SimplyCast Download: Marketing Plan Example Template

Your marketing plan is everything that makes your business flow distilled down into one document that you can use to showcase your marketing efforts. Marketing plans include your marketing initiatives, business goals, market research, budget, marketing channels and objectives, prospective strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This is one of your most used tools when presenting your plans to management, so SimplyCast has compiled this free marketing plan template to help you put your best foot forward.

Creating a marketing plan can seem daunting, but it doesn't have to be! A smart way to start is to create an initial framework of bullet points and then expand each one by filling in all the relevant information. Our template lays out the basic elements of a marketing plan that's simple but detailed, along with some handy tips to guide you through the process from start to finish. The best part of using our free marketing plan template is that it's easily applicable to plenty of other ideas, saving you valuable time in the future.

•  Executive Summary: This is the one-minute pitch of your entire marketing plan. What are your business goals? What does your management team absolutely need to know to execute your marketing strategies? Reinforce the main points of your plan.

• Company Profile: How would you define your company? What is your story? What is your brand identity? Outline your company's vision and business objectives. 

• Situation Analysis: Consider SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) to focus the internal factors of your company, and consider PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental) to examine possible external challenges your company might face.

• Product/Service Details: What is the product or service that your marketing teams will advertise to your target audience? 

• Target Audience: Who are your prospective customers and consumers? This market research is one of the most crucial elements of a marketing plan, as knowing your target audience and their patterns will help you define your marketing goals and better shape your marketing campaign to meet their needs, e.g. through use of buyer personas, which are fictional customer profiles compiled from trends in your market analytics. These buyer personas generate the metrics you'll use to measure the effectiveness of your strategies, and you can assign a particular buyer persona to each segment of your market to ensure your customers' needs are being met alongside your marketing objectives. 

• Marketing Strategies: It is advisable that your marketing plans include such strategies as the "7 Ps" and/or the "7 Cs" of marketing. Making use of multiple strategies will ensure you cover all your bases and have all the information you need to be ready for anything.

• Marketing Channels: Will you utilize traditional marketing channels (such as print advertisements and telemarketing teams), digital marketing channels (such as social media platforms), or a combination of both? What are your marketing objectives? Consider your marketing research: which audiences are you aiming for? Which marketing efforts do they most commonly encounter or respond best to? Which social media platform will give you the best reach?

• Project Mapping, Assigned Roles, and Responsibilities: Clearly-defined roles help everyone in your marketing teams know exactly what they are doing. It may help to outline job titles and their objectives. What are the objectives of each department and position?

• KPIs: KPIs are Key Performance Indicators, or the goals of your marketing campaign. 'Units sold per month' and 'leads generated per month' are the kinds of metrics you'll use to measure your KPI, and you'll adapt your business objectives based on this information.

• Budgeting: An important thing to consider when creating a marketing plan is, how much will it cost? Is this a hard number or adjustable? Do you already have investors? How much money do you hope to invest in each marketing initiative? Consider costs like promoting via paid posts on your preferred social media platform.  

• Financial Analysis: Gross margin, inventory turnover, and revenue growth are some of the metrics you'll use to measure the financial success of your business. Based on your financial reports, how stable is your business? Have you made a profit? What kinds of returns to you hope to see on the money you've put into the business? If you are seeking investors, what will they see in your business?

• Justification: Why do you believe this marketing plan should be approved?

  
  We have outlined these sections for you in a handy downloadable PDF file, so all you need to do is to import your information. Once you have completed the first draft, you can then review and edit your marketing plan until it's rock solid. 
  
  Best of luck!