Developing winning marketing strategies is time-consuming. But an effective plan is likely to improve profits and customer satisfaction.
Fully understanding your customer’s needs helps you appreciate why they may want your product rather than your competitors. Your document should cover traditional as well as digital marketing, such as website content.
Getting started is sometimes the biggest hurdle to overcome. Therefore, we’ve created a simple marketing plan template that any business owner or marketer can put to work on their business.
A marketing plan outlines your organisation’s journey to deliver a desired financial outcome. It answers many of the following questions:
Below is an outline of what your plan should contain. The downloadable templates below also include additional notes and guidance on completing each section. Before you start writing, read through this template to understand the information required.
Your plan begins with a summary of the entire document. This introduction is usually two pages that provide enough data for someone to grasp your concepts and financial projections quickly.
Gather detailed information on your market position and external forces influencing your decisions. For example, knowing how large your potential customer base might be will influence most attributes of your product.
The results from your market research could highlight new business opportunities that you can insert into your overall strategic planning document.
A strategy document or business plan usually contains a SWOT analysis combining internal and external analysis. These results could lead to new market segmentation or action plans to keep the status quo.
Understanding exactly the type of customers who’ll buy from you is essential. B2C target groups have some of the following characteristics:
If you’re targeting a B2B sector, you may also have the following additional characteristics about your personas:
Information about the type of company you represent, its core values, and how your company communicates with its audience.
Describe in full the products you’re offering the consumer groups that you outlined in the previous section. List any options available such as size or colour.
Prepare calculations on the pricing strategy and discounting tables that the sales team use when dealing directly with customers.
You may have different wholesale and retail pricing strategies. Add these plans in this section together with reasons for your choices.
Detail the different sales channels used for selling the products. These may include direct sales, face-to-face sales, online transactions, call centres, and affiliate marketing. If you have different channel pricing strategies, then explain the reasons behind each decision.
List the key communications material produced for your campaign. Explain why you utilise individual media channels such as direct mail or radio, together with the Return on Investment (ROI) for each channel.
Describe the content of each marketing strategy for all promotional plans, including your website content plan. These could be for improving brand awareness or launching new products.
Highlight the investment together with financial returns over the period of the plan. In this section, add any particular industry rules or regulations you need to follow.
You can download a PDF copy of the marketing plan template below to use for your business. There are three different formats to choose from: PDF, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. There are no forms to complete and we don’t require your email address. Just click on the link to open the appropriate file.
Open or download the PDF marketing plan template on your device and start marketing your business right now.
Open or download the Word marketing plan template on your device. You can edit this document directly and save it for future reference.
For those using Microsoft Excel, use the Excel marketing plan template directly on your device. There are also no restrictions on this worksheet.
You can use it for brand development, product launches, service refreshes, or related activity. Students and business owners have downloaded these templates over 65,000 times, and it’s proven to help develop your ideas into successful plans.
Your completed plan will help you precisely target your chosen customer segments and check if you’ve achieved your objectives at the end of the project.
Use the Ansoff Matrix below to assist with segmentation planning.
Each of the segments could be a target for your marketing. Each has different strategies to improve market share depending on the potential customers you want to develop.
