A Beginner’s Guide to Data Flow Diagrams

Processes are mission-critical for businesses, especially when it’s time to document and scale a proven process.

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ادامه خواندن A Beginner’s Guide to Data Flow Diagrams

24 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

I believe that reading sample business plans is essential when writing your own.

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ادامه خواندن 24 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

Top Marketing Channels for 2024 (+Data)

Social media, email, video, audio —today’s marketers have more marketing channels to choose from than ever before.

woman uses top marketing channels

As the former head of marketing for two different tech companies, I learned firsthand that an effective marketing strategy must consider all these channels and identify the best investments for your specific company, product, and target market.

Download Now: Free State of Marketing Report (Updated for 2023)

Of course, this is easier said than done. The marketing channel landscape is constantly growing and evolving, and it’s essential to understand the value that each channel can provide.

The HubSpot team surveyed over 1,000 global B2B and B2C marketing professionals to explore the most used marketing channels.

Below, I’ll share the top marketing channels identified in that survey. I’ll discuss how I’ve found these channels can help you amplify your reach and drive revenue while prioritizing your current customers.

Top B2B Marketing Channels

According to HubSpot’s survey, more than 80% of marketers feel that marketing has changed more in the last three years than in the previous fifty.

In this ever-changing environment, the number one challenge marketing professionals identify is determining which platform (or platforms) they should invest in.

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When making these critical decisions, I’ve found that it’s helpful to do some benchmarking against other professionals in the industry.

Our survey found that the top marketing channels today’s marketers use are short-form video (i.e., TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts, etc.), influencer marketing, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

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Moreover, the survey found that 41% of B2B marketers are increasing their budgets, enabling them to invest in new marketing channels.

Specifically, in addition to the channels described above, B2B marketers mainly focus on website and blogging channels and email newsletters.

In fact, nearly one in three marketers report leveraging email marketing to engage with potential customers.

These targeted email campaigns can run manually and be automated, empowering marketers to focus their energy elsewhere.

Many marketers are also leveraging new tools that allow them to segment subscribers and personalize their messages, maximizing the impact of these campaigns.

However, our data suggests that short-form videos, influencers, and SEO are the most significant channels to watch.

Top B2C Marketing Channels

Many B2C marketers use platforms similar to their B2B counterparts but with a few key differences. For B2C professionals, social media and email are the top marketing channels, followed by websites and blogs.

In general, B2C marketing is usually focused on offering enjoyable content and quick wins, while B2B marketing focuses on building longer-term relationships with customers. As such, focusing on social media makes sense for B2C.

After all, as of 2023, there are nearly 5 billion social media users worldwide (more than 60% of the global population), making this the ideal platform to cast a wide net and reach a broad consumer audience.

HubSpot’s survey offered further support for the importance of social media, finding that B2C brands were most likely to invest in marketing efforts on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

The data shows that LinkedIn is a more important platform for B2B brands than B2C, with B2B marketers substantially more likely to report investing in this platform.

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Alongside social media, the survey identified email as a significant marketing channel for B2C brands. Sometimes, this can refer to a traditional newsletter.

Still, email can also be used to share B2C content such as personalized communications, time-sensitive notifications (like product launches or sales), and cart abandonment email reminders.

Another significant advantage of email is that it’s an owned media channel. Nobody can dictate when, how, or why you can contact your prospects.

At the same time, it’s essential to remember that your customers will unsubscribe if you oversaturate their inbox with too many emails.

Finally, the HubSpot report found that 36% of B2C marketers use blogs and websites to connect with customers, helping these brands generate brand awareness, drive traffic, convert leads, and, most importantly, establish authority.

When you create your blogs and website content with SEO tactics in mind, you’re even more likely to meet your goals.

This is because these strategies can help your content rise to the top of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) when customers make queries related to your business content.

It’s easy to get complacent when it comes to marketing channels.

However, our survey found that more than half of B2C marketers expect their budgets to grow, suggesting that it’s critical to invest in identifying the best new channels for your brand — and take the time to build out your presence on those channels as effectively as possible.

Omnichannel Marketing

According to HubSpot’s survey of marketing professionals, more than nine out of ten marketers leverage more than one marketing channel — and 81% leverage more than three channels.

In today’s marketing ecosystem, trying to work with just one marketing channel or to implement just one strategy simply doesn’t work. Omnichannel marketing is the only option.

