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

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

Written by: Sara McGuire Oct 26, 2023

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

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

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

Click to jump ahead:

What is a marketing plan?

How to write a marketing plan .

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

9 marketing plan examples to inspire your growth strategy

Marketing plan faqs.

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

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

Typically, a marketing plan includes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A typical outline of a marketing plan includes:

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

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

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

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

1. Write a simple executive summary

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

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

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

Include things like:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Set metric-driven marketing goals

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

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

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

As a rule of thumb, be as specific as possible. The folks over at  VoyMedia  advise that you should set goals that impact website traffic, conversions, and customer success — and to use real numbers.

Avoid outlining vague goals like:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Outline your user personas

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

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

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

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

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

Some ways to conduct user research are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next, list demographic information like:

• Identifiers
• Activities/Hobbies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Conduct an extensive competitor analysis

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

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

Typically, your competitor research should include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Set accurate key baselines & metrics

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Create an actionable marketing strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Set tracking or reporting guidelines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marketing plan vs. marketing strategy

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

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

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

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

Marketing plan v.s business plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

Types of marketing plans that can transform your business strategy

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

1. General marketing strategic plan / Annual marketing plan

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

Another good example would be this Starbucks marketing plan:

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

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

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

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

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

2. Content marketing plan

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

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

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

3. SEO marketing plan

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

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

4. Social media marketing plan

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

For B2C brands, you can target Facebook and Instagram. Gain Instagram likes to build trust for your brand’s profile and post engaging content on both platforms

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

5. Demand generation marketing plan

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

1. Free marketing plan template

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

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

2. Pastel social media marketing campaign template

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

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

3. Small business marketing strategy template

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

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

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

4. Orange simple marketing proposal template

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

5. One-page marketing fact sheet template

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

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

6. Light company business fact sheet template

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

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

7. Marketing media press kit template

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

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

8. Professional marketing proposal template

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

9. Social media marketing proposal template

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

What should marketing plans include?

Marketing plans should include:

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

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

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

What are the results when a marketing plan is effective?

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

What is the first section of a marketing plan?

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

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

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Featured Reads

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

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

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

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

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

Level up your marketing plan to drive revenue in 2024

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

7 steps to build a comprehensive marketing plan

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

1. Define your plan

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

Get started by asking yourself the following questions: 

What resources do I need? 

What is the vision?

What is the value?

What is the goal?

Who is my audience?

What are my channels?

What is the timeline?

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

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

What is the vision?  

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

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

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

All existing customers. 

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

The first half of the next fiscal year. 

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

2. Identify key metrics for success 

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

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

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

3. Research your competition 

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

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

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

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

4. Integrate your marketing efforts

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

Lead generation

Social media

Product marketing

Public relations

Analyst relations

Customer marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Conversational marketing

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

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

5. Differentiate with creative content

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Operationalize your marketing plan

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

With the right work management tool , you can: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See marketing planning in action

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

7. Measure performance

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

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

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

Marketing plan examples from world-class teams

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

Autodesk grows site traffic 30% three years in a row

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

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

Sony Music boosts creative production capacity by 4X

In recent years the music industry has gone through a pivotal transition—shifting from album sales to a streaming business model. For marketing and creative teams at Sony Music, that meant adopting an “always on” campaign plan. 

The team successfully executed this campaign plan by centralizing creative production and approvals in one project. By standardizing processes, the team reduced campaign production time by 75%. Read the case study to learn more about how Sony Music successfully scaled their creative production process.

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

Smooth product launches are simpler than you think

How Asana uses work management for smoother creative production

Build a marketing operations strategy in 4 steps

How Asana uses work management for more impactful campaigns

How to Create a Profitable Annual Business Plan [+Free Template]

Published: February 09, 2023

The beginning of a new quarter is the perfect time to start planning the next year for your business. Start the next year or quarter off on the right foot by creating an annual business plan for your company.

Q4 often brings a flurry of business-related activity. And while all this activity helps fill the pipeline, it can distract you from reflecting on past performance and preparing for the year or quarter ahead.

Fortunately, you can write an annual business plan at any time of the year. Start your plan now to set your team up for success.

What is an annual business plan?

An annual business plan is just that — a plan for you and your employees to help achieve the company’s goals for the year. Think of an annual business plan as the guide to complete all of your company’s overall goals outlined in your initial business plan.

The first business plan you wrote for your business is the blueprint and the annual business plan is the detailed instructions to keep your business running long-term.

Usually, an annual business plan contains a short description of your company, a marketing analysis, and a sales/marketing plan.

Because an annual business plan is for the year, you’ll want to review your business at the end of four consecutive quarters and revise your plan for the next four quarters.

Why is annual business planning important?

Even though the fourth quarter might be a busy time of year, don’t put off creating an annual business plan.

Not only will your annual business plan keep you on track, it will also help you map out a strategy to keep your employees accountable. You can then more easily achieve the overall goals of your business.

Here are some reasons why it’s well worth creating an annual business plan for your company.

You can measure your success.

An annual business plan is the best way to measure your success. And I’m referring to the collective “you” here because it takes the entire company or all of your employees to make new business efforts effective.

An annual plan not only sets expectations for you but also for others within your company who need to contribute to the business’s success.

You can reflect on the past and plan ahead.

Creating an annual business plan allows you to reflect on the past 12 months.

As you reflect on the previous year, you’ll be able to get a good idea of what your business is capable of doing and set accurate, attainable projections based on previous numbers.

You’ll define your business goals.

Your annual business plan will shed some light on what the heck you do at your company. For those who are not routinely involved in new business, it can seem like a black hole of mystery.

Sharing your plan — whether to an executive committee, department heads, or even the entire staff — adds clarity and gives everyone something to aim for.

You can impress your boss.

If you head a department that could benefit from an annual business plan, don’t wait to be asked before you start writing. Get on your CEO’s schedule to review your outline and discuss your intentions for putting this plan together.

Sometimes the hardest part is getting started. You can get the ball rolling with the basic template that follows.

Annual Business Plan Template

Each section of your annual business plan will help tell the story of your company and clearly define your company’s goals for the year.

Let’s take a look at each section of the annual business plan template .

Executive Summary

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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

MARKETING PLAN GENERATOR

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

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

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

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

Awesome. it's great to meet you .

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

Where do you work?

Very cool how many employees work at your company .

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

What's your company 's mission?

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

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

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

State of Inbound 2016

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

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

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

(Scroll for more options)

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

What are your goals for these initiatives?

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

( Enter options on previous slide to view content )

Which initiatives would you consider for a future year?

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

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

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

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

What is in the Marketing Plan Template?

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

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the marketing plan template generator do.

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

How Does the Marketing Plan Template Generator Work?

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

Why is a Marketing Plan Important?

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

When Do You Need to Use a Marketing Plan?

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

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MARKETING INSIGHTS

Marketing plan template: step-by-step guide plus examples

• Merav Kanat
• Feb 21, 2021
• 12 min read

If you have a business you want to promote, there are so many directions you can go with your marketing efforts - build your own website , post on social media, send out email blasts and more. With a plethora of both free and paid options for promoting your business online, marketing has become easy and accessible for everyone.

Still, it’s no secret that marketing requires time and money. You’ll need to use your resources wisely if you want to scale efficiently and have a high return on investment. For that reason, it’s wise to avoid haphazard promotional efforts, and come up with a marketing plan: a cohesive operation that aligns all your marketing efforts and directly ties back to your business’s goals.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to create a marketing plan - including a template you can use to write your own. By outlining your objectives as a company, defining your KPIs , and then unifying your marketing strategies accordingly, this type of plan streamlines your promotional efforts and yields results.

Start building your online presence with Wix .

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a roadmap that helps you manage, implement and track your various marketing efforts. In other words, it’s a structured framework that links together all your marketing activities into a single, cohesive operation.

Typically, a marketing plan takes the form of a report that gives an overview of your marketing strategy for the upcoming year, quarter or month. The report defines your company’s goals over a given period of time, and clearly outlines the steps you’ll need to take to achieve them. It's an essential part of any SMBs marketing efforts.

Here’s just a taste of what a marketing plan includes:

An analysis of your competitors and your stance in the market

A description of your target audience and their needs

Your company’s unique selling proposition

An overview of your marketing and advertising goals

A timeline of the various tasks that need to be completed

The key performance indicators (KPIs) that you’ll be tracking to measure success

Creating a marketing plan is the most efficient way to generate demand for your product. Whether you’re running an online T-shirt store, working as a business consultant, or launching a blog for moms, mapping out your strategy in advance will help you drive people through the marketing funnel and get customers.

Types of marketing plans

Before we dive into the specific elements of a marketing plan template, let’s briefly touch on the different types of marketing plans, which can vary depending on your company. They include:

Annual, quarterly or monthly marketing plan: Marketing plans are typically annual, but they can be quarterly or monthly depending on your business’s goals. This type of plan will highlight all your promotional activities within the specified period of time.

New product launch marketing plan: This is a specific type of marketing plan that focuses on the strategies and tactics you’ll use to promote a particular product.

Social media marketing plan: This kind of marketing plan provides a comprehensive outline of your goals, channels, and tactics for promoting your business on social media.

Content marketing plan: Similarly, this type of plan provides a comprehensive outline of your various content marketing strategies and goals.

Media marketing plan: This focuses on building a strategy using all media types: owned media (your own website, app or email marketing tools), paid media (advertising campaigns), and earned media ( word of mouth marketing , organic traffic, viral content) to support an integrated marketing approach.

In this article, we’ll talk about the broadest type of marketing plan. This will outline all of your small business marketing efforts and help you map out a clear strategy.

Using this marketing plan as a guide, you can then create more specific plans - such as a content marketing or social media marketing plan - based on the areas you want to focus on.

How to create a marketing plan in 7 steps

Analyze your market and competition

Research your target audience

Set goals and KPIs

Write a unique selling proposition

Choose strategic marketing channels

Brief your team

Monitor your analytics

01. Analyze your market and competition

The first step in writing a marketing plan is to identify your competitors. This is important so that you know who you’ll be marketing against, and how you can outshine them with your promotional strategy.

Take into account that different competitors will be stronger in different areas. Your biggest competitor on social media, for instance, might be different from your competitor with the best SEO.

With that in mind, do a SWOT analysis of your competition. Using this acronym - which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats - gives you a systematic way to identify your competitors’ performance in your field:

Strengths: What are the competitors’ advantages in the industry? What are they excelling in?

Weaknesses: What could this company be doing better? What processes of theirs could be improved?

Opportunities: Are there any new trends or upcoming events that are relevant to your industry? Identify them, and seize the marketing opportunity before your competition does.

Threats: Are there external factors such as new government regulations, declining customer interest, or industry shifts that are threats to your competitors’ success? If so, find a way to navigate these threats and avoid making the same mistakes as your competition.

Even if you’ve already done a SWOT analysis in the past, it’s important to reassess the playing field as you write your marketing plan. In particular, anticipate whether anything new is about to happen in the coming year or quarter, such as a change in government policy or the emergence of a new competitor in your market.

And, of course, keep an eye out for niches your competitors haven’t gotten to yet. For instance, if you’re selling products to new moms, a SWOT analysis might reveal that none of your competitors are creating products for new dads. In this case, that would be an opportunity for you to expand your audience, attract new customers, and grow your revenue.

As you create your SWOT analysis, use this free SWOT analysis template to guide you, and make it a part of your marketing plan:

02. Research your target audience

Just as you research your competitors, you’ll need to look into your target audience . This is the specific group of people at which your product or service is aimed - and, as such, they’re the primary audience of your marketing strategy.

If you’re unsure of who your target audience is, there are a few different ways to gather this information. First, think about which needs your product fulfills and which types of people it caters to. You can also use your SWOT analysis to point you in the right direction. Look at competitors’ websites, blogs and social media channels to determine the types of people they’re marketing to.

To hone in on your audience even further, analyze your existing customers to understand which kinds of people you’ve attracted in the past. Talk to your current and potential customers as much as you can. Get their feedback, use focus groups, and analyze the data to figure out their shared behaviors and characteristics:

Age: Does your product seek to address the needs of people of a certain age - for example, older adults or millennials?

Location: Are your target customers within a specific country or region? Where are they, and what languages do they speak?

Spending power: How much money are your target customers able to spend? Are they seeking out luxury, or could money be an issue when deciding whether to purchase?

Stage of life: Can you identify your target customers based on their stage of life, such as new parents, college students or retirees?

Hobbies and career: Can you group them based on certain hobbies, career paths, or other lifestyle interests?

Track this information in an orderly way by creating buyer personas , or detailed descriptions of specific types of customers. Each buyer persona should reflect both existing or potential customers, based on the factors above: demographics, location, job title and more.

Be sure to include this information at the beginning of your marketing plan, side-by-side your SWOT analysis, to provide a thorough assessment of the market in which your company is operating. Ultimately, these various audience types will represent customer segments - groups of people you can target with different marketing materials depending on their interests.

03. Set your goals and KPIs

Next, set your business’s goals. What do you want to achieve next quarter? How about by the end of this year? 5 years from now?

The more ambitious the goal, the more time, effort and money you should dedicate to it. Determine each goal, and break it down into small steps, either by month, quarter or year, depending on your time frame. Not only will this help you build a clear timeline, but it will also help you allocate your budget.

Once you divide up your big goals into small goals, consider how to measure them. In other words, how will you know whether you’re meeting your goals, or falling short?

This is where KPIs - key performance indicators - come into play. Essentially, KPIs are the specific metrics used to monitor your progress in achieving your goals.

For instance, if you want to create an active online forum for pop music creators, then your KPIs should be site visits, your number of active visitors, and your number of returning visitors. Your position in Google search results for niche keywords, such as “pop music creator” or “music production software,” would also be a relevant KPI.

