Sample Marketing Plans

Here is some ideas and plans with useful links:

Getting ready to create a marketing plan? Finding a sample plan for a similar company can be a great place to start. Get inspired with great example plans from our collection.

Top marketing plans

The following plans were created using Sales and Marketing Pro. With our inexpensive Sales and Marketing Software, you can edit and update these sample plans directly to produce your marketing plan faster and easier, or create your own plans from scratch.

1.  Accounting and Bookkeeping Services Marketing Plan
    Sorcerer's Accountant
2. Business Employee Trainer Marketing Plan
   College Knowledge Centre
3. Business Operations Consultant Marketing Plan
   Turnaround Consultant
4. Catering and Ballroom Rental Marketing Plan
   Sumptuous Cuisine Catering
5. Education Marketing Plan
   Allendale Language School
6. Equipment Manufacturer Marketing Plan
   Equipment Manufacturer
7. Hotel and Motel Marketing Plan
   The Drowzey Hotel
8. Houseboat Rental Marketing Plan
   Houses on the Lake
9. Inventory Control Software Marketing Plan
   Software Company
10. Jewelry Artisan Marketing Plan
    MoraDora Jewelry
11. Locally Produced Clothing Retailer Marketing Plan
    Local Threads
12. Marketing Coach Marketing Plan
    Marketing Coach
13. Nonprofit Business Training Services Marketing Plan
    Riverton Business Accelerator
14. Organic Bakery Marketing Plan
    Orti's Organic Bakery
15. Personal Insurance Agent Marketing Plan
    Plynthe Insurance
16. Personal Organization Consultant Marketing Plan
    Declutter Coaches
17. Plumbing Company Marketing Plan
    Plumbing Company
18. Portrait Photographer Marketing Plan
    Ofeeld Photography
19. Real Estate Marketing Plan
    Titicus Realtors
20. Remodeling Contractor Marketing Plan
    Remodeling Contractor
21. Restaurant Marketing Plan
    Neon Memories Diner
22. Sheet Music Website Marketing Plan
    Winning Score
23. Sports and Fitness Club Marketing Plan
    Jamestown Sports and Fitness
24. Toilet Rebate Promotion Marketing Plan
    Toilet Promo
25. Tutoring Service Marketing Plan
    Tutors by the Numbers
26.  Window Cleaning Marketing Plan
    Window Cleaning

How to Market Your Business

Marketing strategies and sales ideas

No matter what business you’re in, you rely on customers and sales to bring in revenue. How are you going to do it efficiently? Start with a good marketing plan, then implement it with social media marketing, email marketing, and more.

The Essential Contents of a Marketing Plan

by TIM BERRY

Every marketing plan has to fit the needs and situation. Even so, there are standard components you just can’t do without. A marketing plan should always have a situation analysis, marketing strategy, sales forecast, and expense budget.

• Situation Analysis: Normally this will include a market analysis, a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), and a competitive analysis. The market analysis will include a market forecast, segmentation, customer information, and market needs analysis.
• Marketing Strategy: This should include at least a mission statement, objectives, and focused strategy including market segment focus and product positioning.
• Sales Forecast: This would include enough detail to track sales month by month and follow up on plan-vs.-actual analysis. Normally a plan will also include specific sales by product, by region or market segment, by channels, by manager responsibilities, and other elements. The forecast alone is a bare minimum.
• Expense Budget: This ought to include enough detail to track expenses month by month and follow up on plan-vs.-actual analysis. Normally a plan will also include specific sales tactics, programs, management responsibilities, promotion, and other elements. The expense budget is a bare minimum.

Are They Enough?

These minimum requirements above are not the ideal, just the minimum. In most cases you’ll begin a marketing plan with an Executive Summary, and you’ll also follow those essentials just described with a review of organizational impact, risks and contingencies, and pending issues.

Include a Specific Action Plan

You should also remember that planning is about the results, not the plan itself. A marketing plan must be measured by the results it produces. The implementation of your plan is much more important than its brilliant ideas or massive market research. You can influence implementation by building a plan full of specific, measurable and concrete plans that can be tracked and followed up. Plan-vs.-actual analysis is critical to the eventual results, and you should build it into your plan.

Outline for a Marketing Plan

The exact nature of your plan, and your marketing situation, dictates its contents. You add detail or take it away to suit your needs.

