Marketing plan outlines

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.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. Marketing Plan Outline 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: 1. Business Summary 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. 2. SWOT Analysis 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. 3. Business Initiatives 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? Free Marketing Plan Template Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan. Pre-Sectioned Template Completely Customizable Example Prompts Professionally Designed Download for free Learn more 4. Customer Analysis 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 5. Competitor Analysis Including a competitive analysis is essential when creating a marketing plan. Your buyer persona has choices when it comes to solving their problems, choices in both the types of solutions they consider and the providers that can administer those solutions. In your market research, you should consider your competition, what they do well, and where the gaps are that you can potentially fill. This can include: 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. 6. Market Strategy 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 i