The Guide to Marketing Plans

What is a marketing plan?

• A marketing plan is a report that outlines your marketing strategy for the coming year, quarter, or month. Usually, a marketing plan will include:

• A summary of your business’s marketing and advertising aspirations

• A description of your business’s current marketing situation.

• A timeframe of when tasks within the strategy will be completed.

• Key performance indicators (KPIs) you will be keeping tabs on.

• An explanation of your business’s target audience and customer needs.

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.

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, a sound marketing plan shows that your strategies are backed up by research and data.

How do you make a marketing plan?

The scope of your marketing plan varies depending on its purpose or the type of organization it is 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.

A comprehensive marketing plan will include these key features:

1.       A simple executive summary

An executive summary introduces readers to your company goals, marketing triumphs, future plans, and other important contextual facts.

2.       Metric-driven marketing goals

As a rule of thumb, be as specific as possible. Avoid vague targets such as “more facebook likes” or “more content on twitter” and replace them with metrics such as “increase facebook likes per post by 20%” or “25% more tweet engagements a week on twitter”.

3.       User personas

Who are your ideal customers? What are their goals? What are their biggest problems? How does your business solve their problems? Investigate demographics, interests and personality traits using various market research techniques to discover your ideal customer down to a tee.

4.       Research your competitors

This section will help you identify who your competitors are, what they are doing, and how you could carve yourself a place alongside them in your niche – and ideally, surpass them. Research their strengths and weaknesses in all parts of their company, and you will find some great opportunities. A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis can be a fantastic way to evaluate your competitors.

World Digital Foundation can aid you in developing a marketing plan, our advisors and services can help you address your marketing plan holistically, to create a concise, effective and achievable set of objectives.