founders, and any notable achievements or milestones.

3. Conduct a market analysis

Conduct an in-depth analysis of your industry, competitors, and target market. This is best done with a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Next, identify your target market's needs, demographics, and behaviors.

Use the Competitive Analysis Template to brainstorm answers to simple questions like:

What does the current market look like?

Who are your competitors?

What are they offering?

What will give you a competitive advantage?

Who is your target market?

What are they looking for and why?

How will your product or service satisfy a need?

These questions should give you valuable insights into the current market and where your business stands.

4. Describe your products and services

Provide detailed information about your products and services. This includes pricing information, product features, and any unique selling points.

Use the Product/Market Fit Template to explain how your products meet the needs of your target market. Describe what sets them apart from the competition.

5. Design a marketing and sales strategy

Outline how you plan to promote and sell your products. Your marketing strategy and sales strategy should include information about your:

Pricing strategy

Advertising and promotional tactics

Sales channels

The Go to Market Strategy Template is a great way to visually map how you plan to launch your product or service in a new or existing market.

6. Determine budget and financial projections

Document detailed information on your business’ finances. Describe the current financial position of the company and how you expect the finances to play out.

Some details to include in this section are:

Startup costs

Revenue projections

Profit and loss statement

Funding you have received or plan to receive

Strategy for raising funds

7. Set the organization and management structure

Define how your company is structured and who will be responsible for each aspect of the business. Use the Business Organizational Chart Template to visually map the company’s teams, roles, and hierarchy.

As well as the organization and management structure, discuss the legal structure of your business. Clarify whether your business is a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, or LLC.

8. Make an action plan

At this point in your business plan, you’ve described what you’re aiming for. But how are you going to get there? The Action Plan Template describes the following steps to move your business plan forward. Outline the next steps you plan to take to bring your business plan to fruition.

Types of business plans

Several types of business plans cater to different purposes and stages of a company's lifecycle. Here are some of the most common types of business plans.

Startup business plan

A startup business plan is typically an entrepreneur's first business plan. This document helps entrepreneurs articulate their business idea when starting a new business.

Not sure how to make a business plan for a startup? It’s pretty similar to a regular business plan, except the primary purpose of a startup business plan is to convince investors to provide funding for the business. A startup business plan also outlines the potential target market, product/service offering, marketing plan, and financial projections.

Strategic business plan

A strategic business plan is a long-term plan that outlines a company's overall strategy, objectives, and tactics. This type of strategic plan focuses on the big picture and helps business owners set goals and priorities and measure progress.

The primary purpose of a strategic business plan is to provide direction and guidance to the company's management team and stakeholders. The plan typically covers a period of three to five years.

Operational business plan

An operational business plan is a detailed document that outlines the day-to-day operations of a business. It focuses on the specific activities and processes required to run the business, such as:

Organizational structure

Staffing plan

Production plan

Quality control

Inventory management

Supply chain

The primary purpose of an operational business plan is to ensure that the business runs efficiently and effectively. It helps business owners manage their resources, track their performance, and identify areas for improvement.

Growth-business plan

A growth-business plan is a strategic plan that outlines how a company plans to expand its business. It helps business owners identify new market opportunities and increase revenue and profitability. The primary purpose of a growth-business plan is to provide a roadmap for the company's expansion and growth.

The 3 Horizons of Growth Template is a great tool to identify new areas of growth. This framework categorizes growth opportunities into three categories: Horizon 1 (core business), Horizon 2 (emerging business), and Horizon 3 (potential business).

One-page business plan

A one-page business plan is a condensed version of a full business plan that focuses on the most critical aspects of a business. It’s a great tool for entrepreneurs who want to quickly communicate their business idea to potential investors, partners, or employees.

A one-page business plan typically includes sections such as business concept, value proposition, revenue streams, and cost structure.

Best practices for how to make a good business plan

Here are some additional tips for creating a business plan:

Use a template

A template can help you organize your thoughts and effectively communicate your business ideas and strategies. Starting with a template can also save you time and effort when formatting your plan.

Miro’s extensive library of customizable templates includes all the necessary sections for a comprehensive business plan. With our templates, you can confidently present your business plans to stakeholders and investors.

Be practical

Avoid overestimating revenue projections or underestimating expenses. Your business plan should be grounded in practical realities like your budget, resources, and capabilities.

Be specific

Provide as much detail as possible in your business plan. A specific plan is easier to execute because it provides clear guidance on what needs to be done and how. Without specific details, your plan may be too broad or vague, making it difficult to know where to start or how to measure success.

Be thorough with your research

Conduct thorough research to fully understand the market, your competitors, and your target audience . By conducting thorough research, you can identify potential risks and challenges your business may face and develop strategies to mitigate them.

Get input from others

It can be easy to become overly focused on your vision and ideas, leading to tunnel vision and a lack of objectivity. By seeking input from others, you can identify potential opportunities you may have overlooked.

Review and revise regularly

A business plan is a living document. You should update it regularly to reflect market, industry, and business changes. Set aside time for regular reviews and revisions to ensure your plan remains relevant and effective.

Create a winning business plan to chart your path to success

Starting or growing a business can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting, a well-written business plan can make or break your business’ success.

The purpose of a business plan is more than just to secure funding and attract investors. It also serves as a roadmap for achieving your business goals and realizing your vision. With the right mindset, tools, and strategies, you can develop a visually appealing, persuasive business plan.

Ready to make an effective business plan that works for you? Check out our library of ready-made strategy and planning templates and chart your path to success.

Get on board in seconds

Plans and pricing.

• Start free trial

Start selling with Shopify today

Start your free trial with Shopify today—then use these resources to guide you through every step of the process.

9 Business Plan Examples to Inspire Your Own (2024)

Need support creating your business plan? Check out these business plan examples for inspiration and guidance.

Any aspiring entrepreneur researching how to start a business will likely be advised to write a business plan. But few resources provide business plan examples to really guide you through writing one of your own.

Here are some real-world and illustrative business plan examples to help you craft your business plan .

