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How to create a marketing plan in 2024

7 steps to creating an effective marketing plan for businesses of all sizes

A marketing plan is a bit like a job description for your company. Everyone should have one, but they’re often not fit for purpose, out of date, and reviewed infrequently...

Research has shown that businesses with plans succeed, outperform competitors, and retain staff, more than those with no plan.

Without a plan there’s no direction for the company or its employees, decisions can be uninformed, opportunities can be missed and threats can damage or destroy the business.

Whether you are looking at creating a traditional marketing plan or a multichannel digital marketing plan, we've got resources to help you.

Free marketing plan template aimed at small businesses

In this article, Annmarie Hanlon recommends 7 simple steps for structuring a classic marketing plan. But for an SME or SMB, you need a little more detail about prioritizing your investment of time and money in your communications channels as we've mentioned.

Our Free marketing plan template download , by our co-founder Dr. Dave Chaffey who developed the RACE Planning Framework, provides a little more detail needed for a 'real-world' plan to grow a business.

Free marketing plan template download

Use our simple three-page Microsoft Word template if you work for a small business who needs to create a simple, practical marketing plan quickly. It's structured in three sections of steps using the acclaimed RACE Growth System for improving marketing results

Access the Free marketing plan template

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is your place to document the process of defining and implementing your marketing strategy and creating a roadmap for future growth and business development. A marketing plan should be customer-centred, focused on your target audience and the value propositions you will deliver to them.

The key element of marketing strategy within the plan that you need to compete effectively is the Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning strategy for your brand, known as STP for short. These stages in target marketing strategy development that should be central in your marketing plan are summarized in Figure 4.10 in Digital Marketing: Strategy, Development and Planning created by Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights.

Your plan must reference Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning as essential sections you must cover in a classic marketing plan for a large business. However, for smaller businesses, you also need more practical strategies for how you will reach and engage your audiences using the key digital marketing channels today including search, social media and email marketing and then how you will persuade and convert your audience on a website or on your social pages. So, for a small or medium business (SME or SMB depending on where you are reading) your marketing plan must also include communications strategies to help you achieve your goals. That's why Smart Insights created the RACE planning framework to give guidance on how to best plan and action best practices for these channels.

How to create and structure a marketing plan

To structure your marketing plan, we recommend utilizing the Smart Insights RACE Growth System, an easy-to-use strategic marketing framework that helps you identify opportunities, strategies, and actions to help you drive growth, at each stage of your marketing funnel.

As the visual shows, our OSA process, of which you can see examples in different sectors in our editable Word plan templates, is structured in three parts:

• Opportunity : Situation review including marketplace analysis (customers, competitors and channel partners), performance analysis and Vision and SMART Objective setting based on forecasting (spreadsheet tools available in our templates)
• Strategy : Segmentation, Targeting and Positoning (STP) and the tactics forming the 7Ps of the marketing mix.
• Action : Budget, resourcing including team and tools and marketing technology (Martech) and 90-day action plans.

As a marketer, every activity will fall into either an opportunity, strategy, or action. With a strong marketing plan in place, you will be able to measure each of these elements, and more importantly, ensure all marketing activities remain integrated.

Some marketing plans, such as this Chartered Institute of Marketing recommendation on How to write a marketing plan define more stages, but particularly for smaller businesses we believe the simpler  Opportunity > Strategy > Action enables you to communicate your plan better!

Identify marketing opportunities

Let's now look at what you need to include in your plan, starting with your opportunities. A marketing plan is not just a list of activities to work on! To identify the opportunities to prioritize and challenges to overcome. You need to start with internal audits, external analysis, and goal setting - to give your marketing a purpose. We recommend summarizing your key issues based on a TOWs analysis which is a powerful form of SWOT analysis explained in our post giving SWOT analysis template examples .

Through our RACE Planning Framework, you can access tools and templates designed to help you optimize across 25 opportunities, integrated across each stage of RACE, which you can see in the infographic below:

Starting with these holistic approaches, you will quickly identify opportunities for growth and can plan strategies and actions that help you achieve your vision for your business. That's why opportunities are the first step in our OSA cycle.

Identify marketing strategies

Now you know what you want to do, strategy is working out how to achieve your goals in an efficient and effective manner. To do so, you'll likely lean on guides, templates, and models to inform your strategy.

Making good business decisions to inform your budgets, investment priorities, and key metrics are all elements of a successful marketing strategy.

Marketing plan actions

Of course, the final stage of any marketing strategy is putting it all into place!

To help you manage your time and marketing outputs, our RACE Growth System is structured around short 90-day planning cycles. This means you will see quarterly growth, as well as setting longer-term annual goals.

Quarterly measurement and reporting allow marketers and business owners to spot trends and make optimizations in a shorter timeframe too, to keep cycling customers through your dedicated marketing funnel experience.

Example marketing plan structure

It can be daunting to develop a marketing plan for the first time, so let's walk through the basics together. If you're looking for a practical, simple, data-driven marketing plan, these 7 factors will help you create and action your plan with success.

Step 1. Customer analysis (Opportunity)

A good plan starts by asking 'Where are we now?'. Gain an overview via your customers, but don’t forget to ask the right questions. One of my pet hates is the ‘hypothetical question’ e.g. A hotel asking “if you would stay here again?” It’s possible you would stay there again, but if it’s been a one-off visit it’s very unlikely it will actually happen. Removing hypothetical questions ensures you capture facts, not fiction.

If you’ve got a start-up business or are looking at a marketing plan for a totally new area, many other research resources are available including online reports, insights via trends and conferences. This informs your business decision and ensures the plan is fundamentally sound.

Step 2. Marketing audit (Opportunity)

After you’ve captured customer insights, the next step is a comprehensive review or audit of the business. Most countries publish statistical data on businesses in their region. This can tell you the number of businesses in specific sectors, average numbers of employees, average earnings, average income per household and more. This valuable information highlights market values, market potential and opportunities. This enables you to understand where your business sits in its market sector and the market share available.

A key element of the audit is the SWOT and whilst you and many marketers are familiar with the SWOT analysis, you may be less familiar with the McKinsey 7S framework of business. Taking a holistic look at the business, thinking about Strategy, Structure, Systems, Staff, Style, Skills and Shared values forms a base for your SWOT. Business members can access a 7S and SWOT template in the smart insigths Business marketing plan guide .

Part of a marketing audit is competitor benchmarking. Really understanding what the competitors offer. The more you understand how they work, the more likely you are to be able to predict their next move. You won’t be one of these companies that says “we never saw it coming”. Tools such as Google Alerts help you embed this as an automatic ongoing process.

One of my clients ensured they always got the early news on their key competitor by buying some of their shares! It meant they had access to latest reports, and newsletters and could attend annual meetings to hear what other shareholders thought. This was all for an investment of £150.

Step 3. Create sustainable objectives: Where do we want to go? (Opportunity)

It’s easy to create general objectives; it’s harder to develop SMART objectives.

Taking this one stage further, businesses that use numbers alone often miss key values inside the business. It’s easy to become numbers-driven; it’s harder to create ‘softer’ objectives. In Emarketing Excellence (2022), Dave Chaffey and PR Smith developed the 5s model, initially as a mechanism for reviewing websites. I’ve used this for many years to develop business objectives. It tends to challenge the thinking within a business and gets the owners and managers considering the business as a whole, rather than sales alone.

Look at your business. Do you have SMART objectives for:

• The sales forecast; sales figures, number of new clients wanted?
• Customer service; how can you improve the service to customers?
• Communication (speak) providing information to clients?
• Saving time, increasing your business efficiency and reducing costs?
• The wow factor! Adding sizzle to make your business stand out from the crowd?

Step 4. Segment your customer base (Strategy)

Key strategic initiatives for your business will include one or more of these options:

• Enter new markets
• Develop new products
• Improve the competitive position of the business
• Maintain the competitive position
• Harvest part of the business
• Exit the business

When you know the strategic initiatives the business is taking, it’s easier to segment your customer base, whether you’re B2B, B2C or a blend of both. You can use the mnemonic SUPERB to identify your customer segments:

• Size – Is the market large enough to justify segmenting?
• Unique – Do measurable differences exist between segments?
• Profits – Do anticipated profits exceed the costs of additional marketing plans and other changes?
• Easy Access – Is each segment easily accessible to your team?
• Reaction – Is the market able to react to your communications?
• Benefits – Will the different segments need different benefits?

Step 5. Target new customers and position your business (Strategy)

Growing a business always involves finding new customers, this may be different segments or markets and may encourage your business to look at product development.

What opportunities are there in your business to:

• Sell more of your existing products or services to your existing customer base? (Market Penetration Strategy)
• Introduce your existing product range to a new customer group? (Market Development Strategy)
• Augment or improve the existing product offer? (Product Development Strategy)
• Move into a new market with a new product offer using the skills within the business? (Diversification Strategies)

Pricing is a critical area in any business. Kotler (1988) described nine marketing mix strategies on price quality, which we look at in detail in the Business marketing plan guide for Business members, to support your pricing strategy development.

A pricing matrix is a really useful tool for product marketers or managers because it helps you identify opportunities within your product and pricing strategies. Don't forget to research which of these strategies are your main competitors using too and make sure to use key messages to help differentiate yourself.

Step 6. Create your marketing action plan (Action)

The key to making it happen is to create a detailed marketing action plan. If you don’t have time to conduct each step yourself, you can explore other options and contract out specific tasks to an external consultant or agency.

I have found that an Action Plan that includes more detail, nominates someone to do the work and sets dates by when it should be completed, is more likely to get done than a loose set of instructions. A good action plan becomes ’work instructions’ for different people.

Busy marketing managers may enlist support from the admin team who often relish the opportunity to carry out new tasks, as long as they have a detailed brief. Or for more specialized work, marketing managers may wish to enlist an Agency.

Step 7. Monitor, manage and improve (Action)

The final step is about monitoring action, managing the process and measuring results. The 7 steps to make your plan happen are:

• It is essential to maintain the impetus, start the plan today, not tomorrow.
• Appoint one person to monitor the entire plan and give them the authority to do so.
• Regular meetings should be held to review the plan. These could be 20-minute meetings at the start of the week.
• If you don’t do it today, your competitors will start tomorrow.
• If one item is difficult to start, move on to the next area.
• At the end of each quarter, review what has taken place and where more help is needed.
• The most successful businesses stick to the plan and make it happen – whilst still getting on with the day job.

Other types of marketing plan

As the world of digital marketing continues to develop, many find that particular functions within marketing require their own planning document. See examples of where this may be useful below:

• New product marketing plan: Launching a new product requires its own planning, this process can be make or break for your product. Find out about the product launch plan that generated $1 billion in 60 days .
• Content strategy: 98% of marketers believe 'having or following' a content strategy is 'important for marketing success'.
• Nich marketing strategy: Niche marketing considers the narrow category into which your business falls and targets specific subsets of customers accordingly.

But, remember, it is recommended to define one flagship plan for the whole team, for governance and accountability, before branching out into secondary planning.

One final tip; set a start and an end date for creating and launching the marketing plan , if not, the audit stage could continue indefinitely! Download your free guide and get started today.

Use our simple three-page Microsoft Word template if you work for a small business who needs to quickly create a simple, practical marketing plan quickly. It's structured in three sections of steps using the acclaimed RACE Growth System for improving marketing results

By Annmarie Hanlon

Annmarie Hanlon PhD is an academic and practitioner in strategic digital marketing and the application of social media for business. Dr Hanlon has expertise in the strategic application of social media for business and the move from digitization, to digitalization and digital transformation for business. Her expertise spans consumer touch points, online customer service, the use of reviews, the role of influencers, online engagement and digital content. You can follow her update on Twitter https://twitter.com/annmariehanlon

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12/01/2023 : business studies 7115 october november 2022 past papers of o level are updated., 15/08/2022 : business studies 7115 past papers of feb march and may june 2022 are now available. .

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The Cambridge O Level Business Studies syllabus develops learners' understanding of business activity in the public and private sectors, and the importance of innovation and change. Learners find out how the major types of business organisation are established, financed and run, and how their activities are regulated. Factors influencing business decision-making are also considered, as are the essential values of cooperation and interdependence.

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Blog Marketing What is a Marketing Plan & How to Create One [with Examples]

What is a Marketing Plan & How to Create One [with Examples]

Written by: Sara McGuire Oct 26, 2023

A marketing plan is a blueprint that outlines your strategies to attract and convert your ideal customers as a part of your customer acquisition strategy. It’s a comprehensive document that details your:

• Target audience:  Who you’re trying to reach
• Marketing goals:  What you want to achieve
• Strategies and tactics:  How you’ll reach your goals
• Budget:  Resources you’ll allocate
• Metrics:  How you’ll measure success

In this article, I’ll explain everything you need to know about creating a marketing plan . If you need a little extra help, there are professionally designed marketing plan templates that’ll make the process much easier. So, let’s ditch the confusion and get started!

