How to Create a One Page Marketing Plan

Only 50% of small business owners have a marketing plan for their business. Maybe that’s because they think that it has to be this long and complicated document. Well, it doesn’t. In this guide, you’re going to learn how to streamline your marketing efforts and increase your chances for marketing success by using a simple one-page marketing plan template.

What is a One Page Marketing Plan?

A one-page marketing plan is an executive summary of your marketing strategy, marketing objectives and marketing activities all on a single page.

It’s different from a traditional marketing plan in that it’s more like an executive summary of what you’ve learned from your market research, SWOT analysis and the decisions that you’ve made about how your marketing is going to go for a specific period of time.

• READ MORE: 10 Ways to Take Your Current Marketing Plan to the Next Level

Why a One Page Marketing Plan Should be Part of Your Marketing Strategy

Small businesses don’t require a comprehensive marketing plan. Instead, they need an actionable one page marketing plan that enables them to:

1. Focus your team on your goals: Share your 1-page marketing plan with your marketing department, your entire team, and even your vendors so that everyone knows what your priorities are.
2. Stay within your marketing budget: Once you’ve specified your specific marketing strategies and tactics, you’ll only be spending money on those items and you won’t waste money on tools or programs that aren’t relevant to the success of your marketing plan.
3. Generate leads: Your digital marketing campaign will fit within your entire business plan and help you achieve your marketing goals faster.
4. Track key performance indicators:  In order to measure the success of your marketing plan, you’ll want to track key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs can be different for every business, but some common ones are website visits, social media followers, email subscribers, and conversion rates.

• READ MORE: Top Tips for a Great Small Business Marketing Plan (INFOGRAPHIC)

What to Include in Your Marketing Plan and How to Create One

Now that you recognize the advantages of a one-page marketing plan let’s examine in detail what elements should be incorporated into your marketing plan.

The key to a successful marketing plan is making sure that you’re following the marketing process:

Market Research and SWOT Analysis

This is the first step to any marketing activity. Your goal here is to make sure that there is a market and demand for what you’re selling.

Understanding your market and analyzing your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) is crucial. Consider these points:

• Competitor Analysis: Evaluate your competitors’ strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. Understand their market positioning and customer base.
• Industry Trends: Keep abreast of the latest trends in your industry. This helps in anticipating future market shifts and identifying new opportunities.
• Customer Feedback: Regularly gather feedback from your customers. This can provide insights into what’s working and what’s not, aiding in making more informed decisions.

Target market

This is a description of your ideal customer. Sometimes businesses will start with a target audience and create a product or service to solve their problem and sometimes a business will start with a product or service and adjust it to meet a market need.

In addition to creating buyer personas, consider these points:

• Market Segmentation: Break down your target market into smaller segments based on criteria like demographics, behavior, or needs. This helps in creating more targeted and effective marketing strategies.
• Customer Pain Points: Identify the specific problems or needs your target market faces. Tailoring your offerings to address these pain points can significantly enhance your market relevance.

Offer

This is a bundle of what you’re selling. It includes any products, services, price, packaging, and how it’s delivered. This is often called “The Four Ps” and includes the Product, Price, Promotion, and Place.

Beyond the Four Ps, consider these factors to make your offering stand out:

• Unique Value Proposition (UVP): Clearly articulate what makes your product or service unique and why customers should choose you over competitors.
• Bundling and Upselling: Create bundles of products or services and opportunities for upselling. This can increase the perceived value and encourage higher purchase amounts.

Marketing Strategy

People will tell you that there are dozens of marketing strategies. However, there are only three: content marketing (inbound marketing), direct marketing (direct response marketing), and advertising. Your marketing strategy defines how you intend to attract customers.

Integrating Digital Strategies in Marketing

Given the importance of digital presence, add these elements:

• Online Presence: Ensure your business has a strong online presence. This includes an optimized website, active social media profiles, and a content marketing strategy.
• Digital Marketing Tactics: Incorporate digital marketing tactics such as SEO, PPC advertising, and email marketing to reach a broader audience and drive online engagement.