In the real world you’ll want to customize your outline according to whether you are selling products or services, to businesses or consumers, or you’re a nonprofit organization. Although the outline does change in some respects as a result, this is a good standard sample outline for a basic marketing plan.

Expanded plan outline

1.0 Executive Summary

2.0 Situation Analysis

2.1 Market Summary

2.1.1 Market Demographics
2.1.2 Market Needs
2.1.3 Market Trends
2.1.4 Market Growth

2.2 SWOT Analysis

2.2.1 Strengths
2.2.2 Weaknesses
2.2.3 Opportunities
2.2.4 Threats

2.3 Competition
2.4 Services
2.5 Keys to Success
2.6 Critical Issues
2.7 Channels
2.8 Macroenvironment

3.0 Marketing Strategies

3.1 Mission
3.2 Marketing Objectives
3.3 Financial Objectives
3.4 Target Marketing
3.5 Positioning
3.6 Strategy Pyramids
3.7 Marketing Mix

3.7.1 Services and Service Marketing
3.7.2 Pricing
3.7.3 Promotion
3.7.4 Service
3.7.5 Channels of Distribution

3.8 Marketing Research

4.0 Financials, Budgets, and Forecasts

4.1 Break-even Analysis
4.2 Sales Forecast

4.2.1 Sales Breakdown 1
4.2.2 Sales Breakdown 2
4.2.3 Sales Breakdown 3

4.3 Expense Forecast

4.3.1 Expense Breakdown 1
4.3.3 Expense Breakdown 2
4.3.3 Expense Breakdown 3

4.4 Linking Sales and Expenses to Strategy
4.5 Contribution Margin

5.0 Controls

5.1 Implementation Milestones
5.2 Marketing Organization
5.3 Contingency Planning

Business Management

Existing Companies Need Planning Too

by Tim Berry

Does your company have an annual strategic plan? Does your company develop an annual plan to polish its strategy, focus on main priorities, and manage its cash?

Every business needs to plan
Unfortunately, there is a myth that associates planning with start-ups. That’s particularly common in the United States. Because of that myth, inertia, putting out fires, and related reasons, a lot of businesses miss out on the opportunity to manage themselves a bit better.

As an owner or manager of a small or medium business, can you afford not to plan? Do you leave the annual plan for the large businesses, and let your business depend on reacting to events? Or do you want to plan for priorities, and manage your growth proactively. That’s a leading question, of course, the answer is obvious.

You could call it strategic plan, annual plan, operational plan; the name doesn’t matter as much as the management of it. While these kinds of plans are common in larger enterprises, they are surprisingly rare in small and medium business.

Benefits

1. Guide your growth: Your business will grow or not depending on a lot of different factors, including overall economic trends, location, specific market needs, hard work, and other elements. Businesses that plan do it to guide and influence their growth, so that they move proactively towards defined objectives rather than just reacting to business events.
2. Manage priorities: Strategy is focus. Allocate resources where they will do the most good. Work towards your strengths and away from your weaknesses. Develop the company by doing the most important things, according to your long-term objectives.
3. Assign responsibilities: A plan gives you a place to develop organizational responsibilities.
4. Track progress: Think of a plan as a business positioning device. With a plan, you can track your progress towards goals, measure results, and manage the business. Without a plan, how do you tell whether or not you are moving in the right direction. What do you measure against?
5. Plan for cash: Profits are not cash, and cash is not intuitive. You spend cash, you don’t spend profits. However, businesses don’t plan well for cash, and they need to. That may not sound strategic, but it is. It is also the core of an operations plan, and an annual plan. Whatever else, you have to plan for cash.

Main elements
Regardless of the name you use, strategic plan or annual plan or operational plan, the vast majority of these plans include some or all of the following main points:

1. High-level strategy: Strategy is focus. It guides your growth. Strategy assigns priorities. Of the whole range of possible market segments, and the whole range of services and possible sales and marketing activities, which are your main priorities? Strategy is often a matter of understanding when and how to say no, selecting opportunities.
2. Specific responsibilities, activities, deadlines, and budgets: We call these milestones. They are the bricks and mortar of business planning, critical to business success.
3. Financial plan: One of the most important gains from an annual plan is the financial plan, which of course hinges on cash flow. A business needs to stress its priorities by making sure they get the right amount of money. Growth costs cash.