Writing a marketing plan a board will approve

A marketing plan is the document that asks a board, or a leadership team, to commit money and people to a course of action. The foundations piece on planning frameworks compares the models; this piece is about the document itself: what goes in it, in what order, and how to make it hold up when the finance director starts asking questions.

• The outline has been stable for decades. In Kotler and Keller's Marketing Management, a plan runs from an executive summary through a situation analysis and the strategy to financial projections and implementation controls¹.
• The logic matters more than the template: a diagnosis, objectives tied to the business, a strategy that makes choices, and actions that are costed, scheduled and measured^9, 11.
• The objectives tree links each communications objective to a marketing objective, and each marketing objective to a business one⁶.
• SOSTAC maps onto the same outline, so a team that plans with it can still hand the board the document it expects⁸.
• The one-page plan is the version that gets read; the full plan is the evidence behind it.

The textbook outline is a good starting point because finance and general management have usually seen it too. In editions of Kotler and Keller's Marketing Management, the second chapter, "Developing Marketing Strategies and Plans", sets out what a plan contains: an executive summary, a situation analysis, the marketing strategy, financial projections and implementation controls¹. The condensed A Framework for Marketing Management keeps the chapter as "Developing and Implementing Marketing Strategies and Plans"³. In the 16th edition, written with Alexander Chernev, it became "Marketing Planning and Management"². Chernev, a professor at Kellogg, is credited with the G-STIC framework for marketing planning (goal, strategy, tactics, implementation and control)⁴, and has written a separate Marketing Plan Handbook, now in its 7th edition⁵.

For a plan in which communications carry much of the load, that outline expands into ten sections:

1. Executive summary One page, written last and read first. It ends with the decision you need.
2. Situation analysis The facts, and the diagnosis they lead to.
3. Objectives Business, marketing and communications, linked as a tree.
4. Audiences and insight Who must change, and what they believe now.
5. Strategy Positioning, the core idea and the role communications play.
6. The integrated mix What each discipline does, and when.
7. Budget What it costs, how it is split, and what is held in reserve.
8. Timeline and responsibilities Phases, decision gates and owners.
9. Measurement and control How you will know, and when you will review.
10. Risks and contingencies What could go wrong, and what you would do.

Research, detailed media plans and creative routes go in appendices. A board reads for reasoning, and Richard Rumelt's warning applies directly: bad strategy is long on goals and short on policy or action, and hides behind the language of ambition, vision and values, which are no substitute for the hard work of choosing⁹. His "kernel" of a good strategy has three parts: a diagnosis of the challenge, a guiding policy for dealing with it, and coherent actions that carry the policy out⁹. In a later interview he places many bad strategies in the gap between ambition and action¹⁰. The ten sections above are simply that kernel, made specific and costed.

The situation analysis earns you the right to set objectives. Cover five areas, often called the 5Cs, with evidence rather than opinion:

• Company sales and margin trends, brand health, last period's results by discipline, capabilities and constraints.
• Customers who buys, who could, how they choose, what they think of you and of the category.
• Competitors who wins share, what they say, how much they spend and where.
• Collaborators retailers, distributors, partners, agencies and platforms you depend on.
• Context the economy, regulation, technology and culture that will shape the year.

Summarise it in a SWOT: strengths and weaknesses are internal and must be backed by evidence; opportunities and threats are external and must be things that could change results. Then do the step most plans skip: turn the SWOT into a diagnosis, the one or two issues that, if solved, would matter most. A usable template: "Among [audience], [brand] is [current position]. The main obstacle to growth is [issue], as shown by [evidence]. If we solve it, we expect [business result]."

Common faults: twenty bullet points in each SWOT box, strengths that are claims ("great service") rather than facts, and an analysis that never names the problem the plan is meant to solve.

The IPA describes the chain plainly: businesses set objectives, marketers set marketing objectives to meet them, and communications planners set communications objectives to deliver the marketing objectives; marketing effectiveness is the work of showing that causal effect⁶. In a plan, draw it as a tree, so that every line can be read upwards with "so that".

Worked example (illustrative). A regional chain of fitness clubs wants to grow membership revenue next year.

• Business: grow membership revenue across the network.
• Marketing: recruit new members around two newly opened clubs, and cut cancellations in a member's first three months.
• Communications: make the brand known and considered among working adults living near the new clubs; make new members feel welcome and start using the app in their first month.
• Activity: reach in the two catchments, visits to the trial-pass page, onboarding messages delivered and opened.

Each line gets a KPI, a baseline from your own data, a target and a date. The targets come from your baselines, not from a benchmark you found online. The foundations piece on objectives and KPIs covers how to choose the measures.

