Build a marketing plan
Six questions a plan has to answer, set out on a few pages rather than forty. It also separates an objective from an activity, which is where most plans come apart.
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Look inside
Eight of the thirteen pages. Turn them the way you would a printed guide.
What the guide covers
Thirteen pages, laid out the same way as every other guide in the series.
The six questions a plan must answer
Situation, objectives, strategy, tactics, action and control, each answered in plain sentences.
Eight actions
Numbered and in order, from recording last year's honest numbers to setting the monthly review.
A worked example
A commercial cleaning company in Manchester, twelve staff, GBP 800,000 turnover, growth flat for two years.
A one-page marketing plan
Six answers, each short enough to say aloud.
Related
Where to go next.
Set a marketing budget
Three ways to reach the number, and the rule that decides when the money moves.
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Measure your marketing
Three numbers a board will believe, and what a small budget can prove.
Read the guideWhere this fits. A plan is only as good as the picture it starts from, which is what a marketing audit gives you. Owning the plan afterwards is the job of a fractional CMO.
The article behind this guide. The marketing leader's playbook for 2026.
Sources. PR Smith, SOSTAC: the guide to the perfect digital marketing plan. The framework dates from the 1990s and is used with attribution. Les Binet and Peter Field, The Long and the Short of It, IPA, 2013. Listed in full on page 10 of the guide.
Next step
Talk the decision through before you commit to it
A 30 minute discovery call at no charge, on whichever part of this sits closest to the decision in front of you.
Book a discovery callOr read how marketing audit and diagnostics works, what it covers and how it is scoped.