Do you take a good, hard look at your team’s marketing strategy every year?
You should. Without an annual marketing plan, things can get messy — and it’s nearly impossible to put a number on your budget for the projects, hiring, and outsourcing over the course of a year if you don’t have a plan.
To make your plan’s creation easier, we’ve put together a list of what to include in your plan and a few different planning templates where you can easily fill in the blanks.
To start, let’s dive into how to create a marketing plan and then take a look at what a high-level marketing plan has inside.
In this article, we’re going to discuss:
Download This Marketing Plan Outline for Free
The above marketing plan outline will help you create an effective plan that easily generates buy-in from stakeholders and effectively guides your marketing efforts.
Marketing plans can get quite granular to reflect the industry you’re in, whether you’re selling to consumers (B2C) or other businesses (B2B), and how big your digital presence is. Nonetheless, here are the elements every effective marketing plan includes:
In a marketing plan, your business summary is exactly what it sounds like: a summary of the organization. It’s essential to include this information so that all stakeholders, including your direct reports, learn about your company in detail before delving into the more strategic components of your plan.
Even if you’re presenting this plan to people who’ve been in the company for a while, it doesn’t hurt to get everyone on the same page.
Most business summaries include:
The company name
Where it’s headquartered
Its mission statement
Our marketing plan outline also includes information on marketing leadership, which is especially helpful for companies with large marketing teams.
Your marketing plan’s business summary also includes a SWOT analysis, which covers your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It’s essential to include this information so you can create targeted strategies that help you capitalize on your strengths and improve upon your weaknesses.
In my experience, you need a lot of patience when doing a SWOT analysis; it requires market research and competitive analysis to become truly accurate. I tend to revisit this section periodically, adjusting it as I discover more information about my own business and competition.
The business initiatives element of a marketing plan helps you segment the various goals of your department. Be careful not to include big-picture company initiatives, which you’d normally find in a business plan. This section should outline the projects that are specific to marketing. You’ll also describe the goals of those projects and how those goals will be measured.
Every initiative should follow the SMART method for goal-making. They should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, a broad goal might be something like, “Increase my Facebook following.” But a SMART-ified version of this goal could be, “Increase my Facebook following by 30% by June.” See the difference?
In this part of the marketing plan outline, you get plenty of space to share all the data you collected during your market research. If your company has already done a thorough market research study, this section of your marketing plan might be easier to put together. Either way, try to do your research before synthesizing it in a shareable document like this one.
Ultimately, this element of your marketing plan will help you describe the industry you’re selling to and your buyer persona. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional description of your ideal customer, focusing on traits like:
Age
Location
Title
Goals
Personal challenges
Pains
Triggering event
Positioning
Market share
Offerings
Pricing
Our marketing plan template includes space to list out the specific products you compete with, as well as other facets of the other company’s strategy, such as their blogging efforts or customer service reputation. Keep this part of your plan simple — your full competitive analysis should be done separately. Here are a few competitive analysis templates to get started.
Your market strategy uses the information included in the above sections to describe how your company should approach the market.
For instance, when I’m filling out this section, I always pull insights from my SWOT analysis, my competitive analysis, and my general market research. This helps me write targeted, effective descriptions of my strategies.
Here’s an example: if you found that one of your competitors employs stronger social media marketing strategies, you might add “We’ll post 3 times per week on our social media profiles” under “Promotion.”
In our full-length marketing plan outline, the market strategy section contains the “seven Ps of marketing” (or the “extended marketing mix”):
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
People
Process
Physical Evidence
(You’ll learn more about these seven sub-components inside our free marketing plan template, which you can download below.)
When I created my first marketing plan, I made the mistake of confusing the marketing budget section of my plan with my product’s price and other financials.
Here’s a better way to think of this section: it should describe how much money the business has allotted the marketing team to pursue the initiatives and goals outlined in the elements above.
Depending on how many individual expenses you have, you should consider itemizing this budget by what specifically you’ll spend your budget on. Example marketing expenses include:
Knowing the budget and doing analysis on the marketing channels you want to invest in, you should be able to come up with a plan for how much budget to invest in which tactics based on expected ROI. From there, you’ll be able to come up with financial projections for the year. These won’t be 100% accurate but can help with executive planning.
Remember: Your marketing plan only includes a summary of the costs. We recommend keeping a separate document or Excel sheet to help you calculate your budget much more effectively. Here’s a marketing budget template to get started.
Your marketing plan should also include a list of your marketing channels. While your company might promote the product itself using certain ad space, your marketing channels are where you’ll publish the content that educates your buyers, generates leads, and spreads awareness of your brand.
If you publish (or intend to publish) on social media, this is the place to talk about it. Use the Marketing Channels section of your marketing plan to map out which social networks you want to launch a business page on, what you’ll use this social network for, and how you’ll measure your success on this network.
If you also have a blog, it might be smart to leverage content marketing tools and repurpose long-form content into smaller social media posts. This helps drive extra traffic to your website and maximize ROI. But be sure to mention it in this section.
