A one-page marketing plan anyone can use

Developing a marketing plan is nothing more than setting goals and making a to-do list that will get you there. If you don’t have experience in this area, a sample marketing plan can show you how you can start creating your own marketing strategy.

The process of planning something is time-consuming and exhaustive, but it’s an absolute necessity if you want to be successful. So how do we reconcile our need to succeed with our propensity to procrastinate? In addition to the sample marketing plan, the right marketing strategy template will greatly simplify the process.

But before you start, you need to reframe your planning vision. We hate planning because we remember endless meetings, hours of research that don’t seem to get you any closer to an answer, and documents the size of War and peace. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

It’s really not much different from planning a party.

You basically create a plan to invite more people you like to give you money, then tell others why they should give you their money too. It looks like a party to me. And you?

That’s why I worked on developing a very simple one-page marketing strategy template that can be used to develop marketing plans. I would like to share two different ones with you. They are designed to make you think, plan and earn money, not to write long documents.

Example of a marketing plan

#1 One Page Marketing Plan

The first marketing plan template is one that I freely adapted from the teachings of the original marketing guru, Philip Kotler. (Even he doesn’t believe in hundred-page plans). It’s a simple sheet of paper that outlines the basic components or categories of marketing like your mission/objectives, your target market, your offer, your pricing, your distribution, your communication – you know, those 4 P’s that we love so much in marketing. But the good news is, that’s really all there is to it.

You can find something along these lines in an old book “Marketing Management” that Kotler wrote over 20 years ago, but I think the principles still hold true.

You can use this format as a place to put your big ideas so you can focus on strategies.

I’m making the template available as a Word document – both a blank template and a mock marketing plan example, which you can use as a guide on how to complete the template.

Download blank template #1 (.docx format)

Download the Model Plan Mockup #1 (.docx format)

One Page Marketing Plan #2

The second one-page plan format I use is a combination of the Kotler plan and the Guerrilla Marketing process advocated by Michael McLaughlin. This one isn’t much different from the Kotler plan, but it’s less academic and more focused on the emotional triggers that will make your ideal client choose you.

I also make this template available as Microsoft Word documents that you can download to guide your marketing planning.

Download blank template #2 (.docx format)

Download a sample plan type #2 (.docx format)

So, here are the plans I used – and my hats off to the two masters for giving me a starting point to create these one-page marketing plan templates.

Now I would like to hear from you. What do you think of these one-page marketing plans? What do you use as a marketing plan and why? In what ways would you modify or improve the models that I have proposed? Come on, share your ideas.

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