Whichever KPIs you choose, include them in your marketing plan alongside your goals and write down the metrics you’ll use to measure your success. For example, if your KPI is to make more sales, you might want to track metrics like lead generation and conversion rate .

By checking your achievements every quarter compared to your KPIs, you’ll learn about the pace and abilities of your businesses. If you achieve your KPIs relatively easily, you can set more ambitious goals. On the other hand, if you’re falling short of your KPIs, you might consider recruiting more people to help you get there.

04. Write a unique selling proposition

If you were to give a 30-second marketing spiel to a potential customer, what would you say? Come up with a statement that would appeal to your target audience’s interests and increase demand for your business.

If you’re already a market leader that offers high-quality products, you can claim that you’re “the best solution for” a particular need. On the other hand, if you’re still a relatively small player in the market, you can position yourself as being innovative and groundbreaking - the brand that offers fresh, modern solutions. Many smaller businesses tend to find that creative, funny, or even unorthodox branding gives them the attention boost they need from their audience.

When targeting multiple audiences, you may find it challenging to create a single message that resonates with everyone. One tip for attracting many types of customers at the same time is to create slightly different messages for each buyer persona. Going back to the product lines for new moms and dads, you may find that you need to split your messaging between a few different customer types:

New moms: Target them with the message that they need high-quality products for their babies.

New moms who want their spouse to be involved in childcare: Target them with a new message that they’d have more time to relax if their spouse also used the product.

New dads: Target them with a different message that these products can help them become good fathers and supportive partners.

Be sure to record this messaging in your marketing plan so that you can use it throughout your various promotional efforts.

05. Choose strategic marketing channels

Once you come up with your core messages, decide which marketing strategies you’ll use to spread the word. There’s an abundance of options here, both paid and free. Some popular paid channels include:

Social media ads (Facebook, Instagram and more)

Online ads on other sites

Press releases

Partnerships with other companies

Outreach marketing

Guerilla marketing

Email campaigns

Offline media such as magazine, billboard and radio ads

Facebook ads are a particularly effective option because they reach almost every type of audience and can be targeted based on demographics and interests. They’re fairly simple to make, especially if you already have a Facebook business page. And, depending on your website platform, you can even create Facebook ads directly through your site .

Paid channels are a reliable choice, but it’s also worthwhile to couple these efforts with free promotional options as well. These take a little more time to develop, but they’re also a valuable way to get more exposure and build a loyal audience. They include popular inbound marketing tactics such as:

Website SEO

Creating company social media pages

Being active in online forums and Facebook groups

When choosing what channels to use, it’s important to think about which ones will actually reach your target audience. If you’re marketing to elderly folks, for instance, then Instagram ads may not be the way to go.

Similarly, build a strategy for the timeline of your campaigns. Take into account any holidays and other special events, such as elections or the Super Bowl, that you can use to your advantage when crafting marketing content.

And remember - not all your campaigns will be planned in advance. You’ll need to set aside budget for on-the-fly campaigns, also known as real-time marketing (RTM). This involves taking advantage of precious opportunities like global events and new internet trends. For instance, the January 2021 Bernie Sanders meme was a great chance for companies to get easy attention, earn free media coverage, and go viral. Ikea even used the meme to promote its folding chair and oven mitts.

Pro tip: Once you’ve established the right channels and timeline, you may be eager to launch your campaigns right away - especially if unexpected marketing opportunities arise. Resist the temptation until you’re absolutely sure your product is ready, with at least 85% positive feedback from users. Asking for a second chance will cost you much more than nailing a great impression the first time around.

06. Brief your team

One of the main reasons to create a marketing plan is to develop a unified operation that your whole marketing department can participate in. For this reason, it’s critical that you keep everyone in the loop.

Update your marketing team, as well as the suppliers that create the marketing materials for you. The best way to ensure everyone is aligned is to create a marketing brief - a one-page document that summarizes the market research, company goals, messaging, and action items established in your plan.

You can use the marketing brief template below to create a quick, efficient overview of your plan. It includes guiding questions to help you analyze your competitors, determine your target audience, identify your KPIs, and craft a compelling company message. Fill out this document, and share it with anyone who works with you so that they’re on the same page about your strategy and goals:

07. Monitor your analytics

Once you start implementing your marketing campaigns, you’ll need to closely monitor the results. To ensure your strategy is effective, continuously track your KPIs and see how the numbers stack up against your goals. That will allow you to adapt the marketing plan based on the goals you’re achieving and those you aren’t. Customer analytics can help you in this process.

There are two places to monitor analytics: Google Analytics and your website.

Google Analytics can easily be connected to your company website, and it’s a helpful way to track your site visitors and evaluate the performance of marketing campaigns.

Wix Analytics is another useful tool that provides a comprehensive analysis of your performance, and it’s conveniently located within the Wix website dashboard. This tool allows you to create custom audiences based on their demographics, geographic location, or other defining features, and you can access it directly from your website.

Using these two tools, look at the data. If the numbers indicate that you aren’t meeting your objectives, brainstorm action items for how to improve. If, for instance, you notice that some of your website visitors are located in Europe, try creating a multilingual website; it may just help convert them into customers. Likewise, if you’re getting traffic to your website or blog but are lacking in conversions, try creating content campaigns around specific products.

Don’t be discouraged if, after two quarters, you aren’t reaching your goals. This happens to the best of us, and it’s simply an indicator that you’ll need to refine your marketing plan and go back to Step 1.

Marketing plan template

Now that you know how to create a marketing plan, use this marketing plan template to walk you through the process. It’s free for download and use, and can easily be adapted for any business.

Marketing plan examples

While the marketing plan template above provides you with everything you need, it may also be helpful to look at other examples for inspiration. If you’re seeking additional resources, use these marketing plan examples to guide you:

01. Marketing Plan Template from SBA

The Small Business Administration provides a highly detailed marketing plan template that can be downloaded as a PDF and easily adapted to suit your company. The plan covers all the must-haves, like an explanation of your products and an analysis of your target market, but it supplements those with finer details like location analysis and product packaging.

02. Marketing Plan Template Generator from HubSpot

Unlike most marketing plan examples, this isn’t a file that you print out and fill in. Instead, it’s an online generator - a fill-in-the-blank template that walks you through the creation process page-by-page. The generator feels almost like an AI bot, asking you to fill in your name and then replying “Awesome! It’s great to meet you, [Name]!” This is a great way to make the marketing plan process more dynamic and fun.

03. Marketing Plan Microsoft Word Template from More Business

The advantage of More Business’s marketing plan template is that it’s downloadable for Microsoft Word, allowing you to fill in each section directly on the document. The document not only contains different strategies that you can use to inspire your own marketing efforts, but it also comes with examples of tables and charts for your marketing plan.

04. One-Page Marketing Plan Template from SmartSheet

This template is available for download on Microsoft Word, Google Docs and SmartSheet, but we particularly like that it’s available as an Excel version. As a one-pager, it’s short and sweet - ideal for getting your marketing plan started without getting lost in too much detail from the beginning. It’s a helpful sheet for brainstorming, or for summarizing your marketing plan once it’s complete.

05. Marketing Plan Slide Deck Template from Slidesgo

This marketing plan template comes in yet another format - an attractive slide deck that’s downloadable for both PowerPoint and Google Slides. This includes all the essentials, but in a more visual format, making it a useful asset for turning your marketing plan into a presentation.

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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 2023 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 free content marketing training .

About Jesse Sumrak

Jesse Sumrak is a writing zealot focused on creating killer content. He’s spent almost a decade writing about startup, marketing, and entrepreneurship topics, having built and sold his own post-apocalyptic fitness bootstrapped business. A writer by day and a peak bagger by night (and early early morning), you can usually find Jesse preparing for the apocalypse on a precipitous peak somewhere in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

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11 Steps to Creating a Strategic Annual Marketing Plan

We’ve official entered Q4, and for many companies, that means it’s time to create an Annual Marketing Plan. What do you want to accomplish for your company on the marketing front in 2022? No one expected the ramifications of COVID-19 would last this far into 2021, with trade shows and other in-person events being cancelled or going virtual and a good majority of people still working from home. Next year may be different, but it may mean more of the same. By planning carefully—and having a flexible Annual Plan—you’ll be ready to tackle all the uncertainty that 2022 will may bring.

Although many marketers are still working out the kinks from all the changes 2020 and 2021 brought forth, one thing always stands true when building an annual plan: It prompts marketing teams to focus on supporting the company’s business goals through marketing activities, including Positioning and Messaging, Content Marketing, Media and Analysts Relations, and Social Media.

Building a plan starts with some of the elements you may most easily find in your corporate Positioning and Messaging document or have gathered from your internal teams. If you haven’t gone through a Positioning and Messaging exercise recently, it might be time to stop and tackle that before building an Annual Plan. Positioning and Messaging is an integral foundation for any marketing plan.

Ready to get started? There are 11 specific strategic business elements that every Annual Plan includes. These are:

• An Executive Summary. This will act as an introduction to your overall plan and will be written last but placed first. The audience is the CEO, CFO, and other C-level executives who eventually need to sign off on your plan. It should provide a high-level overview of your goals and broadly how you plan to achieve them. Keep in mind that your company’s overall business plan may also include some short-term pivots as executives keep an eye on particular markets and the supply chain issues because of COVID-19.
• A Situation Analysis. What does the industry and specific customer market look like for the coming year? What changes do you expect? How does your company play into the overall market? Some companies may consider doing a full SWOT analysis to assess their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in light of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, and determine what that means for their business.
• Your Audience. The more detail you provide here, the more of a roadmap you are building for the team to follow throughout the year. If your audience is large enterprises, for example, what vertical markets are your key targets? What titles are you targeting at those types of companies, for example, is purchasing your product a decision that department managers make? The IT group? Does the CEO eventually sign off on purchases from companies such as yours? Defining your specific audience is critical as it will shape your go-to-market strategy.
• Your Lines of Business. Which lines of business (divisions, departments, etc.) will you be focusing on in the coming year? Which new products and which existing products will be central to your company’s business goals? Ask yourself: “If I had $100, how would I divide it up over the various products and services I offer?”
• Your Differentiators. What do you do that is unique in the market? Why should and why do people buy from your company and not the competition? This should have been a key part of your Positioning and Messaging exercise and should include proof points that support your claims.
• Your Sales Strategy. How will you sell these products? Work with the sales team on these key channels, as it will help you drill down specifically into the Influencers that support that market.
• Mediums for Your Message. What are the methods you will use during the year to execute your plan? These may include advertising, SEO, website, collateral, trade shows (or more likely virtual events), webinars, content marketing, public relations and other efforts.
• Your Campaigns. Creating campaigns at a higher level helps you easily plug in specific assets to the campaign later on. This step includes identifying and defining the marketing campaigns you will run, and as part of those, a campaign and content map that defines a campaign, target audience, positioning (value statement) that supports the campaign, specific timeframe for the campaign, goals (such as number of expected leads, number of conversions or other metrics, for each of those) and the content involved.
• Budget / Financial Projection. How much is everything you want to do going to cost and how do you make cuts, if the budget you receive is lower than expected? What results do you expect to deliver based on the budget you do receive?
• Measurement . How will you measure your results through the year? How many sales leads came from which activity? How many customers came from each activity? How are you going to measure the success of each marketing and business goal? Not only will measuring results from every activity tell you what you are doing right (so you can do more of it), it will also tell you what’s not working (so you can stop, make adjustments, and divert budget to things that are working better). It also gives you a solid idea of what you should be budgeting for the following year.
• Summary. Tell the approvers of your Annual Marketing Plan how you plan to reach the goals you’ve established. This is shorter than the executive summary found at the beginning – just one slide to hit the high points again. Areas to consider as part of your Annual Marketing Plan also include several other elements that are specific to your business. These include partnerships, referral programs, user conferences and so forth. These would be delivered before the summary.

Because of the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic and a continuously shifting timeline, we highly recommend drawing up three-month plans to deal with the tactics that your annual strategies are built upon, as well as mini-plans that will guide the tactics of new opportunities as they arise. By having this plan in place and making sure all activities map back specifically to your business goals, you’ll be sure to deliver the results your team needs to find success.

Want to learn more about how to create a Strategic Annual Marketing Plan? Contact Calysto today.

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How to create a successful annual business plan

Here is what you need to know to create an effective and comprehensive annual plan for your department or company:

What is the purpose of annual planning?

An annual plan acts as a roadmap for your company. Annual planning allows you to go into a new fiscal or calendar year with specific and measurable goals set, budgets finalized, and a plan for how to measure progress on and achieve your company’s organizational and financial goals. Through this process, you develop the vision of where you hope that your company will be at the end of the year and the map of how you will get there.

You can also use annual planning to set goals and plans for individual departments or teams within an organization. Create marketing plans, human resource plans, and more to keep each segment of your business on track, reset your goals, and get your teams aligned towards common goals and initiatives. Since trends, consumer habits, and other factors change frequently, it’s good to create a fresh one-year plan each year.

Annual plans complement strategic planning while providing more short-term (one year) goals that are often tied to financial goals as well as the annual budget. Strategic plans often have more overarching goals that work to advance the company’s mission over three years or longer. Your annual plan will likely include goals that play into these longer-term goals in your company’s strategic plan.

Evaluating existing and prior year goals

Start your process by evaluating your current starting point. Take time to look back at last year’s annual plan and evaluate whether you achieved your set goals or fell short in certain areas. Attempt to determine why you fell short on specific goals and what steps you could take to prevent a repeat of that issue. This will help you set realistic goals for the new year.

This is also a great time to review your company’s:

Mission statement. This is a statement that describes the purpose of your organization. What does your business do and what does it hope to accomplish?

Core values. These are the principles, beliefs, and values that your organization’s culture is built on. These values shape how you do business, and as such, should shape your annual plan.

Strategic plan. Your strategic plan should detail your business plan and long-term goals while taking market conditions into consideration. Your annual plan should complement your overall strategic plan.

