what does marketing a business plan mean

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Blog Marketing

What is a Marketing Plan & How to Create One [with Examples]

By Sara McGuire , Oct 26, 2023

A marketing plan is a blueprint that outlines your strategies to attract and convert your ideal customers. It’s a comprehensive document that details your:

• Target audience:  Who you’re trying to reach
• Marketing goals:  What you want to achieve
• Strategies and tactics:  How you’ll reach your goals
• Budget:  Resources you’ll allocate
• Metrics:  How you’ll measure success

In this article, I’ll explain everything you need to know about creating a marketing plan . If you need a little extra help, there are professionally designed marketing plan templates that’ll make the process much easier. So, let’s ditch the confusion and get started!

Click to jump ahead:

What is a marketing plan?

How to write a marketing plan .

• Marketing plan v.s. business plan
• Types of marketing plans

9 marketing plan examples to inspire your growth strategy

Marketing plan faqs.

A marketing plan is a report that outlines your marketing strategy for your products or services, which could be applicable for the coming year, quarter or month.  

Watch this quick, 13-minute video for more details on what a marketing plan is and how to make one yourself:

Typically, a marketing plan includes:

• An overview of your business’s marketing and advertising goals
• A description of your business’s current marketing position
• A timeline of when tasks within your strategy will be completed
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) you will be tracking
• A description of your business’s target market and customer needs
• A description of how you will measure the performance of the strategy

For example, this marketing plan template provides a high-level overview of the business and competitors before diving deep into specific goals, KPIs and tactics:

Learning how to write a marketing plan forces you to think through the important steps that lead to an effective marketing strategy . And a well-defined plan will help you stay focused on your high-level marketing goals.

With Venngage’s extensive catalog of marketing plan templates , creating your marketing plan isn’t going to be hard or tedious. In fact, Venngage has plenty of helpful communications and design resources for marketers. If you’re ready to get started, sign up for  Venngage for Marketers   now. It’s free to register and start designing.

Whether you’re a team trying to set smarter marketing goals, a consultant trying to set your client in the right direction, or a one-person team hustling it out, Venngage for Marketers helps you get things done.

As mentioned above, the scope of your marketing plan varies depending on its purpose or the type of organization it’s for.

For example, you could create a marketing plan that provides an overview of a company’s entire marketing strategy or simply focus on a specific channel like SEO, social media marketing, content marketing and more, like in this example:

A typical outline of a marketing plan includes:

• Executive summary
• Goals and objectives
• User personas
• Competitor analysis/SWOT analysis
• Baseline metrics
• Marketing strategy
• Tracking guidelines

Below you will see in details how to write each section as well as some examples of how you can design each section in a marketing plan.

Let’s look at how to create a successful marketing plan (click to jump ahead):

• Write a simple executive summary
• Set metric-driven marketing goals
• Outline your user personas
• Research all of your competitors
• Set accurate key baselines & metrics
• Create an actionable marketing strategy
• Set tracking or reporting guidelines

1. Write a simple executive summary

Starting your marketing plan off on the right foot is important. You want to pull people into your amazing plan for marketing domination. Not bore them to tears.

One of the best ways to get people excited to read your marketing plan is with a well-written executive summary. An executive summary introduces readers to your company goals, marketing triumphs, future plans, and other important contextual facts.

Basically, you can use the Executive Summary as a primer for the rest of your marketing plan.

Include things like:

• Simple marketing goals
• High-level metrics
• Important company milestones
• Facts about your brand
• Employee anecdotes
• Future goals & plans

Try to keep your executive summary rather brief and to the point. You aren’t writing a novel, so try to keep it under three to four paragraphs.

Take a look at the executive summary in the marketing plan example below:

The executive summary is only two paragraphs long — short but effective.

The executive summary tells readers about the company’s growth, and how they are about to overtake one of their competitors. But there’s no mention of specific metrics or figures. That will be highlighted in the next section of the marketing plan.

An effective executive summary should have enough information to pique the reader’s interest, but not bog them down with specifics yet. That’s what the rest of your marketing plan is for!

The executive summary also sets the tone for your marketing plan. Think about what tone will fit your brand ? Friendly and humorous? Professional and reliable? Inspiring and visionary?

2. Set metric-driven marketing goals

After you perfect your executive summary, it’s time to outline your marketing goals.

(If you’ve never set data-driven goals like this before, it would be worth reading this growth strategy guide ).

This is one of the most important parts of the entire marketing plan, so be sure to take your time and be as clear as possible. Moreover, optimizing your marketing funnel is key. Employing effective funnel software can simplify operations and provide valuable customer insights. It facilitates lead tracking, conversion rate analysis, and efficient marketing optimization .

