The Insanely Simple One-Page Marketing Plan Template

Every concern needs a selling plan. It helps usher your selling efforts and keeps you connected way to deed your selling objectives. 

The occupation is that creating 1 tin get complicated, really complicated.

It’s not truthful atrocious if you’re acquainted with selling jargon and acronyms similar SWOT and KPI. But if you’ve ne'er created 1 earlier and privation to deed the crushed running, it tin consciousness similar you request an MBA successful Marketing conscionable to get started. 

That’s wherefore we created the one-page selling plan.

You’ll larn however to capable it successful soon but first, let’s marque definite we recognize the basics…

• What is simply a selling plan?
• Marketing program vs. strategy vs. tactics vs. objectives
• How to make a selling plan

A selling program is simply a roadmap for executing your selling strategy implicit a fixed play of time, usually a year.

Despite galore radical utilizing these presumption interchangeably, they’re precise antithetic things. 

Here’s the simplest mode to explicate them:

• Objective: What you privation to achieve.
• Strategy: How you’ll do it.
• Tactics: The methods you’ll use.
• Plan: Everything mapped retired truthful you tin instrumentality action.

For instance, ideate that you privation to get from London to Paris connected a budget. Your objective, strategy, tactics, and program mightiness look thing like this: 

• Objective: Get from London to Paris for nether $100.
• Strategy: Use nationalist transportation.
• Tactics: Bus, tube, and Eurostar.
• Plan: Get the autobus to the conduit station, get the conduit to St Pancras, get the Eurostar to Paris.

You tin spot however it would beryllium hard to execute your strategy without the program due to the fact that you wouldn’t cognize whether to get the train, tram, oregon metro first. The program explains however everything fits unneurotic truthful you tin instrumentality action. 

It’s the aforesaid with marketing. Your selling program explains however your marketing tactics fit unneurotic to execute your marketing strategy and execute your marketing objectives.

Start by making a transcript of the selling program template. You’ll spot that it revolves astir answering 4 elemental questions. Let’s spell done however to reply these. 

Question 1. Who are you targeting?

If you’re creating a selling plan, you should already person done your market research and developed your marketing strategy. And that means you should already person a beauteous bully thought of who you’re targeting. However, it’s adjuvant to reiterate this successful your selling program to support you focused and on track. 

For example, if we were putting unneurotic a selling program for Ahrefs, we might put:

SEO professionals and website owners who privation to thrust much postulation to their websites.

This is simply a precise simplified mentation of who we’re targeting, but it’s capable to acceptable america connected the right track.

Question 2. What are your objectives?

You’re not creating a selling program for the amusive of it. You’re creating 1 to representation retired however you’ll (hopefully) execute immoderate selling objectives. So you request to specify what those objectives are.

These tin beryllium beauteous overmuch thing you like, but they should ideally be SMART.

Unfortunately, this is 1 portion of selling jargon we person to tackle, but it’s beauteous straightforward and conscionable means that your objectives should be: 

• Specific. They should intelligibly authorities the desired outcome.
• Measurable. They should be thing you tin way the occurrence of. 
• Achievable. They should beryllium realistic. 
• Relevant. They should align with your wide concern objectives.
• Timely. They should person a clip framework attached to them.

For example, here’s a atrocious selling objective:

Increase integrated traffic

Here’s a good one:

Increase integrated hunt visibility successful the US from 3 to 6% successful the adjacent 12 months.

Only the second is SMART. The erstwhile is excessively vague, has nary clip framework attached to it, and isn’t measurable. The latter, connected the different hand, is specific, has a 12-month clip frame, and is easy measurable successful Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker:

Generally speaking, it’s champion to person a fewer objectives but nary much than a handful. Any less, and you won’t execute much. Any more, and you’ll dispersed yourself too thin. 

If you’re struggling to deliberation of applicable selling objectives for your business, you mightiness privation to instrumentality inspiration from the examples successful our usher to mounting selling objectives.

Question 3. How volition you execute your objectives?

Placing goalposts is easy, but scoring a extremity is hard. That’s wherefore you present request to get circumstantial and deliberation astir the tactics you’ll usage to execute your selling objectives and however overmuch they’ll cost. 

Remember that your tactics should ever align with your marketing strategy and objectives. Don’t conscionable pluck them retired of bladed aerial oregon opt for shiny caller tactics. Consider what tactics align with your selling strategy and spell from there.

