Marketing Plan Template: A Quarterly Plan for Startups

Before a pilot flies a small plane across three states, she files a flight plan. It names the destination and the route. It also lists the fuel on board and the landmarks she'll check her position against, so a wrong heading shows up at the first checkpoint instead of over the wrong airport.

Most startup marketing takes off without one. The founder picks channels that worked for someone else and spends what's left in the account. Nobody checks position until the quarter ends, and by then the money's gone.

A marketing plan is the flight plan for a quarter of spending. A useful one answers two questions before the first dollar goes out. What will this money buy? And how will you know by week four whether it's working?

The five marketing plan parts

A flight plan stays short because the pilot has to use it in the air. A startup marketing plan stays short for the same reason: the team opens it every week. Five parts carry the weight:

• Goal: one number for the quarter, worked back from the revenue it has to produce.
• Buyer and message: who you're reaching and what you'll tell them, taken from your positioning statement and carried onto the landing page each channel sends buyers to.
• Channels: one primary channel that should pay off this quarter, and one that builds an asset over several.
• Budget: a dollar line for every channel, plus a reserve.
• Measures: the weekly numbers, and the rules that act on them.

Anything past those five belongs in another document. Your go-to-market plan decides the market and the sales motion. The marketing plan spends one quarter inside those decisions.

Quarterly marketing plan template

The template below puts those five parts on two pages. Fill it in top to bottom, because each section depends on the one above it.

QUARTER: [start date] to [end date]
OWNER: [one name]

1. GOAL
Revenue from marketing-sourced deals: [$]
Average deal size: [$]. Customers needed: [revenue / deal size]
Close rate on opportunities: [%]. Opportunities needed: [customers / close rate]
Lead-to-opportunity rate: [%]. Leads needed: [opportunities / rate]
Primary goal: [number] [name the lead stage] by [date]
Source of each rate: [our data, or an estimate labeled as one]

2. BUYER AND MESSAGE
Who: [the ideal customer in one sentence]
What starts their search: [the trigger event]
What we say: [positioning in one sentence]

3. CHANNELS
Primary, pays off this quarter: [channel]. Why: [reason]
Asset builder, pays off over several quarters: [channel]. Why: [reason]
Not doing this quarter: [channels we're turning down]

4. BUDGET PER MONTH
Primary channel: [$] (media [$], people and tools [$])
Asset builder: [$]
Tracking and tools: [$]
Test of one new channel: [$]
Reserve, about 10%: [$]
Total: [$]

5. TACTICS
[Tactic] | serves: [goal] | owner: [name] | ships: [day or date]
[Tactic] | serves: [goal] | owner: [name] | ships: [day or date]

6. MEASURES
Weekly leading numbers: [for example traffic, replies, cost per lead]
Quarter result: [the primary goal]
Target cost per lead: [primary budget for the quarter / leads needed]
Scale if: [at or under target two weeks running]
Fix if: [up to 30% over target: test the message or the list first]
Stop if: [more than 30% over target two weeks running, with no trend back]

7. ASSUMPTIONS AND RISKS
Least certain rate: [which one, and why]
What could delay launch: [landing page, product date, an approval]
Reviews: weekly on [day], monthly on [date], quarter-end on [date]

Four habits make the outline hold up:

1. Work the goal backward from revenue, and name the stage you're counting. A sales team that counts opportunities will read "200 leads" as a promise of 200 meetings. MQL vs SQL sets those definitions.
2. Write the channels you're turning down. Saying no in writing stops the plan from growing a new channel every time someone reads a blog post.
3. Build each budget line from zero. Price it by what it buys this quarter, and ignore what it cost last quarter.
4. Set the scale and stop rules before launch. A rule written after a bad month is an excuse with a number on it.

When you have no funnel data yet: every rate in the goal section is a guess until one full quarter runs. Write the guesses down and label them. The first quarter's job is to replace them with your own numbers, and a plan that admits it's guessing is easier to correct than one that hides it.

A worked quarter

A hypothetical B2B software company shows how the numbers connect. It sells a $12,000-a-year product and wants $120,000 in new annual revenue from marketing this quarter.

Each month the company puts $3,500 into outbound email, its primary channel, and $2,000 into search articles as its asset builder. Tools, one small paid test and a reserve bring the monthly total to $8,000.

By week five, outbound leads cost $70 each, a third over target, for the second week running. The plan already says what happens next: pause the channel and find out why. The list turns out to include companies too small to buy. The team fixes the list in a week instead of discovering the problem in a quarter-end review. The checkpoint did the landmark's job: it caught the wrong heading while there was still fuel to turn.

Measurement plan covers what to track before you judge a channel, and digital marketing channels covers how to pick the first one.

Marketing plan mistakes

That company caught its problem because the plan was built to catch it. First plans usually fail in one of four ways:

• Activities as goals: "post three times a week" is a task. A goal counts leads, opportunities or revenue.
• Every channel at once: five channels at a fifth of the budget each means none gets enough money to prove anything.
• No asset builder: a plan that funds only this quarter's channel starts every quarter from zero, and each lead costs more as that channel saturates.
• A plan written once: a plan nobody opens after week two is a document, and the quarter runs on instinct again.

Writing your first plan

A useful marketing plan holds a goal worked back from revenue, two channels with a budget each, and the rules that decide when to scale or stop. It fits on two pages. Write it before the spending starts, then open it every week.

If you'd rather have the channels run for you, my startup marketing services begin with a brand and marketing strategy and publish a monthly price for each channel. Either way, the plan comes first.

File the flight plan before you fuel the plane.