15 marketing plan examples to inspire your work

Marketing plan examples

Whether you’re a marketer or managing a team of marketers, a marketing plan is essential to keep your department on track. Following a marketing plan ensures your team executes the correct strategy and achieves its goals.

But every business is different, which means every marketing plan is unique. It’s helpful to see marketing plan examples to understand all the different formats and types of marketing plans.

In this guide, we’ll share 15 examples of successful marketing plans to inspire your team to create its next great strategy. We’ll also share best practices and tools to set direction and provide structure for your marketing efforts. At the end of this article, you’ll have a better understanding of how to create the right marketing plan for your organization.

This post will cover:

How to create a marketing plan

  • Visit Baton Rouge
  • University of Illinois
  • Lush Cosmetics
  • The Wisconsin Public Library
  • Botanical Bounty
  • The Palm Beaches, Florida
  • The City of West Chicago
  • Safe Haven Family Shelter
  • Austin, Texas
  • Visit Oxnard

Create a strong marketing plan for your business

Adobe can help, marketing plan faq.

Before we look at marketing plan examples, it’s important to understand the foundational concepts of how companies structure their marketing plans.

Every organization is unique, but you can create a marketing plan by first identifying your business goals and establishing the metrics you’ll use to measure results. From there, learn about the customers you’re targeting and conduct competitor research. Then you can organize a team and set a budget before creating the marketing plan.

When it’s time to write the marketing plan, make sure your document includes these seven sections at a minimum:

  • Executive summary. This is a high-level overview of your business and the marketing approach you’ll follow.
  • Mission statement. Describe your company’s unique selling proposition (USP) and your brand’s purpose.
  • Marketing objectives. This section of the plan should focus on marketing-specific goals that will help you achieve your broader business objectives.
  • SWOT analysis. Through a SWOT analysis, your team will identify internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats.
  • Market research. This section of the marketing plan addresses your market, competitors, existing solutions, and target audience.
  • Marketing strategy. The marketing strategy part of your plan should detail exactly how you’re going to achieve your marketing goals. Be as specific as possible to make this document valuable to your marketing team.
  • Budget. Finally, break down your marketing tactics and assign a budget for each area of your strategy. If your budget changes frequently, set aside a certain percentage of your total budget for each tactic, instead of dollar amounts.

Once you create a marketing plan, you might wonder whether it’s effective or if there’s a better way to structure the plan for your situation. For example, a SaaS business has very different needs than an ecommerce company, so your marketing plan likely needs some level of customization.

If you need more direction, check out marketing plan examples from businesses within your industry or with a similar business model. Learn from these 15 successful marketing plan examples to create an effective plan for your own business.

1. Visit Baton Rouge

Visit Baton Rouge as an example for a marketing plan

Baton Rouge, Louisiana might not be as well-known as New Orleans, but the vibrant city wanted to change that through an ambitious new marketing plan . Not only is the plan organized and easy to follow, but it does a great job of highlighting the needs of its multiple audiences.

For example, its separate personas for “Leisure Travelers” and “Sales/Meetings Travelers” help Baton Rouge create custom marketing journeys based on each persona’s unique expectations. The marketing plan has a fully fleshed-out strategy that includes an event calendar, which gives the marketing team actionable next steps after creating its plan.

2. University of Illinois

In 2021, the University of Illinois set out to boost enrollment. Its Office of Undergraduate Admissions created an in-depth marketing plan with three major sections:

  • Section I provides context on the admissions process and knowledge of its target students.
  • Section II dives into market research on the current state of admissions and student demographics.
  • Section III details the university’s strategic action plan, including success metrics.

The University of Illinois marketing plan is effective because it breaks down the high-level components of its strategy, as well as specific marketing tactics. Instead of aiming for generic goals like “interact with high school students,” the plan indicates specific tactics to make that happen, such as direct mail campaigns, swag, and events.

As this marketing plan example for Sony shows, it’s possible to compose a simple but actionable plan for your team. The plan keeps its introduction, vision, and marketing objectives clean, to-the-point, and easy to read.

This marketing plan does a great job of focusing on pricing as a marketing differentiator. Although you might consider pricing to be a sales or product issue, it can have a direct impact on how customers perceive your business. Specify what your prices will be, how the pricing model works, and why your pricing is a differentiator.

4. Coca-Cola

Marketing plans are usually documented in text, but this isn’t the only way you can share your marketing plan with the team. For example, Coca-Cola created its own video marketing plan in 2020. The video follows the typical format of a written marketing plan, but distills big concepts into easily digestible visuals through the power of video.

This approach is ideal if you need to communicate the contents of your marketing plan to a large group or to marketing-adjacent teams, like sales or product development. It doesn’t hurt that the whiteboard-style cartoon animation draws viewers in to ensure everyone truly understands your marketing strategy.

5. Lush Cosmetics

Lush Cosmetics is a renowned international beauty brand. In anticipation of its expansion into Portugal, Lush created a new marketing plan for customers in this new market.

The Lush in-depth marketing plan touches on several elements, including:

  • Specific geographical areas of Lush’s two stores in Portugal, and the unique considerations for shoppers in these areas.
  • Physical marketing within Lush stores, including the store and staff direction, as an extension of the marketing team.
  • The brand’s unique approach to sensory marketing, which describes precisely how Lush products appeal to all of its shoppers’ senses.

When crafting your own marketing plan, consider adding new sections that are unique to your brand, such as Lush’s section on sensory marketing. This will make the plan more relevant to your business and simplify execution.

6. The Wisconsin Public Library

The Wisconsin Public Library created this no-frills marketing plan example specifically for other organizations to copy and use. Although it’s intended for use by libraries, anyone can access and use the components in this free marketing plan template.

The Wisconsin Public Library marketing plan includes several helpful resources. For example, the “Research Your Audience” section links to resources for conducting audience research, including the United States Census and focus groups.

As with any template, be sure to replace the library’s content with information about your business and market. This marketing plan example doesn’t include a list of marketing tools or media. If that’s important to your company, be sure to create a new section detailing the tools your marketing team will use to execute the strategy.

7. Patagonia

Sometimes it’s difficult for companies to articulate their mission statement. However, every business has a greater purpose. Outdoor brand Patagonia is a great example of how large companies should lead marketing initiatives with a mission statement.

On the Patagonia website , the brand makes its mission statement clear: “We're in business to save our home planet.” This isn’t lip service — Patagonia donates a percentage of its profits to protecting the environment.

Your marketing plan needs to marry your corporate mission statement with direct action. For example, if you’re a B2B brand and your mission is to support small businesses with affordable accounting software, your marketing plan could include interviews with small business owners. Or maybe you could host local get-togethers for small business owners while promoting your brand.

The goal is to blend your mission statement with your marketing tactics in a way that makes it clear your business is truly living out its mission statement.

8. Cyberclick

Cyberclick is a marketing agency based in Barcelona, Spain. As a marketing agency, it knows the importance of understanding its target audience.

In this marketing plan example, Cyberclick creates multiple buyer personas to help it understand customer pain points. For example, it has personas like Bilingual Brandon, Millennial Molly, and Donor Dana to understand the unique traits of its target buyers.

When composing your own marketing strategy, follow Cyberclick’s example by creating in-depth personas that your marketing team will find useful. Your personas should include:

  • Demographic information
  • Geographic information
  • Social media preferences
  • Personality
  • Personal and professional goals
  • Pain points
  • Software and tools used

9. Starbucks

Starbucks as an example of a marketing plan

Coffee giant Starbucks is famous for its distinctive brand elements. Consumers immediately recognize the hunter-green mermaid logo, but the Starbucks marketing plan doesn’t just revolve around clever branding. If anything, the company’s success comes down to the buyer experience.

In fact, experience is part of the Starbucks marketing plan . The company targets higher-earning professionals who are willing to pay a premium for drinks. Instead of simply serving coffee, its marketing team works with interior designers and architects to create posh spaces that encourage buyers to spend time in the store as a “third place,” which also increases brand engagement and retention.

Your marketing plan should address the experience buyers can expect from your brand. In an age when many businesses compete over customer service and experience, the quality of service you provide can also give you a competitive marketing advantage.

10. Botanical Bounty

Botanical Bounty is an herbal tea and supplement company based out of New York City. In this marketing plan example , the Botanical Bounty executive summary quickly spells out the problem, solution, market overview, competition, and unique selling proposition (USP) for the company. Formatted like a case study, the executive summary is easy to read and does a great job of summarizing the entire report.

Botanical Bounty also highlights specific due dates for its marketing milestones, as well as target metrics for those milestones. Many marketing plans fail to set specific due dates for milestones, but Botanical Bounty holds itself accountable for executing the plan by assigning due dates for each goal.

11. The Palm Beaches, Florida

The Palm Beaches is known for upscale homes and beaches, but the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County wanted to turn the Florida town into more than a beach destination. In its marketing plan , the council lays out its plan to transform The Palm Beaches into a hub for culture and art in a post-COVID environment.

The marketing plan first describes the council’s past successes in 2020 and 2021, which lays the groundwork for the 2022 marketing plan. This is a great way to show a continuation between different marketing plans, especially if your company’s past initiatives feed into this year’s strategies.

12. The City of West Chicago

The City of West Chicago has a rich history, but it’s largely misunderstood by people in the surrounding areas. In an effort to revitalize tourism, the city created a new marketing plan to rebrand itself and promote the area as a travel destination.

If you’re considering a new image or brand for your company, the West Chicago marketing plan is a great example to follow. The plan creates new market segments for the city’s ideal audience, a plan to drive awareness, and a list of strategic partnerships to aid in the rebrand.

13. Safe Haven Family Shelter

Safe Haven Family Shelter is a nonprofit that aids families experiencing homelessness. Its 2022 marketing plan tells the story of Safe Haven while promoting itself as an industry authority.

In this marketing plan example , Safe Haven takes an action-focused approach. Its template aligns objectives and action steps side by side, assigning staff members to each action step. The marketing plan also includes items like an editorial calendar and social media calendar, which its staff use for planning precise messaging that fits the organization’s larger goals.

14. Austin, Texas

Austin Texas Marketing

Austin, Texas isn’t just the state capital — it’s also considered the live music capital of the world. However, tourism dipped substantially during the pandemic, and the city’s Visit Austin nonprofit responded with an updated marketing plan to attract tourists to the Texas capital.

The Visit Austin marketing plan includes a visual representation of its wins from 2021, which measured the impact of the organization’s work in past years. But this marketing plan truly shines in terms of its market research. Visit Austin not only conducted in-depth research about travelers’ plans to visit Austin, but also visualized this data in an engaging format to boost understanding.

15. Visit Oxnard

Oxnard, California, faced similar challenges with pandemic recovery. Visit Oxnard created a marketing plan to position the city as a destination for both leisure and business.

What’s unique about the Visit Oxnard plan is that it leans heavily into the business side of travel. Its marketing plan includes considerations for business events and meetings, as well as a strategy for attracting film productions as a less expensive alternative to Los Angeles. This is a great example of how marketing plans can introduce new, out-of-the-box positioning and segmentation to take advantage of a gap in the market.

Marketing plans clarify your focus and give marketing teams a solid vision of what they need to do. But not all plans are effective. It’s important to develop a strong marketing plan to give your audience exactly what it needs, as well as make a name for yourself in an increasingly competitive market.

While these 15 marketing plan examples are a great jumping-off point, you might need more guidance on how to create a marketing plan. Check out Adobe’s guide to building a marketing plan to get the most results from your marketing plan. You can also use our marketing plan templates to save time organizing and formatting your marketing plan.

You need a marketing plan to move forward. But then you need to execute your plan, and that’s where things can get complicated.

After investing in a marketing plan, opt for an automation platform to save time and deliver a better user experience. Adobe Marketo Engage helps businesses make sense of complex buying journeys. Build engaging, personalized experiences at scale and prove your impact every step of the way with this all-in-one marketing platform.

Watch the Marketo Engage overview video or take the interactive tour to learn more.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a documented strategy for how a business plans to promote itself over a period of time. Organizations use this marketing plan to set goals, learn about their audience, and create marketing campaigns to help the business stand out.

What are some marketing plan examples?

Coca-Cola created a unique marketing plan formatted not as a written document, but as a video. This marketing plan example is a great illustration of how businesses should make their marketing plans as digestible as possible to increase internal adoption and understanding.

What are the elements of a good marketing plan?

Every good marketing plan should include an executive summary, a mission statement, marketing objectives, a SWOT analysis, market research, a marketing strategy, and a budget. Many marketing plans include additional sections as needed, depending on an organization’s goals and strategy.

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/digital-marketing-strategy-definition

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/strategic-planning

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/learn-about-marketing-campaign-management

examples of business marketing plans

10 Marketing Plan Examples to Inspire Your Campaigns

What do hiking a trail, driving to a friend’s house, and executing marketing campaigns all have in common? Each requires you to closely follow directions.

Directions are a critical part of our daily life. Used correctly, they can guide decision-making processes, make labor more efficient, and get where you want to go as quickly as possible. 

But failing to keep track of directions could cost you — and not just gas money. When it comes to marketing strategies, not having a clear goal tanks web traffic, dissipates brand interest, and costs companies across the United States a whopping $400 billion a year.

Designing a marketing plan is certainly no easy task, but it can be made easier with best practices, strategic tips, and concrete examples from successful businesses all over the world.

examples of business marketing plans

Start selling online now with Shopify

examples of business marketing plans

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a strategic document that acts as a guide for marketing campaigns and strategies. These critical road maps detail where you are, where you’re going, and how you plan to get there.

The average marketing plan consists of seven major sections:

  • Writing an executive summary
  • Discussing the mission statement
  • Listing marketing objectives
  • Performing a SWOT analysis
  • Completing market research
  • Designing a market strategy
  • Determining a budget

The more detailed a marketing plan is, the more efficient it will be at accomplishing its goals. 

As you might imagine, marketers who bother to write a concrete marketing plan enjoy several benefits :

  • Organized marketers have a 674% higher chance of reporting success
  • Marketers who set goals are 377% more successful than those who don’t

It’s clear that a successful marketing plan opens pathways to other forms of business success — although the process is underutilized at best. More than three out of four small business owners lack an overarching marketing plan if they don’t have a clear path of growth. Creating a holistic marketing plan is absolutely necessary to scale brands at any level of development.

10 marketing plan examples from every industry

It’s much simpler to design a plan of action when the groundwork already exists. Below are 10 marketing plans sourced from real companies and brands around the world, highlighting unique approaches to researching, crafting and implementing a marketing strategy . 

1. Contently

Popular SaaS Contently developed a visual marketing plan for developing future campaigns. The strategy depicts its plan in a “waterfall” format, with goals blending into methods of application that eventually lead to success metrics. Although far more casual than other examples on this list, the work provides an excellent overview of a marketing plan’s necessary components.

Contently marketing plan

2. Visit Baton Rouge

The Baton Rouge area of Louisiana generates millions of dollars every year from tourism alone. The Visit Baton Rouge marketing plan was born from a need to better position the area and create long-term strategies for generating interest. This 38-page document goes into detail describing different destinations, events, and calendars, including recommended measurements for success.

Top marketing plan examples: Baton Rouge

Created by SaaS company HubSpot , this template includes a business summary, SWOT matrix, market strategy, budget, and other important aspects of a marketing plan. By filling it out, you can make informed decisions about your company’s positioning and your marketing in general.

HubSpot marketing plan

4. Evernote

Evernote provides a comprehensive marketing plan template for businesses of any size. Create a plan that walks through overviews, timelines, research, personas, and all other elements of an airtight campaign. If desired, you can also implement this template into your Evernote account to start developing a marketing plan almost immediately.

great examples of marketing plan: Evernote

5. University of Illinois

Even educational institutes need marketing plans. The University of Illinois created a very straightforward document that encapsulates its market context, research efforts, and current campaigns. Objectives and success metrics are completed in the third section, with about 40 pages overall. 

6. Monday.com

Monday.com is a project management platform providing in-house templates to all active users. This marketing plan offers various categories and subcategories that track project progress with data visualizations. Detailed objectives and KPIs can be identified in-app, including columns for a projected cost range.

Popular health and hygiene brand Lush released a comprehensive marketing plan walking through some products, positioning, and a marketing calendar for upcoming product releases. One of the highlights includes a detailed SWOT analysis with easy to read graphics. This is particularly helpful for brands in the personal care industry, among others.

Lush marketing plan

8. Coca-Cola

Industry titan Coca-Cola released a strategy video that encompasses all seven elements of a holistic marketing plan. The proposal primarily explains the major content initiatives for the coming year, and focuses on how the brand’s initial ideas can be practically implemented into the existing strategy. 

examples of business marketing plans

9. Naperville Park District

Publicly funded recreational parks often have limited access to resources, which is why the Naperville Park District created a strategic marketing plan right at the beginning. This extremely detailed document walks through the company’s mission, situational analysis, strategy, and budget, on a micro-level.

nashville park marketing plan

10. Starbucks

Unlike the longform documents we’ve seen already, Starbucks takes a more concise approach. This six-page release details a strategy to elevate CX and brand ambassadors around the world. The marketing plan touches on individual strategies and tactics, as well as the methods used to ensure success. It’s important to note the detailed customer journey profiles that fit into a five-year strategy.

beverge marketing plan: starbucks

How to approach a marketing plan

Now that you know what a marketing plan looks like, it’s time to explore the initial stages of drafting and publishing your very first plan. Once you establish some basic starting points, a little research is all you need to get started.

Determine your goals

Directions simply don’t matter without an endpoint in mind. Craft some meaningful goals for your marketing campaign that envelop your brand’s values, objectives, and year-end plans. It’s best to use the SMART goal framework:

The more specific your goals are, the more effective your marketing plan will be.

Check your competitors

Staying abreast of your competitors and market share is critical in the early stages of a marketing plan. Using competitive analysis tools or an internal process, take some time to evaluate the approach that others are using — and how you can do better.

You might want to:

  • Perform a competitive analysis
  • Keep a close eye on industry news
  • Browse competitor social media content

Keep in mind that it’s possible to hire freelancers to perform competitive analysis for you, depending on your needs and time constraints.

Identify your audience

Understanding your target market — including their goals, ages, values, and demographics — is the golden rule of marketing. This can be done several ways, either by using data, creating personas, or outlying features in a document.

It’s best to consider everything that may be relevant to your audience in the marketing plan, including how products can be positioned in a way that makes them relevant. For example, a customer with a degree in IT would be more interested in ads that speak to their experience and industry pain points.

If you don’t have a target audience in mind yet, consider using programs like Google Analytics or in-platform insights from Facebook to identify specific segments.

Craft final KPIs

The difference between a good marketing plan and a great marketing plan starts with key performance metrics (KPIs). These will be used to measure the effectiveness of your campaign and provide detailed information about what worked, what didn’t, and what you can change in the future.

Every marketing plan should rely on its own unique set of metrics, all fitted to individual needs. If you’re looking for specific examples, you might want to try:

  • Raising the number of followers on a social media account
  • Generating a certain amount of website leads 
  • Achieving higher email open rates 

Keep in mind that your final metrics should adhere to the SMART method for best results.

Perform your revisions

The marketing plan is a living document and must be updated regularly to remain current. The average plan only has a shelf life of one to five years , on average, and should receive regular revisions in the meantime.

Take a closer look at your past goals, competitors, audience, and KPIs. Are any of these outdated or ill-aligned? What has changed for the company since its initial publication date? Make these adjustments accordingly (and hopefully with members of a team or committee).

Create marketing plans that guide your business well

It’s not enough to just write a marketing plan. In an increasingly competitive world of iron-clad strategies, marketing pros should take their time developing a plan that lasts. The above examples are a great place to start, especially as you craft an approach that is catered to your industry. 

Keep an eye on the growth of your business once your marketing plan hits the shelves. Continue to find new ways to optimize, refine, and otherwise make what you have even better than before. With an airtight marketing plan by your side, the possibilities are virtually limitless.

Want to learn more?

  • How to Create a Killer Social Media Marketing Plan
  • The Complete Guide to Getting Started With Influencer Marketing
  • 7 of the Best Landing Page Examples to Learn From
  • Instagram Marketing Tips to Shoot Up Your Sales

color psychology

Color Psychology: How Strategic Color Choices Enhance Marketing and Brand Impact (2024)

Dicover how brands use color psychology to enahnce marketing and brand impact.

examples of business marketing plans

How To Create a Content Strategy That Actually Drives Traffic

A content strategy is your roadmap to content marketing success. Learn how to create one that consistently drives traff…

animation software

13 Best Free Animation Software Programs To Use (2024)

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need expensive software to create animated clips. In fact, you can make these vid…

Oberlo uses cookies to provide necessary site functionality and improve your experience. By using our website, you agree to our privacy policy.

  • Marketing |
  • How to create a winning marketing plan, ...

How to create a winning marketing plan, with 3 examples from world-class teams

Caeleigh MacNeil contributor headshot

A marketing plan helps leaders clearly visualize marketing strategies across channels, so they can ensure every campaign drives pipeline and revenue. In this article you’ll learn eight steps to create a winning marketing plan that brings business-critical goals to life, with examples from word-class teams.

quotation mark

To be successful as a marketer, you have to deliver the pipeline and the revenue.”

In other words—they need a well-crafted marketing plan.

Level up your marketing plan to drive revenue in 2024

Learn how to create the right marketing plan to hit your revenue targets in 2024. Hear best practices from marketing experts, including how to confidently set and hit business goals, socialize marketing plans, and move faster with clearer resourcing.

level up your marketing plan to drive revenue in 2024

7 steps to build a comprehensive marketing plan

How do you build the right marketing plan to hit your revenue goals? Follow these eight steps for success:

1. Define your plan

First you need to define each specific component of your plan to ensure stakeholders are aligned on goals, deliverables, resources, and more. Ironing out these details early on ensures your plan supports the right business objectives, and that you have sufficient resources and time to get the job done. 

Get started by asking yourself the following questions: 

What resources do I need? 

What is the vision?

What is the value?

What is the goal?

Who is my audience?

What are my channels?

What is the timeline?

For example, imagine you’re creating an annual marketing plan to improve customer adoption and retention in the next fiscal year. Here’s how you could go through the questions above to ensure you’re ready to move forward with your plan: 

I will need support from the content team, web team, and email team to create targeted content for existing customers. One person on each team will need to be dedicated full-time to this initiative. To achieve this, the marketing team will need an additional $100K in budget and one new headcount. 

What is the vision?  

To create a positive experience for existing customers, address new customer needs, and encourage them to upgrade. We’ll do this by serving them how-to content, new feature updates, information about deals and pricing, and troubleshooting guides. 

According to the Sales Benchmark Index (SBI) , CEOs and go-to-market leaders report that more than 60% of their net-new revenue will come from existing customers in 2023. By retaining and building on the customers we have, we can maintain revenue growth over time. 

To decrease the customer churn rate from 30% to 10%, and increase upgrades from 20% to 30% in the next fiscal year. 

All existing customers. 

The main channel will be email. Supporting marketing channels include the website, blog, YouTube, and social media. 

The first half of the next fiscal year. 

One of the most important things to do as you create your marketing strategy is to identify your target audience . As with all marketing, you need to know who you’re marketing to. If you’re having a hard time determining who exactly your target audience is, try the bullseye targeting framework . The bullseye makes it easy for you to determine who your target audience is by industry, geography, company size, psychographics, demographics, and more.

2. Identify key metrics for success 

Now it’s time to define what key marketing metrics you’ll use to measure success. Your key metrics will help you measure and track the performance of your marketing activities. They’ll also help you understand how your efforts tie back to larger business goals. 

Once you establish key metrics, use a goal-setting framework—like objectives and key results (OKRs) or SMART goals —to fully flush out your marketing objectives. This ensures your targets are as specific as possible, with no ambiguity about what should be accomplished by when. 

Example: If a goal of your marketing plan is to increase email subscriptions and you follow the SMART goal framework (ensuring your objective is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) your goal might look like this: Increase email subscription rate from 10% to 20% in H1 . 

3. Research your competition 

It’s easy to get caught up in your company’s world, but there’s a lot of value in understanding your competitors . Knowing how they market themselves will help you find opportunities to make your company stand out and capture more market share.

Make sure you’re not duplicating your competitors’ efforts. If you discover a competitor has already executed your idea, then it might be time to go back to the drawing board and brainstorm new ways to differentiate yourself.  By looking at your competitors, you might be surprised at the type of inspiration and opportunities you’ll find.

To stay ahead of market trends, conduct a SWOT analysis for your marketing plan. A SWOT analysis helps you improve your plan by identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 

Example: If your competitor launches a social media campaign identical to what you had planned, go back to the drawing board and see how you can build off their campaign. Ask yourself: How can we differentiate our campaign while still getting our message across? What are the weaknesses of their campaign that we can capitalize on? What angles did they not approach?