Mark Ritson argues that marketing has drifted into tactics without strategy: strategy decides where to play and how to win, through segmentation, targeting, positioning and clear objectives, and only then do tactics deliver it¹¹. In the plan, the strategy section answers four questions in plain words: which audiences matter most, what positioning you will hold in their minds, the one idea that carries it (with the message house behind it), and what communications must do, as opposed to price, product or distribution.

The integrated mix then gives each discipline a job tied to a line of the objectives tree. Write it as roles, not as a list of channels: which disciplines build fame and memory, which explain and persuade, which convert, which keep customers. Show the paid, owned, earned and shared parts on one calendar, so that a launch event, a press announcement, a campaign burst and a lifecycle email reinforce each other. The chooser helps with the first draft, and the campaign calendar tool holds the timing.

Budget. Build it from the tasks: cost what each objective needs, then reconcile the total with what is affordable and with what competitors spend. The objective-and-task budget tool walks through it, and budgeting for IMC covers the methods and the evidence. PR Smith's SOSTAC template lists the resources an action plan must state: money, people (men and women), minutes (time) and, in the newer version, megadata (the data required)⁷. Show working spend, production, fees and a reserve as separate lines.

Timeline. Phases, decision gates and a named owner for each workstream. A board will ask what happens first, when money is committed and when it can still be stopped.

Measurement. For every objective in the tree, state the metric, the baseline, the target, the data source, how often it is read and who owns it; the measurement framework tool lays this out as a table. Because effectiveness means showing cause, not coincidence⁶, say how you will separate the plan's effect from everything else that happens: a holdout test, a regional comparison or a model. Measuring effectiveness explains the options.

Boards approve plans faster when the risks are already on the table. Gary Klein's premortem, described in Harvard Business Review, is the quickest way to find them: the team imagines that the plan has already failed, each person writes down privately why, and the leader collects one reason from each person in turn until the list is complete¹². Klein cites research from 1989 finding that this "prospective hindsight" increases the ability to identify the reasons for a future outcome by 30%¹², and notes that it gives quieter team members a way to raise doubts¹².

Turn the list into a short register with six columns: risk, likelihood, impact, early warning signal, response, owner. Typical entries for a communications plan: media prices rise, the creative fails pre-testing, a competitor responds with price, stock or service capacity falls short, a claim needs legal substantiation, consent rules limit the data you planned to use, an agency lacks capacity at the peak. For the largest risks, set a trigger and a response in advance ("if trial sign-ups are below baseline after four weeks, move the reserve to the second burst").

Many teams plan with PR Smith's SOSTAC: situation (where are we now?), objectives (where do we want to be?), strategy (how do we get there?), tactics (the details of the strategy), action (putting the plan to work) and control (measuring, monitoring, reviewing and updating)⁸. It maps onto the board outline almost line for line, and so does Chernev's G-STIC⁴:

The executive summary sits outside both: it is written last, from all of them.

The one-page plan is the executive summary that can stand alone. The IMC plan canvas tool gives it a fixed layout; whatever the format, it carries: the diagnosis in two sentences; the objectives tree with targets; the audience and the insight; the strategy in two sentences; the role of each discipline; the budget total and split; the key dates and gates; how success will be measured and when it will be reviewed; the top three risks; and the decision you are asking for.

• Goals presented as strategy "Become the market leader" is an ambition; Rumelt's test is whether the plan says how, and what it will not do⁹.
• Tactics without strategy A channel plan with no stated audience, positioning or objective¹¹.
• A data dump instead of a diagnosis Thirty pages of analysis that never name the problem.
• Communications metrics reported as business results Reach and engagement belong at the bottom of the tree, not at the top.
• A budget without tasks, and a plan without control Nobody can tell what the money buys or when the plan will be judged.
• A plan and a brief written separately The IPA's briefing guide stresses that marketing strategy should shape the brief¹³; write the brief from the plan (see briefing agencies).

A Monday checklist for the next plan you write:

1. Write the diagnosis in three sentences, using the template above, before you draft anything else.
2. Draw the objectives tree on one sheet and test every line upwards with "so that".
3. Pull baselines for every objective from your own data; leave a target blank rather than invent one.
4. Give each discipline a role tied to a line of the tree, and put all of them on one calendar.
5. Cost the tasks, then reconcile with the affordable total; show the reserve.
6. Run a 30-minute premortem with the team and the agencies; turn it into a risk register with triggers.
7. Write the one-page plan last, ending with the decision you need from the board.

• Kotler and Keller's Marketing Management, the chapter on planning^1, 2, and Chernev's G-STIC framework and Marketing Plan Handbook^4, 5.
• Richard Rumelt on bad strategy^9, 10 and Mark Ritson on strategy before tactics¹¹.
• PR Smith's SOSTAC site and plan template^8, 7; Gary Klein on the premortem¹².
• On IMC Report: planning frameworks, objectives and KPIs, budgeting for IMC, and the CMO and product launch hubs.