Hubspot, our trusted partner, found the best marketing plan examples and created a dedicated article, explaining the reasons why each one of them is successful.
Let’s dig into their insights in a blog post dedicated to marketers. Get a grip on how to develop a successful content marketing strategy, regardless of your team's size.
HubSpot's Comprehensive Guide for Content Marketing Strategy
Main objective: Content Marketing Plan
Starting with the ideator of this topic- HubSpot. The company was built from two business school graduates working from a coffee shop. They’ve learned countless lessons, and through trial and error, they became a powerhouse of hundreds of employees.
In this comprehensive guide for modern marketers, you'll learn:
- What exactly content marketing is.
- Why your business needs a content marketing strategy.
- Who should lead your content marketing efforts.
- How to structure your content marketing team, based on your company's size.
- How to hire the right people for each role on your team.
- What marketing tools and technology you'll need to succeed.
- What type of content your team should create, and which employees should be responsible for creating them.
- The importance of distributing your content through search engines, social media, email, and paid ads.
- And finally, the recommended metrics each of your teams should measure and report to optimize your content marketing program.
Chief Outsiders Go-To-Market Plan for a New Product
Main objective: New Product Launch Marketing Plan
Different needs, require different marketing plans. If you are about to launch a new product, then the Chief Outsiders template is a great place to start. Marketing plans for a new product are generally more specific as they're targeted to one product versus an entire company's marketing strategy.
After reading this plan, you'll learn how to:
- Validate a product
- Write strategic objectives
- Identify your market
- Compile a competitive landscape
- Create a value proposition for a new product
- Consider sales and service in your marketing plan
Buffer's Content Marketing Strategy Template
Main objective: Content Marketing Plan
One of the most challenging marketing plans yet. If you’ve never written a content marketing plan before, it might get confusing. Since only 55% of marketing teams have a documented content strategy, Buffer decided to help out the content marketing community.
By sifting through countless content marketing strategy templates and testing the best, they crafted a content marketing plan template with instructions and examples for marketers who've never documented their content strategy.
After reading Buffer's marketing plan template, you'll learn how to:
- Answer four basic questions that'll help you form a clear executive summary.
- Set SMART content marketing goals.
- Create highly accurate audience personas by interviewing real content strategists.
- Solve your audience's problems with your content.
- Do competitive research by analyzing your competitors' and industry thought leaders' content.
- Evaluate your existing content strategy by examining the topics and themes of your highest and lowest performing pieces.
- Determine which types of new content to craft, based on your team's ability and bandwidth.
- Establish an editorial calendar.
- Develop a promotional workflow.
- Buffer's template is an incredibly thorough step-by-step guide, with examples for each section. The audience persona section, for example, has case studies of real potential audience personas like "Blogger Brian". If you're feeling overwhelmed by the process of creating a marketing guide, this can help ease you into it.
Forbes' Marketing Plan Template
Main objective: Content Marketing Plan
An oldie, but a goodie -- Forbes published a marketing plan template in 2013 and amassed almost four million views. To help you forge a successful marketing plan, their template teaches you how to fill out the 15 key sections of a marketing plan, which are:
- Executive Summary
- Target Customers
- Unique Selling Proposition
- Pricing & Positioning Strategy
- Distribution Plan
- Your Offers
- Marketing Materials
- Promotions Strategy
- Online Marketing Strategy
- Conversion Strategy
- Joint Ventures & Partnerships
- Referral Strategy
- Strategy for Increasing Transaction Prices
- Retention Strategy
- Financial Projections
If you're truly lost on where to start with a marketing plan, this guide can help you define your target audience, figure out how to reach them, and ensure that audience becomes loyal customers.
These marketing plans serve as initial resources to get your content marketing plan started -- but to truly deliver what your audience wants and needs, you'll likely need to test some different ideas out, measure their success, and then refine your goals as you go.
Bonus: Click here to download our FREE Marketing Plan Template to get started.
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-plan-examples
