A marketing plan is a document that sets out what the company wants to achieve in a given period, through which channels, with what budget, and who is responsible for each part. A usable plan contains a business goal translated into marketing indicators, a description of target customers, a breakdown of the budget across channels, a schedule of the main campaigns and a method of evaluation. There is no point writing it as an extensive document full of analyses that no one opens – it is the decisions that have value, not their justification. A practical format is a plan a few pages long, reviewed quarterly, because conditions change and an annual plan without revision goes stale. A key part is usually what the company will not do – without this delineation, the budget gets fragmented across too many channels.
See also: Company marketing budget, Channel mix, KPIs for a marketer.
