You should. Without an annual marketing plan, things can get complicated, and it’s nearly impossible to put a number on the budget you’ll need to secure for the projects, hires, and subcontracts you’ll encounter over the course of a year if you don’t.
To make creating a plan easier, we’ve put together a list of what you should include in your plan and a few different planning templates where you can easily fill in the blanks.
Marketing plan outline
Marketing plans can get pretty granular to reflect the industry you’re in, whether you’re job function email list selling to consumers (B2C) or other businesses (B2B), and how big your digital presence is. Nonetheless, here are the elements that every effective marketing plan includes.
Finally, your marketing plan will include a list of your marketing channels. While your business may promote the product itself using some advertising space, marketing channels are where you will post content that educates your buyers, generates leads, and spreads awareness of your brand.
If you post (or intend to post) on social media, this is the place to talk about it. Use the how to choose an organizational structure Marketing Channels section of your marketing plan to map out which social networks you want to launch a business page on, what you will use this social network for, and how you will measure your success on this network. Part of the purpose of this section is to demonstrate to your superiors, both inside and outside of the marketing department, that these channels will serve to grow the business.
Companies with extensive social media presence might even consider crafting their social strategy into a separate social media plan template.
Financial projections
By knowing your budget and doing an analysis of the marketing channels you cmo email list want to invest in, you should be able to come up with a plan on how much budget to invest in which tactics based on the expected ROI. From there, you can come up with financial projections for the year. These won’t be 100% accurate, but they can help with executive planning.
Perform an analysis of the situation
Before you can get started on your marketing plan, you need to know your current situation.
What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? Conducting a basic SWOT analysis is the first step in creating a marketing plan.
Additionally, you should also have an understanding of the current market. How do you compare to your competitors? Doing a competitor analysis should help you with this step.