I’ve seen a lot more people lately come to me with a marketing plan template they found somewhere online. These templates are inevitably a million pages long. They have sections for everything – PR, advertising, brand statements, several social channels, on and on.
It’s a great idea to have a plan, of course. Know where you’re trying to go, what you’re trying to accomplish, outline how you think you’re going to get there.
But most marketing plan templates assume you need everything. They assume you need a detailed plan for every possible sales & marketing channel, strategy or tactic. They make you feel bad if you haven’t filled out every page, every section.
Most marketers, entrepreneurs and business leaders need to do less, not more. They need to focus their time and resources on a smaller list of strategies and tactics – specific to their product, market and customers – that will move the needle and deliver both market and sales traction.
The vast majority of that marketing plan template will be a waste of your time.
Start with what success looks like. Then define your target market. Then combine those two into a small set of strategies and tactics to immediately put to market, measure, optimize and scale.
There’s your template.
