How to Create a Marketing Plan: Ultimate Guide

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a document that outlines the activities the marketing team will undertake to reach the goals set out in the company’s marketing strategy. It is the roadmap to achieve those objectives, reach people, tell them about your products, and convert them into longtime customers. A marketing plan includes information about the types of marketing activities that will be planned and organized, and the methods the team will use to reach measurable targets over the course of a quarter or year. 

A marketing plan typically includes information taken directly from the marketing strategy document, including marketing research, competitor analysis, and buyer personas. This key information will help give direction and scope to a company’s daily marketing activities. 

Marketing plans can be designed to address the overall marketing strategy or tackle components of a marketing strategy. For example, a company might put together a digital marketing plan or an SEO marketing plan. Both of these plans would tackle only those respective channels. These more specific plans would include the relevant market research and target demographics, as well as the exact marketing activities the marketing team plans to take to deliver results in those categories.

Core elements of a marketing plan

Whenever you sit down to create a marketing plan process, there are certain core elements you’ll need to include to make sure you hit the right notes. With a marketing plan, there are generally three fundamentals or pillars for success: budget, performance, and competition.

Here’s an overview of how to create a marketing plan based on the various factors, so you can start on the right foot and set yourself up for ongoing success: 

Budgeting

A key question in how to build a marketing plan is what your assigned budget will be. Accurate projections on how much it’ll cost to execute your plan and put campaigns into place will provide you with solid parameters to operate within.

Just as enterprise project management suffers without real consideration of budgetary constraints, marketing strategy can fall short if you rush ahead and fail to do due diligence on the numbers.

It isn’t just the overall spend to think about it either — you’ll need to think about your spending in various areas such as:

•  Software subscriptions
•  Lead generation
•  Digital marketing campaigns
•  Asset creation
•  Ads 
•  Website design
•  Outsourcing
•  Events

As you can see, it’s easy to underestimate just how much money you’ll need once you set the wheels in motion on your marketing strategy. 

Performance 

In marketing, you can’t leave anything to chance. 

If your marketing strategy is exemplified by artful persuasion in the front end, then the back end is characterized by rigorous performance tracking and number crunching. Behind the scenes of every campaign, event, and ad you run, you need to monitor KPIs and key performance metrics to create a barometer for success.

Establish which metrics you’ll use so you can effectively track what went well and what didn’t, and make changes in real time.

Competition 

While most of your attention should be firmly on what you’re doing to boost brand exposure and cement your authority, you also need to keep one eye on your competitors.

By carrying out extensive competitor analysis in your marketing plan, you can evaluate what works well for others, what you can apply to your own strategy, and how to cement your brand’s voice and positioning in the market.

Different types of marketing activities

To create a thorough and targeted marketing plan, it’s important to first consider the marketing activities that might be included in a company’s marketing plan. Most companies combine a selection of different marketing activities into their marketing plans to create a balanced plan that promotes their company, brand, product, or services. 

Most marketing activities can be broken down into two categories: outbound marketing activities and inbound marketing activities.

Outbound marketing activities 

Outbound marketing activities typically involve reaching out to prospective customers. This is often referred to as “interrupting” the customer when they might not already be looking for your product. Outbound marketing involves pushing information about your product out to various audiences and typically reaches large numbers of people in a less-targeted manner. These are a few examples of outbound marketing strategies you might include in a marketing plan: 

• Television, radio, print, and billboard advertising: While these “traditional” forms of advertising have gone out of the spotlight in favor of digital advertising, they can still be effective depending on the size of the audience they reach. 
• Cold calling: Cold calling is the practice of compiling a list of potential customers and contacting them via telephone. This has become increasingly difficult in the age of smartphones as many potential customers won’t answer the phone if they don’t recognize the phone number. 
• Email marketing: Email marketing involves companies directly initiating contact with a list of potential customers through email. This can be in the form of newsletters or lead nurturing emails, for example. Typically, the objective is to let customers know about upcoming sales, news, or events. 
• Event marketing: Planning customer events or participating in third-party events or conferences is another form of outbound marketing and often involves physically handing out materials about your product or service to attendees. 
• Content syndication: Placing articles or repurposing your own blog content on third-party websites is known as content syndication. 
• Digital advertising: Digital advertising is one of the fastest-growing and largest marketing strategies in the outbound marketing toolkit and comprises several different options, including: 
• Display, social media, email, and video advertising: Paying for advertisements in the form of images, text, or video on various websites, social media channels, or inside email communications is a direct digital marketing strategy.
• Search engine marketing: One type of search engine marketing is paid advertising, often known as pay-per-click (PPC). A company can pay to show up in the search results for certain keywords and pays only if a person clicks on the link. 
• Native advertising: Native advertising involves paying to have your product or service written about or filmed in a way that matches the look and feel of the other content on the blog, social media account, or website your target audience is visiting. 
• OTT advertising: Over-the-top advertising involves paying to show potential customers video or digital advertising on streaming services or smart devices.

