MARKETING

PLAN
A marketing plan is a report that
outlines your marketing strategy
for the coming year, quarter or
month. Typically, a marketing plan
will include these elements:

An overview A
A timeline of
of your description
when tasks
business’s of your
within your
marketing business’s
strategy will
and current
be
advertising marketing
completed
goals position
A description
of your
Key performa
business’s
nce indicators
target
you will be
market and
tracking
customer
needs
A single plan would be ideal, but in practice,
different types and scales of business will need
different types of plans. It can help to define the
scope and purpose of each one, you should
define, for example for a multichannel marketing
plan, this could be:

 Purpose: To define a strategy and plan

resources needed to achieve business sales
targets.

 Timeframe: Annual, typically. Could have a

longer-term outlook e.g. 18 months to three
years.

 Scope: The focus is on marketing

communications techniques to deliver leads and
sales target for defined products. It can apply to
a complete business, or if there are multiple
markets and product categories, a single
market.

 Channels: Includes online channels and

offline media as required.

 Key outputs: Marketing objectives. Marketing

budget. Campaign plans. Resource plans.
Here's another way to understand the context of a
plan, to put it into context with other types of
plan as shown in this table.

Type of plan Purpose Scope and content

Annual to three-yearly
Define strategies for
- New product
growing profitability
Business development
over a long-term
- Revenue sources and
period
cost management

Define strategies to
engage audiences to
Marketing Typically annual
achieve business
objectives

Define audience
Brand
engagement to Typically annual
marketing
achieve brand sales

Typically annual
Transformation plans
Digital may be longer
Define how to
marketing plan - Review digital
compete more
or capabilities
effectively with digital
transformation - Define digital
marketing
plan marketing technology
- Define resource
requirements for digital

Annual plan
A long-term integrated
- Engaging audiences
communications plan
Multichannel - Content marketing
for using different
marketing - Integrated media
digital media to hit
schedule of always-on
lead or sales targets
and campaign activities

Marketing A shorter-term Shorter-term plan

campaign plan integrated - Engaging audiences
communications plan - Content marketing
for using different - Integrated media
 digital media to hit
schedule
lead or sales targets

A short-term plan of
90-day
activities to review Review of actions
marketing
and optimize activities - Covers always-on and
management
need to hit targets for campaign activity
plan
other plans

Depending on the type and scale of

business there may be even more plans for
individual channels where different people are
responsible for each. For example:

 Advertising plan

 Customer acquisition plan

 Email marketing plan

 A retention plan

 A social media marketing plan

 Conversion optimisation plan

Here's our top 5 types of plans that you can read

about in our new guide or click through to our
detailed members' guide for each type of plan.

 Business plan
 Marketing plan

 Campaign plan

 Digital marketing plan/Digital transformation

plan

 Multichannel marketing plan

Business plan
This is a must! It outlines objectives, goals and
the strategies in order to achieve those
objectives. Your business plan should outline how
you will change and become more competitive in
future. Remember to include strategies,

Typically, you should be looking at 1-3 years with

the aim to answer the most important question of
any business: how do I plan to make my business
succeed? This is the end goal - a successful
business with clients (or customers) and profit.
You need to include 3 key points:

 New product development

 Revenue sources

 Means of cost management

But when should you use a business plan?

 Gaining initial investment as a new-business

or startup

 Planning market expansion for an existing

company

 Undertaking product development

 Preparing for acquisition

 Planning divestment

 Gaining or sustaining a competitive

advantage

 Evaluating resource allocation and strategic

goals

Marketing plan
A marketing plan should include your
organization's target market, marketing
objectives, and the activities to achieve those
objectives and budget.

Your marketing plan should define strategies to

help you achieve business objectives. Think about
including information such as:

 Geographically based

 Product based

 Business unit based

 Focussed on segmentation