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Indeed, according to CMO and co-founder of NP Digital Neil Patel, “100% of the companies we worked with that grew focused on omnichannel marketing and continually expanded.”

This diversified approach helps teams stay agile, adapt to new opportunities, and pivot when specific platforms become oversaturated.

One common approach to omnichannel is content repurposing:

Rather than creating custom content for each platform from scratch, 82% of social media marketers in HubSpot’s survey reported repurposing content across various social channels.

This enables you to ensure brand messaging continuity while reducing the work necessary to engage across many marketing channels.

Video Marketing

Now is the time if you’ve yet to invest in video marketing.

Across industries and markets, I’ve found that video can be a great way to boost conversions, improve ROI, reach new audiences, and help you build relationships with current customers.

That may be why marketers report that video is the top media format they leverage today.

That being said, there are a lot of different kinds of videos. Regarding marketing, short-form content takes the cake for both B2B and B2C marketers.

In the age of TikTok, many social media platforms are rewarding content creators who make short-form video content that encourages viewers to stay on the app longer.

This is also a significant growth area, with 29% of marketing professionals planning to try leveraging video marketing for the first time in 2023. Video can also be a great way to flex your creative skills as a marketer.

For example, I focused mainly on written content early in my career, like blog posts and PR articles.

When my team suggested investing in creating a short promotional video, I was a little nervous at first — but it turned out to be a fascinating project, and the footage drove a lot of sales for our new product.

So, even if you haven’t worked with video before, now might be a great time to start.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is when businesses partner with a popular creator in their industry to share advertisements or specific pieces of content.

These influencers can generate brand awareness by associating a familiar face and personality with your product in customers’ minds and providing social proof.

This is especially important as research has shown that consumers today trust marketers less and less.

Because of this skepticism, they tend to shy away from traditional lead-generating content, instead turning to influencers for product recommendations.

Because influencers are personable, honest people who share your customers’ interests, buyers are likelier to trust them. In the tech age, influencers might be a modern version of old-fashioned word-of-mouth marketing.

Moreover, the data shows that influencer marketing pays off. A recent report found that 86% of B2B brands are successful with influencer marketing.

In contrast, a study from Shopify found that every dollar spent on influencer marketing had an average ROI of $5.78 — i.e., this strategy can achieve more than 5x returns.

In light of these statistics, it’s no surprise that investment in influencer marketing is on the rise.

HubSpot’s survey found that 17% of marketers planned to try influencer marketing for the first time in 2023, and of those already using this approach, 89% plan to increase or maintain their investment.

Search Engine Optimization

Another critical component of any modern marketer’s strategy is Search Engine Optimization or SEO marketing.

If you successfully optimize your web content, it will position your brand as an authority in your domain, ultimately helping you increase traffic and your conversion rate.

It’s important to note that SEO isn’t just about your website. All of your web content needs to be search engine optimized.

That includes your YouTube channels, Google business profile, and podcast episodes, which should be optimized using target keywords.

The pillar-cluster model is one strategy that can help you organically build a thriving online presence. According to HubSpot data, 35% of B2B and 59% of B2C marketers report this as an effective strategy.

So how does it work? With the pillar-cluster model, you’ll create a single pillar page that provides a high-level overview of a topic and hyperlinks to cluster pages that delve into the topic’s subtopics.

This helps signal to search engines like Google and Bing that your pillar page is an authority on the subject.

Other SEO tactics that can be highly effective include using search insights reports, optimizing photos or videos for visual search engines, and optimizing load speed for any media-heavy web pages.

Remember, this doesn’t have to be a lot of work. In my experience, just spending an hour or two reviewing relevant keywords and noting words and phrases to use in your content can make a big difference in SEO marketing.

Podcast Marketing

In a Pew survey conducted in 2023, 42% of Americans aged 12 and older reported having listened to a podcast in the past month.

Audio content is in high demand, so for many brands, podcasts can be a great platform to reach larger audiences.

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Podcast hosts can also serve as brand-specific influencers, demonstrating the human side of your business.

In addition, because people can listen to podcasts passively while doing other things, this can be an excellent channel for reaching people during their morning commutes, walking their dogs, or cleaning the house.

Featured Resource: How To Start a Podcast For Your Business

Podcasts can also be compelling because the human brain is programmed to crave, seek out, and respond to a well-crafted story.

The audio medium can be an excellent opportunity to tell a compelling story, capturing your audience’s attention while making your brand more personable.