4. Integrate your marketing efforts

Here’s where the fun comes in. Let’s dive into the different components that go into building a successful marketing plan. You’ll want to make sure your marketing plan includes multiple supporting activities that all add up into a powerful marketing machine. Some marketing plan components include: 

Lead generation

Social media

Product marketing

Public relations

Analyst relations

Customer marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Conversational marketing

Knowing where your consumer base spends the most time is significant for nailing this step. You need to have a solid understanding of your target audience before integrating your marketing efforts. 

Example: If your target audience is executives that spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, focus your social media strategy around placing branded content on LinkedIn. 

5. Differentiate with creative content

Forty-nine percent of marketers say visual images are hugely important to their content strategy. In other words, a clear brand and creative strategy is an essential component to every marketing plan. As you craft your own creative strategy, here are some tips to keep in mind: 

Speak to your audience: When defining your creative strategy, think about your audience—what you want them to feel, think, and do when they see your marketing. Will your audience find your creative work relevant? If your audience can’t relate to your creative work, they won’t feel connected to the story you’re trying to tell. 

Think outside the box: Find innovative ways to engage your audience, whether through video, animations, or interactive graphics. Know what screens your creative work will live on, whether desktop, mobile, or tablet, and make sure they display beautifully and load quickly across every type of device. 

Tie everything back to CTAs: It’s easy to get caught up in the creative process, so it’s important to never lose sight of your ultimate goal: Get your audience to take action. Always find the best way to display strong Calls to Action (CTAs) in your creative work. We live in a visual world—make sure your creative content counts.

Streamline creative production:   Once you’ve established a strong creative strategy, the next step is to bring your strategy to life in the production stage. It’s vital to set up a strong framework for your creative production process to eliminate any unnecessary back and forth and potential bottlenecks. Consider establishing creative request forms , streamlining feedback and approval processes, and taking advantage of integrations that might make your designers’ lives easier.

Example: If your brand is fun and approachable, make sure that shows in your creative efforts. Create designs and CTAs that spark joy, offer entertainment, and alleviate the pressure in choosing a partner.

6. Operationalize your marketing plan

Turn your plan into action by making goals, deliverables, and timelines clear for every stakeholder—so teams stay accountable for getting work done. The best way to do this is by centralizing all the details of your marketing plan in one platform , so teams can access the information they need and connect campaign work back to company goals.  

With the right work management tool , you can: 

Set goals for every marketing activity, and connect campaign work to overarching marketing and business objectives so teams focus on revenue-driving projects. 

Centralize deliverables for your entire marketing plan in one project or portfolio .

Mark major milestones and visualize your plan as a timeline, Gantt chart, calendar, list, or Kanban board—without doing any extra work. 

Quickly loop in stakeholders with status updates so they’re always up to date on progress. This is extremely important if you have a global team to ensure efforts aren’t being duplicated. 

Use automations to seamlessly hand off work between teams, streamlining processes like content creation and reviews. 

Create dashboards to report on work and make sure projects are properly staffed , so campaigns stay on track. 

With everything housed in one spot, you can easily visualize the status of your entire marketing plan and keep work on track. Building an effective marketing plan is one thing, but how you operationalize it can be your secret to standout marketing.

Example: If your strategy focuses on increasing page views, connect all campaign work to an overarching OKR—like “we will double page views as measured by the amount of organic traffic on our blog.” By making that goal visible to all stakeholders, you help teams prioritize the right work. 

See marketing planning in action

With Asana, marketing teams can connect work, standardize processes, and automate workflows—all in one place.

See marketing planning in action

7. Measure performance

Nearly three in four CMOs use revenue growth to measure success, so it’s no surprise that measuring performance is necessary. You established your key metrics in step two, and now it’s time to track and report on them in step eight.

Periodically measure your marketing efforts to find areas of improvement so you can optimize in real-time. There are always lessons to be learned when looking at data. You can discover trends, detect which marketing initiatives performed well, and course-correct what isn’t performing well. And when your plan is complete, you can apply these learnings to your next initiative for improved results. 

Example: Say you discover that long-form content is consistently bringing in 400% more page views than short-form content. As a result, you’ll want to focus on producing more long-form content in your next marketing plan.

Marketing plan examples from world-class teams

The best brands in the world bring their marketing plans to life every day. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out these examples from successful marketing teams.

Autodesk grows site traffic 30% three years in a row

When the Autodesk team launched Redshift, it was initially a small business blog. The editorial team executed a successful marketing plan to expand it into a premier owned-media site, making it a destination for stories and videos about the future of making. 

The team scaled content production to support seven additional languages. By standardizing their content production workflow and centralizing all content conversations in one place, the editorial team now publishes 2X more content monthly. Read the case study to learn more about how Autodesk runs a well-oiled content machine.

Sony Music boosts creative production capacity by 4X

In recent years the music industry has gone through a pivotal transition—shifting from album sales to a streaming business model. For marketing and creative teams at Sony Music, that meant adopting an “always on” campaign plan. 

The team successfully executed this campaign plan by centralizing creative production and approvals in one project. By standardizing processes, the team reduced campaign production time by 75%. Read the case study to learn more about how Sony Music successfully scaled their creative production process.

Trinny London perfects new customer acquisition 

In consumer industries, social media is crucial for building a community of people who feel an affinity with the brand—and Trinny London is no exception. As such, it was imperative that Trinny London’s ad spend was targeted to the correct audience. Using a work management tool, Trinny London was able to nail the process of creating, testing, and implementing ads on multiple social channels.

With the help of a centralized tool, Trinny London improved its ad spend and drove more likes and subscriptions on its YouTube page. Read the case study to learn more about how Trinny London capitalized on paid advertising and social media. 

Turn your marketing plan into marketing success 

A great marketing plan promotes clarity and accountability across teams—so every stakeholder knows what they’re responsible for, by when. Reading this article is the first step to achieving better team alignment, so you can ensure every marketing campaign contributes to your company’s bottom line. 

Use a free marketing plan template to get started

Once you’ve created your marketing strategy and are ready to operationalize your marketing plan, get started with one of our marketing templates . 

Our marketing templates can help you manage and track every aspect of your marketing plan, from creative requests to approval workflows. Centralize your entire marketing plan in one place, customize the roadmap, assign tasks, and build a timeline or calendar. 

Once you’ve operationalized your entire marketing plan with one of our templates, share it with your stakeholders so everyone can work together in the same tool. Your entire team will feel connected to the marketing plan, know what to prioritize, and see how their work contributes to your project objectives . Choose the best marketing template for your team:

Marketing project plan template

Marketing campaign plan template

Product marketing launch template

Editorial calendar template

Agency collaboration template

Creative requests template

Event planning template

GTM strategy template

Still have questions? We have answers. 

What is a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is a detailed roadmap that outlines the different strategies your team will use to achieve organizational objectives. Rather than focusing solely on the end goal, a marketing plan maps every step you need to reach your destination—whether that’s driving pipeline for sales, nurturing your existing customer base, or something in-between. 

As a marketing leader, you know there’s never a shortage of great campaign and project ideas. A marketing plan gives you a framework to effectively prioritize work that aligns to overarching business goals—and then get that work done. Some elements of marketing plans include:

Current business plan

Mission statement  

Business goals

Target customers  

Competitive analysis 

Current marketing mix

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Marketing budget  

What is the purpose of a marketing plan?

The purpose of a marketing plan is to grow your company’s consumer base and strengthen your brand, while aligning with your organization’s mission and vision . The plan should analyze the competitive landscape and industry trends, offer actionable insights to help you gain a competitive advantage, and document each step of your strategy—so you can see how your campaigns work together to drive overarching business goals. 

What is the difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy? 

A marketing plan contains many marketing strategies across different channels. In that way, marketing strategies contribute to your overall marketing plan, working together to reach your company’s overarching business goals.

For example, imagine you’re about to launch a new software product and the goal of your marketing plan is to drive downloads. Your marketing plan could include marketing strategies like creating top-of-funnel blog content and launching a social media campaign. 

What are different types of marketing plans? 

Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, what your timeline is, or which facet of marketing you’re driving, you’ll need to create a different type of marketing plan. Some different types of marketing plans include, but aren’t limited to:

General marketing plan: A general marketing plan is typically an annual or quarterly marketing plan that details the overarching marketing strategies for the period. This type of marketing plan outlines marketing goals, the company’s mission, buyer personas, unique selling propositions, and more. A general marketing plan lays the foundation for other, more specific marketing plans that an organization may employ. 

Product launch marketing plan: A product launch marketing plan is a step-by-step plan for marketing a new product or expanding into a new market. It helps you build awareness and interest by targeting the right audience, with the right messaging, in the right timeframe—so potential customers are ready to buy your new offering right away. Nailing your product launch marketing plan can reinforce your overall brand and fast-track sales. For a step-by-step framework to organize all the moving pieces of a launch, check out our product marketing launch template .

Paid marketing plan: This plan includes all the paid strategies in your marketing plan, like pay-per-click, paid social media advertising, native advertising, and display advertising. It’s especially important to do audience research prior to launching your paid marketing plan to ensure you’re maximizing ROI. Consult with content strategists to ensure your ads align with your buyer personas so you know you’re showing ads to the right people. 

Content marketing plan: A content marketing plan outlines the different content strategies and campaigns you’ll use to promote your product or service. When putting together a content marketing plan, start by identifying your audience. Then use market research tools to get the best insights into what topics your target audience is most interested in.

SEO marketing plan: Your SEO marketing plan should work directly alongside your content marketing plan as you chart content that’s designed to rank in search results. While your content marketing plan should include all types of content, your SEO marketing plan will cover the top-of-funnel content that drives new users to your site. Planning search engine-friendly content is only one step in your SEO marketing plan. You’ll also need to include link-building and technical aspects in order to ensure your site and content are as optimized as possible.

Social media marketing plan: This plan will highlight the marketing strategies you plan to accomplish on social media. Like in any general or digital marketing plan , your social media strategy should identify your ideal customer base and determine how they engage on different social media platforms. From there, you can cater your social media content to your target audience.  

Related resources

examples of business marketing plans

Campaign management is broken. Here’s how to fix it.

examples of business marketing plans

How Asana uses work management for content marketing

examples of business marketing plans

7 causes of content calendar chaos—and how to solve them

examples of business marketing plans

3 ways to launch marketing campaigns faster with Asana

We use essential cookies to make Venngage work. By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.

Manage Cookies

Cookies and similar technologies collect certain information about how you’re using our website. Some of them are essential, and without them you wouldn’t be able to use Venngage. But others are optional, and you get to choose whether we use them or not.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are always on, as they’re essential for making Venngage work, and making it safe. Without these cookies, services you’ve asked for can’t be provided.

Show cookie providers

  • Google Login

Functionality Cookies

These cookies help us provide enhanced functionality and personalisation, and remember your settings. They may be set by us or by third party providers.

Performance Cookies

These cookies help us analyze how many people are using Venngage, where they come from and how they're using it. If you opt out of these cookies, we can’t get feedback to make Venngage better for you and all our users.

  • Google Analytics

Targeting Cookies

These cookies are set by our advertising partners to track your activity and show you relevant Venngage ads on other sites as you browse the internet.

  • Google Tag Manager
  • Infographics
  • Daily Infographics
  • Graphic Design
  • Graphs and Charts
  • Data Visualization
  • Human Resources
  • Training and Development
  • Beginner Guides

Blog Marketing

What is a Marketing Plan & How to Create One [with Examples]

By Sara McGuire , Oct 26, 2023

Marketing Plan Venngage

After employee salaries, marketing is typically the biggest expense for most businesses.

As a business owner or marketer, don’t you want to make sure your marketing dollars are being spent in the most productive way possible? Yeah, me too.

But what often ends up happening is most businesses try different marketing tactics without a clear plan, and walk away with little success.

Or they’ll get lucky and score a big marketing win but soon find themselves unable to  scale their marketing tactics, goals and strategies  to drive consistent growth.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to grow your business strategically and maximize ROI  generated from your marketing dollars with a well-defined marketing plan.

Don’t know how to create a marketing plan? Start with one of Venngage’s templates today. You don’t need any design skills to make a great plan that helps align your team and grow your business.

Click to jump ahead:

What is a marketing plan.

  • How to create a marketing plan
  • Marketing plan vs. Marketing strategy
  • Types of marketing plans
  • 9 marketing plan templates
  • Marketing plan design and writing tips

A marketing plan is a report that outlines your marketing strategy for your products or services, which could be applicable for the coming year, quarter or month.  

Watch this quick, 13-minute video for more details on what a marketing plan is and how to make one yourself:

Typically, a marketing plan includes:

  • An overview of your business’s marketing and advertising goals
  • A description of your business’s current marketing position
  • A timeline of when tasks within your strategy will be completed
  • Key performance indicators (KPIs) you will be tracking
  • A description of your business’s target market and customer needs
  • A description of how you will measure the performance of the strategy

For example, this marketing plan template provides a high-level overview of the business and competitors before diving deep into specific goals, KPIs and tactics:

Orange Content Marketing Plan Template

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.

With Venngage’s extensive catalog of marketing plan templates , creating your marketing plan isn’t going to be hard or tedious. In fact, Venngage has plenty of helpful communications and design resources for marketers. If you’re ready to get started, sign up for  Venngage for Marketers   now. It’s free to register and start designing.

Venngage for Marketers Page Header

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, Venngage for Marketers helps you get things done. You’ll also get helpful webinars and presentations delivered right to your inbox, like this one:

Growth By Content Webinar Banner

How to write a marketing plan 

As mentioned above, the scope of your marketing plan varies depending on its purpose or the type of organization it’s 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 and more, like in this example:

content marketing plan template

Marketing plan outline

A typical outline of a marketing plan includes:

  • Executive summary
  • Goals and objectives
  • User personas
  • Competitor analysis/SWOT analysis
  • Baseline metrics
  • Marketing strategy
  • Tracking guidelines

Below you will see in details how to write each section as well as some examples of how you can design each section in a marketing plan.

Let’s look at how to create a successful marketing plan (click to jump ahead):

  • Write a simple executive summary
  • Set metric-driven marketing goals
  • Outline your user personas
  • Research all of your competitors
  • Set accurate key baselines & metrics
  • Create an actionable marketing strategy
  • Set tracking or reporting guidelines

1. Write a simple executive summary

Starting your marketing plan off on the right foot is important. You want to pull people into your amazing plan for marketing domination. Not bore them to tears.

Creative Marketing Plan Executive Summary

One of the best ways to get people excited to read your marketing plan is with a well-written executive summary. An executive summary introduces readers to your company goals, marketing triumphs, future plans, and other important contextual facts.

Standard Business Proposal Executive Summary

Basically, you can use the Executive Summary as a primer for the rest of your marketing plan.

Include things like:

  • Simple marketing goals
  • High-level metrics
  • Important company milestones
  • Facts about your brand
  • Employee anecdotes
  • Future goals & plans

Try to keep your executive summary rather brief and to the point. You aren’t writing a novel, so try to keep it under three to four paragraphs.

Take a look at the executive summary in the marketing plan example below:

Content Marketing Proposal Executive Summary

The executive summary is only two paragraphs long — short but effective.

The executive summary tells readers about the company’s growth, and how they are about to overtake one of their competitors. But there’s no mention of specific metrics or figures. That will be highlighted in the next section of the marketing plan.

An effective executive summary should have enough information to pique the reader’s interest, but not bog them down with specifics yet. That’s what the rest of your marketing plan is for!

The executive summary also sets the tone for your marketing plan. Think about what tone will fit your brand ? Friendly and humorous? Professional and reliable? Inspiring and visionary?

2. Set metric-driven marketing goals

After you perfect your executive summary, it’s time to outline your marketing goals.

(If you’ve never set data-driven goals like this before, it would be worth reading this growth strategy guide ).

This is one of the most important parts of the entire marketing plan, so be sure to take your time and be as clear as possible.

As a rule of thumb, be as specific as possible. The folks over at  VoyMedia  advise that you should set goals that impact website traffic, conversions, and customer success — and to use real numbers.

Avoid outlining vague goals like:

  • Get more Twitter followers
  • Write more articles
  • Create more YouTube videos (like educational or Explainer videos )
  • Increase retention rate
  • Decrease bounce rate

Instead, identify  key performance metrics  (KPI) you want to impact and the percentage you want to increase them by.

Take a look at the goals page in the marketing plan example below:

Creative Marketing Plan Goals

They not only identify a specific metric in each of their goals, but they also set a timeline for when they will be increased.

The same vague goals listed earlier become much clearer when specific numbers and timelines are applied to them:

  • Get 100 new Twitter followers per month
  • Write 5 more articles per week
  • Create 10 YouTube videos each year
  • Increase retention rate by 15% by 2020
  • Decrease bounce rate by 5% by Q1
  • Create an online course  and get 1,000 new leads

You can dive even deeper into your marketing goals if you want (generally, the more specific, the better). Here’s a marketing plan example that shows how to outline your growth goals:

Growth Goals Roadmap Template for a Marketing Plan

3. Outline your user personas

Now, this may not seem like the most important part of your marketing plan, but I think it holds a ton of value.

Outlining your user personas is an important part of a marketing plan that should not be overlooked.

You should be asking not just how you can get the most visitors to your business, but how you can get the right visitors.

Who are your ideal customers? What are their goals? What are their biggest problems? How does your business solve customer problems?

Answering these questions will take lots of research, but it’s essential information to get.

Some ways to conduct user research are:

  • Interviewing your users (either in person or on the phone)
  • Conducting focus groups
  • Researching other businesses in the same industry
  • Surveying your audience

Then, you will need to compile your user data into a user persona  guide.

Take a look at how detailed this user persona template is below:

Persona Marketing Report Template

Taking the time to identify specific demographic traits, habits and goals will make it easier for you to cater your marketing plan to them.

Here’s how you can create a user persona guide:

The first thing you should add is a profile picture or icon for each user persona. It can help to put a face to your personas, so they seem more real.

Marketing Persona

Next, list demographic information like:

  • Identifiers
  • Activities/Hobbies

The user persona example above uses sliding scales to identify personality traits like introversion vs. extroversion and thinking vs. feeling. Identifying what type of personality your target users tend to have an influence on the messaging you use in your marketing content.

Meanwhile, this user persona guide identifies specific challenges the user faces each day:

Content Marketing Proposal Audience Personas

But if you don’t want to go into such precise detail, you can stick to basic information, like in this marketing plan example:

Social Media Plan Proposal Template Ideal Customers

Most businesses will have a few different types of target users. That’s why it’s pertinent to identify and create several different user personas . That way, you can better segment your marketing campaigns and set separate goals, if necessary.

Here’s a marketing plan example with a segmented user persona guide:

Mobile App Market Report

The important thing is for your team or client to have a clear picture of who their target user is and how they can appeal to their specific problems.

Start creating robust user personas using Venngage’s user persona guide .

4. Conduct an extensive competitor analysis

Next, on the marketing plan checklist, we have the competitor research section. This section will help you identify who your competitors are, what they’re doing, and how you could carve yourself a place alongside them in your niche — and ideally, surpass them. It’s something you can learn to do with rank tracking software .

Competitor research is also incredibly important if you are starting a blog .

Typically, your competitor research should include:

  • Who their marketing team is
  • Who their leadership team is
  • What their marketing strategy is (this will probably revolve some reverse-engineering)
  • What their sales strategy is (same deal)
  • Social Media strategy (are they using discounting strategies such as coupon marketing to get conversions)
  • Their market cap/financials
  • Their yearly growth (you will probably need to use a marketing tool like Ahrefs to do this)
  • The number of customers they have & their user personas

Also, take as deep a dive as you can into the strategies they use across their:

  • Blog/Content marketing
  • Social media marketing
  • SEO Marketing
  • Video marketing
  • And any other marketing tactics they use

Research their strengths and weaknesses in all parts of their company, and you will find some great opportunities. Bookmark has a great guide to different marketing strategies for small businesses  if you need some more information there.

You can use this simple SWOT analysis worksheet to quickly work through all parts of their strategy as well:

Competitive SWOT Analysis

Click the template above to create a SWOT chart . Customize the template to your liking — no design know-how needed.

Since you have already done all the research beforehand, adding this information to your marketing plan shouldn’t be that hard.

In this marketing plan example, some high-level research is outlined for 3 competing brands:

Content Marketing Proposal Competitive Research

But you could take a deeper dive into different facets of your competitors’ strategies. This marketing plan example analyses a competitor’s content marketing strategy:

Competitor-Analysis-Content-Marketing-Plan-Template

It can also be helpful to divide your competitors into Primary and Secondary groups. For example, Apple’s primary competitor may be Dell for computers, but its secondary competitor could be a company that makes tablets.

Your most dangerous competitors may not even be in the same industry as you. Like the CEO of Netflix said, “Sleep is our competition.”

5. Set accurate key baselines & metrics

It’s pretty hard to plan for the future if you don’t know where your business stands right now.

Before we do anything at Venngage, we find the baselines so we can compare future results to something. We do it so much it’s almost like second nature now!

Setting baselines will allow you to more accurately track your progress. You will also be able to better analyze what worked and what didn’t work, so you can build a stronger strategy. It will definitely help them clearly understand your goals and strategy as well.

Here’s a marketing plan example where the baselines are visualized:

Social Media Marketing Proposal Success Metrics

Another way to include baselines in your plan is with a simple chart, like in the marketing plan example below:

Simple-Blue-Social-Media-Marketing-Plan

Because data can be intimidating to a lot of people, visualizing your data using charts and infographics will help demystify the information.

6. Create an actionable marketing strategy

After pulling all the contextual information and relevant metrics into your marketing plan, it’s time to break down your marketing strategy.

Once again, it’s easier to communicate your information to your team or clients using visuals .

Mind maps are an effective way to show how a strategy with many moving parts ties together. For example, this mind map shows how the four main components of a marketing strategy interact together:

Marketing Plan Mind Map Template

You can also use a flow chart to map out your strategy by objectives:

Action Plan Mind Map

However you choose to visualize your strategy, your team should know exactly what they need to do. This is not the time to keep your cards close to your chest.

Your strategy section may need to take up a few pages to explain, like in the marketing plan example below:

Creative-Modern-Content-Marketing-Plan-Template

With all of this information, even someone from the development team will understand what the marketing team is working on.

This minimalistic marketing plan example uses color blocks to make the different parts of the strategy easy to scan:

Blue-Simple-Social-Media-Marketing-Plan-Template

Breaking your strategy down into tasks will make it easier to tackle.

Another important way to visualize your marketing strategy is to create a project roadmap. A project roadmap visualizes the timeline of your product with individual tasks. Our roadmap maker can help you with this.

For example, this project roadmap shows how tasks on both the marketing and web design side run parallel to each other:

Simple Product Roadmap Plan Template

A simple timeline can also be used in your marketing plan:

Strategy Timeline Infographic

Or a mind map, if you want to include a ton of information in a more organized way:

Business Strategy Mindmap Template

Even a simple “Next, Now, Later” chart can help visualize your strategy:

3 Step Product Roadmap Template

7. Set tracking or reporting guidelines

Close your marketing plan with a brief explanation of how you plan to track or measure your results. This will save you a lot of frustration down the line by standardizing how you track results across your team.

Like the other sections of your marketing plan, you can choose how in-depth you want to go. But there need to be some clear guidelines on how to measure the progress and results of your marketing plan.

At the bare minimum, your results tracking guidelines should specify:

  • What you plan to track
  • How you plan to track results
  • How often you plan to measure

But you can more add tracking guidelines to your marketing plan if you see the need to. You may also want to include a template that your team or client can follow,  for  client reporting ,  ensure that the right metrics are being tracked.

Marketing Checklist

The marketing plan example below dedicates a whole page to tracking criteria:

SEO Marketing Proposal Measuring Results

Use a task tracker to track tasks and marketing results, and a checklist maker to note down tasks, important life events, or tracking your daily life.

Similarly, the marketing plan example below talks about tracking content marketing instead:

Social Media Marketing Proposal

Marketing plan vs. marketing strategy

Although often used interchangeably, the terms “marketing plan” and “marketing strategy” do have some differences.

Simply speaking, a marketing strategy presents what the business will do in order to reach a certain goal. A marketing plan outlines the specific daily, weekly, monthly or yearly activities that the marketing strategy calls for. As a business, you can create a marketing proposal for the marketing strategies defined in your company’s marketing plan. There are various marketing proposal examples that you can look at to help with this.

A company’s extended marketing strategy can be like this:

marketing strategy mind map

Notice how it’s more general and doesn’t include the actual activities required to complete each strategy or the timeframe those marketing activities will take place. That kind of information is included in a marketing plan, like this marketing plan template which talks about the content strategy in detail:

Content Marketing Proposal

Types of marketing plans that can transform your business strategy

Let’s take a look at several types of marketing plans you can create, along with specific examples for each.

1. General marketing strategic plan / Annual marketing plan

This is a good example of a marketing plan that covers the overarching annual marketing strategy for a company:

marketing strategy template marketing plan

Another good example would be this Starbucks marketing plan:

Starbucks marketing plan example

This one-page marketing plan example from coffee chain Starbucks has everything at a glance. The bold headers and subheadings make it easier to segment the sections so readers can focus on the area most relevant to them.

