How to Create a Marketing Plan

So you’re ready to start marketing but you have no plan. Where do you begin? What should you include? How can you present it? You have the questions, we have the answers.

Hello world! My name is Mike Ploger and here at Visme, we aim to make your work life easier. Whether it’s design, presentations or marketing, we have the tools to help you become a true professional.

Marketing is a necessary operation for any business looking to take a leap towards success.

However, if you don’t have the proper experience, you might be lost on how to create a marketing plan, and these are extremely helpful when it comes to understanding your business, clarifying your goals, staying focused and keeping everyone on your team on the same page.

In this video, I’ll take you through the seven necessary steps to creating a winning marketing plan, as well as sharing a number of templates you can start with right away.

Shall we?

Marketing Plan Basics

Understanding the purpose behind a marketing plan is step number one.

Ideally it should be used to help you set your goals, understand your target audience and optimize the impact of your marketing campaigns. Communicating your big strategy or idea is what your marketing plan is all about.

In order to do this, every marketing plan should consist of the following:

1. Your short and long term marketing goals
2. A description of your target audience and their persona
3. One or more high level marketing strategies and tactics

This infographic template available on Visme right now features these key details. It clarifies the objectives, the target audience and strategies in an easily consumable page.

If you wanted to go the extra mile and include even more detail, you can also add an overview of the current market situation, key performance indicators, budget or financial consideration or a timeline on when the plan will be carried out.

Typically, all of this information is communicated on a PDF just like the one we just saw but if you are feeling creative, try creating an infographic, a full presentation or an interactive web page to share your plan.

Who knows? It could be the difference between your plan and some else’s. Without further ado, let’s dive into seven steps for creating an effective marketing plan.

Step 1: Start With an Executive Summary

Step number one, start with an executive summary. This is essentially a brief summary or overview of your entire company and the key details of your marketing plan.

It highlights the function of your business and the purpose of your plan. This shouldn’t be very long. The summary can include past achievements and the future direction of the company.

Consider this template here. The details are concise and to the point. You want to tease your viewers on what’s to come and get them on the edge of their seats. It’s not overwhelming, just a quick introduction before you get into the meat of your plan.

Step 2: State Your Company’s Mission, Vision and Values

Revisiting your company’s mission, vision and values is important to highlight early on. Why? It’ll provide clarity and answer any question as to why your marketing plan is the way that it is.

It’ll show viewers you have this in mind throughout your entire planning process. Templates like this can help because it’ll educate or remind your viewers how your company got to the point they are currently at and where you’re looking to be in the future.

Step 3: Identify the Market and Competition

One of the first steps with any plan is doing your research. Study the market, study the competition. What are others doing that’s working? And then what can you do to make it even better?

Deeply analyze your own company’s strengths and weaknesses. Touch on what you’re doing well, but don’t be afraid to communicate what you think could be stronger.

A SWOT analysis (or strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) is a great way to present your research. You can visualize the company’s path, identify opportunities, set goals and so much more.

This template right next to me can be edited in Visme and is completely customizable. From the text content to the colors, fonts, icons — you name it, you can edit all of our templates to match your brand.

You can do the same for your competitors. Compare your company with another one in the industry to see how they match up with one another side by side. It can be eye opening, sure. But take a hard look at the competition. It’s crucial if you want to compete in the market.

Step 4: Define Your Target Customer

After identifying your competition, you must identify your target customer. This will allow you to create more informed and tailored marketing strategies.

Build a person from scratch. How old are they? What’s their income? What are their interests? What do they value?

A template like this is perfect for putting that person you’ve built on paper and explaining him or her to your audience during a presentation or during a meeting.

Or, what’s one way that’s almost always used when someone wants to explain themselves for a job? Well, a resume, of course.

This template more closely resembles an actual resume. It includes basic information, a photograph, personality traits, a bio, goals, frustrations — you can edit it however you see fit to describe your target audience.

And if your target audience is a mixture of different people, try creating an infographic with data widgets. You can break down how much you should cater to one group or the other.