Interestingly, just one in three marketers report leveraging podcasts or other audio content in their strategies — but of those that do, more than half say that it is the most influential media format they use.

That may be why podcasts receive the second highest marketing spend, with marketers sharing that video is the only channel they’re investing more in.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing

A 2023 survey from PwC found that more than half of U.S. consumers have recommended a company they trust to their family and friends.

As online content becomes increasingly oversaturated, paid content is trusted less and less, with many buyers instead turning to word-of-mouth recommendations to inform their purchasing decisions.

In this new reality, marketers must earn customers’ trust by relying on customer recommendations and word-of-mouth marketing.

Real customers will be much more effective in earning that trust than marketers, who have agendas and are ultimately focused on their bottom lines.

After all, as marketing professionals, we’re paid to promote our brand’s products — but customers will typically only rave about a product or service if they love it.

So, what does this look like in practice? Word-of-mouth marketing is about more than just face-to-face conversations.

Satisfied customers might post about your brand online, tell their roommates they like your service, or leave positive reviews on your product pages.

Only one of these examples involves an actual, in-person conversation, but they’re all ways consumers can vouch for your brand’s credibility.

At its core, word-of-mouth marketing is all about creating a customer experience that’s just so magical that existing users are driven to share your brand with their networks.

As a customer, I’m only motivated to tell my friends about a product if I’ve had a stellar experience.

If you focus on offering top-notch customer service and on always going above and beyond for your customers, you’ll be set up to succeed with word-of-mouth marketing.

Make Your Marketing Channels Work for You

Now that you know the stats behind different marketing channels, there are two key questions: First, how might you reach your existing audience in a new way? And second, how might a new channel enable you to reach new audiences?

Different marketing channels come with different benefits, but most businesses can find a way to use different channels in their marketing strategies to meet their unique business goals.

Studies have shown that customers are likely to come into contact with your brand at least seven times before taking action.

As such, using a range of different marketing channels can be a great way to create those multiple points of contact, nurture your leads over time, increase conversions, and help you achieve your marketing goals.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in Dec. 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

state-of-marketing-2023

منبع: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-channels

What is a Marketing Plan & How to Write One (+Examples)

For a while now, you’ve been spearheading your organization’s content marketing efforts, and your team’s performance has convinced management to adopt the content marketing strategies you’ve suggested.

marketing plan and how to write one

Now, your boss wants you to write and present a content marketing plan, but you‘ve never done something like that before. You don’t even know where to start.

Download Now: Free Marketing Plan Template (Get Your Copy)

Fortunately, we’ve curated the best content marketing plans to help you write a concrete plan that’s rooted in data and produces results. But first, we’ll discuss what a marketing plan is and how some of the best marketing plans include strategies that serve their respective businesses.

The purpose of a marketing plan is to write down strategies in an organized manner. This will help keep you on track and measure the success of your campaigns.

Writing a marketing plan will help you think of each campaign‘s mission, buyer personas, budget, tactics, and deliverables. With all this information in one place, you’ll have an easier time staying on track with a campaign. You’ll also discover what works and what doesn’t. Thus, measuring the success of your strategy.

Featured Resource: Free Marketing Plan Template

HubSpot Mktg plan cover

Looking to develop a marketing plan for your business? Click here to download HubSpot’s free Marketing Plan Template to get started.

To learn more about how to create your marketing plan, keep reading or jump to the section you’re looking for:

Marketing plan definition graphic

If you’re pressed for time or resources, you might not be thinking about a marketing plan. However, a marketing plan is an important part of your business plan.

Marketing Plan vs. Business Plan

A marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics.

A business plan is also a strategic document. But this plan covers all aspects of a company’s operations, including finance, operations, and more. It can also help your business decide how to distribute resources and make decisions as your business grows.

I like to think of a marketing plan as a subset of a business plan; it shows how marketing strategies and objectives can support overall business goals.

Keep in mind that there’s a difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy.

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

A marketing strategy describes how a business will accomplish a particular goal or mission. This includes which campaigns, content, channels, and marketing software they’ll use to execute that mission and track its success.

For example, while a greater plan or department might handle social media marketing, you might consider your work on Facebook as an individual marketing strategy.

A marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies. It’s the framework from which all of your marketing strategies are created and helps you connect each strategy back to a larger marketing operation and business goal.

