What is a Marketing Plan & How to Write One [+ Examples]

One of my favorite ways to break through writer’s block, whether the assignment is a marketing plan or a short story, is simply reading more examples. (I also recommend taking a long walk; you’d be surprised.)

I can’t take you on a walk, but I can give you some examples, some inspiration, and some guidelines to get your creativity humming.

If you don’t know where to start, we’ve curated lists of marketing plans and marketing strategies to help you write a concrete plan that will produce results.

Let’s start by understanding the differences between the two.

Table of Contents

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.

Your marketing plan lays out 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, and you can figure out what works and what doesn’t.

To learn more about creating your marketing plan, keep reading or jump to the relevant section:

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.

A marketing plan is a subset of a business plan; it shows how marketing strategies and objectives can support overall business goals. And if you need an assist executing a marketing plan, might I recommend HubSpot’s marketing hub?

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

A marketing strategy is the part of your marketing plan that describes how a business will accomplish a particular goal or mission.

This includes which campaigns, content, channels, and marketing software you’ll use to execute that mission and track its success.

A marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies. It’s the framework from which all your marketing strategies are created, and it helps you connect each strategy 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 sign-ups.

The department decides to launch a topical blog, debut a YouTube series to establish expertise, and create new X and Instagram accounts to join the conversation around this subject. All this serves to attract an audience and convert this audience into software users.

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

Of course, the business might consider these three things as one giant marketing strategy, each with its own 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.

1. State your business’ 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 as your business’ main mission statement.

In 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 those of you running startups or small businesses, HubSpot’s starter bundle is a great all-in-one solution — it can help you find and win customers, execute content marketing plans, and more.

If your business’ 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.”

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.

Also, make sure to check whether your current reporting software facilitates the KPIs you need. Some reporting tools can only measure a set of pre-defined metrics, which can cause massive headaches in particular marketing campaigns.

However, other tools, like HubSpot’s analytics software, can offer full flexibility over the KPIs you wish to track.

You can generate custom reports that reveal average website engagement rates, page visits, email, social media traffic, and more.

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, sex, location, family size, and job title.

Each buyer persona should directly reflect your business’ current and potential customers. All business leaders must agree on your buyer personas.

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 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:

• What types of content I’ll create. These might include blog posts, YouTube videos, infographics, and ebooks.
• How much 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, X, 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.

You can establish your marketing budget with these 8 free marketing budget templates.

7. Identify your competition.

Part of marketing is knowing your competition. Research the key players in your industry and consider profiling each one.

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

Easily track and analyze your competitors with this collection of 10 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 to help you build effective results-driven plans for your marketing strategies.

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

Types of Marketing Plans

The kind of marketing plan you create will depend on your company, your industry, and your business goals. We compiled different samples to suit your needs:

1. Quarterly or Annual Marketing Plans

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

Forbes published a marketing plan template that has amassed almost 4 million views. To help you sculpt a marketing road map with a strong vision, use its template to learn how to fill out the 15 key sections of a marketing plan:

• 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.

2. Social Media Marketing Plan

A social media marketing plan highlights the channels, tactics, and campaigns you intend to accomplish specifically on social media.

A specific subtype is a paid marketing plan, which includes paid strategies like native advertising, PPC, and paid social media promotions.

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

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When Shane Snow started promoting his 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 “Dream Team” 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 airtight strategy that doesn’t leave any details out.

3. Content Marketing Plan

A content marketing 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:

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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 compile our insights in a blog post to teach marketers how to develop a successful content marketing strategy, regardless of their team’s size.

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 a 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 it even recommends what metrics to track for analyzing campaigns.

If you’re aiming to establish or boost your online presence, try tools like HubSpot’s drag-and-drop website builder, which helps you create a captivating digital footprint that sets the foundation for your content marketing endeavors.

4. New Product Launch Marketing Plan

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

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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:

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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
• Road map
• Insights

Best For

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

1. Louisville Tourism

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In 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 its 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 and CEO of the company, who sets the stage 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.
• It incorporates a variety of data from Google Analytics, Arrivalist, and visitor profiles to define their target audience with a data-informed approach.

2. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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Colleges have a broad target audience, including prospective students, international students, parents, alumni, faculty, and staff.

This marketing plan outlines strategies for each group as they move through different stages in the funnel.

For example, students who become prospects as a high school freshman or sophomore will receive emails about 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 shift focus to 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 Oxnard

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This marketing plan by Visit Oxnard, a convention and visitors bureau, is packed with information: 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

• It states clear and actionable goals for the coming year.
• It includes data and other research that shows how the team made its decisions.
• It outlines how the team will measure the plan’s success.