Part of this section’s purpose is to prove to your superiors, both inside and outside the marketing department, that these channels will serve to grow the business.
Businesses with extensive social media presences might even consider elaborating on their social strategy in a separate social media plan template.
Last, but certainly not least, your marketing plan should include an overview of the tools you’ll include in your marketing technology (MarTech) stack. These are the tools that will help you achieve the goals you outlined in the previous sections. Since all types of marketing software usually need a generous investment from your company’s leadership, it’s essential to connect them to a potential ROI for your business.
For each tool, describe what exactly you’ll use it for, and be sure that it’s a strategy that you’ve mentioned elsewhere. For instance, we wouldn’t recommend listing an advertising management tool if you didn’t list “PPC Advertising” under “Marketing Channels.”
If you’re going for a unified marketing solution, however, you must pinpoint exactly what you’ll use it for, why it’s a better option compared to other software dedicated to specific channels, and in what areas would this type of solution help you the most. As for marketing analytics software, make sure to specify what metrics you’ll track with it, why, and how it will benefit your overall marketing strategy.
The first step I take when creating a marketing plan is conducting a SWOT analysis. It helps me uncover the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing my business.
Additionally, I need a good picture of the current market. How do I compare to my competitors? Doing a competitor analysis can help.
In doing so, I can identify the gaps (and opportunities) in a competitor’s approach. What are they missing? What can I offer that’ll give me a competitive advantage?
Answering questions like this should help you figure out what your customer wants, which brings us to step number two.
If your company already has buyer personas, this step might just mean you have to refine your current personas.
But if you don’t have a buyer persona, you should create one. To do this, you might have to conduct market research.
Your buyer persona should include demographic information such as age, gender, and income. However, it will also include psychographic information such as pain points and goals. What drives your audience? What problems do they have that your product or service can fix?
Once you have this information written out, it’ll help you define your goals, which brings us to step number three.
My mother always used to tell me, “You can’t go somewhere unless you have a road map.” Now, for me, someone who’s geographically challenged, that was literal advice.
However, it can also be applied metaphorically to marketing. You can’t improve your ROI unless you know what your goals are.
After you’ve figured out your current situation and know your audience, you can begin to define your SMART goals.
SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. This means that all your goals should be specific and include a time frame for which you want to complete them.
For example, your goal could be to increase your Instagram followers by 15% in three months. Depending on your overall marketing goals, this should be relevant and attainable. Additionally, this goal is specific, measurable, and time-bound.
Before you start any tactic, you should write out your goals. Then, you can begin to analyze which tactics will help you achieve that goal. That brings us to step number four.
At this point, you’ve written down your goals based on your target audience and current situation.
Now, you have to figure out what tactics will help you achieve your goals. Plus, what are the right channels and action items to focus on?
For example, if your goal is to increase your Instagram followers by 15% in three months, your tactics might include hosting a giveaway, responding to every comment, and posting three times on Instagram per week.
Once you know your goals, brainstorming several tactics to achieve them should be easy. That said, you may not be able to pursue every tactic on your list (unless you have an unlimited budget, which, if so, jealous) — which brings us to step number five.
Before you can begin implementing any of the ideas that you’ve come up with in the steps above, you have to know your budget.
For example, your tactics might include social media advertising. However, if you don’t have the budget for that, then you might not be able to achieve your goals.
While you’re writing out your tactics, be sure to note an estimated budget. You can include the time it’ll take to complete each tactic in addition to the assets you might need to purchase, such as ad space.
Now that you know how to create your marketing plan, let’s dive into creating a marketing campaign outline that will help you reach the goals outlined plan.
Rolling out a new marketing plan is a big lift. To make sure things are running smoothly with all of your projects, you’ll want to create a timeline that maps out when each project is happening.
A marketing plan timeline allows your team to view all projects, campaigns, events, and other related tasks in one place — along with their deadlines. This ensures everyone on your team knows what’s due, when it’s due, and what’s up next in the pipeline. Typically these plans cover marketing efforts for the entire year, but some companies may operate on a bi-annual or quarterly basis.
Once you’ve completed your analysis, research, and set goals, it’s time to set deadlines for your assignments. From new blog posts and content initiatives to product launches, everything will need a deadline. Take into account any holidays or events taking place over the course of the year.
While setting deadlines for the entire year may seem daunting, start by estimating how long you think each task will take and set a deadline accordingly. Track the time it actually takes for you to complete similar types of projects. Once you’ve completed a few of them, you’ll have a better idea of how long each takes and will be able to set more accurate deadlines.
For each project, you’ll want to build in time for:
All projects and their deadlines should be in a central location where your team can access them whether that’s a calendar like HubSpot’s tool, shared document, or project management tool.
As demonstrated above, a marketing plan can be a long document. When you want to share information with stakeholders or simply want an overview of your plan for quick reference, having a shorter version on hand can be helpful. A one-page marketing plan can be the solution, and we’ll discuss its elements below.