Click to jump ahead:

What is a marketing plan?

How to write a marketing plan , 9 marketing plan examples to inspire your growth strategy.

• Marketing plan v.s. business plan
• Types of marketing plans

Marketing plan FAQs

A marketing plan is a report that outlines your marketing strategy for your products or services, which could be applicable for the coming year, quarter or month.  

Watch this quick, 13-minute video for more details on what a marketing plan is and how to make one yourself:

Typically, a marketing plan includes:

• An overview of your business’s marketing and advertising goals
• A description of your business’s current marketing position
• A timeline of when tasks within your strategy will be completed
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) you will be tracking
• A description of your business’s target market and customer needs
• A description of how you will measure marketing plan performance

For example, this marketing plan template provides a high-level overview of the business and competitors before diving deep into specific goals, KPIs and tactics:

Learning how to write a marketing plan forces you to think through the important steps that lead to an effective marketing strategy . And a well-defined plan will help you stay focused on your high-level marketing goals.

With Venngage’s extensive catalog of marketing plan templates, creating your marketing plan isn’t going to be hard or tedious. In fact, Venngage has plenty of helpful communications and design resources for marketers. If you’re ready to get started, sign up for  Venngage for Marketers   now. It’s free to register and start designing.

Whether you’re a team trying to set smarter marketing goals, a consultant trying to set your client in the right direction, or a one-person team hustling it out, Venngage for Marketers helps you get things done.

As mentioned above, the scope of your marketing plan varies depending on its purpose or the type of organization it’s for.

For example, you could look for performance marketing agency to create a marketing plan that provides an overview of a company’s entire marketing strategy:

A typical outline of a marketing plan includes:

• Executive summary
• Goals and objectives
• User personas
• Competitor analysis/SWOT analysis
• Baseline metrics
• Marketing strategy
• Tracking guidelines

Below you will see in details how to write each section as well as some examples of how you can design each section in a marketing plan.

Let’s look at how to create a successful marketing plan (click to jump ahead):

• Write a simple executive summary
• Set metric-driven marketing goals
• Outline your user personas
• Research all of your competitors
• Set accurate key baselines & metrics
• Create an actionable marketing strategy
• Set tracking or reporting guidelines

1. Write a simple executive summary

Starting your marketing plan off on the right foot is important. You want to pull people into your amazing plan for marketing domination. Not bore them to tears.

One of the best ways to get people excited to read your marketing plan is with a well-written executive summary. An executive summary introduces readers to your company goals, marketing triumphs, future plans, and other important contextual facts.

Basically, you can use the Executive Summary as a primer for the rest of your marketing plan.

Include things like:

• Simple marketing goals
• High-level metrics
• Important company milestones
• Facts about your brand
• Employee anecdotes
• Future goals & plans

Try to keep your executive summary rather brief and to the point. You aren’t writing a novel, so try to keep it under three to four paragraphs.

Take a look at the executive summary in the marketing plan example below:

The executive summary is only two paragraphs long — short but effective.

The executive summary tells readers about the company’s growth, and how they are about to overtake one of their competitors. But there’s no mention of specific metrics or figures. That will be highlighted in the next section of the marketing plan.

An effective executive summary should have enough information to pique the reader’s interest, but not bog them down with specifics yet. That’s what the rest of your marketing plan is for!

The executive summary also sets the tone for your marketing plan. Think about what tone will fit your brand ? Friendly and humorous? Professional and reliable? Inspiring and visionary?

2. Set metric-driven marketing goals

After you perfect your executive summary, it’s time to outline your marketing goals.

(If you’ve never set data-driven goals like this before, it would be worth reading this growth strategy guide ).

This is one of the most important parts of the entire marketing plan, so be sure to take your time and be as clear as possible. Moreover, optimizing your marketing funnel is key. Employing effective funnel software can simplify operations and provide valuable customer insights. It facilitates lead tracking, conversion rate analysis, and efficient marketing optimization .

As a rule of thumb, be as specific as possible. The folks over at  VoyMedia  advise that you should set goals that impact website traffic, conversions, and customer success — and to use real numbers. Complement your goals with website optimization tools (e.g., A/B testing speed with Nostra – check Nostra AI review to learn more) to further improve conversions.

Avoid outlining vague goals like:

• Get more Twitter followers
• Write more articles
• Create more YouTube videos (like educational or Explainer videos )
• Increase retention rate
• Decrease bounce rate

Instead, identify  key performance metrics  (KPI) you want to impact and the percentage you want to increase them by.

Take a look at the goals page in the marketing plan example below:

They not only identify a specific metric in each of their goals, but they also set a timeline for when they will be increased.

The same vague goals listed earlier become much clearer when specific numbers and timelines are applied to them:

• Get 100 new Twitter followers per month
• Write 5 more articles per week
• Create 10 YouTube videos each year
• Increase retention rate by 15% by 2020
• Decrease bounce rate by 5% by Q1
• Create an online course  and get 1,000 new leads
• Focus more on local SEO strategies
• Conduct a monthly social media report to track progress

You can dive even deeper into your marketing goals if you want (generally, the more specific, the better). Here’s a marketing plan example that shows how to outline your growth goals:

3. Outline your user personas

Now, this may not seem like the most important part of your marketing plan, but I think it holds a ton of value.

Outlining your user personas is an important part of a marketing plan that should not be overlooked.

You should be asking not just how you can get the most visitors to your business, but how you can get the right visitors.

Who are your ideal customers? What are their goals? What are their biggest problems? How does your business solve customer problems?

Answering these questions will take lots of research, but it’s essential information to get.

Some ways to conduct user research are:

• Interviewing your users (either in person or on the phone)
• Conducting focus groups
• Researching other businesses in the same industry
• Surveying your audience

Then, you will need to compile your user data into a user persona  guide.

Take a look at how detailed this user persona template is below:

Taking the time to identify specific demographic traits, habits and goals will make it easier for you to cater your marketing plan to them.

Here’s how you can create a user persona guide:

The first thing you should add is a profile picture or icon for each user persona. It can help to put a face to your personas, so they seem more real.

Next, list demographic information like:

• Identifiers
• Activities/Hobbies

The user persona example above uses sliding scales to identify personality traits like introversion vs. extroversion and thinking vs. feeling. Identifying what type of personality your target users tend to have an influence on the messaging you use in your marketing content.

Meanwhile, this user persona guide identifies specific challenges the user faces each day:

But if you don’t want to go into such precise detail, you can stick to basic information, like in this marketing plan example:

Most businesses will have a few different types of target users. That’s why it’s pertinent to identify and create several different user personas . That way, you can better segment your marketing campaigns and set separate goals, if necessary.

Here’s a marketing plan example with a segmented user persona guide:

The important thing is for your team or client to have a clear picture of who their target user is and how they can appeal to their specific problems.

Start creating robust user personas using Venngage’s user persona guide .

4. Conduct an extensive competitor analysis

Next, on the marketing plan checklist, we have the competitor research section. This section will help you identify who your competitors are, what they’re doing, and how you could carve yourself a place alongside them in your niche — and ideally, surpass them. It’s something you can learn to do with rank tracking software .

Competitor research is also incredibly important if you are starting a blog .

Typically, your competitor research should include:

• Who their marketing team is
• Who their leadership team is
• What their marketing strategy and strategic marketing plan are (this will probably revolve some reverse-engineering)
• What their sales strategy is (same deal)
• Social Media strategy (are they using discounting strategies such as coupon marketing to get conversions)
• Their market cap/financials
• Their yearly growth (you will probably need to use a marketing tool like Ahrefs to do this)
• The number of customers they have & their user personas

Also, take as deep a dive as you can into the strategies they use across their:

• Blog/Content marketing
• Social media marketing
• SEO Marketing
• Video marketing
• And any other marketing tactics they use

Research their strengths and weaknesses in all parts of their company, and you will find some great opportunities. Bookmark has a great guide to different marketing strategies for small businesses if you need some more information there.

You can use this simple SWOT analysis worksheet to quickly work through all parts of their strategy as well:

Click the template above to create a SWOT chart . Customize the template to your liking — no design know-how needed.

Since you have already done all the research beforehand, adding this information to your marketing plan shouldn’t be that hard.

In this marketing plan example, some high-level research is outlined for 3 competing brands:

But you could take a deeper dive into different facets of your competitors’ strategies. This marketing plan example analyses a competitor’s inbound marketing strategy :

It can also be helpful to divide your competitors into Primary and Secondary groups. For example, Apple’s primary competitor may be Dell for computers, but its secondary competitor could be a company that makes tablets.

Your most dangerous competitors may not even be in the same industry as you. Like the CEO of Netflix said, “Sleep is our competition.”

5. Set accurate key baselines & metrics

It’s pretty hard to plan for the future if you don’t know where your business stands right now.

Before we do anything at Venngage, we find the baselines so we can compare future results to something. We do it so much it’s almost like second nature now!

Setting baselines will allow you to more accurately track your progress. You will also be able to better analyze what worked and what didn’t work, so you can build a stronger strategy. It will definitely help them clearly understand your goals and strategy as well.

Here’s a marketing plan example where the baselines are visualized:

Another way to include baselines in your plan is with a simple chart, like in the marketing plan example below:

Because data can be intimidating to a lot of people, visualizing your data using charts and infographics will help demystify the information.

6. Create an actionable marketing strategy

After pulling all the contextual information and relevant metrics into your marketing plan, it’s time to break down your marketing strategy.

Once again, it’s easier to communicate your information to your team or clients using visuals .

Mind maps are an effective way to show how a strategy with many moving parts ties together. For example, this mind map shows how the four main components of a marketing strategy interact together:

You can also use a flow chart to map out your strategy by objectives:

However you choose to visualize your strategy, your team should know exactly what they need to do. This is not the time to keep your cards close to your chest.

Your strategy section may need to take up a few pages to explain, like in the marketing plan example below:

With all of this information, even someone from the development team will understand what the marketing team is working on.

This minimalistic marketing plan example uses color blocks to make the different parts of the strategy easy to scan:

Breaking your strategy down into tasks will make it easier to tackle.

Another important way to visualize your marketing strategy is to create a project roadmap. A project roadmap visualizes the timeline of your product with individual tasks. Our roadmap maker can help you with this.

For example, this project roadmap shows how tasks on both the marketing and web design side run parallel to each other:

A simple timeline can also be used in your marketing plan:

Or a mind map, if you want to include a ton of information in a more organized way:

Even a simple “Next, Now, Later” chart can help visualize your strategy:

7. Set tracking or reporting guidelines

Close your marketing plan with a brief explanation of how you plan to track or measure your results. This will save you a lot of frustration down the line by standardizing how you track results across your team.

Like the other sections of your marketing plan, you can choose how in-depth you want to go. But there need to be some clear guidelines on how to measure the progress and results of your marketing plan.

At the bare minimum, your results tracking guidelines should specify:

• What you plan to track
• How you plan to track results
• How often you plan to measure

But you can more add tracking guidelines to your marketing plan if you see the need to. You may also want to include a template that your team or client can follow,  for  client reporting ,  ensure that the right metrics are being tracked.

The marketing plan example below dedicates a whole page to tracking criteria:

Use a task tracker to track tasks and marketing results, and a checklist maker to note down tasks, important life events, or tracking your daily life.

Similarly, the marketing plan example below talks about tracking content marketing instead:

Marketing plan vs. marketing strategy

Although often used interchangeably, the terms “marketing plan” and “marketing strategy” do have some differences.

Simply speaking, a marketing strategy presents what the business will do in order to reach a certain goal. A marketing plan outlines the specific daily, weekly, monthly or yearly activities that the marketing strategy calls for. As a business, you can create a marketing proposal for the marketing strategies defined in your company’s marketing plan. There are various marketing proposal examples that you can look at to help with this.

A company’s extended marketing strategy can be like this:

Notice how it’s more general and doesn’t include the actual activities required to complete each strategy or the timeframe those marketing activities will take place. That kind of information is included in a marketing plan, like this marketing plan template which talks about the content strategy in detail:

1. Nonprofit marketing plan

Here’s a free nonprofit marketing plan example that is ideal for organizations with a comprehensive vision to share. It’s a simple plan that is incredibly effective. Not only does the plan outline the core values of the company, it also shares the ideal buyer persona.

Note how the branding is consistent throughout this example so there is no doubt which company is presenting this plan. The content plan is an added incentive for anyone viewing the document to go ahead and give the team the green light.

2. Social media marketing plan

Two-page marketing plan samples aren’t very common, but this free template proves how effective they are. There’s a dedicated section for business goals as well as for project planning.

