What Is a Marketing Plan and How to create

What Is Marketing Plan and How to Create One? Complete Guide

What is a marketing plan? A marketing plan is a roadmap that a company uses to organize, implement and monitor its marketing strategy over a period of time.

Do you always use a navigation app while driving? Your marketing plan is like your navigation app of choice.

Your app provides directions and an estimated time of arrival at your destination. A marketing plan, on the other hand, is an organized list of marketing strategies (directions) to achieve goals (objectives).

If you want to learn more about what a marketing plan is, why it’s important, and how to create one, you’ve come to the right place. This blog post covers the following topics:

  • What is a marketing plan?
  • What is the importance of a marketing plan?
  • 5 types of marketing plans
  • How to create a marketing plan

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a plan that helps you organize, execute and monitor your marketing strategy over a period of time. This includes marketing strategies that work together to achieve business goals.

Having a marketing plan to guide your team will help you track your strategy and measure key campaign metrics.

What Is a Marketing Plan and How to create

What is the importance of a marketing plan?

Creating a marketing plan will allow you to:

Identify your campaign goals: A marketing plan documents your goals so everyone on your marketing team is on the same page about what you want to achieve.
Define your buyer personas: Your marketing plan will help you identify your ideal customers and understand their needs.
Identify your budget: With a fixed budget that everyone on your team knows about, your organization can allocate resources wisely, adhere to working budgets and avoid overspending.
Track campaign progress: Your marketing plan outlines campaign goals and metrics you should track. This allows you to monitor the performance of your campaign and know if you need to reevaluate your approach and strategy.

5 types of marketing plans

Different business needs require different types of marketing plans. There are five types of marketing plans:

  1. General marketing plan
  2. A marketing plan for the launch of a new product or service
  3. Social media marketing plan
  4. Content Marketing Plan
  5. Paid marketing plan

Let’s take a look at each one:

1. General marketing plan

Marketing Plan Goals: Create an overview of your quarterly or annual marketing strategy

This marketing plan can be used for the overall strategy and campaigns that your company can implement in a certain period of time. increase.

Here is an example of this type of marketing plan. Let’s say you run a coffee shop. Create a general marketing plan for the year that outlines strategies for different months or seasons.

We’re kicking off our Pumpkin Spice event in the fall and heading into the winter season with our Peppermint Mocha event.

2. Marketing plan for launching a new product or service

Marketing Plan Purpose: Create a promotional campaign for a new product or service It’s a map.

This is an example of a marketing plan for a new product. Let’s say you provide cleaning services in the home. If you want to keep customers longer, consider implementing a package of regular cleaning services.

A marketing plan for a new service is a plan for the pre-launch, launch and post-launch strategies of the new service.

3. Social media marketing plan

Marketing Plan Objectives: Brand awareness and social media consideration

A blueprint for navigating social media marketing. This type of marketing plan includes the platforms you use. We’ll cover audiences, strategies and specific campaigns for each platform.

Let’s say you work in the hospitality industry. Your social media marketing plan will identify Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn as platforms. Outline your different audience personas in detail in your marketing plan.
Additionally, there are tactical details for each platform. Are you communicating with your customers and prospects on Facebook?

You’re probably talking to a younger audience on TikTok. With LinkedIn, you can tailor your marketing message to your company’s culture and people.

4. Content marketing plan

Marketing plan goals: Brand awareness and care with content marketing

A content marketing plan describes different content marketing strategies for your brand. This marketing plan lists the different personas to communicate with. It also details the content topics associated with each persona and the types of content to create.

Here is an example of a marketing plan with content. Let’s say you run a jewelry store. Your content marketing plan lists different audience personas. Next, identify content topics for each persona. These topics should address personal pains and needs.

Have you segmented your audience based on how long they’ve been into jewelry? New jewelry enthusiasts may want to see content on how to properly care for different types of jewelry.

Longtime jewelry collectors may be interested in content on the latest trends in customization.

5. Paid marketing plan

Marketing plan goals: brand awareness, propensity to purchase, lead generation and conversions with paid advertising.

A paid marketing plan is a plan for a paid advertising strategy that: B. Traditional advertising such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, paid social media campaigns, native advertising, and sometimes outdoor and print advertising.

Clearly define your goals and budget with a paid marketing plan.

For example, you work in interior design. We want to increase awareness of our services and portfolio, bring new audiences to our website and encourage potential customers to fill out their form as the first prospect.

Segment people based on where they are in the journey. Identify the appropriate channel for each segment. Next, create a paid campaign for each.

Bringing new audiences to your coastal décor portfolio landing page? You don’t have to scroll and click to find what you want to see.