Inbound marketing activities

Inbound marketing activities attempt to draw potential customers in and actively capitalize on a target audience that is already looking for a solution or product. Inbound marketing activities attempt to offer valuable content, solutions, or products that potential customers are already actively searching for themselves. Here are some examples of inbound marketing activities: 

• Social media marketing: Social media marketing involves creating valuable, appealing, and useful content for your audience on channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.The goal is that followers will like and share the content and expand the audience for potential customers. 
• SEO marketing: While outbound search engine marketing involves paying for advertisements, inbound search engine marketing attempts to optimize website content so that it ranks highly when a potential customer searches for a specific keyword or set of keywords. 
• Content marketing: Content marketing is the act of creating pieces of valuable, useful content that will attract and retain potential customers. Content marketing often includes website and blog content, videos that can be shared on social media, eBooks that provide valuable information, and infographics that distill a concept in a visually pleasing and shareable way. 
• Event marketing: Inbound event marketing involves planning or hosting events, either online or in-person, designed to attract potential customers. A company might host a panel discussion or a webinar designed to raise their profile in the industry, further familiarizing an audience with the brand and creating leads for the sales department. 

There are pros and cons to both inbound and outbound marketing activities. Inbound marketing activities can typically cost less but reach a smaller, more targeted audience. Outbound marketing activities often use more financial resources, and reach a wider audience. In many cases, a combination of inbound and outbound strategies will be the best option to bring in and retain customers.

The intersection between inbound and outbound marketing

Traditionally, inbound and outbound marketing are siloed operations kept separate. Yet there’s an argument that suggests combining the two approaches could be more beneficial than focusing on them separately.

Integrated marketing combines both inbound and outbound marketing strategies to create a holistic approach to generating and converting leads. It’s more and more common these days to plan interrelated tasks using marketing hubs and software solutions. 

For example, you can have internal telemarketers reach out to the leads you generate through inbound marketing. That way, you can leverage an aware audience to make the sale more likely.

The general idea is that you create awareness with your inbound marketing strategy for your brand and build rapport with would-be customers. From that moment, you use outbound marketing to convert positive attention or familiarity with your brand into concrete purchase interest. This is likely to be more effective than isolated inbound and outbound marketing strategies as you make a more compelling case for what you’re selling. 

Inbound marketing on its own can build awareness and trust in your brand but may lack that key persuasion element that pushes a lead towards making a purchase. Outbound marketing on its own can reach and perhaps even resonate with potential leads, but likely does so from a place of little brand awareness, making for a harder sell.

Marketing demographics matter

You can hit all the right notes with your inbound and outbound marketing strategies but if they fall on the wrong ears, you’re unlikely to strike a chord. That’s why you should always dig into your marketing demographics before rolling out a campaign.

What are marketing demographics? Demographics are puzzle pieces that form the identity of a person and help you segment your marketing to make sure your words reach the right people. 

Here are some of the most common demographic factors:

•  Age
•  Occupation
•  Gender
•  Income bracket
•  Ethnicity
•  Religion 
•  Education 

When you connect the dots between these key demographic factors of your audience and their primary pains, fears, and motivations, you have a powerful recipe for persuasive messaging.

Let’s say you run an e-commerce store dealing in sports goods and you want to create an effective inbound marketing strategy. Here’s a step-by-step rundown of what you might do:

1. Find out who your core audience is by gathering key demographic information (e.g., 20-something students earning less than $20,000 a year)
2. Learn psychographic information about your demographic by conducting surveys, browsing online forums, and looking on social media
3. Research what social media platforms people in your main demographic use most, as this can influence where you pour your resources
4. Using this demographic information, create compelling copy to use on social media platforms that speaks to this audience specifically 

Market segmentation

Once you’ve narrowed down your audience into various demographics and psychographics, you can start to fine-tune your messaging for different customers. 