The milestones for the marketing campaign are clearly laid out, which is a great way to show how organized this business strategy is.

3. Small business marketing plan

This marketing plan template is perfect for small businesses who set out to develop an overarching marketing strategy for the whole year:

Notice how this aligns pretty well with the marketing plan outline we discussed in previous sections.

In terms of specific tactics for the company’s marketing strategy, the template only discusses SEO strategy, but you can certainly expand on that section to discuss any other strategies — such as link building , that you would like to build out a complete marketing plan for.

4. Orange simple marketing proposal template

Marketing plans, like the sample below, are a great way to highlight what your business strategy and the proposal you wan to put forward to win potential customers.

5. One-page marketing plan

This one-page marketing plan example is great for showcasing marketing efforts in a persuasive presentation or to print out for an in-person meeting.

Note how the fact sheet breaks down the marketing budget as well as the key metrics for the organization. You can win over clients and partners with a plan like this.

6. Light company business fact sheet template

This one-page sample marketing plan clearly outlines the marketing objectives for the organization. It’s a simple but effective way to share a large amount of information in a short amount of time.

What really works with this example is that includes a mission statement, key contact information alongside all the key metrics.

7. Marketing media press kit template

This press kit marketing plan template is bright and unmistakable as belonging to the Cloud Nine marketing agency . The way the brand colors are used also helps diversify the layouts for each page, making the plan easier to read.

We like the way the marketing department has outlined the important facts about the organization. The bold and large numbers draw the eye and look impressive.

8. Professional marketing proposal template

Start your marketing campaign on a promising note with this marketing plan template. It’s short, sharp and to the point. The table of contents sets out the agenda, and there’s a page for the company overview and mission statement.

9. Social media marketing proposal template

A complete marketing plan example, like the one below, not only breaks down the business goals to be achieved but a whole lot more. Note how the terms and conditions and payment schedule are included, which makes this one of the most comprehensive marketing plans on our list.

Marketing plan vs. business plan

While both marketing plans and business plans are crucial documents for businesses, they serve distinct purposes and have different scopes. Here’s a breakdown of the key differences:

Business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines all aspects of your business, including:

• Mission and vision
• Products or services
• Target market
• Competition
• Management team
• Financial projections
• Marketing strategy (including a marketing plan)
• Operations plan

Marketing plan on the other hand, dives deep into the specific strategies and tactics related to your marketing efforts. It expands on the marketing section of a business plan by detailing:

• Specific marketing goals (e.g., brand awareness, lead generation, sales)
• Target audience analysis (detailed understanding of their needs and behaviors)
• Product:  Features, benefits, positioning
• Price:  Pricing strategy, discounts
• Place:  Distribution channels (online, offline)
• Promotion:  Advertising, social media, content marketing, public relations
• Budget allocation for different marketing activities
• Metrics and measurement to track progress and success

In short, business plans paint the entire business picture, while marketing plans zoom in on the specific strategies used to reach your target audience and achieve marketing goals.

Types of marketing plans that can transform your business strategy

Let’s take a look at several types of marketing plans you can create, along with specific examples for each.

1. General marketing strategic plan / Annual marketing plan

This is a good example of a marketing plan that covers the overarching annual marketing strategy for a company:

Another good example would be this Starbucks marketing plan:

This one-page marketing plan example from coffee chain Starbucks has everything at a glance. The bold headers and subheadings make it easier to segment the sections so readers can focus on the area most relevant to them.

What we like about this example is how much it covers. From the ideal buyer persona to actional activities, as well as positioning and metrics, this marketing plan has it all.

Another marketing plan example that caught our eye is this one from Cengage. Although a bit text-heavy and traditional, it explains the various sections well. The clean layout makes this plan easy to read and absorb.

The last marketing plan example we would like to feature in this section is this one from Lush cosmetics.

It is a long one but it’s also very detailed. The plan outlines numerous areas, including the company mission, SWOT analysis , brand positioning, packaging, geographical criteria, and much more.

2. Content marketing plan

A content marketing plan highlights different strategies , campaigns or tactics you can use for your content to help your business reach its goals.

This one-page marketing plan example from Contently outlines a content strategy and workflow using simple colors and blocks. The bullet points detail more information but this plan can easily be understood at a glance, which makes it so effective.

For a more detailed content marketing plan example, take a look at this template which features an editorial calendar you can share with the whole team:

3. SEO marketing plan

Your SEO marketing plan highlights what you plan to do for your SEO marketing strategy . This could include tactics for website on-page optimization , off-page optimization using AI SEO , and link building using an SEO PowerSuite backlink API for quick backlink profile checks.

This SEO marketing plan example discusses in detail the target audience of the business and the SEO plan laid out in different stages:

4. Social media marketing plan

Your social media marketing plan presents what you’ll do to reach your marketing goal through social media. This could include tactics specific to each social media channel that you own, recommendations on developing a new channel, specific campaigns you want to run, and so on, like how B2B channels use Linkedin to generate leads with automation tools and expand their customer base; or like making use of Twitter walls that could display live Twitter feeds from Twitter in real-time on digital screens.

For B2C brands, you can target Facebook and Instagram. Gain Instagram likes to build trust for your brand’s profile and post engaging content on both platforms. Leverage AI social media tools to automate and scale your content plan..

Edit this social media marketing plan example easily with Venngage’s drag-and-drop editor:

5. Demand generation marketing plan

This could cover your paid marketing strategy (which can include search ads, paid social media ads, traditional advertisements, etc.), email marketing strategy and more. Here’s an example:

What should marketing plans include?

Marketing plans should include:

• A detailed analysis of the target market and customer segments.
• Clear and achievable marketing objectives and goals.
• Strategies and tactics for product promotion and distribution.
• Budget allocation for various marketing activities.
• Timelines and milestones for the implementation of marketing strategies.
• Evaluation metrics and methods for tracking the success of the marketing plan.

What is an executive summary in a marketing plan and what is its main goal?

An executive summary in a marketing plan is a brief overview of the entire document, summarizing the key points, goals, and strategies. Its main goal is to provide readers with a quick understanding of the plan’s purpose and to entice them to read further.

What are the results when a marketing plan is effective?

When a marketing plan is effective, businesses can experience increased brand visibility, higher customer engagement , improved sales and revenue, and strengthened customer loyalty.

What is the first section of a marketing plan?

The first section of a marketing plan is typically the “Executive Summary,” which provides a concise overview of the entire plan, including the business’s goals and the strategies to achieve them.

Now that you have the basics for designing your own marketing plan, it’s time to get started:

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What Is a Marketing Plan?

Understanding marketing plans, how to write a marketing plan, marketing plan vs. business plan.

• Marketing Plan FAQs

The Bottom Line

• Marketing Essentials

What Is a Marketing Plan? Types and How to Write One

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Pete Rathburn is a copy editor and fact-checker with expertise in economics and personal finance and over twenty years of experience in the classroom.

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A marketing plan is an operational document that outlines an advertising strategy that an organization will implement to generate leads and reach its target market . It details the outreach and PR campaigns to be undertaken and for how long, as well as the ways in which the company will measure the effect of these initiatives. It reflects a company’s overall marketing strategy.

Key Takeaways

• The marketing plan details the strategy that a company will use to market its products to customers.
• The plan identifies the target market, value proposition of the brand or product, campaigns to be initiated, and metrics to be used to assess the effectiveness of marketing initiatives.
• The marketing plan should be adjusted on an ongoing basis based on which efforts are having an impact and which are not.
• Digital marketing shows results almost in real time, whereas TV ads require rotation to realize any level of market penetration.
• A marketing plan is part of a business plan, which describes all of the important aspects of a business, such as its goals, values, mission statement, budget, and strategies.

The terms “marketing plan” and “marketing strategy” are often used interchangeably because the former is developed based on an overarching strategic framework. In some cases the strategy and the plan may be incorporated into one document, particularly for smaller companies that may only run one or two major campaigns in a year. The plan outlines marketing activities on a monthly, a quarterly, or an annual basis, while the strategy delineates the overall  value proposition .

The components of a marketing plan include:

• Market research – This provides information to support pricing decisions and new market entries.
• Tailored messaging – This involves targeting certain demographics and geographic areas and can include the use of affiliate marketing with third-party publishers who bring customers to the table.
• Platform selection – This looks at the best vehicles for disseminating product information for each advertising campaign: traditional venues such as radio, TV, newspapers, and commercial and trade magazines; digital methods such as websites, online ads, search engine results, informational videos, social media groups (Facebook, YouTube, etc.), email, and text messages; or any mix of these platforms.
• Performance metrics – Metrics accurately assess the results of marketing efforts and their reporting timelines and are crucial to the success of the plan.

The four most important social media networks in 2023 for global marketers were, in descending order, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

Types of Marketing Plans

There are a variety of marketing plans that suit different businesses and their needs. These include:

• Product Launch – A product-launch marketing plan outlines how a new product will enter the market, the audience it will target, and the advertising methods used.
• Social Media – A social media marketing plan focuses on the advertising strategies on different social media platforms and how to engage with their users.
• Time Based – Time-based marketing plans, such as those that are executed quarterly or annually, focus on the time of the year, the current condition of the business, and the best strategies in that period.
• Content Based – A content-based marketing plan looks in detail at what kinds of content (blogs, videos, graphics, etc.) will reach the target audience.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – An SEO marketing plan is all about getting the most hits online. It involves keyword research, content optimization, link building, and more, all with the goal of drawing customers to your website.

Mission and Value Proposition

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.

Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

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.

Identify Your Target Market

The 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.

Strategy and Execution

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.

Set Your Budget

A marketing plan costs money. Setting a budget will allow you to create a workable plan, prevent runaway costs, and properly allocate your funds.

Adjust Your Plan

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.

A 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 Plan

Consider the following marketing plan framework that is designed to help direct marketing objectives:

• Executive Summary: Describes company mission, key executives, and where it is headquartered.
• SWOT Analysis: Describes strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for the company. This helps you define how to build on your strengths and how to find ways to improve on your weaknesses. It also helps a company analyze their competitors and how they may achieve an advantage based on their unique value proposition.
• Business Initiatives: Outlines the goals of the marketing plan, such as the number of impressions, Google rankings, or email subscribers.
• Customer Analysis: Describes your target market and audience characteristics based on market research. These may include age, pain points, and location, among other variables.
• Competitor Analysis: Outlines the companies providing similar goods or services to your target audience. In addition, it describes their strengths, market share, pricing structure, and most importantly where your company can fill an important gap.

What Is a Marketing Plan Template?

A marketing plan template is a guide for writing a marketing plan. It contains all the important elements needed to create one, including its goals and KPIs, marketing channels, budget, content type, teams involved, and design.

What Is an Executive Summary in a Marketing Plan?

The executive summary is a nutshell description of the marketing plan. It should contain the key findings of the market research, the company’s objectives and marketing goals, an overview of the marketing trends, the description of the product or service being marketed, information on the target market, and the plan budget.

What Is a Top-Down Marketing Strategy?

A top-down marketing strategy is a traditional one, in which a business decides how best to sell its product or brand, and customers are then spurred to take action through advertisements, generally found on radio and/or television. It is usually determined by company executives, which is then communicated with management to delegate to employees. These employees then develop tactics to meet the strategy's objectives.

What Is a Bottom-Up Marketing Strategy?

In comparison to a traditional top-down marketing strategy, a bottom-up strategy begins with employees who formulate marketing tactics based on their analysis of customer preferences and needs. This then may lead to collaboration with other employees to develop a concrete marketing plan, which is sent to executives for review.

Today’s consumer wants to relate to a product or service in a meaningful way, and a bottom-up marketing strategy seeks to achieve this through customer-centric tactics.

How Much Does a Marketing Plan Cost?

The cost of a marketing plan will vary based on the company, the plan’s complexity, and the length of the overall strategy. In 2023, marketing costs made up 10.1% of corporate revenues on average. The consumer packaged goods sector spent the most, at 18.5% of revenues while the mining and construction sector spent the least, at 1% of revenues.

A separate analysis shows that the cost can range anywhere from $10,000 to over $40,000 for a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is the advertising strategy that a business implements to sell its product or service. It determines the target market, how best to reach it, at what price point the product or service should be sold, and how the company will measure its efforts.

Constantly monitoring and adjusting a market plan is an important part of running a business, as it shows the most effective ways to generate sales. As the consumer landscape evolves, it is important for businesses to adapt in order to meet customer needs and better achieve their marketing objectives.

Statista. " Marketing Worldwide – Statistics and Facts ."

American Marketing Association. " What Is a Marketing Plan and How to Write One? [Easy Guide] ."

HubSpot. " The 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report: Data from 1400+ Global Marketers ."

Deloitte. " The CMO Survey: Managing Marketing Technology, Growth and Sustainability ." Page 16.