As a rule of thumb, be as specific as possible. The folks over at  VoyMedia  advise that you should set goals that impact website traffic, conversions, and customer success — and to use real numbers.

Avoid outlining vague goals like:

• Get more Twitter followers
• Write more articles
• Create more YouTube videos (like educational or Explainer videos )
• Increase retention rate
• Decrease bounce rate

Instead, identify  key performance metrics  (KPI) you want to impact and the percentage you want to increase them by.

Take a look at the goals page in the marketing plan example below:

They not only identify a specific metric in each of their goals, but they also set a timeline for when they will be increased.

The same vague goals listed earlier become much clearer when specific numbers and timelines are applied to them:

• Get 100 new Twitter followers per month
• Write 5 more articles per week
• Create 10 YouTube videos each year
• Increase retention rate by 15% by 2020
• Decrease bounce rate by 5% by Q1
• Create an online course  and get 1,000 new leads
• Focus more on local SEO strategies

You can dive even deeper into your marketing goals if you want (generally, the more specific, the better). Here’s a marketing plan example that shows how to outline your growth goals:

3. Outline your user personas

Now, this may not seem like the most important part of your marketing plan, but I think it holds a ton of value.

Outlining your user personas is an important part of a marketing plan that should not be overlooked.

You should be asking not just how you can get the most visitors to your business, but how you can get the right visitors.

Who are your ideal customers? What are their goals? What are their biggest problems? How does your business solve customer problems?

Answering these questions will take lots of research, but it’s essential information to get.

Some ways to conduct user research are:

• Interviewing your users (either in person or on the phone)
• Conducting focus groups
• Researching other businesses in the same industry
• Surveying your audience

Then, you will need to compile your user data into a user persona  guide.

Take a look at how detailed this user persona template is below:

Taking the time to identify specific demographic traits, habits and goals will make it easier for you to cater your marketing plan to them.

Here’s how you can create a user persona guide:

The first thing you should add is a profile picture or icon for each user persona. It can help to put a face to your personas, so they seem more real.

Next, list demographic information like:

• Identifiers
• Activities/Hobbies

The user persona example above uses sliding scales to identify personality traits like introversion vs. extroversion and thinking vs. feeling. Identifying what type of personality your target users tend to have an influence on the messaging you use in your marketing content.

Meanwhile, this user persona guide identifies specific challenges the user faces each day:

But if you don’t want to go into such precise detail, you can stick to basic information, like in this marketing plan example:

Most businesses will have a few different types of target users. That’s why it’s pertinent to identify and create several different user personas . That way, you can better segment your marketing campaigns and set separate goals, if necessary.

Here’s a marketing plan example with a segmented user persona guide:

The important thing is for your team or client to have a clear picture of who their target user is and how they can appeal to their specific problems.

Start creating robust user personas using Venngage’s user persona guide .

4. Conduct an extensive competitor analysis

Next, on the marketing plan checklist, we have the competitor research section. This section will help you identify who your competitors are, what they’re doing, and how you could carve yourself a place alongside them in your niche — and ideally, surpass them. It’s something you can learn to do with rank tracking software .

Competitor research is also incredibly important if you are starting a blog .

Typically, your competitor research should include:

• Who their marketing team is
• Who their leadership team is
• What their marketing strategy is (this will probably revolve some reverse-engineering)
• What their sales strategy is (same deal)
• Social Media strategy (are they using discounting strategies such as coupon marketing to get conversions)
• Their market cap/financials
• Their yearly growth (you will probably need to use a marketing tool like Ahrefs to do this)
• The number of customers they have & their user personas

Also, take as deep a dive as you can into the strategies they use across their:

• Blog/Content marketing
• Social media marketing
• SEO Marketing
• Video marketing
• And any other marketing tactics they use

Research their strengths and weaknesses in all parts of their company, and you will find some great opportunities. Bookmark has a great guide to different marketing strategies for small businesses  if you need some more information there.

You can use this simple SWOT analysis worksheet to quickly work through all parts of their strategy as well:

Click the template above to create a SWOT chart . Customize the template to your liking — no design know-how needed.

Since you have already done all the research beforehand, adding this information to your marketing plan shouldn’t be that hard.

In this marketing plan example, some high-level research is outlined for 3 competing brands:

But you could take a deeper dive into different facets of your competitors’ strategies. This marketing plan example analyses a competitor’s content marketing strategy:

It can also be helpful to divide your competitors into Primary and Secondary groups. For example, Apple’s primary competitor may be Dell for computers, but its secondary competitor could be a company that makes tablets.

Your most dangerous competitors may not even be in the same industry as you. Like the CEO of Netflix said, “Sleep is our competition.”

5. Set accurate key baselines & metrics

It’s pretty hard to plan for the future if you don’t know where your business stands right now.