Financial reports. Review the prior year’s budget reconciliation, cash flow statements, and year-end reporting. If you have access to budgets or financial forecasts for the upcoming year, review them now. If not, they’ll need to be created later in the annual planning process.

Keep all of these documents handy, as you may need to reference them as you move through the annual planning process.

Create an updated SWOT analysis

It’s also time to update or create a SWOT Analysis chart for your company. A SWOT analysis is typically depicted as a four-quadrant square with the following quadrants:

Strengths. List out the things that your company already does well and your internal strengths. Perhaps you have a large Instagram following with a strong network of influencers promoting your product. Maybe you have unique branding, patents, or technology that set you apart from competitors. This section is your highlight reel from prior years and can also include strengths like new products or developments being released in the new year.

Weaknesses. Now it’s time to consider what can be improved. List out your company’s internal areas of weakness. A good way to identify weaknesses is to look at customer feedback. Do customers like your product but complain about the processing and delivery times? A weakness can also be staffing-related such as high turnover or taking too long to fill open positions. A common marketing weakness may be lack of media mentions or ranking low in Google search results for your product or business type.

Opportunities. These are external opportunities that you can take advantage of in the coming year. Are there new trends or technologies that could boost the success of your business? Is it time to start marketing your products to Gen Z? Are there changes in government regulations or laws going into effect in 2022 that could have a positive impact on your business?

Threats. Explore potential external threats to your company’s growth and success in the coming year. Maybe the current supply chain problems mean that you will have manufacturing or delivery delays in 2022. There could also be legal changes that negatively impact your business. Threats could also come in the form of major competitors or market saturation. Knowing what may threaten your success will help you build a plan to overcome these challenges, so be thorough with your market analysis.

After creating a company-wide SWOT analysis, consider breaking things down even further and creating a SWOT analysis on specific aspects or segments of your business.

For example, a marketing SWOT chart can help you identify what you need to adjust in your marketing strategy for the new year. Many businesses, especially small businesses, may have strong Facebook and Instagram accounts but weaknesses in the area of SEO. Reaching new audiences and market segments through TikTok may be an opportunity if your business has not jumped onto the platform yet. A new year is a great time to do a SWOT and update your ideal customer or target demographics to evaluate opportunities for expansion.

Goal setting with SMART goals

It’s a good idea to start off the new year by setting goals for your employees, departments, and the company overall. This creates trackable metrics to measure your company’s success at each level throughout the year. The best way to create goals is to use the SMART goal system.

Specific. Aim to make your goals specific and to identify who will be involved in the goal. A general goal would be to increase brand awareness. Specific goals would be growing your LinkedIn following to 10,000, obtaining 10 media mentions, or ranking one the first page of Google results for a specific target keyword. Within each of those specific goals you could identify who is responsible for them; a social media manager, PR or media relations team member, an SEO consultant, or in a small business, it may just be a digital marketing manager. Regardless, it’s helpful to define who is involved and who will oversee progress.

Measurable. Define how you will measure the success of each goal. What metric will you use to track progress towards the goal?

Attainable. Your goals should be realistic. They can be somewhat ambitious, but avoid including stretch goals that are unlikely to be achieved within the year with your anticipated staffing levels, budget, and level of consumer awareness. Of course, start-ups would love to score a major investor or have their company go viral and generate a huge amount of buzz with consumers, but unless you have reason to believe either of those is on the horizon, leave out goals that depend on unrealistic or unpredictable events. Also, leave goals that will take several years for your strategic plan.

Relevant. The goals that you set for this year should be relevant to your company’s vision, mission, and long-term objectives. This is why it’s helpful to start the process by looking at your mission statement, vision, and strategic plan.

Time-bound. All goals should have a clearly defined time frame including a specific deadline date. For annual planning, the timeframe may be one year, or you can break your goals down into monthly or quarterly goals and adjust the deadlines as such.

You’ll likely end up with a decently long list of goals for your company. As mentioned in the Specific criteria, breaking down your goals and defining who is responsible for them is important. Try to create goals that span the major business functions of your company such as product, operations, marketing, HR, and leadership . Set company-wide goals and then break them down by teams and later by individual contributors to ensure that everyone knows what goals they need to accomplish in order to help the business meet its overall yearly goals.

Budgeting and financial considerations

An important aspect of annual planning is financial planning. A good business plan should take financial constraints, budgets, and financial goals into consideration and plan accordingly. If you are a start-up and plan to go through a round of fundraising or have other major changes such as going public with an IPO, include those in your annual planning.

Your annual plan should include financial projections for the year. These projections will help you plan for financing needs, changes in cash flow, and evaluate the best timing for new projects or hiring. You’ll want to create sales forecasts to project your expected income. It’s also wise to forecast your anticipated expenses for things like labor, materials. supplies, and overhead.

You’ll also want to verify that you will be able to allocate the funds needed to accomplish the SMART goals that you created earlier. At this point, you may need to revise some of your goals to ensure that they are achievable within your financial constraints. Those that require a larger budget may need to be scaled down or saved for next year.

Contingency planning

Hopefully everything will go as planned, but it’s always good to have a contingency plan in place in case something goes awry. After all, we’ve all seen how unexpected challenges can derail business operations over the past two years.

Plan for potential emergencies or alternate scenarios. Does your annual business plan rely on covid conditions improving in 2022? Create a contingency plan in case there are more hiccups than expected during reopening or the return to the office.

Consider how your business could best handle supply chain issues, unexpected cash flow problems, and major IT or security concerns. If your headquarters is in an area prone to natural disasters such as wildfires or hurricanes, you should always have a plan in place for the safety of your staff, files, as well as assets that would be difficult to replace.

Putting it all together

There are a number of annual business plan templates available online that you can use to craft your final report. Larger companies often use specialized software for their annual business plan. If you plan to use the goals created during the annual planning process for performance management , a software solution may be best so that department leads and individual employees can track their goals throughout the year.

The report should open with an executive summary, although this is actually the last piece that you’ll typically want to write. The executive summary should act as an introduction to and a summary of the full report. Tailor it to your audience depending on whether the plan will be shared with employees, investors, or others.

A description of the product or services including new products, the team, and the company at present may also be included.

Then comes the meat of the report where you explain the goals you’ve created and your plan for achieving and measuring them. Your full report may be separated into marketing planning, financial planning, HR planning for organizational improvement, and other relevant sub-sections. This is where the zoomed-in SWOT analyses and department-level SMART goals will come in handy.

The report should leave the reader with a clear picture of what you will achieve and how you will do it.

WHAT TO READ NEXT

How to Create an Annual Marketing Plan

Dec 18, '17

Posted in Marketing

Marketing is the fuel that drives the sales engine for every successful company’s growth and profitability.

Your marketing plan and corresponding marketing budget are essential components to achieving your revenue goals. They provide the information you need to allocate the amount to spend on your marketing efforts in order to achieve your revenue goals within a certain timeframe.

Unfortunately, far too many businesses do not take the time to plan out their process and develop a solid marketing budget. As a result, they underspend, spend haphazardly on ad-hoc, reactive efforts, or overspend on activities that do not bring a return on investment (ROI).

Below are the 3 critical steps that you need to take to create an annual marketing plan that gets results for your company:

Step #1: Gather your numbers

The first step in creating your marketing budget is to organize your current finances. More specifically, you need to know what your company makes on a monthly basis, along with any seasonal fluctuations. You’ll also need to know what your operational costs are each month - what does it cost you in time and labor to deliver your products and services?

The other set of numbers that you need (if you have them) are your sales conversion numbers. You can harvest this information from your accounting software, customer relationship management ( CRM ) software, and Google Analytics account.

Information that is helpful includes:

• How many website visitors do we get each month?
• How many leads are we generating each month? Where did they come from?
• How many leads convert to buyers?
• What’s the cost of generating each lead? What is the cost of generating each buyer?
• What is the typical lifetime value of each customer?

In addition, be sure to analyze your sales and revenue trends from last year. Where did most of your business come from - new or existing customers? How long was your typical sales cycle? What were your best lead sources?

Document your lessons learned from the past year and think about improvements you’d like to make this year. Reviewing your past marketing performance plays a crucial part in effectively creating a marketing plan that builds upon your successes.

Step #2: Set your business goals

Before you can plan your marketing activities, it’s important to set your your company’s strategic growth and revenue goals. For example, if you plan to grow your business by 20 percent then you’ll want to do a lot more than just design a new brochure.

Questions that will help you determine your company goals include:

• What are your revenue objectives and profit goals for the year?
• What are your revenue and profit goals for each quarter?
• Are there specific business goals that you want to accomplish in the next year/quarter that will require resources (ex: launch a new service line, hire a new employee, increase the sales of a particular product, etc.)?

Your number one priority is to determine where you would like to see your company a year from now, and then you work backwards into each quarter. From there, plan the the steps and activities you’ll need to each week, each month, and each quarter to help you achieve your overarching business goals.

Step #3: Build your marketing plan

Once you have gathered your numbers and understand your business goals and activities, you are armed with the information you need to develop a marketing plan to achieve them.

Developing a marketing plan will ensure that you are spending your marketing dollars on the right efforts at the right time - you develop marketing activities to support the realization of your business goals.  

Developing a marketing plan will ensure that you are spending your marketing dollars on the right efforts at the right time - you develop marketing activities to support the realization of your business goals.

As you create your marketing plan, specify which marketing activities your company will focus on to achieve the revenue, profit, and business goals you want to accomplish for the year. Be sure to build upon successes you’ve had in the past. For example, if you’ve noticed that you are getting a steady stream of leads from your website, then see if there are opportunities to strengthen its marketing power through a redesign or enhancement.

For example, you might want to plan activities around any or all of the below:

• Social media
• Email newsletters
• Gated Content
• Direct mail such as postcards or letters
• Advertising (print, radio, television)
• Marketing materials (brochures, trade show materials, packaging)

Remember to consider which marketing channels allow you to reach the right audiences. If you are a newer business, perhaps you will need to build brand awareness across multiple platforms. Or, if you’re launching a new product or service to a specific industry, focus on the best channel to reach that audience.

Create a calendar as part of your marketing plan

From there, build a marketing calendar that lists the discrete marketing activities that your company will be undertaking.

Plot your major campaigns first - for example a website redesign or product launch - these require more resources and time to get things done than smaller ongoing efforts. Then plug in your smaller campaigns and ongoing marketing activities like blog posts and e-newsletters.

Even if you do not plan to allocate budget to a category - such as social media - make sure you are still including it in your marketing plan so you can define the specific activities and allocate staff time to the endeavor.

Keep in mind: marketing activities are not constant throughout the year. Review the busy seasons in your business and plan marketing activities accordingly. In Part 2 of this series , we will discuss how to plan your marketing budget and set up the metrics to measure your results.

If you need help with your marketing planning, Harvest Media can help! Get in touch with us at 847-352-4345.

This is the second of a two part series. Make sure you also read Part 2: How to create a marketing budget .

Previous Post

How Do You Know When It's Time for a Rebrand?

Rebranding is an exciting process, and - when done correctly - it can provide game-changing results for your company. But, developing a new brand design takes an extraordinary amount of time and energy. … read more

How to Prepare an Annual Marketing Budget

Creating an annual marketing budget to accompany your plan is the solution to haphazard and inconsistent spending. … read more

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Annual Business Planning Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

What is an Annual Business Plan?

An annual business plan is a document that sets out the goals and objectives for a company over the course of a year. It provides a roadmap for how the business will operate and achieve its desired results. The best business plan template will help guide you in creating a comprehensive annual plan.

Steps to Create an Annual Plan

There are seven steps to creating an annual business plan:

• Define the company’s overall vision and strategy.
• Set specific, measurable goals and objectives for the year.
• Identify the resources needed to achieve these goals.
• Create a timeline for each goal and objective.
• Assign responsibility for each goal and objective to specific individuals or teams.
• Review and revise the plan on a regular basis.
• Each of these steps is important in creating a well-formulated annual plan. Let’s take a closer look at each one.

Defining the Company’s Overall Vision and Strategy

The first step in creating an annual plan is defining the company’s overall vision and strategy. This involves deciding where the company wants to be in the future and outlining the steps needed to get there. It’s important to be realistic in setting these goals and to make sure they are aligned with the company’s overall strategic vision.

Setting Specific, Measurable Goals and Objectives

Once the company’s overarching vision has been defined, it’s time to set specific, measurable goals and objectives for the year. These should be attainable but challenging and should align with the company’s overall strategy. Each goal should have a target date for completion, as well as a specific metric that will be used to measure progress.

Identifying Resources Needed To Achieve Goals

Next, it’s important to identify the resources needed to achieve these goals. This includes everything from manpower and funding, to office space and equipment. It’s also important to assign responsibility for each goal/objective to specific individuals or teams. This helps ensure that everyone is aware of their role in achieving the desired results.

Creating a Timeline

Once goals have been defined and resources have been identified, it’s time to create a timeline for each one. This will help keep everyone on track throughout the year and ensure that tasks are completed in a timely manner. A Gantt chart can be helpful in organizing this information visually.

Assigning Responsibility

Finally, it’s important to assign responsibility for each goal/objective to specific individuals or teams. This helps ensure that everyone is aware of their role in achieving the desired results. By assigning clear responsibilities, tasks can be delegated efficiently and everyone will know who is responsible for what outcomes.

Reviewing and Revising Plan Regularly

It’s important to review and revise your annual plan on a regular basis. This ensures that the goals are still relevant and achievable and that the resources required are still available. It also allows for any necessary adjustments to be made if something isn’t working as planned. A good rule of thumb is to review the plan quarterly or more often if needed.

Parts of the Annual Strategic Plan Template

There are four key parts to the annual plan template:

1. Vision and Strategy

The first step is to define the company’s overall vision and strategy. This will provide a framework for all of the other steps in the process.

2. Goals and Objectives

The next step is to set specific, measurable goals and objectives for the year. These should be aligned with the company’s vision and strategy.

3. Resources

The third step is to identify the resources needed to achieve the goals and objectives. This includes things like budget, staff, and materials.

4. Timeline

The fourth step is to create a timeline for each goal and objective. This will help ensure that everything is completed on time and within budget.

The Importance of a Well-Formulated Annual Strategic Plan

The importance of a well-formulated annual plan cannot be overstated. It provides a clear roadmap for the company’s operations and sets forth a clear vision for its desired results. Additionally, it helps to ensure that all employees are aware of the company’s goals and objectives and are working towards the same end.

The Difference between an Annual Plan and A Company’s Broader Strategic Vision

The difference between an annual business plan and a company’s strategic vision is that the former is more focused on the specific goals and objectives to be achieved over the course of a year, while the latter is more concerned with the company’s long-term direction. An annual business plan lays out a roadmap for the company’s operations over the course of a year and sets specific targets to be met. A company’s strategic plan, on the other hand, is more concerned with the overall direction of the business and its long-term goals.

Ultimately the difference between an annual plan and a company’s broader strategic vision is that the former is more focused on the specific goals and objectives to be achieved over the course of a year, while the latter is more concerned with the company’s long-term direction.

Best Practices for Annual Planning

There are a few key best practices that businesses should keep in mind when planning their annual operations.  

First and foremost, it is important to be realistic about what can be accomplished in a year. Businesses should establish achievable goals and objectives, and then create a plan of action to achieve them. This includes setting timelines and specific tasks that need to be completed in order to reach the goal. 

Another key element of effective annual planning is creating a budget and sticking to it. Budgets help businesses stay accountable and track progress toward their goals. 

In addition, effective annual planning should always include regular review and course correction as needed. Businesses should routinely assess their progress, make necessary adjustments, and ensure they are still on track to meet their goals.

When it comes to business annual planning, there are a few best practices that can help your organization make the most of the process. Here are a few tips to get you started:

•  Set realistic goals. It’s important to set realistic goals for your annual planning process – this way, you’re more likely to achieve them. Be honest with yourself about what’s achievable and what’s not, and make sure your team is on the same page.
• Make a roadmap. Once you’ve set your goals, create a roadmap for how you’ll achieve them. This will help keep everyone on track and ensure that you’re making progress toward your targets.
• Use data to inform your decisions. When making decisions about your annual planning, use data to inform your decisions. This will help you make informed choices based on evidence rather than intuition alone.
• Communicate regularly. Make sure to communicate regularly with your team throughout the annual planning process – this will help keep everyone updated on what’s happening and ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal.
• Celebrate successes along the way. Celebrate successes along the way – this will keep everyone motivated and help ensure that the process is fun as well as productive.

Annual Contingency Plan Example

Sometimes it’s helpful to have a contingency plan or clause in case things don’t go as expected. Below is a sample contingency plan.

“In the event that we are unable to achieve our sales goals for the year, we will implement a number of contingency measures. These measures may include reducing our advertising budget, downsizing our workforce, and suspending operations at certain locations. We will only implement these measures if absolutely necessary and we are confident that they will help us to get back on track.”

Strategic Business Plan Example

Below is an example of a strategic business plan.

“Our long-term goal is to become the leading provider of XYZ products and services in our industry. To achieve this, we will need to increase our market share, expand our operations into new markets, and continue to innovate our product offerings. We are confident that we can achieve these goals and become the industry leader.”

Annual Business Plan Template

Executive summary.

The executive summary is a brief overview of the company’s annual plans while taking into account the company’s broader vision. It should include a description of the company, its products, and services, its marketing and sales strategy, its operations plan, and its financial plan.

Company Overview

The company overview section of the annual planning document should provide a brief history of the company, its mission and vision, and its current status.

Products and Services

This section of the annual plans should describe the company’s products and services in detail. It should also include information on the company’s competitive advantages and any new products or services that will be launched in the coming year.

Marketing Plan

The marketing plan section of the company’s strategy should outline the marketing and sales strategy for the entire organization for the coming year. It should include information on the company’s target market, its branding and positioning strategy, its advertising and promotion budget, and its sales goals.

Operations Plan

The operations plan section of the annual business plan should describe the company’s methods for manufacturing, distribution, and other aspects of its operations. It should also include information on the company’s capacity, its supply chain, and its quality control procedures.

Financial Plan

The financial plan section of the annual business plan should include a summary of the company’s financials, the budgetary approval process, contingency plans, as well as the broader visions and plans for funding and investment.

With regards to financials, you want to include past and projected Income Statements, Balance Sheets, and Cash Flow Statements. Also, if you are seeking external financing, document the amount of funding you need and the key expected uses of these funds.

Annual Goals

When creating your business plan, it’s important to set annual goals and objectives. This will help you track your progress and ensure that you’re on track to reaching your long-term goals. Some things you may want to consider when setting your annual goals include:

• Increasing revenue
• Expanding your customer base
• Improving product or service quality
• Reducing costs
• Developing new products or services
• Enhancing marketing efforts
• Expanding into new markets

One of the most important aspects of any business plan is setting annual goals. These goals should be attainable, yet ambitious, and should help to guide your business in the right direction. Some things you may want to consider when setting your annual goals include increasing sales, expanding your customer base, improving productivity or efficiency, reducing costs, or developing new products or services. Whatever your goals may be, make sure to document them and track your progress throughout the year. This will help you ensure that you are on track to meeting your targets and achieving success for your business.

The appendix of the annual business plan template should include any supporting documentation that is relevant to the plan, such as market research reports, financial projections, and product specifications.

Every company should have an annual business plan. This document helps you track your progress, set goals, plan forward, and make necessary adjustments throughout the year related to key results. Without a business plan, it is difficult to make informed decisions about where to allocate your resources or measure your success. If you need help getting started, we have a great business planning template that can get you on the right track. By following our simple tips and using our template, you can create a comprehensive business plan that will help ensure your success in the coming year. 

How to Finish Your Business Plan Template in 1 Day!

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your business plan template?

With Growthink’s Ultimate Business Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!

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• Content Marketing Course
• Case Studies

Start with Market Research

Assess your market situation, gather input from key stakeholders, set your marketing goals, spy on the competition, take stock of last year’s results and current assets, know where you’ve failed, establish your marketing kpis, build your strategies, measure everything and adjust course as needed, stick to the plan, sort of, keep communicating, go forth and market, how to create the perfect marketing plan.

• Keep your own customer surveys, interviews, and customer feedback at the heart of your research but outsourcing some of the work to a market research firm as well can help you get the depth your organization needs.
• Today, social media and other online communities also are great source of data. You’ll find a lot of qualitative information on these channels by paying attention to the conversations circulating.
• And then, of course, there are the new, AI-driven analysis tools, such as the  algorithms made by Ayzenberg Group . We’ll likely see more artificial intelligence in the market research solutions sector so this is an area to keep an eye on.
• Marketing goals you’re trying to reach
• Marketing challenges you’re trying to overcome
• Business goals

Model the Appropriate Marketing Mix

• Increase engagement on social media
• Boost website traffic
• Offer more content
• Publish one educational video a month on LinkedIn
• Conduct extensive A/B testing to improve landing pages and email CTAs
• Create a new eBook every quarter for download in exchange for newsletter sign up
• Run one Facebook contest every quarter
• Post one guest blog a month to increase the number of backlinks to company website
• Create an audience-first marketing mentality.
• Define a content strategy based on the needs of your buyers in each phase of their buying cycle.
• Deliver that content to the channels where your buyers spend their time.

Take the “Always On” Approach

• Produce a continuous bounty of new buyers to engage
• Focus your efforts on helping buyers early in the process and gaining their trust
• Personalize your marketing to produce higher conversions
• Create more leads for sales, for less money per lead, continuously over the course of the year

2 thoughts on “ How to Create the Perfect Marketing Plan ”

Michael–I totally agree with you. Every business regardless of size or focus needs a documented marketing plan. I’d go a step further to point out that it must incorporate all forms of marketing (digital, content, social media and sales support) as well as integrate with other marketing-related activities across your firm. This means sales, customer service, product and human resources. Happy marketing, Heidi Cohen – Actionable Marketing Guide

Thanks Heidi, I completely agree. I am speaking in an hour on this exact topic: everyone is in marketing!

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About the Author - Michael Brenner

Michael Brenner is an international keynote speaker, author of " Mean People Suck " and " The Content Formula ", and Founder of Marketing Insider Group . Recognized as a Top Content Marketing expert and Digital Marketing Leader, Michael leverages his experience from roles in sales and marketing for global brands like SAP and Nielsen, as well as his leadership in leading teams and driving growth for thriving startups. Today, Michael delivers empowering keynotes on marketing and leadership, and facilitates actionable workshops on content marketing strategy. Connect with Michael today.

• Marketing and Sales Strategy
• 11 July, 2022

10 Steps to Create a Complete Sales and Marketing Business Plan [Templates included]

Jump to the end of the post to get access to our free sales and marketing business plan templates.

Turning an idea into a functional business requires laser-sharp focus. You must take care of development, marketing, sales, customer success, and whatnot. 

While most entrepreneurs start with some form of a plan, they often forget about it soon after. 

Blame it on changing dynamics, trial and error to find a product-market fit, or blatant ignorance. But overlooking the planning process is a sure shot reason for failure — as the common saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail.

An essential part of this document is the sales and marketing segment. The sales and marketing plan outlines everything you need to do to promote your products and generate revenue for your business. 

Why do you need a sales and marketing plan? 

Having a revolutionary product that solves a genuine problem is great. But it won’t mean anything if people don’t know about you. 

A sales and marketing plan helps you get discovered, structure your activities, and move forward with your growth goals. 

It’s more or less like a roadmap about what you should do to make things work in your favor. 

Your sales and marketing plan will help you: 

• Identify the bridge between where you are today and where you want to reach your business goals. 
• Get much-needed clarity and avoid conflicts and confusion in case of any disruptions.
• Gain and document insights about your target audience, industry, trends, costs, etc. 
• Justify your business model in front of investors and lenders in case you need to raise funds.
• Stay focused on a north star metric, improvise growth tactics and achieve harmony between various growth activities. 
• Promote sales and marketing alignment.

Your sales and marketing plan would also help you avoid distractions and save time and money lost. 

And you know how easy it is to lose direction and get distracted when starting or running a startup. Documenting everything as a plan will help avoid confusion and add clarity to your everyday affairs and long-term mission. 

However, different companies need different plans based on the stage of operations and their unique growth goals. 

A clear marketing and sales plan promotes alignment between marketing and sales departments at every stage . This reduces resource waste and creates fewer “blame-game ” occasions in your meetups. 

What to include in the marketing & sales plan? 

Planning is a subjective activity. 

You’d receive several different answers if you read, talk to, and consult multiple experts on what to include in your marketing and sales plan. 

So, how should you decide which elements to include in your marketing/sales plan? 

Let’s take a step back and understand the “why” of planning. 

You need a plan so you don’t get confused and can keep walking towards your goal.

Your plan should: 

• Serve as a roadmap for everything related to sales and marketing for the first few months if you’re just starting. 
• Outline and articulate the core strategies you’ll experiment with, the desired outcome, and the KPIs to measure performance. 
• Set realistic KPIs, outcomes, and objectives based on market understanding, competition, funding requirements, and your target audience’s pain points. 

Marketing plan for your startup: The what and why

In an ideal world, every penny you spend in marketing should enhance your visibility, take you closer to your audience,  and increase your conversion rates. 

But in reality, it takes a lot of effort, time, and investment to make it happen. 

A marketing plan helps you navigate through the tricky maze called marketing without getting lost in the process. 

Basically, you build a marketing plan to gain enlightenment about how you’ll promote and stay relevant to your audience. 

You do it beforehand so that when things get tricky, you have a directional beacon to guide you.  

Creating any plan should start with an understanding of the purpose. The same applies to marketing, too. Try to find the reason behind marketing your product – why are you working towards your goal. 

Knowing your why would help you gain clarity – an essential element for the success of any activity on the planet. Before you begin, you should try to find answers to the following questions: 

• Why are you making the marketing plan?
• What do you want to accomplish with the marketing?
• What will be the value proposition? 
• What are the goals that we want to achieve?

These answers will allow you to think better and prepare for strategizing your plan with a better perspective. 

Also, while at it, remember that your marketing plan is not a rigid document etched in stone. Instead, it’s a result of an iterative process that depends on five fundamental aspects: 

1. Product: What are you marketing? 

The product section should explain what you are selling exactly. 

• What do you sell? 
• How is your offering different from your competitors?
• What are the benefits your potential customers would derive from your offerings? 
• What is your core USP? 

Answering these questions would help you craft a great positioning statement and marketing message for your marketing campaigns. 

2. Place: Where are you available? 

This section should outline where you will sell or market your products. How will you get customers to reach out to buy your product or service? 

Though this will depend on the nature of business — online or offline, manufacturing or services, answers to the following questions would help you gain clarity: 

• Where will you be available for your customers? 
• Which distribution channels would you use to be more accessible to customers? 
• What percentage of sales/conversions do you expect from different distribution/marketing channels? 

3. Price: How much will you charge? 

This is an essential part of your planning process. Your pricing decisions would decide how you will generate revenue for your startup . 

Your pricing decision should be based on market analysis, competition, value offering, buying behavior, etc. 

• What will be the pricing model you’ll adopt to generate revenue? 
• What is the most favorable price point that your customers are ready to pay for your offering? 
• Will you make any profit/loss at this price point? 
• How soon can you break even based on your pricing strategy? 

4. Promotion: How will you promote your offering? 

You can have the best product, but no one would care if you’re not promoting it. 

Moreover, one of the primary reasons to create a marketing plan is to help you promote your offering. 

