What is a marketing plan?
It is a structured document detailing the results of your market research and how you are going to promote your product or service.

It should be quite in depth and you may need a separate marketing plan for each product or service that you have.

A summary of the marketing plan(s) should be included in your business plan, however don’t include all the fine details in the business plan – just a brief outline will do.

To create your marketing plan look through the other marketing sections of the website (use the navigation bar on the left) and then compile them together in one report.

What should it include?
As a basic guide it should cover all the following matters:

- Market research - who your customers will be, where they are, and exactly what they want;
- Understanding your competition and market share;
- Your product or service, including the unique selling point (USP) and pricing;
- The promotion methods you will use, ie advertising, email marketing, direct mail, leaflet drops and many more…