What we like about this example is how much it covers. From the ideal buyer persona to actional activities, as well as positioning and metrics, this marketing plan has it all.

Another marketing plan example that caught our eye is this one from Cengage. Although a bit text-heavy and traditional, it explains the various sections well. The clean layout makes this plan easy to read and absorb.

Cengage marketing plan example

The last marketing plan example we would like to feature in this section is this one from Lush cosmetics.

It is a long one but it’s also very detailed. The plan outlines numerous areas, including the company mission, SWOT analysis , brand positioning, packaging, geographical criteria, and much more.

Lush marketing plan

2. Content marketing plan

A content marketing plan highlights different strategies , campaigns or tactics you can use for your content to help your business reach its goals.

This one-page marketing plan example from Contently outlines a content strategy and workflow using simple colors and blocks. The bullet points detail more information but this plan can easily be understood at a glance, which makes it so effective.

contently marketing plan

For a more detailed content marketing plan example, take a look at this template which features an editorial calendar you can share with the whole team:

nonprofit content marketing plan

3. SEO marketing plan

Your SEO marketing plan highlights what you plan to do for your SEO marketing strategy . This could include tactics for website on-page optimization , off-page optimization using AI SEO , and link building using an SEO PowerSuite backlink API for quick backlink profile checks.

This SEO marketing plan example discusses in detail the target audience of the business and the SEO plan laid out in different stages:

SEO marketing plan example

4. Social media marketing plan

Your social media marketing plan presents what you’ll do to reach your marketing goal through social media. This could include tactics specific to each social media channel that you own, recommendations on developing a new channel, specific campaigns you want to run, and so on, like how B2B channels use Linkedin to generate leads with automation tools and expand their customer base; or like making use of Twitter walls that could display live Twitter feeds from Twitter in real-time on digital screens.

Edit this social media marketing plan example easily with Venngage’s drag-and-drop editor:

social media marketing plan example

5. Demand generation marketing plan

This could cover your paid marketing strategy (which can include search ads, paid social media ads, traditional advertisements, etc.), email marketing strategy and more. Here’s an example:

promotional marketing plan

9 marketing plan examples to inspire your growth strategy

1. free marketing plan template.

Here’s a free nonprofit marketing plan example that is ideal for organizations with a comprehensive vision to share. It’s a simple plan that is incredibly effective. Not only does the plan outline the core values of the company, it also shares the ideal buyer persona.

examples of business marketing plans

Note how the branding is consistent throughout this example so there is no doubt which company is presenting this plan. The content plan is an added incentive for anyone viewing the document to go ahead and give the team the green light.

2. Pastel social media marketing campaign template

Two-page marketing plan samples aren’t very common, but this free template proves how effective they are. There’s a dedicated section for business goals as well as for project planning .

Pastel Social Media Marketing Plan Template

The milestones for the marketing campaign are clearly laid out, which is a great way to show how organized this business strategy is.

3. Small business marketing strategy template

This marketing plan template is perfect for small businesses who set out to develop an overarching marketing strategy for the whole year:

Notice how this aligns pretty well with the marketing plan outline we discussed in previous sections.

In terms of specific tactics for the company’s marketing strategy, the template only discusses SEO strategy, but you can certainly expand on that section to discuss any other strategies — such as link building , that you would like to build out a complete marketing plan for.

4. Orange simple marketing proposal template

Marketing plans, like the sample below, are a great way to highlight what your business strategy and the proposal you wan to put forward to win potential customers.

Orange Simple Marketing Proposal Template

5. One-page marketing fact sheet template

This one-page marketing plan example is great for showcasing marketing efforts in a persuasive presentation or to print out for an in-person meeting.

Nonprofit Healthcare Company Fact Sheet Template

Note how the fact sheet breaks down the marketing budget as well as the key metrics for the organization. You can win over clients and partners with a plan like this.

6. Light company business fact sheet template

This one-page sample marketing plan clearly outlines the marketing objectives for the organization. It’s a simple but effective way to share a large amount of information in a short amount of time.

Light Company Business Fact Sheet Template

What really works with this example is that includes a mission statement, key contact information alongside all the key metrics.

7. Marketing media press kit template

This press kit marketing plan template is bright and unmistakable as belonging to the Cloud Nine marketing agency . The way the brand colors are used also helps diversify the layouts for each page, making the plan easier to read.

Marketing Media Press Kit Template

We like the way the marketing department has outlined the important facts about the organization. The bold and large numbers draw the eye and look impressive.

8. Professional marketing proposal template

Start your marketing campaign on a promising note with this marketing plan template. It’s short, sharp and to the point. The table of contents sets out the agenda, and there’s a page for the company overview and mission statement.

Professional Marketing Proposal Template

9. Social media marketing proposal template

A complete marketing plan example, like the one below, not only breaks down the business goals to be achieved but a whole lot more. Note how the terms and conditions and payment schedule are included, which makes this one of the most comprehensive marketing plans on our list.

Checkered Social Media Marketing Proposal Template

7 tips to keep in mind while you’re creating your marketing plan

While a marketing plan doesn’t necessarily have to be pretty, an impressive design certainly helps if you want your plan to be more convincing.

Presentation is especially important if you’re presenting your marketing plan to investors, or if you need to convince your boss to approve your requested marketing budget.

That’s where a marketing plan template can help. If you don’t have a designer available, or even if you want a framework to base your own design on, a template gives you a solid foundation to work with.

Start creating your marketing plan with a template and then customize the design to fit your information and to incorporate your own branding .

Here are seven marketing plan templates to get you started, along with some report design best practices you should follow when creating your plan.

1. Identify, describe and illustrate your target audience

Knowing your target audience is one of the most fundamental steps that every marketing team should take before making any marketing decisions. So by the time you begin writing your marketing plan, you should have your target audience identified.

In your marketing plan, you should dedicate a section to introducing your target audience.

To help keep your target audience top-of-mind when planning and executing your marketing strategies, it can be helpful to visualize your audience personas. Faux images of your personas, illustrations and icons are all great ways to put a face to your personas’ “names”.

Take this page from a marketing plan example that includes imagery and icons:

A photo of “Cassandra Vane”, their “head of marketing” persona, is provided to make the character seem more real. You can incorporate photos seamlessly into your page design by using image frames.

Icons are also used to visualize the different components that make up this persona (their identifies, their demographic information, their goals and their unique challenges).

2. Visualize important process flows and strategy roadmaps

To effectively outline new marketing strategies, processes, and timelines, it can be very helpful to visualize the flows.

You could opt for a classic flow chart or a more creative marketing plan infographic . Whatever type of visual you choose to create, the goal should be to make the information easier for people to follow.

The first step is to organize your flow into distinct steps. Remember to clearly label each step and to use symbols  like lines or arrows to indicate the direction in which the flow should be read.

It can also be helpful to visualize each step using different shapes, or attaching an icon to each step.

For example, this page visualizes an email campaign flow:

Marketing Business Proposal Email Campaign

Icons represent each email as an individual block, to make it easier for readers to visualize the process. Concise descriptions give readers context to understand the flow chart.

Take a look at how information flows visually throughout this promotional marketing plan template thanks to strategically placed visual cues:

Marketing Business Proposal

3. Emphasize important statistics, metrics, and numbers in your marketing plan

To make your plan both more convincing, and easier to scan, you should create a hierarchy of information in your page design.

For example, you can use charts and pictograms to visualize important stats or metrics. Or you could write important numbers in a bright-colored font so they stand out from the rest of the text.

This is an opportunity to get creative with your page design. Look at how speech bubble pictograms are used in this marketing plan example to show key statistics:

Content Strategy Plan

In that same marketing plan, important content-related data is emphasized using brightly colored shapes, illustrative icons and big fonts:

Content Strategy Plan Content Inventory

Color choice , icons and font styles all help bring key information forward in this content strategy plan template:

Content Strategy Marketing Plan Example

4. Use your main marketing goal to guide your design

One of the main goals of your marketing plan is to identify your high-level marketing goals. Your marketing plan design should be driven by this goal–in your page layouts and in the design elements you use.

You can do this by picking a design motif that reflects your goal and using that throughout your marketing plan. This could be a particular shape or item (for example, using images of plants in a work plan to represent growth) or a color scheme that reflects the mood of your mission.

This social media marketing plan example identifies their goal as being the go-to source of inspiration and information for runners:

Blue-Social-Media-Marketing-Plan-Template-

Take a look at how they use chat bubble icons and a bright, bold color scheme to give their marketing plan a friendly and energetic design:

Creative Social Media Marketing Proposal

Pro Tip: You don’t need to create a comprehensive marketing plan yourself. With our real-time collaboration feature , you can leverage your entire team to help you shape your marketing plan together anytime, anywhere. In real-time.

Real-time-Collaboration-Venngage-1

5. Vary your page designs to make your marketing plan engaging

Putting in the extra bit of effort to use visuals will not only make your marketing plan more engaging, it will also make it easier for readers to retain information.

That’s why while you could use the same page layout throughout your whole plan, it’s a good idea to vary your page design. Mixing up your design will prevent your plan from being too predictable. Plus, you will have more flexibility to visualize information creatively .

For example, this SEO plan template simply inverts the color scheme on each page. While the overall color scheme for the whole plan is cohesive, each individual page is varied:

SEO Marketing Proposal

6. Visualize your top channels using charts, icons, and pictograms

It’s important for your team to understand your highest-performing channels. That way, you can identify areas you may want to funnel more resources into, whether it be social media, paid ads , mobile app advertising , organic or referral traffic.

This is where visual communication can be highly effective. A simple but effective way to analyze your channels is to visualize the data. You can do this using charts , pictograms and infographics with Venngage’s infographic creator .

For example, a pie chart can put into perspective where the bulk of your traffic is coming from:

Green Business Marketing Plan Presentation Template

A stacked bar would also work well to visualize this information.

You can also use icons to emphasize and differentiate between channels, like in this marketing plan slide:

White Business Marketing Plan Presentation Template

Take a look at how charts, icons and color-coding make it easy to scan this marketing agenda presentation for information about specific channels:

Marketing Agenda Business Presentation

7. Use borders or color blocks to organize your pages into sections

Generally, it’s good practice to stick to one topic per page. This will help keep your marketing plan more organized and make it easier for readers to scan for information.

That being said, you may want to put more than one topic on the same page, like if both topics are directly related. In that case, you can organize the page into sections using borders or blocks of background color.

For example, look at how this page is clearly divided into two sections, thanks to the use of a color block background:

Promotional Marketing Plan Messaging

Blocks of color are also used to make the sections headers stand out. Take a look at the different pages in this promotional plan template:

Promotional Marketing Plan

A few more marketing plan design best practices:

Here are a few quick tips to keep in mind when start designing your marketing plan.

Keep your design elements like fonts, icons and colors consistent

While it’s good to switch up the layout of your pages to keep your marketing plan engaging, it’s important to keep your design consistent. That means:

  • Using the same font styles for your headers, body text, and accent text (generally, try to stick to only using 2-3 different font styles in one report)
  • Using the same color scheme throughout your plan, and using the same colors for specific types of information (ex. blue for “social media goals” and green for “SEO goals”)
  • Using the same style of icons throughout your report, like flat icons, line art icons, or illustrated icons

marketing plan example

Download your marketing plan as a PDF

It’s important that your team is on the same page. Sharing your marketing plan via Google Docs or a file-sharing service can be unreliable. In most cases, it’s easier to simply download your marketing plan as a PDF and share it with your team that way.

You can download your marketing plan in high-quality PDF digital flipbook or interactive PDF format with Venngage.

Include a table of contents to make it easy to find specific information

This tip is pretty self-explanatory. Even if you’re putting together your marketing plan as a presentation, a simple table of contents at the beginning will give your audience an idea of what they can expect.

Marketing Plan FAQs

What should marketing plans include.

Marketing plans should include:

  • A detailed analysis of the target market and customer segments.
  • Clear and achievable marketing objectives and goals.
  • Strategies and tactics for product promotion and distribution.
  • Budget allocation for various marketing activities.
  • Timelines and milestones for the implementation of marketing strategies.
  • Evaluation metrics and methods for tracking the success of the marketing plan.

What is an executive summary in a marketing plan and what is its main goal?

An executive summary in a marketing plan is a brief overview of the entire document, summarizing the key points, goals, and strategies. Its main goal is to provide readers with a quick understanding of the plan’s purpose and to entice them to read further.

What are the results when a marketing plan is effective?

When a marketing plan is effective, businesses can experience increased brand visibility, higher customer engagement, improved sales and revenue, and strengthened customer loyalty.

What is the first section of a marketing plan?

The first section of a marketing plan is typically the “Executive Summary,” which provides a concise overview of the entire plan, including the business’s goals and the strategies to achieve them.

Now that you have the basics for designing your own marketing plan, it’s time to get started:

More marketing design guides and templates:.

15 Marketing Infographic Templates and Tips to Boost Audience Engagement

12 Business Pitch Deck Templates and Design Best Practices to Impress Investors

10 Page-Turning White Paper Examples and Design Tips

The Evolution of Marketing [Infographic]

  • Credit cards
  • View all credit cards
  • Banking guide
  • Loans guide
  • Insurance guide
  • Personal finance
  • View all personal finance
  • Small business
  • View all small business
  • View all taxes

You’re our first priority. Every time.

We believe everyone should be able to make financial decisions with confidence. And while our site doesn’t feature every company or financial product available on the market, we’re proud that the guidance we offer, the information we provide and the tools we create are objective, independent, straightforward — and free.

So how do we make money? Our partners compensate us. This may influence which products we review and write about (and where those products appear on the site), but it in no way affects our recommendations or advice, which are grounded in thousands of hours of research. Our partners cannot pay us to guarantee favorable reviews of their products or services. Here is a list of our partners .

How to Write a Marketing Plan

Meredith Wood

Many or all of the products featured here are from our partners who compensate us. This influences which products we write about and where and how the product appears on a page. However, this does not influence our evaluations. Our opinions are our own. Here is a list of our partners and here's how we make money .

A marketing plan outlines your marketing strategy, which includes how you’ll attract new customers, retain current customers and promote your products or services. Creating a marketing strategy is key to ensuring you’re making the most of your money while targeting the right people through the right channels so you can grow your business.

When you create your business plan, the marketing plan will be an important component. Within a business plan, the marketing plan helps to explain how your business fits into the market, who your competitors are and how you’ll stand out. Small-business marketing is all about how you will promote your products or services to increase sales through customer engagement.

1. Research

The first step when learning how to write a marketing plan for your business plan is research. You want to look at your market as a whole , your competitors, their marketing strategies and past marketing strategies you’ve used — if any. Your research will inform who your target customer base is, how to price your products , what marketing channels will best serve your business, how you want to interact with customers and what your marketing budget will be.

While not all your research will be included in your marketing plan, it will help to inform your marketing strategy. The final product will be a much condensed and synthesized version of what you discover from your research.

2. Know your business

To create an effective marketing strategy, you need to understand the ins and outs of your own business. What makes your products or services unique? What’s your company’s mission? Why did you start this business in the first place? Reminding yourself what makes your business special will help you inform your marketing strategy and show potential customers why they should choose to work with you. Plus, looking at your business from the viewpoint of a potential customer may help you uncover some unique selling points you hadn’t previously considered.

» MORE: Can your small-business idea actually make money?

3. Understand your customer

Beyond your business and the products or services it offers, you also need to take your customer into consideration when writing your marketing plan.

Understand your customer: who they are, what they like, their pain points, how your product or service solves their problem, how and where they consume media and how to communicate with them. Much of the success of your marketing strategy depends upon knowing and communicating well with your customers.

Identify your target market and narrow your scope to a specific demographic — like athletes or parents, for instance — to help you pinpoint the best way to reach them. If you cast your net too wide, you may come off as insincere and struggle to attract any customers.

4. Highlight your unique selling proposition

Your business’s unique selling proposition, or USP, is the thing that makes you stand out. If you want your product or service to sell well, you need to make sure it offers something your competitors don’t. To do that, you need to find your USP.

You likely have a good idea already of what your USP is, but it’s time to synthesize all of the great ideas you gathered in the previous steps into an easily shareable description. Consider this your elevator pitch. You want to be able to tell someone why your product or service is best in less than 30 seconds. You may also find a catchy slogan comes out of this, as well.

5. Check out the competition

While you need to make decisions that are right for your business based on internal information, you also should have an understanding of what your competitors are doing and how it’s working for them.

Take a look at their products, pricing and marketing strategies. Check out their customer reviews to see what people like and dislike about their business. Then use this information to make your business — and marketing strategy — even better.

6. Know your numbers

A marketing strategy will cost money; however, it doesn’t have to be a lot. In fact, there are plenty of free marketing ideas you can try. However, you will likely need to spend some money if you want to make money in the long run. Understanding your business financials to come up with a realistic marketing budget is crucial before you can decide on your concrete marketing plan.

7. Show, don't tell

If you have any marketing collateral already created, such as logos, ads or social media posts, be sure to include them in your marketing strategy. This will show potential investors or lending partners that you’ve made concrete progress on your business’s marketing plan.

8. Test your strategy and talk to customers

The only way to truly know whether your marketing strategy will work is to show it to real people and get their opinions. While you don’t need to have your entire marketing plan created to get feedback, it’s a good idea to run some general ideas past a focus group to get their input. These can be potential customers or friends and family — just make sure you’re getting their honest feedback. Use the results to tweak your strategy to better suit your customers.

» MORE: Common startup mistakes and how to avoid them

What to include in a marketing plan

Now that you've done the research for your marketing strategy, you need to synthesize it into an easily digestible plan that shows yourself and potential investors that you know how to market your business. You can use the following components as a sort of marketing plan template to organize your research:

Product or service overview. If your business sells products, include specifics like sizes, types, colors, features and pricing. For services, detail what they are, what problems they solve, why they will be in demand and what they cost.

Target customer personas. Who are they? How old are they? Where do they live? How much do they make, on average? Are they married or single? Do they have kids and/or pets? What are their interests, wants, and needs?

USP. Through researching the market, your competition and customers, you know how your business stands out. Be sure you can explain what makes your business unique.

Marketing budget. Outline how much of your overall business budget you’re planning to allocate to marketing. Based on your research, you can also include projections for how this budget will grow your sales.

Marketing channels. For a fully comprehensive marketing plan, you’ll likely use a combination of several channels — email , social media, SMS , local , digital , etc. Detail which you'll focus on, the budget for each, expected returns and what numbers you'll track (views, clicks, subscribers, etc.).

Conversion and retention strategy. Outline a plan for converting leads into paying customers — and for retaining those customers and getting their repeat business. New customers are important, but so is customer retention. After all, it’s more expensive to find a new customer than it is to foster a relationship with an existing one.

Marketing collateral. In the interest of space, you may want to include just a couple of items within the marketing plan section itself, and you can include the rest in the business plan appendix.

» MORE: Best marketing tools for small businesses

A version of this article originally appeared on Fundera, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.

On a similar note...

Special sale for Gretta van Riel's Start & Scale. Get Ecommerce Masters free!

  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

A magazine for young entrepreneurs

examples of business marketing plans

The best advice in entrepreneurship

Subscribe for exclusive access, how to create a marketing plan in 2023 (template + examples).

examples of business marketing plans

Written by Jesse Sumrak | December 12, 2022

Comments -->

Marketing plan graphic

Get real-time frameworks, tools, and inspiration to start and build your business. Subscribe here

Marketing is an often misunderstood profession. Peers often stereotype marketing with massive budgets, loosey-goosey timelines, haphazard tactics, high-profile influencers, and Snapchat filters. In reality, modern marketing plans are more complex and orchestrated than a Premier League-winning football team.

Businesses have big goals to hit and fine margins to walk—and they need realistic, yet imaginative, marketing plans to make it happen. Sure, bigger companies can spend all willy-nilly hiring Taylor Swift for a commercial op and dropping a quarter million on Facebook advertising, but small businesses and startups have to get downright strategic with every dollar they spend.

If your business is trying to stretch every penny, you’ve come to the right place. This article will show you how to create a marketing plan in 2023 that actually works with a down-to-earth budget. We’ve included step-by-step actions, outlines, examples, and more to give you everything you need to take an idea to the market with laser precision.

Table of Contents

What is a marketing plan?

How to create a marketing plan

Marketing plan template

Marketing plan example

Marketing Plan FAQs

What is a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is a documented roadmap for how you plan to drive awareness, sales, signups, attendance, or other marketing initiatives. It outlines your KPIs, budget, and timeline, dictating everything from the critical milestones to the nitty-gritty to-do items.

Marketing plans come in all shapes and sizes. You could build an overarching marketing plan to document and guide your entire department’s annual goals and strategies for the upcoming year. Or you might create a marketing plan detailing the launch strategy for the brand-new product release coming out next quarter. Big plans can even include small plans, just like an adorable collection of Russian nesting dolls.

Plans can be short, long, fat, or thin—just remember what your plan is trying to accomplish. If you’re trying to pitch an idea to a team of venture capitalists or a local bank, you might need a chunky document with accompanying spreadsheets and financial figures. However, if you’re trying to communicate the plan to your marketing team leads, you’ll want to skip straight to the point with tactics, deadlines, and deliverables.

Regardless of your use case, the next section will give you the building blocks you need to create a marketing plan that works.

ERIC BANDHOLZ: Growing Beards and Brands with Content Marketing

How to Create a Marketing Plan

This section will show you the 7-step process to creating a marketing plan. Plans are fluid and versatile, so we don’t recommend filling out one of these with pen and paper—get your eraser ready because a marketing plan is never perfect from the get-go.

Here’s an overview of the 7-step process:

  • Establish Your Marketing Goal
  • Identify Your Audience and Competitors
  • Set Your Marketing Budget
  • Determine Your Deadline(s)
  • Pick Your Marketing Channels and Tactics
  • Outline the To-Do List and Make Assignments
  • Track Performance and Review Analytics

Don’t worry too much about making it all nice and pretty right now. Later, you can use our provided marketing outline to copy, paste, and format a more articulated version for widespread distribution. For now, just focus on hashing out each section and answering the thought-provoking questions.

1. Establish Your Marketing Goal

Define exactly what you’re trying to achieve. Do you want to drive more sales? How much? What about recurring customers? How many? Do you need to increase brand awareness? To whom and by how much?

Work out the details of what you want to accomplish, why, and how you’re going to measure it. Establish your KPIs early on to measure the success of your marketing campaign. You’ll refer to these numbers throughout the rest of your marketing plan, so get specific.

For example, how many website visitors you’re trying to drive will affect your marketing budget, deadlines, and tactics. And if you’re targeting a specific demographic, you may need to engage different marketing teams to use the appropriate channels and messaging.

Fine-tune your marketing goal so that you can communicate it simply in a single sentence. For example: “The goal is to drive 25,000 key decision-makers to the new product page by the end of October with a limited marketing budget of $75,000.”

Content marketing frameworks button

2. Identify Your Audience and Competitors

Explain who this campaign is targeting. If you’ve already built out your buyer personas, you’ll just plug in the persona appropriate to this campaign. However, if this is your first time thinking long and hard about your target audience, really get to know the person you’re marketing to.

Depending on your product, industry, and market, you’ll want to know demographics like:

  • Marital status

These details help you identify a broad audience, but you’ll want to narrow it down with psychographics.

Psychographics dig deeper . They cover your audience’s:

  • Influencers
  • Shopping behaviors

Demographics explain the “who,” while psychographics explain the “why.”

Think about if you were trying to sell a baseball glove. How you market that glove is going to be very different depending on the buyer. Are your messaging and channels targeting a college athlete, recreational youngster, mom, dad, or low-income family? It’s hard to know what to say and how to say it unless you know who you’re talking to.

Don’t just gloss over this section. Without a target audience, you’ll be blindly throwing darts at a board—sure, some plans might work out, but it’ll come down less to strategy and more to sheer luck. A target audience and replicable formula make your success a science and not a game of Russian roulette.

Once you’ve identified your audience, you need to figure out who’s also targeted the same people. Competition research is a way to understand who you are up against for eyeballs, SEO rankings, and influence, but it also can serve as an opportunity to fill gaps in our needs that your competitors are missing.

One easy way to do this is to look at comment sections or reviews of similar companies in your industry. Look for:

  • Frequent complaints about product design.
  • Consistent issues with customer service.
  • Ads or branding language that falls flat.
  • If the competitor hasn’t made a product their customers are asking for.

By identifying your competitor’s weaknesses or gaps their missing with their customers, you’ll have a treasure trove of marketing copy to use in order to differentiate your business from the pack.

3. Set Your Marketing Budget

Marketing plans need budget constraints. Without a cap, plans could hypothetically include:

  • 60-second Super Bowl commercial
  • Cristiano Ronaldo as a celebrity endorser
  • Billboard advertisements along the entirety of Route 66

For most startups, that’s just not a possibility.