Business plan format: 9 examples

The business plan examples in this article follow this template:

• Executive summary
• Company description
• Market analysis
• Products and services
• Marketing plan
• Logistics and operations plan
• Financial plan
• Customer segmentation

1. Executive summary

Your executive summary is a page that gives a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. While it appears at the beginning, it’s easiest to write this section last, as there are details further in the report you’ll need to include here.

In this free business plan template , the executive summary is four paragraphs and takes a little over half a page. It clearly and efficiently communicates what the business does and what it plans to do, including its business model and target customers.

2. Company description

You might repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your About page , social media profile pages, or other properties that require a boilerplate description of your small business.

Soap brand ORRIS has a blurb on its About page that could easily be repurposed for the company description section of its business plan.

You can also go more in-depth with your company overview and include the following sections, like in this business plan example for Paw Print Post:

Business structure

This section outlines how you registered your business —as an LLC , sole proprietorship, corporation, or other business type : “Paw Print Post will operate as a sole proprietorship run by the owner, Jane Matthews.”

Nature of the business

“Paw Print Post sells unique, one-of-a-kind digitally printed cards that are customized with a pet’s unique paw prints.”

“Paw Print Post operates primarily in the pet industry and sells goods that could also be categorized as part of the greeting card industry.”

Background information

“Jane Matthews, the founder of Paw Print Post, has a long history in the pet industry and working with animals, and was recently trained as a graphic designer. She’s combining those two loves to capture a niche in the market: unique greeting cards customized with a pet’s paw prints, without needing to resort to the traditional (and messy) options of casting your pet’s prints in plaster or using pet-safe ink to have them stamp their ’signature.’”

Business objectives

“Jane will have Paw Print Post ready to launch at the Big Important Pet Expo in Toronto to get the word out among industry players and consumers alike. After two years in business, Jane aims to drive $150,000 in annual revenue from the sale of Paw Print Post’s signature greeting cards and to have expanded into two new product categories.”

“Jane Matthews is the sole full-time employee of Paw Print Post but hires contractors as needed to support her workflow and fill gaps in her skill set. Notably, Paw Print Post has a standing contract for five hours a week of virtual assistant support with Virtual Assistants Pro.”

Your mission statement may also make an appearance here. Passionfruit shares its mission statement on its company website, and it would also work well in its example business plan.

3. Market analysis

The market analysis consists of research about supply and demand , your target demographics, industry trends, and the competitive landscape. You might run a SWOT analysis and include that in your business plan. 

Here’s an example SWOT analysis for an online tailored-shirt business:

You’ll also want to do a competitive analysis as part of the market research component of your business plan. This will tell you which businesses you’re up against and give you ideas on how to differentiate your brand. A broad competitive analysis might include:

• Target customers
• Unique value proposition , or what sets the products apart
• Sales pitch
• Price points for products
• Shipping policy

4. Products and services

This section of your business plan describes your offerings—which products and services do you sell to your customers? Here’s an example for Paw Print Post that explains its line of custom greeting cards, along with details on what makes its products unique.

5. Marketing plan

It’s always a good idea to develop a marketing plan before you launch your business. Your marketing plan shows how you’ll get the word out about your business, and it’s an essential component of your business plan as well.

The Paw Print Post focuses on four Ps: price, product, promotion, and place. However, you can take a different approach with your marketing plan. Maybe you can pull from your existing marketing strategy , or maybe you break it down by the different marketing channels. Whatever approach you take, your marketing plan should describe how you intend to promote your business and offerings to potential customers.

6. Logistics and operations plan

The Paw Print Post example considered suppliers, production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory. This includes any raw materials needed to produce the products.

7. Financial plan

The financial plan provides a breakdown of sales, revenue, profit, expenses, and other relevant financial metrics related to funding and profiting from your business.

Ecommerce brand Nature’s Candy’s financial plan breaks down predicted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.

It then dives deeper into the financials to include:

• Funding needs
• Projected profit-and-loss statement
• Projected balance sheet
• Projected cash-flow statement

You can use a financial plan spreadsheet to build your own financial statements, including income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement.

8. Customer segmentation

Customer segmentation means dividing your target market into groups based on specific characteristics. These characteristics can be demographics, psychographics, behavior, or geography. Your business plan will provide detailed information on each segment, like its size and growth potential, so you can show why they are valuable to your business. 

Airsign , an eco-friendly vacuum cleaner company, faced the challenge of building a sustainable business model in the competitive home appliance market. They identified three key customer personas to target:

• Design-oriented urban dwellers
• Millennials moving to suburbs
• Older consumers seeking high-quality appliances

The company utilized Shopify’s customer segmentation tools to gain insights and take action to target them. Airsign created targeted segments for specific marketing initiatives.

Put your customer data to work with Shopify’s customer segmentation

Shopify’s built-in segmentation tools help you discover insights about your customers, build segments as targeted as your marketing plans with filters based on your customers’ demographic and behavioral data, and drive sales with timely and personalized emails.

9. Appendix

The appendix provides in-depth data, research, or documentation that supports the claims and projections made in the main business plan. It includes things like market research, finance, résumés, product specs, and legal documents. 

Readers can access detailed info in the appendix, but the main plan stays focused and easy to read. Here’s an example from a fictional clothing brand called Bloom:

Appendix: Bloom Business Plan

Types of business plans, and what to include for each

This lean business plan is meant to be high level and easy to understand at a glance. You’ll want to include all of the same sections in one-page business plan, but make sure they’re truncated and summarized:

• Executive summary: truncated
• Market analysis: summarized
• Products and services: summarized
• Marketing plan: summarized
• Logistics and operations plan: summarized
• Financials: summarized

A startup business plan is for a new business. Typically, these plans are developed and shared to secure funding . As such, there’s a bigger focus on the financials, as well as on other sections that determine viability of your business idea—market research, for example:

• Market analysis: in-depth
• Financials: in-depth

Your internal business plan is meant to keep your team on the same page and aligned toward the same goal:

A strategic, or growth, business plan is a big-picture, long-term look at your business. As such, the forecasts tend to look further into the future, and growth and revenue goals may be higher. Essentially, you want to use all the sections you would in a normal business plan and build upon each:

• Market analysis: comprehensive outlook
• Products and services: for launch and expansion
• Marketing plan: comprehensive outlook
• Logistics and operations plan: comprehensive outlook
• Financials: comprehensive outlook

Feasibility

Your feasibility business plan is sort of a pre-business plan—many refer to it as simply a feasibility study. This plan essentially lays the groundwork and validates that it’s worth the effort to make a full business plan for your idea. As such, it’s mostly centered around research:

Nonprofit business plans are used to attract donors, grants, and partnerships. They focus on what their mission is, how they measure success, and how they get funded. You’ll want to include the following sections in addition to a traditional business plan:

• Organization description
• Need statement
• Programs and services
• Fundraising plan
• Partnerships and collaborations
• Impact measurement

Set yourself up for success as a business owner

Building a good business plan serves as a roadmap you can use for your ecommerce business at launch and as you reach each of your business goals. Business plans create accountability for entrepreneurs and synergy among teams, regardless of your business model .

