The Marketing Plan is a highly detailed, heavily researched and, hopefully, well written document that many inside and possibly outside the organization will evaluate. It is an essential marketing development tool for both large corporate marketing departments and for startup companies. Essentially the Marketing Plan:

• Forces the marketing personnel to look internally in order to fully understand the capability of your products or services.
• Forces the marketing personnel to look externally in order to fully understand the market in which they operate and the target customer.
• Sets future goals and provides direction for future marketing efforts that everyone within the organization should understand and support.
• May be a key component in obtaining funding to pursue new initiatives.

Possible Marketing Plan Outline:

1. Purpose and Mission
2. Situational Analysis
3. Target Market Analysis
4. Distribution Analysis
5. Competitor Analysis
6. Financial Analysis
7. Other Analysis
8. Marketing Strategy and Objectives
9. Financial Objectives
10. Marketing Objectives
11. Tactical Marketing Programs
12. Target Market Tactics
• Product Tactics
• Promotion Tactics
• Distribution Tactics
• Pricing Tactics
• Other Marketing Tactics
13. Budgets, Implementation
14. Budgeting and Performance Measurement
15. Implementation Plan
16. Additional Considerations