And it’s not where the magic happens. Powerful marketing plans turn tiny marketing budgets into impressive ROI. They prioritize the right channels, messaging, and tactics to stretch every dollar to the max.

Decide beforehand how much budget you’ll need to allocate to meet the goals you set in Step 1. When push comes to shove, you may need to throw additional money at the campaign later to get it across the finish line, but stay strong and do your best to create a marketing plan that works with the budget constraints.

Tight on budget but full on creativity? Check out our Small Business Marketing Guide: From Scratch to Success .

Influencer vs Celebrity Marketing | Ecommerce Tips

4. Determine Your Deadline(s)

Deadlines create the boundaries to your marketing campaign—you can’t have a plan without them. No deadlines mean there’s a never-ending period to achieve your objective, and it’s probably not a good idea to have a 20-year free pass to accomplish that sales goal you set.

Set your deadline. Be realistic, but also be ambitious. The faster you achieve this goal, the faster you can move on to the next one—and each progressive goal should be moving your business forward.

Establish the final deadline for achieving your primary KPI. Then, set the necessary milestones along the journey. For example, you might set milestones for launching different aspects of your campaign, such as hosting 4 webinars, publishing 10 supporting blog posts, or earning a callout in 2 prime news outlets.

Finally, set the start date for when you’ll need to get the ball rolling to meet your deadlines. Don’t assume it’s ASAP—you might have a few weeks to get your ducks in a row instead of immediately heading off into a chaotic marketing battle.

5. Pick Your Marketing Channels and Tactics

This is arguably the funnest part of creating a marketing plan. This is the step where you get to choose the channels, tactics, and deliverables. The right channels and tactics will vary depending on your audience and product or service, but here are the most popular ones to consider:

  • Email Marketing: Email marketing is one of the tried-and-true tactics of the digital marketing world. It generates an average ROI of $40 for every $1 invested —you can’t get much more bang for your buck than that. (Check out our complete email masterclass to learn how to conquer this lucrative channel.)
  • Social Media Marketing: Whether you’re running organic strategies or targeted paid campaigns , social media marketing is an excellent modern-day tactic for reaching consumers where they’re most comfortable: Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, or TikTok.
  • PPC Marketing: Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing lets you run advertising campaigns on search engine pages and other websites across the internet. It’s a competitive way to get your content in front of the right eyeballs.
  • Content Marketing: Content marketing paired with a solid search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is a long-term tactic that can drive organic traffic (read: free) to your website for years to come.

And do you know what all these channels have in common? They each give you the ability to monitor your results and track your progress to prove if a channel is worth your time and money. Unlike traditional outbound advertising and its estimated impressions and influence, you know exactly what you’re getting with these digital marketing strategies.

examples of business marketing plans

6. Outline the To-Do List and Make Assignments

Here’s where you get into the nitty-gritty of your marketing plan. Step 6 is where you’ll outline everything that needs to get done:

  • Launch meeting
  • Recurring meetings and syncs
  • Creative assets
  • Promotional channels
  • Post-mortems

And that’s just the start. Outline everything that needs to happen to make your plan a reality. Once you know what needs to happen, it’s time to start making assignments. Someone needs to be responsible for every deliverable.

Here’s where you may run into roadblocks. You may discover that your creative team is overwhelmed and won’t be able to handle the creative requests until later, or you may find that other email campaigns or social media advertisements are the top priority.

If that’s the case, go back to Step 4 to revisit your timeline. Make adjustments to ensure there’s bandwidth available to make your marketing plan a reality.

7. Track Performance and Review Analytics

No marketing plan will go off without a hitch. That’s why you need your ear to the ground to understand what’s working. Through analytic tools, you can understand if your marketing plan’s target audience, messaging, or creative needs adjusting. Thankfully, most digital tactics allow you to do this on the fly.

Make sure you familiarize yourself with these basic marketing analytics tools:

  • Facebook Ads Manager
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Search Console
  • Semrush or Ahrefs for SEO

For more on analytics, read our marketing metrics guide .

Top 10 Ecommerce Marketing Tips (100% PROVEN)

Marketing Plan Template (Copy/Paste)

Marketing Plan Template: [Name of Project]

Marketing Plan Example (Filled Out)

Here’s a fake content marketing plan example for a fictitious shoe company.

Marketing Plan Template: [Project Zeus Running Collection]

Marketing Goal Drive $200,000 in sales for the new Zeus running collection within the first 4 months of launch day.

Target Audience The primary audience is 35 to 50-year-old male recreational runners who tend to run 30-40 miles a week at an average page of 8:00-10:00 minutes per mile. They’re not overly competitive, but they like to race 5K and 10K races occasionally throughout the year and are always trying to beat their personal best. Many have experienced mild injuries over the last few years that the Zeus Running Collection can help alleviate.

Marketing Budget We have a budget of $40,000 for the initial launch period. If we can prove out the Zeus Running Collection, we’ll allocate additional budget after the first 4 months.

  • Launch Day: June 1
  • Marketing Assets Ready to Go: May 28
  • Pre-Launch Teaser: May 24
  • Creative Assets Finished: May 21
  • Product Beta Tester Reviews Submitted: May 10
  • Written Content Creation Period: April 12 – May 7
  • Enlist Beta Testers: April 12
  • Project Kickoff Meeting: April 5

Marketing Tactics

  • Social Media Marketing: Target runners on Instagram and Facebook with paid ads featuring our endorsed runner racing in the shoe.
  • Email Marketing: Email existing customers with a 15% off discount code on the new Zeus Running Collection. Email prospects with a link to the product breakdown page with a code for free shipping.

Responsibilities and Assignments

  • Lizzy K: Creative assets
  • Mark B: Blog post announcement + product page
  • Spencer S: Beta tester outreach
  • Larry G: Email and social media marketing campaigns
  • Carly M: Project manager

Do I need to write a marketing plan for everything?

As stated earlier, marketing plans can come in all shapes and sizes. But that doesn't mean you need one for every single Facebook ad or whitepaper your team creates. The best marketing plans serve as a source of truth for your team to reach a goal. Within the marketing plan, you should have enough wiggle room to adjust your strategy and tactics. Marketing is an art and science, so there are bound to be surprises once you start executing your plan.

How do I know if my marketing plan is a success?

One of the most common mistakes marketers make is creating a seemingly perfect marketing plan and then going off script as soon as there's a sign of trouble or distraction. Using the SMART goal method (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound) is a simple way to ensure your marketing plan is applicable. Every marketing plan should be a success, whether you hit your goal or not, because you'll learn something new about your customer, tactics, and business throughout the process.

Who should make a marketing plan?

If you're reading this article, ideally you. A marketing manager or marketing team member typically writes marketing plans, but marketing strategy should start at an enterprise level. The more people understand the marketing plan for your business, the more you can work together (not in silos) to achieve a common goal. You'll see this happen in larger organizations where the marketing team works plan that the product or sales team have no idea about.

Plan It Out—Make It Happen

Every great campaign starts with an even better plan. Don’t leave your startup’s success up to chance—give it all the thought and attention you can.

With the right plan in place, you won’t be crossing your fingers on launch day or during the quarterly review. You’ll be sitting confidently, knowing that everything is running according to plan.

Need a high-level plan for your startup? We got you covered with our free content marketing training .

examples of business marketing plans

About Jesse Sumrak

Jesse Sumrak is a writing zealot focused on creating killer content. He’s spent almost a decade writing about startup, marketing, and entrepreneurship topics, having built and sold his own post-apocalyptic fitness bootstrapped business. A writer by day and a peak bagger by night (and early early morning), you can usually find Jesse preparing for the apocalypse on a precipitous peak somewhere in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

Related Posts

How to Write a Sales Email That Converts in 2024

How to Write a Sales Email That Converts in 2024

What Is a Media Kit: How to Make One in 2024 (With Examples)

What Is a Media Kit: How to Make One in 2024 (With Examples)

Namestorming: How to Choose a Brand Name in 20 Minutes or Less

Namestorming: How to Choose a Brand Name in 20 Minutes or Less

10 Ways to Increase Brand Awareness without Increasing Your Budget

10 Ways to Increase Brand Awareness without Increasing Your Budget

What Is a Content Creator? A Deep Dive Into This Evolving Industry

What Is a Content Creator? A Deep Dive Into This Evolving Industry

Content Creator vs Influencer: What’s the Difference?

Content Creator vs Influencer: What’s the Difference?

How Much Do YouTube Ads Cost? A Beginner’s Pricing Breakdown

How Much Do YouTube Ads Cost? A Beginner’s Pricing Breakdown

How to Get Podcast Sponsors Before Airing an Episode

How to Get Podcast Sponsors Before Airing an Episode

How Founders Can Overcome Their Sales Fears with AJ Cassata

How Founders Can Overcome Their Sales Fears with AJ Cassata

How to Grow Your YouTube Channel & Gain Subscribers Quickly

How to Grow Your YouTube Channel & Gain Subscribers Quickly

How to Write Good Instagram Captions That Hook Your Audience

How to Write Good Instagram Captions That Hook Your Audience

Discovering the Best CRM for Consultants

Discovering the Best CRM for Consultants

10 Instagram Growth Hacks For More Engaged Followers (Without Running Ads)

10 Instagram Growth Hacks For More Engaged Followers (Without Running Ads)

How to Keep Your Influencer Marketing Campaign Authentic

How to Keep Your Influencer Marketing Campaign Authentic

Don’t Wing a Cold Email: Templates and Tactics to Get Noticed

Don’t Wing a Cold Email: Templates and Tactics to Get Noticed

FREE TRAINING FROM LEGIT FOUNDERS

Actionable Strategies for Starting & Growing Any Business.

ShareThis

50 Excellent Marketing Plan Examples to Model and Modify

Every business that wants to boost brand awareness and generate more leads needs a solid marketing plan. Businesses that fail to document a plan are much less likely to achieve their desired results. In fact, CoSchedule reports that marketers who document their strategy are  313% more like to achieve their marketing goals . 

To help you create your own marketing plan, we’ve created this list of 50 effective marketing plan examples that showcase the key elements necessary to guide your marketing activities. Many of the examples include fundamental information like market research , while others focus on niche use cases like content marketing , social media , or email marketing . You’ll find a lot of valuable information to help you understand the key concepts, as well as a number of free marketing plan templates you can customize to suit your brand’s needs. Note that the 50 marketing plan examples below are listed alphabetically; otherwise, they’re not ranked or rated in any way.

Adidas

Benchmarking other leading brands when conducting marketing research allows you to determine how you stack up to your biggest competitors. This strategy overview from Adidas provides an excellent high-level overview of the company’s approach to business. You’ll also find a link to additional strategy resources at the bottom of the page.

Why It Works : A marketing plan should be closely aligned with high-level company goals and priorities.

Aha!

Aha! Is a leading roadmap and project plan software suite with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. While the Aha! platform can be used to create a marketing plan, they also include links to several Excel and PowerPoint templates on this page. You’ll see many nice examples of ways to visualize marketing information in Aha! that can help when launching your own initiatives.

Why It Works : Data visualization is a valuable resource to use when planning, launching, and reviewing marketing plans.

Bronto

This 20-page marketing plan template describes a B2B email campaign for a fictitious company called Bronto. We like this template because it’s focused on email marketing, allowing you to outline the specific steps for organizing and running an email campaign without being too cluttered with plans for other marketing channels. The worksheets at the end of the document can help you plan additional details and collect market data.

Why It Works : Each marketing plan should include clear steps for each major project milestone.

Buffer

Content marketing is a major priority for many businesses these days, and this step-by-step guide can help you create a solid content marketing plan. This post shares 21 steps and begins with creating a basic outline to define your content marketing goals. Starting with small concepts and then scaling up your ideas into a full plan can keep the process from becoming too overwhelming.

Why It Works : Starting the planning process with clear goals can help reduce distraction.

5 . Business.com

@businessdotcom

Business.com

This small business marketing plan guide from business.com is nice because it explains why a marketing plan is important for business success. Having some of this background information can really help if you are a beginner at launching formal marketing campaigns. There are several types of marketing plans described in the guide, giving you a lot of flexibility for choosing the elements that match your own priorities.

Why It Works : A complete marketing strategy can be comprised of multiple, individual plans.

6. BusinessTown

@1businesstown

BusinessTown

The BusinessTown website is maintained by author and serial entrepreneur Bob Adams and includes some excellent small business resources. This guide will show you how to create a multichannel marketing plan with a budget of $2,000. The post uses a fictitious landscaping business as the example content takes you through the entire process including budgeting for each step.

Why It Works : A marketing plan should be comprehensive but also practical and easy to implement.

@CFI_education

CFI

The Corporate Finance Institute (CFI) maintains a large resource library of useful business content and templates. This page takes a close look at marketing planning from a financial point of view. Market segmentation is covered along with budgeting and the creation of a suitable marketing mix for your product or service offering.

Why It Works : Defining a marketing mix is a crucial step in any formal marketing plan.

8. Chief Outsiders

@chiefoutsiders

Chief Outsiders

Chief Outsiders offers fractional CMO (chief marketing officer) services to businesses of all sizes. Sharon Spooler, one of the Chief Outsiders, has written this go-to-market (GTM) planning guide for launching a new product or service. The 4-step process defined in the post has been created by Chief Outsiders and aims to keep a marketing team focused on benefits, not features.

Why It Works : Many companies focus on product features, but benefits are what really matter to consumers.

9. Content Marketing Institute

@cmicontent

Content Marketing Institute

One-page plans are an excellent way to focus your team on the essential priorities of a marketing initiative. This post, by George Stenitzer, presents a one-page marketing plan as the perfect place to start when sharing your ideas. A marketing plan of any size should include a description of the company’s growth strategy including profit targets and how this growth will be achieved through marketing.

Why It Works : Starting with a 1-page marketing plan can help you gain early buy-in from stakeholders.

10. Contently

Contently

Developing a content marketing strategy for a book launch requires some unique considerations. This detailed marketing campaign example from Contently includes a content strategy waterfall graphic and an explanation of how to create clear objectives and metrics. A data-driven approach to content marketing is recommended to ensure that you’re making progress.

Why It Works : Standardized workflows make a marketing plan more functional.

11. CoSchedule

@coschedule

CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a complete marketing management platform that includes a calendar and suite of business tools. This 12-chapter guide was recently updated in February of 2022 and introduces many critical marketing processes. The guide is also available as a 25-minute audio track for listening on the go, and chapter 9 includes 25 excellent marketing tactics that you can try.

Why It Works : Setting clear success criteria for each marketing tactic makes it easier to learn and adjust your plan.

Credo

The digital marketing service provider Credo has been in business since 2013 and has some deep expertise in marketing management. This blog post explains the benefits of creating a formal marketing plan and how to define your goals. The post concludes with an important reminder to track your results to identify the best-performing strategies.

Why It Works : Marketing plans should be quickly tested and adjusted based on performance.

13. Disruptive Advertising

@disruptiveads

Disruptive Advertising

Disruptive Advertising offers paid advertising and lifecycle marketing services. This example marketing plan uses the concept of Russian nesting dolls to describe how a marketing plan should be constructed. The key takeaway from this informative post is that each aspect of your marketing plan can be scaled as needs change.

Why It Works : A marketing plan should not be static and can be adapted to changing needs.

14. Evernote

Evernote

The productivity platform Evernote is known for helping individuals and businesses organize their work. This marketing plan template provides all the basic structure needed to develop a complete campaign. Explanations are included throughout the document to help you fill in sections such as Buyer Persona, Research, and Goals & Objectives.

Why It Works : Using a marketing plan template can save a lot of time when getting started.

Forbes

The Forbes contributor Dave Lavinsky, shares 15 core sections that should be included in a marketing plan. Each section has a paragraph explaining what the information is for and how to develop your own. A link to a marketing plan template is also shared at the beginning of the post if you need a structured framework to capture ideas.

Why It Works : Marketing plans can be customized but you should almost always start from a template.

Foundr

This recently updated guide from Foundr shares a 6-step process for creating a marketing plan from scratch. The process begins with defining your marketing goal and selecting key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring campaign success. Your goals can always be updated at a later time, but they function as a filter through which all marketing decisions should be made.

Why It Works : Start a marketing plan with crystal clear goals to increase your chances of success.

G2

This marketing plan guide from G2 includes detailed steps for building your own plan. In the post, you’ll see the four main sections of a marketing plan outline including situation analysis and a company overview. There are a lot of helpful examples presented in each section with tips for how to conduct your own market research.

Why It Works : Each marketing plan should include a detailed customer profile.

18. Get2Growth (Starbucks)

Get2Growth (Starbucks)

Get2Growth is an agile marketing company that provides training, planning, and other professional services. This 1-page marketing plan uses information from Starbucks to create a complete structure for defining an audience, strategies, and activities. Presenting this information on a single page keeps the planning process from becoming overly complicated.

Why It Works : A one-page marketing plan that defines a target audience can be a valuable resource.

19. Houghton Mifflin

Houghton Mifflin

This sample marketing plan is taken from a larger textbook published by Houghton Mifflin and includes has some excellent commentary to help explain the concepts. The 11-page PDF explains the marketing plan for a company called Star Software Inc., including a complete environmental analysis. This example offers detailed explanations for each section.

Why It Works : A formal marketing plan should include enough description to clarify key points.

20. HubSpot

HubSpot

This resource from HubSpot includes a downloadable marketing plan template. An interesting focus of this example is a description of marketing technology. Included with the template are questions that guide you through the process of defining your strategy.

Why It Works : Technology should be defined and budgeted in your marketing plan.

21. Kiss My Biz

Kiss My Biz

Jennifer Mattern runs the site Kiss My Biz and shares this one-page marketing plan guide on her website. The basic information presented in this post is timeless and includes everything you need to create the first draft of a marketing plan. She also recommends summarizing your top 3 competitors so you can define the unique value of your product or service.

Why It Works : Use competitive analysis to identify unique points of value for your business.

22. Leadpages (Lyft)

Leadpages (Lyft)

This blog post from Leadpages explains how the ride-share company Lyft differentiates its business from Uber and other competitors. You’ll find some excellent examples that compare Lyft to Uber, using screenshots to explain how Lyft marketers execute their plan. There’s a link to a checklist at the end of the post that you can use to check your own marketing plan against the “Lyft Formula.”

Why It Works : A marketing plan can reference screenshots or a brand style guide to communicate specific tactics.

@lushcosmetics

Lush

This marketing plan from cosmetics brand Lush is published on the Calameo platform and is an interactive and beautifully designed document. A plan that is professionally presented is an excellent resource for your company and can be used with business partners and even customers. Market research is the main theme of this 33-page document, and lots of great data is included.

Why It Works : A professional, well-designed marketing plan can be a valuable resource itself for communicating brand value.

24. Marketing Mixx (Dell)

@marketingmixx21

Marketing Mixx (Dell)

Marketing Mixx is an international marketing information site with tips for managing advertising, brand equity, and marketing plans. This page includes a basic marketing plan for the computer and electronics manufacturer Dell Inc. The authors have used actual company data from Dell to present a clear overview of marketing activities including the target market and major industry trends.

Why It Works : When benchmarking companies, always reference actual business and industry data.

25. Massachusetts SBDC

@msbdcnortheast

Massachussetts SBDC

The Massachusetts Small Business Development Center (SBDC) supports the needs of companies throughout the northeast. Their marketing plan template includes all the basic information you might expect, such as market demographics and product distribution channels. The authors have also included blank sections following each major part of the outline so you can fill in your own notes.

Why It Works : When creating marketing plan templates for your team, always leave space for notes.

@Mayple_com

Mayple

Mayple is a leading platform for connecting businesses with marketing expertise. This free marketing plan template from their website has been updated for 2022 and includes a budget calculator and smart tables. You can download the template and use this blog post as a handy guide while completing the forms.

Why It Works: A spreadsheet template can save significant time when calculating marketing costs and financial projections.

27. MBA Skool (NBA)

MBA Skool (NBA)

MBA Skool shares advice that covers many marketing topics including competitive analysis and marketing mix. This post uses the National Basketball League (NBA) as an example while defining a product strategy and marketing mix using the 4 Ps framework . The 4 Ps define the product, price, placement, and promotion for your offering.

Why It Works : The 4 Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) is a helpful tool for defining a marketing mix.

@mondaydotcom

Monday

Monday.com offers this marketing template for capturing all details of your company’s strategies and project plans. The template can be used on the Monday platform and is an excellent team resource. Many visual charts such as Kanban boards and timelines are included, making it easy to share the details of your marketing plan with others.

Why It Works : Visualizations are an excellent way to present marketing materials to internal or external parties.

29. More Business

@morebusinesscom

More Business

More Business has many how-to guides and templates for starting and managing a business of any size. This marketing plan is divided into 7 sections and includes many examples along the way. You can use this guide to create your own marketing plan from scratch or identify any sections that may be missing.

Why It Works : A professional marketing plan should begin with a thorough outline.

33. Nancy and Kivi

Nancy and Kivi

This 1-page marketing template is taken from the Total Focus Marketing Plan Workshop developed by consultant Kivi Leroux Miller. It’s a minimalist example, including a short description for each of the 10 sections presented. Questions are used to guide the reader as they complete their own marketing plan.

Why It Works : When creating your first marketing plan, focus on simple templates and core concepts.

31. Naperville Park District

@NaperParks

Naperville Park District

This marketing plan example comes from the Naperville Park District and includes their complete 3-year strategic plan. Over 79 pages, this document covers all aspects of the Naperville Park strategy in great detail. Businesses in the public or educational sectors could benefit greatly from taking some cues from this strategic marketing plan.

Why It Works : Organizations and entities that manage complex businesses often benefit from drafting a thorough strategic plan.

32. NerdyMind

@nerdy_mind

NerdyMind

NerdyMind is a digital marketing agency that focuses on providing practical solutions. This marketing plan example is focused on digital marketing strategies. The post, by Mary Merritt, begins and ends with a review of marketing costs and budgeting.

Why It Works : A marketing plan should always contain a clear explanation of the budget for each initiative.

33. ProductPlan

@productplan

ProductPlan

ProductPlan is a roadmap software that is used to create interactive team project plans. This post shares a marketing plan example from their own platform and explains why you should always customize and streamline your own approach to marketing. A template can be helpful, but you don’t want to include parts of a marketing plan that you will never use.

Why It Works : When creating a plan, focus on the sections most relevant to your current marketing priorities.

34. ProfitWorks

@slideshare

ProfitWorks

Slideshare has a massive collection of example presentations from individuals and brands around the world. This short presentation from Profitworks, a Canadian small business service, explains the brand architecture and marketing mix for the company. The information includes only a portion of the complete marketing strategy but is enough to give you a nice overview.

Why It Works : A marketing plan can be shared in presentation format for easy viewing.

35. QuickMBA

QuickMBA

QuickMBA is a general business knowledge base with categories dedicated to topics like marketing, accounting, and strategy. This marketing plan outline includes 8 sections and an appendix. You won’t find too much detail here, but this is an excellent outline to modify for your own use.

Why It Works : Starting a marketing plan with an outline helps identify the resources and expertise needed for your project.

36. Semrush

Semrush

Semrush is a popular SEO and content marketing platform with valuable online tools. This post explains how to construct a marketing plan using milestones and KPIs to manage progress. The author also explains the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan and includes many examples.

Why It Works : There are several marketing plan formats including an executive summary, 1-page plan, and long-range plan. Choose the format that works for your brand’s needs.

37. Serena Capital

Serena Capital

This blog post describing a SaaS marketing plan was published by Sebastien Le Roy of Serena VC on Medium. A few of the plans we’ve presented are focused on particular niches, such as SaaS, which can be helpful for similar types of businesses. Sebastian recommends auditing acquisition channels early in the process to identify which channels to focus on.

Why It Works : It’s helpful to focus your marketing efforts on channels that perform best over time.

38. Shopify

This resource from Shopify breaks a marketing plan down into the key elements and provides an example from each. With detailed explanations of each element and why it’s important, from your executive summary to your SWOT analysis and budget breakdown, Shopify walks you through every step in the process of crafting an effective marketing plan.

Why It Works: Breaking it down section by section allows you to focus on fully covering each element before moving on to the next.

39. Small Business Trends

@smallbiztrends

Small Business Trends

This post from Small Biz Trends includes two 1-page marketing plans that can be downloaded as Microsoft Word documents. Each template includes a blank version and one that is mocked up with sample data. These templates don’t include a lot of extra information and are useful for getting started quickly.

Why It Works : Marketing plan templates that include sample data can be easier to fill out.

40. Smart Insights

@smartinsights

Smart Insights

The team at Smart Insights created this free digital marketing template to help businesses define their key activities. Using the company’s RACE (Reach, Act, Convert, Engage) framework, the guide explains how to create a marketing campaign that gets results. You can access the fully integrated guide by simply entering your email address.

Why It Works : A marketing plan should always include sequential steps for key processes.

41. Smartsheet

@Smartsheet

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a work collaboration solution that turns standard spreadsheet features into powerful team communication tools. This detailed marketing plan is presented as a PDF and includes 21 pages of information. Many marketing tools are provided in the document, such as 5C analysis, SWOT, and marketing mix (the 4 Ps).

