Marketing Project Plans: What You Need to Know [2025]

Blog originally published April 2024, updated December 2024

“Hey team, says Big Boss, we need to market this business!”

“Sure Boss, says team, we’ll go ahead and…uh…”

Create a marketing plan, that’s what! Everyone knows that good marketing contributes hugely to the bottom line, but how many businesses take the time to thoroughly strategize and plan their marketing projects?

In this blog, we’ll explore how marketing project plans can transform your marketing from ‘meh’ to ‘YEAH!’

Let’s begin with defining what exactly a marketing plan project is.

What is a marketing project plan?

A marketing project plan 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.

There’s no shortage of ways to market a business, but marketing your business in a way that will bring in your type of customer is a skill that requires careful planning.

What are the benefits of a marketing plan?

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 plan gives you focused direction and keeps you on track to succeed.

2. Identifies target customer

 If you wanted to market big, fluffy teddy bears, would you put print ads through old, pensioner’s letter boxes? A marketing plan 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 

Why do you need to know who your competitors are? 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 planning project 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 plan?

1. Business Summary

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

2. SWOT analysis 

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

3. Competitor analysis 

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

4. Marketing goals

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

5. Market research

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

6. Marketing strategy

Determines what activities will be included in your marketing campaign.

7. Budget 

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

8. Key performance indicators

 Identifies 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

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

11. Risk management plan

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

How to create a marketing project plan in 8 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

 In order 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 in a timely manner.

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 dealt with successfully.

For a more in-depth guide on how to create a marketing project plan, check out this guide.

Examples of Marketing Plans

Marketing plans can take on various different forms. A few marketing plan project ideas are; a digital marketing project plan,  a social media marketing plan, and a print marketing plan. We’ll use a social media marketing plan in this example:

An established sports brand wants to promote a new type of sportswear material designed to prevent sweat patches. They already have a strong media presence and want to leverage this to promote their new product. In order to successfully market the product, they need to plan this carefully, answering questions like:

• What is our current business situation?
• What do we aim to achieve with this marketing project?
• Who is our target audience, and where can we find them?
• What is our budget for this project?
• Who are the stakeholders in this project?
• Who is going to be on the project team?
• What are the risks involved, and what will we do about them?

How can Workamajig help you with your marketing project plans?

Workamajig’s project management software is built just for creative teams and helps thousands of agencies plan and carry out projects on a daily basis.

With Workamajig, you get to:

• Know the full story with a real-time daily feed of all updates across projects
• See all items needing attention in one place with budget and timeline warnings
• Create, customize & export reports plus built-in Gantt & burn charts for your visual learners

• Make manual project setup (and finicky spreadsheets) a thing of the past & create fully-scheduled projects with just a few clicks

• Workamajig’s powerful project templates help you kick off your creative projects with ready-to-go schedules & resourcing needs.
• The flexibility you need. Copy from a template & edit to match your new project's needs
• Easily view and manage the exact resources, hours, and budgets for new projects
• Visualize project tasks, dependencies, and complete timelines with built-in Gantt charts

Organize your marketing projects in one place from the very first touch