Marketing Plan Template
[Company Name]
Marketing Plan
20XX
Introduction/Goals
Start your plan off with a brief
introduction including background on your company and your overall marketing
goals for the year. In the introduction, you can highlight areas of your plan
that you think are the most important or discuss particular opportunities,
threats or market trends that will be significant in the coming year.
Competitive
Analysis
Here you can state your overall
observations of the competitive landscape and particular opportunities or
threats within this landscape. Also mention any trends you have noticed
competitors adopting. List out your top competitors.
SWOT Analysis
List out the specific strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats within your market. If there are areas
that are particularly notable that will be a prime area of focus, expand upon
those areas in this introduction. You may also want to list out any environmental
challenges as a separate list.
Strengths (Internal advantages, things the business is already doing well,
the company’s competitive edge):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Weaknesses
(Internal inefficiencies, areas where the business
is falling behind the competition or is lacking resources):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Opportunities
(External areas within the marketplace where the
competition is weak and your business has potential. Use the PEST (political,
economical, social, technological) analysis to cover all the bases):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Threats
(External areas where the competition is strong or
there is a market trend with the potential to harm your business. Again, use
the PEST analysis here):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Target Market
In this section, give a synopsis of your
buyer personas. You should discuss why these are your target buyers as well as
the types of buyers you want to avoid. Remember, you can have as many buyer
personas as you feel necessary.
Buying Cycle
In this section, you will discuss the
buying cycle of your customers. Through your research, you should have
discovered how, when, where and why they buy. This is crucial to your strategy,
which you will also need to explain here. Discuss what your strategy is for
converting leads through each phase of the buying cycle - awareness,
consideration, decision (as coined by HubSpot).
Unique Selling
Proposition (USP)
This section is pretty straightforward.
Explain your unique selling proposition and how you differ from the
competition. You can also discuss how you will incorporate this USP into all
your messaging to ensure it is communicated through your brand to the end
buyer.
Brand
Discuss your brand and how it will be
communicated as well as protected. Any changes or strategies you are hoping to
develop around your brand should be included here. You should discuss how your
brand is currently perceived in the marketplace and how you plan to ensure the
brand stays strong, as well as how you plan to increase its visibility and
recognition or repair a brand that has an image issue. You can also discuss PR
here and how you plan to respond to any negative publicity or events.
Website
In this section, discuss how you plan to
improve/optimize your current site or explain your plans for a new site, if
that is your intention. You should mention why your website is so important and
the role it plays in attracting and converting buyers. If you will need additional
resources for your web plans list that here. You should also add how you will
measure your efforts and what success will look like by listing goals around
number of new web visitors, visitor to lead conversion rate, number of web
leads, lead to sales conversion rate and number of website sales.
Content Marketing
In this section, discuss the important role
content will play in your strategy. Explain how it will be used, who will be
creating it and why it will improve search and attract buyers. You should
discuss any changes from the previous year, list KPIs, explain how content will
be distributed and outline your rough goals for the plan. If you will need additional
resources, list those as well.
Social Media
Marketing
Explain here how you will be either
launching or maintaining social media channels. Include the strategies – how
you will keep a consistent presence, build relationships, gain followers, get
likes, etc. – and goals for each social media account, plus how you will keep your
brand consistent across all accounts. Explain the role social will play in
distributing content and bringing buyers back to the website.
Email Marketing
In this section, explain the role your
email marketing will play. Explain your strategy, goals and KPIs along with any
system changes (i.e. if you are using Exact Target but planning to switch to
MailChimp). Explain the importance of measurement and testing in email
marketing. You may also want to discuss how you will use personalization and
segmentation and how email will be incorporated into your overall campaigns.
SEO
In this section, discuss your SEO strategy
and its importance to your overall goals. You can discuss how it will be
incorporated throughout your website, social media and content marketing
efforts.
Measurement and KPIs
For inbound marketers, measurement is
hugely important. Here, list out how and when you plan to measure your efforts,
the KPIs you will use and what success ultimately looks like. Success should
tie back to the business objectives and marketing goals.
Marketing Strategy
and Tactics
In this section list your overarching
strategy. Everything you have just written out is part of your strategy, but
here you will recap it all in a brief synopsis. This is also a good place to
explain how marketing and sales will work together. If you are focusing on
certain tactics as a part of that strategy, list those here as well and explain
each one briefly. It is often helpful to have 4 or 5 main tactical initiatives
to focus on, which will help you reach the goals you listed out in the
beginning of this plan. Examples: re-vamp the blog, build a microsite and
improve SEO.
Download document - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4nT5aTUneiISl9VdTJWbTN3YWs
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