Why It Works : Market analysis tools such as SWOT and 5C help you visualize and manage your market research data.

42. Teamgantt

Teamgantt

Teamgantt is a team productivity platform with capabilities that go far beyond traditional Gantt charts. Dozens of templates are available on the website, including a tactical marketing plan, marketing schedule, and social media strategy plan. This strategic marketing plan is built for Google Docs and creates a complete workspace where you can create a complete plan.

Why It Works : Building a marketing plan in a spreadsheet program makes it easier to design charts and schedules.

43. University of Baltimore

University of Baltimore

This example marketing plan focuses on a fictitious company, General, that will be launching a new product called the Spree watch. Basic information is defined such as objectives, marketing strategies, and contingency plans. The financial appendix is particularly useful and includes two income statements for product pricing scenarios at $45 and $50 per unit.

Why It Works : Financial projections should accompany a marketing plan to provide profitability and ROI projections.

44. University of Illinois

@UofIllinois

University of Illinois

Many colleges and universities share their strategic plans publicly to promote transparency and involve active members of their staff and student body. This marketing plan for the year 2021 is presented by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and explains how the university will attract new undergraduate students. You’ll find detailed metrics, charts, and definitions within the 40-page document, giving you an excellent example of a complete marketing plan.

Why It Works : Colleges and universities often share their marketing plans publicly and are an excellent resource to model.

45. University of Tennessee

@UTKnoxville

University of Tennessee

This marketing plan on the Scribd website was developed with the Agricultural Development Center at the University of Tennessee. Example data for a company called Heavenly Pies is included, and tips are provided to help you navigate the material. This is a great plan to review for basic definitions of common marketing strategies and tactics.

Why It Works : Definitions should be included in a marketing plan template to describe each section.

46. Venture Harbour

@VentureHarbour

Venture Harbour

If you’re looking for a simple step-by-step plan for creating a marketing plan, this post from Venture Harbour may be the perfect resource to bookmark. This example uses a growth market marketing framework adapted from agile business practices. This approach to marketing relies on shorter plan development cycles with multiple points of review and adjustment instead of targeting a massive marketing campaign launch.

Why It Works : Launching micro-marketing strategies is an efficient way to test new market ideas.

47. Visit Baton Rouge

@visitbatonrouge

Visit Baton Rouge

Baton Rouge is the capital of Louisiana and, like most cities, spends a significant amount of time on marketing. With nearly 40 pages of information, this marketing plan is an excellent example of a complete strategy document. The SWOT included in this 2019 plan is highly detailed, and you may find some helpful examples for conducting your own situational analysis.

Why It Works : A SWOT analysis is an excellent way to present situational data from market research.

48. Vital Design

@Vital_Design

Vital Design

Vital Design provides web design and digital marketing services for businesses worldwide. This guide explains how to structure a marketing plan and incorporate an SEO strategy. An important practice when creating a plan is collecting and explaining market research to support your conclusions.

Why It Works : A marketing plan should educate your staff and strategic partners.

49. Wisconsin Public Library

@wisconsinlibs

Wisconsin Public Library

The Marketing Cohort from the Wisconsin Public Library Systems has created this marketing plan template that places a high priority on the process. The fourth page of the document explains the “cycle of true marketing” with 12 steps for organizing your plans. These authors also recommend taking a 3-phase approach to developing a plan, starting with basic and moving to intermediate and advanced.

Why It Works : Starting with a basic marketing plan is a helpful way to create a strong project baseline.

50. Wyoming SBDC

Wyoming SBDC

The Wyoming Small Business Development Center (SBDC) created this marketing plan template for small businesses that need help defining their business practices. Multiple Microsoft Excel worksheets are embedded in the document so you can easily add your own data. Key sections include competition analysis, sales forecasting, and budgeting.

Why It Works : You will likely need both typed documents and spreadsheets to capture your marketing plan.

Creating an effective marketing plan is a big undertaking, but these examples will help you craft a comprehensive plan that covers all the essentials and guides your team to success. The good news is that not all marketing strategies require tons of hands-on effort. Installing social media share buttons on your website or blog, for example, allows your visitors to do some of the heavy lifting for you by sharing your valuable content on their favorite social media platforms – and they can do so with just a single click.

About ShareThis

ShareThis has unlocked the power of global digital behavior by synthesizing social share, interest, and intent data since 2007. Powered by consumer behavior on over three million global domains, ShareThis observes real-time actions from real people on real digital destinations.

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Get the latest news, tips, and updates

Related Content

31 Travel Bloggers & Blogging Pros Share Their Top Tips for Growing a Travel Blog

MARKETING INSIGHTS

Marketing plan template: step-by-step guide plus examples

  • Rebecca Strehlow
  • Feb 21, 2021
  • 12 min read

Marketing plan template

If you have a business you want to promote, there are so many directions you can go with your marketing efforts - build your own website , post on social media, send out email blasts and more. With a plethora of both free and paid options for promoting your business online, marketing has become easy and accessible for everyone.

Still, it’s no secret that marketing requires time and money. You’ll need to use your resources wisely if you want to scale efficiently and have a high return on investment. For that reason, it’s wise to avoid haphazard promotional efforts, and come up with a marketing plan: a cohesive operation that aligns all your marketing efforts and directly ties back to your business’s goals.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to create a marketing plan - including a template you can use to write your own. By outlining your objectives as a company, defining your KPIs , and then unifying your marketing strategies accordingly, this type of plan streamlines your promotional efforts and yields results.

Start building your online presence with Wix .

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a roadmap that helps you manage, implement and track your various marketing efforts. In other words, it’s a structured framework that links together all your marketing activities into a single, cohesive operation.

Typically, a marketing plan takes the form of a report that gives an overview of your marketing strategy for the upcoming year, quarter or month. The report defines your company’s goals over a given period of time, and clearly outlines the steps you’ll need to take to achieve them. It's an essential part of any SMBs marketing efforts.

Here’s just a taste of what a marketing plan includes:

An analysis of your competitors and your stance in the market

A description of your target audience and their needs

Your company’s unique selling proposition

An overview of your marketing and advertising goals

A timeline of the various tasks that need to be completed

The key performance indicators (KPIs) that you’ll be tracking to measure success

Creating a marketing plan is the most efficient way to generate demand for your product. Whether you’re running an online T-shirt store, working as a business consultant, or launching a blog for moms, mapping out your strategy in advance will help you drive people through the marketing funnel and get customers.

Types of marketing plans

Before we dive into the specific elements of a marketing plan template, let’s briefly touch on the different types of marketing plans, which can vary depending on your company. They include:

Annual, quarterly or monthly marketing plan: Marketing plans are typically annual, but they can be quarterly or monthly depending on your business’s goals. This type of plan will highlight all your promotional activities within the specified period of time.

New product launch marketing plan: This is a specific type of marketing plan that focuses on the strategies and tactics you’ll use to promote a particular product.

Social media marketing plan: This kind of marketing plan provides a comprehensive outline of your goals, channels, and tactics for promoting your business on social media.

Content marketing plan: Similarly, this type of plan provides a comprehensive outline of your various content marketing strategies and goals.

Media marketing plan: This focuses on building a strategy using all media types: owned media (your own website, app or email marketing tools), paid media (advertising campaigns), and earned media ( word of mouth marketing , organic traffic, viral content) to support an integrated marketing approach.

In this article, we’ll talk about the broadest type of marketing plan. This will outline all of your small business marketing efforts and help you map out a clear strategy.

Using this marketing plan as a guide, you can then create more specific plans - such as a content marketing or social media marketing plan - based on the areas you want to focus on.

How to create a marketing plan in 7 steps

Analyze your market and competition

Research your target audience

Set goals and KPIs

Write a unique selling proposition

Choose strategic marketing channels

Brief your team

Monitor your analytics

01. Analyze your market and competition

The first step in writing a marketing plan is to identify your competitors. This is important so that you know who you’ll be marketing against, and how you can outshine them with your promotional strategy.

Take into account that different competitors will be stronger in different areas. Your biggest competitor on social media, for instance, might be different from your competitor with the best SEO.

With that in mind, do a SWOT analysis of your competition. Using this acronym - which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats - gives you a systematic way to identify your competitors’ performance in your field:

Strengths: What are the competitors’ advantages in the industry? What are they excelling in?

Weaknesses: What could this company be doing better? What processes of theirs could be improved?

Opportunities: Are there any new trends or upcoming events that are relevant to your industry? Identify them, and seize the marketing opportunity before your competition does.

Threats: Are there external factors such as new government regulations, declining customer interest, or industry shifts that are threats to your competitors’ success? If so, find a way to navigate these threats and avoid making the same mistakes as your competition.

Even if you’ve already done a SWOT analysis in the past, it’s important to reassess the playing field as you write your marketing plan. In particular, anticipate whether anything new is about to happen in the coming year or quarter, such as a change in government policy or the emergence of a new competitor in your market.

And, of course, keep an eye out for niches your competitors haven’t gotten to yet. For instance, if you’re selling products to new moms, a SWOT analysis might reveal that none of your competitors are creating products for new dads. In this case, that would be an opportunity for you to expand your audience, attract new customers, and grow your revenue.

As you create your SWOT analysis, use this free SWOT analysis template to guide you, and make it a part of your marketing plan:

SWOT analysis downloadable template

02. Research your target audience

Just as you research your competitors, you’ll need to look into your target audience . This is the specific group of people at which your product or service is aimed - and, as such, they’re the primary audience of your marketing strategy.

If you’re unsure of who your target audience is, there are a few different ways to gather this information. First, think about which needs your product fulfills and which types of people it caters to. You can also use your SWOT analysis to point you in the right direction. Look at competitors’ websites, blogs and social media channels to determine the types of people they’re marketing to.

To hone in on your audience even further, analyze your existing customers to understand which kinds of people you’ve attracted in the past. Talk to your current and potential customers as much as you can. Get their feedback, use focus groups, and analyze the data to figure out their shared behaviors and characteristics:

Age: Does your product seek to address the needs of people of a certain age - for example, older adults or millennials?

Location: Are your target customers within a specific country or region? Where are they, and what languages do they speak?

Spending power: How much money are your target customers able to spend? Are they seeking out luxury, or could money be an issue when deciding whether to purchase?

Stage of life: Can you identify your target customers based on their stage of life, such as new parents, college students or retirees?

Hobbies and career: Can you group them based on certain hobbies, career paths, or other lifestyle interests?

Track this information in an orderly way by creating buyer personas , or detailed descriptions of specific types of customers. Each buyer persona should reflect both existing or potential customers, based on the factors above: demographics, location, job title and more.

Be sure to include this information at the beginning of your marketing plan, side-by-side your SWOT analysis, to provide a thorough assessment of the market in which your company is operating. Ultimately, these various audience types will represent customer segments - groups of people you can target with different marketing materials depending on their interests.

03. Set your goals and KPIs

Next, set your business’s goals. What do you want to achieve next quarter? How about by the end of this year? 5 years from now?

The more ambitious the goal, the more time, effort and money you should dedicate to it. Determine each goal, and break it down into small steps, either by month, quarter or year, depending on your time frame. Not only will this help you build a clear timeline, but it will also help you allocate your budget.

Once you divide up your big goals into small goals, consider how to measure them. In other words, how will you know whether you’re meeting your goals, or falling short?

This is where KPIs - key performance indicators - come into play. Essentially, KPIs are the specific metrics used to monitor your progress in achieving your goals.

For instance, if you want to create an active online forum for pop music creators, then your KPIs should be site visits, your number of active visitors, and your number of returning visitors. Your position in Google search results for niche keywords, such as “pop music creator” or “music production software,” would also be a relevant KPI.

Whichever KPIs you choose, include them in your marketing plan alongside your goals and write down the metrics you’ll use to measure your success. For example, if your KPI is to make more sales, you might want to track metrics like lead generation and conversion rate .

By checking your achievements every quarter compared to your KPIs, you’ll learn about the pace and abilities of your businesses. If you achieve your KPIs relatively easily, you can set more ambitious goals. On the other hand, if you’re falling short of your KPIs, you might consider recruiting more people to help you get there.

04. Write a unique selling proposition

If you were to give a 30-second marketing spiel to a potential customer, what would you say? Come up with a statement that would appeal to your target audience’s interests and increase demand for your business.

If you’re already a market leader that offers high-quality products, you can claim that you’re “the best solution for” a particular need. On the other hand, if you’re still a relatively small player in the market, you can position yourself as being innovative and groundbreaking - the brand that offers fresh, modern solutions. Many smaller businesses tend to find that creative, funny, or even unorthodox branding gives them the attention boost they need from their audience.

When targeting multiple audiences, you may find it challenging to create a single message that resonates with everyone. One tip for attracting many types of customers at the same time is to create slightly different messages for each buyer persona. Going back to the product lines for new moms and dads, you may find that you need to split your messaging between a few different customer types:

New moms: Target them with the message that they need high-quality products for their babies.

New moms who want their spouse to be involved in childcare: Target them with a new message that they’d have more time to relax if their spouse also used the product.

New dads: Target them with a different message that these products can help them become good fathers and supportive partners.

Be sure to record this messaging in your marketing plan so that you can use it throughout your various promotional efforts.

05. Choose strategic marketing channels

Once you come up with your core messages, decide which marketing strategies you’ll use to spread the word. There’s an abundance of options here, both paid and free. Some popular paid channels include:

Social media ads (Facebook, Instagram and more)

Online ads on other sites

Press releases

Partnerships with other companies

Outreach marketing

Guerilla marketing

Email campaigns

Offline media such as magazine, billboard and radio ads

Facebook ads are a particularly effective option because they reach almost every type of audience and can be targeted based on demographics and interests. They’re fairly simple to make, especially if you already have a Facebook business page. And, depending on your website platform, you can even create Facebook ads directly through your site .

Paid channels are a reliable choice, but it’s also worthwhile to couple these efforts with free promotional options as well. These take a little more time to develop, but they’re also a valuable way to get more exposure and build a loyal audience. They include popular inbound marketing tactics such as:

Website SEO

Creating company social media pages

Being active in online forums and Facebook groups

When choosing what channels to use, it’s important to think about which ones will actually reach your target audience. If you’re marketing to elderly folks, for instance, then Instagram ads may not be the way to go.

Similarly, build a strategy for the timeline of your campaigns. Take into account any holidays and other special events, such as elections or the Super Bowl, that you can use to your advantage when crafting marketing content.

And remember - not all your campaigns will be planned in advance. You’ll need to set aside budget for on-the-fly campaigns, also known as real-time marketing (RTM). This involves taking advantage of precious opportunities like global events and new internet trends. For instance, the January 2021 Bernie Sanders meme was a great chance for companies to get easy attention, earn free media coverage, and go viral. Ikea even used the meme to promote its folding chair and oven mitts.

Pro tip: Once you’ve established the right channels and timeline, you may be eager to launch your campaigns right away - especially if unexpected marketing opportunities arise. Resist the temptation until you’re absolutely sure your product is ready, with at least 85% positive feedback from users. Asking for a second chance will cost you much more than nailing a great impression the first time around.

06. Brief your team

One of the main reasons to create a marketing plan is to develop a unified operation that your whole marketing department can participate in. For this reason, it’s critical that you keep everyone in the loop.

Update your marketing team, as well as the suppliers that create the marketing materials for you. The best way to ensure everyone is aligned is to create a marketing brief - a one-page document that summarizes the market research, company goals, messaging, and action items established in your plan.

You can use the marketing brief template below to create a quick, efficient overview of your plan. It includes guiding questions to help you analyze your competitors, determine your target audience, identify your KPIs, and craft a compelling company message. Fill out this document, and share it with anyone who works with you so that they’re on the same page about your strategy and goals:

Marketing plan downloadable template

07. Monitor your analytics

Once you start implementing your marketing campaigns, you’ll need to closely monitor the results. To ensure your strategy is effective, continuously track your KPIs and see how the numbers stack up against your goals. That will allow you to adapt the marketing plan based on the goals you’re achieving and those you aren’t. Customer analytics can help you in this process.

Marketing plan: Customer analytics

There are two places to monitor analytics: Google Analytics and your website.

Google Analytics can easily be connected to your company website, and it’s a helpful way to track your site visitors and evaluate the performance of marketing campaigns.

Wix Analytics is another useful tool that provides a comprehensive analysis of your performance, and it’s conveniently located within the Wix website dashboard. This tool allows you to create custom audiences based on their demographics, geographic location, or other defining features, and you can access it directly from your website.

Using these two tools, look at the data. If the numbers indicate that you aren’t meeting your objectives, brainstorm action items for how to improve. If, for instance, you notice that some of your website visitors are located in Europe, try creating a multilingual website; it may just help convert them into customers. Likewise, if you’re getting traffic to your website or blog but are lacking in conversions, try creating content campaigns around specific products.

Don’t be discouraged if, after two quarters, you aren’t reaching your goals. This happens to the best of us, and it’s simply an indicator that you’ll need to refine your marketing plan and go back to Step 1.

Marketing plan template

Now that you know how to create a marketing plan, use this marketing plan template to walk you through the process. It’s free for download and use, and can easily be adapted for any business.

Marketing plan examples

While the marketing plan template above provides you with everything you need, it may also be helpful to look at other examples for inspiration. If you’re seeking additional resources, use these marketing plan examples to guide you:

01. Marketing Plan Template from SBA

The Small Business Administration provides a highly detailed marketing plan template that can be downloaded as a PDF and easily adapted to suit your company. The plan covers all the must-haves, like an explanation of your products and an analysis of your target market, but it supplements those with finer details like location analysis and product packaging.

02. Marketing Plan Template Generator from HubSpot

Unlike most marketing plan examples, this isn’t a file that you print out and fill in. Instead, it’s an online generator - a fill-in-the-blank template that walks you through the creation process page-by-page. The generator feels almost like an AI bot, asking you to fill in your name and then replying “Awesome! It’s great to meet you, [Name]!” This is a great way to make the marketing plan process more dynamic and fun.

Marketing plan example

03. Marketing Plan Microsoft Word Template from More Business

The advantage of More Business’s marketing plan template is that it’s downloadable for Microsoft Word, allowing you to fill in each section directly on the document. The document not only contains different strategies that you can use to inspire your own marketing efforts, but it also comes with examples of tables and charts for your marketing plan.

04. One-Page Marketing Plan Template from SmartSheet

This template is available for download on Microsoft Word, Google Docs and SmartSheet, but we particularly like that it’s available as an Excel version. As a one-pager, it’s short and sweet - ideal for getting your marketing plan started without getting lost in too much detail from the beginning. It’s a helpful sheet for brainstorming, or for summarizing your marketing plan once it’s complete.

05. Marketing Plan Slide Deck Template from Slidesgo

This marketing plan template comes in yet another format - an attractive slide deck that’s downloadable for both PowerPoint and Google Slides. This includes all the essentials, but in a more visual format, making it a useful asset for turning your marketing plan into a presentation.

Related Posts

What is the marketing funnel and how does it work?

Marketing automation and how it can boost your business

Small business marketing: 25 low-budget marketing strategies

Was this article helpful?

Your Guide to Creating a Small Business Marketing Plan

Table of contents.

examples of business marketing plans

To have a successful business, you need a well-thought-out marketing plan to promote your products or services. Although making a few social media posts or blasting a few promotional emails may seem simple enough, disjointed marketing efforts not only confuse your target audience, but can ultimately harm your business. 

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a strategic road map for how you communicate (online and offline) with your target audience to successfully promote your products or services. Depending on your goal, marketing plans can be extremely basic or highly detailed.

According to Molly Maple Bryant, vice president of marketing at Vibrent Health, a marketing plan is not simply a list of things you want to accomplish. Instead, it should list the outcomes you seek — measurable and contextual, like the pipeline you’re developing, or leads you’re generating — and it should explain the high-level strategies you will use to achieve those outcomes. Developing strategies can be complicated, but they make a major difference in keeping you on track and avoiding diversions, also called scope creep .

“Once you have an agreed-upon plan, you are able to compare any incoming requests against your strategies to determine ‘Yes, this adheres to my strategy so we can add it,’ or ‘No, this sounds good in theory, but it doesn’t adhere to our agreed-upon strategy, so we won’t adjust resources,'” Bryant told us.

Download a copy of our free marketing plan template .

Types of marketing plans

There are several different types of marketing plans you can use based on certain strategies that make sense for your organization. Your business will likely need a combination of the following marketing plans to create an effective, comprehensive marketing strategy:

  • Advertising plan
  • Branding plan
  • Content marketing plan
  • Customer acquisition plan
  • Direct marketing plan
  • Email marketing plan
  • Public relation plan
  • Print marketing plan
  • Reputation management plan
  • Retention plan
  • Search engine optimization plan
  • Social media marketing plan

Depending on your product positioning, niche marketing plans like influencer marketing or video marketing can be incredibly effective.

Why is it important to have a marketing plan for your business?

A marketing plan is a crucial resource for any small business because it helps you identify the market needs your product or service meets, how your product is different from competitors, and who your product or service is for. Marketing plans also serve as a road map for your sales strategy, branding direction and building your overall business. This is important for successfully conveying your brand messaging to your target audience .

Another significant benefit of a marketing plan for your company is that rather than simply guessing metrics, it forces you to sit down and do the math about your business goals and how to realistically fulfill them. When you look at your growth outcomes, you can delve further to determine what it will take to get to those numbers.

Bryant offered the following example: “Need $100,000 in revenue? How many sales is that? If 10, what’s your close rate? Let’s say 10 percent from lead to closed deal. Now you have a metric to start with — to get to 10 sales, we need 100 leads. Where will they come from, and what strategies will you use? The plan helps you put it all on paper so you can map out resources and tactics later with a lot of preparation and realism,” said Bryant.

When analyzing outcomes and resources, you can save time and avoid scope creep by focusing only on strategies that are relevant to your marketing plan. A marketing plan helps you think realistically about your strategies, gets your stakeholders on the same page, and holds your marketing team accountable for their decisions.

“When everyone’s tasks and goals are laid out for the stakeholders and company partners to see, it is much easier for the entire team to feel at ease about reaching sales goals and allowing the marketing team the space and freedom needed to execute work without constant supervision,” said Cassady Dill, digital marketing consultant and owner of Ethos Agency.

Additionally, Dill said a marketing plan should be easily understood by your entire team, executives and outside departments. Your plan should also serve as an easy guide for future marketing managers and team members to understand and implement.

What are the key elements of an effective business marketing plan?

A marketing plan should be customized to fit your business; however, Dill said, all marketing plans contain five essential functions:

  • Your business goals
  • Key metrics (how you quantify and measure success)
  • Strategies (an overview of implementation and how that will achieve goals)
  • A plan (the details of execution and the human resources, departments and software that will be involved)
  • Reporting (what reports of progress will include and/or look like)

We broke down those five functions into 10 actionable categories to help you create a marketing plan that is unique and effective for your business.

1. Executive summary

The executive summary is a great place to give the reader of your plan an overview of your business’s mission or goals, as well as the marketing strategy you’re looking to employ. An executive summary is often written after you’ve completed the rest of the marketing plan, to ensure it covers all the important elements of your plan. If the executive summary is the only part of your marketing plan that someone reads (which is highly possible), you want to be sure they understand the most crucial details.

2. Mission statement

The mission statement , not to be confused with a vision statement, is a statement that encompasses your company’s values and how they relate to your overall goals as an organization. Here are some good questions to get you thinking:

  • What does your company do today?
  • What’s important to your company?
  • What would your company like to do in the future?
  • What is your brand identity?
  • What’s your culture like ?
  • How does your company benefit customers, employees and stakeholders?

3. Target markets

Identifying your target market is one of the most important parts of your marketing plan. Without a defined target audience, your marketing expenses will be wasted. Think of it like this: Some people need your service or product but don’t know it exists yet. Who are those people?

Here are some other questions to help you brainstorm your target market :

  • What is the demographic of your customers (gender, age, income, education, etc.)?
  • What are their needs and interests?
  • What’s their psychographic profile (attitudes, philosophies, values, lifestyle, etc.)?
  • How do they behave?
  • What are some existing products they use?

4. Products and services

In this section, don’t just list what your product or service is. Think critically about what you have to offer your customers and what that value proposition means to them.

  • What do you make or provide for customers?
  • What are your customers’ needs?
  • How does your product or service fulfill customers’ needs?
  • What value do you add to your customers’ lives?
  • What type of product or service are you offering?

5. Distribution channels

At this point in your report, you should transition your thinking into actual marketing theory and practices. Distribution channels are the avenues you’ll use to reach a prospective customer or business . Think of all current and potential sales channels on which your specific target audience is active. One distribution channel that works great for one organization may be useless to another. For example, one company may host their website for free on a site like HubSpot and solely rely on that as their sales channel, while another company may have a whole team of people using Pinterest to drive sales. [Learn how CRM systems can help track your marketing leads based on various distribution channels.]

