Yogi Berra, the baseball player, once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you will end up someplace else.” Having a true north star to navigate toward is as critical to a sportsperson as it is to a business.
Once you know your objectives, it’s time to make a plan to achieve it. Today’s business teams make a wide range of plans across project management, tech architecture, talent management, and more.
In this blog post, we explore one of the most critical business plans for market success: The marketing plan.
- What is a Marketing Plan?
- Elements of a Marketing Plan
- 10 Effective Marketing Plan Examples & Samples
- 1. Visit Baton Rouge: Tourism promotions plan
- 2. Safe Haven Family Shelter: Brand marketing plan
- 3. University of Illinois: Enrollment marketing plan
- 4. Coca-Cola’s pandemic response
- 5. OpenOffice: Strategic marketing plan
- 6. Lakeland, Tennessee marketing plan
- 7. Lush Cosmetics
- 8. Bay Area Rapid Transit: Strategic marketing plan
- 9. Northwest Territories Tourism marketing plan
- 10. Public Health England: Social marketing strategy
- Types of Marketing Plans
- How to Create an Effective Marketing Plan
- Marketing Plan Analytics and Performance Indicators
- FAQs About Marketing Plans
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat is a Marketing Plan?
A marketing plan is an operational document that outlines your goals, strategies, tactics, activities, and measurable outcomes.
A good marketing plan is:
- Detailed enough to be clear, overwhelming nitty-gritty to be distracted by
- Simple in language and presentation
- Goal-oriented with clear action items to achieve set goals
- Practical with milestones and checkpoints
Summarize this article for me pleaseElements of a Marketing Plan
A good marketing plan is one that typically has seven key elements:
- Market research: Researching the market size, industry standards, market dynamics, competition, and products
- Target audience: Analyzing the customer base, including their age, gender, language, interests, preferences, behaviors, and stage of life
- Goals: Setting measurable marketing goals that align with the business goals around brand awareness, lead generation, conversion, engagement, and advocacy
- Marketing strategy: Developing the right mix of marketing channels, campaigns, and metrics
- Budget: Allocating resources for each marketing activity, placing existing budgets in channels that produce maximum return on investment
- Brand messaging: Creating intelligent, educated content that builds a solid relationship with prospects, consistently reflecting the organization’s philosophy
- Monitoring and evaluation: Testing and analyzing the marketing strategies to identify the ones that are working and adjusting the plan accordingly
Summarize this article for me please10 Effective Marketing Plan Examples & Samples
Like how no man is an island, no idea is either. Every idea is an improvement (directly or indirectly) on something that already exists. Every idea you have is inspired by something else. Your own ideas will inspire someone too.
So, let’s look at how some of the most successful businesses make marketing plans and learn a thing or two from them.
1. Visit Baton Rouge: Tourism promotions plan
In 2019, the US city of Louisiana set on a mission to “increase visitation to and awareness of the Greater Baton Rouge area.” To pursue this mission, they collaborated with Simpleview, a tourism marketing firm.
Simpleview’s marketing plan includes qualitative and quantitative research, pointed advice, and recommendations. Some of the stand-out elements in this plan are:
- Context around past tourist numbers and plans
- SWOT analysis
- Profile of target audiences
- Goals, strategies, and corresponding tactics
Takeaways
As a fellow marketer, you can learn several things from this marketing plan. Primarily:
Comprehensiveness: Including research and analysis to demonstrate understanding before making recommendations.
Frameworks: SWOT analysis, audience persona, and goal setting.
Inverted pyramid planning: Beginning with the business goal, then breaking it down into 360-degree strategies and on-ground tactics, creating a simple yet powerful process.
Activity calendar: A tentative schedule of events to execute the plan under discussion.
2. Safe Haven Family Shelter: Brand marketing plan
Safe Haven Shelter is a nonprofit organization working on housing. They had four specific goals:
- Goal I: Build Industry Authority
- Goal II: Build Brand Awareness
- Goal III: Build Brand Loyalty in Established Audiences
- Goal IV: Build Event & Fundraising Campaign Brands
To achieve these, they put together a marketing plan that breaks the goals into objectives, against which there are specific action steps. In addition, it also includes a mention of the target audience, key themes and messages, and finally metrics.