• Who is your target audience? 
• How will your reach your target audience? 
• What strategies will you adopt to convert your audience into customers? 
• Which channels of promotions will you use to promote your offerings? 
• How much will you spend on promotions and marketing? 
• What will be your team structure for the next quarter, year, and long term?
• How will you track the marketing effectiveness? 

5. People: Who will do the marketing?  

While most marketing plans you see out there would cover the traditional 4Ps of marketing, often the fifth P, people, is ignored. 

And you know there’s no growth or promotion without your team – your people. 

This aspect should help you understand your current capabilities and the resources needed in your team. Think about how you will find them, their responsibilities, and where they stand in the big picture. 

• Who will do the marketing for you? 
• What do you look for in a human resource?
• At what point do you start expanding the team? 
• Who are you going to hire first?
• How do you plan to hire for marketing? 
• What will be the core responsibilities and KPIs for your team? 
• How will you set KPIs/OKRs and analyze your team’s performance? 

Sales plan for your startup: The what and the why

Your sales plan would help you generate revenues from your marketing efforts by completing the journey from generating leads to turning them into customers. 

A sales plan defines your sales goals, the strategies you’d bet on, your desired results, your challenges, the solutions you have for them, and the structure (people, budget, process, and tools) you need.

Your sales plan would cover everything you need to register sales and generate revenue for your business. 

A sales plan is created to: 

• Provide a strategic direction to your sales team
• Define the core objectives and goals in terms of sales 
• Outline roles and responsibilities
• Analyze and measure your wins in terms of sales. 

These reasons help you succeed more than experimental businesses that beat around the bush while trying to make things work in a world where everyone’s selling something. To ensure your sales plan is effective, it should include: 

1. Sales goals — What do you want to achieve? 

Like any other activity in the world, your sales planning process should also revolve around the end goals for sales

Saying that you want more customers is a generic goal that doesn’t have any tangible metrics attached. Moreover, saying that you wish for more sales is too broad a goal that would involve outlining several action steps. 

So, it’s always better to have a SMART goal and break it down into tangible, measurable, and KPI-driven objectives. You can say that you want to: 

• Nurture 10% more MQLs into SQLs, and ultimately, customers.
• Reduce your churn rates by 5% before the end of Q1.
• Expand your sales team with 3 people to nurture and convert leads faster — reduce time to conversion by 5 days.
• Increase the customer lifetime value through upsells or cross-sells by $200.
• Expand your sales activities into new territories or regions.
• Optimize your pricing strategy to improve your conversion rates by 8% for new accounts.

2. Tactics — The process and activities

This segment will include the specific tactics, processes, and activities you’ll use to generate revenue for your business . 

A solid understanding of your target audience, goals, and capabilities would help you discover exciting and profitable tactics for your industry. 

Try to pick and choose the tactics in line with your ideal customer profile. You can conduct a survey and get insights from your marketing team to align your sales efforts accordingly. 

An aligned sales and marketing team will help you accelerate sales enablement and strike gold with more leads, higher conversions, and better results. 

Interested in exploring new sales tactics? Read this blog on popular sales strategies and techniques for your business. 

3. Timelines — The time you’ll need to make things happen

A plan without a timeline is just a wish. You must link your goals, tactics, and sales strategies with realistic deadlines. This will ensure that everyone’s motivated to work towards your goals. 

Keep all the stakeholders in the loop by developing a realistic growth goal and attaching a practical timeline to it. 

While you’re at it, don’t forget to assign one person who’ll be responsible for ensuring compliance. 

This tactic is known differently in business circles. 

Some call it a key Point of Contact (POC) for an activity; others call this person a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI). 

Another popular approach includes assigning OKR (Objective and Key Results) to an individual in a team who owns up the responsibility of making this happen. 

Whatever you may do, make sure you are realistic, practical, and sensible in creating achievable deadlines for your sales teams. 

Failure to do so would lead to dissatisfaction among sales team members, ultimately harming your bottom line. 

4. KPIs — the metrics you’ll track to determine success 

KPIs will help you understand if your sales tactics align with your revenue generation goals. These metrics help enhance sales teams’ performance, optimize the sales funnels, and improve conversion rate. 

If you want a solid sales plan, you need to tie everyone (and everything) to a tangible sales metric. 

You also need to ensure proper sales and marketing alignment so that all your marketing spends get attributed to some kind of improvement in KPIs. 

Here are some questions and corresponding KPIs you can think of adding to your sales plan: 

If you track these KPIs well, you’ll understand the challenges better, predict future problems, and get better at generating revenues from your sales activities. 

Moreover, the answers you gather and the KPIs would help you keep an eye on the overall efficiency of the sales process and build a strong sales team. 

Apart from these standard inclusions to your sales plan, you can also add the following information: 

• Team structure: How big your sales team should be, and what will be the responsibility (job role and KPIs) of each member of the team? 
• Resources/tools required : What tools and resources do you need to execute the sales tactics and strategies you’ve planned? 
• Current market trends: How is the present market regarding customer interest in your product, competition landscape, and overall sentiment in your industry? 

Rethinking the traditional plan for digital businesses, service companies, and SaaS startups 

The traditional ways of creating a sales and marketing plan are geared more toward the product economy. 

Today, most businesses don’t even have a physical “product”.

Distribution and conversion cycles are not so simple, too.

The sales and marketing ecosystem has transitioned from a single-sales mindset to a culture of lead nurturing , upsells/cross-sells, and experiences to enhance the customer’s lifetime value. 

Even users don’t look at companies, products, and solutions like they used to anymore. 

Don’t you think the old ways should be reimagined? 

In his book, Subscribed, Tien Tzuo mentions how the world economy is transitioning to a digital era powered by subscription-based startups and digital businesses.

Naturally, with changing consumer mindset, the traditional business planning models (including sales and marketing plans) should change, too. 

There has been a hot debate about reimagining marketing and sales operations for the future — digital businesses, SaaS products, and the subscription economy. 

PADRE is a promising framework with all the elements of a traditional business plan, reimagined for the modern digital economy. 

The PADRE framework keeps the customer at the heart of everything and divides all activities (including sales and marketing) into eight subsets: 

• Position: How will you create awareness, turn it into demand for your product and build a pipeline of leads? 
• Acquire: What is your ICPs buyer’s journey? How will you address their pain points and turn them into customers? 
• Deploy : How will you onboard , service, and delight your customers as efficiently as possible so they can use your product, service, or SaaS quickly?   
• Run:  How will you ensure that your customers get what they expect (and deserve) from your product or service? 
• Expand: How will you grow your company through retention, growth, and customer advocacy? 
• Product: How will you evolve your product, service, or offering and manage everything? 
• People:   How will you recruit, onboard, train, and retain the best talent to serve your customers? 
• Money: Where and how will you fund and fulfill your need for running and growing your business most efficiently? 

If you look at the PADRE model carefully, it has almost all the elements discussed above for sales and marketing plans, just in a different way. This differentiation makes more sense for a dynamic digital business than the traditional sales and marketing business plan. 

You can take ideas from the PADRE model to create your version of a dynamic business plan based on your unique business idea. 

10 steps to create a solid sales and marketing plan

Regardless of your approach to creating a business plan, you will have to gather data, make some important decisions, and collate everything together. 

Remember, your sales and marketing plan is a living document that should be revisited repeatedly for optimization. 

Here are the steps you can take to create an actionable plan based on the insights shared above: 

Step 1: Gather data based on company insights and external trends

“Always measure the depth of the pool you’re diving in!” 

Before you start planning your sales and marketing observing and documenting macro-level industry trends is a must. It will give you an understanding and insight into what to expect in the future. 

You can use industry insight to strengthen your assumptions, understand the market, add clarity to your sales and marketing mix, and refine your plan. 

Always look for industry insights around sales and marketing trends — what worked in the past, how things are changing, and what future trends will drive growth. While industry trends are not a full-proof solution, it gives you a direction to provide a concrete shape to your plans. 

Use industry trends to add “meat” to your hypothesis, and see if you can get data about: 

• Consumer behavior and psychology that drives sales. Use the Facebook Ads manager audience tool to find your audience’s topics of interest and behavior trends.
• Psychographic analysis of your target audience.
• Marketing effectiveness of different channels. You can use platforms like Similarweb to peak into the traffic sources of your competitors and get an estimated idea of the volume.
• Sales trends of lateral and complimenting businesses. 
• Competitor analysis, including their past financial performance and effectiveness in generating revenue. 

Step 2: Create your ideal customer profile (ICP) 

As a business owner, you must know everything about your target audience. 

Without a deep understanding of your ICP, you could end up like a door-to-door salesman trying to sell but end up annoying everyone. 

This information helps you take the necessary steps to add context and relevance to your marketing and sales plan. 

You should break up your ideal customer persona (ICP) into several sections covering all aspects of your persona’s — the demographic profile, what they think, believe, and trust in, their needs, motivations, drives, and psychographic profile. 

Sample questions for building an Ideal Customer Profile

Knowing your audience allows you to talk the way they want to be talked to. Also, you get to understand what makes them buy, their problems and pain points, and where they spend most of their time. All this is crucial for creating an effective marketing strategy. 

You can even use this knowledge to segment your audience personas and personalize your marketing campaigns — a powerful tactic to market your brand in 2022. 

Step 3: Assess your current situation 

Once you’ve gathered data and foresight, start the self-introspection process. 

Ask yourself where you stand in your startup journey. 

✓ How is your business performing right now? 

✓ Are you performing according to your revenue estimates and KPIs? 

✓ Do your business and revenue generation efforts align with market and industry trends? Do they need to align?

✓ Are you marketing and selling where your customers are looking for options? 

✓ What are your strengths and weaknesses? 

✓ What challenges are you facing in getting your business to the next level? 

✓ Is there any better way of doing things than you do now? 

All these questions will give you ideas to start the actual planning process. Moreover, you’d understand if whatever you did was even worth it. 

Step 4: Define metric-driven objectives and goals

Have you ever traveled without a destination? 

Well, maybe you have. But that’s not how you run a business. You need to have an exact destination in mind — where you’re headed to. 

That’s why having an objective and goal is essential for making a sales and marketing plan. Tangible and realistic goal-setting should be the #1 priority of anyone trying to succeed as an entrepreneur. 

Your goals will will allow you to track if you’re making a real impact on your business. Plus, having a metric-driven goal gives you an understanding of what you need to do for success. 

Your goals and objectives should be tied to your business vision and mission.

Often, we see there’s a misalignment between sales and marketing objectives. That leads to confusion and, thus, poor performance. Hence setting a SMART goal is critical for ensuring clarity.

SMART objectives for your sales and marketing plans should be: 

• Specific: The goal is clearly defined, and everyone within your team understands the goal and its importance. 
• Measurable: The goal/objective should be tied to key performance indicators (KPIs) and visibly measurable.
•  Achievable: Being realistic is an important factor in setting an attainable goal. Look at your team’s ability, budget, and current situation to ensure the goal is within your limits. Setting the bar too high will only lead to disappointment and wasted time and effort. 
• Relevant: Your objectives should be aligned with your business vision and mission. If your marketing and sales aren’t aligned to your bigger picture, it will lead to losses (and potential conflicts). 
• Time-bound: Any objective you define must have a clear timeline, which means there should be a start and end date. Without that, your goal is just a wish. 

Step 5: Determine metrics for success (KPIs) 

You know you need to measure your goals and objectives in real-time. 

That would ensure everything’s on track and help you red flag any deviations from your desired path. 

But setting a measurable KPI for any business is a tricky business in itself. Especially when there’s a lot to plan in sales and marketing, and every business is different. 

KPI or key performance indicators should be planned based on industry best practices, prevailing marketing trends, and taking stakeholders in confidence. 

You can align standard industry KPIs with your business or marketing/sales goals to create your version of KPIs that will objectify your success figures. 

Standard Goals and KPIs you should track

Always ensure that each KPI you track links to the bigger picture — where and how it contributes to your business’s mission and mission. This will add relevance to your sales and marketing plans giving you more accurate insights for the future periods.

Step 6: Build a forecasting model

Forecasting is an activity that predicts what your sales and marketing efforts will lead to on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. 

Creating a sales or marketing forecast involves taking the opinions of industry leaders, financial consultants, CPAs, marketers, sales managers, and your team members. It also will involve studying and analyzing the insights you gathered in step one.

A forecast will help you make better hiring decisions, budget for your expansion in a better way, and linearly predict your revenues. You can also add dynamic variables to the forecasts to analyze how your KPIs would perform under real-life situations. 

Creating a forecasting and budgeting model for your sales and marketing team is highly essential to keep things in check. However, it would be best if you didn’t fall into the lure of creating forecasts for more extended periods as things are changing quite rapidly, especially after COVID-19. 

Better to create a forecast for a quarter, review it based on actual expenses and performance, and keep iterating. You can also take advantage of popular forecasting tools for more accurate models. 

Step 7: Identify gaps within your assumptions 

By this step, you’d have a clear idea about your capabilities, the goals you want to achieve, the industry trends and the forecasts for the future.

This will give you an opportunity to get a bird’s eye view of your sales and marketing activities in terms of your revenue growth. 

You can use this information to plug in gaps because of your assumptions and biases, analyze what’s required and the challenges you’d face to make things happen. 

Identifying gaps between your existing situation and your goals based on forecasts would help you make informed decisions. 

You can choose to hire more people in sales and marketing, increase your budget, try new marketing tactics, or even start an entirely different lead generation and nurturing channel to achieve your goals. 

Step 8: Create a team structure and involve stakeholders. 

The most important part of the planning process is to understand your capabilities. If you’ve assessed your current scenario correctly, you’ll have a clear picture of who’s responsible for growth, marketing, sales, etc. 

And if you’re just starting, this is a great time to start planning a structure for your marketing and sales team, starting with: 

• How many people will be needed for each team? 
• Who will be responsible for specific KPIs?
• What will be the responsibilities of each member of the team? 
• How will teams communicate with each other and ensure alignment between efforts? 
• How will the performance be measured? 
• What are the challenges marketing and sales teams face in your company (or industry)? 
• How will expansion needs be identified?  