Implementation

This includes the marketing tactics and channels that you’re going to use to generate leads. For example, email, video, SEO, webinars, or advertising.

With all of these marketing basics in hand, you can use your one-page marketing plan template to document your decisions on a single piece of paper.

Mission Statement

Putting your mission statement or marketing message theme at the top of your marketing plan is a great way to keep you and your team focused on the right marketing message throughout the year.

As you go through the marketing plan, always go back to the mission statement or marketing message that you laid out and make sure that the campaigns you’ve outlined are in line with the brand promise you’ve laid out.

The mission statement is the compass that guides your marketing journey. Just like a North Star, it sets the direction for your entire marketing strategy and ensures that every initiative you take aligns with the core values and objectives of your brand.

Starting your one-page marketing plan with a clear, concise mission statement serves as a constant reminder of what your brand stands for and what you aim to achieve.

Purpose of a Mission Statement

• Clarity: It offers a clear perspective on the brand’s objectives, ensuring that all marketing efforts have a unified goal.
• Alignment: A mission statement ensures that every department, from product development to sales, aligns with a shared vision.
• Motivation: It acts as a source of inspiration for your team, motivating them to work towards a common objective.

Crafting a Powerful Mission Statement

• Simplicity: Aim for brevity and impact. A mission statement should not be long; rather, it should effectively convey the core essence of your brand.
• Specificity: Avoid vague statements. Clearly define who you are as a brand and what you aim to achieve.
• Authenticity: Your mission statement should reflect the genuine values and goals of your brand. Avoid generic statements that could apply to any company.

Integrating the Mission Statement into Your Marketing Plan

• Consistency: Every marketing campaign, advertisement, or content you produce should echo the sentiments of your mission statement. This consistency helps in building a strong brand identity.
• Evaluation: Regularly evaluate your marketing initiatives against the mission statement. If a campaign doesn’t align, reconsider its relevance and adjust accordingly.
• Reinforcement: Periodically revisit and, if necessary, revise your mission statement. As your brand grows and evolves, your mission might too.

• READ MORE: Create a Standout Marketing Plan with These 3 Innovative Tips

Business Objectives and Marketing Objectives

Your business objectives are the goals that you want to achieve, while your marketing objectives are how you plan to use marketing activities to help you reach those goals.

For example, if your goal is to increase sales, then one of your marketing objectives might be increasing website traffic by 10%.

Business Objectives Vs Marketing Objectives

Logos and other Branding

Since this will be an internal plan, the logos serve more than just to identify your brand; they are intended to display the specific logo or logos that you will incorporate into your one page marketing plan. For instance, you may utilize special logos for holiday promotions, or you might have different logos designated for featured products that you are launching or promoting.

You can also include a link to a shared folder that holds all the approved branding and marketing assets you will be utilizing in your plan.

• READ MORE: Marketing Courses To Help Your Small Business

Company Name or Product Names

In addition to your logos and branding, be sure to include any product names, service names, or campaign names that are associated with your plan.

Target Market – Create Buyer Personas

Who is the ideal customer for your product or service? Outline the physical characteristics of your target audience or customer.

In this marketing plan, we are focusing on describing PEOPLE and not organizations because people make buying decisions. This is also known as a buyer persona.

Imagine you had a video camera following your ideal customer around. What would the camera capture? Also, consider adding their frustrations and what’s important to them when they are thinking about buying your product or service.

Example:
Upscale households with incomes between $65,000 and $500,000 with an emphasis on female decision-makers between the ages of 30 and 55.

Positioning Statement – How Will You Set Yourself Apart from Other Alternatives

This is another way of saying what you want to be known for.

A great positioning statement comes from answers to three questions –

• Who are you BEING as a business? Are you adventurous, attentive, bold, brainy or cheerful?
• What is the purpose of your business? Do you provide 30-minute delivery or guarantee a tenfold return on investment? Is your product or service something that everyone should have access to? Is your product made in America? Etc.
• What can I count on you for? This might be something that people are always telling you that you or your company consistently delivers. Example:
  (YOUR COMPANY NAME) is known for (WHO YOU’RE BEING) committed to (YOUR COMMITMENT). Customers can count on us to consistently (WHAT I COUNT ON YOU FOR).

Offering to Customers

Think of your product or service offering as a present that you give to your customer. It’s more than just the product or service.

It’s the “who, what, when, where, how and how much” of your product or service.

Example:
“Family Night Tuesdays” is an offering a movie theater or restaurant might have. On Family Night Tuesdays you can watch a matinee movie and get a free large popcorn all for $5 a person.

Price Strategy

This isn’t so much about exactly what your price is. It’s how you want to price your product or service.

Will you be priced at a premium such as a luxury item or do you want to be known for having a low-value price? If you have a service, will you price it by the hour or will you use a flat fee?

Example:
Our landscaping offers will be priced 20% above the competition. Our products and services will be premium brands and we guarantee that the work will be done on budget and on time. No surprises.

Distribution

How are you going to get your product or service within arm’s reach of your customer? You can use direct salespeople, distributors or the internet.

Example:
We will sell our product in retail stores as well as online via our company website.

Sales Strategy

How will you sell your product to your customers? How will you educate your customers about your product? How much will you grow the business?

Example:
We will grow sales by 20% per year by introducing new products and services to existing customers.

Service Strategy

How will you provide service to your customers? What methods will they use to contact you, and how will you respond to their inquiries? This is also a good place to outline your service policy.

Example:
We will service all clients using an online customer service portal “Get satisfaction”. Customers are free to test products for 30 days free of charge.

Promotion Strategy

How will you get the word out about your product? What marketing channels will you use?

Example:
We will promote our products through blogging and article marketing, social media and joint venture partnerships with experts who have complementary products.

Marketing Research

In this section, you want to present your research as a talking point. What’s the burning issue that your offer is solving?

Example:
50% of small businesses don’t have a website. 30 % of these small businesses are overwhelmed by the technology involved in creating a website.

Measuring Success

How are you going to track your success? If email marketing is a tactic that you’re using, you might decide to measure open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. If you’re using SEO, you might track website traffic from Google, or social media and then look at conversion rates.

Example:

We will build our Facebook group to 10,000 members. Our average email open rate goal is 30% with a click-through rate of 5% and a conversion rate of 2%.

Any Other Component of Your Marketing Plan

This is the section where you can put in any other ideas that you are thinking about. Perhaps you’ve thought about using webinars to sell your product or online videos for training. This is the place to put those miscellaneous ideas or potential marketing campaigns.

Here are a few more ideas of what you can put in this section:

• A marketing calendar of marketing campaign plans
• Any direct response marketing ideas such as email campaigns, promotional webinars, etc.
• Forecast of your marketing expenses

• READ MORE: Marketing Locally? 11 Ways to Make Your Interactions More Personal

Monitoring and Adjusting the Plan

A one-page marketing plan should be dynamic. Here’s how you can keep it updated:

• Regular Reviews: Set a schedule to review and update your marketing plan regularly. This ensures that your strategies remain aligned with your business goals and market changes.
• Flexibility: Be prepared to pivot your strategies based on performance data and market feedback. Flexibility is key to responding to changing market conditions effectively.

Including a Call-to-Action (CTA)

End your one-page marketing plan with a strong CTA:

• Actionable Steps: Define clear, actionable steps that your team needs to take to implement the plan.
• Motivation and Direction: Use the CTA to motivate your team and provide clear direction on the immediate next steps.

One Page Marketing Plan Template

This might sound like a lot, but it’s a lot easier than you think. Here’s a free template that you can use to lay out your winning marketing campaigns and ideas.

You can use this digital marketing plan template right out of the box as a way to identify gaps in your knowledge or skill gaps in your marketing team.

Use this form to get started. Then once you get the hang of it, feel free to create your own personalized marketing plan.

Image: Envato Elements

This article, "How to Create a One Page Marketing Plan" was first published on Small Business Trends