Takeaways
Granularity: Safe Haven’s marketing plan begins with the big goals but goes into granular details of the action items, metrics, and accountable stakeholders. This helps connect the high-level plan to on-ground action.
Transparency: This plan continues from the previous year’s plan, openly accepting delays and disturbances to certain campaigns.
Guardrails: “Tell Safe Haven’s story in a way that connects to the larger problems facing society. The world needs to change; what role is Safe Haven playing in shaping that change?”
This quote guides the marketing plan, keeping all stakeholders focused on telling that story.
3. University of Illinois: Enrollment marketing plan
The University of Illinois wanted to boost enrollment for its undergraduate courses in 2021. In pursuit of this goal, the admission department created a detailed marketing plan.
The University of Illinois marketing plan contains:
- Context, research, and key insights
- Audience persona and behavioral influences
- Marketing programs across content, digital, direct mail, brochures, email, events, social media, text messaging and eventually the website
Takeaways
Insights: The plan includes a detailed section establishing context, including audience persona and admissions funnel stages. It offers a unique view of customer behavior that is fundamental to designing an effective strategy.
Full funnel plan: This plan outlines the kind of messages one receives based on what stage of the funnel they’re in.
4. Coca-Cola’s pandemic response
About three months into the global pandemic that changed life as we knew it, Coca-Cola was reinventing itself for the new world.
While this summary of a talk by Chief Financial Officer John Murphy isn’t a marketing plan by definition, it offers great insight into crisis communications and business leadership.
Coca-Cola promises to:
- Eliminate under-performing “zombie” brands
- Consolidate offering to a smaller, more relevant portfolio
- Prioritize hygiene through touchless solutions and away-from-home channels
- Focus on top-selling products to keep the attention of the consumer
- Redesign packaging to create fit-for-purpose products for online sales
Takeaways
Proactiveness: Coca-Cola acknowledges the impact of the pandemic and proactively speaks to shareholders about strategy.
Setting expectations: “A few markets will be more on a V-shape recovery, whereas a number of markets will be either U or a form of L, and I think it’s too early to be able to profess what those varying shapes will look like.”
This establishes realistic expectations in the minds of the reader.
Focus: Instead of discussing the details of challenges or revenue shrinkage, Coca-Cola focuses on opportunities, and the brand is grabbing them with both hands. This reassures the shareholders that together, they’ll emerge stronger.
5. OpenOffice: Strategic marketing plan
Before we get into the details, this plan is admittedly 20 years old. In fact, that offers some unique perspectives that marketers can gain and use in their plans.
This strategic marketing plan by OpenOffice contains:
- Community, market, product, and competitive analysis
- Market segmentation
- SWOT analysis
- Proposals and ideas around community, product, price, distribution, and promotion
Takeaways
Community: “Previous versions have had restricted circulation within the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project; this version launches the consultation process with the whole OpenOffice.org Community, aiming for a formal submission to the Community Council at the end of 2004.”
As an open source product relying heavily on the community, this marketing plan is inclusive and collaborative—an approach that could inspire other similar user-generated or community-built products.
Disruption: This marketing plan includes a section for disruptive marketing ideas, including targeting customers who look unattractive to competition and to compete against “non-consumption.”
Plan for the plan: The appendix contains a description of the process that the marketing team used to devise this plan.
6. Lakeland, Tennessee marketing plan
Typically, marketing plans for towns and cities revolve around tourism. This one of the city of Lakeland, Tennessee is different, looking to attract more families to become residents and driving growth in residential and commercial sectors.