Laire. " How Much Does a Marketing Plan Cost? "

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MARKETING PLAN GENERATOR

This high-level template will help you outline your annual marketing strategy, identify your most important initiatives, and track the right metrics all year long. Tell us a little about your marketing goals and you’ll receive a 12-month plan in less than 10 minutes.

Press enter/arrow keys (or swipe on mobile) to continue

You smart planner, you. We're so excited to help you create a marketing plan that will drive big results!

Let's start by getting acquainted. What's your name?

Awesome. it's great to meet you .

We'll be diving into some questions about your company, what you do there, and what your team's goals are for this year. These questions will help us customize your plan to fit your company's exact needs. If you're not 100% sure how to answer a question, that's okay. Just put in a quick answer for now — you can always go back in and edit your answers later.

Where do you work?

Very cool how many employees work at your company .

A written mission helps align your team around common goals. Patagonia's mission is to "build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis." Want another example? Click here.

What's your company 's mission?

Just add a few words outlining your direction. You can always change this answer later.

Sounds like a great place to be . What exactly do you do at your company ?

74% of marketers say that converting leads into customers is their company's top priority over the next 12 months.

State of Inbound 2016

What's your team's main focus this year?

What key objectives do you want to achieve? Remember: You can always come back and change this answer later.

Select up to 3 initiatives your team should prioritize this year to help carry out that focus:

(Scroll for more options)

• Build Brand Awareness
• Close Deals
• Create a High-Quality Pipeline
• Create Content
• Create Paid Advertisement Program
• Decrease Churn
• Decrease Customer Acquisition Cost
• Define or Update Personas
• Differentiate Brand From Competitors
• Diversify Promotion Efforts
• Grow Event Attendance
• Grow International Brand
• Grow Paid Users
• Grow Revenue
• Grow Social Media Reach
• Improve Customer NPS
• Improve Lead Quality
• Improve Sales Rep Productivity
• Increase Clickthrough Rate
• Increase Conversion Rate
• Increase Leads
• Increase Product Adoption
• Increase Traffic
• Introduce New Product/Service
• Optimize Sales Cycle
• Recruit Top Talent
• Scale Company Culture
• Shorten Sales Cycle
• Unify Products/Services

What are your goals for these initiatives?

Example: Grow lead generation by 1,000 leads per month

( Enter options on previous slide to view content )

Which initiatives would you consider for a future year?

Now that you have your top priorities in place, it’s time to select 1-3 initiatives that, while valuable, will only distract you from achieving this year’s goals. These could be considered later on, but for now, you don’t have the resources in place to focus on them.

Well, would you look at that! You're almost finished. That wasn't so hard, was it?

One final thing: How do we get in touch to discuss your goals for next year?

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What is in the Marketing Plan Template?

HubSpot's marketing plan generator offers a template displaying your company's mission, strategy, and initiatives following the information entered in the tool while also identifying future opportunities. The project planner tool delivers a 12-month marketing plan template dividing actions for your team into initiatives, measurement metrics, and goals. This free resource for your business can be downloaded as a CSV file and shared with your team.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the marketing plan template generator do.

The Marketing Plan Generator uses the information you provide about your marketing goals to create a personalized 12-month plan that will help your business reach new heights of success.

How Does the Marketing Plan Template Generator Work?

As a marketing plan software, it uses the answers you provide in the assessment to generate your company marketing priorities for the year to come. It identifies relevant initiatives to prioritize following the goals entered and delivers a practical template.

Why is a Marketing Plan Important?

Developing a marketing plan is crucial as it allows you to determine what to focus on by setting clear objectives. It also helps in managing resources better and maximize the impact of every marketing action. This is in a nutshell why you need a marketing plan.

When Do You Need to Use a Marketing Plan?

When your product is ready to be marketed, which is most likely right now as you are reading these lines! Instead of an example, why not spend some time taking our MPTG assessment and discover what you can do today to improve your marketing?

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How to Write a Marketing Plan (with Templates and Example)

Written by Dave Lavinsky

What is a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a roadmap that explains how your business will generate more leads and sales. It includes every key marketing strategy that will affect your marketing results from your brand positioning and pricing to your promotional efforts.

Download our Ultimate Marketing Plan Template here >

It’s important to remember that a marketing plan is not something you create in one sitting. This is an ongoing project that requires research, planning, and revision over time before it can truly be finalized.

Although creating a marketing plan can seem like a daunting task, it can actually be quite simple if you know what information should be included in your marketing plan template and where to find examples. Below you will learn everything you must include in your marketing plan so you can effectively grow your business.

What are the Key Components of a Traditional Marketing Plan?

For a comprehensive marketing plan, you should include the following 11 key components:

Executive Summary

Target market segments, unique selling proposition (usp), pricing and positioning strategy, distribution strategy, marketing materials, promotions strategy, digital marketing plan.

• Conversion, Referral and Retention Strategy

Financial Projections

Each of these sections is explained in detail below along with examples.

How to Write a Marketing Plan + Examples

The executive summary is the first section to appear and the last to be written in a marketing plan. The contents include a condensed version of all the findings of the rest of the marketing plan.

The executive summary may include:

• What does the marketing plan intend to accomplish? Why?
• Who handles the daily operations and execution of the marketing plan?
• How will you measure success to determine the effectiveness of the marketing plan?

Keep the executive summary brief and to the point so anyone who reads it immediately understands the salient points.

Marketing Plan Executive Summary Example

TechSmart is an electronics company that specializes in the production of quality products at reasonable prices. A unique selling point (USP) is that our quality products are competitively priced to allow our target market to be able to purchase the items they need without breaking their budget. After assessing my current distribution strategy, we will continue the development of more localized stores in order to cater to the high-earner segment of our market.

A more localized approach will also help support our business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategy. We can work with various schools and universities to implement training measures that teach technicians the proper ways to use our products for a variety of applications. This is important because it will give us a larger market share by cementing ourselves as a go-to company for this segment, which in turn boosts sales overall.

After reviewing the insights from our research, we decided on some broad target markets based on income levels, age brackets, and other variables that might affect their spending power. To start, we want to focus primarily on B2C marketing strategies with these segments while sending out newsletters promoting upcoming products and discounts. In order to reach out to these new segments, we will need to promote our products and services based on the differentiation of their quality and affordability.

TechSmart plans to spend $10,000 a month on marketing activities in order to develop its business within the next six months. Currently, TechSmart has been operating on a small marketing budget while focusing more on its B2B marketing strategy, but it has achieved limited success with this approach. After assessing its current situation, TechSmart’s market research suggests the company needs to shift towards a more consumer-focused B2C marketing strategy in order to achieve growth and reach out to more potential clients that might be interested in purchasing its products or hiring its services.

In order to build awareness for our product line, we plan to launch large-scale online marketing campaigns as part of an integrated multimedia strategy as outlined in the Digital Marketing Plan section. This will allow us to target potential customers who might be interested in our products while promoting awareness of our brand through engaging social media outlets.

To determine success, the Marketing Team will measure whether or not our marketing plan is effective by tracking consumers who buy our products online through the company website; how much revenue was generated from each promotion; what percentage of users signed up for the mobile app, and any other relevant data that helps us track progress towards reaching our marketing goals. We will communicate our success to the C-suite at quarterly reports and work with them to track any changes in revenue from year to year.

To successfully market something you first need to analyze the market’s needs to figure out where the right opportunity exists. Unless you have this information, you will be shooting in the dark and your marketing ROI (return on investment) will suffer. So, start with a detailed analysis of your target customers and their wants and needs.

For example, if you are selling a teeth whitening product, you may identify your customers as single men aged 30 to 40, making between $50,000 and $60,000 per year, living in Manhattan, and own dogs.

What are their needs? In the above case, their primary need as related to your product could be to convey an attractive and professional appearance. Other needs for different products or services could include safety, convenience, ambiance, price, variety, and exclusivity. Finding out the key problems of your target audience will effectively direct all other marketing decisions.

For each customer segment, create a unique buyer persona that will help you develop the appropriate content marketing to speak to their unique needs. Buyer personas can help you sit in your customers’ shoes and understand their perspectives when it comes to buying products and services.

You also must note the 80/20 rule when creating your buyer persona. The 80/20 rule states that 20% of your customers will generate 80% of your revenue.

The point is this….clearly some people who buy from you will not fall neatly into the detailed description of your target customer. That’s ok. By focusing on marketing to and serving your core customer, you’ll get more of the 20% you want and thus much more “bang for your marketing buck.”

Marketing Plan Target Market Segments Example

TechSmart is an electronics company that specializes in the production of quality products at reasonable prices. The TechSmart target market consists of two segments: high-earners with children, and busy parents.

Our primary market is high-earners with children. These customers are parents who are either working or staying at home, and they have money to spend on their children. They are making roughly $150,000-250,000 annually and they want to provide the best for their kids. They also care about quality when it comes to electronics. When these parents shop, they will carefully analyze what needs to be purchased for their child in order to provide the best quality of life.

The high-earners will be the ones looking at the offer of complementary products like headphones, tablets, and games which can be used with our products. They also will be more likely to sign up for the warranty through the mobile app so they get access to freebie offers through holidays like Christmas and Independence Day.

The busy parents segment of TechSmart’s target market typically exhibit the following shopping behaviors:

• They prioritize a good bargain over trendy styles.
• They want to spend as little time as possible at the store.
• They shop for children and themselves.
• They use the internet for product comparison, but will still go to stores to buy items from brands they trust.

Your product and/or service’s USP helps put them ahead of similar offerings made by your competitors – think of it as your competitive advantage. Therefore, it is vital that you create a strong and memorable USP that will make your product and/or service more desirable. A USP could be physical in nature like a product’s form, quality, durability, design, or features. It could also be the additional services you provide when a customer buys your product like delivery, customer service, or installation. Your target market research will come in handy here as it will tell you exactly the kind of products and services your target group needs and desires the most.

Here are some more USP examples used by local businesses:

• We are the only car repair shop that will buy your car if you are not 100 percent satisfied (USP of customer service)
• Delivered in 30 minutes or less (USP of speed)
• Our recipe is so secret, only three people in the world know it (USP of exclusivity)

If you are having trouble identifying your business’s USP, complete a SWOT Analysis to identify your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This will help you determine the best strategy to capitalize on your strengths and opportunities while you address the weaknesses and threats. Use the SWOT Analysis template below to help you.

Continuing with our TechSmart example below, their USP focuses on the quality of their products.

Marketing Plan Unique Selling Proposition Example

The TechSmart unique selling point (USP) focuses on our quality products that are competitively priced to allow our target market to be able to purchase the items they need without breaking their budget.

Your pricing strategy attempts to fulfill one or more of the following marketing goals: improve sales, market share, or profits, get ahead of a competitor or create barriers for any new entrants. Focus on what your most pertinent business objectives are and formulate your prices accordingly.

Furthermore, the strength of your product’s USP also influences your pricing flexibility. More unique products can legitimately quote higher prices, while a product with a more generic USP will have a hard time doing so.

Pricing strategy can also influence the value of your business from a buyer or investor’s perspective. Companies that are able to secure ongoing revenue streams in the form of subscriptions or monthly recurring payments tend to generate higher valuations as there is greater revenue certainty in these models.

Positioning your product and/or service a certain way also will determine its perception among your customer base. For example: Even though both Hondas and Mercedes cars can safely and effectively transport you from point A to point B, Hondas are positioned as value purchases and therefore priced lower than more exclusive Mercedes vehicles.

Marketing Plan Pricing & Positioning Strategy Example

The main concern of my high-income earners is that they want to provide the best for their children and that means quality consumer products. But we know that it can be difficult to make high-quality products and still make them affordable. We want our customers to feel comfortable spending their money on our products, but we also care about providing quality.

Your distribution strategy details how customers will buy from you. It could include a brick-and-mortar store, an e-commerce site, wholesale distributors, retail stores, mail catalogs, or some combination of the above. Base your decision on customer research. That is, find the methods or places your customers find most convenient to buy from and offer your product through those marketing channels.

For example, consider the California cannabis brand Dosist. Dosist distributes through a highly curated network of partner boutique dispensaries as well as through two flagship brick-and-mortar stores. Through its flagship stores, it provides consumers an in-person way to experience the brand. Through its retail partnerships, it gleans wider distribution than it could in a single location.

Marketing Plan Distribution Strategy Example

TechSmart will continue identifying new target market opportunities within our region and build out additional localized stores in order to expand our distribution to our target audience in other high-income areas of the region.

To further distribute our products, we will partner with several retail stores. Location number one is close to a high-income area and is in the mall. Location number two is located near schools that house young parents who are also students at the university across the street.