Remember, if you’re just starting to build a team and have existing team members, take them in confidence and involve every stakeholder before creating a structure.

The more aligned and closely knit your sales and marketing, the faster you achieve your growth goals. 

• Build a Strong B2B Marketing Organization Structure for Modern Teams
• Sales Operations Responsibilities: Roles, duties, and obstacles
• Revenue Operations Roles: Who do you need to build a RevOp team?

Step 9: Outline action items 

By this step, you’re almost done with the planning. You just need to answer two more questions:

• What do you need to do to achieve your goals? 
• How will you do what you need to do? 

This means outlining action steps, developing marketing and sales tactics, and finalizing the cogs required to run your marketing/sales engine. 

You can start by putting together a rough draft of all the insights you’ve gathered, the available resources, the budget, best industry practices, trends, and growth projections. This will give you foresight into what can work in your favour. 

Build a list of action steps that you need to take to move in the direction of your goals. 

Step 10: Identify and implement tools and systems

Okay! This is the last step of the planning process. After this, you will be left with the exact steps you need to take daily to achieve your KPIs. 

But don’t take this step lightly. Think of this as the building blocks of a bridge that would take you from “here” to “there”. 

You’ll need to make a list of tools, systems, and solutions you’d need to make things happen. 

For example, if you’ve concluded that you need to set up a lead nurture campaign , you need a tool or platform that makes that happen. 

You’ll need to evaluate the available options and pick a tool that aligns with your goals and budget. 

While picking up any tool, make sure that it should: 

• Save time, money, or effort for your marketing and sales team members.
• Have prominent success stories and case studies that closely relate to your goals, tactics, and life stage.
• Is reliable and doesn’t use any under-the-hood tactics to make things happen. 
• Has an active developer and customer success team.
• Is supported by a thriving public community of happy users. 

Make sure that whatever tech stack you’re finalizing has a solid mechanism to track success and your KPIs. 

This will help you ascertain success quicker. Also, communicate with all the stakeholders about the tools and success metrics. 

Ready-to-use sales and marketing plan templates

To make things easy for you, we have prepared comprehensive templates for both your sales and marketing plans. To download the template click on the links below and duplicate the document. Then, fill in the blanks.

Download the Marketing Plan Template

Download the Sales Plan Template

Your sales and marketing plan is a living document. Keep revisiting! 

If you’ve come this far with your planning, you should have a functional plan for supercharging your marketing and sales operations in the coming weeks and months.. 

But remember, sales and marketing planning isn’t a one-time activity. Keep optimizing your plans with fresh insights to stay on track with changing dynamics. And don’t forget to track the right metrics and KPIs.

A marketing automation platform like Encharge can help you to execute your marketing and sales plans. Don’t believe us. Check the success stories to see how others businesses are amping up their marketing and sales game now.

Meet your new marketing automation platform

“encharge helped us visually redesign our onboarding flow resulting in a 10% increase in our trial activation rate .", 8 ways to integrate data visualization in content marketing.

Content marketing is a powerful tool for growing brand awareness, but standing out in an ocean of online content can

Annual Marketing Plan

When running a business, developing a marketing plan should be one of your top priorities. Without a marketing plan , your company may end up investing a significant amount of time and money on a series of failed advertising efforts. Marketing plays a huge role in shaping a consumer’s perspective toward a brand. This includes the products and services offered, along with its overall identity.

• 9+ Essential Elements of Market Planning Checklists
• What Is Market Analysis – Demand and Supply?

Annual Marketing Plan Template

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But creating an annual marketing plan for your company isn’t as easy as it seems. It involves a thorough process of market research and general analysis in order to meet the needs of your target consumers. As a marketer, it is your responsibility to ensure that the company sees a return on investment by the end of a specified period.

Annual Business Marketing Plan Example

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Annual Content Marketing Plan Example

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Annual Marketing Budget Plan Example

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Famous Companies with Successful Marketing Stories

Marketing is a competitive sport, where the competitors are also the spectators. You can learn from the mistakes and successes of other brands by observing how they perform in the marketplace, and then turning them into campaigns of your own.

With the easy access of technology and other forms of digital marketing , companies have learned to move boundaries with their campaigns by using the Internet and social media as platforms for brand promotion. Thanks to these advanced means of communication, global reach is no longer exclusive for deep-pocketed brands. Leaving a lasting impression to the local and global market is one of the primary marketing goals for any aspiring business.

So if you’re looking for inspiration on how to design an effective marketing plan, check out these inspiring marketing stories of the following companies:

In early 2018, retailer brand CVS announced they’re putting a ban on the use of Photoshop or any image enhancement software in the marketing of its beauty products. The stand against image alterations to retouch or enhance the beauty of models has been a common issue in the world of marketing for many years. You may also see strategic marketing plan examples .

From blemish-free faces to body size reduction, CVS vowed to stamp or label other brands who continue to refine the image of their models using photo enhancing applications. Such strategy was implemented to promote positive self-esteem and healthy beauty standards among men and women in society. You may also like restaurant marketing plan examples .

Along with the company’s ban on tobacco products, people have since praised CVS for taking a stand on social issues affecting our world.

This triumphant effort exhibited by CVS depicts how a powerful platform that people can rally behind can make a huge difference among consumers.

After sorting through 140,000 applications to find the new Gerber spokesbaby, the company surprised everyone by selecting the brand’s very first baby with Down Syndrome after 90 years in the business. The announcement received a standing ovation from netizens all over social media after the brand made this bold yet clever move. According to Gerber’s CEO Bill Partyka, it was Lucas’s (the baby) winning smile and joyful expression that landed him the role.

Society has long fought for equality in the entertainment and modeling industry for individuals who weren’t your typical “Barbie Doll” image. In this example, Gerber successfully lived up to its long-lasting mantra of inclusion that says, “Every baby is a Gerber baby,” which garnered marketing success with its audience. You may also see marketing strategy plan examples .

Traveling can be very costly, especially with the high price tags on hotel rooms and established motels. Fortunately, the folks over at Airbnb thought it would be a great idea if they developed a marketplace for people to list and book accommodations, such as hotels, condos, houses, inns, and apartments from around the world. Thanks to social media marketing , Airbnb has grown to 1,500,000+ listings in 34,000+ cities worldwide since it was first founded in 2008.

In January 2015, Airbnb launched a social media campaign with the hashtag #OneLessStranger which was a social experiment that encouraged the community to perform random acts of hospitality to complete strangers around their neighborhood. The company also urged people to take a photo or video with the person and share it on social media to inspire others. You may also like how to write a marketing plan for a business .

After only 3 weeks since the campaign launched, there were over 3,000,000 people who were engaged in the project, created their own content, or were mentioning it on different social networks.

Annual Marketing Plan Outline Template

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Annual Marketing Tactical Plan Example

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It’s almost impossible to even talk about marketing success without giving a special shout out to the popular sports apparel brand Nike. Many years after the company first launched its Just Do It campaign, Nike continues to take the marketing world by storm with its innovative ideas and engaging content. You may also see marketing strategy business plan examples .

But who would’ve thought that the brand could go as far as developing a co-creation platform for customers to design their own unique footwear?

Nike’s NIKEiD is a special online service that allows consumers to personalize their own merchandise to align with their cultural preferences and style. This marketing strategy made a huge impact in the consumer market thanks to its user-friendly interface and customer-oriented purpose. By putting the power of design into the creative hands of the customer, Nike is able to cater to the individual needs and demands of its audience.

5. McDonald’s

No matter where you are in the world, McDonald’s continues to be one of the most popular fast-food restaurants in the market. But little do people know just how far the company is willing to go to reach out to its local and global audience. You may also like event marketing plan examples .

While you’re busy munching on your box of chicken nuggets, somewhere in the Middle East, a child just took a bite out of his McArabia. If you haven’t heard about it before, the McArabia is a flatbread sandwich that’s made exclusive to McDonald’s outlets in the Middle East. You may also check out business marketing plan examples .

France even has its own McDonald’s version of the French macaroons. And over in the Philippines, people eat their chicken with a plate of McSpaghetti.

These global marketing campaigns have helped the restaurant brand gain worldwide attention from its target consumers.

For clothing brands like H&M, it’s all about designing the perfect online experience for shoppers.

These days, people would rather do their shopping with an instant click of a button than to go through the hassle of running to the nearest store. This can be very convenient for shoppers who live relatively far from any shopping centers and malls. For this reason, H&M is doing everything in its power to appeal to its consumer market by creating easy-to-navigate mobile-friendly shopping experience. You may also see product marketing plan examples .

A marketing tactic like this can easily appeal to consumers from different parts of the world. Instead of worrying about the city traffic and hour-long commutes, companies can bring their offered products and services to buyers in the comfort of their homes through the World Wide Web. You may also like affiliate marketing plan examples .

7. Coca-Cola

Who could forget Coca-Cola’s promotional anthem Wavin’ Flag  for the 2010 FIFA World Cup? Or how about the #ShareACoke campaign that allowed consumers to customize their own Coke bottle with their names printed on it?

Coca-Cola has always taken the lead with various marketing campaigns in the food and beverage industry. Not only does Coca-Cola center on creating memorable advertising campaigns for its consumers, but the brand also focuses on small community programs and charity works for the minority groups of society.

From building 650 clean water installations in the rural village of Beni Suef, Egypt, to sponsoring Ramadan meals for children across the Middle East. The brand continues to promote the one emotion that can never get lost in translation: happiness. You may also check out implementation plan examples .

Small Business Annual Marketing Plan Example

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Tips for Developing an Effective Marketing Plan

A successful marketing plan can do wonders for a business. From addressing business and marketing challenges to delivering solutions through a holistic approach, a good marketing plan can help a team aligned and focused on the end goal.

But sometimes, the time and effort invested in the process of developing a marketing plan is either abandoned or wasted due to several factors that marketers fail to acknowledge. To guide you and your teams in your quest to build a strong marketing plan, here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Know your niche.

Every brand has a niche. This constitutes to the specific market you’re targeting with your products or services offered. For instance, if your business specializes in 30-minute tasty meals , then your consumers are likely to belong to those who are part of the 9-to-5 job category. Once you have identified your audience, it becomes your responsibility to understand their struggles and provide possible solutions for them.

2. Identify your challenges.

Though there are many business opportunities to invest on, there are also many challenges for your team to overcome. It’s important to identify and acknowledge these issues along the way, or they could potentially hinder you from reaching your better goals .

3. Define your SMART goals.

It’s always important to implement SMART goals that can keep you and your team on track. This can help you conduct a SWOT analysis for your annual marketing plan to see whether the company’s marketing spend is delivering the expected return on investment.

4. Create time frames.

Success doesn’t occur overnight. Since marketing objectives  are often based on long-term goals , start setting short- and long-term milestones as well. This will help keep you motivated despite the obstacles and shortcomings that stand in your way.

5. Study market competitors.

Regardless of how original your product concept can be, there will always be competition in the market. These are the entities that can easily steal your customers from right under your nose. This is why it’s important to gain an in-depth understanding of your competitor’s marketing efforts. You may also see integrated marketing plan examples .

Knowing who they are, what advantages they have over you, and how they may respond to your offerings will help you figure out various strategies to keep your business afloat.

6. Make your brand position known.

Oftentimes, it’s all about the brand image. The best way to gain a competitive advantage is by shaping a consumer’s mind-set toward your brand. For instance, when Kylie Jenner first launched her makeup line, Kylie Cosmetics, it generated so much backlash from critics due to its insane price range and disappointing product quality—yet, fans of the brand (and the woman behind it) can tell you otherwise. You may also see personal marketing plan examples .

Despite the negative criticism surrounding the brand, it still made history for becoming one of the fastest-selling product launches in history. The success of the brand can pay its gratitude toward the image that Kylie Jenner has built for herself in the beauty and fashion industry. Fortunately, since its launch in 2016, the brand has released several products with satisfying results. You may also like apartment marketing plan examples .

Ultimately, creating a well-defined plan that addresses the budget, resources, professional goals , and action items for a company’s marketing strategies can help turn your brand’s vision into a reality. In order to meet your goals and objectives effectively, it’s important to constantly examine your efforts, optimize your strategies, and update your marketing plan to attain successful results.

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4 Things You Should Include in Your Annual Marketing Report

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Now that 2021 is in full swing, it’s likely your team is wrapping up its latest annual marketing report to go over gains and losses from the last fiscal year. 

And even though your team prepares an annual marketing report – well, every year – it’s never a bad thing to go over how to create one and the components that should go into it.

Since marketing is often considered an expendable function in the minds of more numbers-based job functions (ahem, sales), it’s extremely necessary to delineate numbers, facts, and figures in an easy-to-understand report that the non-creatives can comprehend. 

To help your marketing team make the most of this year’s annual report, we’ve compiled the following information on how to create a marketing report and what it should consist of to paint a value-adding picture to your organization when it comes to the marketing budget for this fiscal year.

Care to read something specific? Jump ahead at any time: 

What is an Annual Marketing Report?

• How Do You Create an Annual Marketing Report?

4 Things to Include in an Annual Marketing Report

An annual marketing report communicates the marketing team’s goals, accomplishments, wins, gains, and learnings to the larger organization. In other words, it’s a report that summarizes what the marketing team did over the course of a 12-month period that benefited the organization at large. 

Your annual marketing report is a formalized way to communicate with teams outside of marketing (sales, product, research, etc.) and even to highlight what smaller teams within the overall marketing team did for each other that benefited other teams under the marketing umbrella. For instance, this might include what content marketing did to help demand gen, what outreach did to help product marketing, and so on. 

