Use our simple, 15 section download to quickly create a marketing plan for your business

Many marketing plan templates you will find online were created long ago for larger businesses and aren’t so relevant to small and startup business competing in today’s marketplace where effective digital marketing is essential. Long plans with sections labelled ‘mission and vision statement’ and ‘corporate strategies’ are irrelevant for smaller businesses. The template we recommend in this post  is far more practical since it relates to the real-world challenges and opportunities of a small business. In this post, we'll recommend what needs to go into a marketing plan and how to structure it. At the end of the article we link to a Word document you can download to write your own plan.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is an essential tool to compete and grow your business since it gives focus to your marketing activities…

7 steps to creating an effective marketing plan for businesses of all sizes

A marketing plan is a bit like a job description for your company. Everyone should have one, but they’re often not fit for purpose, out of date, and reviewed infrequently... Research has shown that businesses with plans succeed, outperform competitors, and retain staff, more than those with no plan. Without a plan there’s no direction for the company or its employees, decisions can be uninformed, opportunities can be missed and threats can damage or destroy the business. Whether you are looking at creating a traditional marketing plan or a multichannel digital marketing plan, we've got resources to help you.

Free marketing plan template aimed at small businesses

In this article, Annmarie Hanlon recommends 7 simple steps for structuring a classic marketing plan. But for an SME or SMB, you need a little more detail about prioritizing your investment of time and…

Using the RACE OSA process to structure a marketing plan

A marketing plan is an essential tool to compete and grow your business since it gives focus to your marketing activities by setting realistic, achievable priorities within your budget. It simply defines what you want to gain from your investment in marketing and how you will achieve these goals through selecting the best marketing strategies and channels to acquire and retain customers. A typical definition of a marketing plan used by traditional marketers is: "A marketing plan is a strategic document that specifies your organization’s target markets, marketing objectives, programs, and activities to achieve them, expected timescales, resources to be utilized, according to defined budgets, and how success will be measured". This is logical and simple and that's what we need to achieve through the structure of an effective marketing plan. However, for today's marketing where digital marketing channels are so important we need a…

Discover our top 7 recommended different types of marketing plan options for developing and streamlining your marketing planning activities

Planning is a must for any business that wants to succeed, but choosing the right type of plan to define your strategy and structuring it can be difficult. Especially since there are so many different types of marketing plan within marketing and business, all with a different scope. The challenge is compounded if you are new to creating plans, or to the culture of planning within a business. It seems that the difficulty of choosing the right type of plan and how to structure it to deliver results stops many in their tracks. Our research shows that, shockingly, as many as half of businesses don't have a digital marketing plan or, perhaps worse, a marketing plan on which to base it. Our free marketing plan template structured around RACE,…

How to use Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning (STP) to develop marketing strategies

Today, the STP marketing model (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) is a familiar strategic approach in modern marketing. It is one of the most commonly applied marketing models in practice, with marketing leaders crediting it for efficient, streamlined communications practice. STP marketing focuses on commercial effectiveness, selecting the most valuable segments for a business and then developing a marketing mix and product positioning strategy for each customer group. As Martech continues to develop, so do opportunities for segmentation, targeting, and positioning. So whether you're brand new to STP or a seasoned veteran, it can be useful to take stock and double-check you're utilizing every chance you get to reach, interact with, convert, and engage customers.

But, how do you know which customer segments to focus on? We recommend using personas to identify your…

Our GTM plan template structured using RACE designed for small businesses and startups

You may have heard people talking about their ‘Go To Market Strategy’ and wondered how this type of plan differs from other classical types of marketing plans. In this article, I’ll explain the purpose of a Go To Market plan and how to structure it using our RACE planning system using our template download and example. A plan defining your Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy is distinct from other types of business plans because its focus and scope is centred on product launches and introducing products into new markets. In larger businesses, GTM plans are often owned by Product Managers together with marketing managers. In small businesses, it will often be the co-founder, owner or a marketer who creates the GTM plan for investors. Our simple template will suit these type of…

How to use the power of the 70:20:10 rule as a marketing model to prioritize your digital marketing strategy

With new marketing tools and techniques available to us almost daily, it can be difficult to know where to prioritize your marketing activities to get the most 'bang for your buck'. This is where the 70:20:10 rule can really help, since it's a simple device which helps us think through how we prioritize the time and budget we put into different marketing activities. As marketers, we need to be agile through reacting to new developments in order to gain an upper hand on competitors, but at the same time, we need to avoid being 'technology magpies' following seductive, shiny new tools that may distract us from working on optimizing the most effective channels. By splitting your spending or output into three differently sized areas, it helps you to identify priority areas, and allocate…

9 key differences between strategy vs tactics

‘What is the difference between strategy vs tactics?’ is one of the most common questions that 'crops up' when I’m running training workshops or discussing creating marketing plans with businesses. It’s no surprise since the difference between these two activities often isn’t distinct. Yet, it’s an important question to answer since our research shows that so many businesses don’t have a clear marketing strategy or plan. Without a clear strategy, it’s likely some of your tactics may be poorly directed, so may not be propelling the business in the direction needed.

9 key features that distinguish marketing strategy vs tactics

In this article, I will show the difference between strategy and tactics by looking at the characteristics of marketing strategy, which distinguish it from tactics. I’ll give examples that help show the difference between the two based on essential strategic activities.

What's the difference between strategy vs tactics?

Strategy dictates…

Learn how to create a PESTLE analysis to identify threats and opportunities in the macro environment to guide your marketing planning

You may have heard PESTLE mentioned when studying marketing theory or in your workplace. It is a powerful, yet simple, analysis tool for overall business and marketing planning. In this blog we explain what it is, why it is useful, and how you can create your own PESTLE analysis for marketing planning today.

What is a PESTLE analysis?

PESTLE is an acronym that covers 6 key areas in your macro (external) environment. Each letter stands for a different factor, as shown in the graphic below: Did you know? Sometimes it is referred to as a PEST analysis, or spelt ‘PESTEL’, but the most common acronym is PESTLE. A PESTLE analysis is a framework to help you identify external factors - happening outside…

What is the 7Ps Marketing Mix and how should it be used?

The marketing mix is a familiar marketing strategy tool, which as you will probably know, was traditionally limited to the core 4Ps of Product, Price, Place and Promotion. It is one of the top 3 classic marketing models according to a poll on Smart Insights. It's an essential part of a marketing plan structure that defines the tactics to be used to implement the marketing strategy. The traditional 7Ps of marketing consist of: Product Promotion Price Place People Process Physical evidence [si_guide_block id="95323" title="Free marketing plan template" description="Download for recommendations on how to structure different types of marketing plans including marketing plans, campaign plans and digital plans. Join Smart Insights as a Free Member to download our marketing plan template today"/]

Who created the 7Ps marketing mix model?

The 7Ps marketing model was originally devised by E.…