Examples of sales channels include the following:

  • Mobile text message marketing
  • Social media
  • Print (newspapers, magazines, brochures, catalogs, direct mail)
  • Broadcast (TV, radio)
  • Press releases
  • Trade shows, product demonstrations, event marketing

6. Competitive profile

One of the major aspects of your marketing plan is developing your unique selling proposition (USP). A USP is a feature or stance that separates your product or service from competitors. Finding your USP is all about differentiation and distinguishing your company as a sole proprietor of one type of good or service. Conduct a competitive analysis to identify your competitive profile and how you stack up against the competition. It is important to remain unbiased when conducting this analysis.

Here are some ideas to consider:

  • What’s your USP?
  • Who are your competitors? What do they offer?
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of your competition?
  • What needs of the market (or customer) are not being served? What can you do to meet those needs?

If you are creating your USP for the first time, here are seven surefire strategies to help you stand out from the competition .

7. A pricing strategy

Consider pricing when drafting your marketing plan. Developing the right pricing strategy helps you better market your product. Think about your current and projected finances when developing a long-term marketing strategy that is realistic and beneficial for your business. Here are some key questions to ask yourself about your pricing:

  • What are reasonable margins to make a profit and cover production costs?
  • Is there a market for products or services at your projected price point?
  • Are you willing to sacrifice profit margins in return for a greater market share?
  • What are your marketing and distribution costs?

8. Objectives

Consider your objectives when developing a marketing plan. This aspect of your plan should involve specific goals related to market penetration and revenue targets. Be sure to keep your marketing objectives on-brand with your business. Here are some things to consider:

  • Sales quotas
  • Number of new customers gained
  • Customer retention percentages
  • Revenue targets
  • Market penetration
  • Brand awareness
  • Website traffic

9. Action plans

With all of the above items outlined, determine what steps need to be taken to enact your marketing plan. This includes determining the proper steps, setting goals, breaking down responsibilities, and establishing an overall timeline.

It’s also important to brainstorm potential roadblocks your business could face and some solutions to overcome them. Your research is useless if you don’t have an actionable plan that can be realistically implemented to carry out your ideas.

10. Financial projections

This last step allows you to establish a realistic marketing budget and better understand your marketing plan from a cost perspective. In addition to setting a budget, consider the overall return on investment as well. Here are some other financial projections to consider:

  • Cost of implementation
  • Cost to produce product or service
  • Existing and projected cash flow
  • Projected sales
  • Desired profit margin on projected sales

What is a template for creating a successful marketing plan?

The internet is full of useful tools, including paid and free marketing plan templates, to help you build a successful marketing plan .

Whether you are looking for a free template generator to build a new marketing plan or a benchmarking tool to evaluate your current strategies, several great resources are available. Keep in mind that the best marketing plan for your business will be a customized one.

“Ultimately, you should design a marketing plan that best serves the needs of your team as you see fit,” said Dill. “Don’t force yourself into a plan that doesn’t fit your team. Use templates to shorten the workload time, but then adjust it for a more custom plan.”

Here are some tools and templates to get you started:

  • Free marketing plan template : business.com has developed a free template that is fully customizable based on the needs of your business. Each section provides in-depth explanations, examples and resources to help you create an impressive marketing plan.
  • Smart Insights: In addition to offering marketing plan templates, some companies, like Smart Insights, offer marketing benchmarking templates to help you evaluate your strategy performance. These are accessible with a free Smart Insights membership.
  • GERU: Similarly, GERU offers a funnel-planning, profit-prediction and simulation tool to help you assess mock business ideas and simulations. This can help you identify weak points in your marketing strategy that need improvement. Although GERU requires users to sign up for a paid account, you can access a free trial to test it out.

What mistakes should you avoid when creating your marketing plan?

When creating an effective marketing plan, you need to avoid falling for common missteps and mistakes. For starters, failing to identify any of the 10 actionable categories above is an obvious mistake.

Here are some other key mistakes to avoid:

  • Setting unrealistic budgets: Underestimating the costs of marketing activities or setting an unrealistic budget can limit your ability to execute your plan effectively. Marketing can be expensive, so it’s important to fully understand the estimated cost and budget before building a marketing strategy that you can’t afford.
  • Focusing on quantity over quality: “More” doesn’t always mean “better” if you are posting on irrelevant marketing channels or your efforts are bringing in unqualified leads. Prioritizing the quantity of marketing activities over their quality can lead to superficial engagement and a lack of meaningful results.
  • Not testing campaigns: Launching large campaigns without testing can lead to wasted resources if the messaging or tactics don’t resonate as expected. Test out your new campaigns to ensure they achieve your intended goal.
  • Ignoring customer feedback: You may be tempted to ignore negative feedback, but disregarding customer comments and failing to address their concerns can lead to negative perceptions of your brand. Instead, use customer feedback to your advantage to improve your product and marketing efforts.
  • Overpromising and underdelivering: Setting unrealistic expectations in your marketing messages that your products or services can’t fulfill can damage your brand’s reputation.
  • Ignoring seasonality and trends: Failing to account for seasonal trends and market changes can result in missed opportunities for timely marketing efforts.
  • Not reviewing and updating your plan: A rigid marketing plan that doesn’t allow for adjustments in response to market feedback and changing conditions can hinder your success. A marketing plan should be a living document that is regularly reviewed and updated to reflect changes in the market and your business’s goals.

Avoiding these mistakes and missteps can help you create a more effective and successful marketing plan that drives results for your business.

How can you take action with your new marketing plan?

Before you dive into marketing plan templates, it’s important to understand how to think about a marketing plan.

A good marketing plan targets who your buyers are, establishes the service or product you are offering, and determines your unique selling proposition. From here, you will tackle the marketing planning process and develop the best way to get your product in front of buyers who want your product or service.

Dill created a simple four-step process for how small businesses can take action with creating a marketing plan.

  • The first step is to hold a marketing meeting with all the marketing team and executives or stakeholders. This gives them time to offer questions, concerns and criticisms you haven’t thought of so you can go back to the board room and revise your strategy or plan.
  • Next, add a timeline to all your tasks and assign team members and all the help you’ll need to execute that plan.
  • Once your plan is in action, hold weekly check-ins in person or by email to keep everyone on track.
  • Share a weekly progress report with all parties involved and execs to ensure you are moving in the right direction.

In addition to drafting your own plan, you can work with a digital marketing agency or use internet marketing and pay-per-click management services to leverage your online presence.

Once you’ve established a general road map, update it annually. Developing an evolving marketing plan sets your business up for continued success because it allows you to prepare for the unexpected and establish a connection between your brand and your audience.

Matt D’Angelo contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

thumbnail

Get Weekly 5-Minute Business Advice

B. newsletter is your digest of bite-sized news, thought & brand leadership, and entertainment. All in one email.

Our mission is to help you take your team, your business and your career to the next level. Whether you're here for product recommendations, research or career advice, we're happy you're here!

We use cookies on our website to provide you with the best possible user experience

Manage Your Social Media Like a Pro with Planly

analytics

Manage all your social media with Planly

Exploring the best marketing plan examples for your business success.

Afruz Fatulla-zada

Introduction to Marketing Plan Crafting

When developing a marketing plan, it's invaluable to refer to real-world examples. This guide provides a collection of 12 diverse marketing plan examples, featuring both real-life brands and theoretical scenarios. These examples serve as a blueprint to shape your marketing strategies, objectives, and achievements.

examples of business marketing plans

Example 1: Local Business Marketing Strategy

Baton rouge's tourism marketing approach.

The Baton Rouge tourism marketing plan focuses on elevating city-wide recognition and visitor numbers. Key aspects include:

  • SWOT analysis and target audience identification
  • Defining overall objectives
  • Strategies for leisure, meetings, and convention marketing
  • Plans for destination sales and services
  • Special projects and event promotions
  • Evaluation and event calendar setup

Example 2: Strategic Marketing in Public Sectors

Naperville park district’s comprehensive plan.

This strategic plan covers various departments, from sales to PR, aiming to unify the brand image and boost revenue.

examples of business marketing plans

Components include:

  • Organization overview
  • Situation analysis
  • Strategy formulation and tactical approaches
  • Public relations initiatives
  • Addressing marketing budget constraints
  • Concluding remarks

Example 3: Marketing Framework for Libraries

Wisconsin public library systems’ template.

This template guides libraries in planning, executing, and assessing marketing endeavors:

  • Starting with an introduction
  • Audience research and segmentation
  • Defining product and service offerings
  • Competitive analysis
  • Setting and achieving measurable goals
  • Implementing and refining the marketing plan

Small Business Marketing Plans

Example 4: agricultural extension service’s model plan.

Offering a hypothetical brand as an example, this plan illustrates the essentials of a successful marketing strategy:

  • Initial market research and analysis
  • Setting marketing and financial goals
  • Developing diverse marketing strategies
  • Exploring the marketing mix
  • Budget considerations and market response evaluation

Example 5: University of Illinois’s Student Attraction Plan

Aiming to increase student interest, this plan provides:

  • Contextual background and admissions funnel stages
  • Upcoming market research strategies
  • Objectives, detailed marketing programs, and success metrics

Harnessing Technology in Marketing Strategies

Example 6: coschedule’s strategic template.

This guide includes steps for formulating a marketing strategy with elements like:

  • SWOT analysis and marketing persona development
  • Budget planning
  • Brand voice definition
  • Marketing funnel, goals, and tactics
  • Channel strategies and performance metrics

Example 7: Evernote’s Marketing Plan Template for Businesses

Evernote provides a template for businesses to consolidate their marketing ideas:

  • Overview and timeline establishment
  • Conducting thorough research
  • SWOT analysis
  • Setting clear goals and objectives
  • Developing buyer personas
  • Calendar planning and performance evaluation

Example 8: Buffer’s Content Marketing Strategy

Buffer's template guides businesses through crucial content marketing steps:

  • Goal setting and outlining
  • Defining product/service and audience personas
  • Competitor analysis
  • Content inventory and evaluation
  • Workflow management and promotional tactics

Example 9: Dream Team’s Book Marketing Strategy

This plan outlines the steps for marketing a book, focusing on:

  • Business objectives and key metrics
  • Ultimate goals and channel selection
  • Process and workflow for content creation
  • Optimization and next steps

Example 10: Contently’s Content Strategy Approach

Contently’s template emphasizes a content-focused marketing strategy:

  • Setting content objectives and KPIs
  • Target audience identification
  • Channel strategies and resource allocation

Example 11: AddThis’s Comprehensive Marketing Plan Template

AddThis offers a detailed template covering:

  • Executive and mission statements
  • Defining the target market and buyer personas
  • Marketing objectives and performance metrics
  • Strategies for pricing, distribution, and promotion
  • Budgeting considerations

Example 12: Palo Alto Software’s Business Plan Integration

Palo Alto Software integrates marketing into its business plan with elements like:

  • Opportunity assessment and execution planning
  • Company overview
  • Financial planning and optional appendix

Visual Insights: Crafting an Effective Marketing Plan

To complement our detailed overview of marketing plan examples, the following video offers practical insights into creating a successful marketing strategy. This tutorial, provided by [insert video creator's name or channel], breaks down key elements of a marketing plan, offering valuable guidance for businesses of all sizes. Watch the video here for a comprehensive understanding:

Stay in the loop with everything you need to know.

We care about your data in our privacy policy .

Related posts

Interesting Social Media Ideas for  St. Patrick's Day 2024 (with Practical Examples)

Interesting Social Media Ideas for St. Patrick's Day 2024 (with Practical Examples)

Garanfil Abdullayeva

Top Hashtags for International Women's Day 2024 to Spread Your Voice on Social Media

Trending Hashtags for Nature Enthusiasts to Use on World Wildlife Day 2024

Trending Hashtags for Nature Enthusiasts to Use on World Wildlife Day 2024

Trending Hashtags for World Compliment Day 2024

Trending Hashtags for World Compliment Day 2024

examples of business marketing plans

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share through Email

How To Create A Small Business Marketing Plan In 9 Simple Steps (with Templates)

A small business can use a marketing plan to guide their entire marketing efforts. Follow our step-by-step roadmap to reach your business objectives, increase revenue, and grow your company.

How to create a small business marketing plan (9 simple steps)

Imagine there are two T-shirt companies. Their shirts are both handcrafted and are of the exact same quality and style.

T-shirt seller A has never created a marketing plan and strictly relies on word of mouth to sell their shirts.

T-shirt seller B has put plenty of time into its marketing efforts. They’ve created a website, uses a variety of digital tools,  posted regularly on social media , and even built an email list.

Which company do you think sells more shirts?

Regardless of the size of your company, the core marketing principles are the same. Even if you have a small business, you can create a marketing plan to help you grow your business. In fact, the smaller your business is, the more important it is to put time and energy into creating a marketing roadmap.

In this in-depth guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about creating a small business marketing plan to help you reach your goals. We’ll break down the nine simple steps you need to take to craft a marketing plan that works in the digital age. Plus, you’ll get a template you can follow to craft your own strategy and some best practices to follow to ensure it’s a success.

What Is Small Business Marketing?

Small business marketing is the process small businesses use to get their products and services in front of potential customers to generate sales. This type of marketing typically includes a variety of marketing channels, disciplines, and tactics to gain exposure.

The primary goal of small business marketing is to not only connect with new prospects to acquire new customers but also to build and nurture relationships with existing customers to keep them coming back.

Small business marketing can consist of a variety of offline and  online strategies . Regardless of the marketing tactics you use, the end goal is typically to generate more revenue, expand market share, improve profitability, and grow.

What Is a Small Business Marketing Plan?

A small business marketing plan is a roadmap small businesses can use to reach their marketing objectives, increase revenue, and grow their overall business. A small business can use a marketing plan to guide their entire marketing efforts to ensure they meet their company’s objectives.

In 2021, the most prominent  small business marketing challenges  were:

  • Not having enough time and resources to focus on marketing
  • A small marketing budget, and
  • Lack of clear marketing strategy and objectives

2021 small business marketing challenges

Without a clear marketing strategy and objective, your marketing efforts will be a waste. But, if you implement a small business marketing plan, you’ll be well to see your company or department succeed.

9 Steps to Create a Small Business Marketing Plan

Every small business marketing plan will be different as each business is different. But there’s a simple framework you can use to come up with a plan that’s actionable and effective. Follow these nine steps to set your marketing team up for success:

1. Establish your goals

First off, you need to set your marketing goals. But you can’t just set a random, vague goal like “Make more money.” You need to set clear, actionable goals.

The best way to come up with marketing goals is to use the “SMART” formula. This stands for:

  • S: Specific
  • M: Measurable
  • A: Achievable
  • R: Relevant
  • T: Time-bound

The SMART goal strategy is a tried and true method of goal setting to help you achieve what you’re aiming for. Here’s an example of a SMART small business marketing goal:

“Increase return customer rate from 5% to 20% in 12 months.”

Let’s see how it lines up with the SMART formula:

  • S: Specific (about retention)
  • M: Measurable (includes real numbers)
  • A: Achievable (not too far out of reach)
  • R: Relevant (aligns with your overall business objectives)
  • T: Time-specific (in 12 months)

If you’re having trouble coming up with your goals, you could start by identifying some broader small business objectives before getting specific.

Here are a few common small business marketing goals:

  • Build a greater online presence
  • Generate more leads (and customers)
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Connect with a broader audience
  • Engage with your audience more
  • Generate more recurring revenue

It’s up to you to figure out which of these goals makes the most sense for your team and your business. Try and come up with 3-5 SMART goals now and write them down.

2. Understand your target audience

Now that you’ve established your primary marketing goals, it’s time to focus on your audience. Ultimately, they’re going to be the ones to help you reach your goals.

Before you can achieve any sort of success with your marketing efforts, you need to know who you’re targeting. Your target audience can vary based on a variety of different factors like geographical region, your business type, and demographics.

Oftentimes, your audience will dictate the type of marketing tactics you implement later on, so it’s crucial you take the time to research so you can understand them better.

For instance, if your target audience is in their 70s, then TikTok might not be the best place to invest your marketing resources. On the other hand, if you’re targeting Gen-Zs, then you should probably avoid print ads and, instead, get on TikTok and Instagram asap.

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself to help understand your audience:

  • Who are your past customers?  Look at demographics like age, location, and gender.
  • Who are your returning customers?  This is important to understand, especially if one of your goals is to generate recurring revenue through increased retention.
  • Who do you want to reach?  While you may have a specific past customer base, it’s crucial to know the type of customer you’re after so you can adjust your marketing strategy to target them better.
  • What products or services are people buying from you the most?  Look at sales data to help understand what your customers are interested in, their pain points, and the problems they’re looking to solve.
  • Why did your past customers buy from you?  Look into primary driving factors for their purchase decisions. You can email customers directly, conduct surveys, and look at reviews and testimonials to understand the intent behind their purchases.

Stay Up-to-date On All Things Marketing & Leadership.

  • Your email *
  • No spam, just quality content. Your inbox is safe with us. For more details, review our Privacy Policy . We're protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
  • Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

3. Set your budget

Now that you’ve set your goals and understand your target audience, it’s time to establish your marketing budget.

You should take the time to assess the current financial health of your business—including your current and future cash flow—to determine your marketing budget. If you’re not running the finances in your small business, sit down with your CFO to come up with a budget you can both work within.

It’s crucial to figure out your budget ahead of time, as it’ll help guide the remainder of your marketing plan.

You should be realistic about how much money you’re able to invest into your marketing efforts every month.

If you’re scratching your head wondering where to start, you can start with around 10-20% of your overall revenue. This is a typical budget allocation for small businesses to invest in their marketing efforts.

While this may seem like a lot to invest, the return on investment (ROI) will be well worth it (if you implement the right marketing plan).

If you’re thinking you have almost nothing to spend on marketing as you’re brand new, that’s alright! Any little bit helps. Whatever you can invest in your marketing will help fuel future business growth.

Don’t forget that when budgeting, you should also take into consideration your  time  budget. In other words, you should look at not just the money you can put into marketing but the overall resources, including work hours. How much time are you able to devote to your marketing strategy every day, week, or month?

Write it down alongside your monetary budget. It can be easy to let other business activities take priority over your marketing efforts. Make sure you craft a time budget as well to ensure your marketing gets done. This will help you see your goals through to the end.

4. Create a website

Now that you’ve set your time and money budget, it’s time to spend it!

This is the fun part (at least for most people). Now that you know what you’re working with in terms of your resources, you can get to work on your marketing.

Your website is the digital headquarters for your business. It’s the place where you establish your branding, where you convert prospects into leads, and where you generate new sales.

You need to ensure your website is both professional and tactical. It’s the place where you show off who you are and what you offer. It’s the place of first impressions, so you need to ensure it’s designed well and functions in alignment with your goals.

The most effective websites will be much more than a digital brochure. When crafted properly, they can be 24/7 salespeople for your business.

If you have the budget, you should hire a web designer and developer to help you craft a professional site. If you have a limited budget, there are plenty of cheap and free website-building tools you can use to create your own site, even if you know nothing about design or coding.

5. Build a social media presence

Now that your headquarters is established, it’s time to set your brand up on social media. Nowadays, social media is an essential part of any small business marketing plan (whether your business is online or offline). The reality is that every type of customer is on social media (regardless of age).

If your audience skews younger, then chances are they’re on TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. If they’re older, they’re likely on Facebook. If you have a B2B brand, then you might want to check out LinkedIn.

You probably think all the different platform choices are overwhelming. You’re right—it can definitely be a confusing process trying to figure out how you’ll manage to post on dozens of social platforms consistently.

The truth is, you don’t have to, and you shouldn’t—at least not at the start.

The best way you can get started with your social media plan is to focus on one platform (two at max) when you’re first starting‌ out. Take a look back at number two—your audience. Where are they? Chances are, they hang out on one social media platform more than the others. Try to determine where they hang out. If you’re unsure, you can conduct surveys, ask customers one-on-one, or you can try testing out paid ads on a few platforms to see if there’s a winner early on (we’ll touch more on this at number 7).

There are two secrets to winning with social media:

  • Post consistently.
  • Engage with your followers.

That’s it. Yes, there are dozens of other tactics you can use to increase your social media marketing efforts. But you should spend 80% of your social media efforts focusing on these two things—especially when first starting out.

Just remember:  Even if you’re not going to start posting regularly on all the additional social media platforms, it’s important that you at least make a profile on each one to establish consistent branding if you do decide to branch out to them in the future.

6. Create content

Ever heard the term content marketing? It’s one of the most powerful forms of digital marketing in 2023. While content marketing primarily refers to blog posts and articles that help drive traffic to websites, it encompasses a wide variety of different mediums and content types.

In 2021,  video content actually surpassed blog content  in terms of the type of content created in content marketing strategies.

Main types of media used in content marketing strategies in 2021

Businesses primarily use content marketing as part of an overall inbound marketing strategy—which includes creating content as a means to draw people to your site. Inbound marketing is all about providing your potential customers with helpful information and resources and providing value that both attracts and converts them into customers.

Nowadays, your  content marketing strategy  can include a variety of content types:

  • Social media marketing
  • Video content
  • Blog posts and articles

Similar to choosing a social media platform, it can be confusing where to start with content types. You should consider two things: the ways your audience consumes content and the content you like producing.

For instance, you may find that your audience loves video content the best, and they hang out on YouTube and Instagram. But you’re really not into creating long-form videos. Instead, you could create stories on YouTube and Instagram—short-form videos you like creating that also engage your audience.

Just remember, it’s more important to consider how your audience likes consuming content ‌than what you actually enjoy creating. If you despise writing but you know your audience loves reading blogs, then you may want to outsource your content writing or hire a content agency to help you create content.

7. Invest in paid ads & influencers

All the marketing tactics we’ve mentioned above so far are primarily longer-term tactics to grow your audience and build a brand for the long haul.

However, there are two primary marketing tactics you can use to grow your audience and convert customers quickly—if you have the budget.

Those two are paid ads and influencers.

With enough money, you can access any audience. This could be paying for Facebook ads, or it could be paying an influencer to review your product to their audience of 300,000 engaged followers.

Either way, if your goal is to grow or convert new customers quickly, then you can leverage paid ads, influencers, or a combination of the two to reach your goals. To get started, you don’t need to have tens of thousands to spend. With even the smallest of budgets, you can focus on micro-influencers and run pay-per-click ads on Google or Instagram.

8. Consider traditional marketing tactics

The world, in 2023, is super digital. Everyone has a digital marketing strategy. You can use that to your advantage. As digital marketing has become the dominant form of marketing over traditional efforts, traditional marketing has become less expensive and less crowded.

A well-rounded small business plan will often include both online and offline marketing strategies. If you want to diversify your marketing efforts, then you may want to consider implementing some traditional tactics as well, such as:

  • Print advertising

If you have a business that’s primarily targeting a local audience, then you will definitely want to consider some of these tactics. These traditional marketing efforts can be incredibly powerful for community and brand-building. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, then implementing at least a few of them is essential to thriving in your community.

9. Track & measure your results

Now that you’re taking action and working on the different marketing tactics outlined in this comprehensive plan, it’s time to focus on perhaps the most important step of them all: tracking and measuring your results.

This is a critical step—and one that will essentially evaluate how close you are to your targets set in step number one. Did you reach your goals? Did you surpass them? Did you fall short?

If you want to succeed with your marketing plan, you need to analyze your efforts. You may be posting on Facebook every day only to get a couple of likes here and there. Or maybe you've built a blog that’s generating thousands of visitors every month.

Perhaps your in-person workshops have turned into a thriving repeat customer base.

You should go back to your original goals at the end dates you set for them (since you crafted SMART goals). Where did you land? If you didn’t reach your goal, analyze why. What tactics and specific steps of action did you take (or not take).

What channels are serving you the most?

What channels are performing the worst?

The best way to close out step nine is to re-establish new goals and essentially start your marketing plan over again. Except this time, you’re not starting from scratch. You’ve built up a solid plan and simply need to shift course a bit. You’ve seen what’s working and what’s not, so you can allocate more time, money, and resources to improve your plan even more.

Remember, building your marketing plan isn’t a one-time event. The best small business marketers know that continually monitoring their efforts and optimizing them is how they will find success in the long term.

Small Business Marketing Plan Templates

If you’re looking for a marketing plan template , you can follow steps 1–9 above to create your roadmap. But, if you want something easy—where you can simply fill in the blanks, then there are hundreds of free or paid marketing plan templates available online.

Whether you’re looking to start from scratch with a comprehensive marketing plan template or a simple one-page template, or you want a practical project-based roadmap, there are plenty of resources available.

Comprehensive marketing plan template

Business.com created a  free marketing plan template  you can use built right within Google Docs. It’s a comprehensive template you can use to build your marketing plan in a day. Each section includes in-depth explanations as well as free resources to learn more so you can build a clear roadmap.

Business.com free marketing plan template

One-page marketing plan template

If you don’t have a lot of time available to work on an in-depth plan, then you’ll want to consider Smartsheet’s template. Smartsheet offers a ton of free marketing templates, including a simple  one-page marketing plan  that you can get done in under 30 minutes.

