Need a marketing plan template?  Well I thought it might be helpful to share mine.

Marketing Plan Sample – Rebekah Gregg

And on that subject, here are a few key tips I’ve learned about creating a functional marketing plan that’s worth the amount of time it takes to make it create.

Go ahead and make one, and make it your own.

I’ve been amazed at how many marketers operate without a marketing plan… and I have been one of those marketers. Not having business objectives, not having a product roadmap, FILL IN THE BLANK – none of these are good enough excuses to not have a marketing plan. In fact, they are precisely the reason to have a marketing plan.

So quit making excuses or waiting until the next budgeting cycle or whatever your reason is. You need a marketing plan.

Make it your own. You’ll find templates online and your boss might even have one that she’d really like you to use. While it’s important to have consistency across a marketing team, don’t be afraid to add your personal stamp when it adds value. Marketing is a science that combines analytics with gut feel. My marketing plan has to tell a narrative, a story about the market and our place in it in a way that flows in my mind. Don’t be afraid to break a few rules to generate a plan that helps you do your job better.

The plan is for you first and foremost.

There was a time in my career when I was working with a group that was struggling in the midst of leadership changes. As is often the case, sales still had a quota and was putting demand on marketing for support. It felt like everything I did was never enough and I was constantly running around putting out fires.

I wallowed in fussiness for almost a year until finally I gave up hope. There would be no magnificent business plan for which I could whip up an equally fantastic marketing strategy. Yet if I never told the business owners what I planned to do, they could always add one more thing without removing something else I was already committed to deliver. The cycle of being busy but not being effective would continue.

From that realization, I put my head down and spent hours upon hours creating a marketing plan for the business. That process did a couple key things:

  1. It took all of the swirling thoughts about market pressures, the competitive environment and product positioning from my head and organized it. This caused me to think in a more organized fashion and deepened my knowledge.
  2. It demonstrated to my executive team that I understood our market positioning. This was a critical crossroad in gaining more of their respect and trust.

We’ve all sat in meetings where our already maxed out workload doubles with no new resources being added. A baked and shared marketing plan allows you to go to your decision maker and say, “I’m glad to do this new project, but here are the programs from the marketing plan you approved that will need to be cancelled/delayed/reduced. Is that what you’d like me to do?”

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I’m always looking to find the balance between being detailed enough to be valuable without being so detailed that the plan never gets done or is impossible to keep accurate. Unless you have a major milestone, it’s unlikely to be worth your time in November to decide what exact day in July of the following year you’re going to drop an email.  Keep it simple to start but be sure to go back and update, because…

The plan must be a living, breathing document.

You have to go back through the year and update the plan.  Cancel promotional campaigns that no longer make sense, adjust launch dates as needed, update tactical changes.  Also, I think the marketing plan is a great, one-stop place to capture your campaign results.  This in and of itself helps to keep the document accurate.