This marketing plan for Lakeland, Tennessee includes:
- Major business objectives and supporting goals
- Strategic messages: E.g.: “Lakeland is business-friendly and poised for economic growth”
- Target audiences, such as real estate developers, organizations, and individuals
- Distribution channels
- Key performance indicators
- Strategic initiatives
Takeaways
Challenges: “For many years, Lakeland has chosen to remain a “bedroom community”, offering its residents low or no property taxes, low crime, and strict development guidelines.”
This part of the report outlines historical challenges honestly and transparently in order to drive future changes.
Measurable outcomes: Lakeland, Tennessee ties marketing plan to direct revenues in the form of property and sales taxes. It also includes resident satisfaction metrics to ensure the qualitative results are there too.
7. Lush Cosmetics
The cosmetics industry is extremely competitive with branding and marketing playing the role of a key differentiator. So, Lush’s marketing plan is an interesting study in communication and brand management.
Takeaways
Focus: Use of the BCG matrix is a clever way to understand the value and potential of each product and prioritize marketing efforts.
Values: Placing the vision, mission statement, purpose, and values of the brand front and centre to make direct emotional connection with the prospective customer. The brand also doesn’t shy away from being disruptive and provocative.
Tools and frameworks: The plan includes a value matrix, SWOT analysis, situational analysis and other such marketing frameworks to guide the documentation of the plan.
Brand-centric strategy: Lush’s marketing plan outlines the strategies, messaging, and tactics that are perfectly aligned with the larger brand purpose. For instance, this plan uses the slogan, “go natural” that follows the global “go naked” messages.
8. Bay Area Rapid Transit: Strategic marketing plan
The office of public affairs in 1988 made a comprehensive marketing plan for BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system.
Before you disregard that as too old, allow us to show you why it’s still relevant and inspirational.
Note: Very interesting information about public transportation in the 1980s, if you’re a history buff!
Takeaways
Long-term outlook: Part one of the plan is for five years, including service planning, pricing, research and promotional activities.
Marketing philosophy: “Every employee at BART should be considered to be a marketer,” says the report, establishing marketing as not just a handful of campaigns but a reflection in talk and behavior.
Content marketing: The plan says, “develop BART field guide for teachers taking children on field trips as a companion to “Mark Twain Going Places” film and video—excellent example of relevant and engaging content marketing.
Despite the 35 years since this plan was made, it serves as a great marketing plan example because it gets the fundamentals strong. It focuses on the purpose and message without losing sight of the goals.
In fact, BART continues to be one of the most creative advertisers in the US today, winning multiple awards. Below is an ad from a campaign this year.
9. Northwest Territories Tourism marketing plan
Northwest Territories Tourism (NWTT) is a not for-profit organization and destination marketing organization. They regularly present their marketing plans to board of directors, funders, and other stakeholders. Today, we discuss the plan for 2024.
The NWTT marketing plan includes:
- Overview of the marketing environment, including industry and market trends
- Risk mitigation strategies
- Strategic priorities and corresponding activities
Takeaway
Risk planning: While most organizations perform SWOT analysis of some sort, specific focus on risk is rare in a marketing plan. NWTT identifies various kinds of risks and outlines clear strategies to overcome them.
Visualization: NWTT maps out the entire marketing landscape for simple understanding. It clarifies overlapping responsibilities and encourages teams to work together to achieve common goals.
Note: The visuals and infographics are an absolute inspiration if you seek to persuade your managers or sponsors to fund your plan.
10. Public Health England: Social marketing strategy
Public Health England (PHE) takes tools and techniques from the business world and repurposes them for public good. This way, it supports government agendas, such as childhood obesity and mental health.
This new marketing strategy helps integrate digital technologies and campaigns for deeper engagement and behavior change. The PHE social media marketing plan includes:
- Definition of the challenges and opportunities
- Insights and lessons from past campaigns
- Principles that guide marketing activities
- Campaign ideas and execution plans
Takeaway
Cumulative growth: This plan draws from past successes and accomplishments to guide future marketing efforts. For instance, the plan is doubling down on partnerships to expand reach, which worked very well in the past.
