{"id":188298,"date":"2024-03-26T07:59:31","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T07:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/?p=188298"},"modified":"2025-11-18T11:48:43","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T11:48:43","slug":"marketing-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/marketing\/marketing-strategy\/marketing-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a Marketing Plan and How Do You Create One?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s face it, it\u2019s a bit of a jungle out there when it comes to marketing.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re constantly asking ourselves (or being asked) all the \u2018who, what, when, where, why, and how\u2019 questions, and guess what?<\/p>\n

Developing a thorough marketing plan is the main ingredient to answering all those questions – and to make it thorough, you need good data to contextualize it, optimize it and strategize it.<\/p>\n

In this post, we\u2019ll cover the basics, including how to write a marketing plan\u2026 and the mistakes to avoid.<\/p>\n

What is a marketing plan?<\/h2>\n

A marketing plan is a roadmap that outlines your marketing strategy<\/a> and defines how you will attract and convert (and often, retain) customers. In your marketing plan, you\u2019ll spell out your target audience, your goals, your marketing tactics<\/a> to achieve those goals, and how you\u2019ll measure its success.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll talk more about how to write a marketing plan further down.<\/p>\n

5 types of marketing plans<\/h2>\n

Marketing plans come in all shapes and sizes, depending on your goals, timeframe and team working on it. Here are some of the common types of marketing plans:<\/p>\n

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  1. Business marketing plan<\/strong>: The big-picture marketing plan that looks into how marketing can (and will) support your business goals over an extended period of time.<\/li>\n
  2. Digital marketing plan<\/strong>: Focusing on the digital side of marketing, consider how you can leverage online channels (website, social media and email) to reach your target audience<\/a> and achieve your marketing goals.<\/li>\n
  3. Campaign marketing plan<\/strong>: More of a specific marketing push, a campaign marketing plan outlines the tactics and executions of a single campaign eg. a product launch or building brand awareness<\/a> for a seasonal event.<\/li>\n
  4. Content marketing plan<\/strong>: A content plan that will outline the different content types you will use to reach and resonate with your target audience, to hit your ultimate marketing goals.<\/li>\n
  5. Social media marketing plan<\/strong>: Defining which social media platforms you\u2019ll use, the content you will push on it, and how to make sure you\u2019re getting engagement from the *right* audience.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    How to write a marketing plan<\/h2>\n

    1) Understand your company marketing OKRs<\/h3>\n

    Before you get started on actually writing your marketing plan, you need to have a good understanding of what your company marketing OKRs<\/a> are.<\/p>\n

    OKRs = objective and key results and together, they\u2019ll look something like:<\/p>\n

    [Insert your objective here], as measured by [insert key results].\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

    Without marketing OKRs like this, there is no real marketing strategy \u2013 let alone a marketing plan \u2013 to drive forward to your business\u2019 chosen \u2018destination\u2019.<\/p>\n

    Top tip<\/strong>: Your business doesn\u2019t operate in a vacuum – you will need to benchmark your marketing goals, efforts and performance against others in your industry before committing to your standalone goals to ensure they\u2019re realistic in your competitive landscape<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    For more insight into marketing benchmarking, download our recent report covering how the biggest industries use marketing channels to their advantage (and sometimes, disadvantage).<\/p>\n

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    2) Choose marketing activities to support OKRs<\/h3>\n

    To support and achieve these OKRs, your marketing plan will need to define the marketing activities that you\u2019ll focus on to get you there.<\/p>\n

    This is where you might split your strategy into different marketing channels<\/a> and assign them to the specific team, or \u2013 if you have a smaller marketing team<\/a> \u2013 you will segment your strategy into different focus areas.<\/p>\n

    For example, say you\u2019re looking to achieve more visibility on search. The marketing activities to support this would look something like:<\/p>\n