It comes to no one’s surprise that managers, both people and project, are primarily responsible for creating and delivering the annual marketing report. In fact, nearly 55% of all marketing reports are prepared by managers, while the remaining reports are prepared by director levels or C-suite executives. 

While unsurprising, it’s important to note that though managers and higher-ups are creating the reports, the metrics tracked with marketing dashboards and goals met are achieved by the entire team, very often individual contributors who are some tiers below management. This means that your annual report is the full marketing team’s responsibility. 

Your annual marketing report is important because it: 

• Holds the marketing team accountable for hitting or missing goals set the previous year 
• Helps align marketing’s goals with realistic benchmarks for the upcoming fiscal year 
• Demonstrates the importance of marketing as a function to the overall organization 
• Provides insight into the budget and manpower needs the marketing team will require 
• Reports successes in a “facts and figures” format other non-marketing teams understand 

With this in mind, you might be wondering how to create one for your team. That’s where we come in. 

Let’s go over how to create your first marketing report to make it beneficial for your team and simple enough that non-marketing functions understand the metrics you use to track success, your indicators of performance, and more. 

Editor’s note: Are you tired of sharing links and documents containing performance updates back-and-forth? With Databox, you can display beautiful dashboards on your TV so that performance is visible, easy to understand, and actionable for everyone.

Related article: 17 Real Marketing Report Examples For Communicating Performance To Your Team

PRO TIP: How Are Users Engaging on My Site? Which Content Drives the Most Online Activity?

If you want to discover how visitors engage with your website, and which content drives the most engagement and conversions, there are several on-page events and metrics you can track from Google Analytics 4 that will get you started:

• Sessions by channel. Which channels are driving the most traffic to your website? 
• Average session duration. How long do visitors spend on your website on average? 
• Pageviews and pageviews by page . Which pages on your website are viewed the most? 
• Total number of users . How many users engaged with your website? 
• Engagement rate . Which percentage of your website visitors have interacted with a piece of content and spent a significant amount of time on the site?
• Sessions conversion rate . How many of your website visitors have completed the desired or expected action(s) and what percentage of them completed the goals you’ve set in Google Analytics 4?

And more…

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics 4 experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important KPIs for monitoring visitor engagement on your website. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

How Do You Create an Annual Marketing Report? 

Your main goal of creating an annual marketing report is delivering the right information, figures, facts, and projections for the upcoming year to the right people. But before you can deliver those necessary pieces of information, you first need to decide what key performance indicators (KPIs) to track and include . 

According to the data below, marketing experts find these four groupings to be the most important metrics to include in an annual marketing report: 

• Acquisition metrics – think customers gained/leads earned 
• Sales metrics – think dollars earned greater than dollars spent 
• Channel attribution – per Google, “the rule or set of rules that determine how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths”
• Brand engagement – think social media likes, retweets, engagements, mentions, and more

More specifically, here are some common marketing metrics teams choose to track using a marketing dashboard software (across all subcomponents of the larger marketing department): 

• Lead generation: identifying and drawing in potential customers for your business 
• Website and blog traffic: number of visitors who visited a link on your site
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): cost to acquire one paying customer per channel 
• Return on investment (ROI): ratio of net profit to net cost of an investment
• Return on ad spend (ROAS): revenue earned for each dollar spent on advertising
• Search engine optimization (SEO): traffic earned from search engines 
• Year-over-year (YoY) performance: how your department fared this year vs. last year 
• Unachieved goals/areas for improvement: failed goals, missed metrics, etc. 

Once you’ve decided the core metrics you want to share insight on with the larger organization, break your report down into main focus areas to highlight. We’ll dive into three of these below that our experts focus on for their marketing teams’ annual reports. 

Further reading: How to Prepare A Complete Marketing Report: The KPIs, Analysis, & Action Plan You Need

Lead generation 

The marketing team is responsible for basically everything, but the thing they’re most responsible for is generating leads. Marketing is your lead gen long game, so tracking this metric is a no-brainer. 

Andrea Loubier of Mailbird explains how tracking lead generation is of the utmost importance: “Throughout the year, we gather a lot of leads, but when it comes down to it, what really matters is the end result. In other words, we need to see that a good portion of those leads actually convert to sales. By adding this metric to our annual marketing report, we can see which campaigns are working, and where we may need to pivot for the upcoming year.” 

Lead generation is just a precursor to sales and revenue. So tracking how many leads convert to customers is number one for marketers and the rest of the organization. This is a must-track component for your annual marketing report. 

Website/blog traffic and SEO 

If content creation is a function of your overall marketing efforts, you’re undoubtedly tracking traffic metrics on everything you publish. But the value of SEO-powered traffic is much deeper than the outward numbers show. Strong SEO efforts mean that a lot of people are reading your content, and you might be able to turn some of those readers into leads – who could eventually turn into customers. 

Catriona Jasica of Top Vouchers Code mentions “Traffic demographics are the most important thing that should be included in every annual meeting. If we’re getting junk traffic that doesn’t provide a return on investment, all of the efforts we make so far over the year would simply go to waste.” 

While tracking traffic is a given for content marketing efforts, you could be getting a lot of low-quality traffic that behaves as more of an inflated vanity metric rather than something valuable for the long-term. 

For example, maybe your team has been publishing a lot of quick win blog posts on hot topics and trends that are time-sensitive and not evergreen. These see a short burst of traffic, then fall to the wayside when they’re no longer relevant. Jasica notes the importance of tracking traffic that actually converts, which Viola Eva of Flow Research Collective elaborates on. 

Eva explains: “As we are very focused on SEO, understanding the traffic that actually converts into qualified leads is a very important metric for our end-of-year marketing report. We need to see which of our ranking keywords are actually bringing in more traffic, and then adjust our strategies for the next year accordingly.” 

Having top-tier SEO can highlight which keywords your content team should focus on creating content for in the upcoming fiscal year as well as which to avoid. If you notice you’re not ranking for a keyword related to the products and services you offer, you’ll also know where to hyper-focus your SEO efforts over the course of the next year, which you can add as a long-term goal for your team to shoot for. 

Use this  marketing automation dashboard  to gain valuable insights about the amount of traffic generated from your SEO efforts.

Related: How to Build an SEO Report: 27 Metrics & Insights To Include

Your marketing return on investment is an absolutely essential metric that every marketing team pretty much universally would be foolish not to track. ROI is important – so much that Jasz Joseph of SyncShow says it’s the most important metric to include. 

Joseph notes: “ROI is the most important thing that should be included in any annual marketing report. For some companies, this means qualified leads delivered. For others, it may mean sales. It is so important to track how much was spent on marketing and how much was made from the results generated by your marketing team. At the end of the day, that matters so much more than sessions, bounce rate, social media engagement, or any other metric.” 

This is a bold side to take, but a good one indeed. If you aren’t actually seeing any return on your marketing investments, what’s the point? Spending – and losing – money on unprofitable guest speakers, events, swag, and other nice, but not necessary marketing add-ons is like shooting yourself in the foot. 

On top of that, remember that you’re sharing this report with high-level executives, so silly vanity metrics and meaningless numbers that don’t include financial wins or gains mean next to nothing to them. Chris Wilks of BrandExtract notes that “Ultimately, the audience for this report (i.e. executives, board members) wants to know what their investment in marketing yielded. Other metrics can be useful, but the main purpose is to understand how marketing activities impacted the bottom line, so always show ROI .”

You’re doing your marketing team and the entire organization a disservice by spending money if that money isn’t earning anything in return for your team. The phrase it takes money to make money only works if you’re drawing a profit, which is why tracking ROI can’t be optional; it has to be an essential component of your annual marketing report. 

While every team’s specific needs will differ, here’s a rundown of the 4 core components you should include in your annual marketing report, based on responses from industry experts. 

• A summary of your strategy and goals from the past year
• Performance metrics for each subset of your marketing department
• Year-over-year (YoY) performance to show trends and progress over tim e
• Recommendations and learnings from the past year

1. A summary of your strategy and goals from the past year 

An entire year has passed, and during the past year, you’ve been working toward hitting goals you set up at this same time last year. Now it’s time to show the rest of your organization just what you’ve been doing. 

• First, lay out any big bets and in-progress or completed projects so executives know what you’ll be discussing in the report. 
• Next, describe how each goal was approached, along with what worked and what successes and wins you saw over the past year. 
• Then, introduce any failures, unmet goals, or missed marks – cautiously, and optimistically – so upper management knows you’ve figured out what went wrong. 
• Also, make sure to highlight any specific teams or team members who went above and beyond to fix a problem, meet a goal, or solve an issue that was hanging about. 
• Last, explain what projects are ongoing and will be continued in the following fiscal year, including what metrics you intend to count, goals you plan to hit, and the budget you’ll need to be allocated. 

This is a lot of information to include in your report – we know. So take the length of time it will take to put your annual marketing report together from start to finish into consideration as you begin.

Since you’re pulling information from managers in multiple sub-departments of the marketing team, you’re relying on a lot of moving parts working together cohesively to bring the report to fruition. 

Most teams (64%) say it takes weeks to prepare the entire report. But that’s just the report preparation itself. Account for the time it will take to receive all deliverables from product marketing, creative, content, and anyone else who has figures to add to the master report. 

And while your marketing team might pour their entire heart and soul into the creation and delivery of this report, your executive team is busy and doesn’t have a lot of time to spare. 

CJ Xia of Boster Biological Technology explains this perfectly. “As a marketer, I recommend adding a summary of your marketing goals and strategy, and it should be at the forefront of your annual marketing report.

Everyone doesn’t read through the details of your marketing report. This page or page contains useful detail and explains the direction and essential takeaways of your company. You should focus on outlining your annual marketing goals and explaining the strategy employed to achieve them.” 

Xia is absolutely right. Imagine being a high-level executive who is tasked with reading 10 reports from every department at the company. If every report exceeds 50+ pages (who knows, maybe people have a lot to say!) – can you really blame them for not having time to read 500+ pages of roundup reports from each team, sub-team, and team member who made valuable contributions?

You’d be hard-pressed to find an exec – let alone anyone – who’d be down with consuming that amount of information and actually retaining it. 

In short, make sure there’s a “too long; didn’t read” (TL;DR) version of your marketing report for them to skim over – a summary.

2. Performance metrics for each subset of your marketing department 

While marketing is an overall function, if you ask 30 people who work in the marketing field, there’s no doubt most of them have different job functions from each other. There’s your content team, your brand designers, your outreach folks, and your friends from product marketing.

Depending on the size of your specific organization, your marketing team might be broken into even smaller groupings. 

But from a high-level, executive perspective, there might be no difference between a content marketer and a product marketer in their minds, which is why it’s up to your team to show the KPIs each subteam was responsible for meeting and exceeding. More importantly, you need to bring objectives and a full rundown of completed deliverables each subteam worked on through the past year. 

Peter Thaleikis of Bring Your Own Ideas, Ltd. goes into this with more detail: “Marketing is a mix of a little bit of creative work, tracking of results, and persistence. An annual marketing report should mention the projects completed. For each project, the three points mentioned make a great story to tell. Finish each one with a focus on the related KPIs.

If the year went well, the momentum built up over time should show up automatically. A final summary of the results with year-over-year growth of client KPIs helps to showcase the value provided.” 

Each sub-team within marketing needs to provide their own metrics, which is how your annual marketing report will be so well-built out. If one team’s focus area surrounds leads generated from social media platforms (probably content marketing), then that should be included in their section of the larger report. Similarly, if click-through rate (CTR) on outreach emails is a metric for your demand gen team, make sure that’s included as well. 

Whatever’s important to the smaller puzzle pieces that make up your larger marketing team must be included to ensure everyone has fair reporting and recognition among executives and people in charge.

3. Year-over-year (YoY) performance to show trends and progress over time 

If you’re a brand new company, you won’t have historical data to track current trends, statistics, and data against. But if you’re here, looking to improve next year’s annual marketing report, you’ve likely been at the marketing thing a while. 

That said, what your team’s goals, achievements, failures, and metrics were for last year might be a blip on your radar now because you’re focusing on current, more relevant tracking and deliverables, but executives and stakeholders want to see a “before and after” of some sorts to put last year, the year before, and this year’s projections up against one another. And it’s up to you to deliver. 

Ian Wright of Bequests says that YoY performance tracking is – in a word – crucial. Wright suggests teams “Compare the KPIs you measured this year with the previous period to see how you improved. It will also show you where you need more work or which areas dropped in performance.” This is something we’ve discussed: knowing where you faltered will help you succeed in the future. 

Your execs need to know this information too. And Andre Oentoro of Milkwhale agrees with Wright on this suggestion. Oentoro notes the most important component is “year-to-year performance reports. It’s a great way to see what your team did right and what could’ve been improved. Along with setting future goals, looking at past achievements can help you plan for the year much more effectively.”

4. Recommendations and learnings from the past year 

We live and we learn, right? Maybe the virtual event you meticulously planned didn’t turn around as much revenue or as many leads as you thought it would. Maybe the latest design tool you expensed for your creative team was a bust, not user-friendly, and overly expensive. 

Whatever the problem(s) were, now is the time to address what went wrong – and more importantly – how you fix(ed) what happened to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. 

Jason Hawkins of Advertising for Surgeons emphasizes the importance of covering opportunities for improvement. Hawkins says talking about what you can do better as a team “allows you to be humble even if you knocked the campaign out of the park. It shows serious maturity to be able to self reflect on things that you can do better with [for your clients and your team].” 

Even if you were mostly successful, try to find a small gap where your team could have done better. Bringing your team back down to a place where they can keep a level-head and keep their eyes on an ever-moving target will prepare them for the times when things don’t quite go the right way. Always having high highs without self-reflection and acknowledgment that things weren’t always perfect could cause your team to fail and not be prepared to handle future consequences.

While your annual marketing report comes once per year, the work that goes into it is a year-long affair. From goal-setting for the upcoming year to monthly, quarterly, and mid-year progress check-ins, your annual report building begins on the first day of the new fiscal year, every year. 