Kickstart your ecommerce business and set yourself up for success with an intentional business planning process—and with the sample business plans above to guide your own path.

• How to Start a Dropshipping Business- A Complete Playbook for 2024
• The 13 Best Dropshipping Suppliers in 2024
• How To Source Products To Sell Online
• 25+ Ideas for Online Businesses To Start Now (2024)
• The Ultimate Guide To Dropshipping (2024)
• How to Build a Business Website for Beginners
• 7 Inspiring Marketing Plan Examples (and How You Can Implement Them)
• 10 Ways to Write Product Descriptions That Persuade (2024)
• Get Guidance- 6 Business Plan Software to Help Write Your Future
• Business Valuation- Learn the Value of Your Business

Business plan examples FAQ

How do i write a simple business plan.

To write a simple business plan, begin with an executive summary that outlines your business and your plans. Follow this with sections detailing your company description, market analysis, organization and management structure, product or service, marketing and sales strategy, and financial projections. Each section should be concise and clearly illustrate your strategies and goals.

What is the best format to write a business plan?

The best business plan format presents your plan in a clear, organized manner, making it easier for potential investors to understand your business model and goals. Always begin with the executive summary and end with financial information or appendices for any additional data.

What are the 4 key elements of a business plan?

• Executive summary: A concise overview of the company’s mission, goals, target audience, and financial objectives.
• Business description: A description of the company’s purpose, operations, products and services, target markets, and competitive landscape.
• Market analysis: An analysis of the industry, market trends, potential customers, and competitors.
• Financial plan: A detailed description of the company’s financial forecasts and strategies.

What are the 3 main points of a business plan?

• Concept: Your concept should explain the purpose of your business and provide an overall summary of what you intend to accomplish.
• Contents: Your content should include details about the products and services you provide, your target market, and your competition.
• Cash flow: Your cash flow section should include information about your expected cash inflows and outflows, such as capital investments, operating costs, and revenue projections.

Keep up with the latest from Shopify

Get free ecommerce tips, inspiration, and resources delivered directly to your inbox.

By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify.

popular posts

The point of sale for every sale.

Subscribe to our blog and get free ecommerce tips, inspiration, and resources delivered directly to your inbox.

Unsubscribe anytime. By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify.

Latest from Shopify

Sep 2, 2024

Learn on the go. Try Shopify for free, and explore all the tools you need to start, run, and grow your business.

Try Shopify for free, no credit card required.

Plans and Pricing

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Business leadership

Communication & collaboration

CX / Customer experience

EX / Employee experience

Hybrid work

Productivity

Small business

Virtual events

UCaaS Roundup

Business Communications Roundup

Business Software Roundup

Life @ RingCentral

RingCentral newsdesk

RingCentral products

Customer stories

Industry insights

Reports & research

Strategic partnerships

Working at RC Bulgaria

Already a partner?

Interested in partnering with us? Tell us a little about your business here .

Sales: (877) 768-4369

How to Write a Marketing Plan and 4 Types to Explore

People have been making plans since, well, forever. Whether it’s figuring out a road trip, or just deciding what’s for dinner, plans help us stay on track, avoid mess-ups, and actually get things done.

Now, a marketing plan might not be as fun as planning your next weekend getaway, but it’s just as, if not more, important. A good marketing plan keeps your business focused, organized, and ready for whatever comes your way. 

That’s why it’s pretty surprising to us that a recent study found 67% of small and medium businesses don’t have one.

This guide is going to break down everything you need to know to create a marketing plan that actually works.

What’s a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a strategic document used for getting your marketing efforts together, organized, running smoothly, and keeping track of how they’re going. It keeps your marketing teams aligned and on target because “winging it” is a surefire way to crash and burn. 

By putting all your strategies and marketing activities in writing, you’ll stay on track and monitor your marketing campaign’s progress, avoiding setbacks and mistakes.

Marketing Plan vs. Business Plan

Now that you’ve got a decent understanding of what a marketing plan is, let’s talk a bit about what it’s NOT. 

First off, it’s not the same as a business plan. They’re pretty different actually.

A marketing plan is all about your marketing goals, strategies, target market and tactics. It’s a focused plan for getting your marketing right. On the other hand, a business plan covers everything about your business, we’re talking finances, operations, you name it. It helps you decide how to use your resources and make big decisions as you grow. 

So, think of a marketing plan as a smaller piece of the business plan puzzle.

Marketing Plan vs Marketing Strategy

Next, let’s talk about the difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy. This one is a little trickier because they’re closely related but not quite the same thing.

A marketing strategy is all about how you’re going to hit a specific goal. It’s your game plan for picking campaigns, creating content, choosing marketing channels, and using marketing automation tools to see how things are going. 

On the other hand, a marketing plan is the big picture. It’s your master guide that pulls together all your strategies and shows how they fit into your overall marketing and business goals.

How to Write a Marketing Plan

Start with your business mission.

Your first step in writing a marketing plan is to nail down your mission. This mission should focus on what your marketing wants to achieve, but it should also connect to your company’s big-picture goals (AKA your business objectives).

For example, if you run an online accounting platform, your main mission might be to provide accessible, user-friendly accounting services. Your marketing mission could be something like “to attract new customers by highlighting the benefits of online accounting over more traditional accountancy firms.”

This mission sets the stage for everything else in your plan and lays the groundwork for a solid strategy. So, be sure to really take some time to think about what it is that you want to achieve and how it’s going to tie in to your overall business goals.

