How to Create a Marketing Plan

Stuck on your marketing plan? 

Whether you’re a solopreneur or a marketing manager, a marketing plan can clear up a lot of decisions ahead of time so you can be lighter on your feet when things come up along the way.

Marketing tactics are evolving daily and if you feel the pressure to start a Tik Tok immediately even though you sell paper, think again.

*Note – no offense to any Tik Tokers selling paper. You do you.*

6 Things to Include in your Marketing Plan.

1. An overview of the product or service

Write as if your grandmother is reading this. The overview should be concise and include a few sentences about the company, as well as a few sentences about the products and services the company offers. If your company has a competitive advantage, aka something that makes it stand out above the rest, mention that.

If this is an internal document, this part can still be useful as a template for any inquiries in the future.

2. Objectives

Create a list of objectives for this quarterly/yearly plan. Less is more since there are a lot of moving parts that go into each. Aim to list three to five.

Objective examples:

– Post a weekly blog to drive traffic to the website and increase viewers per month by 10%

– Implement Instagram shop so that people can shop through social media as well as the website to increase sales by 20%

– Reach out to five influencers that have a following that includes my target market to create visibility and add to our audience

Get more specific as you identify goals under each objective. These goals can be drawn out as campaigns.

3. Campaigns

I suggest breaking the objectives up into campaigns. These campaigns will show in more detail how you plan to achieve these goals. What kinds of promotions will you do? What platforms will you use? What partners will you incorporate?

Campaign examples:

– Interview someone with an audience similar to your target market that you can post on your website to drive traffic there

– Subscribe to the email list and get a coupon code for a percentage off the price

– Giveaway on Instagram with a partner company with a similar audience to gain followers and potential customers

This can also remain high-level. Each should eventually be its own document that goes into more detail in the form of a mini-marketing plan. This will delve into the details of each: who will create content, what’s the timeframe, etc.

4. Target Market

Where is your audience hanging out? Discuss your ideal customer, as well as how many customers you currently have.

Ideal Customer Example: “Amanda loves going to Target and spending time with her friends. She has weekly get togethers at her apartment, which is decorative. Her core group likes to come over and watch a movie or play a board game. She works for a non-profit and cares about making people feel supported. She isn’t outdoorsy and her fall drink is a Pumpkin Spice Latte.”

The point of this is to figure out who you are trying to sell to. If you can get super specific, it allows you to communicate more clearly and identify where your ideal customer hangs out, virtually and physically.

You can then research this demographic and write down how many people there are in your market.

5. Budget

This budget can be an overview of how much you’re considering spending on marketing this year or quarter. Break it into sections:

Social Media – $5,000

Ads – $1,000

Partnerships – $10,000

Design – $1,000

Personnel – $50,000

Consultants – $20,000

6. Competitive Analysis

I recommend taking a look at your competitors for reference. Don’t let this make you feel inferior or get into your ego too much. Look at the facts: how many followers do they have on social media, what is their specialty, etc. Look at what’s similar and what’s different.

Take time to figure out what your competitive advantage is.

If you’re seemingly breaking into the market, meaning there’s no one like you, that’s worth noting!

Find yourself including anything and everything? Take a pause.

Chances are the creative juices are flowing. Feel free to write down all the ideas you have in your plan and then on the second read-through of the document, take out the excess ideas that you don’t want to forget and put them into a separate document that you can refer to later.

The more concise you can be in your marketing plan, the better.

I suggest creating the overall marketing plan and keeping it general and then breaking up each campaign and goal into its own mini-marketing-plan-of-action.

Get it! You’re on your way to something great.