If you run mobility courses and training, it’s unlikely that all of your customers are interested in your products because they have poor hip flexibility. It could be that they experience tightness in their shoulders or that they feel neck stiffness often. As a result, you want to make sure that everyone who could fall into your customer base feels accommodated. The way you do this is through market segmentation.

Market segmentation is the act of targeting potential customers by breaking them up into different groups. For example, in our example, you might onboard customers and then segment your email marketing so those with neck stiffness are presented with neck mobility products and those with hip flexibility issues are targeted with hip mobility products.

You can also start segmenting your market to reach new customers. Let’s say you’re enjoying a lot of success with converting male customers in their 40s, but not with females in their 30s. If the latter is a demographic you’d like to target, you can shift your marketing and messaging to cater to this demographic and address the imbalance in your customer base. You can do this by executing highly personalized advertising campaigns and targeting demographics with specific messaging.

If you’re selling sports goods, your audience could likely be split into those who want to compete on some level, those who play sport with their friends or family for fun, and those who enjoy it as a way to lose weight and stay healthy. With that in mind, you can alter your messaging to pick up new customers who may not have resonated with your previous messaging.

How to collect demographic data

To collect the demographic data that will inform your market segmentation and overall marketing strategy, here are some best practices:

• Send a survey to your customers asking a series of questions
• Include multiple-choice questions for demographics such as religion and gender
• Explain the purpose of the survey, e.g., to better understand and serve your customers
• Determine what information will best inform your marketing

If you don’t yet have enough customers to survey, you can pay to have a similar survey done.

Different types of marketing plans

There are several different types of marketing plans that a company might choose to design in order to tackle a specific segment of potential customers or even to promote a new product or service. Marketing plans will include either a single marketing activity from the list above, or could combine several of these into a broader marketing plan. 

The following is a selection of some of the most common marketing plan types: 

Product marketing plan

Product marketing plans are designed to promote an upcoming product launch and might include event marketing efforts and content creation.  

Case study: Coca Cola

A popular product marketing plan that may be fresh in the memory for many, ‘Share a Coke’ was a campaign launched by Coca Cola in 2011 in Australia. 

The idea was simple: invite your friend to share a Coke. 150 of the most common Australian names were printed on cans, personalizing the marketing to as many individuals as possible.

Brand marketing plan

Brand marketing plans are designed to promote and elevate a company’s entire brand, rather than a specific product or launch. They could involve activities like social media campaigns designed to build brand awareness or native advertising on blogs that helps a segment of the customer base become more knowledgeable about the brand’s values and purpose. 

Case study: Thursday

Thursday is a dating app that broke the mold with a bold, contrarian brand voice seeking to disrupt the industry. 

With witty website copy and a unique premise of being available for only one day a week, the brand solidified its identity by offering something different in an overly saturated dating app market.

Integrated marketing plan

An integrated marketing campaign is one that takes into account a range of different channels and seeks to unify the brand messaging and voice across each of them. 

Case study: New York Times

In 2018, the New York Times launched ‘The Truth is Hard,’ a marketing campaign across several channels, targeting its core audience and new eyes through social media platforms and billboards. This was an attempt to restore faith in online journalism in a time of distrust.

The message was straightforward: truth is hard to find, hard to know, and hard to hear.

Digital marketing plan

Digital marketing plans are often designed as a separate component to other marketing plans because they include a range of channels in the digital or online space. Digital marketing plans include SEO optimization and PPC advertising, social media, and content marketing, among others. 

Case study: Apple

Launched in 2014, the Apple #ShotOniPhone campaign soon went viral, as the company invited iPhone 6 users to upload photos that would be published on more than 10,000 billboards around the world.

This hugely successful campaign relied on social media alone and captured the essence of what social media can offer in terms of marketing leverage: the potential for virality and for a campaign to take on a life of its own in the hands of customers.

Campaign management plan

Similar to a product marketing plan, a campaign management plan details each of the elements required for a successful marketing campaign. It might include multiple contacts with potential customers via email marketing, social media marketing, and traditional print marketing, and various forms of content. 

Case study: Charity: Water

Charity: Water uses email marketing and social media marketing to encourage donations, but also to show those who donate exactly where their money will go. This style of marketing communicates through multiple contact points to encourage people to take action.

What should be included in a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a roadmap to achieving a company’s marketing strategy, so it should go into considerable detail about the specific channels, campaigns, projects, and steps the marketing department will take to meet those goals. A marketing plan should therefore include the following elements: 

Brand summary

A brand summary is your opportunity to sum up what your brand represents. When creating a brand summary, you’ll want to include the following elements:

• Mission statement
• Core values
• Brand voice
• Main goals
• Objectives

Specific goals

Next, list out the specific goals for your marketing plan and show how the goals in your marketing plan tie into your larger, strategic goals. 