Knowing this, it’s up to you to work smarter toward setting realistic goals to highlight your successes and minimize errors when coming to your full organization with next year’s marketing report. 

What’s more, it’s up to the marketing team to create a hole-free annual report to help align goals across their department and the rest of the company. Sasha Matviienko of growth360 elaborates on this, mentioning that “annual and quarterly reports are a great place to do strategic alignment across channels.” 

In all, knowing the right projects, deliverables, and metrics that everyone outside of marketing finds important is the first step to strategic alignment sure to improve the results your team sees in the upcoming year.

Databox makes it easy to present and report your annual performance internally or externally. Whether you conduct live meetings to review your performance, put together slide decks, or produce html reports, our dashboard reporting software has you covered. Sign up for a free trial today .

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How To Create Marketing Plans for Small Businesses

Big businesses make big plans. They also create elaborate marketing schemes to put those plans into action.

It’s easy for SMB (small and medium business) owners and their teams to feel that a full-fledged marketing plan is out of their reach. While they may lack the resources to go toe to toe with larger competitors in the market, though, that makes the strategic planning and guidance of small business marketing efforts that much more valuable.

Let’s go over what it means to create marketing plans for small businesses, why having a small business marketing strategy is so important for success, and how your business can create its own master marketing plan.

What are Marketing Plans for Small Businesses?

A marketing plan, at its most fundamental level, is a series of steps that you can take to promote your brand and its products and services to consumers. In other words, a marketing plan isn’t your actual marketing activity. It’s the strategy or guidelines that you create to set those initiatives in motion. 

In the context of marketing plans for small businesses, this could include anything from creating a website to crafting an email drip campaign, drafting a social media marketing campaign, building credibility through digital PR , and more. A small business marketing plan takes the limited resources of a small business and considers how that entity can effectively reach its target audience with its marketing.

Why are Marketing Plans for Small Businesses Important?

Grasping the goal of a marketing plan is the easy part. For a small business team with finite time and resources, justifying the investment in a marketing plan is where things can bog down.  

It’s tempting to redirect your team’s efforts toward activities with more immediate or tangible results, such as sales or product development. When you take the time to invest in a genuine growth-oriented marketing plan , though, you can provide a long-term blueprint for growth that you simply can’t recreate through other areas of business activity.

The goal of a marketing plan is to create basic parameters, such as a schedule and marketing budget, that help you optimize your promotional resources. Developing the plan itself may require some extra investment, but the benefits are well worth it.  

By planning ahead of time, you give yourself the opportunity to consider all of your marketing options. It also allows you to either establish or revisit key factors, such as your target audience, primary selling points, and your competition. From there, you can decide which marketing activities are the most cost-effective and beneficial for your brand, as well as the order in which you need to execute them.  

For example, a marketing plan might reveal that paying for ongoing PPC (pay-per-click) ads is exorbitant and expensive over the long term. It also may reveal that the money saved from slashing your PPC ads in half allows you to invest in a content marketing strategy. From there, you can plot out the steps required to generate, optimize, and promote that content (see the next section) as an effective way to put your marketing in motion. 

Small business marketing plans also allow you to gauge the ROI of your marketing investments over time. This gives you the ability to make adjustments and maximize results as you go along. It also frees you up to be more creative in your long-term approach to marketing by building on past successes that you otherwise might not have known about.

What Should You Include in Marketing Plans for Small Businesses?

If you’re sold on the concept of developing a marketing plan for your small business but aren’t quite sure where to start, you’ve come to the right place. In the following section, we’ll break

down a step-by-step analysis of how you can turn your marketing ambitions into a solid plan of action that can guide you.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

It’s easy to skip this step, but trust us, you don’t want to do that. Most small business owners think they know their marketing goals — and in a certain sense, that’s true. As an involved executive of a smaller enterprise, you probably have your finger on the pulse of your organization more than most leaders. 

But that proximity to daily operations and activities can also make it easy to cloud out the big-picture stuff at times. Before you establish your marketing plan, take a minute to step back. 

What are you trying to accomplish with your marketing in the next year? What about the next five years? Do you want to generate revenue? Build brand awareness? Increase online visibility? Spark long-term growth? 

Each goal is related to your marketing, but the differences are important. Get each specific marketing goal in place before you flesh out your plan.

Step 2: Identify Your Audience

Your target audience should be the central focal point of your entire operation. When you develop products, you should consider whom they serve. When you bring them to market, you want to consider how to communicate to a select group of consumers that they’re available to solve their problems.

Make sure you have a buyer persona in place that reflects precisely whom you’re trying to market to and what their pain points are. If you’ve already considered what your customer base looks like, use this step to review that data and ensure that it’s informed by up-to-date market research.

Step 3: Consider Resources and Competition

As a final step to set the stage for your planning, review what resources you have available. As a small business, do you have a marketing team, or does that responsibility overlap with other employees (or yourself)? How much time do you have to invest in marketing? What is your marketing budget? What assets do you already have, such as a CRM or social media marketing tools?

Also, consider conducting a fresh round of competitive analysis. You likely did this when you were pulling together your business plan. Go back and observe how your competitors are marketing themselves to your target audience. Note the pros and cons of their efforts.

Step 4: Identify the Marketing Tactics You Can Use

Now comes the marketing magic. Once you’ve considered your goals, target audience, resources, and competition, it’s time to bring it all together. 

Consider the marketing tactics you have available and which ones best meet your current marketing needs. Then, weave these marketing ideas into a plan that considers resources and timelines. A few common marketing tactics that work well for small businesses include:

• Creating a strong website : This becomes your central online presence and a place to host your blogs, user-generated content, landing pages, and other content marketing.
• Optimizing your website : SEO is important. Optimizing your site with long-tail keyword phrases, links, and technical SEO (think metadata, mobile-friendly, etc.) is a powerful way to maximize your content creation efforts.
• Build up off-site marketing : Create a social media presence using platforms your target audience prefers. Nurture email marketing, as well, including drip campaigns, newsletters, and targeted announcements.
• Organize leads in a CRM : As a small business owner, you want to stay organized. When your marketing begins to gain momentum, have a customer relationship management (CRM) platform ready to keep things organized and under control.

Remember, you’re a small business with limited marketing resources. Consider which tactic is particularly relevant to your brand at the moment, and invest in those areas first.

Step 5: Establish Success Metrics and Feedback Loops

Finally, consider how you’ll track your marketing over time. Use tools like Google Analytics 4 to keep tabs on important marketing metrics, such as ranking for brand keywords, measuring organic traffic, and tracking conversions.

Also, request feedback from customers and team members and then use that information to hone your marketing activities moving forward. If you’re unsure how to adapt your plan (or create one in the first place), consider working with a growth marketing agency that can bring a cost-effective degree of experience and knowledge to bear on your brand’s marketing initiatives.

Building Master Marketing Plans for Small Businesses

As a small business, you may have limited time, money, and tools to work with. However, that doesn’t mean investing in a marketing plan isn’t worth it.

On the contrary, creating an effective marketing strategy helps you ensure that every ounce of resources you pour into promoting your business has a purpose. This gives you the best chance of sparking genuine, measurable growth, which can enable you to build larger marketing budgets, plans, and strategies in the future.

Free Google Slides Business Model Canvas Templates

By Courtney Patterson | May 8, 2024

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These customizable Google Slides business model canvas templates are tailored for entrepreneurs, startup enthusiasts, and strategic planners. Download any template to help you develop and refine your business model, establishing a solid base for growth and innovation. This collection includes a  Lean business model canvas template , a  social enterprise business model canvas template , a  tech startup business model canvas template , and more.

Google Slides Simple Business Model Canvas Template

Download the Simple Business Model Canvas Template for Google Slides 

When to Use This Template:  Use this streamlined business model canvas template during dynamic strategy meetings or brainstorming sessions. It's particularly useful for entrepreneurs, startups, and educators looking for a fast way to kick-start planning, facilitate workshops, or clarify ongoing business strategies. 

Notable Template Features:  This template efficiently outlines key aspects of a business model, such as value propositions, target customer segments, and critical operations. The user-friendly layout ensures swift updates and engaging team discussions, making it an essential resource for visualizing and refining strategic plans. 

Access this complimentary collection of  free business model canvas templates to effectively visualize your business's fundamental elements. 

Google Slides Lean Business Model Canvas Template

Download the Sample Lean Business Model Canvas Template for Google Slides 

Download the Blank Lean Business Model Canvas Template for Google Slides

When to Use This Template:  Ideal for high-velocity environments, this Lean business model canvas template with or without sample data allows forward-thinking innovators to expedite the testing and validation of their business concepts. It focuses on refining the pivotal aspects of a business strategy to adjust based on real-time market responses. 

Notable Template Features:  This template highlights critical Lean startup principles, including the alignment of solutions with customer problems, compelling value propositions, and key performance indicators (KPIs). Its interactive and flexible design makes it a vital resource for teams striving for continual progress. Download the sample version for a pre-filled template, or try the blank version to fill in the sections with your own data.

Google Slides Business Capability Model Template

Download the Business Capability Model Template for Google Slides  

When to Use This Template:  Use this template to streamline your strategic planning. It is designed to help organizations assess and outline their core business functions and capabilities so that they can synchronize business strategies with operational strengths and identify areas for investment. 

Notable Template Features:  Across multiple dynamic slides, this template facilitates a thorough analysis of business capabilities, from day-to-day operations to customer interaction tactics. Its organized layout allows for a methodical review of your company's strengths, weaknesses, and growth opportunities, improving communication and strategic alignment across teams and sectors. 

Google Slides Social Enterprise Business Model Canvas Template

Download the Social Enterprise Business Model Canvas Template for Google Slides

When to Use This Template:  This Google Slides template is ideal for social enterprises and mission-driven organizations that need to strategize how to balance social impact with financial viability. Use this template in brainstorming sessions or strategic planning meetings to navigate the challenges of creating social value and financial stability. 

Notable Template Features:  This template emphasizes integrating social objectives with core business functions. It includes dedicated sections for outlining social missions, evaluating impact, and building community relationships. Its comprehensive design enables you to map out both the social and economic facets of your business. 

Google Slides Customer-Focused Business Model Canvas Template

Download the Sample Customer-Focused Business Model Canvas Template for Google Slides  

Download the Blank Customer-Focused Business Model Canvas Template for Google Slides  

When to Use This Template:  Use this customer-focused template with or without sample data when you're fine-tuning or developing a business strategy with a strong emphasis on customer insights. The template is particularly effective at turning customer needs into unique market positions and customized experiences.

Notable Template Features:  Specially crafted to highlight the role of customer perspectives in strategic planning, this template features dedicated areas for detailing customer journeys, preferences, and the feedback process. It offers a comprehensive examination of how your business model caters to customer demands, prioritizing customer satisfaction and active engagement in every strategic move.

Google Slides E-Commerce Business Model Canvas Template

Download the E-Commerce Business Model Canvas Template for Google Slides  

When to Use This Template:  Try this e-commerce template when you need to elevate your presence in the digital retail space. Ideal for strategizing the launch of a new online store or refining the operations of an existing one, this template facilitates a detailed examination and improvement of an online shopping journey, from the first interaction to follow-up after sales. 

Notable Template Features:  Tailor-made for the nuances of e-commerce, this template provides a guide for strategizing around online consumer behaviors, digital marketing tactics, and logistical operations. It covers crucial strategic e-commerce activities, such as enhancing the customer experience, streamlining payment systems, and ensuring effective customer support. 

Google Slides Tech Startup Business Model Canvas Template

Download the Tech Startup Business Model Canvas Template for Google Slides

When to Use This Template:  Use this tech startup template during critical phases of brainstorming and entering the market or as you adjust your tech enterprise to meet the changing needs of the industry. It's designed to help you better understand the relationship between your technological innovations and market requirements.

Notable Template Features:  Adapted for the unique challenges and opportunities of the tech sector, this template emphasizes research and development, intellectual property management, and strategies for gaining users. It offers a comprehensive layout for mapping out how your tech solutions align with market expectations, with a focus on ensuring scalability, security measures, and innovation.

Related Templates

Explore these complimentary Google Slides templates rooted in business model canvas methodologies. Tailored to boost your strategic business planning, these resources emphasize strategic planning, market analysis, value proposition clarification, and customer journey mapping. 

Free SWOT Analysis Templates for Google Slides

Make use of these  free SWOT analysis templates for Google Slides to better understand your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, allowing for new strategic initiatives and insightful decision-making. 

Free Google Slides Project Management Templates

These  free Google Slides project management templates offer users an intuitive way to organize, track, and present project details, timelines, and milestones, enhancing project visibility and team collaboration. 

Free Brand Presentation Templates

See this collection of  free brand presentation templates for resources to help you seamlessly integrate and showcase your brand's identity in your business model canvas, enhancing how you communicate your value proposition and market positioning. 

Free Marketing Report Templates

Take a look at these  free marketing report templates for help analyzing and presenting your marketing efforts and ensuring that they align with the strategies outlined in your business model canvas. 

Free Change Management Strategy Templates

Check out these  free change management strategy templates to help you effectively plan and execute organizational changes, ensuring they align with your strategic objectives. 

Free Go-to-Market Strategy Templates

Explore these  free go-to-market strategy templates when you need a targeted strategic approach for launching a product or service. 

Free Project Timeline Templates

Dive into these  free project timeline templates to help you map out the key milestones and timelines for your strategic initiatives, aligning them with the broader goals outlined in your business model canvas. 

Free Annual Plan Templates and Yearly Planning Templates

Discover these  free annual plan templates and yearly planning templates to assist you in setting annual goals and strategies that are in harmony with your long-term objectives. 

Free Google Timeline Templates

Check out these  free Google timeline templates to help you effectively visualize and plan the chronological development and execution of the strategies outlined in your business model canvas. 

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