There are a number of different charts and graphs you can use to help but this template went with pie charts to break down target customer percentages. It’s easier to understand than if someone is trying to explain it without a visual.

Step 5: Outline Your Marketing Goals

Okay. You’ve done your research, you know your audience, now it’s time to outline your marketing goals.

What are you hoping to achieve with your marketing plan? The most important thing to remember with this step is to be specific with actual numbers.

If you are hoping to achieve more web traffic, don’t just say the goal here is to increase web traffic. Say, my goal is to increase traffic to our site by 30% within the next three months. You need a concrete goal. Not a blanket statement.

This template is simple, easy to digest and lays out specific goals. They’re all measurable and clear. Following the progress towards the goals won’t be difficult with how definitive they are.

And as I mentioned, deadlines could be used as well. If that’s the case, a template like this could be more fitting.

In order for this company to accomplish a goal, these three phases must be properly carried out. Marketing plans like this help viewers follow along as they can refer back to them if they start to get off track.

Step 6: Present Your Marketing Strategy

Continuing off my last point, our sixth step is to lay out your marketing strategy from beginning to end. There are three details to write down and include with this step. One, what to do. Two, how to do it and three, the channels to use.

I highly recommend turning this into a visual so your team and audience can fully understand your thought process. To make it even easier for them, turn your strategy into a series of phases or steps.

It could look something like this. Clarifying what needs to be done in each step before moving on.

Or if you want more certain days and deadlines, this template here could be even better. Specific dates are laid out from the first phase of the project to the launch. If you want to ensure something is completed by a certain time, we highly recommend using this template.

Infographics in general are wonderful for displaying information in a way that is easy to understand. People are much more likely to retain information paired with the visual rather than with text alone.

Another template to consider is something like this. They are all of your information in a detailed manner, leaving nothing to the imagination.

Step 7: Define Your Marketing Budget

Last but not least, detail the budget considerations for your plan. How much is it going to cost in order to reach your goal?

It’s important to be clear with this upfront, at least as best as you can. Marketing can be costly and there are often a lot of hidden expenses.

This may be the most helpful template of all. It clearly lays out the cost to your company. Try to set a cap early on so you have a goal to stay under from the jump.

Templates By Industry

Okay! We’ve covered the steps for preparing your marketing plan. You should be able to put one together from start to finish, but I did want to share just a few more Visme templates that may help you depending on what industry you are in.

This restaurant marketing plan template is versatile for either massive chains or local eateries. You can replace the photos with your own and change the colors just like with other templates.

If you’re in real estate and are part of a team or even if you are operating your own business, this template here can be useful. The SWOT analysis included makes it perfect for businesses focused on property marketing.

Maybe you work for a SaaS or content company and you are looking to take your content to the next level. This template will help you organize your editorial calendar so you’re able to reach your goals on time.

Or what about social media? We all manage our own pages of some sort and all businesses should have their own as well. Want more followers? This template can lay out your goals, describe your ideal followers and so much more.

This digital marketing template has a modern feel with a number of different features. SWOT analysis, executive summary, goals, strategies — it has it all! Just waiting for you to hop on board and make it your own.

Product marketing requires as much or more research into consumers as any form of marketing. That’s why this template covers those basics as well as includes the detailed marketing budget we covered just a minute ago.

Want to market yourself? Build your own personal brand? Well, Visme has the templates for you too. It’s just a simple free page plan highlighting resumes, skills and experience before getting into your personal goals.

And it wouldn’t be a Visme video without further discussing infographics. Visme has changed the game when it comes to presenting information in fun, animated and clean designs. This one-page marketing infographic template contains all the necessary details and won’t overwhelm your audience.

Okay! Now that you’ve done at least some of your research, it’s time for you to get to work.

I highly recommend at least scanning Visme’s template collection. There are even more marketing templates past the ones that we’ve discussed today and they’re waiting for you right now. Head to Visme.com to get started.

In the meantime, thank you so much for watching. If we were of any help, we’d love for you to click that like button down below and if that is not in the cards, well maybe next time.

We’ll see you again soon. For now, I’m Mike Ploger with Visme, helping you Make Information Beautiful.