Figure Out the KPIs for Your Mission

You’ve set your mission and figured out your goals yay! Now, you need to decide how you’ll measure success. That’s where key performance indicators (KPIs) come in.

KPIs are just the numbers that tell you how well your marketing is doing. They help you set short-term goals and keep your bosses happy (they love seeing those numbers).

For example, if your mission is “to attract more leads to your multi-line phone system landing page,” you might track things like how many people visit the page, how many target customers fill out the contact form, or how many sign up for a demo. Each of these is a KPI showing how well you’re doing. 

If you’re curious about which KPIs to set, start by reviewing your marketing data to understand where your brand might be falling behind. This will help you to set your objectives and determine where you should focus your efforts. 

Then, decide how you’re going to measure your success. For example, if you’re focused on improving sales, you’ll want to track conversions, whereas if you’re focused on boosting your customer satisfaction rating, you’ll want to track customer feedback surveys from your cloud contact center .

Know Who Your Target Audience Is

The best way to really know your target audience is to create buyer personas. 

A buyer persona is basically a detailed profile of the type of people you want to attract created using data sources, such as your Google Analytics, social media platforms, and virtual call centers , that all feed into your CRM platform. It often includes information such as age, gender, location, family size, job title, and more descriptive categories such as ‘interested in fashion’ or ‘early adopter.’

Each persona should match up with your current and potential customers. So, if you’re selling high-end tech gadgets, your persona might be a tech-savvy 30-something who lives in a city and loves the latest gadgets.

Strategy and Execution

Here’s where you get down to the fun stuff, actually making your marketing plan work. This is where you’ll spell out how you’re going to make things happen and why you’re choosing certain tactics.

Are you investing in ads for your social media channels, TV spots, or something else? And if you’re sending out email newsletters, when’s the best time to hit send? 

Don’t forget to plan your timing and frequency schedules, too. This just means figuring out the best times and how often to run your campaigns so you get the most bang for your buck.

Nail these details, and you’ll have a marketing plan that rolls out smoothly and actually shows you what’s working.

Set Your Marketing Budget

Every marketing plan needs a budget. Setting one will keep you on track, avoid runaway costs, and help you spend your cash where it counts. 

So, figure out how much you’re willing to invest and make sure it aligns with your larger marketing plan. This way, you’ll have a plan that works without breaking the bank.

A rule of thumb is that B2B companies typically spend around 2 to 5% of their revenue on marketing. For B2C companies, it’s usually a bit higher; we’re talking between 5 and 10%.

Adjust your Plan

Last but definitely not least, it’s time to start tweaking and fine-tuning. Your marketing plan isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it deal. 

Sometimes, things just don’t go as planned. You might test a new marketing idea featuring an interactive video call for your nearest and dearest clients. But if it’s not getting the results you expected, it’s time to tweak your strategy.

Stay flexible, keep an eye on how things are performing, and be ready to make adjustments.

4 Types of Marketing Plans

You need different marketing plans for different goals. Think about it. If you’re launching a new product, you’re not gonna use the same game plan as you would for getting your CEO to go viral.

So, here’s a breakdown of five must-have marketing plans:

New Product Launch Marketing Plan

This plan is your go-to for creating a splashy launch. It’s all about getting people excited and making sure your new product grabs all the attention it deserves. You want people to be shouting about this product from the rooftops, after all.

Content Marketing Plan

This maps out what type of content strategies you’ll whip up (whether it’s blogs, videos, hilarious memes, or livestreams) and how you’ll use it to captivate your audience. It’s your content calendar on steroids.

Social Media Marketing Plan

Likes, follows, mentions, and shares. This plan is all about making sure your social media game is on point. You’ll decide which platforms to focus on (Instagram for eye-catching visuals, Twitter for quick updates, LinkedIn for professional networking, etc.), plan your content schedule, and craft engaging posts that keep your followers hooked. Plus, you’ll track the performance of your posts to see what’s working and what’s not.

SEO marketing plan

Ever clicked onto page 8 of Google? Us either. This SEO plan is all about making sure you don’t end up there. It’s basically your blueprint for climbing those search engine rankings and getting noticed. You’ll figure out the best keywords to target, tweak your website to make it search-engine friendly, and create content that makes Google—and your audience—happy.

These are just four of the many marketing plans out there. There are also email marketing plans, digital marketing plans, marketing technology plans, PR & advertising plans, and more.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it. We’ve covered the basics of crafting a killer marketing plan, from setting your mission to choosing the right tactics for your goals.

Remember, your marketing plan isn’t a “one-and-done” deal. It’s a living, breathing document that needs updating as you learn what works best for your customer base and improve your marketing tactics. 

For all you business owners out there, if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed about having to make a comprehensive marketing plan, don’t worry. You can find plenty of marketing plan templates online to help get you started. These templates can guide you through the process and make sure you cover all the essential bases.

How do I set marketing goals and objectives?

Marketing goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Start by identifying what you want to achieve (e.g., increase brand awareness, generate leads, boost sales), and then define the metrics you’ll use to measure success.

How often should I update my marketing plan?

Marketing plans should be reviewed and updated regularly, at least annually, or more frequently if your business environment changes significantly. Regular updates ensure your strategies remain aligned with your current goals and market conditions.

Originally published Sep 01, 2024

Lead generation basics: key benefits, types, and best practices

What’s the best way to go about lead generation for your business? While there’s no simple answer to that question, there are a few steps you can take to give your company the best chance of identifying and reaching your ideal customers. In this article, we’ll show you how you can develop an effective lead ...

Thank you for your interest in RingCentral.

Related content

5 Top Trends for Small Business Communications in 2018

Five Video Meeting Practices to Fuel Collaboration Among Remote Teams

4 cool file-sharing features in your RingCentral app

More From Forbes

Why A Thoughtful Business Plan Is Essential For Success

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Starting a business is an exciting journey, full of opportunities and challenges. For women entrepreneurs, particularly those transitioning from corporate life to entrepreneurship, the path can feel daunting. But with the right roadmap (a well-thought-out business plan), you can navigate the uncertainties and set your business up for success.

