My First Marketing Plan

“Have you created a business marketing plan?” my favorite business school teacher asked me. “No, not yet, I was kind of hoping…” but before I could finish he cut me off.

Look if you haven’t created a business marketing plan, there probably isn’t too much I can help you with. 

I was a little taken aback, this was my favorite teacher, we had a great relationship and often joked around with one another, I couldn’t understand why he was being so cold. In retrospect, this was one of his final lessons. This was the point when I realized I was in the real world and needed to put my big boy pants on. He went on to make the point that while he knew a lot about marketing, he wasn’t familiar with the industry that I was in or what resources I had (frankly I didn’t really either). If I wasn’t going to use the basic knowledge and skills they had already taught me, I didn’t deserve their advanced opinions.

This was my first job out of college, working in the solar industry. Surprisingly when I went back and built my own business marketing plan, the ideas I was seeking began to flow out of me. This is now something that I routinely ask people for and if it doesn’t exist, often make it a priority to create. Everyone often feelsBu that they know the ins and outs of their business but until you actually take the time to put things on paper (or in a document) are you really able to grasp the full picture.

What goes into a business marketing plan?

A good plan is broken into two parts (i) analysis and (ii) actions. The analysis is further broken into two parts (i) internal and (ii) external. Here is an example outline for a business plan.

Business Marketing Plan

I. Internal Analysis

A. Mission

B. Stated Objectives / Goals

C. Operations

i. Management / Roles / Organization
ii. Finance / Budget
iii. Responsibilities

D. Marketing Mix

i. Product
ii. Price
iii. Promotion
iv. Placement (Distribution)

II. External Analysis

A. Competition

i. Primary / direct competitors
ii. Secondary / indirect competitors

B. Target Market

i. Customer profiles
ii. Target demographic
iii. Profiles
iv. Customer/buyer personas

C. Legal and Regulatory

D. Social

E. Political

F. Technology

G. Economics

H. Industry

III. Action Plan

A. SWOT Analysis

Strengths                    Weaknesses

Opportunities              Threats

B. Marketing Mix Recommendations

i. idea 1
ii. idea 2
iii. idea 3
iv. idea 4
v. idea 5

C. Going Forward

D. Implementation, Control, and Evaluation

IV. Additional Notes / Appendix

Example Marketing Plan

Here is a link to view a draft of one of the first marketing plans I created in 2012. My more recent plans have a lot more detail and are much more refined. I am releasing this plan because it brought a great deal of success and enough time has passed that I am not compromising any business activity.

Note: Some information has been removed but it should provide a general idea.

Google Docs: Business Marketing Plan

Word Doc Download: Business Marketing Plan