What should a Marketing Plan actually include?
When you think about it, it’s a bit mad that there isn’t a single everyone-use-this kinda marketing plan template.
Just try hunting one down online and you’ll quickly come across a load of different ones.
Bonkers, really.
What then happens, is that when smaller brands pay someone to create them a marketing plan, they don’t really know, if what they’re getting for their money is, well… right.
Not wanting to throw shade on anyone, but this absence of a universal template gives agencies, freelancers, whoever, a bit of a license to create anything they want - often in a way that best suits them. Whether that’s because of the skills, resources and tools that they have available to them. Or, because they want to bag themselves continued work from the brand once they’re done with the marketing plan.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine for the marketing plan to be done in a way that suits the creator, just as long as it also suits the brand they’re working for. Who doesn’t like a win-win?
Key to this win-win is for the brand to begin by having a good understanding of what they should be getting from a marketing plan - putting the brand in a great position to be able to select the right agency/freelance partner, and/or to challenge them when they are not seeing what they should be seeing in initial marketing proposals.
I’ve seen it happen; a small brand comes across a partner who they like and get on with. They then give them the go-ahead to crack on with a marketing plan. But what comes back is a huge, bloated doc, largely full of unnecessary bumf. I mean, there will be some good things in there, but what shines through more than anything, is the partner over indulging themselves to hide the fact that they don’t really know what they’re doing, whilst trying to tee themselves up for future work.
It’s selfish (if unknowingly so).
Time now then to answer the title of this article, by showing you the sections you need to make sure are in any marketing plan you pay for.
What I like to call the first section in a marketing plan, is what you could say I’ve just finished doing above - setting the scene.
Here then are the main things you want to be getting in a marketing plan.
You’ll see they’ve also been split into three sections, to help make it even easier to understand what a marketing plan should look like.
Marketing Plan Contents:
(Part 1: Research)
1. Setting the scene (you want to see research done on your business, competitors, audience)
2. Understanding the buyer journey (you want to see the challenges and opportunities your brand faces in the buyer journey)
(Part 2: Strategy)
3. The target audience (based on the research, it should be clear what audience(s) you should be targeting)
4. The jobs for comms (the most important opportunities or challenges from the buyer journey that need to be addressed by your comms)
5. The messaging (for each comms job, you’ll want to see a messaging approach, messaging pillars, and then some examples of the messaging in action)
6. Objectives (You don’t want to see any more than three. You do want to be seeing things like consideration and awareness. And yep, they need to be S.M.A.R.T. Specific, measurable… etc.
(Part 3: Tactics)
7. The media to use (the role, content, and phasing for each)
8. The plan on a page and budget (a simple chart showing the media you’re using, when you’re using it, and how much you’re planning to spend on it)
9. Measurement (how you’re measuring success for the the things you’ll be doing)
(Part 4: Housekeeping)
10. Index (any additional slides that back up any points made in the main presentation, but aren’t essential in the main deck - so as to keep the main presentation to a minimum)
11. Next steps (a list of things the client needs to do, and a list the agency/freelancer needs to do).
Done.
Eleven sections, well, ten proper ones really.
Of course, the titles will probably be a bit different, but the content shouldn’t be.
Twenty to thirty pages ideally, with a few more to be found at the back in the index.
Now you know what you need to be ticking off from your shopping list, when you go to market for a marketing plan.
Cheers,
Tref