For example, suppose your company is launching a new software product, and it wants customers to sign up. The marketing department needs to develop a marketing plan that’ll help introduce this product to the industry and drive the desired signups.

The department decides to launch a blog dedicated to this industry, a new YouTube video series to establish expertise, and an account on Twitter to join the conversation around this subject. All this serves to attract an audience and convert this audience into software users.

To summarize, the business’s marketing plan is dedicated to introducing a new software product to the marketplace and driving signups for that product. The business will execute that plan with three marketing strategies: a new industry blog, a YouTube video series, and a Twitter account.

Of course, the business might consider these three things as one giant marketing strategy, each with its specific content strategies. How granular you want your marketing plan to get is up to you. Nonetheless, every marketing plan goes through a particular set of steps in its creation.

Learn what they are below.

1. State your business’s mission.

Your first step in writing a marketing plan is to state your mission. Although this mission is specific to your marketing department, it should serve your business‘s main mission statement.

From my experience, you want to be specific, but not too specific. You have plenty of space left in this marketing plan to elaborate on how you’ll acquire new customers and accomplish this mission.

For example, if your business’s mission is “to make booking travel a delightful experience,” your marketing mission might be “to attract an audience of travelers, educate them on the tourism industry, and convert them into users of our bookings platform.”mission-statement-examples

Need help building your mission statement? Download this guide for examples and templates and write the ideal mission statement.

2. Determine the KPIs for this mission.

Every good marketing plan describes how the department will track its mission‘s progress. To do so, you need to decide on your key performance indicators (KPIs).

KPIs are individual metrics that measure the various elements of a marketing campaign. These units help you establish short-term goals within your mission and communicate your progress to business leaders.

Let’s take our example of a marketing mission from the above step. If part of our mission is “to attract an audience of travelers,” we might track website visits using organic page views. In this case, “organic page views” is one KPI, and we can see our number of page views grow over time.

These KPIs will come into the conversation again in step 4.

3. Identify your buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a description of who you want to attract. This can include age, ،, location, family size, and job title. Each buyer persona should directly reflect your business’s current and potential customers. So, all business leaders must agree on your buyer personas.

buyer-persona-templates

Create your buyer personas with this free guide and set of buyer persona templates.

4. Describe your content initiatives and strategies.

Here’s where you’ll include the main points of your marketing and content strategy. Because there’s a laundry list of content types and channels available to you today, you must choose wisely and explain how you’ll use your content and channels in this section of your marketing plan.

When I write this section, I like to stipulate:

  • Which types of content I’ll create. These might include blog posts, YouTube videos, infographics, and ebooks.
  • How much of it I’ll create. I typically describe content volume in daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly intervals. It all depends on my workflow and the short-term goals for my content.
  • The goals (and KPIs) I’ll use to track each type. KPIs can include organic traffic, social media traffic, email traffic, and referral traffic. Your goals should also include which pages you want to drive that traffic to, such as product pages, blog pages, or landing pages.
  • The channels on which I’ll distribute my content. Popular channels include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.
  • Any paid advertising that will take place on these channels.

5. Clearly define your plan’s omissions.

A marketing plan explains the marketing team’s focus. It also explains what the marketing team will not focus on.

If there are other aspects of your business that you aren’t serving in this particular plan, include them in this section. These omissions help to justify your mission, buyer personas, KPIs, and content. You can’t please everyone in a single marketing campaign, and if your team isn’t on the hook for something, you need to make it known.

In my experience, this section is particularly important for stakeholders to help them understand why certain decisions were made.

6. Define your marketing budget.

Whether it’s freelance fees, sponsorships, or a new full-time marketing hire, use these costs to develop a marketing budget and outline each expense in this section of your marketing plan.

marketing-budget-templates

You can establish your marketing budget with this kit of 8 free marketing budget templates.

7. Identify your competition.

Part of marketing is knowing whom you’re marketing against. Research the key players in your industry and consider profiling each one.

Keep in mind not every competitor will pose the same challenges to your business. For example, while one competitor might be ranking highly on search engines for keywords you want your website to rank for, another competitor might have a heavy footprint on a social network where you plan to launch an account.

competitive-analysis-templates

Easily track and analyze your competitors with this collection of ten free competitive analysis templates.

8. Outline your plan’s contributors and their responsibilities.

With your marketing plan fully fleshed out, it’s time to explain who’s doing what. I don’t like to delve too deeply into my employees’ day-to-day projects, but I know which teams and team leaders are in charge of specific content types, channels, KPIs, and more.

