Have you ever had to write a marketing plan? If yes, then you know how time consuming the task can be. That’s where this sample marketing plan will come in handy. Learn from some of the best strategies by using the strategies outlined here for your own business.
Here is a Marketing Plan. This Marketing Plan will guide you in developing your Hub Hub Analytics strategy. This is a sample Marketing Plan designed for informational purposes only and may not meet the exact needs of the Hub.
Tools for Research
SimilarWeb
Similarweb is another great tool for market research. It’s like Alexa in that it has some very similar features but has more reporting capability, and has other metrics like geography, referring sites, and SEO metrics. Imagine if your Google Analytics dashboard could show you the data on your competitors. This is exactly what SimilarWeb does.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the top SEO tools out there. It can give you some of the most sophisticated information about the types of backlinks you or your competitors have, search engine rankings, and much more. I
Basecamp
Basecamp is a great tool for team collaboration that has been used for streamlining project management. You can use it to message your team, store and organize project files efficiently, and work better with your team. There are so many data points to gather for your marketing plan and you will need to collaborate with multiple teams in your company.
Slack
Slack is another great tool for team collaboration. Though it’s more focused on communication it does provide a great way to store information and collaborate with co-workers (and it has a slick design and an easy-to-use interface).
Speaking of design, let’s talk about visual design tools and software for your marketing plan.
Lucidchart
This is a great design tool for making charts. They have a really easy-to-use drag and drop design interface that allows you to create fancy charts and diagrams for your marketing plan in minutes.
Canva
Canva is a great graphic design tool for all kinds of design projects. It has a wide range of features that you could use to design amazing graphics and download them for your marketing plan.
Marketing Plan Definition
A marketing plan is a document that details how you’re going to execute your strategy. It’s written for a specific period of time and explains both your current situation and your future plans.
A good marketing plan includes several elements:
- Executive Summary
- Mission Statement
- Situation Analysis
- Target Market
- Buyer Personas
- Marketing Objectives and Performance
- Pricing Strategy
- Distribution Strategy
- Promotion Strategy
- Budgeting
How to Write a Marketing Plan
The list of elements involved in a marketing plan may sound quite comprehensive, but writing a plan doesn’t need to be difficult. Of course, it comes with some effort, but doing it step-by-step will help you master this challenge. To get started, use our marketing plan template. This document will guide you through the process. But first, let’s dive into the different elements of a marketing plan, and figure out how to outline them.
Elements of a Marketing Plan
Executive Summary
The executive summary is a small, summarized version of your marketing plan. The main objective is it to briefly list and describe all relevant components. Keep in mind that most executives who’ll read your marketing plan won’t have the time to read the full document. Therefore, you need to make sure that they’re immediately getting the full picture.
Mission Statement
Your mission statement should describe your marketing activities on a meta level. Hence, you need to answer these basic business questions:
- What do you want to do?
- Why do you want to do it?
- Who do you do it for?
All of your business activities should be based on your mission statement. When you start wondering if you’re still heading in the right direction, use this statement to double-check your approach.
Here are some examples of great mission statements:
- “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” – Google
- “We believe in what people make possible. Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” – Microsoft
- “Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.” – Facebook
- “Our vision is to be earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”- Amazon
Situation Analysis
This analysis covers these elements:
- Product/Service: What are you selling?
- Unique Selling Proposition: What is your unique selling proposition? And what separates you from your competitors?
- Best Practices: What are best practices at your company? They could be well-performing marketing channels, buyer personas with a large amount of purchase intent, or campaigns that have generated a lot of leads.
- Marketing Objectives and Performance: What are your current marketing objectives? Did you manage to achieve them? If not, why?
- Challenges: What are the current challenges that your company (especially your marketing team) is facing?
- Competitor Analysis: Who are your competitors? How are your competitors performing?
- SWOT Analysis: What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that your company (especially your marketing team) is facing?
(Image Source: The UX Blog)
Target Market
What market is your product or service trying to target? Is it a B2B market or a consumer market?
The target market includes the industries that you sell your product or service to. It should be as detailed as possible, and it’s the foundation for any marketing activities. Without properly targeting, you won’t be able to successfully run a marketing campaign.
So what do you need to know about your target market? Get started by answering these questions:
- Which companies are in your target market?
- How can you reach them?
- Why would companies in these industries buy your product/service?
- Why would companies from these industries refuse to buy your product or service
- What are these companies’ current needs?
Buyer Personas
You’ve defined your target market. That’s great, but now we need to dive deeper into this market, to find out who will actually buy your product or service. So now is the time to create your buyer personas. This process involves pinpointing which people work in your target markets, and which ones represent segments of your customer base.
You’ll need to define these customer archetypes in a very detailed way. That way, you’ll be able to make informed marketing decisions. But what attributes should you describe? You can easily use our buyer persona template to pinpoint your first personas.
In general, a buyer persona should cover these points:
- Name and Photo: Give your buyer persona a suitable name, and add a nice photo.
- Background Information: Define general information, such as age, gender, location, income, education, job, and family situation.
- Statement: Create one quote that contains the values, objectives, and challenges of your buyer persona.
- Goals: What does your buyer want to achieve?
- Challenges and Problems: List the most important challenges that your buyer persona faces.
- Values: What are your buyer persona’s most relevant values and beliefs?
- Buying Decisions: Why and when does your buyer persona buy?
- Solution: How can your product or service help your buyer persona overcome his or her challenges?
, where your traffic comes from, and the traffic sources of your competitors.
Conclusion
Using this Marketing Plan example created by our team of MBA professionals, you’ll be on your way to building a powerful Marketing Strategy. Call us today for more info on how to create an excellent plan.