Last Updated on September 2, 2025 by admin
Without planning, marketing can get messy. It’s hard to estimate budget for projects, hiring, and outsourcing over the course of a year — especially if you don’t have a marketing plan, email schedule, or social media marketing plan template.Without planning, marketing can get messy. It’s hard to estimate budget for projects, hiring, and outsourcing over the course of a year — especially if you don’t have a marketing plan, email schedule, or social media marketing plan template. To make creating your plan easier, I’ve put together a list of what to include. I’ve also compiled a few different strategic marketing plan templates where you can easily fill in the blanks. In this article, we’re going to discuss: What should a marketing plan include? Marketing Plan Timeline How to Create a Marketing Plan HubSpot’s Free Marketing Plan Template One-Page Marketing Plan Template Simple Marketing Plan Generated by AI Strategy-specific Marketing Plan Templates Marketing Campaign Plan Digital Marketing Plan Product Marketing Plan Social Media Marketing Plan What should a marketing plan include? [Marketing Plan Outline] A marketing plan is a roadmap that businesses like yours use to organize, execute, and track their marketing strategy over a given period. The marketing plan outline we discuss will help you create an effective plan that easily generates buy-in from stakeholders. Download This Marketing Plan Outline for Free Marketing plans can get quite granular depending on your industry and how big your digital presence is. This is true whether you’re selling to consumers (B2C) or other businesses (B2B). Despite these nuances, here are the essentials I’ve found should be present in every marketing plan or marketing planner template: Business Summary In a marketing plan, a business summary is exactly what it sounds like — a summary of the organization. It gives all stakeholders a refresher on your company before delving into the more strategic components of your plan. It also gives them something easily accessible to refer to if they have questions during their review. At a minimum, most business summaries include: Company name Location Mission statement Our marketing plan outline also includes information on marketing leadership, which is especially helpful for companies with large marketing teams. SWOT Analysis Your marketing plan’s business summary should also include a SWOT analysis. This summarizes your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). Creating a SWOT analysis is an important strategic exercise (and call me a marketing nerd, but I find it fun). It gives everyone involved a clear picture of the environment your business is working in and how it is doing within it. It’s like a quick therapy or wellness check-up for business. You see where you’re at and perhaps even get to vent a bit before taking steps to improve things. Including a SWOT in your marketing plan reminds readers of what circumstances are being considered in your strategy. Pro Tip: In my experience, it’s good to have stakeholders from every section of the business contribute to creating your SWOT analysis so that nothing is overlooked. To become truly accurate, it requires thorough market research, data analysis, and competitive analysis. Revisit your SWOT every time you work on your marketing plan, as your audience and competition will inevitably evolve. Business Initiatives What is your marketing team working on? What do you want to work on? Document them in your marketing plan under business initiatives. This section sets the tone for the rest of the document and its strategies. Be careful not to get bogged down by big-picture company initiatives (i.e., opening a new location in X city or recruiting new talent via the Y platform), which you’d normally find in a business plan. This section should outline the projects specific to marketing. You‘ll also describe those projects’ goals, which will be measured. Every initiative should follow the SMART framework for goals — meaning they are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, a broad goal might be, “Increase my Facebook following.” But a SMART version could be, “Increase my Facebook following by 30% by June.” See the difference? Target Market Next, consider your target market, or the audience you are trying to reach with your marketing messages. This includes your industries and buyer personas. Industries If you’re B2B, you’ll want to include a description of the industries your customers typically work in or those where your products or services are used. If you’re B2C, you can disregard this section. Buyer Personas A buyer persona is a semi-fictional description of your ideal customer. It focuses on traits like: Age Location Title Goals Personal challenges Pains Triggering event It’s a more specific characterization of your target market or the types of people you want to work with. This section of your marketing plan should just be a brief summary of your greater buyer persona document to remind readers who your initiatives are speaking to. Competitive Analysis Your buyer persona has choices regarding solving their problems, the types of solutions they consider, and the providers that can administer those solutions. A competitive analysis will detail the companies or brands you’re up against, which should be considered in your marketing strategies. Consider who your competition is, what they do well, and where the gaps are that you can fill. This can include: Positioning Market Share Offerings Pricing Our marketing plan template includes space to list the specific products you compete with. You can also include other facets of the other company’s strategy, such as their blogging efforts or customer service reputation. Keep this part of your plan simple. Your full competitive analysis should be done separately. Here are a few competitive analysis templates to get started. Market Strategy I know what you’re thinking, isn’t this whole plan our marketing strategy? And you’re right to a degree, but this section focuses more on outlining what a brand needs established to go to market. In our full-length marketing plan outline, the market strategy section contains the “seven Ps of marketing” (or the “extended marketing mix”): Product Price Place Promotion People Process