1. Overview

Before you jump into “doing” marketing or spending any money on marketing, it’s essential to pull everything together in a Marketing Action Plan. This section takes you step-by-step through the process of preparing your Marketing Action Plan.

2. Practical marketing planning

Just as your business plan is the roadmap for your business, your marketing action plan helps you to plan, control and keep track of your marketing activity.

A marketing action plan is a practical guide. It enables you to see all your marketing activity at a glance. It is not set in stone and is a dynamic document that can be adjusted as your business changes.

3. Marketing Action Plan

Your Marketing Action Plan doesn’t have to be long and complicated. This example covers all the main areas:

1. Your marketing goals and objectives

  • how much business do you want?
  • what does this mean in terms of numbers of customers?
  • how many people do you have to reach to get that number of customers?

2. Define your customers

  • who are your customers?
  • include your ideal customer profile

3. Your marketing strategies

  • how are you going to get potential customers?
  • how often are you going to get to them?
  • how much will you spend to achieve this?
  • which activities have been the mosy effective so far?

4. Action Plan

  • when are you doing what?
  • who will do it?
  • what resources do you need?
  • how much will it cost
  • how will you measure results?

5. Marketing Action Plan Schedule

  • prepare a 12-month plan of your marketing activities
  • show where each activity should be started

6. Your Marketing Diary

  • put each activity in your diary, so you know what to do and when
  • include the numbers - what results you expect to achieve
  • plan a weekly and monthly review

7. Monitoring, evaluation and control

  • what are you measuring? (number of enquiries, appointments, customers, where enquiries come from, number of enquiries from each activity, conversion of enquiries to appointments, appointments to sales, cost of getting enquiries, of getting customers)

Download this Marketing action plan template (MS Word 17kb) to guide you. 

This BOSS course may also help you with the knowledge needed to draw up a plan.

(BOSS Digital courses created by Business Wales to support starting and running a business. Sign in/Registration is required).

Next: Selling for Success