Smartsheet one-page marketing plan template

Project-based marketing plan template

If you’re looking for a template that’s more of an action plan for your upcoming campaigns, then you’ll want to check out  Monday.com’s marketing plan templates . While you’ll have to get a paid plan to use Monday.com, you get access to a variety of impressive marketing plan templates that are project-based and actionable to help you meet your goals.

Monday.com marketing plan template

4 Best Practices When Crafting a Marketing Plan

1. center everything around your value proposition.

What makes you stand out from the crowd? Why should customers choose you over the competition?

When building your marketing plan, you always need to keep your value proposition top of mind. It has to take center stage when crafting every piece of content, creating new campaigns, and establishing your buyer personas.

Your value proposition is the thing that differentiates your brand from others in the space. If you’re not sure what yours is, try looking at what you do better than everyone else in your industry. If you can’t figure it out, then you need to establish the thing that does make you different. It could be your product, customer service, content plan, branding, or even price.

More Articles

11 marketing campaign types to try (+ examples and tips), fractional cmos vs. agencies vs. contractors: what’s the difference (+ hiring costs), building successful creator partnerships in 2024 (5 tips), the top priorities and challenges of cmos in 2024: report, 2. stay focused on your primary goals.

There are dozens of different paths you can take with your marketing. Within the marketing world, it can be easy to get distracted by new, shiny marketing tactics that are “guaranteed” to convert. While it can be tempting to give in to them, it’s best to stick to your core tactics.

Once you have your marketing plan set up, you need to stick to it to ensure the highest odds of success in reaching your goals. Once you’ve reached your primary objectives (or you’re on the trajectory to do so), then—and only then—should you even consider shifting your marketing efforts to other tactics.

3. Be consistent with your branding

Your branding is your business, and your business is your branding.

When it comes to building the right marketing plan, it’s important to measure the results of your efforts. One of the more challenging aspects of marketing success is measuring how well you are branding yourself. How powerful is your brand?

Your brand image has the power to turn customers off forever with a bad first impression or create raving fans who tell all their friends to buy from you.

One of the key elements to establishing your branding is to ensure you’re consistent. You need to know what type of brand you want to be, then ensure you’re congruent with it everywhere—on your website, social media, ads, in your voice, and even in your customer support.

4. Build a tool stack

In the digital age, you’ll only get so far with your marketing plan without the right tools. Even if you don’t consider yourself tech-savvy, you need to have the right technology at your disposal in order to make a dent with your marketing—even if you lean heavily on traditional marketing tactics.

Here are a few different types of marketing tools you should consider using:

  • Marketing strategy software
  • Email marketing software
  • Content marketing software
  • Social media software
  • Project management software
  • Analytics software

If you have a lean budget, don’t worry. There are plenty of tools in nearly every tool category that won’t cost you a thing.

Level Up Your Marketing Strategy

No matter how great your product or service is, you won’t be able to create consistent growth without a proper marketing plan.

Remember, ‌marketing plans with the greatest odds of success start with the end in mind. Stay focused on your business objectives, and pay attention to what’s working. By staying flexible, you’ll be able to optimize your strategy over time and find success in your industry.

If you want to stay up to date on the latest marketing strategies and trends, then  sign up for The CMO newsletter today . Our email newsletter offers practical advice and software recommendations from industry experts you can use to level up your marketing strategy and grow your business.

Growthink logo white

Sample Coffee Shop Business Plan

examples of business marketing plans

Writing a business plan is a crucial step in starting a coffee shop. Not only does it provide structure and guidance for the future, but it also helps to create funding opportunities and attract potential investors. For aspiring coffee shop business owners, having access to a sample coffee shop business plan can be especially helpful in providing direction and gaining insight into how to draft their own coffee shop business plan.

Download our Ultimate Coffee Shop Business Plan Template

Having a thorough business plan in place is critical for any successful coffee shop venture. It will serve as the foundation for your operations, setting out the goals and objectives that will help guide your decisions and actions. A well-written business plan can give you clarity on realistic financial projections and help you secure financing from lenders or investors. A coffee shop business plan example can be a great resource to draw upon when creating your own plan, making sure that all the key components are included in your document.

The coffee shop business plan sample below will give you an idea of what one should look like. It is not as comprehensive and successful in raising capital for your coffee shop as Growthink’s Ultimate Coffee Shop Business Plan Template , but it can help you write a coffee shop business plan of your own.

Example – BeanBrews Corner

Table of contents, executive summary, company overview, industry analysis, customer analysis, competitive analysis, marketing plan, operations plan, management team, financial plan.

At BeanBrews Corner, we’re proud to introduce our community-focused coffee shop located in the heart of the city’s bustling downtown area. Our mission is to serve high-quality, artisanal coffee and a selection of gourmet pastries and sandwiches, catering to both the early morning rush and the leisurely afternoon crowd. Our establishment is not just about serving great coffee; it’s a place where patrons can feel at home, whether they’re grabbing a quick takeaway or settling in for a few hours of work or relaxation. With our prime location and commitment to excellence in every cup, BeanBrews Corner aims to become a beloved staple in our local community, offering a warm, welcoming atmosphere that coffee lovers will cherish.

Our journey at BeanBrews Corner has been marked by several key success factors and accomplishments. Our focus on high-quality ingredients, coupled with our staff’s expertise in coffee brewing, has allowed us to offer a distinctive selection of coffee blends and drinks that stand out in the market. Our location has also played a crucial role in our success, providing us with high foot traffic and visibility. To date, we’ve successfully fostered a loyal customer base through our exceptional service and inviting atmosphere. Additionally, our engagement with the local community through events and partnerships has strengthened our brand presence and contributed significantly to our growth.

The coffee shop industry is experiencing a period of robust growth, driven by increasing consumer demand for specialty coffee and a rising culture of coffee appreciation. This industry is characterized by its high competitiveness and the importance of location, product quality, and brand differentiation. There is a significant trend toward sustainability and ethical sourcing of coffee beans, as well as an increasing preference for unique and customizable coffee experiences. Given these trends, BeanBrews Corner is positioned to thrive by focusing on quality, sustainability, and creating a unique customer experience that resonates with the values and preferences of today’s coffee enthusiasts.

Our target customers range from busy professionals seeking a quick coffee fix to students and remote workers looking for a cozy place to spend several hours. We also cater to coffee aficionados who appreciate the art of coffee making and seek unique blends and brewing techniques. Recognizing the diverse needs of our clientele, we’ve designed our product offerings and store layout to create a welcoming environment for everyone. Our approach to customer service is tailored to make every visit memorable, ensuring that BeanBrews Corner becomes a preferred destination for a wide range of coffee lovers in our community.

Java Joe’s: A chain with a wide selection of coffee and quick service. The Grind: Known for its cozy atmosphere and strong community engagement. Café Artisan: Focuses on high-end, specialty coffee offerings.

Our competitive advantages lie in our commitment to quality, our prime location, and our strong community ties. Unlike our competitors, we balance the convenience of quick service with the experience of enjoying artisanal coffee in a welcoming environment, making us a go-to spot for a broad customer base.

Our product line includes a wide variety of artisanal coffees, gourmet pastries, and sandwiches, with a focus on quality and uniqueness. Our pricing strategy is competitive, aimed at offering value for premium products. To promote BeanBrews Corner, we leverage social media, local events, and word-of-mouth, emphasizing our community involvement and unique offerings. We plan to introduce loyalty programs and seasonal promotions to encourage repeat business and attract new customers.

At BeanBrews Corner, our daily operations are centered around ensuring excellence in every aspect of our service. This includes meticulous inventory management, strict quality control, outstanding customer service, maintaining cleanliness and hygiene, efficient order fulfillment, effective financial management, strategic staff management, proactive marketing and promotion efforts, attentive feedback collection, and responsible energy and resource management. Our operational milestones include achieving consistent customer satisfaction, expanding our product offerings, and implementing sustainable practices across all operations.

Our management team at BeanBrews Corner brings together individuals with a passion for coffee and a wealth of experience in the hospitality industry. Led by our founder, a seasoned barista and entrepreneur, our team includes experts in operations, marketing, and customer service. Together, we share a commitment to creating an unrivaled coffee experience for our customers, fostering a positive work environment for our staff, and contributing to our community’s vibrancy. Our collective expertise and dedication are the driving forces behind our success and growth.

Welcome to BeanBrews Corner, a fresh and vibrant coffee shop nestled in the heart of Charlotte, NC. As a local coffee shop, we pride ourselves on filling a much-needed gap in the area—a high-quality, local coffee experience. Our passion for coffee, combined with a commitment to our community, drives us to serve not just a drink, but an experience.

At BeanBrews Corner, our menu boasts a wide range of offerings designed to cater to diverse tastes and preferences. Our coffee beverages stand out for their quality and variety, ensuring every coffee lover finds their perfect cup with us. For those who prefer a different kind of warm comfort, our tea selection offers both classic favorites and unique blends. But we don’t stop at drinks; our pastries and bakery items are the perfect companions to our beverages, made fresh daily. For those looking for something more substantial, we offer a selection of sandwiches and snacks, ideal for a quick lunch or a leisurely afternoon treat. And for those special occasions or simply to indulge, our specialty drinks provide a unique BeanBrews Corner experience.

Our location in Charlotte, NC, is no accident. We chose this vibrant city to be close to our customers, understanding their needs and being part of the community we serve. It’s not just about serving coffee; it’s about creating a space where people can gather, share, and connect.

BeanBrews Corner’s potential for success is rooted deeply in several key factors. Our founder brings invaluable experience, having previously run a successful coffee shop. This experience guides our vision and operations, ensuring we understand the intricacies of creating a beloved coffee destination. Furthermore, our commitment to quality sets us apart; we confidently claim to make better coffee than our competition, supported by our extensive variety of coffee and tea options. This combination of experience, quality, and variety positions us uniquely in the market, ready to become a favorite among the coffee-loving community of Charlotte.

Since our founding on January 6, 2024, we’ve made significant strides as a Limited Liability Company. Our journey began with the essentials: developing a company name that resonates with our vision, designing a logo that reflects our brand, and securing a great location that meets the needs of our customers and our business. These accomplishments are just the beginning of our story—one that we are excited to continue writing with our community in Charlotte.

The Coffee Shop industry in the United States is currently a thriving market, with an estimated size of over $45 billion. This figure reflects the growing popularity of coffee culture and the increasing demand for specialty coffee beverages among consumers. With a steady increase in coffee consumption over the years, the industry is expected to continue its growth trend in the coming years.

One of the key trends in the Coffee Shop industry is the shift towards customization and personalization. Consumers are looking for unique and personalized experiences when it comes to their coffee choices, driving the demand for specialty coffee shops like BeanBrews Corner. With a focus on providing high-quality, customizable coffee options, BeanBrews Corner is well-positioned to capitalize on this trend and attract a loyal customer base in Charlotte, NC.

Furthermore, the increasing preference for convenient, on-the-go coffee options has also been a driving force in the industry. With more consumers opting for quick and efficient coffee solutions, BeanBrews Corner can leverage this trend by offering fast service and grab-and-go options for busy customers. By aligning its offerings with the current market trends, BeanBrews Corner can establish itself as a competitive player in the Coffee Shop industry in Charlotte, NC.

Below is a description of our target customers and their core needs.

Target Customers

BeanBrews Corner will target a diverse range of customers, with local residents forming the core of its clientele. These individuals, seeking convenience along with quality coffee and a comfortable space to relax or work in, will find BeanBrews Corner especially appealing. The shop will tailor its offerings to meet the preferences and needs of this group, ensuring a steady flow of patrons from the surrounding neighborhoods.

Commuters and professionals working in or near Charlotte will also constitute a significant customer segment for BeanBrews Corner. The shop will provide a quick and efficient service for those in need of a morning coffee fix or a casual meeting spot. By offering Wi-Fi and work-friendly spaces, BeanBrews Corner will cater to the demands of this busy demographic, establishing itself as a go-to spot for both convenience and quality.

Moreover, BeanBrews Corner will also attract students and young adults looking for a cozy place to study, socialize, or enjoy artisan coffee. This segment values atmosphere as much as the quality of the coffee, and thus, the shop will create a welcoming and vibrant environment. Special promotions and events aimed at this demographic will further ensure their loyalty and frequent visits.

Customer Needs

BeanBrews Corner provides high-quality coffee that meets the expectations of residents with a discerning taste. Customers can savor an array of expertly crafted beverages, ensuring that their desire for premium coffee is fully satisfied. This commitment to excellence sets the foundation for a loyal customer base that values superior taste and quality.

In addition to serving top-tier coffee, BeanBrews Corner creates a welcoming atmosphere where individuals and groups can gather, work, or relax. The shop offers comfortable seating and complimentary Wi-Fi, catering to the needs of remote workers, students, and casual meet-ups. This environment encourages customers to spend time enjoying their coffee, fostering a sense of community and belonging.

BeanBrews Corner understands the importance of convenience for its customers. The coffee shop provides options for quick service, including online ordering and a mobile app for fast pick-ups. This ensures that even the busiest customers can enjoy their favorite beverages without significant delays, meeting the modern need for efficiency and time management.

BeanBrews Corner’s competitors include the following companies:

Summit Coffee – SouthPark:

Summit Coffee – SouthPark offers a wide variety of coffee blends and specialty drinks, as well as a selection of baked goods and light bites. Their price points cater to the mid-range consumer, providing a balance between affordability and premium quality. The revenue generated by Summit Coffee – SouthPark signifies a strong presence in the Charlotte market, with growth reflecting a loyal customer base and effective marketing strategies.

Summit Coffee – SouthPark operates primarily in the SouthPark area, serving a diverse clientele that includes young professionals, families, and students. Their key strength lies in their commitment to sustainability and community involvement, which resonates well with their customer segment. However, their location, while advantageous for reaching a specific demographic, may limit their geographical reach compared to competitors with multiple outlets.

Mugs Coffee:

Mugs Coffee is known for its cozy atmosphere and a broad selection of coffee and tea options, alongside a variety of sandwiches, pastries, and vegan options. They position themselves at a competitive price point, appealing to budget-conscious consumers without compromising on quality. The revenue of Mugs Coffee suggests a steady flow of regular customers and a positive reception in the local market.

With its location in a bustling neighborhood, Mugs Coffee attracts a mix of students, freelancers, and local residents looking for a comfortable place to work or relax. One of their key strengths is the welcoming environment and free Wi-Fi, making it a popular spot for work and study. A potential weakness for Mugs Coffee is the limited seating capacity, which can deter larger groups or peak-hour customers.

Thousand Hills Coffee:

Thousand Hills Coffee prides itself on its direct trade coffee, offering a premium range of single-origin coffees and artisanal blends. Their price points are on the higher end, targeting coffee connoisseurs and those willing to pay a premium for ethically sourced beans. The revenue trends for Thousand Hills Coffee indicate a niche but growing market share, benefiting from the increasing consumer interest in sustainable and ethical consumption.

Thousand Hills Coffee serves the greater Charlotte area, with a particular focus on the upscale market segment, including professionals and ethically conscious consumers. Their key strength is their commitment to quality and ethical sourcing, which distinguishes them from competitors. However, their premium pricing and niche focus could limit their appeal to a broader audience, potentially impacting their market reach.

Competitive Advantages

At BeanBrews Corner, our commitment to quality sets us apart in the vibrant Charlotte coffee scene. We pride ourselves on making better coffee than our competition, a claim rooted in our meticulous selection of beans and our perfected brewing techniques. Our baristas are artisans, trained in the craft of coffee making, ensuring each cup exceeds our customers’ expectations. This dedication to quality is not just a promise but a reality that can be tasted in every sip. Our customers come back not just for the coffee, but for the assurance of excellence that comes with every visit.

Furthermore, our variety is unmatched. We offer an extensive range of coffee and tea varieties, catering to the diverse preferences of our community. Whether a customer seeks the comfort of a classic espresso or the adventure of trying a new, exotic blend, we have something to satisfy every palate. This extensive selection allows us to provide a unique experience for each customer, making BeanBrews Corner a destination for both coffee aficionados and casual drinkers alike. Our variety extends beyond beverages; our cozy, welcoming space is designed to suit a range of needs, from a quiet spot for studying to a comfortable venue for social gatherings.

In addition to our superior coffee and wide variety, our location offers an added advantage. Situated in a convenient spot in Charlotte, we are easily accessible to both locals and visitors, making us a popular choice for anyone in search of quality coffee in a comfortable setting. This strategic location, combined with our commitment to excellence and variety, positions BeanBrews Corner as a leading coffee shop in the area, inviting more customers to discover the unique experience we offer.

Our marketing plan, included below, details our products/services, pricing and promotions plan.

Products and Services

At BeanBrews Corner, customers can indulge in a variety of meticulously crafted coffee beverages. The coffee menu encompasses everything from the classic espresso to more contemporary concoctions, ensuring there’s something for every coffee enthusiast. With an average price point of $3 for a basic coffee to around $5 for more intricate beverages, patrons can enjoy high-quality coffee without breaking the bank.

Aside from coffee, BeanBrews Corner offers a broad selection of teas to cater to non-coffee drinkers or those simply in the mood for something different. From traditional black and green teas to herbal and fruit-infused blends, the tea selection is designed to satisfy a wide range of palates. Prices for tea beverages are generally in the range of $2 to $4, making it an affordable option for tea lovers.

Complementing the beverage options, BeanBrews Corner also boasts an assortment of pastries and bakery items. Whether customers are in the mood for a sweet treat or a savory snack, the bakery section offers fresh, daily-made options including croissants, muffins, and scones, with prices averaging between $2 and $5. These bakery items are perfect for pairing with a cup of coffee or tea.

For those seeking a more substantial meal, the coffee shop also serves a variety of sandwiches and snacks. From gourmet sandwiches to wraps and salads, there’s something to satisfy any appetite. These menu items are ideal for lunch breaks or a quick, healthy snack, with prices ranging from $5 to $8, offering both value and quality.

Last but not least, BeanBrews Corner prides itself on its specialty drinks menu, which includes a range of unique and seasonal beverages. These specialty drinks are a testament to the creativity and passion of the baristas, showcasing flavors and combinations that can’t be found elsewhere. With an average price of $4 to $6, these specialty drinks offer a unique experience for those looking to try something new and exciting.

In summary, BeanBrews Corner caters to a wide range of tastes and preferences with its extensive menu of coffee and tea beverages, pastries, sandwiches, and specialty drinks. With its focus on quality, affordability, and variety, it’s the perfect spot for anyone looking to enjoy a delicious beverage or snack in a welcoming atmosphere.

Promotions Plan

BeanBrews Corner embraces a comprehensive promotional strategy to attract a vibrant customer base. At the heart of its efforts lies a robust online marketing campaign. The coffee shop leverages social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to engage with potential customers. By posting captivating content, including high-quality images of their coffee and pastries, BeanBrews Corner will build a strong online presence. Moreover, the shop will utilize targeted ads to reach coffee enthusiasts within Charlotte, NC, ensuring that their marketing efforts resonate with the local community.

In addition to online marketing, BeanBrews Corner will implement several other promotional tactics. The coffee shop will initiate a loyalty program to encourage repeat business. Customers will accumulate points with every purchase, which they can redeem for discounts or free items. This program not only incentivizes frequent visits but also fosters a sense of belonging among customers.

Furthermore, BeanBrews Corner will harness the power of local partnerships. By collaborating with nearby businesses and community organizations, the shop will gain exposure to a broader audience. These partnerships could include coffee pop-ups at local events or offering exclusive discounts to employees of partner organizations. Such collaborations will bolster BeanBrews Corner’s visibility and reputation within the community.

Email marketing will also play a crucial role in BeanBrews Corner’s promotional efforts. By collecting email addresses both in-store and online, the shop will send out regular newsletters. These newsletters will feature new products, special promotions, and upcoming events, keeping customers informed and engaged.

To cap off its promotional strategy, BeanBrews Corner will host a grand opening event. This event will not only serve as a celebration of the shop’s launch but also as an opportunity to showcase its offerings to the community. Live music, free samples, and special deals will attract a large crowd, generating buzz and excitement around the brand.

In summary, BeanBrews Corner employs a multifaceted promotional strategy encompassing online marketing, loyalty programs, local partnerships, email marketing, and a grand opening event. By executing these tactics, BeanBrews Corner will attract and retain a loyal customer base, establishing itself as a cherished destination for coffee lovers in Charlotte, NC.

Our Operations Plan details:

  • The key day-to-day processes that our business performs to serve our customers
  • The key business milestones that our company expects to accomplish as we grow

Key Operational Processes

To ensure the success of BeanBrews Corner, there are several key day-to-day operational processes that we will perform.

  • Inventory Management: We continuously monitor our stock levels to ensure we have all necessary ingredients and supplies, such as coffee beans, milk, and paper cups. This enables us to serve our customers without delay.
  • Quality Control: Daily checks are performed on our coffee machines and grinders to maintain the highest quality of coffee. We also taste our coffee throughout the day to ensure consistency in flavor.
  • Customer Service: Our staff engages with customers in a friendly and helpful manner, taking orders accurately and providing recommendations when asked. We ensure a welcoming atmosphere for all customers.
  • Cleanliness and Hygiene: Regular cleaning schedules are maintained throughout the day to ensure the shop, including the kitchen and seating areas, is clean and hygienic. This also includes sanitizing surfaces and equipment regularly.
  • Order Fulfillment: We efficiently manage the queue and prepare orders promptly while ensuring that every coffee served meets our quality standards. This minimizes wait times and improves customer satisfaction.
  • Financial Management: Daily sales are tracked, and expenses are monitored to manage the shop’s budget effectively. This includes performing cash handling duties and preparing deposits.
  • Staff Management: We schedule staff shifts to ensure adequate coverage during peak hours and manage the workload effectively. Staff training sessions are also conducted regularly to improve service quality.
  • Marketing and Promotion: We engage with our customers on social media platforms to promote our daily specials and upcoming events. This helps in building a community around our brand and attracting new customers.
  • Feedback Collection: We encourage customers to provide feedback on their experience and suggestions for improvement. This information is used to make necessary adjustments to our service and offerings.
  • Energy and Resource Management: We implement measures to reduce energy consumption and waste, such as using energy-efficient appliances and recycling, to ensure our operations are sustainable.

BeanBrews Corner expects to complete the following milestones in the coming months in order to ensure its success:

  • Securing a Prime Location : Identify and secure a lease for a location that is visible, accessible, and situated in a high-traffic area within Charlotte, NC, to ensure a steady flow of potential customers.
  • Obtaining Permits and Licenses : Successfully navigate the local regulatory environment to obtain all necessary permits and licenses required to legally operate a coffee shop in Charlotte, NC. This includes health department permits, business licenses, and any other local requirements.
  • Building Out the Coffee Shop : Complete the interior design, purchase, and installation of all necessary equipment and furniture to create a welcoming and efficient space for customers. This also includes ensuring the space meets all health and safety standards.
  • Hiring and Training Staff : Recruit, hire, and thoroughly train a team of baristas and support staff who are passionate about coffee and customer service. This team will be crucial in creating a positive customer experience and building a loyal customer base.
  • Marketing and Promotional Activities : Implement a strategic marketing plan that includes a grand opening event, social media campaigns, and local community engagement to generate buzz and attract customers to the shop.
  • Launch Our Coffee Shop : Officially open BeanBrews Corner to the public, ensuring that all operational, staffing, and marketing elements are in place for a successful launch.
  • Establishing Supplier Relationships : Secure relationships with high-quality coffee bean suppliers, local bakeries, and other necessary vendors to ensure a consistent and premium product offering.
  • Implementing a Customer Loyalty Program : Develop and launch a loyalty program or system to encourage repeat business and build a dedicated customer base.
  • Monitoring and Adapting Operations : Regularly review operational efficiency, customer feedback, and financial performance to identify areas for improvement and adapt strategies accordingly.
  • Get to $15,000/Month in Revenue : Reach the critical financial milestone of generating $15,000 in monthly revenue, which indicates a growing customer base and operational success. This will involve continuously optimizing the menu, pricing strategies, and marketing efforts to increase sales.

BeanBrews Corner management team, which includes the following members, has the experience and expertise to successfully execute on our business plan:

Benjamin Taylor, CEO

With an impressive track record in the coffee shop industry, Benjamin Taylor brings a wealth of experience to his role as CEO of BeanBrews Corner. His previous success in running a coffee shop demonstrates his deep understanding of the business, from operations to customer satisfaction. Benjamin’s leadership skills, combined with his passion for coffee and commitment to excellence, make him uniquely qualified to lead BeanBrews Corner towards lasting success. His experience not only in managing day-to-day operations but also in strategic planning and execution, places BeanBrews Corner in capable hands.

To achieve our growth goals, BeanBrews Corner requires a strategic investment in marketing, product development, and further establishment of our community presence. This investment will support our expansion plans, including enhancing our existing location, extending our product range, and implementing innovative marketing strategies to attract a broader customer base. Our financial strategy is designed to ensure sustainable growth while maintaining our commitment to quality and community engagement.