This is important as it shows that your marketing and messaging are in line with your brand’s core values and strategic mission. Alignment is essential for solidifying your brand identity and voice and building trust with your customers.

Buyer personas

Using relevant market research and competitor analysis information, you should create buyer personas in your marketing plan.

What is a buyer persona? A buyer persona is an imaginary person that represents your audience and includes core demographic and psychographic information. It’s what you’ll use to make sure all your messaging aligns with your research and resonates with customers.

List of marketing activities

Once you’ve established a buyer persona, you’ll be able to list out all the marketing activities you’ll carry out and how you’ll put your strategy into motion.

You’ll also want to establish relevant key performance indicators that provide measurable benchmarks.

Itemized budget 

Breaking down your budget into specific items and actions makes it easy to see where you’ve spent too much and whether you need to reallocate resources.

Process and timeline 

Finally, outline your team’s processes and workflows, and how you’ll analyze, optimize, and work out a schedule for revisiting the marketing plan.

A more specialized marketing plan, such as a digital marketing plan, will also go into more detail about the various channels required, the assets required to support them, as well as relevant workflow details.  

Marketing planning tools

Marketing plans are often complex documents, and putting them into action requires the management of many projects, processes, staff members, and even third-party vendors. Keeping marketing plans on track can be difficult without the proper marketing planning tools, like calendars that sync across teams and robust work management software. 

Here are some factors to consider when choosing marketing planning tools:

• Team bandwidth: When you go into any marketing campaign, one of the most important factors for success will be the effective management of your budget and team member time. That’s why capacity planning and resource management are important features to look out for in marketing planning tools.
• Type of product: The type of product or service you’re marketing will impact what marketing planning tools will best support you in meeting your goals. For example, if you have a digital product, it might be worth investing in a marketing planning tool that allows you to sync data for easy performance and customer tracking.
• Communication and collaboration: Two of the most important factors in any marketing department are communication and collaboration. How you work together and relay information to one another is key for streamlining project management and ensuring you meet deadlines and milestones consistently.

Types of marketing planning tools

• Marketing plan template: A marketing plan template can help make creating your marketing plan a straightforward process. It helps you record repeatable actions your team will include in future marketing plans to save time and maximize resources. 
• Integrated calendar: Planning marketing activities requires detailed scheduling, so work management software that integrates tasks with each team member’s calendar will keep everyone from missing meetings and deadlines. 
• Project management software: Being able to view complex projects using Kanban boards or Gantt charts can help each team member view their role in the marketing plan implementation process. Project management software such as Wrike can also help managers get a 360-degree view of the project status without requiring multiple check-in emails with team members. 
• Content management tools: Companies often use a wide range of content management tools, from CMS for website management to social media scheduling software. Project management software that integrates content management tools can streamline otherwise time-consuming tasks.
• Social media listening tools: If you decide to carry out inbound marketing activities using social media, it’s worth investing in a social media listening tool. With a tool like this, you can keep your ears to the ground and assess the feedback towards your marketing efforts so you can make real-time adjustments if necessary.

We’ll tackle specific marketing tools that can help supercharge your marketing department in the marketing tools and software section. 

How can Wrike help you to create a marketing plan?

If you want to create systems and processes that help you create, execute, and evaluate marketing plans, Wrike can help.

Wrike can centralize your marketing efforts and act as a hub for your teams to come together and collaborate effectively. 

Here are some of the features that make Wrike the perfect tool for marketers:

• Asset design and approval: With Wrike, you can design assets with the Adobe Creative Cloud extension, make edits in text documents, and discuss changes in real time with team members. You can also automate the approval process with creative request forms, so as not to disrupt the flow of creative energy.
• Resource management: Wrike has powerful resource management tools that allow you to visualize your budget and timeline, and reallocate tasks and resources on the fly. It’s easy to distribute workloads to avoid employee burnout and use task dependencies to ensure your marketing campaigns go off without a hitch.
• Real-time progress tracking: Tracking progress in real time is key for adapting to changing circumstances, scope, and shifting markets. With Wrike, you can cross-tag teams to keep everyone in the loop on certain projects, factor in external feedback, and use integrations such as Google Ads and Facebook to assess ad performance over time.