Offers like buy-one-get-one-free, discounts, and guarantees are classic offers that when leveraged correctly attract new customers and maintain the loyalty of existing customers. Ideally, you can position offers in a way that makes them a win-win for your business and customers.

For example, Package Free Shop, an e-commerce store dedicated to providing reusable and earth-friendly everyday products, regularly offers discounts on products if you sign up for a subscription to those products. This offer is attractive to the consumer as they can get the same product for less and don’t have to remember to reorder. It’s attractive to Package Free Shop because it provides more certainty around cash flow on a monthly basis than one-off purchases.

You can use different marketing methods like the official website, mail catalogs, or brochures to help spread offers, identify what offers and materials might resonate most with your target audience, and spend your resources accordingly.

Marketing Plan Offers Example

TechSmart will run various offers that will allow customers to obtain a set of complementary products if they purchase the specific product mentioned in the offer. Offers will apply only in-store.

Each offer will vary in terms of the purchased product and the complementary set offered. The offer will be valid until it reaches the available quantity provided to each store or until a specific deadline is reached, whichever comes first. The details of each promotional offer will be detailed in the weekly e-newsletter, on our website, and through promotional print materials in-store.

Your marketing assets include the visual and tactical representation of your brand. These items include your logo and other visual identity elements; your website and social media accounts; signage, brochures, or other print collateral; and case studies and testimonials.

Having brand guidelines in place ensures that the look and feel of all assets are consistent between the materials themselves and with your overall brand. This consistency means customers will recognize and feel familiar with your brand, whether they are walking into your brick-and-mortar store, browsing your mobile app, or using your product.

Sample Brand Guidelines

Marketing Plan Marketing Materials Example

All TechSmart marketing assets will utilize our Brand Guidelines. Methods of marketing may include TV commercials, a Social Media Marketing Strategy – organic and paid advertising, promotional flyers for in-store shoppers, also available digitally on our website, and billboards.

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Your promotions strategy will determine how you communicate with your customers about your product and/or service. Your strategy could include advertisements on TV, billboards, radio, catalogs, product placements in movies, and more. Your choice of promotional channels must be influenced by who your target market is and how it likes to consume information. For instance, if your target customer base is adolescents then taking out an ad in a newspaper would largely be ineffective.

When detailing your promotions strategy, be sure to include a description of each tactic, the estimated cost involved, and how / when you will evaluate ROI and determine whether to modify the tactic or switch course entirely.

Marketing Plan Promotions Example

TechSmart’s promotional strategy targets high-income earners who want quality products for their children, but at the same time not break the bank. TechSmart will offer various promotions so that people can get a sense of what they are buying before they buy it, and free events where consumers can play with the products before they buy them. These events will be promoted through social media, primarily Facebook and Instagram, and through banners and/or pop-ups on our website.

Online marketing should be a central component of most any business’ marketing plan today as customers of all types increasingly spend time online transacting or evaluating potential transactions. There are several components to a successful online marketing strategy: your website, social media accounts, and supporting paid and organic web traffic efforts.

Your website is an extension of your business and should be consistent with the spirit of your brand and easy to interact with. A clunky, cluttered website will quickly turn off customers, who seldom give second chances when it’s as easy as a click of a button to move onto a better option.

Maintaining an active social media presence or leveraging influencers in your space to promote your product enables you to reach broad swaths of prospective customers. Your accounts must be engaging and attractive to your target market as well as content-specific to the platform itself.

For example, your LinkedIn account might include postings on a recent fundraise or supplier partnership, whereas your Instagram account might include beautiful, high-quality photos of your product.

These core pieces of online real estate are then supported by your paid and organic online advertising efforts. By including content-rich blog posts, articles or videos that include your industry’s key terms or words, you will boost your organic visibility in customers’ search results. Similarly, by investing in paid advertising you ensure that you appear in those same searches, but as an advertised result.

Marketing Plan Digital Marketing Strategy Example

TechSmart will use digital marketing to increase its brand awareness in the competitive marketplace. Digital marketing is an inexpensive way to advertise to a large number of potential customers in many different regions with minimal resources.

Generally, TechSmart will use Facebook and Instagram for social media posts about new products or store events. We will also run retargeting campaigns for website visitors and other engaged consumers. We are also considering launching a YouTube channel for tutorials on how to use various types of computer accessories, electronic devices, gaming platforms, and/or popular games.

We will also use Google Adwords to promote shopping ads when people are searching for similar items in our targeted market.

TechSmart will also participate in Influencer Marketing by working with bloggers with large followings in the target market who would be willing to provide reviews or advertise our products on their channels.

Conversion, Referral, and Retention Strategy

In this section of your marketing plan, you should detail each of your customer pathways and the resulting conversion from each path. For certain pathways (like an e-commerce site) this data will be more readily trackable and easier to discern. For other more qualitative marketing efforts (such as the purchase of an ad in a magazine), it may be more difficult to quantify your conversion results.

Think through and identify how you might improve your conversions across various pathways. For example, would showcasing the glowing reviews and ratings of past customers increase your conversion rate on your e-commerce site? Would placing small, trial-size products right next to the cash register in your brick-and-mortar store tick up your average purchase size?

Also, think through in this section what you can do to increase the conversions of referrals from past customers. Can you incentivize your happiest customers to leave you a great online review, gift a sample of one of your products to a friend or recommend you reach out to a family member who might benefit from your services?

All of the efforts outlined above will ensure you retain your best existing customers and build loyalty with them.

Marketing Plan Conversion, Referral, and Retention Strategy Example

To increase our conversion of new customers, we will add a function to the website where people can sign up for emails about upcoming promotions and store events. We can also add links to shop in popular social media marketing channels like Facebook and Instagram. People who visit the site without buying anything will be able to chat with one of our associates if they have any questions or concerns about his/her purchase.

We will also promote samples of games and apps so kids can try out before they buy them, and free events where parents can play with the products their children want before they buy them at home. To encourage past customers to refer friends and family members, we will offer discounts and exclusive offers for repeat, as well as publish reviews from happy customers on our website and social media.

To increase conversions of people who visit the site but do not buy anything initially, we will highlight products that are currently on sale or offer special discounts for first-time customers. We will also create content that explains how to use common devices like laptops, tablets, and smartphones. This will increase our conversion rates by ensuring people are familiar with the products they want to buy before arriving on site.

Our referral program can offer discounts or free samples of products if customers recommend us to friends and family who make a purchase within 24 hours. We can also advertise special deals like time-sensitive giveaways or contests for referrals through social media marketing on Instagram and Facebook. People who already shop with us frequently are likely to be more receptive in encouraging their friends and family members to do so as well.

We will contact past customers via email periodically asking them how they enjoyed their experience at the store, what they thought about specific items they purchased, or how they heard about our store in the past. If they mention that they found out about us through another customer, we will ask them who it was and thank them for their referral so we can send a small gift or coupon to the person they recommended.

This strategy ensures that we continue to offer competitive prices on our products while also increasing people’s trust in our company by implementing new policies and procedures across all pathways.

Every well-researched marketing plan must include projections that will estimate the overall cost of engaging in certain marketing strategies including the results of their implementation in terms of new sales, profits, and customers. Even though these will just be estimates they will still highlight which strategies have the potential to gross the highest ROI.

Your projections need to be revisited time and time again to assess how well the marketing plan has been implemented and what can be done better. Analyzing metrics like cost per sale, average ticket price and retention rates will help you understand which marketing tactics are working and which need to be revisited.

Marketing Plan Financial Projections Example

New Customers:

We project to acquire 160 new customers in Year 1 at a cost of $6,400. This means that the cost per customer acquisition is roughly $40.00.

Existing Customers:

We have 30 clients who are extremely valuable and spend more than once every two months on average. These loyal customers generate an average profit of $2,080 each time they purchase from TechSmart for an ROI of 5%. The total amount projected for existing customers is 120 transactions worth $24,000 or 4% of our revenue goal. With these calculations, it should be clear that investing resources into acquiring new users will result in better returns than capitalizing on people who have already purchased from us but don’t come back often. Furthermore, spending money to keep people returning for future buys is more effective than trying to convince the same person to purchase again after they have already done so once before.

Using these estimates, TechSmart will generate $138,000 in revenue in Year 1 with an average ticket price of $1,350. This equates to around 160 customers purchasing one item each or 320 transactions for a total of $138,000.

Marketing Plan Template

Below is a free strategic marketing plan template to use. Simply answer the key questions below to complete your plan:

• Our target customers are:
• Our unique selling proposition is:
• Our pricing and positioning strategy is:
• Our distribution strategy includes:
• The key offers we will use to attract customers include:
• The marketing materials we will use are:
• The promotional methods we will use to attract customers include:
• Our online marketing strategy includes:
• The strategies we will use to increase our customer conversion rates, referrals and customer retention include:
• Our key financial projections from implementing our marketing plan include:

Marketing Plan FAQs

What are the different formats used for a marketing plan.

Marketing plans can be made using one of four formats: the traditional marketing plan, the digital marketing plan template, the marketing mix, and the product launch.

When it comes to choosing a format, consider what factors are most important for your business. There is no right answer here as you'll have to choose what's best for you. If you want help, use the information below as a guide:

• The traditional marketing plan provides a comprehensive marketing strategy based on your business goals. This type of marketing plan involves research and analysis of the target market segments, unique selling proposition, pricing and positioning strategy, distribution and promotions strategies, and more. If you are seeking to really grow your business, it is helpful to provide this type of plan to provide the details of how you will bring your target audience to your business to generate more revenue. 
• The digital marketing plan focuses on planning steps and milestones to achieve success in your online marketing. Note that even if you are solely marketing online, there are many exercises, like improving your unique selling proposition, that are still critical. With a digital marketing plan template, you'll break your marketing plan down into these essential steps: objective, strategy, tactics, and measurement.
• The marketing mix plan focuses on the 4Ps of marketing: product, price, promotion, and place. If your business sales are driven by physical products or services, this is likely the best format for you. However, if you depend more on media and informational products (like a blog or an eBook), then this type of plan won't be as helpful for you.
• The product marketing plan focuses on launching and/or growing a single product. While the product will be unique, it generally will be branded under your company name so there are elements of the traditional marketing plan the are not required in developing it.

How Do You Develop a Marketing Plan?

First, choose a format for your marketing plan. Please refer to the 1st FAQ question for more information regarding marketing plan formats.

Now that you've chosen a format, it's time to start filling in the blanks. Keep in mind, though, that like any other type of writing (or planning for this matter), your document should be organized and easy to follow. 

To make sure your marketing plan is clear and concise:

• Create an outline . Using your chosen format as a guide, start creating an outline of the sections and subsections you'll include in your marketing plan.
• Fill out each section . Next, fill in the subsections composing each section of your plan. Keep them short and concise so you don't overwhelm yourself or your readers.
• Include examples . Use any relevant data or case studies you've collected to provide examples of strategies and tactics that will work with your business. It can be helpful to include screenshots for social media posts, images of ads, or infographics in sections where they're most relevant.
• Designate a timeframe . For each section, also decide on a timeframe for when you'll achieve the goals outlined for that particular section.
• Revise and update . No document is ever truly complete so it's important to remember to update your marketing plan over time. The work involved in planning, developing, and revising your marketing plan can be daunting at times but it will pay off in the long run when you have a thorough, detailed marketing strategy.

What Should Be Included in the Different Marketing Plan Formats?

You'll need to include different content in your marketing plan depending on which format you choose. When it comes to the digital marketing plan template, for example, there are three main topics that should be covered:

• Digital Marketing Strategy & Overview   - this section provides an overall view of how you're planning to use digital marketing in your campaigns. It includes information like how many channels (and which ones) you will use and why what budget has been set aside for marketing activities and your marketing objectives. This part will act as a roadmap for your digital campaign so make sure it's detailed enough - but not too long!
• Business Market Analysis - this section will help potential investors understand your business and its context. Here you'll include information about your competition, market trends, and industry growth. You'll also mention the opportunities and threats that your company faces so that viewers can get a sense of how it will operate in the future.
• Marketing Strategy - this section is where you explain your specific marketing strategy such as who's involved, what needs to be done and when, etc. Remember to break down each step into smaller chunks so that marketing activities are easier to follow throughout the year or quarter.

When writing content for any other format, simply remember: Keep it brief - no one likes reading long documents! Below we give examples of marketing plan templates for different types of marketing objectives, which should provide some guidance on the content.

