Marketing Strategy Template

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy consists of all the research and strategies required to successfully carry out a marketing venture. It involves documenting business goals, current business situation, target customers, and KPIs to track marketing success. Creating a marketing strategy plan template is the easiest way to wrap your head around all these things. In this blog, we’ll delve into the benefits of using a marketing strategy as well as provide a template for marketing strategy.

What are the benefits of a marketing strategy?

1. Clarifies Goals

It’s easy to lose clarity of what exactly you’re trying to achieve in the vague, overarching pursuit of ‘marketing’. Having a marketing strategy gives you focused direction and keeps you on track to succeed. Research has shown that companies that actively strategize a project before it begins have three times more success than companies that don’t.

2. Identifies Target Customer

If you wanted to market big, fluffy teddy bears, would you put print ads through old pensioners’ letter boxes? I’d think not. A marketing strategy identifies your target audience so that you can market your product in the most appropriate way, time, and place.

3. Defines Your USP

To successfully market a product, you must first consider your unique selling point. Knowing what separates you from others allows you to broadcast your value so customers choose you over others.

4. Identifies Competitors

To get the most customers possible, you need to make sure people choose you over your competitors. Once you know who they are, you can take a look at what they are offering and see how a) you can do better and b) market the aspects that you have, but competitors don’t.

5. Creates Consistency

Documenting a marketing strategy template that all team members have access to promotes collaboration. When your team works collaboratively on a marketing goal, the chances of success are great, as opposed to when everyone works on something else.

What is included in a marketing strategy plan?

1. Business Summary

Details of your company, e.g., name, location, and services, to share with stakeholders.

2. SWOT Analysis

Identify your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

3. Competitor Analysis

Analyze who competitors are, what they are offering, and who their customers are.

4. Marketing Goals

Define what you're trying to achieve with your marketing efforts and how that aligns with business goals.

5. Market Research

Collect data on target customers, where they can be found, and how to best reach them.

6. Marketing Strategy

Determine what activities will be included in your marketing campaign.

7. Budget

Document how much you can afford to spend on a marketing project.

8. Key Performance Indicators

Identify how you are going to track marketing success, e.g. achieving a certain amount of views per month on social media.

9. Marketing Channels

Define what channels you’ll use to broadcast marketing messages, e.g., email, TV, and social media.

10. Marketing Technology

Details what technology you’ll need for this marketing campaign, e.g., computers, marketing software, and what you’ll use each for.

11. Marketing Team

Plan who is going to be part of the marketing project.

11. Risk Management Plan

Clarify what risks are involved and how they will be addressed.

How to create a marketing strategy in 8 easy steps

Now that we’ve defined what’s included in a marketing project planner let’s talk about actually writing a marketing plan using the steps below.

1. Conduct a business analysis

Quite literally how it sounds, this first step involves taking stock of where your business stands internally and externally. A SWOT analysis tells you how you’re doing internally while researching competitors’ offerings, and the current market gives you an external view of your business.

2. Identify stakeholders

It’s important to clarify which people are involved/affected by a marketing venture. This will determine whom you need to run plans by and who needs to be communicated with.

3. Define the target audience

To plan your marketing project effectively, you need to know to whom you are trying to bring your message. This includes their pain points, their age, and budget, to name a few.

4. Organize a team

Who is going to be involved in this project, and what role will each member take on? These questions are answered in this part of the project plan.

5. Define tasks

A marketing project is made up of many tasks to achieve the ultimate goal. In this step, tasks should be broken down into SMART tasks - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound.

6. Create a schedule

When are tasks going to be completed? With the deadline in mind, a timeline is created to fit each task on time.

7. Decide on a budget

How much can you afford to spend on this marketing project? Once this has been decided, the budget should be broken down according to tasks. In addition, someone must be put in charge and held accountable for the budget.

8. Create a risk management plan

As all PMs know, no project ever goes exactly according to plan. The difference, though, is how well risks are planned for. By thinking through potential risks, they can be preempted or at least dealt with successfully.