business plan for market project

Project Management Business Plan Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Project Management Business Plan

Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 500 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their project management companies.

If you’re unfamiliar with creating a project management business plan, you may think creating one will be a time-consuming and frustrating process. For most entrepreneurs it is, but for you, it won’t be since we’re here to help. We have the experience, resources, and knowledge to help you create a great business plan.

In this article, you will learn some background information on why business planning is important. Then, you will learn how to write a project management business plan step-by-step so you can create your plan today.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here >

What Is a Business Plan?

A business plan provides a snapshot of your project management business as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategies for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.

Why You Need a Business Plan

If you’re looking to start a project management business or grow your existing project management company, you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your project management business to improve your chances of success. Your project management business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.

Sources of Funding for Project Management Businesses

With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for a project management business are personal savings, credit cards, bank loans, and angel investors. When it comes to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the loan officer will not only want to ensure that your financials are reasonable, but they will also want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business. Personal savings and bank loans are the most common funding paths for project management companies.

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How to write a business plan for a project management business.

If you want to start a project management business or expand your current one, you need a business plan. The guide below details the necessary information for how to write each essential component of your project management business plan.

Executive Summary

Your executive summary provides an introduction to your business plan, but it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.

The goal of your executive summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the kind of project management business you are running and the status. For example, are you a startup, do you have a project management business that you would like to grow, or are you operating a chain of project management businesses?

Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan.

• Give a brief overview of the project management industry.
• Discuss the type of project management business you are operating.
• Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers.
• Provide a snapshot of your marketing strategy. Identify the key members of your team.
• Offer an overview of your financial plan.

Company Overview

In your company overview, you will detail the type of project management business you are operating.

For example, you might specialize in one of the following types of project management businesses:

• Marketing project management : this type of project management involves overseeing projects related to marketing and advertising.
• Construction project management: this type of project management involves overseeing responsibilities related to planning and the logistics of a construction project.
• Engineering project management: this type of project management is responsible for overseeing engineering projects to ensure they’re completed appropriately.
• IT project management: this type of project management involves overseeing job duties such as establishing IT goals, overseeing the IT team’s processes and ensuring all project-related employees have the necessary resources to complete the project.

In addition to explaining the type of project management business you will operate, the company overview needs to provide background on the business.

Include answers to questions such as:

• When and why did you start the business?
• What milestones have you achieved to date? Milestones could include the number of clients served, the number of clients with positive outcomes, reaching X number of clients served, etc.
• Your legal business Are you incorporated as an S-Corp? An LLC? A sole proprietorship? Explain your legal structure here.

Industry Analysis

In your industry or market analysis, you need to provide an overview of the project management industry.

While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.

First, researching the project management industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating.

Secondly, market research can improve your marketing strategy, particularly if your analysis identifies market trends.

The third reason is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.

The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section of your project management business plan:

• How big is the project management industry (in dollars)?
• Is the market declining or increasing?
• Who are the key competitors in the market?
• Who are the key suppliers in the market?
• What trends are affecting the industry?
• What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?
• What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential target market for your project management business? You can extrapolate such a figure by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local population.

Customer Analysis

The customer analysis section of your project management business plan must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.

The following are examples of customer segments: small businesses, midsize companies and corporations.

As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of project management business you operate. Clearly, corporations would respond to different marketing promotions than small businesses, for example.

Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles. With regards to demographics, including a discussion of the ages, genders, locations, and income levels of the potential customers you seek to serve.

Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target customers. The more you can recognize and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.

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Competitive Analysis

Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.

Direct competitors are other project management businesses.

Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t directly competing with your product or service. This includes in-house employees, online programs, or software. You need to mention such competition as well.

For each such competitor, provide an overview of their business and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as

• What types of clients do they serve?
• What type of project management business are they?
• What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
• What are they good at?
• What are their weaknesses?

With regards to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective. And don’t be afraid to ask your competitors’ customers what they like most and least about them.

The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:

• Will you provide your own staff?
• Will you offer products or services that your competition doesn’t?
• Will you provide better customer service?
• Will you offer better pricing?

Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.  

Marketing Plan

Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For a project management business plan, your marketing strategy should include the following:

Product : In the product section, you should reiterate the type of project management company that you documented in your company overview. Then, detail the specific products or services you will be offering. For example, will you provide consulting, scheduling, budgeting, or staffing?

Price : Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your plan, you are presenting the products and/or services you offer and their prices.

Place : Place refers to the site of your project management company. Document where your company is situated and mention how the site will impact your success. For example, is your project management business located in a business district, a standalone office, or purely online? Discuss how your site might be the ideal location for your customers.

Promotions : The final part of your project management marketing plan is where you will document how you will drive potential customers to your location(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:

• Advertise in local papers, radio stations and/or magazines
• Attend industry events and tradeshows
• Reach out to websites
• Distribute flyers
• Engage in email marketing
• Advertise on social media platforms
• Improve the SEO (search engine optimization) on your website for targeted keywords

Operations Plan

While the earlier sections of your business plan explained your goals, your operations plan describes how you will meet them. Your operations plan should have two distinct sections as follows.

Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your project management business, including answering calls, planning and providing project services, client interaction,  billing clients and/or vendors, etc.

Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect to book your Xth client, or when you hope to reach $X in revenue. It could also be when you expect to expand your project management business to a new city.  

Management Team

To demonstrate your project management business’ potential to succeed, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company.

Ideally, you and/or your team members have direct experience in managing project management businesses. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.

If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act as mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in managing a project management business or successfully running a small consulting firm.

Financial Plan

Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statements.

Income Statement

An income statement is more commonly called a Profit and Loss statement or P&L. It shows your revenue and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not.

In developing your income statement, you need to devise assumptions. For example, will you manage 5 clients per day, and/or offer consulting services? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? As you can imagine, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business. As much as possible, conduct research to try to root your assumptions in reality.

Balance Sheets

Balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. While balance sheets can include much information, try to simplify them to the key items you need to know about. For instance, if you spend $50,000 on building out your project management business, this will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a lender writes you a check for $50,000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.

Cash Flow Statement

Your cash flow statement will help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and ensure you never run out of money. What most entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit but run out of money and go bankrupt.

When creating your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a project management business:

• Cost of equipment and office supplies
• Payroll or salaries paid to staff
• Business insurance
• Other start-up expenses (if you’re a new business) like legal expenses, permits, computer software, and equipment

Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include your office location lease or a list of project management services you plan to offer.

Writing a business plan for your project management business is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will truly be an expert. You will understand the project management industry, your competition, and your customers. You will develop a marketing strategy and will understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful project management business.

Project Management Business Plan Template FAQs

What is the easiest way to complete my project management business plan.

Growthink's Ultimate Business Plan Template allows you to quickly and easily write your project management business plan.

How Do You Start a Project Management Business?

Starting a project management business is easy with these 14 steps:

• Choose the Name for Your Project Management Business
• Create Your Project Management Business Plan
• Choose the Legal Structure for Your Project Management Business
• Secure Startup Funding for Your Project Management Business (If Needed)
• Secure a Location for Your Business
• Register Your Project Management Business with the IRS
• Open a Business Bank Account
• Get a Business Credit Card
• Get the Required Business Licenses and Permits
• Get Business Insurance for Your Project Management Business
• Buy or Lease the Right Project Management Business Equipment
• Develop Your Project Management Business Marketing Materials
• Purchase and Setup the Software Needed to Run Your Project Management Business
• Open for Business

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your Project Management business plan?

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Since 1999, Growthink has developed business plans for thousands of companies who have gone on to achieve tremendous success.   Click here to see how a Growthink business planning advisor can create your business plan for you.

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An In-Depth Guide to Creating a Marketing Project Plan

Sarah Burner

ClickUp Contributor

February 8, 2024

Careful research and planning are the cornerstones of any successful marketing strategy. 

If you don’t plan your marketing initiatives, there’s every chance your marketing charter will go off course. As a result, you’ll waste time, money, and precious resources on activities that won’t help you achieve your marketing goals .

That’s where a robust marketing project plan will help. It helps marketing professionals map out their marketing strategy for the year, quarter, month, etc.

You can include factors like budget, resource allocation, sub-division of tasks, and the end objective.

If you need help preparing a marketing project plan, this guide is just what you require. In this comprehensive guide, we will explain what a marketing project plan is, why it’s beneficial, and how to make one.

Let’s get started.

What is a Marketing Project Plan?

Essential elements of a marketing project plan, how to create an effective marketing project plan, the role of marketing project manager in crafting a plan, benefits of having a strong marketing project plan, common challenges in making a marketing project plan, ready to create a solid marketing project plan.

A marketing project plan details a company’s marketing strategies and execution steps. It comprises clear timelines for executing the strategy, a list of tasks to be accomplished, the marketing goals, and other essential details about the company’s marketing initiatives.

The purpose of having a marketing project plan is to organize tasks and streamline marketing processes to get the best results.

Make your marketing project plan as comprehensive and well-researched as possible. This will help you during the execution stage when you need to find some information.

While there are many factors that one should include, here are some essential elements you must add to your marketing project plan.

Marketing goals

This section will mention your company’s current position and what it wants to achieve next year.

Here, you’ll list all your marketing goals for the period and the metrics you’ll use to track the performance of your campaigns. Make sure your marketing objective aligns with your overall business objectives.

Some examples of broad business and marketing objectives are

• Raising brand awareness
• Generating more sales leads
• Improving website rankings
• Growing social media presence

Based on these broad objectives, you need to develop specific goals that help achieve these. Use the ClickUp Smart Goals Template to define and document your marketing goals.

Target audience

A description of your target customer segments and their buyer personas will make up this part of your marketing plan.

Include all the critical insights from your customer research data in this section of the marketing project plan. Add as many details as possible to ensure your team knows who they’re targeting through various marketing initiatives.

Competitor analysis

Here, include a list of key competitors and insights from competitor analysis data. It should help you get a quick overview of your competitor’s marketing strategies and their strengths and weaknesses. Use the ClickUp Market Competitive Analysis Template to create a visual competitor benchmarking dashboard.

Marketing tactics

This section of your marketing plan will include a detailed list of the marketing strategies you plan to execute. Go in-depth and make a detailed plan of all the marketing initiatives you want to implement in the next year.

For example, if you plan to grow your social media presence, list all marketing strategies you will use. This could be organic content posting, paid advertising, influencer marketing, and more.

Also, list the types of content you want to focus on. Videos, for example, are gaining much traction and should be a part of your content mix.

Marketing channels

List all the marketing and content distribution channels you will use for your marketing campaign. Don’t just rely on your website or blog. 

Instead, ensure you have a good mix of channels to reach a larger audience and generate more leads for your business. 

You should, for example, use at least one social media marketing channel. Choose the one that’s most popular among your target audience.

However, don’t go overboard and try to put too much on your plate. Choose a few strategic channels and target them well instead of trying to market on all possible channels and failing.

Go-to-market strategy

You will need a go-to-market strategy to promote a new product or collection or enter a new market. This includes your marketing plans for five key aspects—product, price, promotion, people, and place.

Many ready-to-use go-to-market strategy templates can help you create a detailed marketing strategy. Here’s a screenshot of the ClickUp Go-to-Market Strategy Whiteboard Template , which is perfect for this.

Use this portion of your marketing project plan to set an overall marketing budget. Also, allocate a part of your overall budget to the various marketing activities and strategies you have in the works.

Do market research to estimate the costs you will likely incur on multiple marketing activities to make a realistic and accurate budget plan.

Software and tools

You will need various marketing tools and software to implement your marketing strategy successfully. This includes marketing planning software , social media management tools, content scheduling tools, and more.

We also advise using the best marketing project management software to ensure seamless team collaboration and efficient task management.

List all the tools you have and plan to buy in the next year. If there are recurring costs, such as a subscription fee, then list those as well.

You now understand what a marketing project plan is and what elements it contains. Now, let’s discuss how you can create a marketing project plan that works for you and helps you run successful marketing campaigns.

Here’s a step-by-step guide. Follow the process to develop a solid project marketing plan.

1. Assess your current position

Determining your company’s current situation is the first step toward making any business plan. This will help you identify areas of improvement and set clear goals.

Start with a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis for that. Take it further and write a possible action plan for each item on your SWOT matrix. See the example below to get an idea.

You should also conduct a competitor analysis to understand where you stand compared to your key competitors.

Once you have a clear idea of where you stand, move to the next step.

2. Clearly define your target audience

You need to identify and define your target customer segments at this stage. 

Because your marketing strategies and project marketing plan will depend on your audience and their interests and preferences.

Create buyer personas for your target customer segments. It should include:

• Demographic information : Age, location, job role, income, etc.
• Goals and pain points : What is the key challenge your product helps solve? What goals can you help them achieve via your products or services?
• Interests and preferences : Which marketing channels are they most active on? What types of content do they engage with?
• Behavioral traits : What is their online shopping behavior? What is their typical buying journey?

Use the ClickUp User Persona Whiteboard Template to visualize your buyer personas and bring them to life. Include characteristics relevant to your niche and enrich each buyer persona with as much information as you can collect. Using the ClickUp User Persona Template , create and manage several user personas from a single dashboard.

3. Set clear marketing goals

Next, you need to define your marketing goals clearly. What is it that you want to achieve with your marketing efforts?

Both your marketing plan and goals should be for a specific period. Ideally, this should be a fiscal year. 

Tracking your marketing performance yearly will help keep things organized. It’s also a long enough period for you to track and measure the results of your marketing activities.

Make your goals as specific and realistic as possible. Use the SMART framework to make your goals:

• Specific : Don’t be vague; set clear targets. For example, ‘drive revenue growth by 5% in the next quarter’
• Measurable : Identify metrics you can use to measure performance on said goals
• Attainable : Set realistic targets that can be achieved within the given time frame
• Relevant : Set goals that are relevant to your business
• Time-bound : All goals should have clear timelines

Once you have identified your goals, use good marketing project management software like ClickUp to document your goals.

Invest in the required analytical tools to measure your marketing campaign’s performance.

4. Set a budget

By now, you should clearly know what you want to achieve and who your target audience is. Now, it’s time to set aside a dedicated marketing budget to help you achieve your goals and create a solid marketing project plan.

How much of your budget should you allocate for marketing?

This is an excellent place to start, but there is no strict rule on how much you spend. It depends on how aggressive your growth plans and marketing goals are.

If your company is in the initial growth stage, you may want to spend more on marketing. If you have an established business, your marketing budget could be lower.

It also depends on how much money you want to spend. As such, you should assess your financial position and marketing goals to set a realistic budget.

5. Choose the right marketing strategies and channels

At this step of the marketing planning process , you have everything you need to create your marketing plan and decide which strategies and channels you will use.

Some popular marketing tactics include:

• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Webinars and podcasts
• Video Marketing

Keep your budget in mind when choosing marketing strategies. For example, advertising is a good way to drive quick results, but you may not have the budget to allocate.

As for marketing channels, your website will be your primary channel for content and SEO, but you should also include other channels in the mix. Choose 1-2 social media platforms where your target audience is most active and focus on those. 

6. Assign tasks and create a schedule

This is where all your work so far comes to fruition, and you start executing your marketing strategies. Use the ClickUp Marketing Plan Template to create and allocate tasks and a marketing calendar.

Whether you’re working with an in-house team or outsourcing content creation, provide detailed creative briefs to your team. This will ensure all your marketing content is consistent, on-brand, and meets your requirements. If you need help with content creation, use the ClickUp AI to get an AI-powered writing assistant. It will help you create and edit content quickly and efficiently.

You should also use ClickUp to manage your marketing projects, as it’s a great project management tool. Use it to create a project plan, track the progress of each task, and meet deadlines. It allows you to view tasks in the Gantt chart view, a great way to visualize your project timelines and status.

ClickUp Docs can also help you create visual workflows, create docs for sharing your project plans, collaborate with your team on various tasks, and more.

It’s one of the best project management tools and can simplify marketing project management.

A marketing project manager plays a crucial role in creating and executing a marketing plan.

They are in charge of the initiative and are responsible for planning, designing, managing, and implementing it. They provide critical input and use the right marketing project management strategies to ensure that the company’s marketing initiatives are successful.

Marketing project managers are also responsible for allocating tasks and working with various marketing team members to ensure things are done correctly and on time. This requires them to be great communicators and leaders.

A well-researched and in-depth marketing project plan can help you better organize your marketing activities. But if you need more convincing on creating a plan, check out its various benefits.

Here are some key benefits:

• A plan gives everyone involved a strategic direction and plan of action. This helps you and your team stay on the right course to achieve your marketing goals
• It helps streamline the marketing processes and keep track of and manage the various tasks involved
• It gives you a better understanding of your target customers, competitors, and target market, allowing you to be better equipped to handle any unexpected challenges
• As you mention your goals and KPIs in a marketing plan, it also helps you assess if your marketing initiatives are working well or if you need to change your approach

Making a robust marketing project plan is crucial for success, but it isn’t easy. It requires careful planning, research, and brainstorming.

By learning about the potential challenges you may face, you will be better prepared when preparing a plan for your business.

Here are some challenges you may face when creating a marketing project plan:

• You may not know where to start and what to include in your marketing project plan. Using a marketing project plan template, however, can help with that
• Setting realistic goals is another area where managers struggle. It also requires a thorough analysis of your current business positioning and overall business objectives
• Conducting thorough competitor and market analysis is also a challenging part of making a marketing plan, one that takes a lot of time and effort

Planning will be more difficult if you’re a marketer without project management experience. Get help from experts, read more about how to do it right, and use project planning tips from various online resources to prepare yourself for the challenge.

If you’ve carefully read this article, you have all the information you need to create a winning marketing project plan.

Remember, it’s a challenging and time-consuming process, especially if you don’t have a marketing plan template or framework you use every year. 

Don’t worry; we’ve got the perfect solution for you. Use ClickUp’s marketing plan templates to make your job easier. ClickUp also offers various project management tools, templates, and features to help you plan and execute your marketing strategies.

Check out the ClickUp marketing project management software and explore its features to see if it fits your business correctly.

Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.

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How to Write a Business Plan in 2023 [Examples Included]

Table of contents

So you have come up with a business idea that will turn your company into a Forbes 500 enterprise? Sounds great!

However, you are going to need much more than an idea. You will need to do some comprehensive research, create operational standpoints, describe your product, define your goals, and pave out a road map for future growth.

In other words, you are going to need a business plan.

A business plan is a document that precisely explains how you are going to make your startup a success. Without it, your chances of attracting funding and investments significantly decrease.

Do you want to learn how to create a winning business plan that will take your company to the next level? We created a guide that will help you do just that.

Let’s dive in.

What Is a Business Plan?

Why and when do you need a business plan, types of business plans (what to include in each).

• How Do You Write a Business Plan?

Best Practices for Writing a Winning Business Plan

Business plan examples.

• Monitor the Performance of Your Business with Databox

A business plan is a comprehensive document that defines how a business will achieve its goals. It is essentially a road map for growth that includes operational standpoints from all the key departments such as marketing, financial, HR, and others.

Startups use business plans to describe who they are, what they plan to do, and how they plan to achieve it. This is an extremely valuable document for attracting investors.

However, they are valuable for the company members as well. A good business plan keeps executive teams on the same page regarding the strategies they should implement to achieve their set objectives.

Related : Reporting to Investors: 6 Best Practices to Help Increase Funding

While business plans are especially useful for startups, each business should include them. In the best-case scenario, this plan will be updated from time to time and reviewed whether the goals of the company have been met.

The main things that investors want to check out in the business plan are:

• Product-market fit – Have you researched the market demand for your products and services?
• Team efficiency – Does your startup have devoted professionals that will work on achieving your goals?
• Scalability – How probable is growth in sales volumes without proportional growth or fixed costs?

An organized business plan is essentially a blueprint of your goals and it showcases your abilities as an entrepreneur.

Related : Business Report: What is it & How to Write a Great One? (With Examples)

If you want to persuade venture capitalists and banking institutions to invest in your startup, you won’t be able to do it without a solid business plan. Following a clear business plan format is crucial, as it structures your plan in a way that is easily understandable and demonstrates your business’s potential. 

A business plan is helpful in two ways – it allows you to focus on the specific goals you set for the future and it provides external parties with evidence that you have done your research in advance.

But don’t just take our word for it – here are some of the things that researchers from Bplans found out when they were analyzing the benefits of business plans with the University of Oregon.

• Companies that use business plans have recorded a 30% faster growth compared to those that didn’t use them.
• Getting investments and loans is twice as likely to happen with the help of business plans.
• There is a 129% increased chance for entrepreneurs to go past the ‘startup’ phase through business plans.

You should create a business plan before you decide to quit your regular job. It can help you realize whether you are ready or not.

Also, creating a business plan is helpful when:

• You want to attract investments or funding from external parties
• You want to find a new partner or co-founder
• You want to attract talented professionals to join your startup
• You need to change things up due to the slow growth

While creating a business plan is an important step, you first have to know how to differentiate all the different types. This will help you choose the one that is most suitable for your business.

Here are the most common types of business plans and what you should include in each.

One-Pager Business Plan

Startup business plan, internal business plan, strategic business plan, feasibility business plan.

The one-pager is a business plan that only includes the most important aspects of your business. It is essentially a simplified version of a traditional business plan.

When creating the one-pager business plan, your primary focus should be on making it easily understandable.

Since this business plan is rather short, you should avoid using lengthy paragraphs. Each section should be around 1-2 sentences long.

The things you should include in a one-pager business plan are:

• The problem – Describe a certain problem your customers have and support the claim with relevant data.
• The solution – How your products/services can solve the issue.
• Business model – Your plan on how to make money. Include production costs, selling costs, and the price of the product.
• Target market – Describe your ideal customer persona. Start with a broad audience and narrow it down by using TAM, SAM, and SOM models. This lets investors in on your thought process. To understand these models better, check out, for example, the importance of proper TAM evaluation for B2B startups .
• Competitive advantage – How are you different from your competitors?
• Management team – Include your business’s management structure.
• Financial summary – This part should revolve around the most significant financial metrics (profit, loss, cash flow, balance sheet, and sales forecast).
• Required funding – Define how much money you need to make your project a success.

PRO TIP: How Well Are Your Marketing KPIs Performing?

Like most marketers and marketing managers, you want to know how well your efforts are translating into results each month. How much traffic and new contact conversions do you get? How many new contacts do you get from organic sessions? How are your email campaigns performing? How well are your landing pages converting? You might have to scramble to put all of this together in a single report, but now you can have it all at your fingertips in a single Databox dashboard.

Our Marketing Overview Dashboard includes data from Google Analytics 4 and HubSpot Marketing with key performance metrics like:

• Sessions . The number of sessions can tell you how many times people are returning to your website. Obviously, the higher the better.
• New Contacts from Sessions . How well is your campaign driving new contacts and customers?
• Marketing Performance KPIs . Tracking the number of MQLs, SQLs, New Contacts and similar will help you identify how your marketing efforts contribute to sales.
• Email Performance . Measure the success of your email campaigns from HubSpot. Keep an eye on your most important email marketing metrics such as number of sent emails, number of opened emails, open rate, email click-through rate, and more.
• Blog Posts and Landing Pages . How many people have viewed your blog recently? How well are your landing pages performing?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics and HubSpot Marketing experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template that contains all the essential metrics for monitoring your leads. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your HubSpot and Google Analytics 4 accounts with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Related : Check out our comprehensive guide on writing a marketing plan report .

New businesses use startup business plans to outline their launching ideas and strategies to attract funding and investment opportunities. When creating startup business plans, you should primarily focus on the financial aspect and provide evidence that supports it (e.g. market research).

These are some of the main things that should be included:

• Vision statement – Explain your vision for the company and include the overall business goals you will try to achieve.
• Executive summary – A quick overview of what your company is about and what will make it successful. Make sure to include your products/services, basic leadership information, employees, and location.
• Company description – A detailed overview of your company. Talk about the problems you will solve and be specific about customers, organizations, and growth plans. This is the place where you should state your business’s main advantages.
• Market Analysis – Show investors that you have a good understanding of your industry and target market by providing a detailed market analysis. Try to point out certain trends, themes, or patterns that support your objective.
• Organization and management – This section explains the structure and the management hierarchy. Also, describe the legal structure of your business.
• Service or product line – Go into detail about the products and services you are going to sell. Explain the benefits they bring and share your intellectual property plans.
• Marketing and sales – Talk about your marketing strategy and describe how you plan to attract new customers.
• Financial projections – This section should be about convincing your readers why the business will be a financial success. Create a prospective financial outlook for the next few years and it includes forecasts.

An internal business plan is a document that specifically focuses on the activities within your company. While external business plans focus on attracting investors, internal business plans keep your team aligned on achieving goals.

Related : Internal vs. External Reporting: What Are the Differences?

This business plan can differentiate based on how specific you want it to be. For example, you can focus on a specific part of the business (e.g. financial department) or on the overall goals of the whole company.

Nonetheless, here are some things that should universally be included in all internal business plans:

• Mission statement – Focus on the practical, day-to-day activities that your employees can undertake to achieve overall objectives.
• Objectives – Provide specific goals that you want your company to achieve. Make the objectives clear and explain in which way they can be reached. Focus more on short-term objectives and set reasonable deadlines.
• Strategies – Talk about the general activities that will help your team reach the set objectives. Provide research that will describe how these strategies will be useful in the long term.
• Action plans – These plans revolve around particular activities from your strategy. For example, you could include a new product that you want to create or a more efficient marketing plan.
• Sustainability – This refers to the general probability of achieving the goals you set in the internal report. Sometimes, plans may seem overly ambitious and you are going to have to make amends with certain things.

A strategic business plan is the best way to gain a comprehensive outlook of your business. In this document, forecasts are examined even further and growth goals tend to be higher.

By creating a strategic business plan, you will have an easier time aligning your key stakeholders around the company’s priorities.

Here is a quick overview of what a strategic business plan should include:

• Executive summary – Since strategic business plans are generally lengthy, not all executives will have time to go through it. This is why you should include a quick overview of the plan through an executive summary, you can also create an executive summary template to make the step easily repeatable.
• Vision statement – Describe what you wish to achieve in the long term.
• Company overview – This refers to past achievements, current products/services, recent sales performances, and important KPIs.
• Core values – This section should provide an explanation of what drives the business to do what it does.
• Strategic analysis of internal and external environments – Talk about the current organizational structure, mission statements, and department challenges.
• Strategic objectives – Go into detail about the short-term objectives your team should reach in a specific period. Make sure the objectives are clear and understandable.
• Overall goals – This section should include operational goals, marketing goals, and financial goals.

A feasibility business plan is also known as a feasibility study. It essentially provides a foundation for what would be a full and comprehensive business plan. The primary focus of a feasibility plan is research.

The things you should include in a feasibility plan are:

• Product demand – Is there a high demand for your product? Would customers be interested in buying it?
• Market conditions – Determine the customer persona that would be interested in buying your products. Include demographic factors.
• Pricing – Compare your desired price with the current pricing of similar products. Which price would make your service profitable?
• Risks – Determine the risks of launching this new business.
• Success profitability – Is there a good way to overcome the risks and make your company profitable?

How Do You Write a Business Plan Report?

As we explained in the previous heading, there are a few different types of business plan. Depending on the audience you are referring to, the language you use in the plan should be adjusted accordingly.

Nonetheless, there are certain key elements that should be included in all business plans, the only thing that will vary is how detailed the sections will be.

Include these elements in your business plan.

Executive summary

Company description, market opportunity and analysis, competitive landscape, target audience, describe your product or service, develop a marketing and sales strategy, develop a logistics and operations plan, financial projections, explain your funding request, compile an appendix for official documents.

An executive summary is a quick overview of the document as a whole that allows investors and key stakeholders to quickly understand all the pain points from the report.

It is the best way to layout all the vital information about your business to bank officials and key stakeholders who don’t have the time to go through the whole business plan.

If you summarize the sections well, the potential investors will jump into the sections they are most interested in to acquire more details.

You should write the executive summary last since you will then have a better idea of what should be included.

A good executive summary answers these questions:

• Who are you?
• What do you sell?
• How profitable is it?
• How much money do you need?

This section of the business plan aims to introduce your company as a whole. The things you include in the company description can vary depending on if you are only starting a business or you already have a developed company.

The elements included in this section are:

• Structure and ownership – Talk about who the key shareholders in your company are and provide a full list of names. Also, mention details such as where the company is registered and what the legal structure looks like. In most countries, this is a legal requirement for AML regulations.
• History – This segment is if you already have an existing company. Use this section to show your credibility. Include company milestones, past difficulties, and a precise date for how long your company has been operating.
• Objectives – Describe the overall objectives of your company and how you plan to reach them.

Market analysis refers to creating your ideal customer persona and explaining why they would be interested in buying your products.

Market opportunities are the gaps that you found in the current industries and creating a way for your product to fill those gaps.

The most important step in this section is to create a target market (persona) through demographic factors such as location, income, gender, education, age, profession, and hobbies.

Make sure that your target market isn’t too broad since it can put off potential investors.

A good idea is to also include a detailed analysis of your competitors – talk about their products, strengths, and weaknesses.

Related : 12 Best Tools Marketers Use for Market Research

Although you may include a competitive analysis in the market analysis section, this segment should provide a more detailed overview.

Identify other companies that sell similar products to yours and create a list of their advantages and disadvantages. Learning about your competitors may seem overwhelming, but it’s an indispensable part of a good business plan.

Include a comparison landscape as well that defines the things that set you apart from the competitors. Describe the strengths of your product and show which problems it could solve.

Related : How to Do an SEO Competitive Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide

Use the target audience section to fully describe the details of your ideal customer persona. Include both demographic and psychographic factors.

Ask yourself:

• What are the demographic characteristics of the people who will buy my product?
• What are their desires?
• What makes my product valuable to them?

Make sure to answer all of these questions to get in the mindset of your customers.

If you need more details on how to identify your target audience , check our full expert guide.

When talking about your products and services, be as precise as possible. Mention your target audience and the marketing channels you use for targeting this audience.

This section should reveal the benefits, life cycle, and production process of your products/services. Also, it is a good idea to include some pictures of your products if possible.

When describing your products, you should highlight:

• Unique features
• Intellectual property rights
• What makes the product beneficial

Marketing is the blood flow to your business’s body. Without a good marketing and sales strategy, the chances of your product succeeding are very slim.

It’s always best to already have a marketing plan in place before launching your business. By identifying the best marketing channels, you will show your investors that you researched this topic in detail.

Some of the things you should include are:

• Reach – Explain why a specific channel will be able to reach your target market
• Cost – Is the marketing strategy going to be cost-effective? How much money do you plan on spending on the strategy?
• Competition – Are your competitors already using this channel? If so, what will make your product stand out?
• Implementation – Who will be taking care of the implementation process? Is it a marketing expert? Which suppliers did you reach out to?

Related : 14 Reasons Sales And Marketing Alignment Is Crucial for Skyrocketing Company Growth

This section should explain the details of how exactly your company is going to operate.

These are the things you should include:

• Personnel plan – Define how many people you plan to employ and their roles. Also, if you plan on increasing your staff, you should explain what would be the cause of that.
• Key assets – This refers to assets that will be crucial for your company’s operation.
• Suppliers – Mention who your suppliers will be and what kind of relationship you have with them. Your investors will be interested in this part of the section since they want to be reassured that you are cooperating with respectable counterparties.

The financial projections section is one of the most important parts of your business plan. It includes a detailed overview of expected sales, revenue, profit, expenses, and all the other important financial metrics .

You should show your investors that your business will be profitable, stable, and that it has huge potential for cash generation.

Monthly numbers for the first year are crucial since this will be the most critical year of your company.

At the very least, you should provide:

• Funding needs
• Profit-and-loss statement forecast
• Balance sheet forecast
• Cash-flow statement forecast

Related : How to Write a Great Financial Report? Tips and Best Practices

When providing the funding request, be realistic. Explain why you need that exact amount of money and where it will be allocated.

Also, create both a best-case and worst-case scenario. New companies don’t have a history of generating profits which is why you will probably have to sell equity in the early years to raise enough capital.

This will be the final section of your business plan. Include any material or piece of information that investors can use to analyze the data in your report. 

Things that could be helpful are:

• Local permits
• Legal documents
• Certifications that boost credibility
• Intellectual properties or patents
• Purchase orders and customer contracts

After reading the previous heading, you should have a clear idea of how to write a compelling business plan.

But, just to be sure, we prepared some additional information that can be very helpful.

Here are some of the best practices you should implement in your business plan according to the most successful companies.

Keep it brief

Make it understandable, be meticulous about money, design is important.

Generally, business plans will be around 10-20 pages long. Your main focus should be to cover the essentials that we talked about, but you don’t want to overdo it by including unnecessary and overwhelming information.

In business plan, less is more.

Create a good organizational outline of your sections. This will allow investors to easily navigate to the parts they are most interested in reading.

Avoid using jargon – everyone should be able to easily understand your business plan without having to Google certain terms. 

Make a list of all the expenses your business incurs. Financial information should be maximally precise since it will directly impact the investor’s decision to fund your business idea.

After you wrap up your business plan, take a day off and read it again. Fix any typos or grammatical errors that you overlooked the first time.

Make sure to use a professional layout, printing, and branding of your business plan. This is an important first impression for the readers of the document.

Now you know what a business plan is, how you can write it, and some of the best practices you can use to make it even better.

But, if you are still having certain difficulties coming up with a great business plan, here are a few examples that may be helpful.

HubSpot’s One-Page Business Plan

Bplan’s free business plan template, small business administration free business plan template.

This One-Page Business Plan was created by HubSpot and it can be a great way to start off your business plan journey on the right foot.

You already have fields such as Implementation Timeline, Required Funding, and Company Description created so you will just need to provide your specific information.

This free business plan template highlights the financial points of the startup. If your primary focus will be your business’ financial plan and financial statements, you can use this template to save up some time.

It can also be useful for making sure everyone in your company understands the current financial health and what they can do to improve it.

If you need additional inspiration to kick start your own business plan, you can check out this free template by small business administration .

You just have to decide which type of plan you want to create and then review the format of how it should look like.

Monitor and Report on the Performance of Your Business with Databox

Tracking your company’s performance is an indispensable part of quality decision-making. It is crucial that you know how your business strategy is performing and whether it needs to be optimized in certain areas.

However, doing this manually will undoubtedly take a hefty amount of your valuable time. You will have to log into all of the different tools, copy-paste the data into your reports, and then analyze it. And this isn’t a one-time thing – you have to do it at least once a month.

Luckily, Databox can lend a helping hand.

By using customizable dashboards from Databox, you will be able to connect data from all your different tools into one comprehensive report. Not only that, but you can also visualize the most important metrics to make your presentation to shareholders immensely more impactful.

Did you spend a lot of time cutting and pasting? Say ‘no more’ to that. You will be able to use that time to better analyze your business performances and monitor any significant changes that occur.

Leave the grueling business reporting process in the past and sign up for a free trial with Databox.

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Free Marketing Project Plan Templates

By Joe Weller | July 10, 2020

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We’ve compiled the most useful free marketing project plan templates for marketers, enterprises, small businesses, startups, and others, as well as tips for getting started.

Included on this page, you'll find many helpful marketing project plan templates, including a simple marketing project plan template , a marketing project plan checklist template , a marketing plan example , and tips for planning and managing marketing projects .

Marketing Project Plan Template

This marketing project plan template helps guide you through the steps needed for the successful planning, execution, and evaluation of a marketing project. The customizable template serves as an all-purpose marketing project plan that you can use for single marketing project plans or as a record of multiple marketing projects’ details. 

Rows for planning, milestones, creative deliverables, and results intersect with columns for assignee, due date, and priority. Use the selectable drop-down options to stay on track. Keep the members of your marketing team apprised of project details by leveraging the dashboard view and flexibility that this template offers. 

Download Marketing Project Plan Template - Excel

Gain valuable insight on how to keep your marketing project on time and budget by reading about the micro and macro marketing project manager skills to master now .

Marketing Project Plan Checklist Template

Keep your project moving with this marketing project plan checklist template. You’ll find all major and minor steps in the marketing project plan process, along with columns for task name, team member (assigned to), deadline, and completion status with related drop-down options for each step. Regardless of your industry, this marketing project plan checklist template is an excellent tool to accurately record your project’s progress.

Download Marketing Project Plan Checklist Template - Excel

Marketing Project Management Calendar (2024) Template

This simple marketing project management calendar template offers week-by-week and month-by-month dashboard views. Universal in its application (regardless of marketing project plan type), the calendar template can be customized to fit the particulars of your unique marketing plan. Stay informed on the progress of all project tasks with this printable calendar template.

Download 2024 Marketing Project Management Calendar Template

Excel  | Google Sheets

Marketing Plan Template

Keep tabs on your marketing plan with this distinctive template that guides you through your strategic objectives, ensuring that your marketing plan aligns with your organization’s business objectives. This fully customizable marketing plan template allows you to enter or update info related to your plan’s core capabilities, goals, target information, marketing strategy, performance standards, measurement methods, financial summary, and other project-specific details. This marketing plan template is useful for determining the next course of action to ensure your project’s success.

Download Marketing Plan Template

Word | PDF | Smartsheet

One-Page Marketing Project Plan Template

Designed with accessibility in mind, this one-page template provides you with a streamlined method to plan, implement, and track your marketing project plan. 

You’ll find ample space for a business summary, business objectives, the problem, solution, competitive advantage, target market, marketing strategy and objects, and financial requirements. You can include details about product, price, place, promotion, marketing channels, performance standards, results measurement methods, and review in the project plan section. There’s even room to add customized steps for your marketing plan. You’re never far from the big-picture vision of your marketing project plan with this efficient one-page marketing project plan template.

Download One-Page Marketing Project Plan Template

Excel | Word | PDF

Business Marketing Project Plan Template

This comprehensive business marketing project plan template provides everything you need for to run a successful marketing campaign. Business-specific marketing project plan components include sections for a business summary, situational analysis, marketing capabilities, buyer persona, and a financial summary. A section for performance standards and measurement methods assures team members and managers that benchmarks are being met and you’re providing quantifiable metrics to gauge the project’s success.

Download Business Marketing Project Plan Template

Small-Business Marketing Project Plan Template

This template provides the big picture on actionable items for your marketing project. This fully customizable, small-business-specific template guides you in documenting the specifics on marketing goals; strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis; target market; marketing strategy; and research results. You can save this small-business marketing project plan template as an individual file with customized entries or as a template for other marketing project plans.

For more on conducting a SWOT analysis, see “ 14 Free SWOT Analysis Templates .” 

Download Small-Business Marketing Project Plan Template

Marketing Project Plan Template for Startups

Designed specifically for startup businesses, this template uses a pre-built, all-inclusive marketing plan to provide guidance for new ventures. This template is completely customizable, with space to enter an executive summary, your vision statement, details of your marketing project plan’s situational analysis, your goals, your target market, your marketing strategy, and a financial summary. Take the guesswork out of creating a plan from scratch, and leverage the advantages that this startup-specific marketing project plan can offer you and your team. 

Find more useful solutions and tools for startups by reading “ Free Startup Plan, Budget & Cost Templates .” 

Download Marketing Project Plan Template for Startups

Strategic Marketing Project Plan Template

Manage the entirety of your marketing project plan with this comprehensive strategic marketing project plan template. A column for campaign types provides section-by-section rows for national marketing, local marketing, public relations, content marketing, social media, advertising, web, market research, and sales campaigns. These rows intersect with columns for target audience, clicks/response, notes, weight, and projected and actual cost. This template also comes with a quarter-by-quarter calendar, so you can plan in advance for upcoming strategic action, as well as gauge the effectiveness of the marketing strategies you already have in place.

For more on strategic marketing, read “ The Definitive Guide to Strategic Marketing Planning .”

‌Download Strategic Marketing Project Plan Template

Excel | Smartsheet

Marketing Project Plan Example

It’s crucial to have a marketing project plan that guides marketing teams through the entire process, from planning to implementation to retrospective assessment. Use this pre-filled template with step-by-step details as an example of a marketing project management plan.

By using an example for guidance, you can focus on delivering superb marketing project campaigns. This completed marketing project template includes the following detailed sections (we’ve provided instructions for reference): 

• Marketing Project Plan Background Creative Brief : Who will benefit from your marketing project, and what does the project entail? 
• Marketing Project Plan Performance Standards: What are your project’s timeline specifications? Are there opportunities for automation to eliminate redundancies? What are this project’s performance standards? 
• Marketing Project Plan Scope: What is the scope of your marketing project? Can you break up the project into sprints, stories, and tasks? What is the project’s delivery date? What are its milestones? 
• Marketing Project Plan Meetings: How will you keep apprised of your plan’s progress? Do you need daily meetings, sprint reviews, and a retrospective meeting once the project has been completed? 

With its built-in best practices, this marketing project management plan template is a useful tool for planning, strategizing, applying tactics, and gauging the project’s results. 

Download Marketing Project Management Plan Template Example - Word

Tips for Planning and Managing Marketing Projects

A marketing project plan provides an easy-to-follow design to guide you through the planning, execution, and evaluation stages for implementing a successful marketing campaign. 

It’s essential to keep tabs on your plan’s objectives by defining your offerings’ core capabilities, goals, strategy, performance standards, and measurement methods. 

Use a template to stay apprised of your marketing project’s status and follow these tips to help ensure success: 

• Who will benefit from your marketing project plan? 
• What does your marketing project entail? 
• How does your marketing project benefit your defined audience? 
• What resources do you need to complete this marketing project?
• What challenges or anticipated roadblocks should you define prior to project initiation? 
• Are there ways to automate some of the project’s processes? 
• Are there ways to eliminate redundancies (e.g., leverage efforts from another department or project)? 
• How can you execute your project successfully and reduce the amount of maintenance it otherwise might require? 
• What are your marketing plan’s performance standards? 
• What do you expect it to achieve? 
• How can you quantify your project’s success? 
• What is your marketing project’s delivery date? 
• Do you need to meet with team members to stay in sync with your project plan’s deliverables? 
• Are daily marketing project meetings needed? 
• Are review meetings and itineraries required? 
• Do you need a defined project retrospective meeting itinerary to gauge the success of your marketing project plan’s implementation? 

Regardless of your line of business, the templates offered in this article can help guide you through the steps of your marketing project’s planning, execution, and evaluation of project success. 

For more useful information about marketing plans, read our comprehensive guide on marketing project management .

Improve Project Planning with Smartsheet for Marketing

The best marketing teams know the importance of effective campaign management, consistent creative operations, and powerful event logistics -- and Smartsheet helps you deliver on all three so you can be more effective and achieve more. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Improve your marketing efforts and deliver best-in-class campaigns.

5 Steps To Creating A Top-Notch Marketing Project Plan

You already know that marketing is crucial to your business. A good marketing function is not only essential for strengthening brand awareness and educating customers–it can also significantly impact your bottom line. In a typical business, marketing contributes a whopping 15-30% of revenue when it comes to net-new customers. 

So how do you max out on your marketing revenue? How can you get the most out of marketing for your specific business? It all starts with creating a marketing project management plan . 

Marketing campaign template

Take the guesswork out of planning and executing your digital marketing campaign and spin up successful projects in seconds.

Try our marketing campaign template

What is a marketing project plan? 

A marketing project plan is a report that outlines your marketing strategy for the upcoming month, quarter, or year. Typically, these plans include:

An overview of your business’s marketing, advertising goals, and competitors

A description of your business’s current marketing position

A timeline of when tasks within your strategy will be completed

Key performance indicators (KPIs) you will be tracking

A description of your business’s target market and customer needs.

This may feel like a lot of moving parts to research and manage. But we’ll narrow the focus in on five essential steps that will get you moving towards those marketing goals.

Key responsibilities of a marketing project manager when creating a marketing campaign project plan

The  role of a project manager  is to set up and head up a project so that everything runs smoothly.  Project managers  are given overall responsibility for the successful initiation, planning, design , execution, monitoring, controlling, and closure of a project. 

Projects will typically have fixed time-frames and fixed costs. And project managers need to make sure that tasks are completed within the set time-frames and budgets permitted. 

While planning and  tracking  these details is an essential duty in a project manager’s day-to-day, they also must be great communicators.  One of project managers’ biggest roles is to communicate with and manage their team members, making sure that each member knows what their responsibilities are and are staying on track.

Do you really need a marketing project plan?" 

The answer, from research and professional marketers alike is a resounding “Yes!” Learning how to write a marketing project plan forces you to think through the important steps necessary for effective marketing. And a well-defined plan will help you stay focused on your overall marketing goals.

But in addition to helping you get your head in the marketing game, creating a marketing project plan yields a few other significant benefits: 

According to one study from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, only 2.5% of organizations complete 100% of their projects.

A report from The Standish Group found that 90% of companies use some sort of project retrospective process to assess performance .

And Aditi Consulting says  3 in 5 projects companies execute are not relevant to their business strategy.

But, marketers who set goals have a 429 percent greater chance of reporting successful campaigns, and 81 percent of these marketers achieve their goals . 

Setting clear goals and building out a thorough marketing project plan is one of the most difficult tasks for marketers, but this work pays off. 

How to create a killer marketing project plan 

We’ve broken this process down into seven straight-forward steps. Soon you’ll be cranking out stellar marketing project plans like the pro you are! Feel free to peruse these  project management templates  as you read along.

1. Create a clear marketing strategy 

While a marketing project plan is like a  roadmap , a marketing strategy is like a destination. So, before you start walking, figure out where you want to go. Your marketing strategy will include areas of research like your business’s vision, values, and goals; your audience; and your available marketing channels. Let’s quickly examine each of these further.

First, identify and note your business’ vision, values, and goals. 

Your marketing strategy must align with your business’ overall vision, values, and goals. So identify what these are in your particular business. What is your company hoping to achieve? What makes you stand apart from your competitors? What values do your company refuse to compromise? Keep this back bone of your company in the forefront of your mind while filling out your marketing strategy.

Second, take a close look at your target audience. 

Your target audience are those people who you are gearing your services or products towards and who are most likely to purchase your products. They are the reason you’re in business. Knowing what your target audience is buying or interested in purchasing is absolutely necessary when developing a marketing strategy and plan. When quality products or services are tied to your audience’s personal preferences, you can make a big impact and a big ROI. 

Audience research and knowledge is at the core of good marketing strategies. In fact, successful marketers are 242 percent more likely to conduct frequent audience research. Additionally, 56 percent of professionals and experienced marketers say that they perform audience research at least once per month.

Lastly, your marketing strategy will include a list of your marketing channels .

Marketing channels are the venues you use to reach your customers. These channels are where you’ll publish the content that educates your buyers, generates leads , and spreads awareness of your brand. Lay out which channels you want to use during your marketing project, what you’ll use each channel for, and how you’ll measure your success on each channel.

Some of the most effective marketing channels that have been performing best this year include pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media, email marketing, a business website, content marketing using a blog , and word of mouth. Other marketing channels include influencer marketing, cold calling , billboards, or TV commercials.

Today, there are more online marketing platforms than ever before. As intimidating as that may sound, your overall online presence has the potential to be more connected than ever before. 

Pro tip:  Don’t give a speech to an empty auditorium. You could write the most riveting blog post, put together the most eye-catching Instagram post , or create the cleverest tweet, but if your audience isn’t on those platforms or channels, you might as well have spent that time binge-watching Netflix.

2. Set S.M.A.R.T. goals 

The next step to creating a strong marketing project plan is to start setting your  project goals . There are a number of goals you might be interested in. Maybe you want to increase brand awareness or drive more traffic to your website. Perhaps you’re hoping to increase mentions in the press, generate new leads, or funnel customers towards a new ebook or course. 

Whatever marketing agenda you have, set S.M.A.R.T. goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. For example, you could have the goal of increasing traffic to your website by 15% in the next 6 months. This way, you and everyone on your team can clearly understand each goal and analyze your progress.

3. Delegate tactics to reach your goals 

The next step in building a fool-proof marketing project plan is to break down your goals into specific tactics. For example, if one of your marketing project goals is to reach 1000 followers on your company’s Instagram account, you might break down that goal into the following steps: 

Post varied content that aligns with your target audience’s interests daily.

Seek out potential partners and engage with their content daily.

Pursue new followers by engaging with competitor companies’ following.

Once you have your list of smaller steps, you can start delegating. Good delegation begins with a good team. If you have people working with you that have proven themselves to be trustworthy and hard-working, delegate portions of the marketing project to the appropriate workers. 

Routine and straightforward tasks are the best ones to delegate. Otherwise, you will end up being the bottleneck of your own marketing project. By delegating tasks to trusted employees, you’ll free up your own time to do what you do best–managing your marketing project plan.

4. Recognize parameters and resources 

Include detailed information about the available resources for your marketing project. Factors like your timeline, budget, and available team members will help you write and run through the plan smoothly.

Without specific parameters around your marketing project plan, your projects will be as real as pies in the sky. Setting parameters around your marketing project plan will actually help you turn your goals into a reality and track your progress along the way. Try to get your numbers as specific as possible so that you can accurately manage and monitor each step of the project and know when you’re getting close to your budget or time limit.

5. Get everyone on the same page 

One of the biggest responsibilities of a marketing project manager is to communicate well with the team and keep everyone working smoothly together. No matter what kind of marketing campaign you’re managing, your marketing team needs a clear plan and great execution to make it a success. 

You know your team best, so decide whether it’s necessary to meet every morning for five minutes or once a week for an hour to make sure that everyone understands the goal of the project and their upcoming tasks and responsibilities. However often you decide, here are a few tips for keeping each member of your team on the same page:

Share the big-picture. Most of us work better when we know the ultimate goal. It can be motivating and empowering to your team members and employees to feel like their work is part of a larger company objective.

Clarify specific tasks and responsibilities. In addition to sharing the big-picture, make sure to clearly explain each of the smaller tasks as well. Offer clarity for each marketing teammate on their specific roles,  tasks , and responsibilities. That way, you can ensure a smooth progression through the extent of the project.

Post a Project Calendar. Share a schedule with a set due date for every assigned task in your marketing project plan. This will help every member of your team stay on track and keep themselves accountable. 

A calendar with the approaching launch day can also be a big motivator for the whole team, and coworkers will more easily be able to see the accomplishments and successes of each other’s work. Make sure your teammates can easily access your  project calendar  and celebrate them when they hit challenging deadlines.

Pay no attention to the man(ager) behind the curtain 

Behind every project, whether it’s organizing a wedding or building a skyscraper, there is an unknown leader–the project manager who kept everything and everyone on track. 

The  role of a project manager  is to deliver the desired result, anticipate potential problems, and fix them before they occur. Good project managers can delegate work to passionate employees and teammates. They run things excellently from behind the curtain so as to eliminate any hiccups and ensure the project’s success . 

Better Marketing Project Management: The Key to Successful Marketing Campaigns

It’s a challenging role for marketers, but when done well, marketing project management leads to incredible business success. Solid  project management  and communication with your team is even more important and challenging with everyone working from home this year. But we’re not about to leave you hanging. Check out  our guide  for working through the six biggest challenges you might encounter while managing your team from afar. 

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How To Create A Marketing Project Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide

When you think of “big marketing mistakes”, you might think of that episode of The Office where Michael accidentally gives their biggest customer a Golden Ticket for a 50% discount.

And yes, giving away too much of your value for free is bad.

But actually, one of the biggest mistakes marketers make is: failing to plan.

You can have access to the best marketing project management tools but without a clear, documented marketing plan you’re bound to fail.

According to CoSchedule, marketers who plan are three times more likely to be successful than those who don’t.

In this blog, we’ve broken down everything you need to know on how to put together a marketing plan, including examples and templates.

What is a marketing project plan?

A marketing project plan is a report or presentation in which you outline your marketing strategy. It covers your marketing goals, the steps you will take to achieve these goals, and how to measure them. This could be for a specific period, for example, the next quarter or year, or for a specific event, such as a product launch. 

We’ll get into the specifics of what’s included in a marketing plan in a minute, but their basic purpose is to outline:

• Your goals and the metrics you’ll use to measure them
• The challenges you face in reaching them
• The actions you’ll take and resources required to overcome these

It’s the document your superiors will use to understand the project, that the marketing team will work from throughout, and that you’ll use to keep the whole thing on track.

Common formats for marketing plans are:

• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft Powerpoint
• Equivalent products in Google Drive, e.g., Slides

We’ll show you more examples below, but here’s a quick example of an MS Word marketing plan by ProjectManager for now:

In a nutshell, a marketing plan helps you:

• Define the scope of the project (and minimize project scope creep !)
• Set out a timeline for completion and allocate resources
• Measure your success and adjust your tactics as your project evolves

Marketing strategy vs. marketing plan: what’s the difference?

The difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan is subtle but important. 

A marketing strategy is all about high-level thinking – that means how you’re: 

• Communicating your company values 
• Achieving your goals for long-term growth
• Securing a competitive advantage 

A marketing plan, on the other hand, is the more specific, day-to-day actions that will get you there. 

It’s a symbiotic relationship: a marketing plan needs a strong strategy to guide it, and a marketing strategy is useless if not accompanied by a good plan.

9 elements of a marketing plan

No two marketing projects are the same, so it follows that no two marketing plans will be either. However, most successful marketing plans will usually have these nine elements in common.

1. Target market 

If you’re working on an email marketing campaign, this might be which segments of the target audience you’ll be engaging. If you’re launching a new product it’ll mean outlining your ICP, or Ideal Customer Profile.

Buyer personas are useful to document your ICP. Here’s an example buyer persona template.

2. Project goals

Without goals in place, your marketing plan is dead in the water. They should be SMART – that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

In short, SMART goals are specific targets you want to hit in a defined period. Advantages for setting SMART goals include:

• Set clear, unambiguous goals for your marketing team
• Provide a way to measure progress and course correct if necessary
• Prevent your team from wasting resources on irrelevant work
• Build confidence with realistic and achievable goals
• Set clear start and end dates for your marketing projects

Here’s an example SMART goals planning template from HubSpot.

3. Competitive analysis

A competitor analysis might seem like it’s more relevant to a product launch project, but it’s equally important to your marketing efforts.

Depending on your marketing campaign, your competitive analysis can take different forms. For example, to analyze your SEO competition, you want to know:

• Who are my SEO competitors?
• How does a competitor’s content on Google?
• Am I missing any content that my competitors have?
• What kind of content drives results for my competition?

Here’s an example SEO competition analysis by Moz to include in your marketing plan:

4. Strategies

Now’s the time to define the important elements of your brand’s strategy. This will include things like:

• Your value proposition
• Your brand positioning
• Your mission statement

Here’s an example of a brand strategy slide from a brand marketing plan. It includes a brand strategy roadmap, which you can find out more about here .

The last thing you want to do when you’re outlining your big vision for brand expansion is crunched the numbers, but look at it this way: if you don’t crunch them now, they’ll come back to bite you later.

You need to budget for any costs, such as: 

• Focus groups 
• Visual assets

Here’s an example of a product marketing budget in Google Sheets:

6. Responsibilities and resource planning

A resource plan is a key component of any plan.

It involves identifying, acquiring, and assigning resources for your marketing project in order to meet the goals. Resources can be anything including people, tools, facilities, materials, or monetary budget.

The resource allocation process involves the following steps:

• Create your marketing project’s timeline.
• Identify resources you’ll need to get the project done.
• Find and book available resources.
• Create a plan for acquiring unavailable resources.

7. Metrics and measurements

Setting your metrics at the start of the project gives you the ability to track the success of the project in real-time and makes it clear to everyone on board what success would look like.

The best metrics will depend on your overall objectives.

Remember, though: beware of vanity metrics that look good on a graph but don’t give a reliable indicator of engagement, for example, social media impressions.

8. Tasks and schedule 

Do you know what we call a plan without a clear schedule attached to it? Just a nice idea.

Here’s a template to for creating a digital marketing plan in Excel .

Alternatively, you can also use a visual planning tool like Toggl Plan to plan a timeline for your marketing project.

9. Executive summary

We know what you’re thinking – doesn’t this usually go at the top of a marketing plan?

You’re absolutely right. But the reason we’ve left this part till the end of this list is that it’s actually the last thing you’ll write as part of your marketing plan.

The executive summary takes everything we’ve just discussed and boils it down into a brief overview at the start of the marketing plan.

Learn more about how to write an executive summary .

How to create a marketing plan

Now that you know the key elements of a great marketing plan, it’s time to get yours written. Here’s how to create a stellar marketing plan – in seven steps.

1. Identify stakeholders

The stakeholders are the people you need to please with this marketing plan, and you’ve got to identify them and what their needs are before you begin.

Examples of who your stakeholders might be:

Identifying which ones are the most important to this project and what their distinct needs are can guide your strategy and priorities.

For example, let’s say you’re running a campaign to generate leads for your sales team. Your sales team is a stakeholder in this campaign. You’ll need to consult them to find out their needs—not just high-level goals like “get more leads”, but things like:

• What does a qualified lead look like for them?
• What information do they need to contact these leads?
• How many leads do they need to meet their sales targets?

You can’t afford to skip this stage—only one in three organizations deliver projects that are likely to achieve stakeholder satisfaction.

2. Assemble your team

This is self-explanatory, right? To get the job done properly, you need the right people working on it.

Most project teams have only 6-10 people on them. The old saying “too many cooks spoil the broth” is as true in marketing as it is in the kitchen.

Instead, focus on getting a small group of people who have the right expertise, experience, and authority to get the job done.

For example, in a content marketing project you might need:

• A project manager (that’s you)
• An SEO expert
• A content writer
• A social media manager to promote the content

Learn more about how to assemble your team in our resource allocation guide .

3. Create a communication plan

29% of project failures are due to poor communication.

A documented project communication plan could mean a difference between success and failure.

Decide how your team will communicate with each other from the outset, for example:

• The medium you’ll use, e.g., email, Slack, Microsoft Teams
• How often you’ll meet to discuss the project 
• What the chain of command is – who should your team members go to with questions and concerns?

One great way of increasing transparency and communication in marketing projects is through effective time tracking .

Some tasks will take longer than you expected them to—that’s just life. With time tracking , you can see when this is happening and react accordingly, whether by allocating more resources or having another team member jump in to help

This can help to reduce the stress of ambitious projects because team members are all on the same page, and they can work more efficiently together and independently, too.

4. Create a task list

Creating a task list for your project seems daunting at first, but we believe it can be broken down into three easy steps: 

• Establish project scope . What’s your job in this project, and what do you not need to worry about?
• Create a work breakdown structure ( WBS ) . Divide the project into phases you can then use to bucket your tasks – for example, market research might be the first phase of a product marketing campaign.
• Break each work phase into tasks . Within the market research example, you might have tasks like “put together focus groups”, “white paper”, or “case study.”

Your project’s activities should be ranked according to stakeholder priorities. For internal tasks consider using these prioritization techniques .

5. Make a schedule for your marketing plan

We’ve already shown you what a schedule in a marketing plan can look like in Excel, but there are numerous drawbacks to scheduling your marketing plan in a static document.

One of the biggest ones is its lack of interactivity, particularly when it comes to integrating with other platforms. There are many more sophisticated project management tools out there that allow you to see not just your team’s work for this one project, but to compare this to their other priorities, including milestones and deliverables.

A visual project schedule helps you identify the milestones, gaps, risks, and resources required for your marketing campaign.

6. Generate a risk management plan

Risk management practices are widely used across most organizations – only 3% of organizations say they never use risk management practices, while 27% say they always do.

One way that you can anticipate risk is by doing a SWOT analysis. That’s an overview of your:

• Opportunities

Here’s an example of what this looks like for a local Thai restaurant:

Another important step in preparing for risk factors in your marketing project is to utilize an agile planning model .

Originally conceived by software development teams, agile planning is all about using an iterative approach where you’re constantly evaluating and re-evaluating your methods as the project goes on.

Instead of sticking to your original plan through thick and thin, if something’s not working, you change it up. This minimizes the risk of total project failure, while also building on our final point.

7. Monitoring and reporting

We’ve already spoken about the importance of project time management. Tracking and regular reporting are key to delivering projects on time and successfully, and one way of doing this is through the time tracking tools as we mentioned earlier.

These will help you flag if team members are falling behind, as well as show you how much has been done on the project to date.

Throughout your project, you should constantly monitor your key metrics. And in fact, many good marketing project plans have a space for this kind of reporting built into them.

Marketing plan examples

We’ve already seen some snippets from marketing plans but here are three marketing project plan examples.

We showed this briefly above, but this marketing project plan example from Lush in Portugal exhibits almost all of the features we’ve outlined in this blog.

2. Gantt project plan

A Gantt chart is simply a chart that illustrates a project schedule. This marketing plan template from Microsoft gives you a good idea of how it looks and is like an offline version of time management tools like Toggl.

3. Microsoft Word

This simple marketing project plan example is created in Word. In just four pages, it offers a condensed version of what we’ve discussed above.

This streamlined format is ideal for simpler or shorter-term projects, or if you only have a limited time to present an overview of your project—for example, in a company updates meeting.

Create the Perfect Marketing Project Plan

Designing a dynamite marketing project plan is only the beginning. Now you’ve got all the information you need to do it, it’s up to you to see it through. But you’re not on your own—with these tips under your belt and the right planning tools , we know you’ve got what it takes to lead an amazing marketing project.

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How to Write a Market Analysis for a Business Plan

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A lot of preparation goes into starting a business before you can open your doors to the public or launch your online store. One of your first steps should be to write a business plan . A business plan will serve as your roadmap when building your business.

Within your business plan, there’s an important section you should pay careful attention to: your market analysis. Your market analysis helps you understand your target market and how you can thrive within it.

Simply put, your market analysis shows that you’ve done your research. It also contributes to your marketing strategy by defining your target customer and researching their buying habits. Overall, a market analysis will yield invaluable data if you have limited knowledge about your market, the market has fierce competition, and if you require a business loan. In this guide, we'll explore how to conduct your own market analysis.

How to conduct a market analysis: A step-by-step guide

In your market analysis, you can expect to cover the following:

Industry outlook

Target market

Market value

Competition

Barriers to entry

Let’s dive into an in-depth look into each section:

Step 1: Define your objective

Before you begin your market analysis, it’s important to define your objective for writing a market analysis. Are you writing it for internal purposes or for external purposes?

If you were doing a market analysis for internal purposes, you might be brainstorming new products to launch or adjusting your marketing tactics. An example of an external purpose might be that you need a market analysis to get approved for a business loan .

The comprehensiveness of your market analysis will depend on your objective. If you’re preparing for a new product launch, you might focus more heavily on researching the competition. A market analysis for a loan approval would require heavy data and research into market size and growth, share potential, and pricing.

Step 2: Provide an industry outlook

An industry outlook is a general direction of where your industry is heading. Lenders want to know whether you’re targeting a growing industry or declining industry. For example, if you’re looking to sell VCRs in 2020, it’s unlikely that your business will succeed.

Starting your market analysis with an industry outlook offers a preliminary view of the market and what to expect in your market analysis. When writing this section, you'll want to include:

Market size

Are you chasing big markets or are you targeting very niche markets? If you’re targeting a niche market, are there enough customers to support your business and buy your product?

Product life cycle

If you develop a product, what will its life cycle look like? Lenders want an overview of how your product will come into fruition after it’s developed and launched. In this section, you can discuss your product’s:

Research and development

Projected growth

How do you see your company performing over time? Calculating your year-over-year growth will help you and lenders see how your business has grown thus far. Calculating your projected growth shows how your business will fare in future projected market conditions.

Step 3: Determine your target market

This section of your market analysis is dedicated to your potential customer. Who is your ideal target customer? How can you cater your product to serve them specifically?

Don’t make the mistake of wanting to sell your product to everybody. Your target customer should be specific. For example, if you’re selling mittens, you wouldn’t want to market to warmer climates like Hawaii. You should target customers who live in colder regions. The more nuanced your target market is, the more information you’ll have to inform your business and marketing strategy.

With that in mind, your target market section should include the following points:

Demographics

This is where you leave nothing to mystery about your ideal customer. You want to know every aspect of your customer so you can best serve them. Dedicate time to researching the following demographics:

Income level

Create a customer persona

Creating a customer persona can help you better understand your customer. It can be easier to market to a person than data on paper. You can give this persona a name, background, and job. Mold this persona into your target customer.

What are your customer’s pain points? How do these pain points influence how they buy products? What matters most to them? Why do they choose one brand over another?

Research and supporting material

Information without data are just claims. To add credibility to your market analysis, you need to include data. Some methods for collecting data include:

Target group surveys

Focus groups

Reading reviews

Feedback surveys

You can also consult resources online. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau can help you find demographics in calculating your market share. The U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Small Business Administration also offer general data that can help you research your target industry.

Step 4: Calculate market value

You can use either top-down analysis or bottom-up analysis to calculate an estimate of your market value.

A top-down analysis tends to be the easier option of the two. It requires for you to calculate the entire market and then estimate how much of a share you expect your business to get. For example, let’s assume your target market consists of 100,000 people. If you’re optimistic and manage to get 1% of that market, you can expect to make 1,000 sales.

A bottom-up analysis is more data-driven and requires more research. You calculate the individual factors of your business and then estimate how high you can scale them to arrive at a projected market share. Some factors to consider when doing a bottom-up analysis include:

Where products are sold

Who your competition is

The price per unit

How many consumers you expect to reach

The average amount a customer would buy over time

While a bottom-up analysis requires more data than a top-down analysis, you can usually arrive at a more accurate calculation.

Step 5: Get to know your competition

Before you start a business, you need to research the level of competition within your market. Are there certain companies getting the lion’s share of the market? How can you position yourself to stand out from the competition?

There are two types of competitors that you should be aware of: direct competitors and indirect competitors.

Direct competitors are other businesses who sell the same product as you. If you and the company across town both sell apples, you are direct competitors.

An indirect competitor sells a different but similar product to yours. If that company across town sells oranges instead, they are an indirect competitor. Apples and oranges are different but they still target a similar market: people who eat fruits.

Also, here are some questions you want to answer when writing this section of your market analysis:

What are your competitor’s strengths?

What are your competitor’s weaknesses?

How can you cover your competitor’s weaknesses in your own business?

How can you solve the same problems better or differently than your competitors?

How can you leverage technology to better serve your customers?

How big of a threat are your competitors if you open your business?

Step 6: Identify your barriers

Writing a market analysis can help you identify some glaring barriers to starting your business. Researching these barriers will help you avoid any costly legal or business mistakes down the line. Some entry barriers to address in your marketing analysis include:

Technology: How rapid is technology advancing and can it render your product obsolete within the next five years?

Branding: You need to establish your brand identity to stand out in a saturated market.

Cost of entry: Startup costs, like renting a space and hiring employees, are expensive. Also, specialty equipment often comes with hefty price tags. (Consider researching equipment financing to help finance these purchases.)

Location: You need to secure a prime location if you’re opening a physical store.

Competition: A market with fierce competition can be a steep uphill battle (like attempting to go toe-to-toe with Apple or Amazon).

Step 7: Know the regulations

When starting a business, it’s your responsibility to research governmental and state business regulations within your market. Some regulations to keep in mind include (but aren’t limited to):

Employment and labor laws

Advertising

Environmental regulations

If you’re a newer entrepreneur and this is your first business, this part can be daunting so you might want to consult with a business attorney. A legal professional will help you identify the legal requirements specific to your business. You can also check online legal help sites like LegalZoom or Rocket Lawyer.

Tips when writing your market analysis

We wouldn’t be surprised if you feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information needed in a market analysis. Keep in mind, though, this research is key to launching a successful business. You don’t want to cut corners, but here are a few tips to help you out when writing your market analysis:

Use visual aids

Nobody likes 30 pages of nothing but text. Using visual aids can break up those text blocks, making your market analysis more visually appealing. When discussing statistics and metrics, charts and graphs will help you better communicate your data.

Include a summary

If you’ve ever read an article from an academic journal, you’ll notice that writers include an abstract that offers the reader a preview.

Use this same tactic when writing your market analysis. It will prime the reader of your market highlights before they dive into the hard data.

Get to the point

It’s better to keep your market analysis concise than to stuff it with fluff and repetition. You’ll want to present your data, analyze it, and then tie it back into how your business can thrive within your target market.

Revisit your market analysis regularly

Markets are always changing and it's important that your business changes with your target market. Revisiting your market analysis ensures that your business operations align with changing market conditions. The best businesses are the ones that can adapt.

Why should you write a market analysis?

Your market analysis helps you look at factors within your market to determine if it’s a good fit for your business model. A market analysis will help you:

1. Learn how to analyze the market need

Markets are always shifting and it’s a good idea to identify current and projected market conditions. These trends will help you understand the size of your market and whether there are paying customers waiting for you. Doing a market analysis helps you confirm that your target market is a lucrative market.

2. Learn about your customers

The best way to serve your customer is to understand them. A market analysis will examine your customer’s buying habits, pain points, and desires. This information will aid you in developing a business that addresses those points.

3. Get approved for a business loan

Starting a business, especially if it’s your first one, requires startup funding. A good first step is to apply for a business loan with your bank or other financial institution.

A thorough market analysis shows that you’re professional, prepared, and worth the investment from lenders. This preparation inspires confidence within the lender that you can build a business and repay the loan.

4. Beat the competition

Your research will offer valuable insight and certain advantages that the competition might not have. For example, thoroughly understanding your customer’s pain points and desires will help you develop a superior product or service than your competitors. If your business is already up and running, an updated market analysis can upgrade your marketing strategy or help you launch a new product.

Final thoughts

There is a saying that the first step to cutting down a tree is to sharpen an axe. In other words, preparation is the key to success. In business, preparation increases the chances that your business will succeed, even in a competitive market.

The market analysis section of your business plan separates the entrepreneurs who have done their homework from those who haven’t. Now that you’ve learned how to write a market analysis, it’s time for you to sharpen your axe and grow a successful business. And keep in mind, if you need help crafting your business plan, you can always turn to business plan software or a free template to help you stay organized.

This article originally appeared on JustBusiness, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.

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How to Write a Business Plan: Target Market Analysis

The Business Plan and the Importance of Defining Your Target Market

Susan Ward wrote about small businesses for The Balance for 18 years. She has run an IT consulting firm and designed and presented courses on how to promote small businesses.

Conducting a Market Analysis

Polling your target market, writing the market analysis, online tools for market research, u.s. online market research sources, canadian online market research, local sources of market research, doing your own market research.

 Creative Commons CC0

The market analysis is basically the target market section of your business plan . It is a thorough examination of the ideal people to whom you intend to sell your products or services.  

Even if you intend on selling a product or service only in your community, you won't be selling that service to everyone who lives there. Knowing exactly what type(s) of people might be interested in buying your product or service and how many of them reside in your projected area or region is fundamental in creating your market analysis.

Once target market data has been established, you'll also work on sales projections within specific time frames, as well as how prospective sales might be affected by trends and policies.

Research is key and cornerstone of any solid  business plan .

Don't Skip This Step!

Don't skip market research; otherwise, you could end up starting a business that doesn't have a paying market.

Use these general terms as linchpins in research data for the market analysis section of your business plan, and to identify your target market:

But don't stop here. To succinctly define your target market, poll or survey members of your prospective clients or customers to ask specific questions directly related to your products or services. For instance, if you plan to sell computer-related services, ask questions relating to the number of computing devices your prospective customers own and how often they require servicing. If you plan on selling garden furniture and accessories, ask what kinds of garden furniture or accessories your potential customers have bought in the past, how often, and what they expect to buy within the next one, three, and five years.

Answers to these and other questions related to your market are to help you understand your market potential.

The goal of the information you collect is to help you project how much of your product or service you'll be able to sell. Review these important questions you need to try to answer using the data you collect:

• What proportion of your target market has used a product similar to yours before?
• How much of your product or service might your target market buy? (Estimate this in gross sales and/or in units of product/service sold.)
• What proportion of your target market might be repeat customers?
• How might your target market be affected by demographic shifts?
• How might your target market be affected by economic events (e.g. a local mill closing or a big-box retailer opening locally)?
• How might your target market be affected by larger socio-economic trends?
• How might your target market be affected by government policies (e.g. new bylaws or changes in taxes)?

One purpose of the market analysis is to ensure you have a viable business idea.

Find Your Buying Market

Use your market research to make sure people don't just like your business idea, but they're also willing to pay for it.

If you have information suggesting that you have a large enough market to sustain your business goals, write the market analysis in the form of several short paragraphs using appropriate headings for each. If you have several target markets, you may want to number each. 

Sections of your market analysis should include:

• Industry Description and Outlook
• Target Market
• Market Research Results
• Competitive Analysis

Remember to properly cite your sources of information within the body of your market analysis as you write it. You and other readers of your business plan, such as potential investors, will need to know the sources of the statistics or opinions that you've gathered.

There are several online resources to learn if your business idea is something worth pursing, including:

• Keyword searches can give you an overall sense of potential demand for your product or service based on the number of searches.
• Google Trends analysis can tell you how the number of searches has changed over time.
• Social media campaigns can give you an indication of the potential customer interest in your business idea.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has information on doing your market research and analysis , as well as a list of free small business data and trends resources you can use to conduct your research. Consider these sources for data collection:

• SBA  Business Data and Statistics  
• The U.S. Census Bureau maintains a huge database of demographic information that is searchable by state, county, city/town, or zip code using its census data tool . Community, housing, economic, and population surveys are also available.
• The U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has extensive statistics on the economy including consumer income/spending/consumption, business activity, GDP, and more, all of which are searchable by location.

The Government of Canada offers a guide on doing market research and tips for understanding the data you collect. Canadian data resources include:

• Statistics Canada  offers demographic and economic data.
• The  Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)  offers market research and consulting with industry experts.
• The Canada Business Network provides business information to entrepreneurs by province/territory, including market research data.

There are also a great many local resources for building target market information to explore, including:

• Local library
• Local Chamber of Commerce
• Board of Trade
• Economic Development Centre
• Local government agent's office
• Provincial business ministry
• Local phone book

All of these will have information helpful in defining your target market and providing insights into trends.

The above resources are secondary sources of information, in which others have collected and compiled the data. To get specific information about your business, consider conducting your own market research . For instance, you might want to design a questionnaire and survey your target market to learn more about their habits and preferences relating to your product or service.

Market research is time-consuming but is an important step in affording your business plan validity. If you don't have the time or the research skills to thoroughly define your target market yourself, hiring a person or firm to do the research for you can be a wise investment.​

Small Business Administration. " Market Research and Competitive Analysis. " Accessed Jan. 13, 2020.

550+ Business Plan Examples to Launch Your Business

Need help writing your business plan? Explore over 550 industry-specific business plan examples for inspiration.

Find your business plan example

Accounting, Insurance & Compliance Business Plans

• View All 25

Children & Pets Business Plans

• Children's Education & Recreation
• View All 33

Cleaning, Repairs & Maintenance Business Plans

• Auto Detail & Repair
• Cleaning Products
• View All 39

Clothing & Fashion Brand Business Plans

• Clothing & Fashion Design
• View All 26

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• Architecture
• Construction
• View All 46

Consulting, Advertising & Marketing Business Plans

• Advertising
• View All 54

Education Business Plans

• Education Consulting
• Education Products

Business plan template: There's an easier way to get your business plan done.

Entertainment & Recreation Business Plans

• Entertainment
• Film & Television
• View All 60

Events Business Plans

• Event Planning
• View All 17

Farm & Agriculture Business Plans

• Agri-tourism
• Agriculture Consulting
• View All 16

Finance & Investing Business Plans

• Financial Planning
• View All 10

Fine Art & Crafts Business Plans

Fitness & Beauty Business Plans

• Salon & Spa
• View All 36

Food and Beverage Business Plans

• Bar & Brewery
• View All 77

Hotel & Lodging Business Plans

• Bed and Breakfast

IT, Staffing & Customer Service Business Plans

• Administrative Services
• Customer Service
• View All 22

Manufacturing & Wholesale Business Plans

• Cleaning & Cosmetics Manufacturing
• View All 68

Medical & Health Business Plans

• Dental Practice
• Health Administration
• View All 41

Nonprofit Business Plans

• Co-op Nonprofit
• Food & Housing Nonprofit
• View All 13

Real Estate & Rentals Business Plans

• Equipment Rental

Retail & Ecommerce Business Plans

• Car Dealership
• View All 116

Technology Business Plans

• Apps & Software
• Communication Technology

Transportation, Travel & Logistics Business Plans

• Airline, Taxi & Shuttle
• View All 62

View all sample business plans

Example business plan format

Before you start exploring our library of business plan examples, it's worth taking the time to understand the traditional business plan format . You'll find that the plans in this library and most investor-approved business plans will include the following sections:

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally only one to two pages. You should also plan to write this section last after you've written your full business plan.

Your executive summary should include a summary of the problem you are solving, a description of your product or service, an overview of your target market, a brief description of your team, a summary of your financials, and your funding requirements (if you are raising money).

Products & services

The products & services chapter of your business plan is where the real meat of your plan lives. It includes information about the problem that you're solving, your solution, and any traction that proves that it truly meets the need you identified.

This is your chance to explain why you're in business and that people care about what you offer. It needs to go beyond a simple product or service description and get to the heart of why your business works and benefits your customers.

Market analysis

Conducting a market analysis ensures that you fully understand the market that you're entering and who you'll be selling to. This section is where you will showcase all of the information about your potential customers. You'll cover your target market as well as information about the growth of your market and your industry. Focus on outlining why the market you're entering is viable and creating a realistic persona for your ideal customer base.

Competition

Part of defining your opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage may be. To do this effectively you need to get to know your competitors just as well as your target customers. Every business will have competition, if you don't then you're either in a very young industry or there's a good reason no one is pursuing this specific venture.

To succeed, you want to be sure you know who your competitors are, how they operate, necessary financial benchmarks, and how you're business will be positioned. Start by identifying who your competitors are or will be during your market research. Then leverage competitive analysis tools like the competitive matrix and positioning map to solidify where your business stands in relation to the competition.

Marketing & sales

The marketing and sales plan section of your business plan details how you plan to reach your target market segments. You'll address how you plan on selling to those target markets, what your pricing plan is, and what types of activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success.

The operations section covers the day-to-day workflows for your business to deliver your product or service. What's included here fully depends on the type of business. Typically you can expect to add details on your business location, sourcing and fulfillment, use of technology, and any partnerships or agreements that are in place.

Milestones & metrics

The milestones section is where you lay out strategic milestones to reach your business goals.

A good milestone clearly lays out the parameters of the task at hand and sets expectations for its execution. You'll want to include a description of the task, a proposed due date, who is responsible, and eventually a budget that's attached. You don't need extensive project planning in this section, just key milestones that you want to hit and when you plan to hit them.

You should also discuss key metrics, which are the numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common data points worth tracking include conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, profit, etc.

Company & team

Use this section to describe your current team and who you need to hire. If you intend to pursue funding, you'll need to highlight the relevant experience of your team members. Basically, this is where you prove that this is the right team to successfully start and grow the business. You will also need to provide a quick overview of your legal structure and history if you're already up and running.

Financial projections

Your financial plan should include a sales and revenue forecast, profit and loss statement, cash flow statement, and a balance sheet. You may not have established financials of any kind at this stage. Not to worry, rather than getting all of the details ironed out, focus on making projections and strategic forecasts for your business. You can always update your financial statements as you begin operations and start bringing in actual accounting data.

Now, if you intend to pitch to investors or submit a loan application, you'll also need a "use of funds" report in this section. This outlines how you intend to leverage any funding for your business and how much you're looking to acquire. Like the rest of your financials, this can always be updated later on.

The appendix isn't a required element of your business plan. However, it is a useful place to add any charts, tables, definitions, legal notes, or other critical information that supports your plan. These are often lengthier or out-of-place information that simply didn't work naturally into the structure of your plan. You'll notice that in these business plan examples, the appendix mainly includes extended financial statements.

Types of business plans explained

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. To get the most out of your plan, it's best to find a format that suits your needs. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan

The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used for external purposes. Typically this is the type of plan you'll need when applying for funding or pitching to investors. It can also be used when training or hiring employees, working with vendors, or in any other situation where the full details of your business must be understood by another individual.

Business model canvas

The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

The structure ditches a linear format in favor of a cell-based template. It encourages you to build connections between every element of your business. It's faster to write out and update, and much easier for you, your team, and anyone else to visualize your business operations.

One-page business plan

The true middle ground between the business model canvas and a traditional business plan is the one-page business plan . This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business.

By starting with a one-page plan , you give yourself a minimal document to build from. You'll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences making it much easier to elaborate or expand sections into a longer-form business plan.

Growth planning

Growth planning is more than a specific type of business plan. It's a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, forecast, review, and refine based on your performance.

It holds all of the benefits of the single-page plan, including the potential to complete it in as little as 27 minutes . However, it's even easier to convert into a more detailed plan thanks to how heavily it's tied to your financials. The overall goal of growth planning isn't to just produce documents that you use once and shelve. Instead, the growth planning process helps you build a healthier company that thrives in times of growth and remain stable through times of crisis.

It's faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

Download a free sample business plan template

Ready to start writing your own plan but aren't sure where to start? Download our free business plan template that's been updated for 2024.

This simple, modern, investor-approved business plan template is designed to make planning easy. It's a proven format that has helped over 1 million businesses write business plans for bank loans, funding pitches, business expansion, and even business sales. It includes additional instructions for how to write each section and is formatted to be SBA-lender approved. All you need to do is fill in the blanks.

How to use an example business plan to help you write your own

How do you know what elements need to be included in your business plan, especially if you've never written one before? Looking at examples can help you visualize what a full, traditional plan looks like, so you know what you're aiming for before you get started. Here's how to get the most out of a sample business plan.

Choose a business plan example from a similar type of company

You don't need to find an example business plan that's an exact fit for your business. Your business location, target market, and even your particular product or service may not match up exactly with the plans in our gallery. But, you don't need an exact match for it to be helpful. Instead, look for a plan that's related to the type of business you're starting.

For example, if you want to start a vegetarian restaurant, a plan for a steakhouse can be a great match. While the specifics of your actual startup will differ, the elements you'd want to include in your restaurant's business plan are likely to be very similar.

Use a business plan example as a guide

Every startup and small business is unique, so you'll want to avoid copying an example business plan word for word. It just won't be as helpful, since each business is unique. You want your plan to be a useful tool for starting a business —and getting funding if you need it.

One of the key benefits of writing a business plan is simply going through the process. When you sit down to write, you'll naturally think through important pieces, like your startup costs, your target market , and any market analysis or research you'll need to do to be successful.

You'll also look at where you stand among your competition (and everyone has competition), and lay out your goals and the milestones you'll need to meet. Looking at an example business plan's financials section can be helpful because you can see what should be included, but take them with a grain of salt. Don't assume that financial projections for a sample company will fit your own small business.

If you're looking for more resources to help you get started, our business planning guide is a good place to start. You can also download our free business plan template .

Think of business planning as a process, instead of a document

Think about business planning as something you do often , rather than a document you create once and never look at again. If you take the time to write a plan that really fits your own company, it will be a better, more useful tool to grow your business. It should also make it easier to share your vision and strategy so everyone on your team is on the same page.

Adjust your plan regularly to use it as a business management tool

Keep in mind that businesses that use their plan as a management tool to help run their business grow 30 percent faster than those businesses that don't. For that to be true for your company, you'll think of a part of your business planning process as tracking your actual results against your financial forecast on a regular basis.

If things are going well, your plan will help you think about how you can re-invest in your business. If you find that you're not meeting goals, you might need to adjust your budgets or your sales forecast. Either way, tracking your progress compared to your plan can help you adjust quickly when you identify challenges and opportunities—it's one of the most powerful things you can do to grow your business.

Prepare to pitch your business

If you're planning to pitch your business to investors or seek out any funding, you'll need a pitch deck to accompany your business plan. A pitch deck is designed to inform people about your business. You want your pitch deck to be short and easy to follow, so it's best to keep your presentation under 20 slides.

Your pitch deck and pitch presentation are likely some of the first things that an investor will see to learn more about your company. So, you need to be informative and pique their interest. Luckily, just like you can leverage an example business plan template to write your plan, we also have a gallery of over 50 pitch decks for you to reference.

With this gallery, you have the option to view specific industry pitches or get inspired by real-world pitch deck examples.

Ready to get started?

Now that you know how to use an example business plan to help you write a plan for your business, it's time to find the right one.

Use the search bar below to get started and find the right match for your business idea.

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• Marketing project management: How to st ...

Marketing project management: How to structure your strategy

Marketing project management is a methodology used to keep marketing campaigns on track and stakeholders informed throughout the project lifecycle. It provides clarity among teams, keeps your projects within scope, and helps team members meet customer needs. In this piece, we’ll discuss the challenges of marketing campaigns and explain how marketing project management can help you succeed.

Marketing initiatives can be crucial to your business plan because they give you the chance to tell your brand story and send leads down the sales funnel. Without effective marketing, you may struggle to bring in revenue and secure loyal customers. A focused marketing plan ensures that your message resonates with your audience so you can walk away from every campaign feeling proud of the work your team put in.

What is marketing project management?

Marketing project management is a methodology used to keep marketing campaigns on track and stakeholders informed throughout the project lifecycle. It provides clarity among teams, keeps your projects within scope, and helps you meet customer needs.

To manage marketing projects, you’ll start with the same project management principles that other teams and industries use. But marketing project management differs from the traditional project management approach in a few ways, which we’ll cover below. 

The five project management phases are:

Performance

In marketing project management, you’ll add a marketing strategy phase where you’ll gather market research and data and use your findings to set your project plan in motion.

Why is marketing project management important?

Marketing project management is important because how you manage a project impacts everyone involved with the marketing campaign. When you use the right methodology, others will follow your lead and reap the benefits of your strong leadership. 

Picture yourself at the center of the project. As the circle expands, more people get involved in the project. Once you realize you’re only the first person in the project life cycle, it’s easier to see why project management is so important.

It takes a village to manage a marketing project. The three most important stakeholder groups are:

The marketing project manager:  As the leader and facilitator of marketing campaigns, you’re at the center of everything that happens during a marketing project. This includes things like project timeline delays, email marketing troubleshooting, and KPI monitoring. 

Internal stakeholders: Internal stakeholders are team members within your organization who have a stake in your project. These people may include executives, sales representatives, creatives, or technicians. How you manage your marketing campaign affects internal stakeholders. They’re often either involved with the marketing campaign, impacted by the campaign’s deliverables, or informed about your overall goals.

External stakeholders: External stakeholders are people outside of your organization who have a stake in your project. These people may include vendors, end users, clients, or investors. You’ll need project management skills to keep external stakeholders informed and satisfied with your project deliverables.

10 steps of the marketing project management process

The marketing project management methodology has 10 key steps. While your marketing agency may tackle complex projects in niche areas like SEO or social media, you can use these steps as a general framework for most marketing campaigns.

You can divide the 10 steps below into five project phases. These five phases resemble the traditional project management phases, but they also include additional marketing strategies to ensure you’re setting yourself—and your marketing project—up for success. 

Objectives and analysis

The goal of the objectives and analysis phase of marketing project management is to focus on planning your marketing campaign. This involves defining the project’s end goals and outlining success metrics.

Define end goals: Make your end goals clear at the beginning of every project you work on. That way, team members know what to strive for during project execution and stakeholders know what to expect. 

Identify success metrics : It’s critical to identify KPIs at the beginning of your campaign so you can use these metrics to monitor your progress throughout the project lifecycle. 

Marketing strategy

Use your project objectives from phase one to drive your marketing strategy. During this phase, you’ll also use market research and data to find the most effective way to achieve your strategic goals .

Pinpoint your audience: Identifying your target audience is the first step to achieving a high ROI. Your target audience is the group of people who are most likely to resonate with your brand. If you can reach this audience, you increase your chance of selling your product or service. 

Set message and CTAs: Determine the message you want to send to your target audience. Your message should include strategic calls to action for your product or service. 

Project scheduling

Your marketing campaign may require creative assets and a detailed plan of how and where to distribute these assets. During the project scheduling phase, establish a team to assist you with asset creation. 

Clarify scope: Clarify your project scope so everyone knows the limitations of your project timeline, resources, and budget. It's also important to ensure stakeholders are aware of the project scope to limit change requests.

Delegate tasks : Delegating work is crucial if you hope to stay organized and avoid duplicate work. Create a project timeline and assign tasks to team members. Use a Gantt chart or other task management tool so team members can visualize project milestones and dependencies between tasks. 

Campaign launch

After you’ve scheduled your campaign, the action begins. This is the phase when your team develops your creative assets and sends them out to the masses. This part of marketing project management is exciting because you get to see your strategy in motion. 

Create project deliverables: Produce deliverables that will outshine your competitors’ and wow your audience. Employ a team of writers and graphic designers that can deliver your message using strong copy and impressive visuals. 

Distribute across marketing channels: Determine which marketing channels will help you reach your target audience and when they’re on them. Place your deliverables across these channels so you get as many eyes on them as possible.

Monitor and review

Use the success metrics you set during the project planning phase to monitor your project progress. Once you’ve tracked your progress, you can also  use your performance results to learn lessons for future projects . 

Monitor results: Use project management software to monitor your KPIs in real time. Once you’ve launched your marketing campaign, you can assess how well your campaign performed and what adjustments you should make to your future marketing strategy.

Set future standards: Use any lessons you learn from monitoring your campaign to set standards for future projects. For example, if your campaign performed poorly with a specific age bracket, set audience limitations on this group for future campaigns.  

Common challenges in marketing campaigns

Many marketing teams face challenges when implementing their marketing campaigns. Luckily, the most common challenges are preventable or easily mitigated with marketing project management. 

Use the solutions to the challenges below as part of your marketing project management workflow.

1. Project risks

Marketing campaigns experience risk in many areas, and it’s difficult to predict what these risks will be or when they’ll occur. But if you’re not prepared to mitigate a project risk once it takes hold, the problem can affect project quality. Some common areas of project risks include:

Technical risk: Technical risk can particularly affect email or digital marketing campaigns . Security incidents, cyberattacks, password theft, or service outages could delay a marketing campaign or derail it completely. 

Market risk: These are risks that affect the entire market. These may include risk of recession, margin risk, interest rate risk, and currency risk. While these risks are uncontrollable, your team can prepare for them so you can react quickly if they do happen.

Organizational risk: Organizational risk occurs from issues with internal operations. Events that fall under this category include reputational damage, communications failure, lawsuits, and supply chain disruptions. 

Solution: Use project risk management to prevent and mitigate risk in your marketing campaigns. During the planning phase, set up a risk analysis to assess which project risks are most likely to occur, as well as which risks are of highest priority. Then, use insights to shape your campaign and prepare for potential mishaps. 

2. Scope creep

Scope creep occurs when your marketing campaign expands beyond the initial expectations you set. Marketing campaigns often suffer from scope creep because teams don’t establish clear requirements during project planning. If you don’t communicate your limitations to stakeholders, they may request changes that your project team has trouble keeping up with. 

Solution: Define project objectives during the initial stages of your marketing campaign and share these objectives with your stakeholders. Maintain clear lines of communication so your stakeholders understand your project requirements, including the limits of your project timeline and budget . If necessary, you can also establish a change control process to regulate change requests.  

3. Poor communication with stakeholders

Poor communication with stakeholders is a challenge many marketing teams face . You can see above that this challenge has consequences, with scope creep being just one of those consequences. Other consequences of communication issues include:

Unclear project expectations 

Inconsistencies in goals and results

Reduced team morale

Insufficient project funding

Duplicate work

Solution: Use project management software to establish a strong line of communication with stakeholders. Share real-time updates with everyone involved in your marketing campaign, and encourage stakeholders to provide feedback along the way. Set project milestones as checkpoints for collective evaluation of the campaign.

4. No single source of truth

Marketing teams that rely on face-to-face, email, phone, or video chat to communicate with stakeholders will experience challenges when managing their marketing campaigns. You shouldn’t retire these traditional forms of communication, but they don’t offer essentials like:

Document sharing

Real-time status updates

Software integrations

Task management

Central source of truth

Your marketing strategy should be transparent to all stakeholders. Transparency strengthens team communication and improves project quality.

Solution: Use project management software as your single source of truth. There are many types of project management with varying levels of functionality. Some tools compile your project information, while others compile information from outside sources. Use a tool like Asana to customize project views and keep everyone—from team members to stakeholders—on the same page.

Use project management software to structure your marketing strategy

Marketing project management can eliminate some of the common challenges faced by marketing departments. When you use a structured management methodology, you’ll improve communication flow and streamline your work process. Use project management software to promote collaboration among stakeholders and to establish a single source of truth. 

Related resources

How Asana uses work management for smoother creative production

Build a marketing operations strategy in 4 steps

How Asana uses work management for more impactful campaigns

Marketing vs. advertising: What’s the difference?

24 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

Published: February 06, 2024

I believe that reading sample business plans is essential when writing your own.

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As you explore business plan examples from real companies and brands, it’s easier for you to learn how to write a good one.

But what does a good business plan look like? And how do you write one that’s both viable and convincing. I’ll walk you through the ideal business plan format along with some examples to help you get started.

Table of Contents

Business Plan Format

Business plan types, sample business plan templates, top business plan examples.

Ask any successful sports coach how they win so many games, and they’ll tell you they have a unique plan for every single game. To me, the same logic applies to business.

If you want to build a thriving company that can pull ahead of the competition, you need to prepare for battle before breaking into a market.

Business plans guide you along the rocky journey of growing a company. And if your business plan is compelling enough, it can also convince investors to give you funding.

With so much at stake, I’m sure you’re wondering where to begin.

Free Business Plan Template

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• Outline your idea.
• Pitch to investors.
• Secure funding.
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You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Fill out the form to get your free template.

First, you’ll want to nail down your formatting. Most business plans include the following sections.

1. Executive Summary

I’d say the executive summary is the most important section of the entire business plan. 

Why? Essentially, it's the overview or introduction, written in a way to grab readers' attention and guide them through the rest of the business plan. This is important, because a business plan can be dozens or hundreds of pages long.

There are two main elements I’d recommend including in your executive summary:

Company Description

This is the perfect space to highlight your company’s mission statement and goals, a brief overview of your history and leadership, and your top accomplishments as a business.

Tell potential investors who you are and why what you do matters. Naturally, they’re going to want to know who they’re getting into business with up front, and this is a great opportunity to showcase your impact.

Need some extra help firming up those business goals? Check out HubSpot Academy’s free course to help you set goals that matter — I’d highly recommend it

Products and Services

To piggyback off of the company description, be sure to incorporate an overview of your offerings. This doesn’t have to be extensive — just another chance to introduce your industry and overall purpose as a business.

In addition to the items above, I recommend including some information about your financial projections and competitive advantage here too.:

Keep in mind you'll cover many of these topics in more detail later on in the business plan. So, keep the executive summary clear and brief, and only include the most important takeaways.

Executive Summary Business Plan Examples

This example was created with HubSpot’s business plan template:

This executive summary is so good to me because it tells potential investors a short story while still covering all of the most important details.

Image Source

Tips for Writing Your Executive Summary

• Start with a strong introduction of your company, showcase your mission and impact, and outline the products and services you provide.
• Clearly define a problem, and explain how your product solves that problem, and show why the market needs your business.
• Be sure to highlight your value proposition, market opportunity, and growth potential.
• Keep it concise and support ideas with data.
• Customize your summary to your audience. For example, emphasize finances and return on investment for venture capitalists.

Check out our tips for writing an effective executive summary for more guidance.

2. Market Opportunity

This is where you'll detail the opportunity in the market.

The main question I’d ask myself here is this: Where is the gap in the current industry, and how will my product fill that gap?

More specifically, here’s what I’d include in this section:

• The size of the market
• Current or potential market share
• Trends in the industry and consumer behavior
• Where the gap is
• What caused the gap
• How you intend to fill it

To get a thorough understanding of the market opportunity, you'll want to conduct a TAM, SAM, and SOM analysis and perform market research on your industry.

You may also benefit from creating a SWOT analysis to get some of the insights for this section.

Market Opportunity Business Plan Example

I like this example because it uses critical data to underline the size of the potential market and what part of that market this service hopes to capture.

Tips for Writing Your Market Opportunity Section

• Focus on demand and potential for growth.
• Use market research, surveys, and industry trend data to support your market forecast and projections.
• Add a review of regulation shifts, tech advances, and consumer behavior changes.
• Refer to reliable sources.
• Showcase how your business can make the most of this opportunity.

3. Competitive Landscape

Since we’re already speaking of market share, you'll also need to create a section that shares details on who the top competitors are.

After all, your customers likely have more than one brand to choose from, and you'll want to understand exactly why they might choose one over another.

My favorite part of performing a competitive analysis is that it can help you uncover:

• Industry trends that other brands may not be utilizing
• Strengths in your competition that may be obstacles to handle
• Weaknesses in your competition that may help you develop selling points
• The unique proposition you bring to the market that may resonate with customers

Competitive Landscape Business Plan Example

I like how the competitive landscape section of this business plan below shows a clear outline of who the top competitors are.

It also highlights specific industry knowledge and the importance of location, which shows useful experience in this specific industry. 

This can help build trust in your ability to execute your business plan.

Tips for Writing Your Competitive Landscape

• Complete in-depth research, then emphasize your most important findings.
• Compare your unique selling proposition (USP) to your direct and indirect competitors.
• Show a clear and realistic plan for product and brand differentiation.
• Look for specific advantages and barriers in the competitive landscape. Then, highlight how that information could impact your business.
• Outline growth opportunities from a competitive perspective.
• Add customer feedback and insights to support your competitive analysis.

4. Target Audience

Use this section to describe who your customer segments are in detail. What is the demographic and psychographic information of your audience?

If your immediate answer is "everyone," you'll need to dig deeper. Here are some questions I’d ask myself here:

• What demographics will most likely need/buy your product or service?
• What are the psychographics of this audience? (Desires, triggering events, etc.)
• Why are your offerings valuable to them?

I’d also recommend building a buyer persona to get in the mindset of your ideal customers and be clear on why you're targeting them.

Target Audience Business Plan Example

I like the example below because it uses in-depth research to draw conclusions about audience priorities. It also analyzes how to create the right content for this audience.

Tips for Writing Your Target Audience Section

• Include details on the size and growth potential of your target audience.
• Figure out and refine the pain points for your target audience , then show why your product is a useful solution.
• Describe your targeted customer acquisition strategy in detail.
• Share anticipated challenges your business may face in acquiring customers and how you plan to address them.
• Add case studies, testimonials, and other data to support your target audience ideas.
• Remember to consider niche audiences and segments of your target audience in your business plan.

5. Marketing Strategy

Here, you'll discuss how you'll acquire new customers with your marketing strategy. I’d suggest including information:

• Your brand positioning vision and how you'll cultivate it
• The goal targets you aim to achieve
• The metrics you'll use to measure success
• The channels and distribution tactics you'll use

I think it’s helpful to have a marketing plan built out in advance to make this part of your business plan easier.

Marketing Strategy Business Plan Example

This business plan example includes the marketing strategy for the town of Gawler.

In my opinion, it really works because it offers a comprehensive picture of how they plan to use digital marketing to promote the community.

Tips for Writing Your Marketing Strategy

• Include a section about how you believe your brand vision will appeal to customers.
• Add the budget and resources you'll need to put your plan in place.
• Outline strategies for specific marketing segments.
• Connect strategies to earlier sections like target audience and competitive analysis.
• Review how your marketing strategy will scale with the growth of your business.
• Cover a range of channels and tactics to highlight your ability to adapt your plan in the face of change.

6. Key Features and Benefits

At some point in your business plan, you'll need to review the key features and benefits of your products and/or services.

Laying these out can give readers an idea of how you're positioning yourself in the market and the messaging you're likely to use. It can even help them gain better insight into your business model.

Key Features and Benefits Business Plan Example

In my opinion, the example below does a great job outlining products and services for this business, along with why these qualities will attract the audience.

Tips for Writing Your Key Features and Benefits

• Emphasize why and how your product or service offers value to customers.
• Use metrics and testimonials to support the ideas in this section.
• Talk about how your products and services have the potential to scale.
• Think about including a product roadmap.
• Focus on customer needs, and how the features and benefits you are sharing meet those needs.
• Offer proof of concept for your ideas, like case studies or pilot program feedback.
• Proofread this section carefully, and remove any jargon or complex language.

7. Pricing and Revenue

This is where you'll discuss your cost structure and various revenue streams. Your pricing strategy must be solid enough to turn a profit while staying competitive in the industry. 

For this reason, here’s what I’d might outline in this section:

• The specific pricing breakdowns per product or service
• Why your pricing is higher or lower than your competition's
• (If higher) Why customers would be willing to pay more
• (If lower) How you're able to offer your products or services at a lower cost
• When you expect to break even, what margins do you expect, etc?

Pricing and Revenue Business Plan Example

I like how this business plan example begins with an overview of the business revenue model, then shows proposed pricing for key products.

Tips for Writing Your Pricing and Revenue Section

• Get specific about your pricing strategy. Specifically, how you connect that strategy to customer needs and product value.
• If you are asking a premium price, share unique features or innovations that justify that price point.
• Show how you plan to communicate pricing to customers.
• Create an overview of every revenue stream for your business and how each stream adds to your business model as a whole.
• Share plans to develop new revenue streams in the future.
• Show how and whether pricing will vary by customer segment and how pricing aligns with marketing strategies.
• Restate your value proposition and explain how it aligns with your revenue model.

8. Financials

To me, this section is particularly informative for investors and leadership teams to figure out funding strategies, investment opportunities, and more.

 According to Forbes , you'll want to include three main things:

• Profit/Loss Statement - This answers the question of whether your business is currently profitable.
• Cash Flow Statement - This details exactly how much cash is incoming and outgoing to give insight into how much cash a business has on hand.
• Balance Sheet - This outlines assets, liabilities, and equity, which gives insight into how much a business is worth.

While some business plans might include more or less information, these are the key details I’d include in this section.

Financials Business Plan Example

This balance sheet is a great example of level of detail you’ll need to include in the financials section of your business plan.

Tips for Writing Your Financials Section

• Growth potential is important in this section too. Using your data, create a forecast of financial performance in the next three to five years.
• Include any data that supports your projections to assure investors of the credibility of your proposal.
• Add a break-even analysis to show that your business plan is financially practical. This information can also help you pivot quickly as your business grows.
• Consider adding a section that reviews potential risks and how sensitive your plan is to changes in the market.
• Triple-check all financial information in your plan for accuracy.
• Show how any proposed funding needs align with your plans for growth.

As you create your business plan, keep in mind that each of these sections will be formatted differently. Some may be in paragraph format, while others could be charts or graphs.

The formats above apply to most types of business plans. That said, the format and structure of your plan will vary by your goals for that plan. 

So, I’ve added a quick review of different business plan types. For a more detailed overview, check out this post .

1. Startups

Startup business plans are for proposing new business ideas.

If you’re planning to start a small business, preparing a business plan is crucial. The plan should include all the major factors of your business.

You can check out this guide for more detailed business plan inspiration .

2. Feasibility Studies

Feasibility business plans focus on that business's product or service. Feasibility plans are sometimes added to startup business plans. They can also be a new business plan for an already thriving organization.

3. Internal Use

You can use internal business plans to share goals, strategies, or performance updates with stakeholders. In my opinion, internal business plans are useful for alignment and building support for ambitious goals.

4. Strategic Initiatives

Another business plan that's often for sharing internally is a strategic business plan. This plan covers long-term business objectives that might not have been included in the startup business plan.

5. Business Acquisition or Repositioning

When a business is moving forward with an acquisition or repositioning, it may need extra structure and support. These types of business plans expand on a company's acquisition or repositioning strategy.

Growth sometimes just happens as a business continues operations. But more often, a business needs to create a structure with specific targets to meet set goals for expansion. This business plan type can help a business focus on short-term growth goals and align resources with those goals.

Now that you know what's included and how to format a business plan, let's review some of my favorite templates.

1. HubSpot's One-Page Business Plan

Download a free, editable one-page business plan template..

The business plan linked above was created here at HubSpot and is perfect for businesses of any size — no matter how many strategies we still have to develop.

Fields such as Company Description, Required Funding, and Implementation Timeline give this one-page business plan a framework for how to build your brand and what tasks to keep track of as you grow.

Then, as the business matures, you can expand on your original business plan with a new iteration of the above document.

Why I Like It

This one-page business plan is a fantastic choice for the new business owner who doesn’t have the time or resources to draft a full-blown business plan. It includes all the essential sections in an accessible, bullet-point-friendly format. That way, you can get the broad strokes down before honing in on the details.

2. HubSpot's Downloadable Business Plan Template

We also created a business plan template for entrepreneurs.

The template is designed as a guide and checklist for starting your own business. You’ll learn what to include in each section of your business plan and how to do it.

There’s also a list for you to check off when you finish each section of your business plan.

Strong game plans help coaches win games and help businesses rocket to the top of their industries. So if you dedicate the time and effort required to write a workable and convincing business plan, you’ll boost your chances of success and even dominance in your market.

This business plan kit is essential for the budding entrepreneur who needs a more extensive document to share with investors and other stakeholders.

It not only includes sections for your executive summary, product line, market analysis, marketing plan, and sales plan, but it also offers hands-on guidance for filling out those sections.

3. LiveFlow’s Financial Planning Template with built-in automation

This free template from LiveFlow aims to make it easy for businesses to create a financial plan and track their progress on a monthly basis.

The P&L Budget versus Actual format allows users to track their revenue, cost of sales, operating expenses, operating profit margin, net profit, and more.

The summary dashboard aggregates all of the data put into the financial plan sheet and will automatically update when changes are made.

Instead of wasting hours manually importing your data to your spreadsheet, LiveFlow can also help you to automatically connect your accounting and banking data directly to your spreadsheet, so your numbers are always up-to-date.

With the dashboard, you can view your runway, cash balance, burn rate, gross margins, and other metrics. Having a simple way to track everything in one place will make it easier to complete the financials section of your business plan.

This is a fantastic template to track performance and alignment internally and to create a dependable process for documenting financial information across the business. It’s highly versatile and beginner-friendly.

It’s especially useful if you don’t have an accountant on the team. (I always recommend you do, but for new businesses, having one might not be possible.)

4. ThoughtCo’s Sample Business Plan

One of the more financially oriented sample business plans in this list, BPlan’s free business plan template dedicates many of its pages to your business’s financial plan and financial statements.

After filling this business plan out, your company will truly understand its financial health and the steps you need to take to maintain or improve it.

I absolutely love this business plan template because of its ease-of-use and hands-on instructions (in addition to its finance-centric components). If you feel overwhelmed by the thought of writing an entire business plan, consider using this template to help you with the process.

6. Harvard Business Review’s "How to Write a Winning Business Plan"

Most sample business plans teach you what to include in your business plan, but this Harvard Business Review article will take your business plan to the next level — it teaches you the why and how behind writing a business plan.

With the guidance of Stanley Rich and Richard Gumpert, co-authors of " Business Plans That Win: Lessons From the MIT Enterprise Forum ", you'll learn how to write a convincing business plan that emphasizes the market demand for your product or service.

You’ll also learn the financial benefits investors can reap from putting money into your venture rather than trying to sell them on how great your product or service is.

This business plan guide focuses less on the individual parts of a business plan, and more on the overarching goal of writing one. For that reason, it’s one of my favorites to supplement any template you choose to use. Harvard Business Review’s guide is instrumental for both new and seasoned business owners.

7. HubSpot’s Complete Guide to Starting a Business

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know writing a business plan is one of the most challenging first steps to starting a business.

Fortunately, with HubSpot's comprehensive guide to starting a business, you'll learn how to map out all the details by understanding what to include in your business plan and why it’s important to include them. The guide also fleshes out an entire sample business plan for you.

If you need further guidance on starting a business, HubSpot's guide can teach you how to make your business legal, choose and register your business name, and fund your business. It will also give small business tax information and includes marketing, sales, and service tips.

This comprehensive guide will walk you through the process of starting a business, in addition to writing your business plan, with a high level of exactitude and detail. So if you’re in the midst of starting your business, this is an excellent guide for you.

It also offers other resources you might need, such as market analysis templates.

8. Panda Doc’s Free Business Plan Template

PandaDoc’s free business plan template is one of the more detailed and fleshed-out sample business plans on this list. It describes what you should include in each section, so you don't have to come up with everything from scratch.

Once you fill it out, you’ll fully understand your business’ nitty-gritty details and how all of its moving parts should work together to contribute to its success.

This template has two things I love: comprehensiveness and in-depth instructions. Plus, it’s synced with PandaDoc’s e-signature software so that you and other stakeholders can sign it with ease. For that reason, I especially love it for those starting a business with a partner or with a board of directors.

9. Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template

The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers several free business plan templates that can be used to inspire your own plan.

Before you get started, you can decide what type of business plan you need — a traditional or lean start-up plan.

Then, you can review the format for both of those plans and view examples of what they might look like.

We love both of the SBA’s templates because of their versatility. You can choose between two options and use the existing content in the templates to flesh out your own plan. Plus, if needed, you can get a free business counselor to help you along the way.

I’ve compiled some completed business plan samples to help you get an idea of how to customize a plan for your business.

I chose different types of business plan ideas to expand your imagination. Some are extensive, while others are fairly simple.

Let’s take a look.

1. LiveFlow

One of the major business expenses is marketing. How you handle your marketing reflects your company’s revenue.

I included this business plan to show you how you can ensure your marketing team is aligned with your overall business plan to get results. The plan also shows you how to track even the smallest metrics of your campaigns, like ROI and payback periods instead of just focusing on big metrics like gross and revenue.

Fintech startup, LiveFlow, allows users to sync real-time data from its accounting services, payment platforms, and banks into custom reports. This eliminates the task of pulling reports together manually, saving teams time and helping automate workflows.

"Using this framework over a traditional marketing plan will help you set a profitable marketing strategy taking things like CAC, LTV, Payback period, and P&L into consideration," explains LiveFlow co-founder, Lasse Kalkar .

When it came to including marketing strategy in its business plan, LiveFlow created a separate marketing profit and loss statement (P&L) to track how well the company was doing with its marketing initiatives.

This is a great approach, allowing businesses to focus on where their marketing dollars are making the most impact. Having this information handy will enable you to build out your business plan’s marketing section with confidence. LiveFlow has shared the template here . You can test it for yourself.

2. Lula Body

Sometimes all you need is a solid mission statement and core values to guide you on how to go about everything. You do this by creating a business plan revolving around how to fulfill your statement best.

For example, Patagonia is an eco-friendly company, so their plan discusses how to make the best environmentally friendly products without causing harm.

A good mission statement  should not only resonate with consumers but should also serve as a core value compass for employees as well.

Patagonia has one of the most compelling mission statements I’ve seen:

"Together, let’s prioritise purpose over profit and protect this wondrous planet, our only home."

It reels you in from the start, and the environmentally friendly theme continues throughout the rest of the statement.

This mission goes on to explain that they are out to "Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to protect nature."

Their mission statement is compelling and detailed, with each section outlining how they will accomplish their goal.

4. Vesta Home Automation

This executive summary for a smart home device startup is part of a business plan created by students at Mount Royal University .

While it lacks some of the sleek visuals of the templates above, its executive summary does a great job of demonstrating how invested they are in the business.

Right away, they mention they’ve invested $200,000 into the company already, which shows investors they have skin in the game and aren’t just looking for someone else to foot the bill.

This is the kind of business plan you need when applying for business funds. It clearly illustrates the expected future of the company and how the business has been coming along over the years.

5. NALB Creative Center

This fictional business plan for an art supply store includes everything one might need in a business plan: an executive summary, a company summary, a list of services, a market analysis summary, and more.

One of its most notable sections is its market analysis summary, which includes an overview of the population growth in the business’ target geographical area, as well as a breakdown of the types of potential customers they expect to welcome at the store. 

This sort of granular insight is essential for understanding and communicating your business’s growth potential. Plus, it lays a strong foundation for creating relevant and useful buyer personas .

It’s essential to keep this information up-to-date as your market and target buyer changes. For that reason, you should carry out market research as often as possible to ensure that you’re targeting the correct audience and sharing accurate information with your investors.

Due to its comprehensiveness, it’s an excellent example to follow if you’re opening a brick-and-mortar store and need to get external funding to start your business .

6. Curriculum Companion Suites (CSS)

If you’re looking for a SaaS business plan example, look no further than this business plan for a fictional educational software company called Curriculum Companion Suites. 

Like the business plan for the NALB Creative Center, it includes plenty of information for prospective investors and other key stakeholders in the business.

One of the most notable features of this business plan is the executive summary, which includes an overview of the product, market, and mission.

The first two are essential for software companies because the product offering is so often at the forefront of the company’s strategy. Without that information being immediately available to investors and executives, then you risk writing an unfocused business plan.

It’s essential to front-load your company’s mission if it explains your "Why?" and this example does just that. In other words, why do you do what you do, and why should stakeholders care? This is an important section to include if you feel that your mission will drive interest in the business and its offerings.

7. Culina Sample Business Plan

Culina's sample business plan is an excellent example of how to lay out your business plan so that it flows naturally, engages readers, and provides the critical information investors and stakeholders need. 

You can use this template as a guide while you're gathering important information for your own business plan. You'll have a better understanding of the data and research you need to do since Culina’s plan outlines these details so flawlessly for inspiration.

8. Plum Sample Business Plan

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Craft Roadmaps to Success With a Killer Marketing Project Planner

By Lawrence Dy | Mar 26, 2024 | Agency Insights | 8 min read

Marketing efforts of any scale tend to require the convergence of many skills, including those in the sales, creative, and administrative arenas. That alone can make managing marketing projects challenging without a detailed written plan. Having a templated marketing project planner ready to go when you launch each new effort can help streamline the planning process and strengthen your projects overall.

Learn trends and growth drivers in MSP space with 'Not another MSP handbook'. DOWNLOAD the eBook today.

A template keeps teams from getting caught up in ideas and processes and overlooking important elements of the plan. This guide digs deeper into the importance of a marketing project planner and provides tips for what it should include and how to create a solid project plan.

Importance of a marketing project planner

A project planner helps you align every marketing effort with your overall digital marketing strategy . This efficient and streamlined approach to planning helps you boost ongoing or startup agency revenue and protect critical metrics such as profit margins.

A well-defined project plan can ensure you:

• Set clear goals for your agency or for the marketing campaigns you create for clients
• Define target audiences appropriately for more cohesive marketing plans
• Allocate resources effectively so you can boost digital agency revenue without burning out internal teams
• Execute marketing projects in a timely manner and within budget
• Appropriately monitor marketing activities so you can make proactive changes and support continuous improvement

Essential components of a marketing project planner

While your marketing planner documents should be unique to your organization and client needs, some elements belong in most marketing plans. They include:

• Marketing strategy. Your plan should detail your overall strategy, including your message and what channels you use to deliver it.
• Target audience analysis. Include a deep dive into your target audience that identifies the interests, needs, and channels relevant to each segment.
• Budget allocation. When selling agency services online , ensure that your budget is allocated for marketing work. If you’re spending too much on various aspects of your plan—or spending more than the customer lifetime value—you could have a profitability issue. You also want to ensure more budget goes to channels and efforts that drive the most value.
• Timeline. Use visual elements to create a timeline for the project. A Gantt chart lets you visualize dependencies and how they might impact deliverable timelines, which can ensure you don’t rely on or promise work on untenable deadlines.
• Task allocation. Include a written plan for how the work will get done. This helps ensure you don’t overburden existing staff. Remember that you can white label to fill in digital agency staffing needs .
• Performance measurement metrics. Always define how you’ll measure success. Choose key performance metrics that align with the goals of each project.

Steps to creating a marketing project plan

Create a marketing project plan for each effort by following the steps below.

1. Conduct market research and competitive analysis

Start by doing some homework. Conduct research to understand:

• Where the market—and your agency or product—currently stands. Figuring out what the current baseline is helps you create realistic goals for the future.
• What competitors are doing. In some cases, you may need to outpace competitors with your marketing efforts to gain traction in the market, and that’s helpful to know at the start.
• Whether there are gaps you can leverage. If you find a gap in competitor marketing, it might represent low-hanging fruit you can target with your own campaigns.
• What challenges you might face. Identify challenges you must keep in mind as you move forward with planning.

2. Set SMART goals

Whether you’re marketing your services as a Google Workspace reseller ­­ or creating a client content plan, SMART goals are important.

As you create objectives for your marketing efforts, ensure each one can check the following boxes:

• Specific. Goals must be specific to the product, client, or marketing effort at hand. “Improve revenue” is not a good goal because it’s too broad. “Drive a 10% increase in website traffic” is much more specific.
• Measurable. Ensure you can measure success toward your goal. Identify marketing KPIs that work for this purpose and make sure you have access to the data needed to perform any KPI calculations.
• Achievable. Don’t set goals you don’t have the resources to achieve. If it normally takes 10 days to create and publish a blog post, don’t set a goal for publishing 20 in one month.
• Realistic or relevant. Be realistic about what’s possible—a goal of bringing every client page to the top three organic search results probably isn’t possible. Ensure your goals are relevant to the work at hand.
• Timely or time bound. Set time deadlines. For example, “Increase conversion rate by 3% quarter over quarter.”

3. Define your marketing strategy

Digital marketing offers many ways to connect with your target audience, but it’s not always feasible or even necessary to try to engage on every channel. Instead, define your strategy for each marketing effort. Consider:

• Who the target audience is, as this impacts where they tend to hang out online
• What the product is, as some products work better on various channels or via various media than others
• What your goals are, as that can inform which channels you need to concentrate on

4. Create a timeline and resource-allocation plan

Start sketching out a plan to use time and resources intelligently to meet your marketing goals. You can use Excel or project management software to make a Gantt chart to help you visually see these components.

If you’re struggling to see how you can “make ends meet” within your marketing plan, consider learning more about white label versus private label . You can also read our guide to white labeling to find out more about these options.

5. Detail a plan to monitor progress throughout the project

Dos and don'ts of creating a marketing project plan.

Before you start working on your marketing project plans, here are a few final tips for success:

• Do involve key stakeholders. Talk to marketing leadership or clients about their expectations, and get sign-off on goals, budgets, and timelines before you start working to get all the details down. Set up communication workflows to keep decision-makers in the loop to avoid a project getting too far down the road without proper alignment.
• Don’t ignore input from subject-matter experts. Get feedback from those who deal with various marketing processes on a daily basis. They have the best idea of potential challenges and timelines.
• Do set realistic goals. Challenge your team, but don’t overburden them with impossible tasks. When setting goals, consider the performance of campaigns in the past, what your team has historically been able to accomplish in a set period of time, and other known benchmarks. It’s okay to try to rise above those, but if email open rates have always hovered around 15 percent, a goal of 50 percent is typically not realistic.
• Don’t overcommit your resources. Keep other projects and day-to-day business requirements in mind when planning. Avoid overloading your teams, as this can lead to quality issues or even loss of skilled employees. Remember that you can outsource or white label to scale your agency without relying completely on your busy in-house staff.
• Do create contingency plans. Don’t assume that everything will go exactly right. Plan for issues such as sick employees, software downtime, or a marketing campaign simply not working as well as you planned. Think about how to make your business recession proof in part by ensuring you always have a backup plan for marketing projects.
• Don’t overextend your budget. Be mindful of how much marketing efforts cost. Because so many marketing tactics, including content, SEO, and PPC ads, are ongoing and incremental, spend can add up before you realize it. Having a way to control spend is important to safeguarding agency profits.
• Do create your plan with an eye toward flexibility. Consider how you can be more agile when you offer marketing services or resell digital marketing resources and how your marketing plan needs room to support that agility.

Marketing project planner templates and resources

For more information about marketing project planners and downloadable templates to get you started, check out some of these resources:

• Our 10-step guide to creating your own digital marketing strategy. Explore the steps and tools required to create a digital marketing strategy that works.
• Get marketing plan templates from Team Gantt . These templates work in the Team Gantt solution and let you quickly convert your plan into helpful timeline visuals.
• Download a free marketing plan template for use in Microsoft Word. SCORE offers a free template you can download to build marketing plans, and it comes with internal instructions and guidelines that walks you through the entire process.

About the Author

Lawrence Dy

Lawrence Dy is the SEO Strategy Manager at Vendasta. His career spans from starting as a Jr. Copywriter in the automotive industry to becoming a Senior Editorial Content Manager in various digital marketing niches. Outside of work, Lawrence moonlights as a music producer/beatmaker and spends time with friends and family.

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Reporting by Josephine Mason, Nick Carey, Helen Reid, Jonathan Saul, Nigel Hunt, Marwa Rashad, Scott DiSavino, Shariq Khan and Eric Onstad; Compiled by Josephine Mason and Nina Chestney; Editing by Nick Macfie and Nick Zieminski

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Ukraine invites citizens to register wartime damage

Ukrainians can begin filing claims for damages they have suffered in Russia's invasion at a newly-established register based in The Hague, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Tuesday.

Tullett Prebon on Tuesday launched a new desk and team to trade CME cobalt, lithium and molybdenum, all materials crucial for batteries used in electric vehicles and energy storage, the London-based commodities broker said.

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Stock market today: wall street sinks on rate worries as health care stocks and tesla tumble.

Associated Press

HONG KONG – U.S. stocks are sinking Tuesday, as worries about interest rates staying high continue to hit Wall Street.

The S&P 500 was 1% lower in midday trading and on track for a second drop after setting an all-time high to close last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also pulled further from its record and was down 478 points, or 1.2%. The Nasdaq composite was 1.4% lower, as of noon Eastern time.

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Health care companies led the market lower on worries about their upcoming profits after the U.S. government announced lower-than-expected rates for Medicare Advantage. Humana tumbled 14.3%. Tesla, meanwhile, dropped 5.4% after delivering far fewer vehicles for the start of 2024 than analysts expected.

One of the big reasons the U.S. stock market has been on a nearly unstoppable run since late October is the expectation that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates several times this year. It’s hinted as much, and an easing of rates would relieve pressure on both the economy and financial system.

But Fed officials have also said they need further confirmation that inflation is heading sustainably down to their 2% target before acting. A surprisingly strong report on U.S. manufacturing Monday, which showed a return to growth after 16 straight months of contraction, hurt those expectations.

It’s the latest evidence of a remarkably resilient U.S. economy, but it could also add upward pressure on inflation. Progress on inflation has become bumpier recently, with reports this year coming in hotter than expected .

Traders have already drastically reduced their expectations for how many times the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this year, halving them from a forecast of six at the start of the year . That would be in line with the three cuts that Fed officials themselves have hinted at.

After briefly shading some bets toward just two rate cuts this year, traders are still largely expecting three cuts in 2024, according to data from CME Group. That follows report on Tuesday that showed U.S. employers were advertising roughly the same number of job openings in February as they were a month earlier and a stronger-than-expected gain in factory orders.

With the U.S. economy remaining stronger than expected, the chances are rising for just two rate cuts this year. That has Gargi Chadhuri, chief investment and portfolio strategist, Americas, at BlackRock, suggesting investors keep their bets spread across a wide range of investments, rather than “trying to time the market – or the Fed.”

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.35% from 4.33% late Monday.

The two-year yield, which moves more closely with expectations for Fed action, slipped to 4.69% from 4.71% late Monday.

High rates slow the economy by design, by making borrowing more expensive. They also hurt prices for investments by making it more attractive for investors to put money instead in safer alternatives. Bitcoin tumbled 7% and dropped back below $65,000.

Beyond worries about interest rates staying high, critics also say the U.S. stock market has simply gotten too expensive after soaring more than 20% in six months. Companies will likely need to deliver strong growth in profits to justify such big moves.

On Wall Street, several health care stocks led the market lower as worries rose about their upcoming profits. Analysts at Citi Research said the final Medicare Advantage rate approved by the government was well below expectations given higher-trending medical costs and a big lobbying push for the industry.

UnitedHealth Group fell 7.7%, and CVS Health lost 9.5%.

PVH, the company behind Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, lost more than a fifth of its value despite reporting stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its forecast for profit this upcoming year fell short of analysts’ estimates, in part due to weakness in Europe, and its stock dropped 23%.

Among the few gainers on Wall Street were stocks of oil and gas producers. Exxon Mobil and Marathon Petroleum both rose 1.1%.

They followed the price of crude higher. A barrel of benchmark U.S. oil rose 1.4% to $84.88 and is back to where it was in October. A barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, climbed 1.6% to $88.80.

In Europe, stocks were falling 0.9% in Paris. Germany’s DAX lost 1.1%, and London’s FTSE 100 was 0.2% lower.

In Asia, indexes were mixed. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 2.4%, but moves were much more modest elsewhere.

AP Writers Matt Ott and Zimo Zhong contributed.

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Nine states plan to ban gas-powered car sales by 2035

Advanced clean cars ii rules look to phase out sales of new gas-powered cars in next decade.

Electric vehicles can't be imposed on middle America: Sen. Cynthia Lummis

 Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wy., says the Biden administration doesn't have regard for the law on 'Kudlow.'

Nine states are planning to ban new gasoline-powered vehicle sales by 2035 as part of an initiative to cut climate-warming emissions.

The Advanced Clean Cars II rules originated in California with the state Air Resources Board. The regulations in California look to phase out the sale of new gas vehicles beginning with the 2026 model year, scaling back over time until 2035 – when a total ban on the sales will go into effect.

Since the rules were first adopted in California in 2022, eight other states have followed suit, with several others considering the plan.

So far, the other states that have implemented the plan to hit the goal of selling zero new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 include Washington, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware and Maryland.

BIDEN ADMIN SET TO FINALIZE MAJOR GAS CAR CRACKDOWN OVER WARNINGS FROM AUTOMAKERS, ENERGY INDUSTRY

Nine states have undertaken a plan to scale back the sales of new gas-powered vehicles over the next decade, with the goal of completely eliminating the sales by 2035. (Fox News / Fox News)

The rules do not stop residents in these states from owning or using gas-powered cars, nor do they force consumers to buy electric vehicles (EVs). Dealerships can still sell used cars powered by gas, and consumers in these states can purchase the gas-powered vehicles in other states – as long as they meet certain emissions standards. 

Not everyone, however, supports this effort.

The New Jersey Business and Industry Association (NJBIA) led a campaign last year to try and stop New Jersey's adoption of the Advanced Clean Cars II rule.

Ray Cantor, the chief deputy government affairs officer at the NJBIA, told Fox News Digital in a statement that the plan ignores the cost to consumers and lack of current infrastructure.

"The ban on new gas-powered cars in such an expedited time does not take costs or feasibility into account," Cantor said. "It does not take the lack of local and highway infrastructure into account. It does not take grid capacity into account. It ignores consumer choice. It doesn’t take New Jersey residents into account, especially low- and moderate-income families. And it doesn’t take the lack of actual environmental benefit into account."

Under the action, residents can still own and drive gas-powered vehicles and purchase new gas-powered cars in other states. (iStock / iStock)

Cantor urged New Jersey to "apply the brakes" to what he called an obvious "bureaucratic overreach" before the mandate starts to affect consumers.

"There's nothing wrong with working to reduce carbon emissions," Cantor said. "And the marketplace would have likely seen a natural increase of EV users with an organic time frame to build appropriate capacities. But the near-term, targeted mandates will increase the prices of both new and used gas-powered cars."

VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS UPHOLD STATE'S EV MANDATE DESPITE GROWING OPPOSITION: 'DEFY COMMON SENSE'

In support of the action, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management Director Terry Gray has called the rules a "major step" in the fight against climate change in the transportation sector.

"In terms of economic impact, states joining together to send a clear signal to the market will result in greater economies of scale, driving down the prices of ZEVs (zero-emission vehicles), and ensuring that Rhode Island dealers and customers have full access to electric vehicles," Gray said.

The rules come as the Biden administration has sought to push the transportation sector from gas-powered vehicles to EVs as part of its climate agenda.

Last year, the  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)  unveiled its own plan to increase vehicle pollution standards that will impact car model years 2027 through 2032. 

If the EPA’s regulations are finalized, a staggering 67% of new sedan, crossover, SUV and light truck purchases could be electric by 2032, the White House projected. In addition, up to 50% of bus and garbage truck, 35% of short-haul freight tractor and 25% of long-haul freight tractor purchases could be electric by then.

Hybrid cars 'are the future' of the auto industry: Mike Caudill

Auto expert Mike Caudill explains data proving consumers 'aren't ready yet' for a full transition to electric vehicles.

However, the push toward EVs has faced multiple setbacks in the industry.

Earlier this month, Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr resigned after the car rental company's big bet on EVs went bust due to its struggles to keep up with the higher repair cost and lower demand for EV rentals.

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Ford's EV division, Ford Model e, posted a net loss of $4.7 billion last year — with $1.6 billion of that in the last quarter — and Ford's chief financial officer John Lawler explained during the company’s earnings call last month that both "the quarter and year were impacted by challenging market dynamics and investments in next-generation vehicles."

Fox News' Thomas Catenacci and Eric Revell contributed to this report.

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Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem

The former republican national committee chairwoman was hired by nbc and then let go after an outcry..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, the saga of Ronna McDaniel and NBC and what it reveals about the state of television news headed into the 2024 presidential race. Jim Rutenberg, a “Times” writer at large, is our guest.

It’s Monday, April 1.

Jim, NBC News just went through a very public, a very searing drama over the past week, that we wanted you to make sense of in your unique capacity as a longtime media and political reporter at “The Times.” This is your sweet spot. You were, I believe, born to dissect this story for us.

Oh, brother.

Well, on the one hand, this is a very small moment for a major network like NBC. They hire, as a contributor, not an anchor, not a correspondent, as a contributor, Ronna McDaniel, the former RNC chairwoman. It blows up in a mini scandal at the network.

But to me, it represents a much larger issue that’s been there since that moment Donald J. Trump took his shiny gold escalator down to announce his presidential run in 2015. This struggle by the news media to figure out, especially on television, how do we capture him, cover him for all of his lies, all the challenges he poses to Democratic norms, yet not alienate some 74, 75 million American voters who still follow him, still believe in him, and still want to hear his reality reflected in the news that they’re listening to?

Right. Which is about as gnarly a conundrum as anyone has ever dealt with in the news media.

Well, it’s proven so far unsolvable.

Well, let’s use the story of what actually happened with Ronna McDaniel and NBC to illustrate your point. And I think that means describing precisely what happened in this situation.

The story starts out so simply. It’s such a basic thing that television networks do. As elections get underway, they want people who will reflect the two parties.

They want talking heads. They want insiders. They want them on their payroll so they can rely on them whenever they need them. And they want them to be high level so they can speak with great knowledge about the two major candidates.

Right. And rather than needing to beg these people to come on their show at 6 o’clock, when they might be busy and it’s not their full-time job, they go off and they basically put them on retainer for a bunch of money.

Yeah. And in this case, here’s this perfect scenario because quite recently, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee through the Trump era, most of it, is now out on the market. She’s actually recently been forced out of the party. And all the networks are interested because here’s the consummate insider from Trump world ready to get snatched up under contract for the next election and can really represent this movement that they’ve been trying to capture.

So NBC’S key news executives move pretty aggressively, pretty swiftly, and they sign her up for a $300,000 a year contributor’s contract.

Nice money if you can get it.

Not at millions of dollars that they pay their anchors, but a very nice contract. I’ll take it. You’ll take it. In the eyes of NBC execs she was perfect because she can be on “Meet the Press” as a panelist. She can help as they figure out some of their coverage. They have 24 hours a day to fill and here’s an official from the RNC. You can almost imagine the question that would be asked to her. It’s 10:00 PM on election night. Ronna, what are the Trump people thinking right now? They’re looking at the same numbers you are.

That was good, but that’s exactly it. And we all know it, right? This is television in our current era.

So last Friday, NBC makes what should be a routine announcement, but one they’re very proud of, that they’ve hired Ronna McDaniel. And in a statement, they say it couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team. So all’s good, right? Except for there’s a fly in the ointment.

Because it turns out that Ronna McDaniel has been slated to appear on “Meet the Press,” not as a paid NBC contributor, but as a former recently ousted RNC chair with the “Meet The Press” host, Kristen Welker, who’s preparing to have a real tough interview with Ronna McDaniel. Because of course, Ronna McDaniel was chair of the party and at Trump’s side as he tried to refuse his election loss. So this was supposed to be a showdown interview.

From NBC News in Washington, the longest-running show in television history. This is “Meet The Press” with Kristen Welker.

And here, all of a sudden, Kristin Welker is thrown for a loop.

In full disclosure to our viewers, this interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor.

Because now, she’s actually interviewing a member of the family who’s on the same payroll.

Right. Suddenly, she’s interviewing a colleague.

This will be a news interview, and I was not involved in her hiring.

So what happens during the interview?

So Welker is prepared for a tough interview, and that’s exactly what she does.

Can you say, as you sit here today, did Joe Biden win the election fair and square?

He won. He’s the legitimate president.

Did he win fair and square?

Fair and square, he won. It’s certified. It’s done.

She presses her on the key question that a lot of Republicans get asked these days — do you accept Joe Biden was the winner of the election?

But, I do think, Kristen —

Ronna, why has it taken you until now to say that? Why has it taken you until now to be able to say that?

I’m going to push back a little.

McDaniel gets defensive at times.

Because I do think it’s fair to say there were problems in 2020. And to say that does not mean he’s not the legitimate president.

But, Ronna, when you say that, it suggests that there was something wrong with the election. And you know that the election was the most heavily scrutinized. Chris Krebs —

It’s a really combative interview.

I want to turn now to your actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

And Welker actually really does go deeply into McDaniel’s record in those weeks before January 6.

On November 17, you and Donald Trump were recorded pushing two Republican Michigan election officials not to certify the results of the election. And on the call —

For instance, she presses McDaniel on McDaniel’s role in an attempt to convince a couple county commissioner level canvassers in Michigan to not certify Biden’s victory.

Our call that night was to say, are you OK? Vote your conscience. Not pushing them to do anything.

McDaniel says, look, I was just telling them to vote their conscience. They should do whatever they think is right.

But you said, do not sign it. If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. How can people read that as anything other than a pressure campaign?

And Welker’s not going to just let her off the hook. Welker presses her on Trump’s own comments about January 6 and Trump’s efforts recently to gloss over some of the violence, and to say that those who have been arrested, he’ll free them.

Do you support that?

I want to be very clear. The violence that happened on January 6 is unacceptable.

And this is a frankly fascinating moment because you can hear McDaniel starting to, if not quite reverse some of her positions, though in some cases she does that, at least really soften her language. It’s almost as if she’s switching uniforms from the RNC one to an NBC one or almost like breaking from a role she was playing.

Ronna, why not speak out earlier? Why just speak out about that now?

When you’re the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now, I get to be a little bit more myself.

She says, hey, you know what? Sometimes as RNC chair, you just have to take it for the team sometimes.

Right. What she’s really saying is I did things as chairwoman of the Republican National committee that now that I no longer have that job, I can candidly say, I wished I hadn’t done, which is very honest. But it’s also another way of saying I’m two faced, or I was playing a part.

Ronna McDaniel, thank you very much for being here this morning.

Then something extraordinary happens. And I have to say, I’ve never seen a moment like this in decades of watching television news and covering television news.

Welcome back. The panel is here. Chuck Todd, NBC News chief political analyst.

Welker brings her regular panel on, including Chuck Todd, now the senior NBC political analyst.

Chuck, let’s dive right in. What were your takeaways?

And he launches right into what he calls —

Look, let me deal with the elephant in the room.

The elephant being this hiring of McDaniel.

I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation.

And he proceeds, on NBC’S air, to lace into management for, as he describes it, putting Welker in this crazy awkward position.

Because I don’t know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract.

And Todd is very hung up on this idea that when she was speaking for the party, she would say one thing. And now that she’s on the payroll at NBC, she’s saying another thing.

She has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself, or is she speaking on behalf of who’s paying her?

Todd is basically saying, how are we supposed to know which one to believe.

What can we believe?

It is important for this network and for always to have a wide aperture. Having ideological diversity on this panel is something I prided myself on.

And what he’s effectively saying is that his bosses should have never hired her in this capacity.

I understand the motivation, but this execution, I think, was poor.

Someone said to me last night we live in complicated times. Thank you guys for being here. I really appreciate it.

Now, let’s just note here, this isn’t just any player at NBC. Chuck Todd is obviously a major news name at the network. And him doing this appears to just open the floodgates across the entire NBC News brand, especially on its sister cable network, MSNBC.

And where I said I’d never seen anything like what I saw on “Meet the Press” that morning, I’d never seen anything like this either. Because now, the entire MSNBC lineup is in open rebellion. I mean, from the minute that the sun comes up. There is Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring. But if we were, we would have strongly objected to it.

They’re on fire over this.

believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices, but it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier.

But it rolls out across the entire schedule.

Because Ronna McDaniel has been a major peddler of the big lie.

The fact that Ms. McDaniel is on the payroll at NBC News, to me that is inexplicable. I mean, you wouldn’t hire a mobster to work at a DA’s office.

Rachel Maddow devotes an entire half hour.

It’s not about just being associated with Donald Trump and his time in the Republican Party. It’s not even about lying or not lying. It’s about our system of government.

Thumbing their noses at our bosses and basically accusing them of abetting a traitorous figure in American history. I mean, just extraordinary stuff. It’s television history.

And let’s face it, we journalists, our bosses, we can be seen as crybabies, and we’re paid complaining. Yeah, that’s what we’re paid to do. But in this case, the NBC executives cannot ignore this, because in the outcry, there’s a very clear point that they’re all making. Ronna McDaniel is not just a voice from the other side. She was a fundamental part of Trump’s efforts to deny his election loss.

This is not inviting the other side. This is someone who’s on the wrong side —

Of history.

Of history, of these moments that we’ve covered and are still covering.

And I think it’s fair to say that at this point, everyone understands that Ronna McDaniel’s time at NBC News is going to be very short lived. Yeah, basically, after all this, the executives at NBC have to face facts it’s over. And on Tuesday night, they release a statement to the staff saying as much.

They don’t cite the questions about red lines or what Ronna McDaniel represented or didn’t represent. They just say we need to have a unified newsroom. We want cohesion. This isn’t working.

I think in the end, she was a paid contributor for four days.

Yeah, one of the shortest tenures in television news history. And look, in one respect, by their standards, this is kind of a pretty small contract, a few hundred thousand dollars they may have to pay out. But it was way more costly because they hired her. They brought her on board because they wanted to appeal to these tens of millions of Americans who still love Donald J. Trump.

And what happens now is that this entire thing is blown up in their face, and those very same people now see a network that, in their view, in the view of Republicans across the country, this network will not accept any Republicans. So it becomes more about that. And Fox News, NBC’S longtime rival, goes wall to wall with this.

Now, NBC News just caved to the breathless demands from their far left, frankly, emotionally unhinged host.

I mean, I had it on my desk all day. And every minute I looked at that screen, it was pounding on these liberals at NBC News driving this Republican out.

It’s the shortest tenure in TV history, I think. But why? Well, because she supports Donald Trump, period.

So in a way, this leaves NBC worse off with that Trump Republican audience they had wanted to court than maybe even they were before. It’s like a boomerang with a grenade on it.

Yeah, it completely explodes in their face. And that’s why to me, the whole episode is so representative of this eight-year conundrum for the news media, especially on television. They still haven’t been able to crack the code for how to handle the Trump movement, the Trump candidacy, and what it has wrought on the American political system and American journalism.

We’ll be right back.

Jim, put into context this painful episode of NBC into that larger conundrum you just diagnosed that the media has faced when it comes to Trump.

Well, Michael, it’s been there from the very beginning, from the very beginning of his political rise. The media was on this kind of seesaw. They go back and forth over how to cover him. Sometimes they want to cover him quite aggressively because he’s such a challenging candidate. He was bursting so many norms.

But at other times, there was this instinct to understand his appeal, for the same reason. He’s such an unusual candidate. So there was a great desire to really understand his voters. And frankly, to speak to his voters, because they’re part of the audience. And we all lived it, right?

But just let me take you back anyway because everything’s fresh again with perspective. And so if you go back, let’s look at when he first ran. The networks, if you recall, saw him as almost like a novelty candidate.

He was going to spice up what was expected to be a boring campaign between the usual suspects. And he was a ratings magnet. And the networks, they just couldn’t get enough of it. And they allowed him, at times, to really shatter their own norms.

Welcome back to “Meet the Press,” sir.

Good morning, Chuck.

Good morning. Let me start —

He was able to just call into the studio and riff with the likes of George Stephanopoulos and Chuck Todd.

What does it have to do with Hillary?

She can’t talk about me because nobody respects women more than Donald Trump.

And CNN gave him a lot of unmitigated airtime, if you recall during the campaign. They would run the press conferences.

It’s the largest winery on the East Coast. I own it 100 percent.

And let him promote his Trump steaks and his Trump wine.

Trump steaks. Where are the steaks? Do we have steaks?

I mean, it got that crazy. But again, the ratings were huge. And then he wins. And because they had previously given him all that airtime, they’ve, in retrospect, sort of given him a political gift, and more than that now have a journalistic imperative to really address him in a different way, to cover him as they would have covered any other candidate, which, let’s face it, they weren’t doing initially. So there’s this extra motivation to make up for lost ground and maybe for some journalistic omissions.

Right. Kind of correct for the lack of a rigorous journalistic filter in the campaign.

Exactly. And the big thing that this will be remembered for is we’re going to call a lie a lie.

I don’t want to sugarcoat this because facts matter, and the fact is President Trump lies.

Trump lies. We’re going to say it’s a lie.

And I think we can’t just mince around it because they are lies. And so we need to call them what they are.

We’re no longer going to use euphemisms or looser language we’re. Going to call it for what it is.

Trump lies in tweets. He spreads false information at rallies. He lies when he doesn’t need to. He lies when the truth is more than enough for him.

CNN was running chyrons. They would fact check Trump and call lies lies on the screen while Trump is talking. They were challenging Trump to his face —

One of the statements that you made in the tail end of the campaign in the midterms that —

Here we go.

That — well, if you don’t mind, Mr. President, that this caravan was an invasion.

— in these crazy press conferences —

They’re are hundreds of miles away, though. They’re hundreds and hundreds of miles away. That’s not an invasion.

Honestly, I think you should let me run the country. You run CNN. And if you did it well, your ratings —

Well, let me ask — if I may ask one other question. Mr. President, if I may ask another question. Are you worried —

That’s enough. That’s enough.

And Trump is giving it right back.

I tell you what, CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN.

Very combative.

So this was this incredibly fraught moment for the American press. You’ve got tens of millions of Trump supporters seeing what’s really basic fact checking. These look like attacks to Trump supporters. Trump, in turn, is calling the press, the reporters are enemies of the people. So it’s a terrible dynamic.

And when January 6 happens, it’s so obviously out of control. And what the traditional press that follows, traditional journalistic rules has to do is make it clear that the claims that Trump is making about a stolen election are just so abjectly false that they don’t warrant a single minute of real consideration once the reporting has been done to show how false they are. And I think that American journalism really emerged from that feeling strongly about its own values and its own place in society.

But then there’s still tens of millions of Trump voters, and they don’t feel so good about the coverage. And they don’t agree that January 6 was an insurrection. And so we enter yet another period, where the press is going to have to now maybe rethink some things.

In what way?

Well, there’s a kind of quiet period after January 6. Trump is off of social media. The smoke is literally dissipating from the air in Washington. And news executives are kind of standing there on the proverbial battlefield, taking a new look at their situation.

And they’re seeing that in this clearer light, they’ve got some new problems, perhaps none more important for their entire business models than that their ratings are quickly crashing. And part of that diminishment is that a huge part of the country, that Trump-loving part of the audience, is really now severed from him from their coverage.

They see the press as actually, in some cases, being complicit in stealing an election. And so these news executives, again, especially on television, which is so ratings dependent, they’ve got a problem. So after presumably learning all these lessons about journalism and how to confront power, there’s a first subtle and then much less subtle rethinking.

Maybe we need to pull back from that approach. And maybe we need to take some new lessons and switch it up a little bit and reverse some of what we did. And one of the best examples of this is none other than CNN.

It had come under new management, was being led by a guy named Chris Licht, a veteran of cable news, but also Stephen Colbert’s late night show in his last job. And his new job under this new management is we’re going to recalibrate a little bit. So Chris Licht proceeds to try to bring the network back to the center.

And how does he do that?

Well, we see some key personalities who represented the Trump combat era start losing air time and some of them lose their jobs. There’s talk of, we want more Republicans on the air. There was a famous magazine article about Chris Licht’s balancing act here.

And Chris Licht says to a reporter, Tim Alberta of the “Atlantic” magazine, look, a lot in the media, including at his own network, quote unquote, “put on a jersey, took a side.” They took a side. And he says, I think we understand that jersey cannot go back on him. Because he says in the end of the day, by the way, it didn’t even work. We didn’t change anyone’s mind.

He’s saying that confrontational approach that defined the four years Trump was in office, that was a reaction to the feeling that TV news had failed to properly treat Trump with sufficient skepticism, that that actually was a failure both of journalism and of the TV news business. Is that what he’s saying?

Yeah. On the business side, it’s easier call, right? You want a bigger audience, and you’re not getting the bigger audience. But he’s making a journalistic argument as well that if the job is to convey the truth and take it to the people, and they take that into account as they make their own voting decisions and formulate their own opinions about American politics, if tens of millions of people who do believe that election was stolen are completely tuning you out because now they see you as a political combatant, you’re not achieving your ultimate goal as a journalist.

And what does Licht’s “don’t put a jersey back on” approach look like on CNN for its viewers?

Well, It didn’t look good. People might remember this, but the most glaring example —

Please welcome, the front runner for the Republican nomination for president, Donald Trump.

— was when he held a town hall meeting featuring Donald J. Trump, now candidate Trump, before an audience packed with Trump’s fans.

You look at what happened during that election. Unless you’re a very stupid person, you see what happens. A lot of the people —

Trump let loose a string of falsehoods.

Most people understand what happened. It was a rigged election.

The audience is pro-Trump audience, was cheering him on.

Are you ready? Are you ready? Can I talk?

Yeah, what’s your answer?

Can I? Do you mind?

I would like for you to answer the question.

OK. It’s very simple to answer.

That’s why I asked it.

It’s very simple. You’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you that.

And during, the CNN anchor hosting this, Kaitlan Collins, on CNN’s own air, it was a disaster.

It felt like a callback to the unlearned lessons of 2016.

Yeah. And in this case, CNN’s staff was up in arms.

Big shakeup in the cable news industry as CNN makes another change at the top.

Chris Licht is officially out at CNN after a chaotic run as chairman and CEO.

And Chris Licht didn’t survive it.

The chief executive’s departure comes as he faced criticism in recent weeks after the network hosted a town hall with Donald Trump and the network’s ratings started to drop.

But I want to say that the CNN leadership still, even after that, as they brought new leadership in, said, this is still the path we’re going to go on. Maybe that didn’t work out, but we’re still here. This is still what we have to do.

Right. And this idea is very much in the water of TV news, that this is the right overall direction.

Yeah. This is, by no means, isolated to CNN. This is throughout the traditional news business. These conversations are happening everywhere. But CNN was living it at that point.

And this, of course, is how we get to NBC deciding to hire Ronna McDaniel.

Right. Because they’re picking up — right where that conversation leaves off, they’re having the same conversation. But for NBC, you could argue this tension between journalistic values and audience. It’s even more pressing. Because even though MSNBC is a niche cable network, NBC News is part of an old-fashioned broadcast network. It’s on television stations throughout the country.

And in fact, those networks, they still have 6:30 newscasts. And believe it or not, millions of people still watch those every night. Maybe not as many as they used to, but there’s still some six or seven million people tuning in to nightly news. That’s important.

Right. We should say that kind of number is sometimes double or triple that of the cable news prime time shows that get all the attention.

On their best nights. So this is big business still. And that business is based on broad — it’s called broadcast for a reason. That’s based on broad audiences. So NBC had a business imperative, and they argue they had a journalistic imperative.

So given all of that, Jim, I think the big messy question here is, when it comes to NBC, did they make a tactical error around hiring the wrong Republican which blew up? Or did they make an even larger error in thinking that the way you handle Trump and his supporters is to work this hard to reach them, when they might not even be reachable?

The best way to answer that question is to tell you what they’re saying right now, NBC management. What the management saying is, yes, this was a tactical error. This was clearly the wrong Republican. We get it.

But they’re saying, we are going to — and they said this in their statement, announcing that they were severing ties with McDaniel. They said, we’re going to redouble our efforts to represent a broad spectrum of the American votership. And that’s what they meant was that we’re going to still try to reach these Trump voters with people who can relate to them and they can relate to.

But the question is, how do you even do that when so many of his supporters believe a lie? How is NBC, how is CNN, how are any of these TV networks, if they have decided that this is their mission, how are they supposed to speak to people who believe something fundamentally untrue as a core part of their political identity?

That’s the catch-22. How do you get that Trump movement person who’s also an insider, when the litmus test to be an insider in the Trump movement is to believe in the denialism or at least say you do? So that’s a real journalistic problem. And the thing that we haven’t really touched here is, what are these networks doing day in and day out?

They’re not producing reported pieces, which I think it’s a little easier. You just report the news. You go out into the world. You talk to people, and then you present it to the world as a nuanced portrait of the country. This thing is true. This thing is false. Again, in many cases, pretty straightforward. But their bread and butter is talking heads. It’s live. It’s not edited. It’s not that much reported.

So their whole business model especially, again, on cable, which has 24 hours to fill, is talking heads. And if you want the perspective from the Trump movement, journalistically, especially when it comes to denialism, but when it comes to some other major subjects in American life, you’re walking into a place where they’re going to say things that aren’t true, that don’t pass your journalistic standards, the most basic standards of journalism.

Right. So you’re saying if TV sticks with this model, the kind of low cost, lots of talk approach to news, then they are going to have to solve the riddle of who to bring on, who represents Trump’s America if they want that audience. And now they’ve got this red line that they’ve established, that that person can’t be someone who denies the 2020 election reality. But like you just said, that’s the litmus test for being in Trump’s orbit.

So this doesn’t really look like a conundrum. This looks like a bit of a crisis for TV news because it may end up meaning that they can’t hire that person that they need for this model, which means that perhaps a network like NBC does need to wave goodbye to a big segment of these viewers and these eyeballs who support Trump.

I mean, on the one hand, they are not ready to do that, and they would never concede that that’s something they’re ready to do. The problem is barring some kind of change in their news model, there’s no solution to this.

But why bar changes to their news model, I guess, is the question. Because over the years, it’s gotten more and more expensive to produce news, the news that I’m talking about, like recorded packages and what we refer to as reporting. Just go out and report the news.

Don’t gab about it. Just what’s going on, what’s true, what’s false. That’s actually very expensive in television. And they don’t have the kind of money they used to have. So the talking heads is their way to do programming at a level where they can afford it.

They do some packages. “60 Minutes” still does incredible work. NBC does packages, but the lion’s share of what they do is what we’re talking about. And that’s not going to change because the economics aren’t there.

So then a final option, of course, to borrow something Chris Licht said, is that a network like NBC perhaps doesn’t put a jersey on, but accepts the reality that a lot of the world sees them wearing a jersey.

Yeah. I mean, nobody wants to be seen as wearing a jersey in our business. No one wants to be wearing a jersey on our business. But maybe what they really have to accept is that we’re just sticking to the true facts, and that may look like we’re wearing a jersey, but we’re not. And that may, at times, look like it’s lining up more with the Democrats, but we’re not.

If Trump is lying about a stolen election, that’s not siding against him. That’s siding for the truth, and that’s what we’re doing. Easier said than done. And I don’t think any of these concepts are new.

I think there have been attempts to do that, but it’s the world they’re in. And it’s the only option they really have. We’re going to tell you the truth, even if it means that we’re going to lose a big part of the country.

Well, Jim, thank you very much.

Thank you, Michael.

Here’s what else you need to know today.

[PROTESTERS CHANTING]

Over the weekend, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in some of the largest domestic demonstrations against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since Israel invaded Gaza in the fall.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

Some of the protesters called on Netanyahu to reach a cease fire deal that would free the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7. Others called for early elections that would remove Netanyahu from office.

During a news conference on Sunday, Netanyahu rejected calls for early elections, saying they would paralyze his government at a crucial moment in the war.

Today’s episode was produced by Rob Szypko, Rikki Novetsky, and Alex Stern, with help from Stella Tan.

It was edited by Brendan Klinkenberg with help from Rachel Quester and Paige Cowett. Contains original music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, and Rowan Niemisto and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

• April 2, 2024   •   29:32 Kids Are Missing School at an Alarming Rate
• April 1, 2024   •   36:14 Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem
• March 29, 2024   •   48:42 Hamas Took Her, and Still Has Her Husband
• March 28, 2024   •   33:40 The Newest Tech Start-Up Billionaire? Donald Trump.
• March 27, 2024   •   28:06 Democrats’ Plan to Save the Republican House Speaker
• March 26, 2024   •   29:13 The United States vs. the iPhone
• March 25, 2024   •   25:59 A Terrorist Attack in Russia
• March 24, 2024   •   21:39 The Sunday Read: ‘My Goldendoodle Spent a Week at Some Luxury Dog ‘Hotels.’ I Tagged Along.’
• March 22, 2024   •   35:30 Chuck Schumer on His Campaign to Oust Israel’s Leader
• March 21, 2024   •   27:18 The Caitlin Clark Phenomenon
• March 20, 2024   •   25:58 The Bombshell Case That Will Transform the Housing Market
• March 19, 2024   •   27:29 Trump’s Plan to Take Away Biden’s Biggest Advantage

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Jim Rutenberg

Produced by Rob Szypko ,  Rikki Novetsky and Alex Stern

With Stella Tan

Edited by Brendan Klinkenberg ,  Rachel Quester and Paige Cowett

Original music by Marion Lozano ,  Dan Powell and Rowan Niemisto

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

Ronna McDaniel’s time at NBC was short. The former Republican National Committee chairwoman was hired as an on-air political commentator but released just days later after an on-air revolt by the network’s leading stars.

Jim Rutenberg, a writer at large for The Times, discusses the saga and what it might reveal about the state of television news heading into the 2024 presidential race.

On today’s episode

Jim Rutenberg , a writer at large for The New York Times.

Background reading

Ms. McDaniel’s appointment had been immediately criticized by reporters at the network and by viewers on social media.

The former Republican Party leader tried to downplay her role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A review of the record shows she was involved in some key episodes .

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Jim Rutenberg is a writer at large for The Times and The New York Times Magazine and writes most often about media and politics. More about Jim Rutenberg

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