Include your company name, list the names of individuals responsible for enacting the different stages of your plan, and a brief mission statement.
Include your company name, list the names of individuals responsible for enacting the different stages of your plan, and a brief mission statement.
Outline your target audience(s) that your efforts will reach. You can include a brief overview of your industry and buyer personas.
This is an overview of the money you’ll spend to help you meet your marketing goals. Create a good estimate of how much you’ll spend on each facet of your marketing program.
List the channels you’ll use to achieve your marketing goals. Describe why you’re using each channel and what you want to accomplish so everyone is on the same page.
Now that you know what to include in your marketing plan, it’s time to grab your marketing plan template and see how best to organize the six elements explained above. The following marketing plan template opens directly in Microsoft Word, so you can edit each section as you see fit:
Your marketing plan is a high-level view of the different marketing strategies you’ll use to meet your business objectives. A marketing campaign template is a focused plan that will help achieve those marketing goals.
A marketing campaign template should include the following key components:
| column header | column header | column header | column header |
A digital marketing plan is similar to a marketing campaign plan, but, as the name suggests, it’s tailored to the campaigns that you run online. Let’s go over the key components of a digital marketing plan template to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
Many people use social media in their digital campaigns, and below we’ll discuss some ideas you can use for inspiration.
As your marketing department grows, so will your presence on social media. And as your social media presence grows, so will your need to measure, plan, and re-plan what types of content you want to publish across each network.
If you’re looking for a way to deepen your social media marketing strategy — even further than the marketing plan template above — the following collection of social media marketing plan templates is perfect for you:
In the above collection of marketing plan templates, you’ll get to fill in the following contents (and more) to suit your company:
Below, let’s review the social media reporting templates, and what you’ll find in each one.
This template lists out questions to help you decide which social media management platform you should use.
What We Like
Once you know what social media tactics you’re going to implement in your marketing plan, it’s time to figure out what channels are right for you. This template will help you do that.
If Facebook Live is one of the marketing tactics in your plan, this template will help you design an editorial calendar. With this template, you can organize what Facebook live’s you want to do and when.
What We Like
Once you’ve decided on dates, you can color-code your FB calendar and coordinate with your editorial calendar so everyone can see what lives are running in relation to other campaigns.
Are you going to begin using Instagram regularly? Do you want to increase your following? With this template, you can organize your Instagram posts, so everyone on your team knows what posts are going live and when.
What We Like
This is more than just a content calendar. You can use this doc to collaborate with your team on messaging, landing pages linked in your bio, and campaign rollouts.
With this template, you can organize your annual and monthly budget for your paid social media calendar.
What We Like
With this spreadsheet, all you need to do is plug in your numbers and the formulas will do the works for you. I recommend using this in conjunction with your marketing plan budget to make sure you are not overspending and funds are allocated appropriately.
Conducting a social media audit? You can use this template to help you gather the right analytics. Tracking the results of your marketing efforts is key to determining ROI.
What We Like
Use this template to track each of your campaigns to determine what worked and what didn’t. From there, you can allocate funds for the strategies that deliver the results you want.
With this template, you can organize your social media editorial calendar. For example, you can include social media posts for each platform, so your team knows what’s going live on any given day.
What We Like
This calendar makes it easy to track activity across every social media platform, since each platform is assigned a specific color.
With this template, your team can have the latest social media image sizes handy. This template includes image sizes for all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
What We Like
Having a resource like this readily available for your team ensures that everyone is on the same page regarding image sizes and prevents delays.
With this template, you can create an entire social media marketing proposal. This will outline the social media goals, the scope of the work, and the tactics that you plan to implement.
What We Like
This proposal functions as more of a deep dive into the marketing channel section of your marketing plan. It’s relatively straightforward and contains all the essential sections of a proposal.
With this template, you’ll gain access to a slide deck that includes templates for social media reporting.
What We Like
If you plan to implement social media in your marketing plan, these reporting templates can help you track your progress. If using the social media audit above, you can add all of your data here once it’s been collected.
If you’re going to lean into social media in your marketing plan, you can use hashtag holidays to generate ideas.
What We Like
These holidays are a great way to fill out your social media publishing schedule. With this template, you’ll get a list of all the hashtag holidays for the year. Once you’ve come up with content ideas, you can add them to your social media calendar.
Of course, this type of planning takes a lot of time and effort. So if you’re strapped for time before the holidays, give our new Marketing Plan Generator a try.
This tool simplifies yearly planning by asking prompted questions to help guide your process. You’ll be asked to input information about:
Once you input all information, the tool will spit out a table (as shown in the image below) that you can use to guide your processes.
Pro Tip: If the tool doesn’t work, clear your browser’s cache or access it in incognito mode.
The best way to set up your marketing plan for the year is to start with quick wins first, that way you can ramp up fast and set yourself (and your team) up to hit more challenging goals and take on more sophisticated projects by Q4. So, what do you say? Are you ready to give it a spin?
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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