Focus: PHE is tasked with bringing about behavior change, a challenge almost unsurmountable. PHE overcomes this by focusing on communication and designing campaign slogans that resonate with the diverse target groups.
Digital assets: In addition to advertising and content, PHE is also building mobile apps and digital products that support behavior change. For example, the Breastfeeding Friend Facebook bot provides midwife-approved answers to feeding mothers 24×7!
These are just the top ten plans that we could find on the Internet. In fact, many of them tend to be government bodies and departments because they are mandated to publish their marketing plans from time to time.
If you could use a few more examples, here you go:
- Public Health England 2013-14 marketing plan: A great this-day-that-year exercise
- City of Grand Haven marketing plan: Aimed at creating redevelopment opportunities
- Travel Texas strategic marketing plan: Granular details of activities across various channels
The above examples demonstrate the diverse ways in which you can approach your marketing plan. However, if there is one thing you absolutely can not afford to miss, it’s data and analytics.
Summarize this article for me pleaseTypes of Marketing Plans
There are dozens of different kinds of marketing plans that teams make each day. The social media team might make a calendar for their activities, the analytics teams might build a dashboard tracking success metrics, and the content team might have a schedule for their output.
1. Content marketing plan
A content marketing plan covers the ideation, creation, distribution, repurposing, and measurement of content-related efforts. A good content marketing plan includes:
- Topics/ideas that the team is going to create content about
- The format in which content will be created, such as blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, etc.
- The channel in which it will be published, such as blog, website, social channels, etc.
- Expected metrics for readership, engagement, and conversions, as applicable
If you’re new to this space, begin with any of these customizable content calendar templates.
2. Social media marketing plan
Unlike a content marketing plan which is built around topics and ideas, a social media marketing plan is about creating conCtent that is suitable for specific social channels. A robust social media marketing plan includes:
- Paid and organic campaign strategies
- Platform-specific content ideas
- Repurposing strategies for existing content
- Engagement and performance metrics
3. Email marketing plan
If a social media marketing plan focuses on social channels, email marketing focuses on emails. This plan includes the comprehensive ways in which your organization would use email to pursue its marketing objectives.
An email marketing plan includes:
- Types of emails, such as promotional, educational, or newsletters
- Databases of prospects in various stages of the funnel and the corresponding messages they need to receive
- Frequency and time of email delivery
- Tone, style, and design of the email messages themselves
- Measures of success and benchmarks
4. Search engine optimization (SEO) marketing plan
This is a specialized marketing plan designed to optimize the ranking of your content on the search engine results page, which will, in turn, drive more traffic to the site. SEO marketing plans include:
- Keyword research and potential visibility
- On-page optimization tactics
- Link-building strategies and other off-page optimization techniques
5. Traditional marketing plan
Traditional marketing plan generally refers to non-digital advertising channels, such as television, radio, print, and outdoor. This marketing plan is complementary to the digital marketing plan, creating a cohesive strategy for the brand.
Especially in developing economies, where users are more exposed to traditional media for entertainment and information, this marketing plan plays a crucial role in success.
Traditional marketing plans include:
- Channels chosen for marketing and advertising
- Projected expenses and budgets for each channel
- Communication and business messaging for each channel
- Tracking mechanisms, like a dedicated phone number or email ID to evaluate performance
6. Growth marketing plan
Common among startups and technology businesses, growth marketing leverages data to drive interest, inquiry, and engagement in the business. A typical growth marketing plan contains:
- Full funnel tactics from awareness to advocacy
- KPIs, such as growth rate, retention rate, churn, customer lifetime value, and satisfaction metrics
- Activities that power growth, such as events or webinars
- Resources to execute campaigns, such as ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, etc.
7. Influencer marketing plan
Traditionally, this might be called a brand ambassadorship plan involving celebrity endorsements. In the social media space, the influencer marketing plan refers to an organization’s strategy to engage popular online personalities to explain, educate, and endorse their products or services.
A good influencer marketing plan needs to be careful and thoughtful. Here’s what that entails.
