A marketing plan is a master plan that outlines your company’s industry and competitive positioning, as well as its long-term strategy for achieving market leadership. It summarizes your target customers, positioning for your company and its products and services, key sales propositions, competitive differentiators, and primary distribution channels and strategies.

A marketing plan covers your business strategy, including:

• Marketing and sales objectives
• Target markets, including market segmentation
• Positioning and key messaging
• Key sales propositions
• Competition
• SWOT analysis (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
• Pricing
• Distribution channels and selling strategy
• Partnerships and alliances

You should make sure that your marketing communications activities support the goals and objectives of your company’s marketing plan

A marketing plan establishes your company’s roadmap for all of its marketing activities. If your company does not have a marketing plan yet, you should consider it a priority to develop one.

Key decision makers from your company’s major business units should be involved in developing, validating, and approving the marketing plan. Once approved, marketing campaigns and communication tactics can be created to support the positioning in your marketing plan.

There are many resources available for you for creating a marketing plan: websites, courses, books, seminars, and consultants. Here you will find a brief overview of common elements of a marketing plan [PDF 116KB].