What is a marketing plan?
A marketing plan is a detailed document that's part of a business plan. A marketing plan document outlines a business’s marketing strategies and activities. This plan will help marketing teams build a brand, collect market insights internally, and clearly communicate the product's value to the market, generating quality leads and eventually increasing revenue.
Why should your business have a marketing plan?
A solid marketing plan acts as the foundation for all your marketing efforts. Here are the prime purposes for having a marketing plan:
Strategic direction
A marketing plan gives a clear roadmap of what needs to be achieved. This will help you align the team with the larger vision.
Target segmentation
A marketing plan defines the target market so that you can create tailored initiatives. Clearly identifying the market will enhance the chances of reaching them and making a lasting impact.
Performance measurement
A good marketing plan should also establish the metrics and benchmarks to evaluate your marketing efforts.
Before you create a marketing plan, here are a few questions that you can answer:
What are your short-term and long-term goals for your marketing efforts?
Who do you want to target for your products/services?
What are your marketing strengths and weaknesses?
What are your current marketing efforts?
What are the possible areas of improvement?
Is your team aware of business conditions?
Thankfully, a marketing plan template is an excellent way to get started with laying out a marketing plan.
Marketing plan template by Zoho Tables
To help you draw up your marketing plan, we've come up with a comprehensive marketing plan template. Here's what's included:
Product/services offered by your business
The template lets you list all the products/services your business offers along with essentials like:
Product/service category
When each product/service was established
Goal of the product
Targeted revenue, actual revenue, and calculating the difference
This will help you outline all your business initiatives and give you an idea about where your marketing efforts should be focused.
SWOT analysis
To create a marketing plan template, you need to analyze the following for your business:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
Including this information is crucial for creating targeted strategies that allow you to leverage your strengths and address your weaknesses. You can revisit and update this as your business grows and the markets change.
Target market and buyer persona
Figuring out your target audience and buying persona will let you create focused messages for each segment and help you understand your customer preferences, leading to improvements in what your business offers.
You can also customize this table in the marketing plan template to include even more details of your buyer persona, like:
Age
Interests
Location
Profession
Goals
Buying behavior
Preferences
Competitor analysis
Your target audience has numerous choices on the market when choosing a product or service. Doing thorough research of your competitors will help you figure out what they do well and the areas where they lag behind so that you can use it to your advantage.
The template's Competitive Analysis table contains fields for you to capture competitor data like:
Business name
Website
Business categories they cater to
Highlights or pros
Shortcomings
Annual growth percentage
Annual revenue
Market share
You can also add more details like their location, pricing, etc.
Marketing strategies
This lets you define how you want your brand and products/services to be perceived. Defining this will help you align your marketing efforts with your business goals, allocating time and resources efficiently,
Here you can outline your marketing strategies, like:
Pricing strategy
Unique selling points
Market demand
Promotion channels
Marketing budget
You can also customize this table to include performance metrics.
Teams
Adding your team’s details to the marketing plan ensures everyone knows their roles and responsibilities, thus enhancing accountability. This also helps in identifying their skills and expertise, which in turn lets you assign the right responsibilities to them.
The Teams table can be used to add details like:
Member name
Department
Designation
Photo
Job description
You can even add things like the key projects/initiatives they're associated with.
Who can use this marketing plan template by Zoho Tables?
Our marketing plan template can be used by all manner of teams and stakeholders, including, but not limited to:
Marketing managers
Marketing teams
Business owners
Marketing consultants
Business development managers
Customer support executives
Product managers
Finance officers
Anyone using this template can customize it according to their business needs and requirements.
Get started in 3 steps
Pick a template
Load the template in Zoho Tables
Customize it as needed