Financial Statements

Balance sheet.

[insert balance sheet]

Income Statement

[insert income statement]

Cash Flow Statement

[insert cash flow statement]

Coffee Shop Business Plan Example PDF

Download our Coffee Shop Business Plan PDF here. This is a free coffee shop business plan example to help you get started on your own coffee shop plan.  

How to Finish Your Coffee Shop Business Plan in 1 Day!

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your coffee shop business plan?

With Growthink’s Ultimate Business Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!

Growthink logo white

Diving Deep Into Marketing for Dentists (My Takeaways)

Precious Oboidhe

Published: February 08, 2024

An avalanche of both booked and patient walk-ins is the dream of dental practitioners. But let’s be honest — getting these patients requires hard work because the dental industry is fiercely competitive.

dentist uses dental marketing tactics

To help you win and bring your dream to fruition, I will discuss the most interesting dental marketing campaigns I’ve seen and highlight what makes them so effective.

Download Now: Free Marketing Plan Template [Get Your Copy]

I’ll also share some out-of-the-box marketing strategies for growing your dental business. Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Dental Marketing Strategies: 5 Campaigns You Can Learn From

4 dentist marketing ideas and how to execute them.

examples of business marketing plans

Free Marketing Plan Template

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

  • Pre-Sectioned Template
  • Completely Customizable
  • Example Prompts
  • Professionally Designed

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Below are the top dental marketing campaigns I’ve discovered — from Google ads to unique website updates. Here’s how these dental offices and companies found success.

1. Increase lead capture with Google Ads.

Google Ads is one of the most effective marketing strategies I’ve seen dental companies use. Beyond helping to create brand awareness , Google Ads lets you generate leads fast.

Case in point: Smile Doctors.

dental marketing campaigns, Smile Doctors homepage

Image Source

Smile Doctors started in 2015 , and in the first few years, the brand had minimal brand recognition. To connect with people who may need its orthodontic services, they used Google Ads, and I’ll tell you why.

From my experience, marketing channels like SEO take time to bring results — often six and up to nine months to attract just traffic .

Waiting for results wasn’t in the best interest of Smile Doctors. As a business with offices across the U.S., Smile Doctors needed country-wide brand awareness to get clients across their branches.

Embarking on a Google Ad campaign was an easy (though costly) choice to get people searching for dental services in each location.

Part of the campaign included the creation of customized landing pages aligned with each ad campaign. The brand also created many location-specific landing pages.

In fact, as of the time of this writing, Smile Doctors has 269 location-specific landing pages. Here’s an example.

Smile Doctors location landing page

With the landing pages set up, they conducted research to find commercial and transactional keywords. They also did competitor analysis and found and bid on many location-based keywords.

The campaign was massive, and insights from SpyFu show they may have invested over $13,000 per month in Google Ads.

Smile Doctors estimated Google ads budget

Here are a few of their ads.

Smile Doctors Google ads example

Overall, these ads got Smile Doctors a 35% increase in conversion rates . Call and form submissions also surged by 73%.

The icing on the cake is the incredible increase in online brand awareness — going from a mere 252 monthly visits in 2016 to 62,115 visits in 2023.

Smile Doctors organic traffic from 2016 to 2023

My Takeaway

Google Ads can get you results, but it’s best when you pair it with customized landing pages. These pages have the potential to rank organically, causing you to attract organic traffic and possibly help you cut your Google Ad costs.

2. Increase organic website visits and qualified leads with a targeted SEO campaign.

Customers will always appreciate your willingness to direct them. Once you can teach them “How to do [insert topic idea],” you will stand out and become an industry authority.

The Klement Family Dental (KFD) knew this about SEO and went all-in on it.

Before they got aggressive with SEO, they had a one-page dental website with subpar copy and no blog.

Klement Family Dental former homepage

Fast forward to 2024, the website has a new look with lots of pages, resources, and clear calls to action.

Klement Family Dental current homepage

Their strategy? A combination of content marketing , on-page , off-page , and technical SEO .

Some of the technical SEO boxes they checked off include having a sitemap and optimized site architecture, which looks like this:

Site architecture

A practical example is their “dental services” top-level navigation. Hovering on it shows the next-level menu, which has yet another category.

Klement Family Dental website architecture

This website structure is a plus for user experience because it reduces the crawl/click depth to three clicks.

That means it takes three clicks for a user to reach the bottom of the architecture (tooth filling, for example) and find what they need.

The outcome? Search engines rank such pages high.

The KFD website also has an informative blog with 171 posts. The traffic value of these posts shows they save up to $40,000 on Google ad costs.

Organic traffic cost of KFD blog

Besides this saving, what I love even more is their targeting of keywords that have commercial value . For example, their top article about “home remedies for toothaches” brings in 19,000 monthly visitors with a traffic value of $26,800.

Organic traffic cost of KFD top article

The catch with this article? If the home remedy options do not satisfy visitors, they can contact KFD for professional help.

Implementing SEO and content marketing can unlock the full potential of your dental website. But this duo works even better when you target keywords with high commercial value.

3. Run a reputation management campaign.

A report by B2B SaaS Reviews says 52% of customers consider businesses with an average review rating of four out of five stars suspicious.

Parker Pediatrics and Adolescents, a dental brand, didn't meet this threshold. The outcome? Patient numbers were taking a hit.

To fix this, they embarked on a reputation management campaign using a two-pronged strategy.

First, they established and optimized business listings primarily focused on Google Reviews. Working on the business listings positioned this dental brand for local SEO success.

This process ensured they had consistent NAP (name, address, phone number) on the internet, which created trust for potential new patients.

Google Business Profile of Parker Pediatrics and Adolescents

The second approach was the simultaneous launch of a Google review solicitation campaign. This helped them generate a steady stream of reviews from actual patients.

Today, when you search for Parker Pediatrics, you see a consistent NAP across listings and a good review page.

Customer review of Parker Pediatrics and Adolescents

The clinic’s average Google Reviews rating underwent a remarkable transformation, going from 3.6 to an impressive 4.2. They’ve also witnessed a 16% increase in new users, according to Cardinal Digital Marketing .

The clinic now boasts over 100 reviews, a testament to the genuine satisfaction of their patients and an accurate reflection of their work.

Online reviews shape perceptions, especially in healthcare. To attract patients with reviews, always ask your past patients to always leave positive feedback.

More positive feedback helps you dilute the overall impact of any negative review on your brand.

4. Get leads with Facebook Ads.

Smile Design Dentistry (SDD) is a family-owned practice in Florida. Faced with a low number of new patients, the brand embraced Facebook ads as a solution.

Their objectives were to:

  • reduce customer acquisition cost.
  • increase patient volume while keeping spending stable.
  • enhance lead generation and new patient bookings across their 50 locations.

To meet these objectives, Cardinal Digital Marketing worked with SDD to tell video stories, use image carousels, and adopt value-based conversion actions that helped the Facebook algorithm find better prospects.

They also created ads tailored to each location at every stage of the funnel. Plus, the creative planning involved A/B testing assets to achieve the lowest cost per lead (CPL).

Facebook ads by Smile Design Dentistry

After this campaign, call duration, conversion rates (CVR), and cost per acquisition (CPA) improved. There was also a notable increase in brand search volume, which shows improved brand awareness.

The indicator of success was not just in the efficiency of conversions but in the actual results — an influx of new patients.

Facebook ads are helpful for patient acquisition. But while you’re at it, watch out for your CVR, CPA, and CPL. If they are too high, you might be doing something wrong. That said, the ultimate barometer for success is more patients.

Quick note: You can connect your ad account to your HubSpot Marketing Automation software to create and manage your Facebook ads directly in HubSpot.

5. Try a website update or refresh.

Dr. Geisca Horn and Dr. Chad Loween run Serene Oaks Dental. Looking at their website homepage, all I see is elegance .

Serene Oaks Dental homepage

But it wasn’t always this way.

The site looked like this in March 2016.

Web archive result of Serene Oaks Dental homepage

Web archive results show they have redesigned their dentist service website several times.

In fact, the good folks at Roadside Dental Marketing say they redesign their site roughly every 2 to 3 years. And in 2021, they did a complete website makeover.

This is fascinating. Their rationale?

Serene Oaks Dental is not your average dental practice.

Dr. Horn and Loween are trailblazers in cosmetic dentistry who constantly enhance their skills and invest in the latest technology. They are also in a competitive market near Minneapolis, so they need to always stand out to stay ahead.

According to Roadside Dental Marketing, the results of their rebrand were a 72% increase in mobile traffic, a 37.9% surge in total traffic, and a 52.5% boost in average pages per session.

Your website reflects on your practice. By updating it, you create a great brand perception. This is even more important if you work with patients who want expensive dental services.

Here are four dentist marketing ideas you can use to drive traffic and sales opportunities to your dental business.

1. Optimize your Google Business Profile for local search.

“Dentist near me.”

“Dentist in Florida.”

“Best dentist for Invisalign in [state].”

These are local search terms . When patients search for them, Google will return results with profiles in the user’s area.

To win such local clientele , you need to set up or claim your Google Business Profile. Here are some tips for optimizing your profile.

Claim and verify your business.

This is the first step to optimizing your Google Business Profile .

A verified profile adds authenticity to your brand. This reassures visitors they are engaging with a legitimate and established dental practice. Here is how a verified Google profile looks:

Google Business Profile of Sky Dental

Add images showing the physical location.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and with a dental practice, it’s worth even more. Showcase your clinic, staff, and facilities using high-quality images and videos.

A visual representation of your dental services can help potential patients get a feel for your clinic and set the tone for a positive experience.

Google Business Profile image of Sky Dental

Choose relevant categories for your dental service.

Doing this helps your business appear and rank in the right search results. For instance, here’s what I got when I searched for “orthodontist in New York.”

Google Business Profile results for orthodontist in New York

And “oral surgeon New York.”

Google Business Profile results for oral surgeon in New York

These results show Google will return results that reflect the category a user wants. So, if you run a specialized practice, clarify this by choosing the right category and emphasizing it in your description.

Optimized Google Business Profile description

Optimize your description for local keywords.

Research and identify local keywords for dental services. Think “orthodontist in [location],” “teeth whitening in [location],” etc.

Use these keywords in your profile description, services, and posts to enhance your local search visibility.

2. Bid for transactional and commercial intent keywords.

Both are bottom-of-the-funnel keywords . Customers who search for them are actively seeking to make a purchase or take action — you just need to be there and gain their trust.

From my experience, such keywords may not have lots of traffic potential.

But their commercial value is enormous and bidding for them will be expensive and rewarding. Smile Doctors’ success shows the effectiveness of these high-conversion keywords.

Here are a few ways you can identify these keywords:

  • If your dental practice serves a specific location, include location-based terms in your keywords. For example, “dentist near me” or “dental services in [city].”
  • Uncover competitor keywords with tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush and target those with the highest commercial value. Keywords related to services, pricing, or transactional actions are good examples.
  • Focus on long-tail keywords . These keywords are specific and indicative of user intent. For instance, targeting ‘my tooth hurts’ is a gigantic waste of money. But “my tooth hurts so bad?” That’s a keyword that someone who needs help right away will search for.
  • Include phrases that stimulate action in your ad copy. For example, same-day treatment is available and 24-hour emergency dentist.
  • Use adjectives that suggest intent, such as “best,” “top-rated,” “affordable,” or “near me.” These modifiers suggest commercial intent, and using them will help refine your keyword list to attract patients.

Recommended reading: The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads [Examples]

3. Create Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram).

Facebook has a global advertising audience of 2.25 billion , and Instagram forecasts 1.44 billion estimated users by 2025. Both platforms offer unparalleled reach and targeting capabilities for paid advertisement.

Below are some Facebook and Instagram ad ideas.

Before and After Images

The visual impact of a transformed smile speaks volumes.

By creating these images, you give potential patients the confidence to use your service. You can try this out with a side-by-side image featuring a client’s smile before and after using your services.

Lifestyle Transformation Display

Highlighting the impact of dental services on lifestyle can resonate deeply. This is as simple as showing happy people with well-aligned and white teeth.

Feature images or videos that capture the newfound confidence and joy your patients experience after fixing their teeth.

Education on Bad Habits

Educational content is highly shareable and can position your dental brand as an authority.

Create visually appealing content that educates people on bad habits affecting their dental health — you’ll get engagement and trust that’ll translate into more patients.

Igniting Pain Points

Addressing pain points associated with dental issues helps you tap into a patient’s emotional triggers. To execute this, you can design image carousels, create videos, feature past clients, and more.

Plus, there are a myriad of issues you can address, like bad breath, tooth pain, decay, smiles that ruin impressions, and yellow teeth.

You can also create behind-the-scenes videos displaying some work being done, the atmosphere, and everything to the final result.

Tips for Facebook and Instagram Ad Success

  • Branding : Maintain a consistent brand presence across both platforms to build recognition and trust.
  • Use carousel ads : Facebook and Instagram carousel ad formats help you tell a visual transformational story.
  • Generate engagement : Create posts that encourage engagement through comments and shares. Facebook’s algorithm rewards content that sparks conversations.
  • Use Instagram Reels : Engage your audience with short, entertaining Reels that educate on dental health in a fun and digestible manner. What’s great is that Reels are shareable on Facebook.
  • Call-to-action (CTA) : Always have clear and compelling CTAs. Whether it’s booking an appointment or learning more about your services, tell the prospective patient the next step.

4. Create TikTok videos.

TikTok is an invaluable tool for dental businesses to connect with a wide demographic.

According to TikTok user research by Backlinko , out of 5.3 billion internet users worldwide, 23% use TikTok. The most interesting part of this data is TikTok’s 1.218 billion ad reach potential.

But newsflash: you don’t need ads to make TikTok work. With organic content, you can get incredible reach and engagement, provided your content is relatable and shows expertise.

Two dentists who use the organic approach on TikTok are @thebracesguy and @veneercheck.

Tiktok pages of dental experts

Their numbers and what they do:

Achieving the above feat won’t be easy, but taking a step trumps stagnancy. Here are a few ideas you can implement to establish your brand presence on TikTok.

Before and After Smile Transformations

Create visually striking before-and-after videos showcasing the transformative power of your services. This format will both engage and reinforce the impact of your services and boost confidence.

3D Dental Work and Behind-the-Scenes Content

Offer a glimpse into cutting-edge dentistry by sharing high-quality 3D dental work and behind-the-scenes footage. This content can demystify dental procedures, building trust and appreciation for your services.

Dentist-Patient Conversations

Humanize your practice by featuring authentic interactions between dentists and patients. These conversations can address common concerns and foster a sense of community within your TikTok audience.

Hygiene Tips and Product Recommendations

Educate your audience with hygiene tips and product recommendations. You could create short and informative videos that highlight the importance of dental care practices while subtly promoting your services and endorsed products.

Concerns Your Audience May Have

There is no such thing as excess information or ‘the information is already out there.’ Your audience may want to hear from you.

To figure out their concerns, include a call to action in your videos and ask them to comment about their dental challenges.

Embracing Trends and Engaging Your Audience

There is a popular TikTok trend? Cool! Align it with what you do and make a fun video(s). This ensures your content remains relevant and resonates with the platform’s culture.

Also, respond to comments, ask questions, and encourage user-generated content. Bottom line: Engage with your audience.

Your Next Step as a Dental Practitioner

These marketing campaigns and ideas show you can achieve significant growth right now, while planning for future growth.

To grow right now, you need a substantial PPC or social media advertisement budget. For future growth, you need to consider organic content you can create that won’t only support your ad strategy but also generate traffic in the future.

And if you can execute both at once, that’s even better. You build brand awareness, attract new patients, and generate revenue — this trio will make you smile as a practitioner.

New Call-to-action

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

50 Small Business Marketing Ideas for 2024

50 Small Business Marketing Ideas for 2024

How Luxury Brands Market and What You Can Learn

How Luxury Brands Market and What You Can Learn

Diving Deep Into Marketing in Financial Services (My Takeaways)

Diving Deep Into Marketing in Financial Services (My Takeaways)

Diving Deep Into Marketing for Restaurants (My Takeaways)

Diving Deep Into Marketing for Restaurants (My Takeaways)

Q1 Marketing Plays That'll Start Your Year Strong, According to State of Marketing Data

Q1 Marketing Plays That'll Start Your Year Strong, According to State of Marketing Data

Relationship Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

Relationship Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

The 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report: Data from 1400+ Global Marketers

The 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report: Data from 1400+ Global Marketers

Top Marketing Channels for 2024 [+Data]

Top Marketing Channels for 2024 [+Data]

I Took a Deep Dive Into ASO Marketing. Here’s What I Learned.

I Took a Deep Dive Into ASO Marketing. Here’s What I Learned.

I Took a Deep Dive Into the Marketing Funnel, Here’s What I Learned

I Took a Deep Dive Into the Marketing Funnel, Here’s What I Learned

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

IMAGES

  1. 15+ Small Business Marketing Plan Templates

    examples of business marketing plans

  2. Simple Marketing Plan

    examples of business marketing plans

  3. What is a marketing plan and why do you need one?

    examples of business marketing plans

  4. Business Marketing Plan

    examples of business marketing plans

  5. 34 Marketing Plan Samples to Build Your Strategy With 7 Templates

    examples of business marketing plans

  6. 30 Professional Marketing Plan Templates ᐅ TemplateLab

    examples of business marketing plans

VIDEO

  1. How To Write A Marketing Plan In 5 Easy Steps

  2. Marketing Plan vs Business Plan: What’s the Difference?

  3. Marketing Plan Explained ✅ What It Is & How To Create One

  4. How to Create a Marketing Plan

  5. Small Business Marketing 101: Creating a Marketing Plan

  6. Startup Business Plan

COMMENTS

  1. What is a Marketing Plan & How to Write One [+Examples]

    What is a Marketing Plan & How to Write One [+Examples] Download Now: Free Marketing Plan Template Clifford Chi Published: December 27, 2023 For a while now, you've been spearheading your organization's content marketing efforts, and your team's performance has convinced management to adopt the content marketing strategies you've suggested.

  2. 15 marketing plan examples to inspire your work

    Coca-Cola Lush Cosmetics The Wisconsin Public Library Patagonia Cyberclick Starbucks Botanical Bounty The Palm Beaches, Florida The City of West Chicago Safe Haven Family Shelter Austin, Texas Visit Oxnard Create a strong marketing plan for your business Adobe can help Marketing plan FAQ How to create a marketing plan

  3. 10 Examples of Marketing Plan and Key Takeaways (2022)

    3 1. Contently 2. Visit Baton Rouge 3. HubSpot 4. Evernote 5. University of Illinois 6. Monday.com 7. Lush 8. Coca-Cola 9. Naperville Park District 10. Starbucks 4 How to approach a marketing plan Determine your goals Check your competitors Identify your audience Craft final KPIs Perform your revisions

  4. 7 Examples of Marketing Plan and Why They Work

    7 Inspiring Marketing Plan Examples Struggling with your marketing plan? We've got you covered. Here are the essential elements, plus seven examples that get it right. Nov 5, 2021 Start your online business today. For free. Start free trial Navigating uncharted territories without a compass is impossible.

  5. How to Create a Winning Marketing Plan [With Examples] [2023 ...

    For example, imagine you're creating an annual marketing plan to improve customer adoption and retention in the next fiscal year. Here's how you could go through the questions above to ensure you're ready to move forward with your plan: What resources do I need?

  6. Create a Marketing Plan [+20 Free Templates]

    Some examples include social media marketing, influencer marketing, video marketing, and email marketing. Your business needs a marketing plan to understand your business, align marketing goals with business goals, ensure everyone is on the same page, stay focused on what's important and make better decisions.

  7. 5 Steps to Create an Outstanding Marketing Plan [Free Templates]

    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.

  8. What is a Marketing Plan & How to Create One [with Examples]

    9 marketing plan templates Marketing plan design and writing tips What is a marketing plan? A marketing plan is a report that outlines your marketing strategy for your products or services, which could be applicable for the coming year, quarter or month.

  9. What Is a Marketing Plan? And How to Create One

    Here are some examples: Launching a new product or service Carrying out campaigns through different marketing channels, including social media, email marketing, print media, TV, or offline events Implementing paid advertising Measuring marketing efforts over specific periods of time, such as every quarter, six months, or year

  10. How to Write a Marketing Plan

    1. Research The first step when learning how to write a marketing plan for your business plan is research. You want to look at your market as a whole, your competitors, their marketing...

  11. How to Create a Marketing Plan In 2023 (Template + Examples)

    Subscribe here Marketing is an often misunderstood profession. Peers often stereotype marketing with massive budgets, loosey-goosey timelines, haphazard tactics, high-profile influencers, and Snapchat filters. In reality, modern marketing plans are more complex and orchestrated than a Premier League-winning football team.

  12. 24 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

    8. Panda Doc's Free Business Plan Template. PandaDoc's free business plan template is one of the more detailed and fleshed-out sample business plans on this list. It describes what you should include in each section, so you don't have to come up with everything from scratch.

  13. 50 Excellent Marketing Plan Examples to Model and Modify

    1. Adidas @adidas Benchmarking other leading brands when conducting marketing research allows you to determine how you stack up to your biggest competitors. This strategy overview from Adidas provides an excellent high-level overview of the company's approach to business.

  14. How To Write A Marketing Plan

    It is important to know what other people besides you think about your company, so spend some time before writing your marketing plan talking to employees, customers, shareholders and community...

  15. Marketing Plan Template [Step-by-Step Guide Plus Examples]

    If you have a business you want to promote, there are so many directions you can go with your marketing efforts - build your own website, post on social media, send out email blasts and more. With a plethora of both free and paid options for promoting your business online, marketing has become easy and accessible for everyone.

  16. Everything You Need to Write a Marketing Plan

    Your business will likely need a combination of the following marketing plans to create an effective, comprehensive marketing strategy: Advertising plan Branding plan Content marketing plan Customer acquisition plan Direct marketing plan Email marketing plan Public relation plan Print marketing plan Reputation management plan Retention plan

  17. 6 Ranked Marketing Plan Examples for Small Businesses

    Marketing Plan Example 1: BusinessTown's Multichannel Marketing on a Budget BusinessTown sets out a multichannel marketing plan for Landscape Express, LLC on a $2,000 budget. This marketing plan walks through purpose, target audience, all the way through to choosing CTAs and measuring results.

  18. Exploring the Best Marketing Plan Examples for Your Business Success

    Example 4: Agricultural Extension Service's Model Plan. Offering a hypothetical brand as an example, this plan illustrates the essentials of a successful marketing strategy: Initial market research and analysis. Setting marketing and financial goals. Developing diverse marketing strategies. Exploring the marketing mix.

  19. How to create a marketing plan in 2024

    Strategy: Segmentation, Targeting and Positoning (STP) and the tactics forming the 7Ps of the marketing mix. Action: Budget, resourcing including team and tools and marketing technology (Martech) and 90-day action plans. As a marketer, every activity will fall into either an opportunity, strategy, or action.

  20. 38 Marketing Plan Examples, Samples, & Templates

    Published July 20, 2022 / Updated September 15, 2023 Looking to create a marketing plan? Here are 38 marketing plan examples from real-life brands and hypothetical companies to help you map out your goals, strategies, and successes. The following marketing plan samples break down the outlines from these plans.

  21. 2024 Digital Marketing Strategy Guide

    A digital marketing strategy is a plan that gets a product or brand in front of potential customers. ... Goals should also support your business objectives. An example of a digital marketing goal ...

  22. How To Create A Small Business Marketing Plan In 9 Simple Steps (with

    But there's a simple framework you can use to come up with a plan that's actionable and effective. Follow these nine steps to set your marketing team up for success: 1. Establish your goals. First off, you need to set your marketing goals. But you can't just set a random, vague goal like "Make more money.".

  23. 19 Best Sample Business Plans & Examples to Help You Write Your Own

    Having this information handy will enable you to build out your business plan's marketing section with confidence. LiveFlow has shared the template here. You can test it for yourself. 2. Lula Body. This is a good business plan example for service-based businesses such as gyms, boxing classes, dancing studios, etc.

  24. 8 Steps to Create a Complete Marketing Strategy in 2023

    For example, say you're creating a marketing strategy for a new fashion brand. Your strategy might target young urban professionals and position the brand as trendy and affordable.

  25. Sample Coffee Shop Business Plan

    Industry Analysis. The Coffee Shop industry in the United States is currently a thriving market, with an estimated size of over $45 billion. This figure reflects the growing popularity of coffee culture and the increasing demand for specialty coffee beverages among consumers.

  26. Diving Deep Into Marketing for Dentists (My Takeaways)

    Here are four dentist marketing ideas you can use to drive traffic and sales opportunities to your dental business. 1. Optimize your Google Business Profile for local search. "Dentist near me.". "Dentist in Florida.". "Best dentist for Invisalign in [state].". These are local search terms.