4. Safe Haven Family Shelter

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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

• It confirms ongoing marketing strategies and objectives while introducing new initiatives.
• It uses colors, fonts, and formatting to emphasize key parts.
• It closes with long-term goals, key themes, and other overarching topics to set the stage for the future.

5. Wright County Economic Development

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Wright County Economic Development’s plan drew my 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 like to dig into the details.

Most importantly, it includes a detailed breakdown of projected costs per marketing initiative, which is critical for upper-level managers and other stakeholders.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

• It begins with a quick paragraph stating why the recommended changes are important.
• It uses clear graphics and bullet points to emphasize key points.
• It includes specific budget data to support decision-making.

6. The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County

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This marketing plan presentation by a cultural council is a great example of how to use data. It also offers extensive details of 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 for new audiences. If you’re addressing audiences outside your industry, consider defining terms at the beginning, like the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County did.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

• It uses quality design and images to support the goals and priorities in the text.
• There are separate pages for each big idea or new strategy.
• It includes sections for awards and accomplishments to show how the marketing plan supports wider business goals.
• It defines strategies and tactics for each channel for easy skimming.

7. Cabarrus County Convention & Visitors Bureau

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The Cabarrus County Convention & Visitors Bureau takes a slightly different approach with its marketing plan, formatting it like a physical magazine.

It offers information on the county’s target audience, channels, goals, KPIs, and public relations strategies and initiatives.

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

Why This Marketing Plan Works

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

8. Visit Billings

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Visit Billings’ comprehensive marketing plan uses a magazine-style format similar to Cabarrus County’s. With sections for each planned strategy, it offers a wealth of information for internal stakeholders and potential investors.

I especially love its content strategy section, which details the organization’s prior efforts and its 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

• It includes a section on the buyer journey, which offers clarity on the reasoning for marketing plan decisions.
• The design calls out special topics that could impact the audience, such as safety concerns or staycations.
• Clear headings make it easy to scan this comprehensive report.

I’ve collected a few of my favorite recent marketing strategies below so you can get some creative inspiration and see how these differ from a full-blown marketing plan.

Below is a list that includes email marketing, SEO marketing, PR marketing, and more. I’ve included companies small and big as well as influencers and solo content creators.

I’ve also highlighted a few distinguishing features in each example, so you can easily adapt and apply them to your own marketing strategies.

1. GLDN

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It’s frankly pretty rare that I regularly open emails from businesses that want my money. The rate at which some companies hit “send” is enough to make even a Kardashian want a break from consumerism.

GLDN, an online jewelry store that specializes in affordable and personalized pieces, is a diamond in the rough (see what I did there?).

A few weeks before my birthday, GLDN sent me an email with the subject, “What do you want for your birthday? 🎂.” Corporate happy birthdays are par for the course these days, but when dozens of them appear in my inbox overnight, I’m less likely to open them.

Because GLDN slid into my inbox before I got corporate birthday-email fatigue, the personalization felt, well, more personal, even though my name wasn’t part of the subject line.

(And it must be mentioned: GLDN also stands out for its solid punning. “Get on the bandwagon” is clever but not cloying, and it works even if you don’t catch the double entendre.)

Strategic Takeaways for Email Marketing

• Personalize.
• Get ahead of the competition (literally).

Why This Marketing Strategy Works

Personalization isn’t about just using customers’ first names — it’s about making them feel seen. Acknowledging my birthday earlier than other brands feels more like a friend asking to make birthday plans than a business asking for my money.

2. Ilona Maher, U.S. Olympic women’s rugby player and Secret deodorant brand ambassador

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U.S. women’s rugby player Ilona Maher took TikTok by storm the summer of 2021. The delayed Olympic Games were underway in Tokyo, and the rest of the world was cautiously emerging from pandemic lockdowns.

Maher had a still-impressive 86K followers when she started making videos to pass the time while the team was locked down in quarantine. It exploded to 800K in just a few weeks.

Today she has a combined 2.5 million followers on Instagram and TikTok, but her content remains fundamentally the same: body positivity, #beautybeastbrains, rugby, and lighthearted behind-the-scenes content.

Over the past few years, Maher built trust and a long-term relationship with her audience, earning U.S. women’s rugby millions of new fans — and millions of dollars.

In July 2024, businesswoman Michele Kang announced a $4 million donation to the team, thanks in part to Maher’s fierce social media presence and the attention she brought to women’s sports.

Like many influencers, she’s parlayed TikTok success into paid partnerships, but her recent content, even the ads, shows off her goofy humor just as much as it did in 2021.

Strategic Takeaways for Social Media Marketing

• Build trust and a long-term relationship with your audience.
• Prioritize great content over paid partnerships.
• Be consistently authentic to your core values.

Why This Marketing Strategy Works

Yapping about “authenticity” is making every marketer’s voice hoarse, but that doesn’t mean we’re wrong. Especially when it comes to influencer marketing.