Product Marketing Plan Template

• Company introduction & summary of company history (include any key milestones)
• Product description, including how it's different from other similar products offered by your competition
• Product usage statistics and potential markets
• Overview of the marketing strategy, including campaign timeline and key milestones. Also include information about product promotion strategy, pricing strategy, and distribution strategy.
• Summary of expected outcomes for the proposed marketing plan. Include financial projections where possible.
• References to product launch marketing plan template that the writer has used as reference

Marketing Mix Marketing Plan Template

• Description of brands & products within market category (include which brands you're using as competitive references)
• Description of marketing strategy, including marketing objectives and key action steps/tasks to achieve those objectives
• References to marketing mix example that the writer has used as reference

Digital Marketing Plan Marketing Plan Template

• The business overview, including a summary of your digital activities and achievements
• Digital marketing overview, including a description of how you use digital technologies in your business and a time frame for future plans
• References to a digital marketing plan that the writer has used as reference

What is the Difference Between a Marketing Plan and a Business Plan?

The main difference between a marketing plan and business plan is that a marketing plan is focused on customer satisfaction, while the business plan describes how the business will achieve its goals. Other differences include the marketing plan's focus on consumer demand, thorough market research and forecasting, while the business plan also includes financials and production details.

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

How to Write a Sales and Marketing Plan

2 min. read

Updated January 3, 2024

You’ve addressed what you’re selling and why in the products and services section. You now have an understanding of the market and an ideal customer in mind thanks to your market analysis. Now, you need to explain how you will actually reach and sell to them.

The marketing and sales section of your business plan dives into how you’re going to accomplish your goals. You’ll be answering questions like:

• Based on your audience, how will you position your product or service in the current market?
• What marketing channels, messaging, and sales tactics will you implement?
• What’s your business model and how will your business operate day-to-day?

By the end of this section, you should have an outline of what growth looks like, what milestones you intend to hit, and how you’ll measure success. Basically, you’re backing up the opportunity you’ve identified with a solid go-to-market plan.

What to include in the sales and marketing section

The sections you should include act as a useful framework for exploring and defining your marketing and sales tactics.

Create a positioning statement

How does your business differ? What do you do that others don’t? If you’re unsure, work through a handful of strategic exercises to create a simple but convincing positioning statement.

Outline your marketing strategy

A marketing plan brings together strategic goals with tangible marketing activities designed to reach and engage your target market—ultimately convincing them to purchase your product.

Craft your sales plan

A good sales strategy provides actionable steps to reach your goals. Estimate how much you intend to sell and outline a process that anyone else in your business can execute.

Optional sales and marketing information to include

The basics of a marketing and sales plan are fairly straightforward. However, it’s also the perfect place to flesh out any details that you think will make your outreach efforts successful.

Create a unique value proposition

What makes your business unique? How does the solution you provide stand out? This is your chance to point to what you believe potential customers will find more valuable about your business over the competition.

Don't forget digital marketing

While we don’t recommend creating separate traditional and digital marketing plans, it may be wise to explore and address them separately within your plan.

Build your promotional plan

How will you convince your customers to buy your products or services? While actual ads and promotions may be months away, it’s best to think through and even mock up designs now.

Conduct a SWOT analysis

With this simple analysis, you’ll better understand your strengths and weaknesses, along with the opportunities and threats you should account for.

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Kody Wirth is a content writer and SEO specialist for Palo Alto Software—the creator's of Bplans and LivePlan. He has 3+ years experience covering small business topics and runs a part-time content writing service in his spare time.

Table of Contents

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How to create a winning marketing plan, with 3 examples from world-class teams

A marketing plan helps leaders clearly visualize marketing strategies across channels, so they can ensure every campaign drives pipeline and revenue. In this article you’ll learn eight steps to create a winning marketing plan that brings business-critical goals to life, with examples from word-class teams.

To be successful as a marketer, you have to deliver the pipeline and the revenue.”

In other words—they need a well-crafted marketing plan.

Level up your marketing plan to drive revenue in 2024

Learn how to create the right marketing plan to hit your revenue targets in 2024. Hear best practices from marketing experts, including how to confidently set and hit business goals, socialize marketing plans, and move faster with clearer resourcing.

7 steps to build a comprehensive marketing plan

How do you build the right marketing plan to hit your revenue goals? Follow these eight steps for success:

1. Define your plan

First you need to define each specific component of your plan to ensure stakeholders are aligned on goals, deliverables, resources, and more. Ironing out these details early on ensures your plan supports the right business objectives, and that you have sufficient resources and time to get the job done. 

Get started by asking yourself the following questions: 

What resources do I need? 

What is the vision?

What is the value?

What is the goal?

Who is my audience?

What are my channels?

What is the timeline?

For example, imagine you’re creating an annual marketing plan to improve customer adoption and retention in the next fiscal year. Here’s how you could go through the questions above to ensure you’re ready to move forward with your plan: 

I will need support from the content team, web team, and email team to create targeted content for existing customers. One person on each team will need to be dedicated full-time to this initiative. To achieve this, the marketing team will need an additional $100K in budget and one new headcount. 

What is the vision?  

To create a positive experience for existing customers, address new customer needs, and encourage them to upgrade. We’ll do this by serving them how-to content, new feature updates, information about deals and pricing, and troubleshooting guides. 

According to the Sales Benchmark Index (SBI) , CEOs and go-to-market leaders report that more than 60% of their net-new revenue will come from existing customers in 2023. By retaining and building on the customers we have, we can maintain revenue growth over time. 

To decrease the customer churn rate from 30% to 10%, and increase upgrades from 20% to 30% in the next fiscal year. 

All existing customers. 

The main channel will be email. Supporting marketing channels include the website, blog, YouTube, and social media. 

The first half of the next fiscal year. 

One of the most important things to do as you create your marketing strategy is to identify your target audience . As with all marketing, you need to know who you’re marketing to. If you’re having a hard time determining who exactly your target audience is, try the bullseye targeting framework . The bullseye makes it easy for you to determine who your target audience is by industry, geography, company size, psychographics, demographics, and more.

2. Identify key metrics for success 

Now it’s time to define what key marketing metrics you’ll use to measure success. Your key metrics will help you measure and track the performance of your marketing activities. They’ll also help you understand how your efforts tie back to larger business goals. 

Once you establish key metrics, use a goal-setting framework—like objectives and key results (OKRs) or SMART goals —to fully flush out your marketing objectives. This ensures your targets are as specific as possible, with no ambiguity about what should be accomplished by when. 

Example: If a goal of your marketing plan is to increase email subscriptions and you follow the SMART goal framework (ensuring your objective is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) your goal might look like this: Increase email subscription rate from 10% to 20% in H1 . 

3. Research your competition 

It’s easy to get caught up in your company’s world, but there’s a lot of value in understanding your competitors . Knowing how they market themselves will help you find opportunities to make your company stand out and capture more market share.

Make sure you’re not duplicating your competitors’ efforts. If you discover a competitor has already executed your idea, then it might be time to go back to the drawing board and brainstorm new ways to differentiate yourself.  By looking at your competitors, you might be surprised at the type of inspiration and opportunities you’ll find.

To stay ahead of market trends, conduct a SWOT analysis for your marketing plan. A SWOT analysis helps you improve your plan by identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 

Example: If your competitor launches a social media campaign identical to what you had planned, go back to the drawing board and see how you can build off their campaign. Ask yourself: How can we differentiate our campaign while still getting our message across? What are the weaknesses of their campaign that we can capitalize on? What angles did they not approach?

4. Integrate your marketing efforts

Here’s where the fun comes in. Let’s dive into the different components that go into building a successful marketing plan. You’ll want to make sure your marketing plan includes multiple supporting activities that all add up into a powerful marketing machine. Some marketing plan components include: 

Lead generation

Social media

Product marketing

Public relations

Analyst relations

Customer marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Conversational marketing

Knowing where your consumer base spends the most time is significant for nailing this step. You need to have a solid understanding of your target audience before integrating your marketing efforts. 

Example: If your target audience is executives that spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, focus your social media strategy around placing branded content on LinkedIn. 

5. Differentiate with creative content

Forty-nine percent of marketers say visual images are hugely important to their content strategy. In other words, a clear brand and creative strategy is an essential component to every marketing plan. As you craft your own creative strategy, here are some tips to keep in mind: 

Speak to your audience: When defining your creative strategy, think about your audience—what you want them to feel, think, and do when they see your marketing. Will your audience find your creative work relevant? If your audience can’t relate to your creative work, they won’t feel connected to the story you’re trying to tell. 

Think outside the box: Find innovative ways to engage your audience, whether through video, animations, or interactive graphics. Know what screens your creative work will live on, whether desktop, mobile, or tablet, and make sure they display beautifully and load quickly across every type of device. 

Tie everything back to CTAs: It’s easy to get caught up in the creative process, so it’s important to never lose sight of your ultimate goal: Get your audience to take action. Always find the best way to display strong Calls to Action (CTAs) in your creative work. We live in a visual world—make sure your creative content counts.

Streamline creative production:   Once you’ve established a strong creative strategy, the next step is to bring your strategy to life in the production stage. It’s vital to set up a strong framework for your creative production process to eliminate any unnecessary back and forth and potential bottlenecks. Consider establishing creative request forms , streamlining feedback and approval processes, and taking advantage of integrations that might make your designers’ lives easier.

Example: If your brand is fun and approachable, make sure that shows in your creative efforts. Create designs and CTAs that spark joy, offer entertainment, and alleviate the pressure in choosing a partner.

6. Operationalize your marketing plan

Turn your plan into action by making goals, deliverables, and timelines clear for every stakeholder—so teams stay accountable for getting work done. The best way to do this is by centralizing all the details of your marketing plan in one platform , so teams can access the information they need and connect campaign work back to company goals.  

With the right work management tool , you can: 

Set goals for every marketing activity, and connect campaign work to overarching marketing and business objectives so teams focus on revenue-driving projects. 

Centralize deliverables for your entire marketing plan in one project or portfolio .

Mark major milestones and visualize your plan as a timeline, Gantt chart, calendar, list, or Kanban board—without doing any extra work. 

Quickly loop in stakeholders with status updates so they’re always up to date on progress. This is extremely important if you have a global team to ensure efforts aren’t being duplicated. 

Use automations to seamlessly hand off work between teams, streamlining processes like content creation and reviews. 

Create dashboards to report on work and make sure projects are properly staffed , so campaigns stay on track. 

With everything housed in one spot, you can easily visualize the status of your entire marketing plan and keep work on track. Building an effective marketing plan is one thing, but how you operationalize it can be your secret to standout marketing.

Example: If your strategy focuses on increasing page views, connect all campaign work to an overarching OKR—like “we will double page views as measured by the amount of organic traffic on our blog.” By making that goal visible to all stakeholders, you help teams prioritize the right work. 

See marketing planning in action

With Asana, marketing teams can connect work, standardize processes, and automate workflows—all in one place.

7. Measure performance

Nearly three in four CMOs use revenue growth to measure success, so it’s no surprise that measuring performance is necessary. You established your key metrics in step two, and now it’s time to track and report on them in step eight.

Periodically measure your marketing efforts to find areas of improvement so you can optimize in real-time. There are always lessons to be learned when looking at data. You can discover trends, detect which marketing initiatives performed well, and course-correct what isn’t performing well. And when your plan is complete, you can apply these learnings to your next initiative for improved results. 

Example: Say you discover that long-form content is consistently bringing in 400% more page views than short-form content. As a result, you’ll want to focus on producing more long-form content in your next marketing plan.

Marketing plan examples from world-class teams

The best brands in the world bring their marketing plans to life every day. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out these examples from successful marketing teams.

Autodesk grows site traffic 30% three years in a row

When the Autodesk team launched Redshift, it was initially a small business blog. The editorial team executed a successful marketing plan to expand it into a premier owned-media site, making it a destination for stories and videos about the future of making. 

The team scaled content production to support seven additional languages. By standardizing their content production workflow and centralizing all content conversations in one place, the editorial team now publishes 2X more content monthly. Read the case study to learn more about how Autodesk runs a well-oiled content machine. Trinny London perfects new customer acquisition 

In consumer industries, social media is crucial for building a community of people who feel an affinity with the brand—and Trinny London is no exception. As such, it was imperative that Trinny London’s ad spend was targeted to the correct audience. Using a work management tool, Trinny London was able to nail the process of creating, testing, and implementing ads on multiple social channels.

With the help of a centralized tool, Trinny London improved its ad spend and drove more likes and subscriptions on its YouTube page. Read the case study to learn more about how Trinny London capitalized on paid advertising and social media. 

Turn your marketing plan into marketing success 

A great marketing plan promotes clarity and accountability across teams—so every stakeholder knows what they’re responsible for, by when. Reading this article is the first step to achieving better team alignment, so you can ensure every marketing campaign contributes to your company’s bottom line. 

Use a free marketing plan template to get started

Once you’ve created your marketing strategy and are ready to operationalize your marketing plan, get started with one of our marketing templates . 

Our marketing templates can help you manage and track every aspect of your marketing plan, from creative requests to approval workflows. Centralize your entire marketing plan in one place, customize the roadmap, assign tasks, and build a timeline or calendar. 