A business plan is more than just a document; it's your blueprint for building and growing your business. It outlines your goals, strategies, and the steps you need to take to achieve them. A strong business plan not only guides your decisions but also communicates your vision to potential investors, partners, and employees.

Here’s why a business plan is crucial and how you can create one that will steer your business toward success.

The Importance of a Well-Thought-Out Business Plan

1. clarifies your vision and objectives.

As you build out your business plan it forces you to think deeply about your business idea and if it’s a viable idea. What exactly are you trying to achieve? What are your short-term and long-term goals? By putting these thoughts on paper, you create a clear vision that will guide every decision you make.

2. Helps You Understand Your Market

Researching and writing a business plan requires you to analyze your market. Who are your competitors? Who is your target audience? What are the market trends? This understanding helps you position your business strategically and identify opportunities for growth.

Trump Vs. Harris 2024 Polls: Harris Leads By 6 Points In Latest Likely Voter Survey

Viral ‘chase bank glitch’ isn’t the hack people thought it was, directv blacks out espn, abc, and other disney channels, 3. defines your strategy.

A business plan includes your marketing strategy, sales approach, and operational plan and outlines how you will achieve objectives. This strategic framework ensures that your efforts are aligned and focused on achieving your goals.

4. Secures Funding

If you need financial support to start or grow your business, a well-prepared business plan is essential. Investors and lenders want to see a clear plan for how you will generate revenue and repay any loans. A business plan that demonstrates a thorough understanding of your industry and a solid strategy is more likely to attract funding.

5. Guides Your Decision-Making

A business plan serves as a reference point, helping you make informed decisions that align with your long-term goals. By consistently referring to your business plan, you ensure that every decision contributes to the overarching vision and objectives of your business, ultimately driving growth and success.

6. Tracks Your Progress

A business plan includes milestones and key performance indicators (KPIs) that allow you to track your progress. Regularly reviewing your business plan helps you stay on course, adjust your strategies as needed, and celebrate your successes.

The bottom line is that creating a business plan is a crucial step in turning your entrepreneurial dreams into reality. It’s your roadmap, guiding you through the complexities of starting and growing a business. For women entrepreneurs, especially those transitioning from a corporate career, a well-thought-out business plan can provide the clarity, confidence, and direction needed to succeed. Take the time to craft a business plan that reflects your vision and sets the foundation for a thriving, profitable business.

Melissa Houston, CPA is the author of Cash Confident: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating a Profitable Business and the founder of She Means Profit . As a Business Strategist for small business owners, Melissa helps women making mid-career shifts, to launch their dream businesses, and also guides established business owners to grow their businesses to more profitably.

The opinions expressed in this article are not intended to replace any professional or expert accounting and/or tax advice whatsoever.

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Join The Conversation

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. 

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's  Terms of Service.   We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

• False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
• Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
• Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
• Content that otherwise violates our site's  terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

• Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
• Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
• Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
• Actions that otherwise violate our site's  terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

• Stay on topic and share your insights
• Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
• ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
• Protect your community.
• Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's  Terms of Service.

Brandwatch has just been named The Best Social Media Monitoring Software by the Martech Breakthrough Awards 🏆

• · Brandwatch Academy
• Forrester Wave

Brandwatch Consumer Research

Formerly the Falcon suite

Formerly Paladin

Published August 25 th 2024

Social Media Marketing Platforms: A Comprehensive Introduction on What to Expect

Understand how social media marketing platforms work and how they can be useful to you and your business.

Social media marketing platforms are designed to ease the workload and simplify processes, so you can stay on top of your social media channels.

The idea is to bring all your social accounts into one place, create content and post from the same platform, and use data to improve your future marketing strategies.

Eight out of 10 companies already invest in social media marketing. Some use free platforms like the Meta Business Suite to improve their Facebook and Instagram marketing efforts. Others opt for paid-for platforms that offer a wider range of services, including social listening and AI-generated content creation tools.

No matter what your business does, it's important to find a social media marketing platform that can support your strategy.

This guide will take you through the key considerations for social media managers when picking marketing software. Each platform has its own benefits and costs, so it's important to understand what you want from software before diving in.

Evolution of social media marketing

We'll go into further detail about what social media marketing platforms actually do and how they can help you run multiple accounts at once. Before that, though, it's worth exploring how we got to the stage where marketing efforts on social media platforms has become such an integral part of business.

The rise of social media platforms

Two decades ago, platforms such as MySpace and Friendster were primarily used for personal connections. Social media was just that: social .

Others soon came along, with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn becoming the big hitters in the early 2010s.

The problem was, a social media platform needs money in order to operate effectively. Users can sign up for free, so where does the money come from to support each social site?

The answer is through advertising. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram understood this better than others and became commercial hubs for thousands of businesses. Very soon, brands realized social media sites were different to traditional commercial mediums like TV and billboards. Not only can you advertise, you can also interact with your audience and be far more specific in your marketing.

Integration with digital marketing strategy

Today, social media marketing is part of a wider digital strategy. Social platforms are often a big focus for brands because target audiences spend so much time on Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok.

What's more, eCommerce now makes up almost 20% of all global sales . A digital marketing strategy's objectives often include selling products or services, either via a website or directly on a social media platform.

No wonder social media marketing has never been so important!

In this guide

Types of social media platforms, using platforms for crafting a social media marketing strategy, social media platforms for effective management, analytics and performance tracking, how to optimize social media presence, advertisements and paid marketing on social media, social media platforms and targeted reach, advanced techniques in social media marketing.

Use the links above to jump to each section of this article. Our aim is to provide readers with a comprehensive introduction to social media marketing and how software can help make life easier.

If you'd like to know more, read our Complete Social Media Marketing Guide here.

Let's start with the basics. Most of us know what types of social media platforms are out there, but we may not know the core differences between each one.

It's important to be aware of these so you can decide whether your brand needs to be on multiple platforms, or whether it would be smarter to focus resources on certain ones.

Social first: Facebook

Facebook remains the heavyweight in the world of social media marketing, although there is plenty of competition from the likes of Instagram and TikTok. With billions of active users, it is a crucial platform for businesses to build and maintain a strong social media presence.

After all, you can create a Facebook business profile that acts as a shop front if you don't want to operate a website. There's no shortage of possible customers!

