How to Write a Simple Marketing Plan [With Free Fill-In-The-Blanks Template]
At GenM, our members come from a wide background of marketing expertise. Some users are seasoned marketers looking for an extra set of hands to help turn the wrenches in their marketing machine. Other users are experts in their respective industries but have only started to dip their toes into the world of digital marketing to grow their business. Regardless of where they’re at, there’s one common thread between those who are successful with their marketing efforts — they all have a plan (maybe built with a killer marketing plan template).
Having a plan and knowing how to put that plan into action is at the core of any good marketing effort. Without one, you’re liable to waste a lot of time (and often, a lot of money) without seeing any impactful results for your business. But where do you start? Thankfully, the expert marketers at GenM have created a simple marketing plan to get you started on your journey to growth, and just because we like you we’ve even made a marketing plan template you can use.
To create your first marketing plan, simply outline these six areas and you’ll be on your way to the lead-gen history books in no time.
Want to write a marketing plan of your own? Download our free Simple Marketing Plan Template.
1. Business Objectives
As highly as we like to think of ourselves sometimes, it’s important to remember that the marketing department is just a means to an end. Without a product to sell, or a customer service team to keep the peace, your marketing efforts will be all for naught. When writing your marketing plan, take a step back and ask yourself why you’re even writing one in the first place. What are the key objectives you’re hoping to achieve for your business as a whole. Depending on your business, this will be a lot of things to a lot of different people. Maybe you want to achieve 20% growth this quarter, maybe you want to launch a new product or feature. Once you know what your business needs to be successful, then you can start examining how marketing can assist with that. This step may require some input from those guiding the high-level strategy of your business before you get started filling in your marketing plan template.
Example: Grow 20% this quarter.
2. Marketing Priorities
Once you have a plan for your business as a whole, you can start looking to see where the marketing team can help with achieving those objectives. If your plan is to grow 20% this quarter but your product is lacking key features or your customer service team is short on the resources they need to keep users satisfied with their experience then your growth can’t be achieved by marketing alone. Where marketing could help with that is by bringing in new customers through lead gen campaigns, or re-engaging past customers to return. This step of the marketing plan template should be discussed with all teams and departments so that everyone is aligned with the core business objectives and can start planning what their department and team needs to do to make sure those objectives are achieved.
Example: Marketing team to bring in new customers via lead gen campaigns and generate sales through re-engaging past customers.
3. Marketing Goals
Now that you know what your marketing team needs to do in the abstract, it’s time to get a little more detailed with what those initiatives will look like tangibly. Using the example again of hitting 20% growth in the quarter then you should know exactly how many new customers that is and be able to attribute a number to that goal. There could also be other goals that go into achieving that primary goal. For example, if your newsletter is your main source of sales, then a goal could be to grow your email list by [X] new members.
When filling out this section of your marketing plan template, you want to be as specific as possible and keep things realistic relative to your capacity as a team and resources as a business. It’s ok to aim high, but keep in mind that you can’t pull your goals out of thin air. Look at where you’ve been in the past, and where you want to go in the future and go from there.
Example: Bring in 1200 new paying customers by the end of the quarter.
4. Marketing Strategy/Budget
With your goals set, your marketing team can now start thinking about how you’re going to go about making those goals a reality. Keep things somewhat high-level for this one as we will be breaking them down further in the next step of the marketing plan template. Going off our example goal of bringing in [X] new paying customers by the end of the quarter, you can start outlining what shape your lead gen campaigns will take to hit this goal. Keep in mind that not every strategy will be successful so don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Take a multifaceted approach to account for strategies that don’t take off as well as you hoped, or previously successful strategies that fail to scale.
At this stage, you should also be thinking about what your budget will look like. It’s true that often you have to spend money to make money — just know how much money you have to spend in the first place.
Examples: Launch Facebook ads. Introduce a coupon for newsletter recipients and increase the frequency of newsletter. Create a referral program.
5. Key Actions/Budget Allocation
Your goals are set and your strategy in place. It’s almost time to start getting the ball rolling putting this marketing plan into action. At this point, you can start outlining in detail what actions need to be taken to implement your strategy, who will be responsible for those actions, and the budget you will allocate for each action. You don’t have to get too granular for this one but break each strategy down into key actions that need to be taken to get them up and running and make sure the owner of each action is aware of the deadline for them and is being held accountable for making them a reality. For example, if you’re adding a coupon to your newsletter and increasing the frequency of your newsletter, your key actions might require you to build a new landing page, design an image for the coupon, and write copy for the CTA. If you’re going to launch Facebook ads, you will need to source creative, write copy, and allocate an appropriate budget.
Example: Design a new landing page and make live.
6. Risks and Contingencies
You’re probably getting pretty excited to get started at this point. We don’t blame you. Your plan is almost ready to get put into action. There’s just one more thing you need to be aware of before you get started. Like any great plan, there are risks you need to look out for and contingencies that are a requirement for you to be able to get things started in the first place. For example, if you’re increasing the frequency of your newsletter you need to keep in mind that there is a risk you could annoy your list and users will unsubscribe. If you want to launch Facebook ads, those might only be able to be launched on the contingency that your engineering department is able to implement the pixel tracking code onto your website and set up the appropriate triggers. This is an important section not to be overlooked. Be sure to take time and think critically about the risks and contingencies before filling out this section of your marketing plan template.
Keep track of your list of risks and contingencies throughout the implementation of your plan and be ready to pivot if need be.
Example: Increased frequency of the newsletter could lead to a spike in unsubscribes.
Key Takeaways
A solid marketing plan [and a solid marketing plan template] is at the core of any great business. When creating your plan, start high level and look at what your business as a whole needs. From there you can start to figure out where your marketing team can lend their expertise in hitting those goals. Set goals, build out a strategy, and then break that strategy down into key actions that can be distributed to members of your team. Be aware of potential risks, and contingencies required to make your plan a reality. Remember not to lose focus when you get into the thick of it implementing your plan. Be ready to pivot, but don’t lose sight of what you wrote in your original marketing plan template. Trust yourself, trust your team, and stick to the plan.