Now that you know why you need to build an effective marketing plan, it’s time to get to work. Starting a plan from scratch can be overwhelming if you haven’t done it before. That’s why there are many helpful resources that can support your first steps. We’ll share some of the best guides and templates that can help you build effective results-driven plans for your marketing strategies.

Ready to make your own marketing plan? Get started using this free template.

Types of Marketing Plans

Depending on the company you work with, you might want to create various marketing plans. We compiled different samples to suit your needs:

1. Quarterly or Annual Marketing Plans

These plans highlight the strategies or campaigns you’ll take on in a certain period.

marketing plan examples: forbes

Forbes published a marketing plan template that has amassed almost 4 million views. To help you sculpt a marketing roadmap with true vision, their template will teach you how to fill out the 15 key sections of a marketing plan, which are:

  • Executive Summary
  • Target Customers
  • Unique Selling Proposition
  • Pricing & Positioning Strategy
  • Distribution Plan
  • Your Offers
  • Marketing Materials
  • Promotions Strategy
  • Online Marketing Strategy
  • Conversion Strategy
  • Joint Ventures & Partnerships
  • Referral Strategy
  • Strategy for Increasing Transaction Prices
  • Retention Strategy
  • Financial Projections

Best For

If you’re truly lost on where to start with a marketing plan, I highly recommend using this guide to help you define your target audience, figure out how to reach them, and ensure that audience becomes loyal customers.

Download Now: Free Marketing Plan Template (Get Your Copy)

2. Social Media Marketing Plan

This type of plan highlights the channels, tactics, and campaigns you intend to accomplish specifically on social media. A specific subtype is a paid marketing plan, which highlights paid strategies, such as native advertising, PPC, or paid social media promotions.

Shane Snow’s Marketing Plan for His Book Dream Team is a great example of a social media marketing plan:

Contently's content strategy waterfall.

 

When Shane Snow started promoting his new book, “Dream Team,” he knew he had to leverage a data-driven content strategy framework. So, he chose his favorite one: the content strategy waterfall. The content strategy waterfall is defined by Economic Times as a model used to create a system with a linear and sequential approach.

Snow wrote a blog post about how the waterfall‘s content strategy helped him launch his new book successfully. After reading it, you can use his tactics to inform your own marketing plan. More specifically, you’ll learn how he:

  • Applied his business objectives to decide which marketing metrics to track.
  • Used his ultimate business goal of earning $200,000 in sales or 10,000 purchases to estimate the conversion rate of each stage of his funnel.
  • Created buyer personas to figure out which channels his audience would prefer to consume his content.
  • Used his average post view on each of his marketing channels to estimate how much content he had to create and how often he had to post on social media.
  • Calculated how much earned and paid media could cut down the amount of content he had to create and post.
  • Designed his process and workflow, built his team, and assigned members to tasks.
  • Analyzed content performance metrics to refine his overall content strategy.

Best For

I use Snow’s marketing plan to think more creatively about my content promotion and distribution plan. I like that it’s linear and builds on the step before it, creating an air-tight strategy that doesn’t leave any details out.

→ Free Download: Social Media Calendar Template (Access Now)

3. Content Marketing Plan

This plan could highlight different strategies, tactics, and campaigns in which you’ll use content to promote your business or product.

HubSpot’s Comprehensive Guide for Content Marketing Strategy is a strong example of a content marketing plan:

marketing plan examples: hubspot content marketing plan

At HubSpot, we‘ve built our marketing team from two business school graduates working from a coffee table to a powerhouse of hundreds of employees. Along the way, we’ve learned countless lessons that shaped our current content marketing strategy. So, we decided to illustrate our insights in a blog post to teach marketers how to develop a successful content marketing strategy, regardless of their team’s size.

Download Now: Free Content Marketing Planning Templates

In this comprehensive guide for modern marketers, you’ll learn:

  • What exactly content marketing is.
  • Why your business needs a content marketing strategy.
  • Who should lead your content marketing efforts?
  • How to structure your content marketing team based on your company’s size.
  • How to hire the right people for each role on your team.
  • What marketing tools and technology you’ll need to succeed.
  • What type of content your team should create, and which employees should be responsible for creating them.
  • The importance of distributing your content through search engines, social media, email, and paid ads.
  • And finally, the recommended metrics each of your teams should measure and report to optimize your content marketing program.

