What Is A Marketing Plan (Easy Template For You To Follow In 2025!)

Jan 17

Looking for a clear, step-by-step summary of **‘What Is A Marketing Plan’** but also in need of an *Easy Template* To Follow?

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This blog will take you about 5 minutes to read through.

If you’re short on time and would rather work with a 1:1 Marketing Consultant to help you build out your own customized marketing plan to ensure that your business growth is consistent and predictable, click here to learn more →

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‘Marketing Plan’

The phrase is simple. It’s just 2 words, and most business owners can define what ‘Marketing’ is and what a ‘Plan’ is.

But when you slap these 2 words together and ask a small business owner ‘what their marketing plan is’ you’ll often be met with a look of terror.

“Uhhh, marketing plan…?” they’ll say?

“I don’t have one!”

**CUE MY SADNESS WHEN I REALIZE THERE IS SO MUCH UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITY! 🤷**

I’ll usually dig a bit deeper and ask them what they’re doing on a weekly or monthly basis to get the business visible, to build awareness of their solutions, and to add value towards the problem they solve.

The answers are usually along the lines of:

I post on Social Media (but it feels like a waste of time)
I run Facebook Ads (but it’s equivalent to throwing money into the wind, because we don’t get new clients through ads)
I send out a monthly email (but there’s no clear call to action, and the open rate is only 20%)

I never want to make anyone feel bad about their marketing plan, but the biggest mistake that I see small business owners make is leaving their marketing to chance!

Chance is not a success strategy,

Executing on a well-crafted plan is.

So let’s draft up your Marketing Plan for 2025, shall we?

In this blog post, I want to demystify what it is to write a Marketing Plan.

You don’t need to be a CMO (Chief Marketing Officer),
You don’t need to make your Marketing Plan 4,525,593 pages long
And you don’t need to copy whatever other small business owners are doing.

You simply need to sit down and ask:

What are the simplest things that I can do, repeatedly, to get visible in front of my dream clients?

For your unique business this might include…

door knocking,
or posting flyers at a community center in your town
or establishing partnerships with complimentary services in your industry

Or it might involve…

Growing an email list and sending weekly promotional emails to share your ‘deal of the week’.
Building a highly functional and SEO-optimized website
Getting media attention and PR

There’s no one-size-fits all plan, and there’s no secret to good marketing.

But there is a well crafted plan that you test, iterate and optimize on over time. That’s what I will share, in the rest of this post.

TL;DR: What Is A Marketing Plan?

It’s a collection of success strategies written out succinctly on one page
It’s a brainstorm of new, innovative and fresh ideas that you can experiment with when time & energy & money permits
It’s a commitment to your business and the visibility required to reach more customers
It is the outputs that back up your business strategy, your mission and your core values.

Before we can write a marketing plan, we need to have a clear goal.

You’ve heard this Tony Robbins quote ad-nauseam, but I’ll write it out once again,

““You can’t hit a target if you don’t know what it is.””

— Tony Robbins

When it comes to marketing, too many small business owners start throwing spaghetti at the wall with no idea where they should aim their spaghetti.

If you decide ‘I want to aim my spaghetti at the top, right-hand corner of my kitchen wall’ that’s good.

But what’s even better is if you say ‘I want to aim my al-dente, gluten-free spaghetti noodle at the top right-hand corner of the 3rd black and white tile on my kitchen backsplash’

Now, we’re aiming at something!

I want you to ask yourself:

What’s Your *Short Term Goal (90 days from now, should align with the overall business goal)
What’s Your Long-Term Goal (12 months from now, should align with the overall business goal)

Now, turn both of these into a Data-Driven, Outcome-Based Goal.

Something that is measurable, and you will know when it’s achieved.

ex:

200 new client sessions booked, 15 new students booked in per month, $20,000 in monthly revenue, 10 podcasts published with premium sponsored ads, signing my first (1) high-ticket client, etc.)

Now, map out your ‘good, better and best’ goals.

When you typically set a goal, you aim for one clear target. However, with the Good, Better, Best goal-setting you give yourself the opportunity to surpass your baseline.

Good: This is the minimum you aim to hit. It represents a realistic and attainable target! 🎯
Better: This level is more challenging than the "good" goal, requiring additional effort (and a couple marketing experiments) 🧪
Best: This ambitious target pushes your marketing boundaries, but you know that if you give 100% you can make it happen! 🚀

Now, set your goals below!

Good
Better
Best

Now, it’s time to create our Marketing Plan, starting with the Top of Funnel (ToFU) Marketing Efforts.

TOFU (Top of Funnel) is the initial stage of the marketing funnel, where the goal is to attract your dream clients and generate awareness. It’s the beginning of putting in the inputs required to have the outcome achieved!

This is where we consider speaking at events, creating content, having a website, door-knocking, attending an event, organic SEO, and paid advertising to reach a wide audience.

Start by jotting down your ideas for where your customers are most likely to encounter your brand (ex: They love the gym, so I should be at gyms and wellness studios) and where they turn to when they encounter a problem (ex: They want new gym shorts, so they go to a Mall / Retail or to Amazon or Google to search ‘Gym Shorts’)

Write your list, and be sure you don’t default to only Social Media Marketing channels:

Now, it’s time to write out the details of your plan!

For each marketing effort, you will write the following details:

What it is: jot down notes

Why are you putting time, energy and money into this? It’s so important to connect with your greater ‘why’ because you may not see viral results right away.

Frequency is the suggested Time Frame or Frequency / Consistent Cadence of showing up: Any specific timelines we need to be aware of?

How does this lead to your greater goal? Are there any in-between steps we need to be aware of?

K.P.I’s

What are we measuring / tracking to ensure there are results (data/metrics associated with platform, # conversions into clients)
Are there any personal metrics (ex: enjoyment/happiness, crafting of thought leadership / building authority, good for slowly writing your future book, etc.) that you want to track, the will nudge you to continue even when you’re not seeing quick results

Here’s a sample:

What it is:

Networking: Attending 1x monthly networking event (local or online) every month

Why I’m putting time, energy & money into this:

I want to build meaningful relationships with real humans in my community
I see value in meeting new people and having interesting conversations, everyday.
It’s a great way to meet other well connected individuals

Frequency:

1 event per month

How this leads to your goal:

My goal is to find new clients, and in a world where social media feels saturated and algorithms aren’t in my favour, I know that connecting with other entrepreneurs is valuable. By meeting 30 people per event, I’m opening myself up to a variety of new relationships.

What I am measuring (KPI’s):

Quantitative

Number of events attended
Number of people at the event
Number of conversations
Number of follow up emails sent

Qualitative

Feeling like I made true connections (scale 1-10)
Enjoyment of the event (scale 1-10)
Feeling energized after event (vs. drained) (scale 1-10)

What it is:

Why I’m putting time, energy & money into this:

Frequency: