The activity of gathering information about customer needs and preferences for analysis and decision making. Your marketing plan should combine your situation analysis and market research for goals and strategic decision-making.

Examples:

• Analyst report data
• Competitive analysis
• Independent surveys
• Economic conditions
• Expansion opportunities
• Technology trends

Business drivers that marketing goals will support. The most common company goals that pertain to marketing are related to sales, customers, or products/services.

Examples:

• Revenue targets
• Customer satisfaction
• New products to market
• Company perception

Support the company goals. Create topline marketing goals—both qualitative and quantitative.

Examples:

• Increase sales
• Create awareness
• Build brand perception

Marketing strategy is a forward-looking approach and an overall game plan of any business. The purpose of the strategy is to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage. You can have different strategies for achieving different goals. In your marketing plan, build strategies for achieving each goal you set.

Examples of marketing strategies:

• Growth
• Promotional
• Expansion (new markets)
• Competitive replacement
• Land and expand
• Wedge issue
• Product/services leadership
• Customer retention/loyalty
• Content marketing
• Viral marketing

Identify the ideal audience you would like to message in order to stimulate a response or create an impression.

Examples:

• Target audience definition
• Segmentation (by geo, demographics, behavioral, and psychographics)
• Personas

Positioning focuses your messaging platform. A positioning statement includes a target audience, the needs or wants of that target audience, your product or service definition, benefits of the offering, and differentiation from the competition. Supporting messages come from the positioning statement and should live in a messaging guide. The messaging guide provides consistency of message across different communications to multiple audiences. Both the positioning statement and topline messages should be built into your plan.

For companies that have brand management or product management as part of the marketing function, roadmap strategy will need to be part of the plan. It is important to have a clear vision of what is coming in order to prepare for go-to-market launches

Definition:

• Clear articulation of the product value proposition

Product direction:

• Roadmap/innovation

The process of finding the optimal price that the buyer is willing to pay for your products and services, taking profitability and the competition into account. Packaging creates product/service configurations based on the target audience’s needs. Both are essential elements to include when building a marketing plan.

Examples:

• Pricing table
• Packages
• Profitability analysis
• Competitive pricing
• Value/ROI analysis
• Win/loss analysis

Competitive analysis is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of your competition. This evaluation provides both offensive and defensive strategic context to solidify differentiated competitive messaging.

Examples:

• Full product/service analysis and comparison
• Offensive messages
• Defensive messages
• Competitor 2×2 map

Marketing’s primary function is to drive sales to support the business, so outlining how the marketing strategy aligns with the sales strategy will be a critical element when building your marketing plan.

Examples:

• Sales model: direct vs. indirect sales channels
• Sales team structure
• Sales goals for the year
• Lifetime customer value

If the product you offer is complex or has a long evaluation cycle before purchase, such as an automobile or enterprise software, it is important to have a sales support strategy and tactical execution plan. This will include sales training and tools to help them close business.

Training and sales tools:

• Onboarding new salespeople
• Sales skills training
• Product & messaging training
• Presentations, brochures, selling scripts, pricing tools

Partner strategy is a critical element of any marketing plan. Some companies sell direct to the buyer exclusively, but most have either a full indirect selling strategy or a mixture of both direct and indirect. For companies that sell indirect exclusively, this is their sales strategy.

Examples:

• Partnering goals
• Partner revenue targets
• Partnering strategy
• Partnering tactical plan
• Partner program
• Joint marketing programs

Planning out product and services launches based on the roadmap will be a crucial part when using the marketing plan builder. Product launches are one of the most important campaign types.

Examples:

• Key messages
• Announcement schedule
• Communication strategy
• Market education

Campaigns are large-scale marketing initiatives that are goals-based, have a specific target audience, promote a specific set of messages, use several communication channels, and can be measured. Campaigns are usually time-based. All campaigns should be included when building your marketing plan. 

Examples of campaign types:

• Integrated
• Thematic
• Promotional
• Product launch
• Demand generation
• Thought leadership
• Competitive replacement

A marketing channel is a vehicle for carrying your key messages to the target audience. Marketing channels should be selected based on where the target market goes, what they read, what they watch, and who they consult. There are a lot of offline and online marketing channels for reaching audiences so determining which ones have the greatest chance of reaching your target audience is critical for making a connection.

Examples of marketing channels:

• Email
• Social
• Advertising – TV/radio/print
• Trade shows/events
• Search engine – SEM/SEO
• Webinars
• Content syndication
• Website
• Direct mail

Programs are ongoing initiatives that have goals and budget, but are not necessarily time-based or audience specific. Programs are not campaigns since many of the activities are created over the course of the year due to opportunistic marketing.

Program examples:

• PR
• Partner
• Community
• Loyalty
• Social

The marketing activity timeline has all the major milestones over the life of the plan. The timeline will include campaigns, launches, major events, etc. A more detailed project plan that includes the timeline will be created outside of your strategic marketing plan.

Milestone examples:

• Product launches
• Campaigns
• Program launches
• Expansion announcements
• Major events

A marketing team structure starts with the goals and what resources are necessary to achieve them. The plan must justify any new headcount and provide a structure for the new team members to be successful.

Examples:

• Organizational chart
• Scale requirements and resource justification
• Division of team labor
• Succession planning

Include your current marketing technology stack and any additional systems you plan to add. Discuss any efficiency gains the technology will bring to the marketing team.

Examples:

• Full tech stack
• New tech implementation plan, timeline and payback
• Expected efficiency gains

Include a topline budget broken out by key functions, campaigns, and by time period. Budget is a critical part of the process and necessary in order to successfully execute your plan. Build your marketing plan first, and mandate the funds you need to achieve the goals.

Examples:

• Headcount
• Discretionary spend
• Technology spend
• Correlate budget to sales performance for true ROI

Testing takes several forms. Using a test market is a good way to gather data on a certain demographic or geo to gauge product/service interest prior to roll-out. A/B testing is a method of determining buyer preferences by comparing messages. Surveys and focus groups can also help gather valuable input to improve marketing effectiveness.

Examples:

• Test market
• A/B testing
• Surveys
• Focus groups
• Independent research

Measurement of critical goal-based success metrics that represent marketing performance. Most marketing metrics are indicators of sales performance and should be measured in terms of return on investment.

Examples:

• Impressions
• Leads
• Influenced pipeline
• Opportunities
• Sales
• Conversion rate
• Lifetime value
• Customer satisfaction
• Market share

Now that you have your marketing plan built out, include a list of assumptions that are essential for success and the dependencies your team will require to be effective. Understand the key internal and external risks to the successful execution of the marketing plan. Lastly, include scenario planning to prepare best-case and worst-case scenarios.

Examples:

• Budget
• Sales team readiness
• Product roadmap delivery
• Industry dynamics
• Economic dynamics
• Competitive pressure
• Staffing/talent challenges
• Budget cut risk
• Organizational commitment
• Cross-functional cooperation