How to write a marketing plan: Avoid costly errors by planning out your marketing activities

A marketing plan is like a GPS for your business: it shows you the best way to reach your sales and revenue goals while avoiding any time-consuming and costly errors along the way. BDC Senior Business Advisor Mallika Kazim provides some tips for developing a marketing plan that will help map out your route and keep your business on course.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan outlines your intended marketing/advertising activities for a specific period, usually over the next 12 months. It describes how you’ll reach, attract and persuade customers to buy your products or services, with clear goals, actions and accountabilities.

While large corporations might have an overarching marketing strategy with individual plans for each part of the strategy, Kazim recommends entrepreneurs with smaller businesses keep things simple.

“Think in practical terms,” she says. “It’s not about capital-S ‘Strategy’, it’s a how-to for achieving your targets.”

What is the purpose of a marketing plan?

Most businesses will have many different plans that interlink and support each other.

Your marketing plan identifies the promotional tactics that will help you accomplish the goals of your business plan, which sets out your target markets and the solutions you’ll offer to them. It should also connect with your strategic plan, which sets the overall direction for your business for the next three to five years.

“If you’ve done your business plan, you know who you want to sell to and why,” says Kazim. “The marketing plan is your attack plan for chasing after your high-priority revenue opportunities.”

A well-built marketing plan also builds confidence with financial institutions, showing lenders your business has a good chance of being successful.

How to build a marketing plan in 5 steps

Creating a marketing plan typically involves the following steps:

1. Conduct a SWOT analysis

Look at your own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats:

• Strengths: are factors that improve your position in the marketplace. These can include skills, capabilities and proficiencies that can't easily be copied by your competitors, such as low production costs due to superior technology.
• Weaknesses: are factors that reduce your ability to achieve your objectives, such as unreliable delivery or outdated production tools.
• Opportunities: are ways your business can grow and become more profitable. These might include entering new markets or adopting new technologies.
• Threats: are factors that could have a negative impact on your business in your primary markets, such as labour shortages or detrimental economic/political developments.

Because your strengths and weaknesses are defined in relation to your competitive environment, as part of this step, you’ll also want to conduct a competitive analysis to gain a complete picture of where you stand in the marketplace.

2. Profile your customers

Organize your current customers into three or four main groups—perhaps by industry or transaction size. Then drill down into what defines the customers in those groups: who they are, what they want, how much they buy, the information they use to make purchasing decisions and so on.

Example of a customer segmentation table