Best For

This is fantastic resource for content teams of any size — whether you’re a team of one or 100. It includes how to hire and structure a content marketing team, what marketing tools you’ll need, what type of content you should create, and even recommends what metrics to track for analyzing campaigns.

4. New Product Launch Marketing Plan

This will be a roadmap for the strategies and tactics you‘ll implement to promote a new product. And if you’re searching for an example, look no further than Chief Outsiders’ Go-To-Market Plan for a New Product:

marketing plan examples: chief outsiders

→ Download Now: Free Product Marketing Kit (Free Templates)

After reading this plan, you’ll learn how to:

  • Validate a product
  • Write strategic objectives
  • Identify your market
  • Compile a competitive landscape
  • Create a value proposition for a new product
  • Consider sales and service in your marketing plan

Best For

If you’re looking for a marketing plan for a new product, the Chief Outsiders template is a great place to start. Marketing plans for a new product will be more specific because they target one product versus its entire marketing strategy.

5. Growth Marketing Plan

Growth marketing plans use experimentation and data to drive results, like we see in Venture Harbour’s Growth Marketing Plan Template:

marketing plan examples: venture harbour

Venture Harbour’s growth marketing plan is a data-driven and experiment-led alternative to the more traditional marketing plan. Their template has five steps intended for refinement with every test-measure-learn cycle. The five steps are:

  • Goal
  • Projection
  • Experiments
  • Roadmap
  • Insights

Download Now: Free Growth Strategy Template

Best For

I recommend this plan if you want to experiment with different platforms and campaigns. Experimentation always feels risky and unfamiliar, but this plan creates a framework for accountability and strategy.

1. Louisville Tourism

Louisville Tourism Marketing PlanIn my opinion, this marketing plan is a masterclass for companies in the tourism industry. It’s a comprehensive game plan that covers key strategies for events, tourism programs, meetings, and conventions.

It also divides its target market into growth and seed categories to allow for more focused strategies. For example, the plan recognizes Millennials in Chicago, Atlanta, and Nashville as the core of it’s growth market, whereas people in Boston, Austin, and New York represent seed markets where potential growth opportunities exist. Then, the plan outlines objectives and tactics for reaching each market.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

  • The plan starts with a letter from the President & CEO of the company, who sets the stage for the plan by providing a high-level preview of the incoming developments for Louisville’s tourism industry
  • The focus on Louisville as “Bourbon City” effectively leverages its unique cultural and culinary attributes to present a strong brand
  • Incorporates a variety of data points from Google Analytics, Arrivalist, and visitor profiles to to define their target audience with a data-informed approach

2. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

University IllinoisColleges have a broad target audience, including prospective students, international students, parents, alumni, faculty, and staff. This marketing plan does an effective job of outlining strategies for each group as they move through different stages in the funnel.

For example, students who become prospects as freshman and sophomore will receive emails that focus on getting the most out of high school and college prep classes. Once these students become juniors and seniors — thus entering the consideration stage — the emails will focus more on the college application process and other exploratory content.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

  • The plan incorporates competitive analysis, evaluation surveys, and other research to determine the makeup of its target audience
  • The plan lists each marketing program (e.g., direct mail, social media, email etc.) and supplements it with examples on the next page
  • Each marketing program has its own objectives, tactics, and KPIs for measuring success

3. Visit Oxnardmarketing plan examples: visit oxnard

This marketing plan by Visit Oxnard, a convention and visitors bureau, is packed with all the information one needs in a marketing plan: target markets, key performance indicators, selling points, personas, marketing tactics by channel, and much more.

It also articulates the organization’s strategic plans for the upcoming fiscal year, especially as it grapples with the aftereffects of the pandemic. Lastly, it has impeccable visual appeal, with color-coded sections and strong branding elements.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

  • States clear and actionable goals for the coming year
  • Includes data and other research that shows how their team made their decisions
  • Outlines how the team will measure the success of their plan

4. Safe Haven Family Shelter

marketing plan examples: safe haven family shelter

This marketing plan by a nonprofit organization is an excellent example to follow if your plan will be presented to internal stakeholders at all levels of your organization. It includes SMART marketing goals, deadlines, action steps, long-term objectives, target audiences, core marketing messages, and metrics.