In an era where influencer careers rise and fall faster than you can doom scroll, Maher stands out for playing the long game.

Her love of rugby — and her blistering takedowns of body-shaming trolls — is consistent, authentic, and still a lot of fun to watch.

3. Pridemore Properties

Social media marketing, particularly when it goes viral, is nearly impossible to imitate without simply piggybacking on other creators.

So don’t try.

A real estate agent in Charlotte, North Carolina, says he asked his Gen Z employee to edit a video of a house tour.

The resulting video — whether it was the employee’s idea of a joke or an idea they hatched together doesn’t really matter — edits out everything except the real estate agent taking a breath at the beginning of his sentences.

It’s a 15-second ASMR nightmare fit to score a horror movie. It’s also hilarious.

But it’s not funny just because of the video itself — it’s funny because it’s surprising. It (gently) cashes in on stereotypes of Gen Z employees not taking their jobs too seriously, and that shared cultural understanding makes it accessible to an audience much bigger than Gen Zers.

Of course, a thousand similar videos popped up in the wake of Pridemore Properties’ viral sensation, and some of them undoubtedly performed well on social media. But unless the copycats add something new, they’re unlikely to see sustained engagement.

Here’s another great example of strategic surprise in a more traditional advertisement. The NHL’s “love makes you do crazy things” ad is about a couple who watched every Colorado Avalanche playoff game together through their 10-year relationship.

The twist would need a spoiler alert if I said anything more, but take a look and see how subverting expectations can create a memorable impression.

Strategic Takeaways for Social Media Marketing

• “Going viral” isn’t a goal; it’s an outcome.
• Be surprising. Subvert expectations.
• Be weird and niche if you want to be weird and niche, but establishing a shared cultural understanding might result in a bigger audience.

Why This Marketing Strategy Works

Pridemore Properties’ Instagram smash hit is unexpected, to say the least. You think you’re getting a home tour that takes your figurative breath away; you get a home tour that takes the agent’s literal breath away.

4. Oatly

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Oatly is known as much for its anti-marketing as its oat milk.

One example: The Spanish dairy lobby sued Oatly in 2020, claiming that the Oatly slogan “it’s like milk, but for humans” misled consumers into thinking that oat drink was the same as cow’s milk. Oatly responded by posting the entire lawsuit online.

Our own Caroline Forsey got the scoop from Oatly CEO Brendan Lewis for a recent Masters in Marketing newsletter. She wrote, “Oatly’s secret sauce [is that it’s] a mission-led company that happens to sell oat milk; it’s not a product-led company in search of a mission.”

That mission — sustainability — is more important than bad publicity. Instead of going on the defensive or trying to bury the story, Oatly saw an opportunity to bring more attention to its mission.

Strategic Takeaways for Mission-First Marketing

• This one isn’t for everybody. But if your company is mission first, product second, take advantage of the freedom that gives you.
• If embracing negative publicity is a bridge too far, think about strategies that take advantage of mission-first positioning, like REI (below).

Why This Marketing Strategy Works

Oatly’s strategy may look like it amounts to trolling its haters, but it’s just the outcome of a very nimble marketing plan.

Another one of my favorite examples of mission-first marketing is REI’s #OptOutside campaign, in which the company shuts down both virtual and brick-and-mortar stores every Black Friday.

5. Total by Verizon

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We often remind ourselves to “know your audience” in our marketing plans, but it can also be deployed as a stand-alone marketing strategy. Take a look at what Ogilvy did for this Verizon commercial:

Verizon’s toe-tapping, hip-shaking Totalmente (aka Total by Verizon, a contractless phone plan) ad debuted during Univision’s Spanish-language broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII. The ad reinvents the 1998 Elvis Crespo song “Suavemente,” an earworm if I’ve ever heard one, replacing the lyrics with Total by Verizon features.

Verizon Value’s CMO and VP of Marketing, Cheryl Gresham, has admitted that she didn’t know much about marketing to a majority-Latinx audience.

In an interview with Campaign Live, she said she didn’t think the idea would have gotten off the ground “if it had just been me and a lot of other people that had a background like myself in that room.”

CampaignLive wrote, “Gresham says the team opted for a creative concept that spoke to all the Latinos in the room — despite Gresham herself not understanding the connection.”

Gresham’s marketing strategy hinged on knowing her audience and, just as importantly, trusting her fellow marketers who knew how to reach that audience.

Strategic Takeaways for Demographic Marketing

• Know what you don’t know.
• Foster diversity in marketing leadership and staff.
• Know your audience.

Why This Marketing Strategy Works

The catchy tune and the great storytelling certainly don’t hurt.