However, users likely see Facebook as a social-first platform – a place to go to converse with each other but not necessarily brands.

News and views: X

X (formerly Twitter) has undergone a lot of change recently with a change of ownership and algorithm tweaks.

X remains the home of news and views. Brands will use the social media site to launch their marketing initiatives or make announcements but probably don't expect financial returns directly from X. Instead, brand recognition and media hype is often the goal social media marketing on X.

Visual and creative networks: Instagram

Instagram, and to a lesser extent Pinterest, are platforms that highlight visual content and inspire creativity.

They often attract a younger demographic than Facebook or X, and Instagram in particular is at the forefront of social media marketing innovation. Stories and Reels have become huge hits, while direct sales via Instagram means brands can cut the sale funnel to just one or two steps.

However, social media marketing on visual-led sights must be creative. Dull or badly-designed imagery won't resonate with audiences and could result in embarrassment for the brand.

Trends: TikTok

Perhaps the most all-consuming of the social media networks, TikTok is a non-stop deep dive into what's hot right now. Trending videos quickly go viral and produce millions of spin-off posts.

Doing TikTok right requires a dedicated social media employee who can shoot, edit, and post engaging video. Quick, creative thinking is a must, because trends come and go in a flash.

You'll need the right tools to implement an effective social media strategy for TikTok.

Professional networks: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the go-to platform for professional networking. It provides businesses with opportunities to target professionals based on their job title, industry, company size, and more.

We often overlook how important LinkedIn is. Brands and employees become thought leaders in their industries, even if the company doesn't dominate the market.

It serves as an ideal platform for businesses in the B2B sector to target and engage with potential clients and industry influencers.

It's a great place not only to share campaign content, but also to show off your marketing prowess.

Say, for example, you launch a campaign on Facebook and Instagram that seeks to target two demographics and generate leads for your product. The campaign goes well and you smash your goals in the first three days. This is the good news story you can spread on LinkedIn, showing others in your industry how great you are at social media marketing!

A social media marketing strategy is required if you're going to use your social presence correctly. Some companies 'open' social media accounts simply to act as place holders. You might, for example, have an account on Facebook that does nothing but prompt readers to navigate to your main website.

If you want to be proactive on social media then you need to create a strategy. Here's how to start:

1. Define business goals and target audience

To create an effective social media marketing strategy, you must first define your business goals and target audience.

Consider what you want to achieve through your marketing efforts, such as increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or boosting sales. Can you do this on one platform? Do you need software to help?

You'll certainly need tech support to identify or define your ideal audience, considering factors like demographics, interests, and online behavior.

Once you have your goals and audience nailed down, you can move on to the next step.

2. Content creation and diverse content formats

Developing a dynamic content strategy is key to capturing your target audience's attention. You can do all the research you like into your audience but if you create uninteresting content then you won't make any impact.

Focus not only on crafting compelling messages, but also on incorporating diverse content formats. TikTok requires smart, quick videos for example, while LinkedIn and Facebook may be more suited to text-based posts.

You could even dive into the audio sphere and publish talks on your X or Instagram accounts that help build brand awareness.

Of course, experimentation is key! And what works best on each platform can change over time.

3. Using influencers

Influencer marketing can significantly boost the visibility and credibility of your brand. It can be as simple or as complex as you like.

So long as you collaborate with influencers whose values align with your brand then you'll be able to create content that resonates with your target audience.

Keep in mind that micro-influencers (10,000-100,000 followers) and macro-influencers (100,000-1 million followers) can often prove more effective than celebrity influencers with millions of followers due to their strong specialities and highly engaged audiences.

Influencer marketing can become the focus of your social media strategy if you get it right. For more advice, see how Brandwatch Influence can help you today.

4. Social media advertising

The last part of your strategy should look at advertising. Paid social media ads go straight to your target demographic.

This means you can pinpoint the people that would be most interested in your brand or offering and connect with them more deeply with messaging that resonates.

Social ads can come in the form of written content, images, or videos. Most brands go for a combination, such as a tweet that outlines the brand's marketing statement alongside an eye-catching video or image.

Once you have your overarching social media marketing strategy in place, you can begin to look at the tools and platforms available to help deliver on your goals.

Since social media is such a popular marketing platform, there are a lot of social media marketing software solutions out there.

Let's take a look at some of the top platforms available today.

Using social media marketing software

Social media marketing platforms are designed to help you manage each social media account in one place. These platforms, such as Brandwatch, Hootsuite, and Statusbrew, provide you with a one-stop solution for managing multiple social media accounts across different networks.

What they offer

The ability to create, schedule, and publish social media posts across multiple accountsEngagement management by monitoring comments, likes, and mentionsAccess to tracking data and in-depth analyticsOptions to use social listening to better understand audiences (available at Brandwatch)Your software enables you to operate and manage social media marketing campaigns in one place, from start to finish. What makes these platforms so valuable is the access they have to social media data and the ability to pull multiple accounts into one place. You won't need to hop around multiple tabs to get a full view of your social media marketing.

Monitoring and social listening

We mentioned social listening in the list above – and it's worth us talking a little more about this.

Social listening opens the door to an entirely new social media landscape. No longer are brands constrained to data directly related to them (such as likes, shares, and mentions). Now, you can hear what people think about your brand, what they're saying about competitors, and what's trending in the industry.

Brandwatch Listen allows you to conduct thorough research into billions of social media data points and feed the insights you've gathered into your strategy. You can then create smarter marketing campaigns that truly resonate with audiences.

Social media companies like X and Meta give users access to basic data that is directly relevant to their channels. This data can be useful for giving a general overview of a brand's success on a social platform. However, it's not enough in an era where competitive analysis and performance tracking can make or break a marketing campaign.

That's why tools like Brandwatch and Statusbrew exist. These platforms dig into the data, so you know exactly how well your Instagram Stories, tweets, and LinkedIn posts are doing.

Analyzing data with advanced analytics

It's advanced analytics that provides the most value when you use software like Brandwatch. Whereas the Meta Business Suite gives a good overview of your Facebook analytics, you need a much more powerful tool to see the whole picture.