The plan is detailed, yet scannable. By the end of it, one can walk away with a strong understanding of the organization’s strategic direction for its upcoming marketing efforts.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

  • Confirms ongoing marketing strategies and objectives while introducing new initiatives
  • Uses colors, fonts, and formatting to emphasize key parts of the plan
  • Closes with long-term goals, key themes, and other overarching topics to set the stage for the future

5. Wright County Economic Development

marketing plan examples: wright county

Wright County Economic Development’s plan drew our attention because of its simplicity, making it good inspiration for those who’d like to outline their plan in broad strokes without frills or filler.

It includes key information such as marketing partners, goals, initiatives, and costs. The sections are easy to scan and contain plenty of information for those who’d like to dig into the details. Most important, it includes a detailed breakdown of projected costs per marketing initiative — which is critical information to include for upper-level managers and other stakeholders.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

  • Begins with a quick paragraph stating why the recommended changes are important
  • Uses clear graphics and bullet points to emphasize key points
  • Includes specific budget data to support decision-making

6. The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County

marketing plan examples: cultural council of palm beach county

This marketing plan presentation by a cultural council is a great example of how to effectively use data in your plan, address audiences who are new to the industry, and offer extensive detail into specific marketing strategies.

For instance, an entire slide is dedicated to the county’s cultural tourism trends, and at the beginning of the presentation, the organization explains what an arts and culture agency is in the first place.

That’s a critical piece of information to include for those who might not know. If you’re addressing audiences outside your industry, consider defining terms at the beginning, like this organization did.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

  • Uses quality design and images to support the goals and priorities in the text
  • Separate pages for each big idea or new strategy
  • Includes sections for awards and accomplishments to show how the marketing plan supports wider business goals
  • Defines strategies and tactics for each channel for easy skimming

7. Cabarrus County Convention & Visitors Bureau

marketing plan examples: carrabus county

Cabarrus County’s convention and visitors bureau takes a slightly different approach with its marketing plan, formatting it like a magazine for stakeholders to flip through. It offers information on the county’s target audience, channels, goals, KPIs, and public relations strategies and initiatives.

We especially love that the plan includes contact information for the bureau’s staff members, so that it’s easy for stakeholders to contact the appropriate person for a specific query.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

  • Uses infographics to expand on specific concepts, like how visitors benefit a community
  • Highlights the team members responsible for each initiative with a photo to emphasize accountability and community
  • Closes with an event calendar for transparency into key dates for events

8. Visit Billings

marketing plan examples: visit billings

Visit Billing’s comprehensive marketing plan is like Cabarrus County’s in that it follows a magazine format. With sections for each planned strategy, it offers a wealth of information and depth for internal stakeholders and potential investors.

We especially love its content strategy section, where it details the organization’s prior efforts and current objectives for each content platform.

At the end, it includes strategic goals and budgets — a good move to imitate if your primary audience would not need this information highlighted at the forefront.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

  • Includes a section on the buyer journey, which offers clarity on the reasoning for marketing plan decisions
  • Design includes call-outs for special topics that could impact the marketing audience, such as safety concerns or “staycations”
  • Clear headings make it easy to scan this comprehensive report and make note of sections a reader may want to return to for more detail

Marketing Plan FAQs

What is a typical marketing plan?

In my experience, most marketing plans outline the following aspects of a business’s marketing:

  • Strategies
  • Objectives
  • Target audience
  • Tactics

Each marketing plan should include one or more goals, the path your team will take to meet those goals, and how you plan to measure success.

For example, if I were a tech startup that’s launching a new mobile app, my marketing plan would include:

Featured resource: Free Marketing Plan Template

What should a good marketing plan include?

A good marketing plan will create a clear roadmap for your unique marketing team. This means that the best marketing plan for your business will be distinct to your team and business needs.

That said, most marketing plans will include sections for one or more of the following:

  • Clear analysis of the target market
  • A detailed description of the product or service
  • Competitive analysis
  • Strategic marketing mix details (such as product, price, place, promotion)
  • Measurable goals with defined timelines

This can help you build the best marketing plan for your business.

A good marketing plan should also include a product or service’s unique value proposition, a comprehensive marketing strategy including online and offline channels, and a defined budget.

Featured resource: Value Proposition Templates

What are the most important parts of a marketing plan?

When you‘re planning a road trip, you need a map to help define your route, step-by-step directions, and an estimate of the time it will take to get to your destination. It’s literally how you get there that matters.

Like a road map, a marketing plan is only useful if it helps you get to where you want to go. So, no one part is more than the other.