But more than that, Ogilvy and Verizon dug deep into Latinx culture — more than 25 years deep — to craft an ad that doesn’t feel like it’s just responding to the latest trend. They also tapped Venezuelan American comedian, musician, and producer Fred Armisen to direct the spot.

6. Chappell Roan

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Singer Chappell Roan’s decade-long overnight success story is well documented by now, but there’s still a lot to learn from the Midwestern princess about personal (re)branding.

Chappell Roan spent nearly 10 years releasing music as Kayleigh Rose, whose sweet girl-next-door appeal found limited success. In addition to talent, hard work, and some good luck — not forces to be taken lightly — Rose rebranded as Roan in 2017.

It wasn’t just a name or hair color change. It was a fully integrated marketing strategy dressed up in red curls and drag makeup.

Sam Stryker, Associate Creative Director at Dentsu Creative, wrote of Roan in a LinkedIn post, “In 2024, social media marketing and traditional marketing are one and the same.”

Stryker notes that Roan’s team capitalized on a combination of old-school and social media strategies, like Roan opening for Olivia Rodrigo’s early 2024 tour and her community-centered social media presence.

Stryker calls it “a powder keg for success.”

Strategic Takeaways for Personal (Re)Branding

• Jump at opportunities.
• Build a 360° strategy that mixes old- and new-school marketing.
• Even (especially!) if your personal rebranding introduces a surprising new look, stick to your core values.

Why This Marketing Strategy Works

Roan’s self-reinvention didn’t feel like she was leaving Kayleigh Rose behind in favor of a slick corporate campaign — it was a singer coming into her own power.

And if it seemed like the whole world discovered Chappell Roan at the same time in early 2024, that’s because she jumped at opportunities across traditional channels and social media.

Authenticity + traditional marketing + social media marketing = an exploding star. A supernova, if you will.

7. Denver International Airport

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“Local marketing” might conjure up visions of slick used-car dealers yelling through megaphones, but Denver International proves that it’s a whole lot more.

Before ground broke on Denver International Airport — this is back in 1989 — the conspiracy theories were already a mile high.

It was the Illuminati’s headquarters. It sat atop miles of secret tunnels and underground bunkers that were used by lizard people who may or may not be extraterrestrials. After the airport opened in 1995, the theories only snowballed.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. And have a little fun while you’re doing it.

That was Stacey Stegman’s marketing strategy when the airport began remodeling in 2018.

The airport’s Senior Vice President of Communications, Marketing, and Customer Experience told the Mission Implausible podcast that when she started, “the team that I worked with was very into disputing every conspiracy … and pushing back when we got questions from the public or passengers.”

Stegman asked herself, “Why are we doing that? Let’s have some fun with it, and let’s talk about it and make it part of who we are and part of our brand.”

The airport went all in on local lore during the 2018 remodel. From the airport that brought you Blucifer:

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Strategic Takeaways for PR Marketing and Local Marketing

• Embrace your local identity. Even if that local identity involves lizard people.
• Don’t be afraid to have fun with a PR campaign.

Why This Marketing Strategy Works

Airports are often nearly indistinguishable from one another, but DIA’s commitment to the bit makes it stand out.

It also gives the airport some personality, which is not a phrase I thought I’d be writing today, but it does make for memorable marketing.

8. HubSpot

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I’ve saved the best for last, so let’s talk about how we do search engine optimization (SEO) here at HubSpot.

More than anywhere else I’ve worked, HubSpot puts a lot of resources behind its SEO.

It’s important for us to rank high on search engine result pages (SERPs) to attract new users to our site. So we create lots of valuable content that’s driven by data — like using monthly search volume (MSV) to make sure we’re answering the questions that our audience (that’s you!) have.

Strategic Takeaways for SEO Marketing

• Know what your audience is searching for — including what follow-up questions they’ll have — and create content for them, not for Google.
• Adapt and evolve, but eyes on the prize: Even though AI is changing the search landscape, great content is still at the root of great SEO.

Why This Marketing Strategy Works

Because we have a long history of creating valuable content, HubSpot.com is highly likely to rank in the SERPs whenever you search Google for relevant keywords.

Good SEO is an essential part of your digital marketing plan, but remember that it’s not going to provide instant gratification. We’ve been adapting our SEO strategies for years, and in this new AI-powered search world, we’re evolving faster than ever.

We’ve made it easy to borrow from our SEO marketing strategies with a ton of free resources.

Marketing Plan FAQs

What is a typical marketing plan?

In my experience, most marketing plans outline the following aspects of a business’ 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 creates a clear road map 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 one or more of the following sections:

• 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, and promotion)
• Measurable goals with defined timelines

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

A good marketing plan also includes your 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 how long 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. No one part is more important 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.

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 might 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 are 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.