Once you’ve operationalized your entire marketing plan with one of our templates, share it with your stakeholders so everyone can work together in the same tool. Your entire team will feel connected to the marketing plan, know what to prioritize, and see how their work contributes to your project objectives . Choose the best marketing template for your team:

Marketing project plan template

Marketing campaign plan template

Product marketing launch template

Editorial calendar template

Agency collaboration template

Creative requests template

Event planning template

GTM strategy template

Still have questions? We have answers. 

What is a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is a detailed roadmap that outlines the different strategies your team will use to achieve organizational objectives. Rather than focusing solely on the end goal, a marketing plan maps every step you need to reach your destination—whether that’s driving pipeline for sales, nurturing your existing customer base, or something in-between. 

As a marketing leader, you know there’s never a shortage of great campaign and project ideas. A marketing plan gives you a framework to effectively prioritize work that aligns to overarching business goals—and then get that work done. Some elements of marketing plans include:

Current business plan

Mission statement  

Business goals

Target customers  

Competitive analysis 

Current marketing mix

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Marketing budget  

What is the purpose of a marketing plan?

The purpose of a marketing plan is to grow your company’s consumer base and strengthen your brand, while aligning with your organization’s mission and vision . The plan should analyze the competitive landscape and industry trends, offer actionable insights to help you gain a competitive advantage, and document each step of your strategy—so you can see how your campaigns work together to drive overarching business goals. 

What is the difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy? 

A marketing plan contains many marketing strategies across different channels. In that way, marketing strategies contribute to your overall marketing plan, working together to reach your company’s overarching business goals.

For example, imagine you’re about to launch a new software product and the goal of your marketing plan is to drive downloads. Your marketing plan could include marketing strategies like creating top-of-funnel blog content and launching a social media campaign. 

What are different types of marketing plans? 

Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, what your timeline is, or which facet of marketing you’re driving, you’ll need to create a different type of marketing plan. Some different types of marketing plans include, but aren’t limited to:

General marketing plan: A general marketing plan is typically an annual or quarterly marketing plan that details the overarching marketing strategies for the period. This type of marketing plan outlines marketing goals, the company’s mission, buyer personas, unique selling propositions, and more. A general marketing plan lays the foundation for other, more specific marketing plans that an organization may employ. 

Product launch marketing plan: A product launch marketing plan is a step-by-step plan for marketing a new product or expanding into a new market. It helps you build awareness and interest by targeting the right audience, with the right messaging, in the right timeframe—so potential customers are ready to buy your new offering right away. Nailing your product launch marketing plan can reinforce your overall brand and fast-track sales. For a step-by-step framework to organize all the moving pieces of a launch, check out our product marketing launch template .

Paid marketing plan: This plan includes all the paid strategies in your marketing plan, like pay-per-click, paid social media advertising, native advertising, and display advertising. It’s especially important to do audience research prior to launching your paid marketing plan to ensure you’re maximizing ROI. Consult with content strategists to ensure your ads align with your buyer personas so you know you’re showing ads to the right people. 

Content marketing plan: A content marketing plan outlines the different content strategies and campaigns you’ll use to promote your product or service. When putting together a content marketing plan, start by identifying your audience. Then use market research tools to get the best insights into what topics your target audience is most interested in.

SEO marketing plan: Your SEO marketing plan should work directly alongside your content marketing plan as you chart content that’s designed to rank in search results. While your content marketing plan should include all types of content, your SEO marketing plan will cover the top-of-funnel content that drives new users to your site. Planning search engine-friendly content is only one step in your SEO marketing plan. You’ll also need to include link-building and technical aspects in order to ensure your site and content are as optimized as possible.

Social media marketing plan: This plan will highlight the marketing strategies you plan to accomplish on social media. Like in any general or digital marketing plan , your social media strategy should identify your ideal customer base and determine how they engage on different social media platforms. From there, you can cater your social media content to your target audience.  

Related resources

How Asana streamlines strategic planning with work management

Write better AI prompts: A 4-sentence framework

What is content marketing? A complete guide

Smooth product launches are simpler than you think

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6 Tips for Creating a Great Business Marketing Plan

If you want your marketing campaigns to succeed, it all starts with a great marketing plan.

Table of Contents

Marketing campaigns don’t just happen in a vacuum — they should be part of a broad, holistic strategy that works together. Developing a marketing plan is essential to ensure consistent, effective messaging across all marketing channels. From identifying your target audience to fine-tuning your marketing campaigns, a marketing plan serves as guidance to help you succeed. Read on to learn more about how to develop a marketing plan for your small business.

How to develop a business marketing plan

A focused marketing plan sets two goals. The first is to maintain engagement and customer loyalty , and the second is to capture market share within a specific audience segment of your target audience.

Your marketing plan outlines the strategies you’ll use to achieve both goals and the specific actions your marketing team will employ, such as the specific outreach campaigns, over which channels they will occur, the required marketing budget and data-driven projections of their success.

Marketing is a science-driven commitment that typically requires months of data to refine campaigns, and an interconnected marketing plan keeps your business committed to its long-term goals. 

All marketing guidelines will circle back to the four P’s: product, price, place and promotion. The following tips are starting points that will ingrain the habit of continually returning to these four P’s.

1. Create an executive summary.

Marketing campaigns should not be considered individual functions. Marketing is the story of your brand as told to customers. As with any narrative, its tone and characters should remain consistent. An executive summary details your marketing goals for the next year and helps tie each campaign together. 

When establishing your marketing goals, they should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART). These goals should work together to achieve both internal and external harmony, telling a consistent story that informs customers of your exact message while building on its previous chapters. 

For example, you may set a SMART goal to increase your company’s social media traffic by 15 percent in a 90-day time frame, and plan to achieve this by creating four relevant, informative and high-quality posts per week on each platform, using your company’s brand kit. 

2. Identify your target market.

Before you write a marketing plan, you need to find and understand your niche. Ask yourself who the specific demographic is that you’re targeting. For example, if your business sells 30-minute meals, then those who work traditional 9-to-5 jobs are likely in your market. Study that group of individuals to understand their struggles and learn how your business can solve the problem.

3. Differentiate your brand with inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing utilizes internal tools, such as content marketing, social media activity and search engine optimization , to attract a customer’s attention primarily through online communication. Content marketing can include informative blog posts, interviews, podcasts with relevant industry figures or supplementary guides on how to use your product best. For example, if you sell cooking supplies, consider posting several fun recipes around the holidays that your tools can help prepare.

Each of these strategies empowers the others in a loop to achieve greater customer attention. A strong content offering can improve your search engine ranking, which brings more people to your website and social pages. You can then share those developed content pieces with that wider audience, who will again improve your search engine rankings. All of this can be done without the expense of a famous endorser or commercial advertising campaign. 

4. Identify competitors that also target your customers.

No matter how original your product or service may be, there is always competition for your target customer’s dollar. Small business personnel seldom take the time to study their competitors in depth or pinpoint companies outside their industry that are as capable of luring customers away. Knowing who your competitors are, their core competitive advantages, and how they might respond to your offerings, such as price cuts or increased communication, helps you devise strategies to combat such losses. 

By seeking out these competitors, you can develop ways to differentiate your business by providing consumers with the things they may be lacking from your competition. Observe how your competitors operate to find ways in which you can stand out and steer your target audience toward your business.

5. State your brand position for your target customers.

Ultimately, your brand ― and what it symbolizes for customers ― is your strongest advantage. You should be able to write a simple declarative sentence of how you will meet customer needs and beat the competition. The best positioning statements focus on solving a problem for the customer in a way that promotes the best value.

6. Budget the plan. 

When implementing a strategy, consider the marketing budget you will allot. Marketing requires money for various reasons, including paid promotions, marketing software, events and outsourced costs. Consider your budget when creating the plan so that there is money available to spend on marketing tactics to achieve your goals. 

While drafting the plan and evaluating your course of action, note the estimated cost, assets, and time required to achieve the stated goals. This will help when it comes time to set the actual calculated budget. Any goals that you create should be realistically achievable within the budget you have set.

Channels to include in your marketing plan

Once you know the elements of your plan, the next step is to develop the blueprint of how you will reach your target customers. Aside from traditional print and broadcast media, here are three digital marketing channels that many business owners utilize.

Social media

Social media is an essential part of businesses’ marketing plans because every type of customer is on some type of platform, such as Facebook or LinkedIn . You may feel overwhelmed by the possibilities but focus on the sites that can benefit your business the most.

Brett Farmiloe, founder of internet marketing company Markitors, advised companies starting out in social media to get to know their customers and the platforms they use.

“Figure out where your customers are spending their time, and set up shop on those platforms,” he told Business News Daily. “Develop a content strategy that can be executed internally, [and then] execute your strategy by posting branded content on your selected platforms.”

Although email marketing is not as new as social media marketing, it is an effective and popular choice for small business owners. Companies can implement email marketing techniques in many ways, including newsletters, promotional campaigns, transactional emails and drip campaigns . 

Farmiloe added to set your email marketing efforts apart from the others by segmenting your markets.

“Not all subscribers want to receive the same blast,” he said. “Smart email marketers take the time to segment subscribers at the outset and then continue to segment based on subscriber activity. Through segmentation, companies reduce the amount of unsubscribes, increase open rates and, most importantly, increase the amount of actions taken from an email send.”

The popularity of smartphones and tablets has changed how companies target consumers. Since people have these devices with them nearly all the time, companies are looking to implement strategies that reach customers on their gadgets.   

“Mobile marketing is interruptive,” Farmiloe said. “It’s because of this power that a marketer has to let the consumer determine how and when to receive marketing material. That’s why almost every app comes with the option to turn notifications on or off. The consumer has to hold the power with mobile marketing.”

Monitoring results

Well-defined budgets, goals and action items ― with appropriate personnel assigned to each ― can make your marketing plan a reality. Think about how much you’re willing to spend, the outcomes you expect and the necessary tasks to achieve those outcomes.

Analytical tools that track customer behavior and engagement rates can serve as a helpful guide for your marketing strategy . Unlike billboards or commercials, digital channels allow you to assess each step of the customer journey and gain insights into the individual patterns and intent of prospects. Intention can soon develop into prediction, empowering your marketing team to develop campaigns that consistently reach target audiences at the right time. 

Stay on track with a business marketing plan

It can be difficult to measure progress without a clear plan. A marketing plan helps you identify goals and then measure your progress toward them as you deploy your campaigns. While it’s important to develop a plan and stick to it, you can always iterate on your original marketing plan as you learn more. The more your audience engages with your marketing campaigns, the more you’ll learn about what works and what doesn’t — and you can adjust accordingly. 

Tejas Vemparala and Adryan Corcione contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

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3 Marketing Plan Examples To Inspire Your Business

With real-world marketing plan examples, learn how to outline your business’s promotional strategies and goals.

Picture this: You’ve developed What Was I Saying, a new smartphone app to help those who lose their train of thought mid-sentence. To prepare for launch and jumpstart your marketing efforts, you ask your team to line up social media influencers and buy ads; you also task the engineering team with submitting your product to the App Store.

But the launch date arrives and there aren’t any marketing campaigns to be found. The influencers are silent, the ads appear on the wrong sites, and the app isn’t available for download. It turns out the timeline was unclear and no one was on the same page during preparation. 

A formal timeline and clear marketing goals could have prevented this miscommunication. For businesses, detailed marketing plans provide the framework for communication and execution. 

Read on for some marketing plan examples to inspire building your own marketing plan.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a comprehensive outline of the promotional strategies and goals a business hopes to achieve within a specific timeframe. Marketing leaders build these plans and use them to communicate priorities and new initiatives to relevant team members. 

A successful marketing plan includes all of the marketing objectives your team aims to meet as well as the details your team needs to begin building marketing campaigns—including information about marketing budgets, marketing mix, and marketing channels. Depending on your goals, your plan may involve all available channels or focus on just a few. For example, if you run a clothing brand that partnered with an Instagram influencer on a capsule collection, you might prioritize a social media marketing plan to take advantage of your collaborator’s audience. 

These plans may also include timelines and spending priorities. A foundation of market research supports successful marketing plans, meaning demographic insights and competitive analysis shape the marketing planning process.

Marketing strategies vs.marketing plans

While both marketing strategies and marketing plans are necessary to meet key performance indicators (KPIs), the two are not the same. 

• Marketing strategy: the overall efforts you take to position your business, wherein the marketing goals you set ladder up to company-wide initiatives.
• Marketing plan: the specific steps you’ll take to achieve your business objectives within a specific timeframe.

For example, to increase traffic to your ecommerce site, your marketing strategy might be to run ads on social media platforms where your content has performed well organically. Your marketing plan would include the steps needed to bring that social media campaign to life—including a paid marketing plan for when to run ads and for how long.