That said, you can use the list below to make sure that you’ve added or at least considered each of the following in your marketing plan:

  • Marketing goals
  • Executive summary
  • Target market analysis
  • Competitive analysis
  • Marketing strategies
  • Tactics
  • Budget
  • Metrics

What questions should I ask when making a marketing plan?

Questions are a useful tool for when you‘re stuck or want to make sure you’ve included important details.

Try using one or more of these questions as a starting point when you create your marketing plan:

  • Who is my target audience?
  • What are their needs, motivations, and pain points?
  • How does our product or service solve their problems?
  • How will I reach and engage them?
  • Who are my competitors? Are they direct or indirect competitors?
  • What are the unique selling points of my product or service?
  • What marketing channels are best for the brand?
  • What is our budget and timeline?
  • How will I measure the success of marketing efforts?

How much does a marketing plan cost?

Creating a marketing plan is mostly free. But the cost of executing a marketing plan will depend on your specific plan.

Marketing plan costs vary by business, industry, and plan scope. Whether your team handles marketing in-house or hires external consultants can also make a difference. Total costs can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands. This is why most marketing plans will include a budget.

Featured resource: Free Marketing Budget Templates

What is a marketing plan template?

A marketing plan template is a pre-designed structure or framework that helps you outline your marketing plan.

It offers a starting point that you can customize for your specific business needs and goals. For example, our template includes easy-to-edit sections for:

  • Business summary
  • Business initiatives
  • Target market
  • Market strategy
  • Budget
  • Marketing channels
  • Marketing technology

Sample Marketing Plan

Let’s create a sample plan together, step by step.

Follow along with HubSpot’s free Marketing Plan Template.

HubSpot Mktg plan cover

1. Create an overview or primary objective.

Our business mission is to provide (service, product, solution) to help (audience) reach their (financial, educational, business related) goals without compromising their (your audience’s valuable asset: free time, mental health, budget, etc.). We want to improve our social media presence while nurturing our relationships with collaborators and clients.

2. Determine the KPIs for this mission.

For example, if I wanted to focus on social media growth, my KPIs might look like this:

We want to achieve a minimum of (followers) with an engagement rate of (X) on (social media platform).

The goal is to achieve an increase of (Y) on recurring clients and new meaningful connections outside the platform by the end of the year.

3. Identify your buyer personas.

Use the following categories to create a target audience for your campaign.

  • Age:
  • Gender:
  • Profession:
  • Background:
  • Interests:
  • Values:
  • Goals:
  • Pain points:
  • Social media platforms that they use:
  • Streaming platforms that they prefer:

For more useful strategies, consider creating a buyer persona in our Make My Persona tool.

4. Describe your content initiatives and strategies.

Our content pillars will be: (X, Y, Z).

Content pillars should be based on topics your audience needs to know. If your ideal clients are female entrepreneurs, then your content pillars can be: marketing, being a woman in business, remote working, and productivity hacks for entrepreneurs.

Then, determine any omissions.

This marketing plan won’t be focusing on the following areas of improvement: (A, B, C).

5. Define your marketing budget.

Our marketing strategy will use a total of (Y) monthly. This will include anything from freelance collaborations to advertising.

6. Identify your competitors.

I like to work through the following questions to clearly indicate who my competitors are:

  • Which platforms do they use the most?
  • How does their branding differentiate?
  • How do they talk to their audiences?
  • What valuable assets do customers talk about? And if they are receiving any negative feedback, what is it about?

7. Outline your plan’s contributors and their responsibilities.

Create responsible parties for each portion of the plan.

Marketing will manage the content plan, implementation, and community interaction to reach the KPIs.

  • Social media manager: (hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations)
  • Content strategist: (hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations)
  • Community manager: (hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations)

Sales will follow the line of the marketing work while creating and implementing an outreach strategy.

  • Sales strategists: (hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations)
  • Sales executives: (hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations)

Customer Service will nurture clients’ relationships to ensure that they have what they want. (Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations).

Project Managers will track the progress and team communication during the project. (Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations).

Get started on your marketing plan.

These marketing plans serve as initial resources to get your content marketing plan started. But, to truly deliver what your audience wants and needs, you’ll likely need to test some different ideas out, measure their success, and then refine your goals as you go.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in April 2019, but was updated for comprehensiveness. This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure to learn more about how we use AI.

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منبع: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-plan-examples