How to create a marketing plan

Now that you know what a marketing plan is and why it’s important, let’s talk about how to create one.

  1. Write down your overall mission
  2. Identify your buyer personas
  3. Determine your key performance indicators (KPIs)
  4. Identify your marketing plan’s scope and boundaries
  5. State your budget
  6. Identify your competitors and conduct a SWOT analysis
  7. List Marketing Strategies and Campaigns
  8. Identify Marketing Plan Contributors and Their Responsibilities

Let’s discuss each step in detail:

1. Write down your overall mission

Begin your marketing plan by stating an overall mission statement that reflects your organization’s goals. Be specific about what you want to achieve, but be sure to detail it in other parts of your marketing plan.

Let’s say you own a dance studio that offers ballet classes for kids and modern hip-hop classes for dancers of all ages. After receiving many requests for ballet for adults, we have developed a program to meet this need.

With the launch of our adult ballet class program, we created a marketing plan for this new service. Your overall mission is to spread awareness of this new dance class to interested adults and increase enrollment.

2. Identify your buyer persona

Once you’ve completed your mission, identify your audience by identifying your buyer persona. Buyer personas are the customers and prospects you want to attract to your business.

By taking the time to create accurate buyer personas, you can address the needs of your target audience and eliminate pain points.

In the previous example of a dance studio and its new adult ballet class, you can create buyer personas based on leads and customers who inquire about adult ballet classes.

3. Determine KPIs

To measure the progress and success of your marketing plan, you need to determine KPIs. A KPI is a measure of whether your marketing strategy is meeting your business goals.

Continuing with the previous example of a dance studio with a mission to raise awareness of a new service, its KPI to track would be ballet for adults unique to its users who visited its class page is the number

4. Identify the scope and limitations of your marketing plan
Your marketing plan should clearly state the focus and scope of your campaign. In addition, it should be clear what your marketing team is not focusing on and what the limitations of your campaign are.

For example, a previous marketing plan for a new adult ballet class should state that the strategy, campaign, budget and KPIs apply to the new class only. Does not apply to children’s ballet classes.

5. Budget specification

Strategies and campaigns can use some of the existing channels that are included in the overall marketing budget
However, some strategies may incur costs.

Freelance fees, advertising budgets, sponsorships, and all of these costs should be documented in your marketing plan to help your team easily measure the return on investment (ROI) of their campaigns.

6. Identify your competitors and do a SWOT analysis

Knowing who your competitors are and what they are doing is essential in marketing. This way you can see how you stack up against them and what other strategies you need to implement to stay ahead.

Competitive analysis conducted by researching industry leaders. Analyze your website, content and social media presence. You can also access physical locations.
Conduct a SWOT analysis of his competitors by identifying them below:

Strengths: Write down what your competitors are good at. Is your site ranking in the SERPs when searching for relevant keywords? Are their social media posts engaging?

Weaknesses: Note areas your competitor needs improvement. Does his competitor’s website take more than 12 seconds to load? You can add page speed as one of your weaknesses.

Opportunities: Opportunities are trends and industry changes that benefit and help grow your business and your competitors. For example, let’s say you work in the solar energy industry. As the demand for renewable energy and solar power increases, the company and its competitors could potentially grow.

Threats: Threats are activities or trends that affect a competitor’s growth. For example, a pandemic could threaten tourism and hospitality.


Competitors will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses compared to your competitors. It also helps us plan how to overcome them.

7. List your marketing strategies and campaigns

Marketing plans are the navigation apps that help you reach your destination, but marketing strategies are the drivers and vehicles that get you there.

List the marketing strategies and campaigns that help achieve the overall mission. Also specify the duration of each campaign.

In the previous example of a dance studio launching a new ballet class for adults, search engine optimization (SEO) and its PPC can be used together to increase awareness of the new service.

An organic social media strategy in the pre-launch phase can also attract your audience. Paid social media strategies can target users by age, interests, and location to get them to read more about new services on your site.

8. Identify contributors to the marketing plan and their responsibilities

Now that you have clearly defined your mission, strategy, budget and scope, list the team members involved and their primary responsibilities. Don’t forget to include its relevant KPIs as well.

Create a marketing plan with Xekera Systems

A marketing plan will help you implement your strategy and ensure that your marketing campaigns are successful. If you need help creating a marketing plan and starting to execute your strategy, Xekera Systems can help.

We are a full-service digital marketing agency that helps our clients. Our team looks forward to helping you achieve your marketing goals and deliver ROI.

Contact us online or call us at (408) 982-5851 to speak with a strategist about our digital marketing services!

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