3 marketing plan examples

Great jones.

A comprehensive marketing plan includes research, goals, and an overview of the company’s newest marketing initiatives. Marketing plans typically follow a standard structure, but their contents are unique to each company. Consider the following examples to see how several Shopify merchants created plans to support their own business goals:

Known for its colorful enamel cookware, Shopify merchant Great Jones launched its first product line in 2018. As a new, rapidly growing company, the Great Jones team embraced experimentation and adaptation as core components of its marketing strategy. 

Great Jones CEO Sierra Tishgart explains that a detailed marketing plan helps the team focus its creative efforts: “It’s really helpful to have the structure of goals while also recognizing that we’re a young creative brand.”

Great Jones’s cast-iron Dutch ovens are designed to last a lifetime, but Sierra says this makes it difficult to attract repeat customers—once you’ve purchased one, you probably don’t need another. Recent customers represent a significant portion of the company’s email subscribers and social media followers, so the team adjusted its annual marketing plan to appeal to this audience by incorporating a gift-giving program. To support this marketing strategy, it implemented marketing tactics that added appropriate language to email copy and formed a partnership with the gift-giving platform Zola. It also added an option to include a personal note to the gift recipient. 

Key components of this successful marketing plan example

This creative marketing plan example was informed by the Great Jones team’s: 

• Deep understanding of their products and target audience
• Ability to identify the right marketing channels for their detailed marketing programs

Sabai 

Crafted in the US, Sabai is a modern, eco-friendly furniture retailer. Its founder and CEO, Phantila Phataraprasit, says consumer research helped her company craft a digital marketing strategy that resonated with its audience. Sabai’s team defines its target audience as “individuals who are passionate about sustainability and the well-being of our planet, particularly those juggling busy lives and family responsibilities.” 

Phantila emphasized Sabai’s commitment to understanding customers: “Data analytics is pivotal in shaping our marketing decisions. By continuously measuring web, email, and social media analytics on a monthly, weekly, quarterly, and yearly basis, we gain deep insights into our customers’ preferences and behaviors.”

Insights gained from customer data inspired Sabai to develop a new program called Repair Don’t Replace . “We meticulously considered every touchpoint to create a program that resonated with our audience’s commitment to sustainability and practicality,” Phantila says. Sabai designed the Repair Don’t Replace initiative to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability and deepen relationships with customers committed to an eco-friendly lifestyle.

This creative marketing plan example was informed by the Sabai team’s: 

• Nuanced insights into customer behavior via marketing data analytics
• Drive to stay true to the brand’s mission statement

ALOHA 

Plant-based protein bar brand ALOHA is committed to providing easy access to nutritious food. Its VP of brand and content, Julia Shapiro, described the competitive consumer packaged goods sector as one of the brand’s biggest challenges. The ALOHA team used in-depth market and competitive analysis to build an effective marketing plan that made the product stand out.

“In a rapidly changing category, research allows us to keep an ear to the ground, tracking shopping, eating, and media consumption habits,” Julia says. 

The ALOHA team used multiple market research techniques in its competitive analysis—including customer surveys, category surveys, and focus groups —to sharpen its assessment of the competitive landscape. 

“We conduct[ed] primary research of the broader category to gain a better understanding of the different shopper segments and how and where we might reach them,” Julia adds. “This allowed us to learn things we wouldn’t otherwise learn through our own shoppers, helping to lay out a path for growth and expansion.” 

To complete its research, the marketing team conducted a SWOT analysis , which focused on the business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. “Our SWOT helped us to better understand the options shoppers are faced with and why they might choose one brand over another, including ours,” Julia says.

Combining the insights from these market research efforts helped the team develop a differentiation strategy to market its new product. “The recent launch of our Paʻakai bar is a great example of a campaign success story,” Julia says. “The Paʻakai is our second special edition bar and was created using ingredients from local farms in Hawaiʻi, including macadamia nuts and 100% pure Hawaiian sea salt. Ten percent of proceeds from this bar also goes to our local non-profit partner, to help fund education programs in Hawaiʻi. This bar represents what people have come to expect from ALOHA: providing healthy food with top-quality ingredients while using business as a force for good.” 

• Market research tactics
• SWOT analysis 

💡Ready to create a marketing plan for your business? Download a free marketing plan template to get started today. 

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Marketing plan example FAQ

What is the difference between a marketing plan and a business plan.

Marketing plans outline a business’s goals and different marketing strategies for product promotion. Marketing teams use them to make decisions and plan marketing activities. Business plans , on the other hand, cover the entire organization’s strategic direction. These plans include broad business strategy goals as well as product development programs and financial projections. Company leaders often present business plans to external stakeholders and investors.

What makes a good and effective marketing plan?

A winning marketing plan provides all the information your team needs to start promoting your product. Effective plans establish clear marketing goals and provide the steps to follow to achieve them. The best examples include specific success metrics that derive from a solid foundation of consumer and market research.

How do you prepare a marketing plan?

To create a marketing plan, start by researching your target market. Select a set of specific, measurable goals that support your overall business initiatives. Determine the digital marketing mix you will use to achieve your goals and write out an implementation plan. To jumpstart the process, consider reviewing a sample marketing plan or downloading a free marketing plan template .

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Nailing the accounting marking scheme is your ticket to acing those exams. Let’s break down why this scheme matters and how it can steer you towards top marks.

Why It Matters

Getting a grip on the marking scheme is your secret weapon for smashing A-Level Accounting. It shows you exactly what examiners want, so you can give them just that. Knowing the scheme helps you spot where the points are and dodge common mistakes.

Accuracy and completeness are your best friends here. Miss a step in your calculations? Say goodbye to those marks. For example, in a four-mark question, skipping a step can cost you dearly ( Superprof ). So, understanding what the examiners are after can seriously boost your scores.

How It Works

The A-Level Accounting marking scheme checks how well you get accounting principles. It looks at things like accuracy, completeness, and how you present your answers. Breaking it down helps you see where the points are and how to grab them.

Here’s a peek at how a four-mark question might be scored:

To ace your exams, practice with past papers and compare your answers to the marking scheme. This shows you where you need to improve and makes sure you’re hitting the right notes. Also, check out the examiner’s report for extra tips and insights.

For more ways to boost your accounting skills, take a look at our articles on accounting knowledge and accounting made simple . By using these resources and mastering the marking scheme, you’ll be on your way to top marks and achieving your academic dreams.

CPA Exam Overview

Getting through the CPA Exam can feel like climbing a mountain, but knowing the lay of the land will make the journey smoother. The exam is split into core and discipline sections, each testing different parts of your accounting smarts.

Core Sections Breakdown

Starting in 2024, the CPA Exam will have three core sections: Auditing and Attestation (AUD), Regulation (REG), and Financial Accounting and Reporting (FAR). Everyone has to tackle these.

Each core section is a mix of 50% multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and 50% task-based simulations (TBSs). You need at least a 75 out of 99 to pass ( AICPA-CIMA ).

Discipline Sections Explained

Besides the core sections, you’ll pick one of three discipline sections: Tax Compliance and Planning (TCP), Business Analysis and Reporting (BAR), or Information Systems and Controls (ISC). This lets you zero in on what fits your career goals.

Picking the right discipline section is key. Think about what you’re good at and where you want to go in your career. For more on how the scoring works, check out our accounting knowledge page.

Knowing the CPA Exam’s structure and content will help you study smarter and boost your chances of passing. Need more help? Check out our accounting videos and accounting 101 book for all the study materials you need.

Cracking the CPA Exam

Getting a grip on how the CPA Exam is scored can make all the difference in your prep. Let’s break down the scoring system and the fancy Item Response Theory (IRT) that keeps things fair.

Scoring Scale

The CPA Exam scores range from 0 to 99. To pass, you need at least 75 points per section ( UWorld ). It’s not about percentages or curves, so aim to nail those answers.

Here’s how the sections stack up:

*Discipline Sections don’t include the ISC section.

Scores for MCQs and TBSs are scaled using formulas that factor in whether you got the questions right and how tough they were ( AICPA-CIMA ). This keeps the exam’s difficulty level steady over time.

Item Response Theory

The AICPA uses Item Response Theory (IRT) to score the CPA Exam. IRT mixes scaled scores from multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and task-based simulations (TBSs) across the exam sections.

IRT looks at:

• Correct Answers: Did you get it right?
• Question Difficulty: How hard was the question?

This method ensures fairness and consistency, no matter when you take the exam. For more details on the CPA Exam and accounting basics, check out our accounting 101 pdf .

Need more prep? Dive into our accounting courses part time and accounting exam papers . Knowing how the scoring works can help you plan your study sessions and practice smart to hit your target score.

Tips for A-Level Accounting

Getting ready for your A-Level Accounting exams might seem like a mountain to climb, but with the right game plan, you can ace it. Let’s break down two winning strategies: practicing past papers and understanding marking schemes.

Practicing Past Papers

Going through past exam papers is like having a cheat sheet for success. It helps you get a feel for the types of questions that pop up and the patterns you can expect. Think of it as a sneak peek into the exam.

According to Superprof , practicing these papers helps you spot common question types and themes. This way, you can fine-tune your answers and manage your time like a pro during the actual exam.

Why Practicing Past Papers Rocks:

• Get the Lay of the Land: Know what kinds of questions to expect.
• Master Time Management: Learn how to divvy up your time for each section.
• Spot Your Weak Spots: Find out where you need more practice.
• Build Confidence: Feel more prepared and less stressed.

For a treasure trove of past papers, check out our accounting 9706 past papers page.

Understanding Marking Schemes

Knowing how marking schemes work is just as crucial. These schemes show you how marks are handed out for each question, giving you a clear picture of what examiners want. By understanding this, you can tailor your answers to score the most points.

Marking schemes can make or break your performance. For example, if you skip steps in your calculations, you might lose marks even if your final answer is spot-on. Always show your workings to grab those extra points.

Key Tips for Analyzing Marking Schemes:

• Know the Breakdown: See how marks are split for each part of a question.
• Highlight Important Steps: Identify the steps that carry the most marks.
• Double-Check Your Answers: Compare your answers with the marking scheme.
• Use Examiner Reports: Combine marking schemes with examiner reports for a full picture ( Superprof ).

For detailed marking schemes and examiner reports, head over to our accounting exam papers section.

By weaving these strategies into your study routine, you can boost your exam performance and tackle the accounting marking scheme like a champ. For more tips and resources, explore our accounting knowledge and accounting notebook pages.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Nailing the accounting marking scheme is key to scoring high. Here are some common slip-ups to dodge:

Missing Calculation Steps

A big no-no is skipping steps in your calculations. This can really hurt your score, as each step often carries its own mark. For instance, in a four-mark question, each step might be worth one mark. Miss a step, and you lose a quarter of the marks for that question ( Superprof ).

To steer clear of this mistake:

• Show all your work clearly.
• Break down complex calculations into smaller, bite-sized steps.
• Double-check each step to make sure it’s spot-on.

For more tips on showing your work, check out our article on accounting balance sheet example .

Ignoring Pretested Questions

Another common blunder is ignoring pretested questions. The CPA Exam includes these questions to test their effectiveness for future exams, and they don’t count towards your score. But you should answer all questions as if they do count ( UWorld ).

To avoid this pitfall:

• Answer every question, even if you think it’s a pretested one.
• Manage your time wisely to ensure you can tackle all questions.
• Treat each question like it’s the real deal.

Skipping pretested questions can lower your overall score if you miss questions that actually count. For more exam prep tips, visit our accounting exam papers resource.

By keeping an eye on these common mistakes, you can boost your exam performance and make the most of the accounting marking scheme. For more resources and tips, explore our accounting handbook and study guide .

Ace Your Accounting Exams: Top Resources You Need

Getting ready for your accounting exams? You need more than just a textbook. Here’s a rundown of some killer tools to help you nail it, including sample tests and mock exam tips.

Sample Assessments

Sample assessments are like a sneak peek into the real deal. The ICAEW offers two solid sample assessments. You’ll get a case study-style question and 24 short questions to practice on.

These samples help you get comfy with the exam format and spot areas where you might need more work. For more practice, check out our accounting exam papers .

Mock Exam Tips

Mock exams are your best friend. They mimic the real test, helping you manage your time and keep those nerves in check. The ICAEW has guidance notes in their question banks to help you prep.

Mock exams also help you figure out what you’re good at and what needs more work. For more tips, check out our accounting notebook .

Extra Resources

Want to go the extra mile? Here are some more tools:

• Accounting 101 book : Basics and principles.
• Accounting questions and answers pdf : Practice questions with answers.
• Accounting videos : Learn visually.

Using these resources, you’ll be ready to tackle the accounting marking scheme and crush your exams.

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