Types of advanced analytics include:

• Identifying how users interact with your content
• Finding posts with the highest engagement
• Discovering optimal posting times
• Tracking referral sources
• Analyzing user demographics

You can then layer audience sentiment data to understand not only what's said about your brand, but whether it's good or bad. Then, dig into different social networking sites to pinpoint where conversations and trends started.

Suddenly, your social media management software is showing you a complete picture of your channels and the broader market.

Measuring success and ROI

The other big benefit to external tools that look beyond social media posts is their ability to accurately measure ROI.

For example, a brand might plan to spend $750,000 on a marketing campaign with videos posted on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.

Using one of the top social media marketing platforms, the brand will be able to see which campaigns are generating the most clicks as well as the most engagement.

Your software allows you to see all this data in one place and match it to your overall marketing strategy.

Social media can become a black hole of time and resources if you don't optimize your work on it. Marketing professionals can spend months posting to business accounts without having any real strategy for what they're doing.

The insatiable need for social content means marketers often can't escape the loop and take time to create a social media strategy.

So, what can you do? Below are ways to optimize your presence while working on a strategy, so you can begin to publish better content across your different social media platforms.

1. Use search engine optimization methods

This is a quick win but optimizing your social media presence can be done using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

By using targeted keywords, building quality backlinks, and creating shareable content, you can attract more users to your social media accounts.

Likewise, by being smart with your hashtags, alt text on images, shareable links, and general content, you can make your social media accounts much more engaging.

Social media marketing, like SEO marketing, is all about understanding the tech behind each platform and aligning your content with it.

2. Build brand awareness and identity

You can save a lot of time trying to court attention on social media if you have a brand identity that actually resonates with your audience. For example, a soccer club that launches a new jersey might have general interest from its own fans. However, a soccer club with a strong mission statement that launches a new jersey alongside a social impact sponsor can generate global interest way beyond its fanbase.

Here are some steps for building brand awareness and identity on socials:

• Define your brand: Start by establishing a clear and unique brand identity that represents your business and values. Consider aspects such as color schemes, logos, and a consistent tone of voice.
• Choose the right platforms: Select the social media platforms that align best with your target audience and brand identity. Focus your efforts on the platforms where your audience is most active and engaged. You can do this by performing a simple volume analysis to find out where people are talking about your brand, competitors, or industry most.
• Consistent messaging: Maintain a consistent message across all platforms. This ensures that your brand is easily recognizable and memorable. Try to bring old accounts in line too – you don't want audiences to get confused.
• Engage your audience: Interact with your target audience, respond to their comments, and encourage dialogue. Building strong connections with your followers can encourage brand loyalty and increase brand awareness.

3. Cross-pollinate with software

A third way to optimize your social presence is to use software to cross-pollinate between each social media site. For example, content creation tools like Canva allow you to repurpose images and video content for different mediums.

So, your Instagram Reel can easily go on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Likewise, you can resize graphics so they display better on individual platforms.

Cross-pollination of content only works well if you know your target audience will respond in kind on various platforms. So, be sure to do your audience research before replicating posts for each of your social platforms. Replication for the sake of it is just lazy.

Each social media platform has an ads or paid-for option that is intended to help brands widen their reach. Using these services correctly can be hugely beneficial. Advertising on social media is nothing new but marketers are always figuring out fresh ways to get the most from their investments.

A platform like Brandwatch can help you manage your paid marketing efforts so you don't waste money.

But marketing in this way requires a lot of expertise if you want to secure a worthwhile ROI.

Understanding paid ads across platformsIndeed, as you venture into social media advertising, it's important to understand the different types of paid ads across various platforms.

Generally, there are three main formats of social media ads:

• Sponsored posts: These are promoted versions of regular posts that appear in users' feeds, giving your brand more visibility. They're commonly found on Facebook and X, although they're not always effective.
• Carousel ads: These allow you to showcase multiple images or videos in a single ad, with viewers swiping through them. They're popular on Instagram and X.
• Story ads: Short-lived, full-screen ads that usually contain images or short videos, which appear between user-generated stories on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. They have become a go-to option for brands on TikTok in recent years.

You can use a social site's own business platform – such as the Meta Business Suite – to coordinate your ads. Or you can use tools like Advertise from Brandwatch, which lets you manage your ad campaigns in one place.

Exploring key features of social media ads

What is the point of social media advertising? It's something many marketers wonder, especially when you have to pay large fees with no guarantee of return.

Well, advertising on a social media platform isn't just about making money. It can greatly enhance a brand's reputation and help it pivot into a different industry, or target a fresh demographic.

If you think social ads are right for you then here are some things to consider when establishing your paid-for plan.

• Targeting: Each platform offers diverse targeting options based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. Make sure to segment your audience and tailor your ads accordingly. Use social listening to find your audience and go from there.
• Ad placements: Experiment with different ad placements (feed, stories, etc.) to see what works best for your campaign. You can always start cheap and then invest more money into the best-performing format later.
• Bidding and budgeting: Social media advertising platforms typically use an auction system, allowing you to set bid caps and daily budgets to control costs. This is important if you want to target specific events, like music festivals or sports games. Assess your budget before bidding!
• Be creative: Develop attention-grabbing creative ads that resonate with your audience, and test different variations to optimize performance. Creativity is vital in advertising and is often rewarded on social media.
• Tracking and analytics: You can use the built-in analytics tool of each social media platform to track key performance metrics such as impressions, click-through rate, and conversions. Or go bigger with powerful software like Brandwatch Advertise and get a full picture of how your ads have fared.

One of the main benefits of using social media management platforms is you get hands on a lot of data. You can use this to boost your reach with specific targeting. Never again will you simply throw out a Facebook post and hope some attention comes back.

Identifying the right audience

So, how you do perform targeted reach on social? The first step is to identify the right audience for your products or services.

To do this, you'll need to look back at your strategy and understand who your target audience is. Remember to consider factors such as gender, age, location, and interests when creating these personas.

From there, you can use social media analytics tools to gain insights into their online behavior and identify user subsets that match your target audience.

Your software will help you do this and allow you to send targeted messages to those subsets.

Of course, as a marketing campaign rolls out you might redefine or recategorize your target audience – perhaps broadening or making it more specific. If this happens, you'll need to crunch the data again and find new subsets.