For example, our selling strategy is beauteous elemental astatine its core:

Help our people assemblage lick their SEO and selling problems with the assistance of our tools by creating informative and utile content about topics they’re searching for

Because your strategy should ever dictate the tactics you use, it’s wide that immoderate tactics we usage volition beryllium content-related. This is besides wide from the nonsubjective we acceptable ourselves successful the erstwhile section:

Increase integrated hunt visibility successful the US from 3% to 6% successful the adjacent 12 months.

So what tactics should we utilize to execute this objective?

Given the nonsubjective itself, there’s truly lone 1 happening we tin bash here: SEO. However, if we truly privation to make an actionable selling program for ourselves, we request to beryllium much specific. 

This is wherever a spot of probe is needed…

If we scroll down to our tracked keywords successful Rank Tracker and benignant by estimated traffic, we tin spot the keywords wherever our hunt visibility is debased oregon non-existent:

To amended our integrated hunt visibility for these keywords, determination are a fewer tactics we could use. However, to support things simple, let’s accidental that rewriting the posts that people them seems similar the astir viable tactic. 

Let’s besides presume that we don’t person the manpower to rewrite each of these posts, truthful we’ll absorption connected the astir low-hanging opportunities. That would astir apt beryllium the posts that people high-volume keywords and presently fertile good but not great. 

Here’s however we tin filter for these keywords successful Rank Tracker:

Now, it looks similar a fewer of those keywords (“youtube tags”, “what is https,” etc.) don’t align peculiarly good with our people assemblage of website owners, truthful we’ll exclude those.

This leaves america with astir 80 keywords, which equates to 80 posts to rewrite.

Next, we request to estimation however overmuch each of this is going to cost us. 

This is simply a important measurement that you shouldn’t neglect arsenic there’s nary constituent successful creating a pastry successful the entity selling plan. It needs to beryllium realistic, doable, and immoderate numbers should really beryllium based connected thing (not plucked retired of thin air). 

Given that we bash contented rewrites in-house, it makes the astir consciousness for america to basal outgo estimations connected however overmuch clip we deliberation each of this volition instrumentality our squad (and however overmuch we pay them).

To support things simple, let’s accidental that the numbers look like this:

Time per rewrite: 20 hours.
Cost per hour: $20
Number of rewrites: 80

Based connected these numbers, it looks similar it volition outgo america astir $32k and 1,600 antheral hours to execute this tactic. That mightiness dependable similar a batch but it’s little than 1 full-time employee’s yearly moving hours.

Repeat this process arsenic galore times arsenic indispensable to physique retired a database of tactics you’ll usage to deed your selling objective(s).

Learn more: 16 Marketing Tactics That Work in 2021

Question 4. When volition you bash everything?

Marketing plans screen a circumstantial play of time, truthful it mightiness look similar the reply to this question is obvious. If you’re creating a 12-month selling plan, past the tactics you outlined successful the erstwhile measurement request to beryllium done successful that timeframe.

Although this is true, simply having a database of things to bash implicit the people of a twelvemonth isn’t precise actionable. It’s amended to interruption things down into manageable chunks truthful you tin way advancement passim the year. 

How overmuch you interruption things down is up to you, but a quarterly program is simply a bully starting point.

Here’s what that mightiness look similar for our maneuver of rewriting 80 low-performing blog posts:

This mightiness look similar a tiny and insignificant change, but it means that we tin reappraisal our advancement each 4th to support things connected track. For example, if we find that lone 10 posts person been rewritten aft the archetypal quarter, past we mightiness request to intervene and optimize workflows to guarantee we conscionable our objectives by the extremity of the year.

Planning tactics connected a quarterly ground besides helps you to allocate resources much efficiently.

For example, let’s accidental that different 1 of our selling tactics was to update a clump of blog posts successful Q4 to maximize postulation from “2022” queries successful the caller year. Our contented squad would beryllium beauteous overwhelmed if they were besides expected to rewrite 20 low-performing posts successful the aforesaid quarter, truthful this would astir apt beryllium a amended plan:

You mightiness adjacent privation to see color-coding your quarterly program to amusement which squad is liable for which task. This volition marque it easier to spot erstwhile teams are apt to beryllium overloaded and program accordingly.

Final thoughts

Given that astir selling plans tally dozens oregon adjacent hundreds of pages, our one-page program is admittedly very oversimplified. But that’s the point. It helps you get the basics down connected insubstantial arsenic accelerated arsenic imaginable without having to contend with endless selling jargon and acronyms. 

Got questions? Ping maine on Twitter.