Marketing Plan Outline: Simple Bulleted Lists To Draft Your Own Outline

Marketing plan outlines document your marketing strategy with the goal of generating focused results. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all marketing plan outline.

That said, there are common components and elements many marketing plan outlines leverage, which may be useful for businesses of all kinds, such as enterprises, nonprofits, small businesses, and more.

Use the following questions to customize your own marketing plan outline and help you create your own marketing plan.

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Executive Summary

• Focus: In as few words as possible, what are the marketing initiatives on which you will spend resources?
• Outcomes: What are the anticipated outcomes of your marketing initiatives?
• Timeline: What is the active timeline of your marketing plan?
• Table Of Contents: What are the contents to follow that outline your marketing approach?

Business Strategy

• Name: What is the name of your business?
• Vision: What is the business’ vision statement?
• Mission: What is the business’ mission statement?
• Summary/Boilerplate: What does your business do?
• Headquarters & Locations: Where does your business operate?
• Leadership: Who are your business’ marketing leaders?
• SWOT Analysis: What are your business’s strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities?

Product Strategy

Per product:

• Target Market: What is the state of the target market, industry, or niche in which your business operates?
• Competitive Situational Analysis: Who are your competitors? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses?
• Customer Analysis & Buyer Persona: Who is your target buyer customer?
• Product/Service Statement: What are you selling? Why are you selling it?
• Unique Selling Proposition (USP): What unique value does your product offer? What is your unique positioning statement?
• Price: What is your pricing strategy? What is your approach for increasing transactional pricing?
• Place: Where will you distribute your product? What is your distribution plan?
• Promotion: How will you market your product? What is your unique offer?
• Market Strategy: How will you stand out from the competition to uniquely reach your target buyer?

Marketing Strategy

• Goals: What are your marketing goals?
• Objectives: What are your marketing objectives? What are your key results (OKRs)?
• Metrics & Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): How will you measure success?
• Initiatives: What will you do to influence results?
• Tactics: What marketing tactics will you leverage to reach your target buyer?
• Channels: What marketing channels will you use to reach your target market?
• Content: What types of content, media, collateral, and marketing materials will you publish?
• Roles: What marketing team roles are necessary to execute your marketing strategy?
• Responsibilities: What are each role’s unique responsibilities?
• Partnerships: What agencies, joint ventures, co-marketing, and third parties are a part of your marketing strategy?
• Tools: What marketing tools and software will you need?
• Process(es): How will these roles collaborate?
• Monitoring & Controls: How will you approve marketing work?
• Tracking: When will you gather results? How will you communicate the results?
• Timeline(s): What will you achieve in specific weeks, months, and quarters? What is your content schedule?
• Contingency Plan(s): What will you do if marketing initiatives fail?
• Budget: How much will you spend on tactics, channels, content, roles, partnerships, and tools? When will you spend?
• Financial Projections: What is your anticipated return on ad spend (ROAS)? When do you expect a return on investment (ROI)?

See how real-life brands put outlines like this into practice with these marketing plan examples. And don’t forget to grab your own marketing plan template to help you kickstart your own plan. You’ve got this!