One-page Marketing Plan

The benefits of planning are well understood in theory, but in practice few of us carry this through into our businesses effectively.

Based on our theory that what puts people off creating their own marketing plan is the idea that they have to write a report that will run into several pages, and that thought stops them even getting started, we have created a one-page template to make light of the writing.

The health warning is that, although the output may appear simple, creating a one-page plan will still involve a fair degree of hard work and intellectual effort! The fact is that, although you may be able to put your conclusions and actions succinctly into one page, the real hard work in planning is in the process.

You will undoubtedly know a lot about your own market and products, but you need to sort that knowledge, filter it, fill in the gaps and then draw appropriate conclusions in order to have a sound basis for your planning.

Nevertheless the marketing planning approach we use is very simple to follow:

• Where are you now?
• Where are you going?
• How could you get there?
• Which way is best?
• How do you know when you've arrived?

You can download the template here

Ultimately your one-page plan will cover all the basic building blocks of analysis and planning, including dependencies and resources:

• Business objectives (why you are doing this)
• The offer (value proposition)
• Target market (who are you talking to)
• Marketing objectives (translated from the business objectives)
• Marketing budget (an essential factor)

Most importantly it then identifies what is going to be done, by who and when across the marketing mix: product, price, place promotion (the 4ps).

We're writing a series of blogs that will tackle each of these sections in turn, looking at some tools that will help in analysis (or checking gut instinct). I think if you allow an hour or so a week to work through the stages then creating a marketing plan would seem much less painful - and less of a slog to fit into a busy working week.

In the meantime please download the template, try it out (or imagine using it) and let me know what you think. Would a one-page plan help you - or is that still too much of a stretch?

The blogs

As we add to the blog series we'll post the links here to help you create your own one-page marketing plan.

• Introduction - Everyone needs at least a one-page marketing plan
• Marketing Planning - Getting Started
• Marketing Planning - Where are you now?
• Marketing Planning - Where are you going?
• Marketing Planning - How could you get there?
• Marketing Planning - How could you get there, with Product?
• Marketing Planning - How could you get there, with Price?
• Marketing Planning - How could you get there, with Place?
• Marketing Planning - How could you get there, with Promotion?
• Marketing Planning - Which way is best?