Marketing Plan Template (Excel)

What is in the Marketing Plan template

This workbook holds a full year marketing plan on five sheets: Goals, Budget, Calendar, KPIs and How to use. The sheets are linked, so what you plan on the Calendar flows into the Budget, and the Budget sheet shows where you stand against each channel.

Goals

The top block records the business, plan period, target audience and positioning. Under it, a goals table lists each goal with its metric, baseline, target, current figure, deadline and owner. Progress is worked out as (Current – Baseline) / (Target – Baseline), which works for goals that go up, like leads, and goals that go down, like cost per lead. Status reads Achieved, On track, Watch or Behind, and is color coded. There is room for ten goals.

Budget

The Budget sheet lists ten channels, from SEO and content to paid search, events and referrals. You enter an annual budget for each. The sheet then pulls the planned and actual spend from the Calendar by channel, and shows the remaining amount, the share of budget used and a flag. The flag says “Over budget” when actual spend passes the annual budget and “Plan exceeds budget” when the activities you have scheduled add up to more than the budget. A second table totals planned and actual spend by month, and a bar chart compares budget with actual spend by channel. The chart has no data labels, so it reads cleanly.

Calendar

The Calendar is the monthly plan. Each row is one activity with a month, a channel, an owner, planned spend, actual spend, variance and status. Month, Channel and Status are drop-downs, and the channel list reads from the Budget sheet, so renaming a channel there updates every drop-down. Status colors show what is done, in progress or cancelled, and a positive variance (overspend) shows in red. The sheet has 60 rows.

KPIs

The KPI table lists the numbers you track, such as website visitors, leads, conversion rate, email open rate, cost per lead and customer acquisition cost. For each one you say whether higher or lower is better, then enter the baseline, target and actual. The sheet calculates the percent of target and a status: On track at 90 percent or more, Watch from 60 to 89 percent and Behind below that. A count of each status sits underneath.

The sample plan

The file opens with a made-up plan for a home services company, with 18 calendar activities, five goals and eight KPIs. Nothing in it is a benchmark. Delete the sample rows and set targets from your own history.

How to use it

1. Write your goals and set baselines and targets.
2. Set an annual budget for each channel.
3. Plan activities month by month on the Calendar.
4. Enter actual spend as invoices arrive.
5. Update KPI actuals monthly and review the flags.

Every sheet prints landscape on one page wide. For budgeting beyond marketing, see the small business budget template, and track leads with the free lead tracker template. For the method behind the sheets, read how to write a marketing plan.

Frequently asked questions

More free tools: All free calculators · Small business budget template · Free lead tracker template · Budget template