Finally we come to the futuristic side of social media marketing. Below are three advanced techniques marketers use to supercharge their campaigns, grab more attention, and generate leads.

You don't necessarily need a presence on all social media platforms to apply these advanced techniques.

• Running competitive intelligence analysis
• Integrating E-commerce
• Engaging with a broader audience

Let's take a look.

1. Running competitive intelligence analysis

Competitive intelligence has always existed in marketing but it's only become a big factor on social media platforms over the last decade. There are some huge advantages to be gained from watching how your rivals launch and operate digital marketing campaigns.

For a start, you see their successes as well as their failures. You can spot what to avoid and, crucially, what gaps are there to be filled in the industry. It's competitor research without speaking to your competitors!

Using analytics tools like Brandwatch and Sprout Social helps here, because you can directly compare your social media efforts against others.

Want to know more? Our guide to competitor analysis will help.

2. Integrating E-commerce: Link in bio tools and online stores

E-commerce within social media platforms has become a lot easier over the last few years, yet you still have to find a relevant audience before you can sell anything this way.

The trick is to conduct the usual background research into your target audiences and build relationships with them, before then launching purchase opportunities directly from the social network.

Instagram, for example, requires a brand to have 1,000 followers before it can sell products.

Another trick to boost e-commerce opportunities is to use a link in bio tool. These tools, like Linktree, give users a menu of where they want to go once they've clicked on it. It means one Instagram user can go to your online shop, and another to the 'about us' page on your website.

Your online store also needs to be optimized for social media. Most e-commerce platforms, like Shopify and WooCommerce, offer social media integration options.

This means you can:

• Use high-quality images for product listings.
• Include "buy now" buttons to streamline the checkout process.
• Provide a secure, mobile-friendly experience.

3. Engaging with a broader audience

Brand seek to widen their audiences all the time in order to generate more interest and sales. Being able to analyze data on your own audience is one thing, but assessing the entire social landscape gives you the opportunity to capture a broader audience.

Now, listening tools like Brandwatch are at the forefront of this development. You can hear what people are saying on social sites across the world. Discover what they're talking about, analyze conversation sentiments, and predict future trends.

Armed with this data, you can now begin to look for bigger audiences.

Say a sportswear company is trying to figure out how to appeal to women in their 30s. They notice thousands of social media accounts in that demographic are talking about a very specific niche sport. Launching an ad campaign about the multi-sports use of their equipment, including the trending sport, might be the sort of thing that attracts this new audience.

The last word on social media marketing platforms

You should now be ready to enter the world of social media marketing, armed with knowledge on what to expect across the industry. Marketing on social media requires software to help streamline your efforts and ensure consistency across all channels.

From creating images and building a content calendar, to sourcing the right audiences and keeping apace of brand monitoring – you can do it all with the right tools.

Your next step is to develop the strategy we mentioned toward the top of this guide and calculate what you need to execute it. You might not need a universal marketing tool if you realize what's available as standard within social networks can handle all your tasks.

However, you might find that as your brand grows, the workload for managing your social media marketing campaigns increases. If this happens, consider trialing external software to see if it can help.

You never know, it might revolutionize how you work on social media.

Share this post

Brandwatch bulletin.

Offering up analysis and data on everything from the events of the day to the latest consumer trends. Subscribe to keep your finger on the world’s pulse.

New: Social Media Management

Everything you need to succeed on social media.

Leverage the industry-leading, all-in-one social media management solution.

We value your privacy

We use cookies to improve your experience and give you personalized content. Do you agree to our cookie policy?

By using our site you agree to our use of cookies — I Agree

Falcon.io is now part of Brandwatch. You're in the right place!

Existing customer? Log in to access your existing Falcon products and data via the login menu on the top right of the page. New customer? You'll find the former Falcon products under 'Social Media Management' if you go to 'Our Suite' in the navigation.

Paladin is now Influence. You're in the right place!

Brandwatch acquired Paladin in March 2022. It's now called Influence, which is part of Brandwatch's Social Media Management solution. Want to access your Paladin account? Use the login menu at the top right corner.

What is a Business Plan? Definition, Tips, and Templates

Published: June 28, 2024

Years ago, I had an idea to launch a line of region-specific board games. I knew there was a market for games that celebrated local culture and heritage. I was so excited about the concept and couldn't wait to get started.

But my idea never took off. Why? Because I didn‘t have a plan. I lacked direction, missed opportunities, and ultimately, the venture never got off the ground.

And that’s exactly why a business plan is important. It cements your vision, gives you clarity, and outlines your next step.

In this post, I‘ll explain what a business plan is, the reasons why you’d need one, identify different types of business plans, and what you should include in yours.

Table of Contents

What is a business plan?

What is a business plan used for.

• Business Plan Template [Download Now]

Purposes of a Business Plan

What does a business plan need to include, types of business plans.

Free Business Plan Template

The essential document for starting a business -- custom built for your needs.

• Outline your idea.
• Pitch to investors.
• Secure funding.
• Get to work!

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

A business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines a company's goals, strategies, and financial projections. It provides a detailed description of the business, including its products or services, target market, competitive landscape, and marketing and sales strategies. The plan also includes a financial section that forecasts revenue, expenses, and cash flow, as well as a funding request if the business is seeking investment.

The business plan is an undeniably critical component to getting any company off the ground. It's key to securing financing, documenting your business model, outlining your financial projections, and turning that nugget of a business idea into a reality.

The purpose of a business plan is three-fold: It summarizes the organization’s strategy in order to execute it long term, secures financing from investors, and helps forecast future business demands.

Business Plan Template [ Download Now ]

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

18 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

23 of My Favorite Free Marketing Newsletters

The 8 Best Free Flowchart Templates [+ Examples]

7 Gantt Chart Examples You'll Want to Copy [+ 5 Steps to Make One]

How to Write an Executive Summary Execs Can't Ignore [+ 5 Top Examples]

20 Free & Paid Small Business Tools for Any Budget

Maximizing Your Social Media Strategy: The Top Aggregator Tools to Use

The Content Aggregator Guide for 2024

16 Best Screen Recorders to Use for Collaboration

2 Essential Templates For Starting Your Business

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform