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2024 strategic marketing plan: digital marketing tactics & trends to include, august 30, 2023.

It’s time to start building your 2024 Strategic Marketing Plan and set your budgets for next year. Although it might be tempting to let your marketing run on autopilot, it’s crucial to take a step back and evaluate the upcoming marketing trends and economic landscape.

Here are 10 marketing tactics you should consider as you start your annual reviews, budget setting, and marketing plan creation:

Predictive Analytics

Voice search optimization, social media commerce, micro and nano influencer marketing.

• Segmented Audiences and Platform Stacks

Google Optimize Sunset (New A/B Testing Tools)

Retaining lists and customers, content clean up, iterative website plans, accessibility.

While there are a million ways we could talk about AI & Machine Learning dominance in marketing, one of the most interesting is predictive analytics. AI can automate repetitive tasks, create content , and optimize processes in our workflows, but it excels in seeing and analyzing things we don’t..

There are already tools on the market, like Klaviyo, that use machine learning to analyze the best email send times, predicted date of next order and customer churn probability.

In 2024, more tools will leverage machine learning to identify issues and suggest optimization. So watch for new predictive tools available in your various marketing platforms and social media tools.

This tactic is especially critical for DTC and eCommerce businesses that rely on repeat purchases from a single customer. Still, as Machine Learning gets more and more sophisticated, you can expect to see it all over this year.

What to include in your marketing plan:

• Use predictive analytics to increase your email open rates.
• Create a workflow for high-churn probability emails to re-engage them.
• Use A/B testing tools to optimize CTR and conversion rates.
• Incorporate lead scoring systems to maximize your team’s time.
• Implement personalization on your website and campaigns.

The prominence of voice search is on the rise. In fact, more than 1 billion voice searches take place every single month. As users transition from asking simple questions like “Who was the lead actress in the Barbie movie” to “plumbing company near me”, it becomes increasingly essential for voice search to be part of your marketing strategy.

This is one of the top marketing tactics that should be on your radar in 2024 if you’re a local business. Ensure your site is optimized for common search queries and questions that might be the difference in getting found by your customers via voice this year.

Voice is also going to start to enter the chatbot space. If you’re in a high-service industry with a tech-enabled audience, now might be the time to start looking at voice-enabled chatbots. Especially if you already have some chat function on your website.

What to include in your digital marketing plan:

• Optimize your site for local voice search.
• Use conversational language.
• Answer user questions and long-tail keywords.
• Add supporting content to your high-performing posts.
• Consider voice-enabled chatbots.

TikTok continues to dominate the social media space, and its TikTok shop platform is no exception. The platform heavily incentivizes new customer purchases, bringing in an influx of buyers. 

But this is just the latest in a several-year-long stretch to stop users from leaving native platforms, allowing platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to control the user’s experience and take a cut of the sale.

While jumping on these marketing strategies and trends is not for every business, it can be beneficial to capitalize on a company’s push to make something successful. If you have more impulse purchases or highly niched consumer products, this could be an excellent window to leverage algorithmic tide.

What to Include in Your Digital Marketing Strategy:

• Research competitors using eCommerce shopping functionality.
• Rollout social media commerce with best-selling or high-margin products.
• Create exclusive products or bundles on these social platforms.
• Test an alternative variant of a product that’s more social-media ready (i.e., ebooks or webinars).

While not new to 2024, this tactic has moved from experimental to solid investment as marketers have seen an average of 6x return on their investment.

And while you don’t need a celebrity endorsement, there are a wealth of platforms you can use right now to find your next ambassador, or you can promote signups on your website for your managed influencer program. 

In the last several years, connecting with Micro and Nano influencers through TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms has become easier.

Marketers who used micro and nano influencers have found them to produce higher engagement rates, increase customer trust, and take a lower investment than other forms of Influencer Marketing.

• Research micro and nano influencers in your industry.
• Test an influencer campaign on a platform of your choice.
• Invest in influencer-created video assets.
• Run cross-platform ad campaigns using successful assets

Segmented Audiences & Platform Stacks

Understanding challenges in the landscape can be a critical part of making a high-value marketing plan, and one of the biggest challenges over the last several years in the marketing world is the segmentation of audiences. 

We live in a world with endless choices. As a result, your target audience may have different technology preferences.

With the continued phasing out of third-party cookie data, you’ll need to find creative ways to engage with your customers personally and encourage them to offer you their information upfront.

Doing so will continue to challenge marketers across industries and verticals. Unfortunately, the best way to overcome this is to make a digital strategy that accounts for the variety of places your audience might be engaging.

What to Include in Your Digital Marketing Plan:

• Test a campaign or content strategy on a platform you’ve never tried before.
• Create systems to tweak and re-purpose content across platforms.
• Do customer research to find out where your most effective channels will be.
• Analyze engagement, visit, and customer metrics to understand the complete picture of your buyers.

READ MORE: What You Need to Know About GA4 and the Universal Analytics Sunset

Google is sunsetting its free A/B testing tool at the end of September , so maybe it won’t surprise you to hear that most companies didn’t utilize this free tool!

That said, A/B testing is one of the best ways to improve your existing assets’ performance. Changing layouts, language, and colors can improve conversion rates and the effectiveness of your campaigns. 

There are Google Analytics integrations with Optimizely, VWO, and AB Tasty, but that doesn’t mean those are the only tools you can use. 

Getting A/B testing set up should be a top priority for any company in any industry because knowing that you’ve got the best version of your copy, landing pages , and more is crucial for any business.

What You to Include in Your Marketing Plan:

• Migrate or set up an A/B testing platform.
• Run regular experiments on your site to find key improvements.
• Test wording or conversion on new products or offerings.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of core messaging and how well it resonates with your target audience.

As the marketing landscape gets more and more segmented, the importance of owning and managing your lead and customer lists only grows.

While having thousands of social media followers is still an asset, marketers can no longer depend on always being able to reach that audience. Social trends and audience trust in platforms can change quickly. 

What worked in advertising campaigns several years ago doesn’t work the same today. And while we can keep evolving, there’s nothing better than owning your lists.

Such a tactic is significant for B2B and B2C companies across all industries.

What Can You Add to Your Digital Marketing Plan:

• Use campaigns to capture leads from your social media audience.
• Test SMS marketing for your audience.
• Engage your users with email marketing.
• Create newsletter and lead generation campaigns by offering valuable insights.

Do you have blogs from 2015 or before? Are they still bringing SEO value or just taking up space? We’ve created numerous articles on improving your content’s quality to educate readers, position you as a thought leader, and help you improve keyword rankings for your business!

Not only is content still king, but it’s also a lucrative and competitive market. Don’t think that you can just throw up a new page or blog post without a strategy and expect to see results. From social media to blogs to streaming services, it’s all about creating lasting connections with content. – Britt Laeger, Director of Marketing Operations at Brandography

In 2024, a vital part of your marketing strategy plan must include revisiting your old content and ensuring it’s up to industry standards. In fact, you often find more value in updating old content than creating new copy.

The key is to ensure you create clarity for Google and provide high-value content for your target audience. 

What to Add to Your Marketing Plan:

• Investigate high-value content that has decreased in traffic, views.
• Archive or unpublish content that is no longer relevant or up to date.
• Combine together pages that have similar content.
• Find content gaps on your site and fill them in with new pages/content.

Historically, the standard website practice is to do a complete redesign every 2-4 years, depending on your industry. 

There are several reasons for this approach:

• Stay up-to-date with technological changes, web standards, search algorithms, etc.
• Refresh the look and feel to keep visitors engaged with your website.
• Do a content audit of pages that are underperforming.
• Update the UI/UX of your website to make it as user-friendly as possible.

However, there has been a shift in the website development world, and many companies are now moving to a growth-driven design methodology.

Growth-driven design 101

Growth-driven design is a more agile, focused website redesign sprint instead of the giant overhaul website projects that companies have historically used.

Another thing that search engines favor is regularly updated websites because the newest information is often the best. With that in mind, companies are shifting away from lengthy redesign projects to minor, more iterative website design and development agreements.

This change allows marketers to test and measure what works best for their audience and double down on areas where they are most successful.

What to add to your marketing plan:

• Evaluate your website against best practices, industry standards, and your competitors.
• Research growth-driven website design.
• Identify one area of your website that could use an update, refresh, or reorganization.
• Consider having a website company do an audit of your site to identify potential growth areas.

Improving your website’s accessibility has always been an ongoing effort. But lately, we’re learning that more businesses in the service and medical industries are receiving letters threatening to take action against their websites that fail to meet accessibility requirements. 

Knowing how to cover yourself will be essential in 2024. If you’re worried about the accessibility of your site, our team can help you find the tools to get your site up to standards and keep it compliant, so you can get back to serving your customers!

• Add accessibility tools to your site to improve readability.
• Leverage multiple forms of content, such as graphics, video, audio, and text to increase readability for your audience.

Getting Leadership Buy-In on the Importance of Digital Marketing Trends

Most leadership teams already understand how the digital environment is shifting, and they’ll likely be ready to invest in new ideas. Your main challenge will be getting them to focus on the horizon rather than the easy wins in front of them.

Get prepared by asking yourself the following questions first:

• What are my company’s KPIs, priorities, goals, or rocks for 2024? 
• What issues (if any) led to my company’s new priorities?
• How can I tie my strategic marketing plan to solving my company’s challenges?
• How will I communicate the value proposition of each part of my plan using simple language?
• Do I have any current data that I can show regarding maintaining momentum toward a goal?
• Can I promise time to set up regular touchpoints and show progress through common KPIs for digital marketing?

Preparation is essential for getting the all-important buy-in (and hopefully an increased budget) for your 2024 digital marketing efforts. If you can answer these questions confidently, getting your leadership team as excited as you about new trends should be more accessible.

Need Help with Your Strategic Marketing Plan ? 

At Brandography, we’re passionate about being forward-thinking. In an industry that’s constantly changing, our team rises to the challenge of helping our customers find a way to connect with their target audience.

We offer comprehensive marketing plans , website audits, and creative strategies to get you started. You can also spend some time before next year looking over our past blogs and case studies to learn how we can help. 

When you’re ready, don’t hesitate to reach out for a fresh start on your digital marketing plan next year.

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How to Analyze Market Trends for a Business Plan

• March 21, 2024
• Business Plan , How to Write

Analyzing market trends is a crucial step in creating a comprehensive business plan. It involves understanding the movements and changes in your industry that can impact your business strategy and decision-making process.

This analysis helps entrepreneurs and business owners identify opportunities for growth, potential threats, and the overall direction of the market. Whether you’re starting a new venture or looking to expand your existing business, a deep dive into market trends can provide you with a competitive edge.

Define the Scope of Your Analysis

Begin by defining the scope of your market trend analysis. Determine which geographic areas you will consider and which product or service categories are relevant to your business.

Identifying the key factors that influence your industry, such as technological advancements, consumer behavior changes, and economic conditions, is also essential. This step ensures your analysis is focused and relevant.

• Example for a Coffee Shop : If you’re planning to open a coffee shop, your analysis might focus on trends in the coffee industry within your city or region, including consumer preferences for coffee types (e.g., organic, fair trade), the popularity of coffee shop formats (e.g., drive-thru, co-working spaces), and the impact of mobile ordering technology.

Collect Data from Reliable Sources

The next step is to gather data from a variety of reliable sources. This can include industry reports, market research studies, government publications, and academic papers.

Online databases and business news websites are valuable resources for finding up-to-date information. Social media and forums can also provide insights into consumer opinions and behaviors.

• Example for a Coffee Shop : Collect data on coffee consumption patterns, industry growth rates, and competitor analysis in your targeted area. Sources might include market research firms like Statista or Mintel, as well as local business news outlets and coffee industry blogs.

Identify Key Market Trends

With your data in hand, start identifying key trends that are shaping your industry. Look for patterns in consumer behavior, emerging technologies, regulatory changes, and competitive strategies.

It’s important to distinguish between short-term fads and long-term trends that will have a lasting impact on the market.

• Example for a Coffee Shop : Key trends might include the growing demand for specialty coffee, the rise of plant-based milk options, and the increasing importance of sustainability in the supply chain.

Analyze the Impact of Market Trends

Once you’ve identified key trends, analyze their potential impact on your business. Consider how these trends could affect your product or service offerings, marketing strategies , and operational processes.

This analysis should also include considering potential threats and opportunities that these trends might present.

• Example for a Coffee Shop : The demand for specialty coffee may create an opportunity to offer a unique selection of beans and brewing methods, differentiating your shop from competitors. However, the popularity of plant-based milk options may require adjustments to your supply chain and menu offerings.

Incorporate Market Trends into Your Business Plan

Integrate your findings into your business plan, using the insights gained from your market trend analysis to inform your business strategy.

This should include product or service development, marketing and sales strategies , and financial planning. Be sure to clearly articulate how you plan to capitalize on opportunities and mitigate potential threats.

• Example for a Coffee Shop : Your business plan could highlight the introduction of a specialty coffee menu and sustainable sourcing practices as key differentiators. It might also detail marketing strategies targeting health-conscious consumers and environmentally aware individuals.

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• Marketing |
• How to create a winning marketing plan, ...

How to create a winning marketing plan, with 3 examples from world-class teams

A marketing plan helps leaders clearly visualize marketing strategies across channels, so they can ensure every campaign drives pipeline and revenue. In this article you’ll learn eight steps to create a winning marketing plan that brings business-critical goals to life, with examples from word-class teams.

To be successful as a marketer, you have to deliver the pipeline and the revenue.”

In other words—they need a well-crafted marketing plan.

Level up your marketing plan to drive revenue in 2024

Learn how to create the right marketing plan to hit your revenue targets in 2024. Hear best practices from marketing experts, including how to confidently set and hit business goals, socialize marketing plans, and move faster with clearer resourcing.

7 steps to build a comprehensive marketing plan

How do you build the right marketing plan to hit your revenue goals? Follow these eight steps for success:

1. Define your plan

First you need to define each specific component of your plan to ensure stakeholders are aligned on goals, deliverables, resources, and more. Ironing out these details early on ensures your plan supports the right business objectives, and that you have sufficient resources and time to get the job done. 

Get started by asking yourself the following questions: 

What resources do I need? 

What is the vision?

What is the value?

What is the goal?

Who is my audience?

What are my channels?

What is the timeline?

For example, imagine you’re creating an annual marketing plan to improve customer adoption and retention in the next fiscal year. Here’s how you could go through the questions above to ensure you’re ready to move forward with your plan: 

I will need support from the content team, web team, and email team to create targeted content for existing customers. One person on each team will need to be dedicated full-time to this initiative. To achieve this, the marketing team will need an additional $100K in budget and one new headcount. 

What is the vision?  

To create a positive experience for existing customers, address new customer needs, and encourage them to upgrade. We’ll do this by serving them how-to content, new feature updates, information about deals and pricing, and troubleshooting guides. 

According to the Sales Benchmark Index (SBI) , CEOs and go-to-market leaders report that more than 60% of their net-new revenue will come from existing customers in 2023. By retaining and building on the customers we have, we can maintain revenue growth over time. 

To decrease the customer churn rate from 30% to 10%, and increase upgrades from 20% to 30% in the next fiscal year. 

All existing customers. 

The main channel will be email. Supporting marketing channels include the website, blog, YouTube, and social media. 

The first half of the next fiscal year. 

One of the most important things to do as you create your marketing strategy is to identify your target audience . As with all marketing, you need to know who you’re marketing to. If you’re having a hard time determining who exactly your target audience is, try the bullseye targeting framework . The bullseye makes it easy for you to determine who your target audience is by industry, geography, company size, psychographics, demographics, and more.

2. Identify key metrics for success 

Now it’s time to define what key marketing metrics you’ll use to measure success. Your key metrics will help you measure and track the performance of your marketing activities. They’ll also help you understand how your efforts tie back to larger business goals. 

Once you establish key metrics, use a goal-setting framework—like objectives and key results (OKRs) or SMART goals —to fully flush out your marketing objectives. This ensures your targets are as specific as possible, with no ambiguity about what should be accomplished by when. 

Example: If a goal of your marketing plan is to increase email subscriptions and you follow the SMART goal framework (ensuring your objective is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) your goal might look like this: Increase email subscription rate from 10% to 20% in H1 . 

3. Research your competition 

It’s easy to get caught up in your company’s world, but there’s a lot of value in understanding your competitors . Knowing how they market themselves will help you find opportunities to make your company stand out and capture more market share.

Make sure you’re not duplicating your competitors’ efforts. If you discover a competitor has already executed your idea, then it might be time to go back to the drawing board and brainstorm new ways to differentiate yourself.  By looking at your competitors, you might be surprised at the type of inspiration and opportunities you’ll find.

To stay ahead of market trends, conduct a SWOT analysis for your marketing plan. A SWOT analysis helps you improve your plan by identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 

Example: If your competitor launches a social media campaign identical to what you had planned, go back to the drawing board and see how you can build off their campaign. Ask yourself: How can we differentiate our campaign while still getting our message across? What are the weaknesses of their campaign that we can capitalize on? What angles did they not approach?

4. Integrate your marketing efforts

Here’s where the fun comes in. Let’s dive into the different components that go into building a successful marketing plan. You’ll want to make sure your marketing plan includes multiple supporting activities that all add up into a powerful marketing machine. Some marketing plan components include: 

Lead generation

Social media

Product marketing

Public relations

Analyst relations

Customer marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Conversational marketing

Knowing where your consumer base spends the most time is significant for nailing this step. You need to have a solid understanding of your target audience before integrating your marketing efforts. 

Example: If your target audience is executives that spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, focus your social media strategy around placing branded content on LinkedIn. 

5. Differentiate with creative content

Forty-nine percent of marketers say visual images are hugely important to their content strategy. In other words, a clear brand and creative strategy is an essential component to every marketing plan. As you craft your own creative strategy, here are some tips to keep in mind: 

Speak to your audience: When defining your creative strategy, think about your audience—what you want them to feel, think, and do when they see your marketing. Will your audience find your creative work relevant? If your audience can’t relate to your creative work, they won’t feel connected to the story you’re trying to tell. 

Think outside the box: Find innovative ways to engage your audience, whether through video, animations, or interactive graphics. Know what screens your creative work will live on, whether desktop, mobile, or tablet, and make sure they display beautifully and load quickly across every type of device. 

Tie everything back to CTAs: It’s easy to get caught up in the creative process, so it’s important to never lose sight of your ultimate goal: Get your audience to take action. Always find the best way to display strong Calls to Action (CTAs) in your creative work. We live in a visual world—make sure your creative content counts.

Streamline creative production:   Once you’ve established a strong creative strategy, the next step is to bring your strategy to life in the production stage. It’s vital to set up a strong framework for your creative production process to eliminate any unnecessary back and forth and potential bottlenecks. Consider establishing creative request forms , streamlining feedback and approval processes, and taking advantage of integrations that might make your designers’ lives easier.

Example: If your brand is fun and approachable, make sure that shows in your creative efforts. Create designs and CTAs that spark joy, offer entertainment, and alleviate the pressure in choosing a partner.

6. Operationalize your marketing plan

Turn your plan into action by making goals, deliverables, and timelines clear for every stakeholder—so teams stay accountable for getting work done. The best way to do this is by centralizing all the details of your marketing plan in one platform , so teams can access the information they need and connect campaign work back to company goals.  

With the right work management tool , you can: 

Set goals for every marketing activity, and connect campaign work to overarching marketing and business objectives so teams focus on revenue-driving projects. 

Centralize deliverables for your entire marketing plan in one project or portfolio .

Mark major milestones and visualize your plan as a timeline, Gantt chart, calendar, list, or Kanban board—without doing any extra work. 

Quickly loop in stakeholders with status updates so they’re always up to date on progress. This is extremely important if you have a global team to ensure efforts aren’t being duplicated. 

Use automations to seamlessly hand off work between teams, streamlining processes like content creation and reviews. 

Create dashboards to report on work and make sure projects are properly staffed , so campaigns stay on track. 

With everything housed in one spot, you can easily visualize the status of your entire marketing plan and keep work on track. Building an effective marketing plan is one thing, but how you operationalize it can be your secret to standout marketing.

Example: If your strategy focuses on increasing page views, connect all campaign work to an overarching OKR—like “we will double page views as measured by the amount of organic traffic on our blog.” By making that goal visible to all stakeholders, you help teams prioritize the right work. 

See marketing planning in action

With Asana, marketing teams can connect work, standardize processes, and automate workflows—all in one place.

7. Measure performance

Nearly three in four CMOs use revenue growth to measure success, so it’s no surprise that measuring performance is necessary. You established your key metrics in step two, and now it’s time to track and report on them in step eight.

Periodically measure your marketing efforts to find areas of improvement so you can optimize in real-time. There are always lessons to be learned when looking at data. You can discover trends, detect which marketing initiatives performed well, and course-correct what isn’t performing well. And when your plan is complete, you can apply these learnings to your next initiative for improved results. 

Example: Say you discover that long-form content is consistently bringing in 400% more page views than short-form content. As a result, you’ll want to focus on producing more long-form content in your next marketing plan.

Marketing plan examples from world-class teams

The best brands in the world bring their marketing plans to life every day. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out these examples from successful marketing teams.

Autodesk grows site traffic 30% three years in a row

When the Autodesk team launched Redshift, it was initially a small business blog. The editorial team executed a successful marketing plan to expand it into a premier owned-media site, making it a destination for stories and videos about the future of making. 

The team scaled content production to support seven additional languages. By standardizing their content production workflow and centralizing all content conversations in one place, the editorial team now publishes 2X more content monthly. Read the case study to learn more about how Autodesk runs a well-oiled content machine.

Sony Music boosts creative production capacity by 4X

In recent years the music industry has gone through a pivotal transition—shifting from album sales to a streaming business model. For marketing and creative teams at Sony Music, that meant adopting an “always on” campaign plan. 

The team successfully executed this campaign plan by centralizing creative production and approvals in one project. By standardizing processes, the team reduced campaign production time by 75%. Read the case study to learn more about how Sony Music successfully scaled their creative production process.

Trinny London perfects new customer acquisition 

In consumer industries, social media is crucial for building a community of people who feel an affinity with the brand—and Trinny London is no exception. As such, it was imperative that Trinny London’s ad spend was targeted to the correct audience. Using a work management tool, Trinny London was able to nail the process of creating, testing, and implementing ads on multiple social channels.

With the help of a centralized tool, Trinny London improved its ad spend and drove more likes and subscriptions on its YouTube page. Read the case study to learn more about how Trinny London capitalized on paid advertising and social media. 

Turn your marketing plan into marketing success 

A great marketing plan promotes clarity and accountability across teams—so every stakeholder knows what they’re responsible for, by when. Reading this article is the first step to achieving better team alignment, so you can ensure every marketing campaign contributes to your company’s bottom line. 

Use a free marketing plan template to get started

Once you’ve created your marketing strategy and are ready to operationalize your marketing plan, get started with one of our marketing templates . 

Our marketing templates can help you manage and track every aspect of your marketing plan, from creative requests to approval workflows. Centralize your entire marketing plan in one place, customize the roadmap, assign tasks, and build a timeline or calendar. 

Once you’ve operationalized your entire marketing plan with one of our templates, share it with your stakeholders so everyone can work together in the same tool. Your entire team will feel connected to the marketing plan, know what to prioritize, and see how their work contributes to your project objectives . Choose the best marketing template for your team:

Marketing project plan template

Marketing campaign plan template

Product marketing launch template

Editorial calendar template

Agency collaboration template

Creative requests template

Event planning template

GTM strategy template

Still have questions? We have answers. 

What is a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is a detailed roadmap that outlines the different strategies your team will use to achieve organizational objectives. Rather than focusing solely on the end goal, a marketing plan maps every step you need to reach your destination—whether that’s driving pipeline for sales, nurturing your existing customer base, or something in-between. 

As a marketing leader, you know there’s never a shortage of great campaign and project ideas. A marketing plan gives you a framework to effectively prioritize work that aligns to overarching business goals—and then get that work done. Some elements of marketing plans include:

Current business plan

Mission statement  

Business goals

Target customers  

Competitive analysis 

Current marketing mix

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Marketing budget  

What is the purpose of a marketing plan?

The purpose of a marketing plan is to grow your company’s consumer base and strengthen your brand, while aligning with your organization’s mission and vision . The plan should analyze the competitive landscape and industry trends, offer actionable insights to help you gain a competitive advantage, and document each step of your strategy—so you can see how your campaigns work together to drive overarching business goals. 

What is the difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy? 

A marketing plan contains many marketing strategies across different channels. In that way, marketing strategies contribute to your overall marketing plan, working together to reach your company’s overarching business goals.

For example, imagine you’re about to launch a new software product and the goal of your marketing plan is to drive downloads. Your marketing plan could include marketing strategies like creating top-of-funnel blog content and launching a social media campaign. 

What are different types of marketing plans? 

Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, what your timeline is, or which facet of marketing you’re driving, you’ll need to create a different type of marketing plan. Some different types of marketing plans include, but aren’t limited to:

General marketing plan: A general marketing plan is typically an annual or quarterly marketing plan that details the overarching marketing strategies for the period. This type of marketing plan outlines marketing goals, the company’s mission, buyer personas, unique selling propositions, and more. A general marketing plan lays the foundation for other, more specific marketing plans that an organization may employ. 

Product launch marketing plan: A product launch marketing plan is a step-by-step plan for marketing a new product or expanding into a new market. It helps you build awareness and interest by targeting the right audience, with the right messaging, in the right timeframe—so potential customers are ready to buy your new offering right away. Nailing your product launch marketing plan can reinforce your overall brand and fast-track sales. For a step-by-step framework to organize all the moving pieces of a launch, check out our product marketing launch template .

Paid marketing plan: This plan includes all the paid strategies in your marketing plan, like pay-per-click, paid social media advertising, native advertising, and display advertising. It’s especially important to do audience research prior to launching your paid marketing plan to ensure you’re maximizing ROI. Consult with content strategists to ensure your ads align with your buyer personas so you know you’re showing ads to the right people. 

Content marketing plan: A content marketing plan outlines the different content strategies and campaigns you’ll use to promote your product or service. When putting together a content marketing plan, start by identifying your audience. Then use market research tools to get the best insights into what topics your target audience is most interested in.

SEO marketing plan: Your SEO marketing plan should work directly alongside your content marketing plan as you chart content that’s designed to rank in search results. While your content marketing plan should include all types of content, your SEO marketing plan will cover the top-of-funnel content that drives new users to your site. Planning search engine-friendly content is only one step in your SEO marketing plan. You’ll also need to include link-building and technical aspects in order to ensure your site and content are as optimized as possible.

Social media marketing plan: This plan will highlight the marketing strategies you plan to accomplish on social media. Like in any general or digital marketing plan , your social media strategy should identify your ideal customer base and determine how they engage on different social media platforms. From there, you can cater your social media content to your target audience.  

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Inbound Marketing Insights

16 trends to consider in your marketing plan.

Posted by Prism Global Marketing Solutions | 7 Minutes to Read

As you build and modify your marketing plan, what are some things you should consider including to maximize engagement with your prospects and customers?

To help you stay ahead of the curve, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders for their best tips on what to include in your marketing plan. From short-form videos to podcasts to virtual reality, you should factor several marketing trends into your plans for next year.

Here are 16 marketing trends these marketers and business leaders are considering:

• Short-Form Vertical Videos
• Push Notifications
• Omni-channel Marketing
• Integrating Artificial Intelligence
• Building a Loyal Client Base
• Personifying Brands
• Integrating Digital Ads into Micro-Interactions on Partners' Sites
• Long-Term Influencer-Brand Relationships.
• Customization of the Customer Experience
• Virtual and Augmented Reality for Immersive Marketing Experience
• Leveraging User-Generated Content to Promote Products
• Web3 Marketing 
• Streaming Service Advertising
• Blog Content Embedded With Visuals and Interactive Media
• Featured Snippets in Google Search

1) Short-Form Vertical Videos They started with Snapchat, then Instagram, and TikTok. To keep up with those platforms, Facebook and YouTube now feature them. Shorts/Reels/Stories - short - under 60 seconds - vertical videos. They are informal, quick to the point, easy-to-create messages. Facebook is changing its algorithm to be similar to Instagram's to prominently feature videos - Reels and Stories - in users' feeds. Users may even see content from companies and other users that they don't follow or are connected to. 

To take advantage of this, businesses must upload videos directly – (don't just share a link). Use stories (share from Instagram - connected to your Facebook business page -- every 24 hrs); Upload Reels, promotional images, animated gifs or memes, blog articles, or share related, relevant content. Make sure the post has text! That helps with your discoverability. The algorithm engine needs text and hashtags.

Giselle Aguiar , Digital Marketing Consultant, AZ Social Media Wiz

2) Push Notifications Marketers today should be including push notifications in their strategies. People are doing more and more of their online searching for brands and purchases on their mobile devices. Push notifications make sense as a more efficient approach for brands to grab consumers' attention. More than half of today's consumers have enabled push notifications on their mobile devices, making it easier for businesses to contact them.

Daniel Foley , Director of Marketing, SEO Stack

3) Omni-channel Marketing Omni-channel marketing has been percolating for several years. It involves having a consistent branding experience on multiple channels so customers are coming across it in the same way, no matter what platform they're on. That is easier said than done because there are so many options, from social media to streaming. Those who do it well will be a step ahead.

Baruch Labunski , CEO, Rank Secure

4) Podcasting What sets podcasts apart from other marketing mediums is that they humanize your brand and give your audience something more to connect with. Through podcasts, you can share stories, provide anecdotes, and be authentic — something that today's modern-day consumer is incredibly concerned about. While it may seem like uncharted territory for many organizations, the rewards are well worth your time and effort. Besides, with the steady rise in podcast production agencies, you'll quickly find a competent team to help bring your podcast to life.

Harry Morton , Founder, Lower Street

5) Integrating Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept; it's a reality slowly being integrated into all aspects of life. In marketing, AI is used to personalize content, automate tasks, and improve customer service. The potential applications of AI in marketing are endless, and as the technology continues to develop, we can only expect to see more businesses leveraging its power. While it's undeniable that technology is changing the marketing landscape, organizations should create an environment conducive to innovation and creativity to thrive by planning their marketing strategies around technology.

Demi Yilmaz , Co-Founder, Colonist.io

6) Building a Loyal Client Base One trend that is certain to still kick around is focusing more resources on building a loyal client base rather than looking for new customers. It would seem that every little niche offers people plenty of businesses to choose from, and customers don't shy away from trying different companies' products. Securing a client for longer periods of time is becoming harder and more complex, and that's become a significant challenge you should undertake.

Natalia Brzezinska , Marketing & Outreach Manager, US Visa Photo

7) Personifying Brands We've all seen the immense social media marketing success that Duolingo has had through its witty and Gen Z-like voice on TikTok. While companies don't have to go to that extreme, it's becoming increasingly critical for brands to feel more like a person - not just a black corporate box trying to sell something to consumers.

Adam Shlomi , Founder, SoFlo Tutors

8) Integrating Digital Ads into Micro-Interactions on Partners' Sites  Though it may be too early to call it a trend, a cool new technique I've seen over the past few months is integrating digital ads into micro-interactions on partners' sites. I know that might be hard to picture, so here is an example. This past week, when I logged in to Yahoo to check my fantasy football matchup, a congratulatory screen popped up, and when I clicked on it, confetti came raining down on the screen. But it wasn't confetti - it was a million little Arby's logos. It was incredibly interactive and unexpected and got my attention (unlike most popups and sidebar ads today). I frankly love this approach to digital ads. With more sites than ever incorporating micro-interactions and micro-animations on-page, there are millions of opportunities to work with partners to incorporate your advertising into their site. The Arby's thing is just one example. More organic ad placement on-site, especially in the context of micro-interactions, will be huge in coming years.

John Ross , Chief Executive Officer, Test Prep Insight

9) Long-Term Influencer-Brand Relationships We are going to see a higher importance on long-term influencer-brand relationships. People are increasingly looking to social media as a place for community and building trust and relationships with influencers. Brands will tap into this built-in trust and relationship as they align themselves with influencers who make sense of their brand. The connection between influencers and brands will continue to grow into the new year.

Ann McFerran , CEO, Glamnetic

10) Customization of the Customer Experience Customization of the customer experience will be a major player in marketing. Companies will utilize data to find out as much as they can about their customers to create tailored marketing content, from email campaigns to Instagram posts. The customer experience will be unique and specialized based on the customer's unique buyer's journey. Data will continue to be king and help companies create the best-customized customer experience.

Sumeer Kaur, Founder & CEO, Lashkaraa

11) Virtual and Augmented Reality for Immersive Marketing Experience Businesses should consider using virtual and augmented reality to create immersive marketing experiences. Virtual reality is a computer-generated simulated environment that allows users to interact with their surroundings in real time. Augmented reality is a technology that overlays digital information on top of the physical world, making it possible to see both the real and the virtual world simultaneously. Businesses are already starting to experiment with these technologies for marketing purposes. For example, Marriott Hotels created a VR experience that allows users to visit different destinations worldwide. And BMW has created an augmented reality app that lets customers explore different car models and features.

Gosia Hytry , Head of Content, Spacelift

12) Leveraging User-Generated Content to Promote Products Businesses are leveraging social proof through customers' UGC more and more on social media. We share our customers' posts to curate virtual showrooms on our Instagram and extend our reach to new clientele. User-generated content is perfect for curating versatile examples of how our products meet users' diverse preferences. On top of bolstering our content marketing strategy, we enjoy spotlighting different users on our account, using their content to help them reach new audiences. Not only does this strategy help us attract new leads, but it reinforces our existing relationships with loyal customers. I expect that, well into the new year, many businesses will use similar strategies to increase their brand awareness and conversions.

Justin Soleimani , Co-Founder, Tumble

13) Web3 Marketing Web3 marketing will matter even more. On a technical level, Web3 is the label for a decentralized internet, which can incorporate blockchain and other technologies. On a practical level, it means that you need to look at where your customers spend their time and where you expect them to spend time in a decentralized world. Today, you can find your web3 base of customers on platforms like Discord, Twitter, and Telegram. Although a social media space like Twitter is really just a remnant of the Web2 world, the audience of current and future Web3 users hang out there. Real-time communications on platforms like Discord and Telegram will be a huge part of Web3, and Twitter is not far off. So, expand your marketing efforts to engage and create spaces in preparation for Web3 expansion, and you'll be ahead of the competition.

Dennis Consorte , Digital Marketing & Leadership Consultant for Startups, Snackable Solutions

14) Streaming Service Advertising One of the most important marketing trends that I see emerging, and has been relatively important as of recent years, that all businesses should consider in their marketing plan is advertising on streaming services. Even before COVID-19 came along and made a massive boom in the streaming service industry, streaming services and companies were substantial game changers in the market. They were starting to become the dominant form of media and TV delivery. Many people nowadays are switching from cable TV to streaming, and creating and putting ads on these streaming platforms is the go-to way to bring attention to your business.

David Ring , Senior Marketing Manager, MCT - Trading

15) Blog Content Embedded With Visuals and Interactive Media Basic text-heavy blog articles are no longer adequate, especially given Google's recent update that prioritizes content quality. With more users engaging with audio and video formats, I expect more companies will make their blogs more interactive and include a variety of media. This includes having embedded video, click-to-tweets, infographics, original graphics and images, slideshows, and clickable Table of Contents for longer posts -- anything that will make the blog content stand out and be visually and functionally more engaging.

Alli Hill , Founder and Director, Fleurish Freelance

16) Featured Snippets in Google Search The evolution of SEO is one of the significant shifts in recent years. With mobile and voice search growth, people are changing how they use search engines like Google. Being number one in SERPs is no longer necessarily your business's goal - being found through "on-SERP" information means you can get what they need without clicking. 

Featured Snippets and other "on SERP" information mean you no longer need to click through - it's on the Google search results page! For example, my website won feature snippets for the keyword "Nicknames in Spanish," and it gets about 40k monthly pageviews. The best part is that my website has fewer backlinks or domain authority, so you don't need to be a top-tier brand to rank your keywords for feature snippets!

Connor Ondriska , Co-founder & CEO, SpanishVIP

If you're interested in discussing your current inbound marketing strategy and how to improve your results, we invite you to schedule an inbound marketing consultation .

Topics: Mastering Inbound Marketing

Posted by Prism Global Marketing Solutions

Prism Global Marketing Solutions is a HubSpot Platinum Partner based in Phoenix, Arizona helping businesses maximize their marketing investment with a strategic approach to inbound marketing.

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Put Marketing at the Core of Your Growth Strategy

• Marc Brodherson,
• Jennifer Ellinas,

Three ways to use marketing as a lever for growth, according to McKinsey research.

Companies that make the decision to put marketing at the core of their growth strategy outperform the competition, according to McKinsey research. Specifically, both B2C and B2B companies who view branding and advertising as a top two growth strategy are twice as likely to see revenue growth of 5% or more than those that don’t (67% to 33%). Yet their research also showed that few CEOs recognize the potential for marketing as a growth accelerator. They recommend three actions for CEOs to hit the reset button. The first is to define what you need from marketing. While it sounds obvious, their research found that more than half the time CEOs and CMOs in the same company were misaligned on marketing’s primary role. Second, nominate one person to serve as the chief voice of the customer. In two many organizations this is fragmented, and when everyone owns the customer, then no one does. Third, the CEO should function as a growth coach. They should have a handle on the challenges and opportunities of modern marketing, but their job is to draw up the strategy, not toss the ball down the field.

Growth is a perpetual business priority. So it’s imperative that CEOs understand how their marketing function and chief marketing officers (CMOs) can contribute to that goal. Few do — and that misalignment can be costly.

• Marc Brodherson is a senior partner in McKinsey & Company’s New York office.
• Jennifer Ellinas is an associate partner in McKinsey & Company’s Toronto office.
• Ed See is a partner in McKinsey & Company’s Stamford, Connecticut office.
• Robert Tas is a partner in McKinsey & Company’s Stamford, Connecticut office.

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5 Trends Shaping the Next Generation of Digital Marketing These IT platforms offer a unique opportunity for brands to connect organically with their demographic by partnering with influencers who boast a loyal following.

By Dmitrii Khasanov • Mar 22, 2024

Key Takeaways

• The future of digital marketing depends on IT solutions for better customer experiences, personalized interactions, data insights and innovative strategies in a dynamic, competitive landscape.
• These five IT solutions are propelling a digital transformation in the marketing industry, reshaping how brands connect with consumers.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

The current state of digital marketing is heavily influenced by IT solutions that use modern technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation, data analytics and personalization to enhance marketing strategies. These technologies play a crucial role in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing campaigns and boosting the overall customer experience provided by companies in different industries.

Today, IT solutions enable omnichannel marketing strategies, allowing businesses to create a seamless and integrated customer journey across multiple touchpoints, leading to a more cohesive brand experience.

Related: How Digital Marketers Can Do More With Less

1. Artificial intelligence is the new black

Artificial Intelligence has been revolutionizing digital marketing for the last three years by giving users access to advanced data analysis, automated decision-making processes and personalized customer interactions through machine learning algorithms. In the beginning, it was rocket science, but now the technology has become accessible and user-friendly.

The applications of AI in digital marketing are vast and diverse. Chatbots have become popular for businesses, offering real-time customer support and enhancing user experience. Predictive analytics — another key feature of artificial intelligence — helps marketers anticipate consumer behavior and trends, enabling them to make data-driven strategies. Customer segmentation, a crucial aspect of marketing, has been greatly improved by AI's ability to process big data and identify specific customer profiles for targeted campaigns.

What to expect: AI, once complex, is becoming more accessible, providing advanced capabilities for businesses. Expect ongoing advancements in chatbots, predictive analytics and customer segmentation, driving digital marketing toward a dynamic and personalized future filled with innovation.

2. VR & AR for business

Virtual and augmented reality technologies are reshaping digital marketing by creating immersive brand experiences, engaging content and interactive campaigns that captivate audiences in new and innovative ways.

These innovations have revolutionized the user experience in online advertising and e-commerce, offering a level of interactivity and personalization previously unseen. Through VR/AR, companies can now tell compelling brand stories that resonate deeply with consumers, fostering stronger connections and brand loyalty. The ability to transport users to virtual worlds or overlay digital information onto their physical environment opens up endless possibilities for marketers to deliver impactful and memorable experiences that drive conversions and establish a strong online presence.

What to expect: As technology becomes more accessible and hardware performance improves, the virtual and augmented reality market will grow. This will increase demand for non-traditional brand advertising, offering a new way to interact with products, fostering loyalty and boosting sales among the Gen-Z.

Related: Will Apple Change VR Forever?

3. Internet of Things as a fresh start

IoT allows businesses to tap into vast amounts of big data generated by IoT devices, offering valuable insights into consumer behavior and preferences. Companies can leverage this data to create targeted advertising campaigns tailored to user preferences and behaviors.

Today, these devices with user interfaces help marketers deliver seamless customer experiences across multiple touchpoints, boosting brand loyalty and driving sales. Data-driven decision-making enabled by IoT empowers marketers to adapt strategies in real time, optimizing marketing efforts for increased effectiveness and impact.

What to expect: A higher risk of information leakage or misuse comes with increased collected data. Companies will need to intensify their focus on data protection and customer privacy. At present, IoT devices from various manufacturers often function in isolated ecosystems. It will underscore the importance of developing standards for interoperability between devices from different brands to ensure successful marketing strategies shortly.

4. The era of 5G internet

This technological leap has presented exciting prospects for mobile marketing. Businesses can harness the improved speed and reliability of 5G networks to offer more engaging and interactive experiences on mobile apps and social media platforms. In the 5G era, conducting real-time competitive analysis and adapting marketing strategies became more efficient and effective, providing businesses with a competitive edge.

What to expect: Real-time interactions across digital channels will become smoother, enabling brands to connect with their audiences instantly. With the ability to deliver personalized content based on location, preferences and behavior patterns, companies can craft highly targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with their audience.

5. AI-powered influencer marketing platforms

Social media platforms are now essential in digital marketing, utilizing influencers to authentically promote brands and effectively engage target audiences.

These IT platforms offer a unique opportunity for brands to connect organically with their demographic by partnering with influencers who boast a loyal following. This collaboration enhances visibility and credibility and ultimately drives sales. Influencer marketing platforms enable brands to analyze campaign effectiveness through data and market research, providing insights into consumer behavior for refined strategies and tailored messaging.

What to expect: The future will see companies collaborating with a new generation of influencers (nano and micro-influencers), setting trends and prioritizing authenticity over aesthetics. In contrast to millennials, Gen Z values straightforward and considerate design in physical spaces, favoring companies that embrace authenticity.

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What are market trends in a business plan?

Table of Contents

What are market trends?

Why do i need market trends in my business plan, how to keep up with market trends, what market trends to monitor frequently, customer behaviours, technological advances, industry regulations, how to write the market trends in your business plan, using countingup to streamline your business.

Market trends in a business plan are key pieces of information that share where your company sits in the wider picture of your industry. Your business plan should prove why your business is viable, show where you fit in the market and what customers you serve. Examining what the market looks like is a smart business move when starting out.

This article on market trends in a business plan will cover:

• What are market trends
• Why market trends are necessary in my business plan

Market trends are the direction changes of a specific industry and can be influenced by customer behaviours or developing technology. 

Take the mobile phone industry for example, as technology has improved over the last twenty years consumers have moved from bulky handsets to slimmer smartphones, that can do everything a computer can and more. Consumers have even gone back to the fashion of flip phones now that technology has allowed a bigger screen that can be folded to save space. This is a good example where both technology and customer demand has influenced the direction of the industry,

Acknowledging these trends when running a business ensures that you stay on the same path as the industry itself, moving with customer needs and adapting your business as the sector and technology evolve. Ignoring market trends in the long term could mean you are left behind by customers, as they may move to businesses that meet their needs more. 

Your market trend research should be part of wider market analysis in your business plan. Understanding where you fit in a sector and what separates your company from competitors will help you shape everything from your product to pricing and marketing plans.

It’s important to focus on trends in this process so you can understand what appeals to your target audience. By analysing the market landscape and trends, you will be able to serve your customers better. It will also feed into your marketing messaging and content creation strategy later on.

A market and trend analysis should be both quantitative (using numbers and statistics such as projections and financial forecasts) and qualitative (based on experience or observation). Trends will fit into both categories of research and you should be able to find data and non-numerical information to support your examination of trends when writing your business plan. 

It’s important to remember that a business plan is not set in stone. It can be a document that you regularly update to reflect changes in your industry and company.

Keeping pace in a fast-changing market is not easy – after all, you’ve got a business to run. Using social media and subscribing to relevant industry emails make it simpler to get the information you need. Doing this will allow you to stay on top of market trends to include in your initial business plan and for more long-term future planning. 

Follow influencers in your industry to see what they talk about and how they create content for the audience that you serve. This will give you an idea of what resonates with your target customers when it comes to content and the form of content the influencer tends to use (video, written blogs, imagery etc.).

Read relevant publications in your sector to find out what is making headlines. Magazines or online blogs that share up-to-date opinions and thought leadership (influential content) will help you stay on the pulse of what is currently important to the industry.

Reading detailed reports and research can be time-consuming but will give you a good overview of the industry’s current state and any new developments. You can then update your business plan to follow the trends that arise from any data you’ve seen. 

Some common areas will affect the running of your business, the trends in your business plan and the whole market landscape. Keeping on top of the following aspects and regularly checking in on them will ensure your business develops as the market does.

Your customer can make or break your business. If you don’t cater to their needs and wants, your business will not be on the radar of your target audience. 

Let’s take an example – if your target customer is under 45, and you primarily do business online, you will need to ensure your website is optimised for mobile. This is because consumer behaviours have changed in recent years, and most searches are now conducted via mobile . If you don’t pick up on this development, your business risks being left behind when competitors optimise for mobile and you don’t.

Like our previous example, customer behaviour often changes with advances in technology. As mobile phones, and then smartphones, have become more able to operate as a computer, consumers have moved to using their phones out of convenience. 

Keep on top of developments that are relevant to your business and make sure you can move with, and not against, the technology changes.

Every now and again, there will be a law change or new regulation that rocks many industries – such as GDPR in 2018. Staying up to date with regulations that could affect the way you run and market your business will save you weighty fines (especially in the case of data protection).

There may be more frequent regulation updates if you operate in an industry that requires you to follow safety guidelines or best practices, such as those that an electrician or builder will have to follow. 

Ensuring that you are up to date on precautions and rules, as well as renewing any professional certifications you need to operate, will ensure your business plan reflects the changing face of your industry.

Using your research on your target customers and the sector,  use the following steps to write up the market trends section of your business plan:

• Current market overview, including which company has the biggest share or most influence
• Where you fit in that market, what gives your business a competitive edge.
• Current trends that impact your business operation
• Any upcoming trends that may impact your business or the products/services you offer
• Outline any plans on how you will keep up with trends
• Upcoming regulatory changes

You can then follow this with your competitor research in your business plan, to give a full picture of your industry and where you fit in.

Now that you have the answers to questions like ‘what are market trends in a business plan’, you will be able to prepare a thorough market analysis to set up your new venture for success. 

Countingup can help your new business by making your business accounting simple, too. Countingup is the business account with built-in accounting software. The app is helping thousands of business owners across the UK save time and money by automating the time consuming parts of accounting. Find out more here and get started today.

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Next-gen B2B sales: How three game changers grabbed the opportunity

Driven by digitalized operating models, B2B sales have seen sweeping changes over the recent period amid rising customer demand for more seamless and transparent services. 1 “ The multiplier effect: How B2B winners grow ,” McKinsey, April 13, 2023. However, many industrial companies are failing to keep pace with their more commercially focused peers and, as a result, are becoming less competitive in terms of performance and customer services.

The most successful B2B players employ five key tactics to sharpen their sales capabilities: omnichannel sales teams; advanced sales technology and automation; data analytics and hyperpersonalization; tailored strategies on third-party marketplaces; and e-commerce excellence across the full marketing and sales funnel. 2 “ The multiplier effect: How B2B winners grow ,” McKinsey, April 13, 2023.

Companies using all of these tactics are twice as likely to see more than 10 percent market share growth than companies focusing on just one. 3 “ The multiplier effect: How B2B winners grow ,” McKinsey, April 13, 2023. However, implementation is not as simple, requiring a strategic vision, a full commitment, and the right capabilities to drive change throughout the organization. Various leading European industrial companies—part of McKinsey’s Industrial Gamechangers on Go-to-Market disruption in Europe—have achieved success by implementing the first three of these five sales tactics.

Omnichannel sales teams

The clearest rationale for accelerating the transition to omnichannel go-to-market is that industry players demand it. In 2017, only about 20 percent of industrial companies said they preferred digital interactions and purchases. 4 Global B2B Pulse Survey, McKinsey, April 30, 2023. Currently, that proportion is around 67 percent. In 2016, B2B companies had an average of five distinct channels; by 2021, that figure had risen to ten (Exhibit 1).

Excelling in omnichannel means enabling customers to move easily between channels without losing context or needing to repeat information. Companies that achieve these service levels report increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, faster growth rates, lower costs, and easier tracking and analysis of customer data. Across most of these metrics, the contrast with analogue approaches is striking. For example, B2B companies that successfully embed omnichannel show EBIT growth of 13.5 percent, compared to the 1.8 percent achieved by less digitally enabled peers. Next to purely digital channels, inside sales and hybrid sales are the most important channels to deliver an omnichannel experience.

Differentiating inside versus hybrid sales

Best-in-class B2B sellers have achieved up to 20 percent revenue gains by redefining go-to-market through inside and hybrid sales. The inside sales model cannot be defined as customer service, nor is it a call center or a sales support role—rather, it is a customer facing, quota bearing, remote sales function. It relies on qualified account managers and leverages data analytics and digital solutions to optimize sales strategy and outreach through a range of channels (Exhibit 2).

The adoption of inside sales is often an advantageous move, especially in terms of productivity. In fact, inside sales reps can typically cover four times the prospects at 50 percent of the cost of a traditional field rep, allowing the team to serve many customers without sacrificing quality of service. 5 McKinsey analysis. Top performing B2B companies are 50 percent more likely to leverage inside sales.

Up to 80 percent of a company’s accounts—often smaller and medium-sized customers, accounting for about half of revenues—can be covered by inside sales teams. 6 Industry expert interviews; McKinsey analysis. The remaining 20 percent often require in-person interactions, triggering the need for hybrid sales. This pertains to highly attractive leads as well.

Hybrid sales is an innovative model combining inside sales with traditional in-person interactions. Some 85 percent of companies expect hybrid sales will be the most common job role within three years. 7 Global B2B Pulse Survey, McKinsey, December 2022. Hybrid is often optimal for bigger accounts, as it is flexible in utilizing a combination of channels, serving customers where they prefer to buy. It is scalable, thanks to the use of remote and online sales, and it is effective because of the multiplier effect of numerous potential interactions. Of companies that grew more than 10 percent in 2022, 57 percent had adopted a hybrid sales model. 8 Global B2B Pulse, April 2023.

How an industrial automation solution player implemented game-changing inside sales

In 2019, amid soaring digital demand, a global leader in industrial digital and automation solutions saw an opportunity to deliver a cutting-edge approach to sales engagement.

As a starting point, the company took time to clearly define the focus and role of the inside sales team, based on product range, customer needs, and touchpoints. For simple products, where limited customer interaction was required, inside sales was the preferred go-to-market model. For more complex products that still did not require many physical touchpoints, the company paired inside sales teams with technical sales people, and the inside sales group supported fields reps. Where product complexity was high and customers preferred many touch points, the inside sales team adopted an orchestration role, bringing technical functions and field sales together (Exhibit 3).

The company laid the foundations in four key areas. First, it took time to sketch out the model, as well as to set targets and ensure the team was on board. As in any change program, there was some early resistance. The antidote was to hire external talent to help shape the program and highlight the benefits. To foster buy-in, the company also spent time creating visualizations. Once the team was up and running, early signs of success created a snowball effect, fostering enthusiasm among both inside sales teams and field reps.

Second, the company adopted a mantra: inside sales should not—and could not—be cost saving from day one. Instead, a significant part of the budget was allocated to build a tech stack and implement the tools to manage client relationships. One of the company’s leaders said, “As inside sales is all about using tech to obtain better outcomes, this was a vital step.”

The third foundational element was talent. The company realized that inside sales is not easy and is not for everyone—so finding the right people was imperative. As a result, it put in place a career development plan and recognized that many inside sales reps would see the job as a stepping stone in their careers. Demonstrating this understanding provided a great source of motivation for employees.

Finally, finding the right mix of incentives was key. The company chose a system based on compensation and KPI leading and lagging indicators. Individual incentives were a function of whether individuals were more involved with closing deals or supporting others, so a mix of KPIs was employed. The result was a more motivated salesforce and productive cooperation across the organization.

Advanced sales technology and automation

Automation is a key area of advanced sales technology, as it is critical to optimizing non-value adding activities that currently account for about two-thirds of sales teams’ time. More than 30 percent of sales tasks and processes are estimated to be partially automatable, from sales planning through lead management, quotation, order management, and post-sales activities. Indeed, automation leaders not only boost revenues and reduce cost to serve—both by as much as 20 percent—but also foster customer and employee satisfaction. (Exhibit 4). Not surprisingly, nine out of ten industrial companies have embarked on go-to-market automation journeys. Still, only a third say the effort has achieved the anticipated impact. 9 McKinsey analysis.

Leading companies have shown that effective automation focuses on four areas:

• Lead management: Advanced analytics helps teams prioritize leads, while AI-powered chatbots contact prospective customers via text or email and schedule follow-up calls at promising times—for example, at the beginning or end of the working day.
• Contract drafting: AI tools automate responses to request for proposal (RFP) inquiries, based on a predefined content set.
• Invoice generation: Companies use robotic process automation to process and generate invoices, as well as update databases.
• Sales commission planning: Machine learning algorithms provide structural support, for example, to optimize sales commission forecasting, leading up to a 50 percent decline in time spent on compensation planning.

How GEA seized the automation opportunity

GEA is one of the world’s most advanced suppliers of processing machinery for food, beverages, and pharmaceuticals. To provide customers with tailored quotes and services, the company launched a dedicated configure, price, quote (CPQ) system. The aim of the system was to enable automated quote creation that would free up frontline sales teams to operate independently from their back office colleagues. This, in turn, would boost customer interaction and take customer care to the next level.

The work began with a bottom-up review of the company’s configuration protocols, ensuring there was sufficient standardization for the new system to operate effectively. GEA also needed to ensure price consistency—especially important during the recent supply chain volatility. For quotations, the right template with the correct conditions and legal terms needed to be created, a change that eventually allowed the company to cut its quotation times by about 50 percent, as well as boost cross-selling activities.

The company combined the tools with a guided selling approach, in which sales teams focused on the customers’ goals. The teams then leveraged the tools to find the most appropriate product and pricing, leading to a quote that could be enhanced with add-ons, such as service agreements or digital offerings. Once the quote was sent and agreed upon, the data automatically would be transferred from customer relationship management to enterprise resource planning to create the order. In this way, duplication was completely eliminated. The company found that the sales teams welcomed the new approach, as it reduced the time to quote (Exhibit 5).

Data analytics and hyperpersonalization

Data are vital enablers of any go-to-market transformation, informing KPIs and decision making across operations and the customer journey. Key application areas include:

• lead acquisition, including identification and prioritization
• share of wallet development, including upselling and cross-selling, assortment optimization, and microsegmentation
• pricing optimization, including market driven and tailored pricing, deal scoring, and contract optimization
• churn prediction and prevention
• sales effectiveness, so that sales rep time allocations (both in-person and virtual) are optimized, while training time is reduced

How Hilti uses machine data to drive sales

Hilti is a globally leading provider of power tools, services, and software to the construction industry. The company wanted to understand its customers better and forge closer relationships with them. Its Nuron battery platform, which harvests usage data from tools to transform the customer experience and create customer-specific insights, provided the solution.

One in three of Hilti’s frontline staff is in daily contact with the company’s customers, offering advice and support to ensure the best and most efficient use of equipment. The company broke new ground with its intelligent battery charging platform. As tool batteries are recharged, they transfer data to the platform and then to the Hilti cloud, where the data are analyzed to produce actionable insights on usage, pricing, add-ons, consumables, and maintenance. The system will be able to analyze at least 58 million data points every day.

Armed with this type of data, Hilti provides customers with advanced services, offering unique insights so that companies can optimize their tool parks, ensuring that the best tools are available and redundant tools are returned. In the meantime, sales teams use the same information to create deep insights—for example, suggesting that companies rent rather than buy tools, change the composition of tool parks, or upgrade.

To achieve its analytics-based approach, Hilti went on a multiyear journey, moving from unstructured analysis to a fully digitized approach. Still, one of the biggest learnings from its experience was that analytics tools are most effective when backed by human interactions on job sites. The last mile, comprising customer behavior, cannot be second guessed (Exhibit 6).

In the background, the company worked hard to put the right foundations in place. That meant cleaning its data (for example, at the start there were 370 different ways of measuring “run time”) and ensuring that measures were standardized. It developed the ability to understand which use cases were most important to customers, realizing that it was better to focus on a few impactful ones and thus create a convincing offering that was simple to use and effective.

A key element of the rollout was to ensure that employees received sufficient training— which often meant weeks of engagement, rather than just a few hours. The work paid off, with account managers now routinely supported by insights that enrich their interactions with customers. Again, optimization was key, ensuring the information they had at their fingertips was truly useful.

Levers for a successful transformation

The three company examples highlighted here illustrate how embracing omnichannel, sales technology, and data analytics create market leading B2B sales operations. However, the success of any initiative will be contingent on managing change. Our experience in working with leading industrial companies shows that the most successful digital sales and analytics transformations are built on three elements:

• Strategy: As a first step, companies develop strategies starting from deep customer insights. With these, they can better understand their customers’ problems and identify what customers truly value. Advanced analytics can support the process, informing insights around factors such as propensity to buy and churn. These can enrich the company’s understanding of how it wants its go-to-market model to evolve.
• Tailored solutions: Customers appreciate offerings tailored to their needs. 10 “ The multiplier effect: How B2B winners grow ,” McKinsey, April 13, 2023. This starts with offerings and services, extends to pricing structures and schemes, and ways of serving and servicing. For example, dynamic pricing engines that model willingness to pay (by segment, type of deal, and route to market) may better meet the exact customer demand, while serving a customer completely remotely might better suit their interaction needs, and not contacting them too frequently might prevent churn more than frequent outreaches. Analytics on data gained across all channels serves to uncover these needs and become hyperpersonalized.
• Single source of truth: Best-in-class data and analytics capabilities leverage a variety of internal and external data types and sources (transaction data, customer data, product data, and external data) and technical approaches. To ensure a consistent output, companies can establish a central data repository as a “single source of truth.” This can facilitate easy access to multiple users and systems, thereby boosting efficiency and collaboration. A central repository also supports easier backup, as well as data management and maintenance. The chances of data errors are reduced and security is tightened.

Many companies think they need perfect data to get started. However, to make productive progress, a use case based approach is needed. That means selecting the most promising use cases and then scaling data across those cases through speedy testing.

And with talent, leading companies start with small but highly skilled analytics teams, rather than amassing talent too early—this can allow them to create an agile culture of continual improvement and cost efficiency.

As shown by the three companies discussed in this article, most successful B2B players employ various strategies to sharpen their sales capabilities, including omnichannel sales teams; advanced sales technology and automation; and data analytics and hyperpersonalization. A strategic vision, a full commitment, and the right capabilities can help B2B companies deploy these strategies successfully.

Paolo Cencioni is a consultant in McKinsey’s Brussels office, where Jacopo Gibertini is also a consultant; David Sprengel is a partner in the Munich office; and Martina Yanni is an associate partner in the Frankfurt office.

The authors wish to thank Christopher Beisecker, Kate Piwonski, Alexander Schult, Lucas Willcke, and the B2B Pulse team for their contributions to this article.

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For many, being a social media influencer has transformed from a side gig into a multimillion dollar business. Creators now have more say in the sponsored content they create for brands as well as the earnings they receive. And as creators continue to prove themselves as influential brand advocates, marketers are tapping these influencers for content beyond social feeds, including TV, out-of-home, and other digital media.  

Influencers have also proven resilient amid economic uncertainty and an increasingly crowded space. Influencer marketing spend rose roughly 3.5 times faster in 2023 than social ad spending, according to EMARKETER’s July 2023 forecast. 

In this guide, we explore the current state of influencer marketing, and why marketers, social platforms, and media companies should adjust their strategies as the power of the creator economy grows. 

• Want to learn more about influencer marketing and other marketing trends?  Sign up for the EMARKETER Daily newsletter.

What is the creator economy?

The creator economy , also called the influencer economy, is the interconnected ecosystem of creators, audiences, digital platforms, marketers, and agencies and/or vendors. The creator economy, as defined by EMARKETER’s Creator Economy Explainer report , enables creators to generate revenues in the form of money, goods, or services through their content, usually delivered via social media platforms. Meanwhile, marketers can partner with creators to build awareness for their brands.

Because interaction among stakeholders is constantly evolving, revenue data is sparse. A March 2023 estimate from Citigroup values the creator economy at $65.2 billion in 2023. By 2024, that figure is expected to reach $74.0 billion. 

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing involves a celebrity, content creator, subject matter expert, or public figure endorsing a brand’s product or service to drive social proof. 

The market is rapidly expanding as influencer types have increased, with influencers filling every conceivable niche and sub-niche interest. 

Here are the types of influencers, based on follower count and focuses:

• Mega-influencers: Often celebrity influencers, those accounts with more than 1 million followers 
• Macro-influencers: Influencers with a follower count of 100,000 to 999,999
• Mid-tier influencers: Influencers with a follower count of 20,000 to 99,999
• Micro-influencers: Followers ranging between 5,000 to 19,999 
• Nano-influencers: A community of 1,000 to 4,999 followers 
• Kidfluencers: Gen Alphas with social followings that often review toys and games 
• Gaming influencers: Esport and video game players who discuss game strategy and livestream while in-game 
• Virtual influencers: Computer-generated avatars like Noonoouri, a fashion model and digital-only popstar 

The pandemic sped up changes in influencer marketing that were already underway, such as the trend toward “unfiltered” or less-scripted content, the rise of TikTok, and the popularity of “everyday influencers” with genuine and relatable personalities like Elyse Myers. 

Industries like financial services that hadn’t invested in influencer marketing earlier are also learning to navigate the space. And as ecommerce and social media converge, influencers will become increasingly vital intermediaries, helping to connect brands with consumers on social media. 

Creators vs. influencers: What’s the difference? 

Creators create content. Influencers are creators if the content they develop can sway the purchase decisions of a population regardless of whether they are being paid to promote a product. The term refers to a wide group of people from celebrities to loyal customers. Creators are influencers if their content affects purchase decisions. 

Who is a creator? 

Everyone has the potential to be a content creator thanks to how the term is defined. Adobe estimates there could be up to 303 million creators worldwide. For context, that figure is close to the US population at the start of 2023, per the US Census Bureau. 

Most content creators worldwide are under 41, but there are creators of all ages, including Gen Xers and baby boomers, per Adobe. 

Creators over 60 years old, dubbed “granfluencers,” have found popularity on social media due to their cross-generational appeal. 

For example, Nonna Pia, a TikTok account with 4 million followers, features a grandmother who cooks classic Italian dishes while her grandson narrates. Similarly, the Instagram account “Excuse My Grandma” follows a grandmother-granddaughter duo as they discuss generational differences in dating, fashion, and more. 

Creator categories

Although there is an account for every interest and target audience—from foraging to chiropractic medicine—lifestyle, fashion, and beauty are among the top creator categories.

While broad, these top categories overlap with many other industries, including travel, health, entertainment, food and drink, and art. Cross-category appeal is ideal for brand marketers looking to expand their reach to find like-minded audience demographics. 

Areas that have seen recent growth in creator focus include:

Collegiate sports

A 2021 NCAA policy change allows college athletes to be compensated for their name, image, and likeness. College athletes already command large audiences and regularly create content on social media, per August 2022 data from Curastory.  

B2B professionals 

Industry professionals are increasingly building audiences by sharing B2B content online. For example, a “ LinkedInfluencer ” is an influencer on B2B social platform LinkedIn. 

Nearly 1 in 4 people in the US are on LinkedIn, according to EMARKETER’s May 2023 forecast, as both the creator economy and B2B ad spending grow. As buyers get younger and B2B marketing becomes increasingly digital, authenticity and experience will matter more in marketing. 

Financial services

In the financial sector, “ finfluencers ” use their social media platform to share videos that cover personal experiences, tips, and advice about investing, budgeting, financial trends, and the economy. 

Finfluencers are capitalizing on a widespread lack of financial literacy. However, the quality of the content is controversial because some creators do not have a professional background in finance. Despite concerns, 60% of investors ages 18 to 35 use social media as a source of investment information, according to a Finra Investor Education Foundation report.  

The generational response 

Younger shoppers are more likely to use social media . About 129.5 million US Gen Zers and millennials will use social media in 2024, per a May 2023 EMARKETER forecast. 

Younger shoppers are also more likely to follow and buy from accounts run by influencers. A Q2 2022 Klarna survey found that over 40% of Gen Zers and millennials worldwide follow influencers , compared with one-quarter of Gen Xers and less than 10% of baby boomers. 

Millennials

Often considered a millennial concept, influencer culture is embraced by this extremely active social media user base. Close to 70 million US millennials will use social media next year, per EMARKETER’s May 2023 forecast. 

Millennials look to trusted influencers for product recommendations, reviews, and as a discovery point for new brands. 

They’re also willing to purchase what they see being promoted by their favorite influencers on social media. Over half (54.1%) of US social network users ages 25 to 34 will make a purchase on a social platform in 2024, per September 2023 EMARKETER data. 

In 2024, 60.7 million US Gen Zers will use social media, according to EMARKETER’s May 2023 forecast. And while that growth is expected to continue through 2027, Gen Z will remain slightly behind millennial users.  

Gen Zers, however, are not as sold on following influencers as their older peers. Less than half (48.6%) use social media to view creator/influencer content, according to a July 2023 EMARKETER survey’s findings. 

Where influencers do have an outsize influence over Gen Z is women’s beauty and wellness. Close to 80% of Gen Z women rank creators as their most trusted source for beauty recommendations, a survey conducted by LTK found. 

Those recommendations are also turning into online and offline sales. Eighty-three percent of Gen Z women shop for creators’ product suggestions online, and 82% shop for those items in-store.  

Influencing by “de-influencing” 

While the majority of influencers promote what to buy, some influencers are turning to platforms like TikTok to tell their followers what not to buy. As of January 2024, #deinfluencing videos on TikTok have roughly 1.3 billion views, up considerably from 208 million in February 2023. 

Seen as a method to combat overconsumption in a tight economy, deinfluencing videos often offer economical alternatives to expensive products or discuss the pitfalls of fast-fashion shopping hauls. 

Creators also use de-influencing videos to share critical commentary to distance themselves from brand controversies and post honest reviews of products that don’t meet expectations. Doing so can help reinforce creator trust through authenticity and transparency. 

Influencer marketing spend 

In 2024, advertisers will spend $5.89 billion on influencer marketing, a 14.7% increase YoY, according to EMARKETER’s July 2023 forecast, which excludes paid media. 

US influencer marketing spend grew more than three times faster than social ad spending in 2023, and it will remain ahead through 2025, according to a July 2023 EMARKETER forecast. 

Social platforms are reliant on creators, not the other way around, as creators’ options extend and include owned channels like blogs, podcasts, and newsletters.

A number of well-known creators, such as YouTuber MrBeast and podcaster Alex Cooper, have launched their own audio and video networks.

Although not every creator has a strong enough brand or following to create a successful media business , the growing success of these ventures should signal to brand marketers and entertainment companies that creators can offer much more than an outlet to generate hype or hawk goods. 

Where influencers post sponsored content

Creators utilize a number of social media platforms. 

To be impactful, influencer content should be engaging, entertaining, and educational, and marketers should work with credible creators who have built trust with their communities. 

US marketers will allocate over $1 billion to sponsored content on each of the top four influencer marketing platforms in 2024, according to EMARKETER’s July 2023 forecast. When it comes to influencer monetization , Instagram posts were the top format that creators worldwide were paid by brands to create in December 2022, per a Later and Mavrck December 2022 survey. Here’s a look at the top social media marketing platforms for influencers.

Instagram remains the top platform for sponsored content, per a June 2023 report from Mavrck. About 98% of US creators share brand content via Instagram feed posts, Instagram Stories, and Instagram Reels, while 69.1% go live on the platform. 

As of June 2023, more creators worldwide report being paid to create Reels (98.0%) compared with TikTok videos (89.6%). 

Creator monetization: In May 2023, Meta began testing a new payout model for Ads on Reels. The monetization program pays creators based on the performance of the Reel, rather than the earnings of the Reel ad, per TechCrunch. 

As TikTok’s popularity rises, brand opportunities for paid content is likely to increase as well. 

Influencer marketing spending growth on TikTok has grown 27.8%, compared with 12.7% on Instagram, according to EMARKETER’s July 2023 forecast.

In 2024, over half of marketers (54.0%) will use TikTok specifically for influencer marketing, with $1.25 billion in US influencer marketing spend going to the platform, per the same EMARKETER forecast.

Creator monetization: If an influencer promotes a brand’s product on TikTok Shop, the social app’s ecommerce tool, they can earn a commission through product sales. For both brands and influencers, TikTok Shop holds a lot of promise and room for growth. In 2024, we expect 40.7 million TikTok users to make a purchase on the app. 

YouTube, like Instagram and TikTok, has a solid hold on influencer marketing. YouTube is the top platform for US adults to follow influencers, according to March 2023 CivicScience data. 

EMARKETER forecasts that in 2024, US marketers will spend $1.07 billion on influencer content for YouTube. 

Similar to Instagram Reels, YouTube has been emphasizing Shorts as a cost-effective option for marketers.

Livestreaming is also leveraged by YouTube to connect influencers—and, ultimately, the brands they partner with—to followers. One-fourth (25.0%) of internet users say they watch creator- or influencer-led livestreams on YouTube, making it the most popular livestreaming app, ahead of TikTok (18.7%), Facebook (17.4%), and Instagram (14.0%), per an April 2023 survey by The Influencer Marketing Factory. 

Creator monetization: YouTube attracts and retains creators in a number of ways. The platform offers a way to connect creator, artist, and brand stores to their YouTube channel, enabling users to more easily find and purchase featured products. YouTube also has affiliate shopping capabilities for creators interested in revenue opportunities. 

Other platforms with influencer marketing potential include Facebook, Twitch, and to a lesser extent, Snapchat and X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter. 

Despite its waning popularity among users, especially youths, Facebook is still expected to see $1.00 billion in influencer marketing spending next year, per an EMARKETER forecast. 

Popular with the esports gaming community, livestreaming app Twitch recently launched a number of features for creators. In July 2023, Twitch announced its Discovery Feed, made up of livestream clips and ad features that help creators share their content from other platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit. 

Snap has struggled with ad monetization and commands a fraction of influencer marketing spend compared with larger platforms. In 2023, Snap crossed $40 million in influencer marketing spending, and is expected to see growth of 3.4% in 2024.  

In October 2023, Snap released Creator Collab Campaigns, a suite of tools to facilitate brand-creator partnerships on the platform. Previously, Snap’s primary focus was helping creators monetize directly on the platform through programs like ad revenue sharing. 

X (formerly Twitter)

X saw total US ad revenues decline by 54.9% in 2023 after Elon Musk’s 2022 purchase, according to EMARKETER’s October 2023 forecast, which means it is not an attractive platform for influencer marketing. 

The aforementioned June 2023 Mavrck survey found that 45.9% of US creators shared promoted tweets, while a December 2022 Later and Mavrck survey found that 8.3% of creators worldwide have been paid by a brand to post on X. 

Influencer marketing strategy

An influencer marketing strategy allows a brand to further its reach and tap new audiences, but narrowing down the right creator to work with requires an understanding of the landscape and what type of partnership will best serve the brand’s objectives.  

Influencer marketing hubs: As influencer marketing took off, agencies dedicated to influencers sprang up to help brands manage the opportunity and vice versa. 

Acting as a directory, influencer marketing hubs organize creator profiles by follower count per social platform, audience demographics, location, services offered, the price of partnership, and their interests (e.g., fashion, travel, home improvement, etc.), to take the guesswork out of selecting an influencer to partner with.  

In addition to facilitating brand-creator relationships and identifying new talent, influencer hubs create campaign narratives, determine KPIs, and amplify influencer-led social campaigns, among other responsibilities. 

For creators, working with an influencer marketing agency can be beneficial to scale and manage their own business. As influencer campaigns become more complex, an agency can manage payment, negotiate contracts, handle data analytics and reporting, and oversee other business functions.

Influencer marketing campaigns: An influencer marketing campaign is one that leverages the influence the creator has over their followers. 

When in a paid partnership with a brand, the influencer campaign’s objective is to increase awareness, engagement, and, ultimately, sales. In comparison, an unsponsored campaign, while achieving the same objectives to various degrees, can be seen as more trustworthy and authentic by the influencer’s community.  

Influencer campaigns fall into two categories: 

• User-generated content (UGC) is organic content shared by a social media influencer to promote a brand or product without direct input from the featured brand. The influencer is not paid for UGC posts, and is often not as polished as content created with brand involvement. UGC posts range from product reviews, recommendations, tutorials, and personal experiences with a given good or service.
• Influencer-generated content is a collaboration between a creator and partner brand. These campaigns follow a brand’s creative guidelines—including tone of voice, talking points, aesthetics, and frequency of posts—to produce content fitting for that creator’s audience. As more influencers become trusted partners, brands have loosened the reins, allowing talent to tap into their own creativity for campaigns. Like UGC, influencer-led campaigns are more authentic and engaging, and may prove more effective for the brand involved. 

Influencer posts: When paid for by a brand partner, an influencer post is a type of native advertising. When unpaid with no brand involvement, the post is considered UGC. 

Most commonly seen on social media platforms, formats include Instagram photos with captions, short-form videos on TikTok, and long-form video content posted to YouTube. Influencers can also post written content on blogging platforms like Substack. Influencers will often promote their posts across various platforms to increase reach, engagement, and effectiveness. 

While format is an important aspect of influencer marketing, the post’s creative should be at the forefront. According to EMARKETER’s Influencer Monetization 2023 report, the “three E’s” of influencer marketing should be remembered when creating posts. 

“Regardless of the format, each piece of content should be engaging, entertaining, and educational to drive the most impact,” according to EMARKETER analyst Jasmine Enberg. Brands should also trust creators’ input on creative and format decisions because they know what will resonate best with their audience, Enberg continued.   

Product launches: Influencers are an ideal way for a brand to launch new products. 

When introducing a new product, brands can expand their reach by working with influencers with a similar following as the brand’s target audience. A kitchenware brand, for instance, may work with a popular food influencer to introduce a new range of pots to show off the products, its attributes, and how to buy. 

As influencers become brands in their own right, many have launched their own product lines.

Thanks to an engaged and well-known audience, some influencers are able to develop products that align with the interests of the community they’ve built across their social media footprint. 

For example, beauty vlogger and influencer Huda Kattan launched her own line of false eyelashes in 2013 after her community expressed an interest. Kattan then expanded the line into a full range of cosmetics. Huda Beauty, named after Kattan’s YouTube channel and blog, is now sold D2C and at Sephora. 

Creators with large followings have launched food and beverage products, fitness programs, clothing lines, restaurants, and more to capitalize on their popularity and the value and willingness of their followers to support their businesses. Venturing into their own products also helps creators diversify their revenues and avoid alienating their audiences with too much sponsored content. 

Collaboration: Similar to leveraging an influencer’s help to launch a new product, brands also partner with their stable of creators for product collaborations. 

Often developed as a one-off or limited-edition product, brand-influencer collaborations can be a great source of product innovation. 

In March 2023, Chipotle added two new limited-edition menu items to its quesadilla lineup, the “Keithadilla” and the “Fajita Quesadilla Hack,” which were developed and popularized by TikTok creators Keith Lee and Aleix Frost. 

For some influencers, a brand collaboration may be a jumping-off point to developing their own product lines if the collaborative effort was deemed successful. 

Common influencer marketing KPIs

These metrics are a good way for brands to measure their return on investment for influencer marketing campaigns: 

• Facebook engagement rates (subscribers only): Engagement rate is defined as measurable interactions on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, replies, and reactions, and is calculated based on all these interactions divided by total follower count.  
• Facebook posts per week  
• Instagram affiliate engagement rate : The percentage of an affiliate influencer’s audience that interacts with an affiliate influencer’s campaign or post on Instagram; this includes likes, comments, and shares.
• Instagram affiliate impression per follower rate : The number of affiliate-generated views that a specific post or piece of content received over a specific period of time on Instagram. 
• Instagram affiliate reach : The percentage of followers and viewers from an affiliate influencer’s audience that is exposed to the affiliate influencer’s Instagram. 
• Instagram affiliate view rate : The percentage of an affiliate influencer’s audience that views an affiliate influencers’ campaign or post on Instagram. 
• Instagram engagement rates : Engagement rate is defined as measurable interactions on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, replies, and reactions, and is calculated based on all these interactions divided by total follower count.
• Instagram posts per week
• Social affiliate clicks : The clicks generated by social influencer efforts, including generating traffic or leads (through affiliate links) to the company’s website.
• Social affiliate conversion rate : The percentage of clicks generated by social influencer efforts, including generating traffic or leads (through affiliate links) to the company’s website that also result in completed orders or purchases.
• Social affiliate engagement rate : The percentage of an affiliate influencer’s audience that interacts with an affiliate influencer’s campaign or post on a social media platform; this includes likes, comments, and shares.
• Social affiliate orders : The orders generated by social influencer efforts, including generating traffic or leads (through affiliate links) to the company’s website.
• Social affiliate sales : The sales or revenues generated by social influencer efforts, including generating traffic or leads (through affiliate links) to the company’s website.
• Social affiliate view rate : The percentage of an affiliate influencer’s audience that views an affiliate influencer’s campaign or post on a social media platform.
• TikTok affiliate engagement rate : The percentage of an affiliate influencer’s audience that interacts with an affiliate influencer’s campaign or post on TikTok; this includes likes, comments, and shares.
• TikTok affiliate view rate : The percentage of an affiliate influencer’s audience that views an affiliate influencer’s campaign or post on TikTok.
• X (formerly Twitter) tweets per week

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What is a Marketing Plan & How to Write One [+Examples]

Published: December 27, 2023

For a while now, you've been spearheading your organization's content marketing efforts, and your team's performance has convinced management to adopt the content marketing strategies you’ve suggested.

Now, your boss wants you to write and present a content marketing plan, but you‘ve never done something like that before. You don't even know where to start.

Fortunately, we've curated the best content marketing plans to help you write a concrete plan that's rooted in data and produces results. But first, we'll discuss what a marketing plan is and how some of the best marketing plans include strategies that serve their respective businesses.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a strategic roadmap that businesses use to organize, execute, and track their marketing strategy over a given period. Marketing plans can include different marketing strategies for various marketing teams across the company, all working toward the same business goals.

The purpose of a marketing plan is to write down strategies in an organized manner. This will help keep you on track and measure the success of your campaigns.

Writing a marketing plan will help you think of each campaign‘s mission, buyer personas, budget, tactics, and deliverables. With all this information in one place, you’ll have an easier time staying on track with a campaign. You'll also discover what works and what doesn't. Thus, measuring the success of your strategy.

Featured Resource: Free Marketing Plan Template

Looking to develop a marketing plan for your business? Click here to download HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template to get started .

To learn more about how to create your marketing plan, keep reading or jump to the section you’re looking for:

How to Write a Marketing Plan

Types of marketing plans, marketing plan examples, marketing plan faqs, sample marketing plan.

If you're pressed for time or resources, you might not be thinking about a marketing plan. However, a marketing plan is an important part of your business plan.

Marketing Plan vs. Business Plan

A marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics.

A business plan is also a strategic document. But this plan covers all aspects of a company's operations, including finance, operations, and more. It can also help your business decide how to distribute resources and make decisions as your business grows.

I like to think of a marketing plan as a subset of a business plan; it shows how marketing strategies and objectives can support overall business goals.

Keep in mind that there's a difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy.

Free Marketing Plan Template

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

• Pre-Sectioned Template
• Completely Customizable
• Example Prompts
• Professionally Designed

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

A marketing strategy describes how a business will accomplish a particular goal or mission. This includes which campaigns, content, channels, and marketing software they'll use to execute that mission and track its success.

For example, while a greater plan or department might handle social media marketing, you might consider your work on Facebook as an individual marketing strategy.

A marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies. It's the framework from which all of your marketing strategies are created and helps you connect each strategy back to a larger marketing operation and business goal.

For example, suppose your company is launching a new software product, and it wants customers to sign up. The marketing department needs to develop a marketing plan that'll help introduce this product to the industry and drive the desired signups.

The department decides to launch a blog dedicated to this industry, a new YouTube video series to establish expertise, and an account on Twitter to join the conversation around this subject. All this serves to attract an audience and convert this audience into software users.

To summarize, the business's marketing plan is dedicated to introducing a new software product to the marketplace and driving signups for that product. The business will execute that plan with three marketing strategies : a new industry blog, a YouTube video series, and a Twitter account.

Of course, the business might consider these three things as one giant marketing strategy, each with its specific content strategies. How granular you want your marketing plan to get is up to you. Nonetheless, every marketing plan goes through a particular set of steps in its creation.

Learn what they are below.

• State your business's mission.
• Determine the KPIs for this mission.
• Identify your buyer personas.
• Describe your content initiatives and strategies.
• Clearly define your plan's omissions.
• Define your marketing budget.
• Identify your competition.
• Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

1. State your business's mission.

Your first step in writing a marketing plan is to state your mission. Although this mission is specific to your marketing department, it should serve your business‘s main mission statement.

From my experience, you want to be specific, but not too specific. You have plenty of space left in this marketing plan to elaborate on how you'll acquire new customers and accomplish this mission.

Need help building your mission statement? Download this guide for examples and templates and write the ideal mission statement.

2. Determine the KPIs for this mission.

Every good marketing plan describes how the department will track its mission‘s progress. To do so, you need to decide on your key performance indicators (KPIs) .

KPIs are individual metrics that measure the various elements of a marketing campaign. These units help you establish short-term goals within your mission and communicate your progress to business leaders.

Let's take our example of a marketing mission from the above step. If part of our mission is “to attract an audience of travelers,” we might track website visits using organic page views. In this case, “organic page views” is one KPI, and we can see our number of page views grow over time.

These KPIs will come into the conversation again in step 4.

3. Identify your buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a description of who you want to attract. This can include age, sex, location, family size, and job title. Each buyer persona should directly reflect your business's current and potential customers. So, all business leaders must agree on your buyer personas.

Create your buyer personas with this free guide and set of buyer persona templates.

4. Describe your content initiatives and strategies.

Here's where you'll include the main points of your marketing and content strategy. Because there's a laundry list of content types and channels available to you today, you must choose wisely and explain how you'll use your content and channels in this section of your marketing plan.

When I write this section , I like to stipulate:

• Which types of content I'll create. These might include blog posts, YouTube videos, infographics, and ebooks.
• How much of it I'll create. I typically describe content volume in daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly intervals. It all depends on my workflow and the short-term goals for my content.
• The goals (and KPIs) I'll use to track each type. KPIs can include organic traffic, social media traffic, email traffic, and referral traffic. Your goals should also include which pages you want to drive that traffic to, such as product pages, blog pages, or landing pages.
• The channels on which I'll distribute my content. Popular channels include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.
• Any paid advertising that will take place on these channels.

Build out your marketing plan with this free template.

Fill out this form to access the template., 5. clearly define your plan's omissions..

A marketing plan explains the marketing team's focus. It also explains what the marketing team will not focus on.

If there are other aspects of your business that you aren't serving in this particular plan, include them in this section. These omissions help to justify your mission, buyer personas, KPIs, and content. You can’t please everyone in a single marketing campaign, and if your team isn't on the hook for something, you need to make it known.

In my experience, this section is particularly important for stakeholders to help them understand why certain decisions were made.

6. Define your marketing budget.

Whether it's freelance fees, sponsorships, or a new full-time marketing hire, use these costs to develop a marketing budget and outline each expense in this section of your marketing plan.

You can establish your marketing budget with this kit of 8 free marketing budget templates .

7. Identify your competition.

Part of marketing is knowing whom you're marketing against. Research the key players in your industry and consider profiling each one.

Keep in mind not every competitor will pose the same challenges to your business. For example, while one competitor might be ranking highly on search engines for keywords you want your website to rank for, another competitor might have a heavy footprint on a social network where you plan to launch an account.

Easily track and analyze your competitors with t his collection of ten free competitive analysis templates .

8. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

With your marketing plan fully fleshed out, it's time to explain who’s doing what. I don't like to delve too deeply into my employees’ day-to-day projects, but I know which teams and team leaders are in charge of specific content types, channels, KPIs, and more.

Now that you know why you need to build an effective marketing plan, it’s time to get to work. Starting a plan from scratch can be overwhelming if you haven't done it before. That’s why there are many helpful resources that can support your first steps. We’ll share some of the best guides and templates that can help you build effective results-driven plans for your marketing strategies.

Ready to make your own marketing plan? Get started using this free template.

Depending on the company you work with, you might want to create various marketing plans. We compiled different samples to suit your needs:

1. Quarterly or Annual Marketing Plans

These plans highlight the strategies or campaigns you'll take on in a certain period.

Forbes published a marketing plan template that has amassed almost 4 million views. To help you sculpt a marketing roadmap with true vision, their template will teach you how to fill out the 15 key sections of a marketing plan, which are:

• Executive Summary
• Target Customers
• Unique Selling Proposition
• Pricing & Positioning Strategy
• Distribution Plan
• Your Offers
• Marketing Materials
• Promotions Strategy
• Online Marketing Strategy
• Conversion Strategy
• Joint Ventures & Partnerships
• Referral Strategy
• Strategy for Increasing Transaction Prices
• Retention Strategy
• Financial Projections

If you're truly lost on where to start with a marketing plan, I highly recommend using this guide to help you define your target audience, figure out how to reach them, and ensure that audience becomes loyal customers.

2. Social Media Marketing Plan

This type of plan highlights the channels, tactics, and campaigns you intend to accomplish specifically on social media. A specific subtype is a paid marketing plan, which highlights paid strategies, such as native advertising, PPC, or paid social media promotions.

Shane Snow's Marketing Plan for His Book Dream Team is a great example of a social media marketing plan:

When Shane Snow started promoting his new book, "Dream Team," he knew he had to leverage a data-driven content strategy framework. So, he chose his favorite one: the content strategy waterfall. The content strategy waterfall is defined by Economic Times as a model used to create a system with a linear and sequential approach.

Snow wrote a blog post about how the waterfall‘s content strategy helped him launch his new book successfully. After reading it, you can use his tactics to inform your own marketing plan. More specifically, you’ll learn how he:

• Applied his business objectives to decide which marketing metrics to track.
• Used his ultimate business goal of earning $200,000 in sales or 10,000 purchases to estimate the conversion rate of each stage of his funnel.
• Created buyer personas to figure out which channels his audience would prefer to consume his content.
• Used his average post view on each of his marketing channels to estimate how much content he had to create and how often he had to post on social media.
• Calculated how much earned and paid media could cut down the amount of content he had to create and post.
• Designed his process and workflow, built his team, and assigned members to tasks.
• Analyzed content performance metrics to refine his overall content strategy.

I use Snow's marketing plan to think more creatively about my content promotion and distribution plan. I like that it's linear and builds on the step before it, creating an air-tight strategy that doesn't leave any details out.

3. Content Marketing Plan

This plan could highlight different strategies, tactics, and campaigns in which you'll use content to promote your business or product.

HubSpot's Comprehensive Guide for Content Marketing Strategy is a strong example of a content marketing plan:

At HubSpot, we‘ve built our marketing team from two business school graduates working from a coffee table to a powerhouse of hundreds of employees. Along the way, we’ve learned countless lessons that shaped our current content marketing strategy. So, we decided to illustrate our insights in a blog post to teach marketers how to develop a successful content marketing strategy, regardless of their team's size.

In this comprehensive guide for modern marketers, you'll learn:

• What exactly content marketing is.
• Why your business needs a content marketing strategy.
• Who should lead your content marketing efforts?
• How to structure your content marketing team based on your company's size.
• How to hire the right people for each role on your team.
• What marketing tools and technology you'll need to succeed.
• What type of content your team should create, and which employees should be responsible for creating them.
• The importance of distributing your content through search engines, social media, email, and paid ads.
• And finally, the recommended metrics each of your teams should measure and report to optimize your content marketing program.

This is a fantastic resource for content teams of any size — whether you're a team of one or 100. It includes how to hire and structure a content marketing team, what marketing tools you'll need, what type of content you should create, and even recommends what metrics to track for analyzing campaigns. If you're aiming to establish or boost your online presence, leveraging tools like HubSpot's drag-and-drop website builder can be extremely beneficial. It helps you create a captivating digital footprint that sets the foundation for your content marketing endeavors.

4. New Product Launch Marketing Plan

This will be a roadmap for the strategies and tactics you‘ll implement to promote a new product. And if you’re searching for an example, look no further than Chief Outsiders' Go-To-Market Plan for a New Product :

After reading this plan, you'll learn how to:

• Validate a product
• Write strategic objectives
• Identify your market
• Compile a competitive landscape
• Create a value proposition for a new product
• Consider sales and service in your marketing plan

If you're looking for a marketing plan for a new product, the Chief Outsiders template is a great place to start. Marketing plans for a new product will be more specific because they target one product versus its entire marketing strategy.

5. Growth Marketing Plan

Growth marketing plans use experimentation and data to drive results, like we see in Venture Harbour’s Growth Marketing Plan Template :

Venture Harbour's growth marketing plan is a data-driven and experiment-led alternative to the more traditional marketing plan. Their template has five steps intended for refinement with every test-measure-learn cycle. The five steps are:

• Experiments

I recommend this plan if you want to experiment with different platforms and campaigns. Experimentation always feels risky and unfamiliar, but this plan creates a framework for accountability and strategy.

• Louisville Tourism
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Visit Oxnard
• Safe Haven Family Shelter
• Wright County Economic Development
• The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County
• Cabarrus County Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Visit Billings

1. Louisville Tourism

It also divides its target market into growth and seed categories to allow for more focused strategies. For example, the plan recognizes Millennials in Chicago, Atlanta, and Nashville as the core of it's growth market, whereas people in Boston, Austin, and New York represent seed markets where potential growth opportunities exist. Then, the plan outlines objectives and tactics for reaching each market.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

• The plan starts with a letter from the President & CEO of the company, who sets the stage for the plan by providing a high-level preview of the incoming developments for Louisville's tourism industry
• The focus on Louisville as "Bourbon City" effectively leverages its unique cultural and culinary attributes to present a strong brand
• Incorporates a variety of data points from Google Analytics, Arrivalist, and visitor profiles to to define their target audience with a data-informed approach

2. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

For example, students who become prospects as freshman and sophomore will receive emails that focus on getting the most out of high school and college prep classes. Once these students become juniors and seniors — thus entering the consideration stage — the emails will focus more on the college application process and other exploratory content.

• The plan incorporates competitive analysis, evaluation surveys, and other research to determine the makeup of its target audience
• The plan lists each marketing program (e.g., direct mail, social media, email etc.) and supplements it with examples on the next page
• Each marketing program has its own objectives, tactics, and KPIs for measuring success

3. Visit Oxnard

This marketing plan by Visit Oxnard, a convention and visitors bureau, is packed with all the information one needs in a marketing plan: target markets, key performance indicators, selling points, personas, marketing tactics by channel, and much more.

It also articulates the organization’s strategic plans for the upcoming fiscal year, especially as it grapples with the aftereffects of the pandemic. Lastly, it has impeccable visual appeal, with color-coded sections and strong branding elements.

• States clear and actionable goals for the coming year
• Includes data and other research that shows how their team made their decisions
• Outlines how the team will measure the success of their plan

4. Safe Haven Family Shelter

This marketing plan by a nonprofit organization is an excellent example to follow if your plan will be presented to internal stakeholders at all levels of your organization. It includes SMART marketing goals , deadlines, action steps, long-term objectives, target audiences, core marketing messages , and metrics.

The plan is detailed, yet scannable. By the end of it, one can walk away with a strong understanding of the organization’s strategic direction for its upcoming marketing efforts.

• Confirms ongoing marketing strategies and objectives while introducing new initiatives
• Uses colors, fonts, and formatting to emphasize key parts of the plan
• Closes with long-term goals, key themes, and other overarching topics to set the stage for the future

5. Wright County Economic Development

Wright County Economic Development’s plan drew our attention because of its simplicity, making it good inspiration for those who’d like to outline their plan in broad strokes without frills or filler.

It includes key information such as marketing partners, goals, initiatives, and costs. The sections are easy to scan and contain plenty of information for those who’d like to dig into the details. Most important, it includes a detailed breakdown of projected costs per marketing initiative — which is critical information to include for upper-level managers and other stakeholders.

• Begins with a quick paragraph stating why the recommended changes are important
• Uses clear graphics and bullet points to emphasize key points
• Includes specific budget data to support decision-making

6. The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County

This marketing plan presentation by a cultural council is a great example of how to effectively use data in your plan, address audiences who are new to the industry, and offer extensive detail into specific marketing strategies.

For instance, an entire slide is dedicated to the county’s cultural tourism trends, and at the beginning of the presentation, the organization explains what an arts and culture agency is in the first place.

That’s a critical piece of information to include for those who might not know. If you’re addressing audiences outside your industry, consider defining terms at the beginning, like this organization did.

• Uses quality design and images to support the goals and priorities in the text
• Separate pages for each big idea or new strategy
• Includes sections for awards and accomplishments to show how the marketing plan supports wider business goals
• Defines strategies and tactics for each channel for easy skimming

7. Cabarrus County Convention & Visitors Bureau

Cabarrus County’s convention and visitors bureau takes a slightly different approach with its marketing plan, formatting it like a magazine for stakeholders to flip through. It offers information on the county’s target audience, channels, goals, KPIs, and public relations strategies and initiatives.

We especially love that the plan includes contact information for the bureau’s staff members, so that it’s easy for stakeholders to contact the appropriate person for a specific query.

• Uses infographics to expand on specific concepts, like how visitors benefit a community
• Highlights the team members responsible for each initiative with a photo to emphasize accountability and community
• Closes with an event calendar for transparency into key dates for events

8. Visit Billings

Visit Billing’s comprehensive marketing plan is like Cabarrus County’s in that it follows a magazine format. With sections for each planned strategy, it offers a wealth of information and depth for internal stakeholders and potential investors.

We especially love its content strategy section, where it details the organization’s prior efforts and current objectives for each content platform.

At the end, it includes strategic goals and budgets — a good move to imitate if your primary audience would not need this information highlighted at the forefront.

• Includes a section on the buyer journey, which offers clarity on the reasoning for marketing plan decisions
• Design includes call-outs for special topics that could impact the marketing audience, such as safety concerns or "staycations"
• Clear headings make it easy to scan this comprehensive report and make note of sections a reader may want to return to for more detail

What is a typical marketing plan?

In my experience, most marketing plans outline the following aspects of a business's marketing:

• Target audience

Each marketing plan should include one or more goals, the path your team will take to meet those goals, and how you plan to measure success.

For example, if I were a tech startup that's launching a new mobile app, my marketing plan would include:

• Target audience or buyer personas for the app
• Outline of how app features meet audience needs
• Competitive analysis
• Goals for conversion funnel and user acquisition
• Marketing strategies and tactics for user acquisition

Featured resource : Free Marketing Plan Template

What should a good marketing plan include?

A good marketing plan will create a clear roadmap for your unique marketing team. This means that the best marketing plan for your business will be distinct to your team and business needs.

That said, most marketing plans will include sections for one or more of the following:

• Clear analysis of the target market
• A detailed description of the product or service
• Strategic marketing mix details (such as product, price, place, promotion)
• Measurable goals with defined timelines

This can help you build the best marketing plan for your business.

A good marketing plan should also include a product or service's unique value proposition, a comprehensive marketing strategy including online and offline channels, and a defined budget.

Featured resource : Value Proposition Templates

What are the most important parts of a marketing plan?

When you‘re planning a road trip, you need a map to help define your route, step-by-step directions, and an estimate of the time it will take to get to your destination. It’s literally how you get there that matters.

Like a road map, a marketing plan is only useful if it helps you get to where you want to go. So, no one part is more than the other.

That said, you can use the list below to make sure that you've added or at least considered each of the following in your marketing plan:

• Marketing goals
• Executive summary
• Target market analysis
• Marketing strategies

What questions should I ask when making a marketing plan?

Questions are a useful tool for when you‘re stuck or want to make sure you’ve included important details.

Try using one or more of these questions as a starting point when you create your marketing plan:

• Who is my target audience?
• What are their needs, motivations, and pain points?
• How does our product or service solve their problems?
• How will I reach and engage them?
• Who are my competitors? Are they direct or indirect competitors?
• What are the unique selling points of my product or service?
• What marketing channels are best for the brand?
• What is our budget and timeline?
• How will I measure the success of marketing efforts?

How much does a marketing plan cost?

Creating a marketing plan is mostly free. But the cost of executing a marketing plan will depend on your specific plan.

Marketing plan costs vary by business, industry, and plan scope. Whether your team handles marketing in-house or hires external consultants can also make a difference. Total costs can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands. This is why most marketing plans will include a budget.

Featured resource : Free Marketing Budget Templates

What is a marketing plan template?

A marketing plan template is a pre-designed structure or framework that helps you outline your marketing plan.

It offers a starting point that you can customize for your specific business needs and goals. For example, our template includes easy-to-edit sections for:

• Business summary
• Business initiatives
• Target market
• Market strategy
• Marketing channels
• Marketing technology

Let’s create a sample plan together, step by step.

Follow along with HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template .

1. Create an overview or primary objective.

Our business mission is to provide [service, product, solution] to help [audience] reach their [financial, educational, business related] goals without compromising their [your audience’s valuable asset: free time, mental health, budget, etc.]. We want to improve our social media presence while nurturing our relationships with collaborators and clients.

For example, if I wanted to focus on social media growth, my KPIs might look like this:

We want to achieve a minimum of [followers] with an engagement rate of [X] on [social media platform].

The goal is to achieve an increase of [Y] on recurring clients and new meaningful connections outside the platform by the end of the year.

Use the following categories to create a target audience for your campaign.

• Profession:
• Background:
• Pain points:
• Social media platforms that they use:
• Streaming platforms that they prefer:

For more useful strategies, consider creating a buyer persona in our Make My Persona tool .

Our content pillars will be: [X, Y, Z].

Content pillars should be based on topics your audience needs to know. If your ideal clients are female entrepreneurs, then your content pillars can be: marketing, being a woman in business, remote working, and productivity hacks for entrepreneurs.

Then, determine any omissions.

This marketing plan won’t be focusing on the following areas of improvement: [A, B, C].

5. Define your marketing budget.

Our marketing strategy will use a total of [Y] monthly. This will include anything from freelance collaborations to advertising.

6. Identify your competitors.

I like to work through the following questions to clearly indicate who my competitors are:

• Which platforms do they use the most?
• How does their branding differentiate?
• How do they talk to their audiences?
• What valuable assets do customers talk about? And if they are receiving any negative feedback, what is it about?

7. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

Create responsible parties for each portion of the plan.

Marketing will manage the content plan, implementation, and community interaction to reach the KPIs.

• Social media manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Content strategist: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Community manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]

Sales will follow the line of the marketing work while creating and implementing an outreach strategy.

• Sales strategists: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Sales executives: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]

Customer Service will nurture clients’ relationships to ensure that they have what they want. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Project Managers will track the progress and team communication during the project. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Get started on your marketing plan.

These marketing plans serve as initial resources to get your content marketing plan started. But, to truly deliver what your audience wants and needs, you'll likely need to test some different ideas out, measure their success, and then refine your goals as you go.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in April 2019, but was updated for comprehensiveness. This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure t o learn more about how we use AI.

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