- List of influencers whose content and philosophy align with your brand
- Process of trying, using, and recommending your product
- Remuneration and related disclosure to the influencer’s audience
- Framework to measure ROI on influencer marketing activities
8. Launch marketing plan
A good product launch inspires potential users to consider, or even try, the new product you have on offer. To achieve this, the launch marketing plan will include:
- Product positioning, with details about how it compares with existing competition
- Educational material, such as brochures, demos, testimonials from beta users, etc.
- Go-to-market strategy, including pricing, ad campaigns, partnerships, etc.
- Pre-launch (research, prep, designing value proposition), launch (press releases, ads, events) and post-launch activities (data analysis, optimizations)
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Create an Effective Marketing Plan
Depending on the goals, objectives, scope, timeline, and activities involved, your marketing planning process can vary widely. Here are the foundational steps to help you get off the blank page.
1. Choose a planning tool
There are several marketing planning software available in the market to help you plan and organize your activities. Choose one that best fits your needs. For instance, you can simply fire up a Google Doc and write your plans.
If you have a mature marketing practice, you can use a project management software like ClickUp to document the plan, collaborate with stakeholders, schedule activities, create tasks, manage performance and more.
A tool like ClickUp with a free marketing plan template can make your life easier each time you’re making plans.
2. Do your research
A good marketing plan rests on the foundation of thorough research. Some of the most commonly used marketing research techniques are:
SWOT analysis: Study of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This New Product SWOT analysis template from ClickUp is a great starting point.
Market segmentation: Organizing the market/audience into groups based on their demographics, preferences, behaviors etc. Segmentation helps in planning and targeting marketing campaigns.
Pricing strategies: Understanding the market, competition, and affordability of the prospect to create the right pricing strategy.
3. Set goals
The lynchpin of any good marketing plan is clear objectives set initially. Make sure your marketing KPIs are:
- SMART i.e., Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound
- Clear and easily understandable to all team members
- Accessible throughout the time that the marketing plan is applicable
- Aligned with business goals
ClickUp Goals are designed to enable all of the above and more. Create task/activity targets. Set numerical, monetary, or True/False targets. Let progress roll up, and visualize progress percentages across multiple Goals in one view.
4. List your plans
This is the plan part of your marketing plan. Make a list of all the marketing initiatives you intend to do to achieve your goals. Include:
- Campaign messaging
- Content and other assets you will create (good content marketing software might help with this)
- Distribution channels
- Stakeholders and their responsibilities
- Budgets
- Metrics for each activity
Then schedule them on a timeline to ensure that it is all reasonably achievable. Use any of ClickUp’s marketing plan templates to accelerate this process. Get started with the ClickUp Marketing Plan Template!
Bonus: Here are some marketing tools for small businesses that you can use to make your plans.
5. Document the details
Include as much information as possible in your marketing plan so that when it’s time to execute, everyone knows what needs to be done.
ClickUp Docs offers a collaborative and easy-to-use writing space to consolidate data, visuals, text, and other embeds effortlessly.
Edit together in real-time. Add highlights, headings, checklists, and more. Once done, you can directly create tasks from your ClickUp Docs for easier marketing project management.
6. Write a summary
Everyone needs a tl;dr version. So, write an executive summary with salient points from the longer marketing plan. If that’s a bit much, use ClickUp Brain to automatically create a summary and insert it right within Docs. Et voila!
7. Set up dashboards
Based on your goals and projects, set up dashboards for the metrics you need to track. You can also use ClickUp Dashboards for tracking key performance indicators, project metrics, and productivity in marketing teams.
📮 ClickUp Insight: 78% of our survey respondents make detailed plans as part of their goal-setting processes. However, a surprising 50% don’t track those plans with dedicated tools. 👀
With ClickUp, you seamlessly convert goals into actionable tasks, allowing you to conquer them step by step. Plus, our no-code Dashboards provide clear visual representations of your progress, showcasing your progress and giving you more control and visibility over your work. Because “hoping for the best” isn’t a reliable strategy.
