how to write a marketing plan
the mission and value proposition is a statement that articulates the value that a product or brand will deliver to a customer it should appear front and center on the company website and any branding materials the value proposition should delineate how a product or brand solves the customer s problem the benefits of the product or brand and why the customer should buy from this company and not another the marketing plan is based on it establishing your key performance indicators kpis will allow you to measure the success of your marketing plan in relation to your company s value proposition in other words they track the effectiveness of your marketing strategy for example if your goal is to engage with a certain demographic in a certain region you can track social media impressions and website visits there are a number of kpis that help you measure success including the search engine ranking click through rate cost per click return on investment roi and conversion rates which tracks the percentages of visitors to your website that make a specific action such as buying a product or becoming a newsletter subscriber in 2023 facebook and instagram were tied for having the highest roi across social media platforms for global marketers while youtube fell next in line 3the marketing plan identifies the target market for a product or brand market research is often the basis for a target market and marketing channel decisions for example whether the company will advertise via social media online ads or regional tv knowing to whom you want to sell and why is an extremely critical component of any business plan it allows you to focus your business and measure its success different demographics have different tastes and needs knowing your target market will help you market to them the marketing plan includes the rationale for these decisions the plan should focus on the creation timing scheduling and placement of specific campaigns and include the metrics that will measure the outcomes of your marketing efforts for example will you advertise on social media or tv what time will you schedule your marketing if they are through email newsletters the strategy may include flighting scheduling which includes the times when you can make the most of your advertising dollars a marketing plan costs money setting a budget will allow you to create a workable plan prevent runaway costs and properly allocate your funds a marketing plan can be adjusted at any point based on the results from its metrics if digital ads are performing better than expected for example the budget for a campaign can be adjusted to fund a higher performing platform or the company can initiate a new budget the challenge for marketing leaders is to ensure that every platform has sufficient time to show results without the correct metrics to assess the impact of outreach and marketing efforts an organization will not know which campaigns to repeat and which to drop in short maintaining ineffective initiatives wastes money digital marketing shows results almost immediately whereas tv ads require rotation to realize any level of market penetration in the traditional marketing mix model a marketing plan would fall under the category of promotion which is one of the four ps a term coined by neil borden to describe the marketing mix of product price promotion and place marketing plan vs business plana business plan is a roadmap that details how a business will operate and function in its entirety it should cover the goals missions values financials and strategies that the business will use in day to day operations and the achievement of its objectives among its many elements are an executive summary the products and services sold a marketing analysis a marketing strategy financial planning and a budget as mentioned a business plan should include a marketing plan which focuses on creating a strategy for creating awareness of the company s product or service reaching the target market and generating sales example of a marketing planconsider the following marketing plan framework that is designed to help direct marketing objectives 