💫 Real Results: ClickUp users say they can take on ~10% more work without burning out.
8. Evaluate and optimize
As and when you execute the plan, you’ll encounter new learnings and insights. Use them to optimize the plan. For example, if your search engine advertising is performing better than your social media investments, reallocate budgets.
Summarize this article for me pleaseMarketing Plan Analytics and Performance Indicators
If marketing is a creative endeavor, analytics is the part that ensures its funding. In essence, marketing analytics monitors and measures the impact of marketing plans so teams can ensure maximum return on investment.
Some of the most common ways in which analytics strengthens marketing plans are:
Accuracy
With data and insights, analytics helps marketers create campaigns that are most likely to succeed. For instance, if you know that most of your inquiries come from Instagram, you can invest in creating an Instagram store for in-platform sales.
Targeting
Analytics helps identify the target market that has maximum value potential and target them accurately.
Agility
Unlike the days of yore, teams no longer make five year plans. Like agile software teams, marketers make plans in small sprints. Analytics offers the ability to measure outcomes for each sprint and optimize accordingly.
Prioritization
Facebook or Instagram ads? Search ads or SEO? Billboard or Twitter hashtag? Analytics helps project the potential outcomes of each of these and prioritize them effectively.
Measurement
Every online marketing tool offers a wide range of metrics. For your plan to be meaningful, focus only on those that matter. Typically, this might include any of the following.
- Organic and paid traffic
- Customer acquisition costs
- Customer lifetime value
- Returns on spend
- Break-even and other cost-related metrics
- Market penetration numbers
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably anxious about creating a great marketing plan for yourself. So, before we part ways today, we want to leave you with a simple primer on creating your own marketing plan.
Summarize this article for me pleaseFAQs About Marketing Plans
1. What is a marketing plan?
A marketing plan is an operational document that outlines your goals, strategies, tactics, activities, and measurable outcomes.
Take the example of Visit Baton Rouge. Simpleview’s marketing plan includes qualitative and quantitative research, pointed advice, and recommendations. Some of the stand-out elements in this plan are:
- Context around past tourist numbers and plans
- SWOT analysis
- Profile of target audiences
- Goals, strategies, and corresponding tactics
2. What are the eight steps of marketing plans?
- Choose a marketing planning tool
- Do your research
- Set goals
- List your plans
- Document the details
- Write a summary
- Set up dashboards
- Evaluate and optimize
3. How can I write a marketing plan?
To write a clear and comprehensive marketing plan, include the following elements.
- Market research: Researching the market size, industry standards, market dynamics, competition, and products
- Target audience: Analyzing the customer base, including their age, gender, language, interests, preferences, behaviors, and stage of life
- Goals: Setting measurable marketing goals that align with the business goals around brand awareness, lead generation, conversion, engagement, and advocacy
- Marketing strategy: Developing the right mix of channels, campaigns, and metrics
- Budget: Allocating resources for each marketing activity, placing existing budgets in channels that produce maximum return on investment
- Brand messaging: Creating intelligent, educated content that builds a solid relationship with prospects, consistently reflecting the organization’s philosophy
- Monitoring and evaluation: Testing and analyzing the marketing strategies to identify the ones working and adjusting the plan accordingly
Summarize this article for me pleaseCreate Winning Marketing Plans With ClickUp
Marketing is one of the most powerful and accountable functions in any organization. In an average startup, marketing is one of the top three expenses. To make the most of the budgets and stand up to its reputation, marketers need a plan.
ClickUp for marketers is stacked with every feature you’d ever need to make a successful marketing plan. Use ClickUp Docs to write down your plan.
Use ClickUp Goals to track targets and progress. With ClickUp tasks, manage and schedule your marketing activities. See results on the ClickUp Dashboard and optimize as you go along. Customize and adapt a digital marketing plan template for your needs.
Sounds like the perfect marketing planning tool? See for yourself. Try ClickUp for free.
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