Before we do anything at Venngage, we find the baselines so we can compare future results to something. We do it so much it’s almost like second nature now!

Setting baselines will allow you to more accurately track your progress. You will also be able to better analyze what worked and what didn’t work, so you can build a stronger strategy. It will definitely help them clearly understand your goals and strategy as well.

Here’s a marketing plan example where the baselines are visualized:

Another way to include baselines in your plan is with a simple chart, like in the marketing plan example below:

Because data can be intimidating to a lot of people, visualizing your data using charts and infographics will help demystify the information.

6. Create an actionable marketing strategy

After pulling all the contextual information and relevant metrics into your marketing plan, it’s time to break down your marketing strategy.

Once again, it’s easier to communicate your information to your team or clients using visuals .

Mind maps are an effective way to show how a strategy with many moving parts ties together. For example, this mind map shows how the four main components of a marketing strategy interact together:

You can also use a flow chart to map out your strategy by objectives:

However you choose to visualize your strategy, your team should know exactly what they need to do. This is not the time to keep your cards close to your chest.

Your strategy section may need to take up a few pages to explain, like in the marketing plan example below:

With all of this information, even someone from the development team will understand what the marketing team is working on.

This minimalistic marketing plan example uses color blocks to make the different parts of the strategy easy to scan:

Breaking your strategy down into tasks will make it easier to tackle.

Another important way to visualize your marketing strategy is to create a project roadmap. A project roadmap visualizes the timeline of your product with individual tasks. Our roadmap maker can help you with this.

For example, this project roadmap shows how tasks on both the marketing and web design side run parallel to each other:

A simple timeline can also be used in your marketing plan:

Or a mind map, if you want to include a ton of information in a more organized way:

Even a simple “Next, Now, Later” chart can help visualize your strategy:

7. Set tracking or reporting guidelines

Close your marketing plan with a brief explanation of how you plan to track or measure your results. This will save you a lot of frustration down the line by standardizing how you track results across your team.

Like the other sections of your marketing plan, you can choose how in-depth you want to go. But there need to be some clear guidelines on how to measure the progress and results of your marketing plan.

At the bare minimum, your results tracking guidelines should specify:

• What you plan to track
• How you plan to track results
• How often you plan to measure

But you can more add tracking guidelines to your marketing plan if you see the need to. You may also want to include a template that your team or client can follow,  for  client reporting ,  ensure that the right metrics are being tracked.

The marketing plan example below dedicates a whole page to tracking criteria:

Use a task tracker to track tasks and marketing results, and a checklist maker to note down tasks, important life events, or tracking your daily life.

Similarly, the marketing plan example below talks about tracking content marketing instead:

Marketing plan vs. marketing strategy

Although often used interchangeably, the terms “marketing plan” and “marketing strategy” do have some differences.

Simply speaking, a marketing strategy presents what the business will do in order to reach a certain goal. A marketing plan outlines the specific daily, weekly, monthly or yearly activities that the marketing strategy calls for. As a business, you can create a marketing proposal for the marketing strategies defined in your company’s marketing plan. There are various marketing proposal examples that you can look at to help with this.

A company’s extended marketing strategy can be like this:

Notice how it’s more general and doesn’t include the actual activities required to complete each strategy or the timeframe those marketing activities will take place. That kind of information is included in a marketing plan, like this marketing plan template which talks about the content strategy in detail:

Marketing plan v.s business plan

While both marketing plans and business plans are crucial documents for businesses, they serve distinct purposes and have different scopes. Here’s a breakdown of the key differences:

Business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines all aspects of your business, including:

• Mission and vision
• Products or services
• Target market
• Competition
• Management team
• Financial projections
• Marketing strategy (including a marketing plan)
• Operations plan

Marketing plan on the other hand, dives deep into the specific strategies and tactics related to your marketing efforts. It expands on the marketing section of a business plan by detailing:

• Specific marketing goals (e.g., brand awareness, lead generation, sales)
• Target audience analysis (detailed understanding of their needs and behaviors)
• Product:  Features, benefits, positioning
• Price:  Pricing strategy, discounts
• Place:  Distribution channels (online, offline)
• Promotion:  Advertising, social media, content marketing, public relations
• Budget allocation for different marketing activities
• Metrics and measurement to track progress and success

In short, business plans paint the entire business picture, while marketing plans zoom in on the specific strategies used to reach your target audience and achieve marketing goals.

Types of marketing plans that can transform your business strategy

Let’s take a look at several types of marketing plans you can create, along with specific examples for each.

1. General marketing strategic plan / Annual marketing plan

This is a good example of a marketing plan that covers the overarching annual marketing strategy for a company:

Another good example would be this Starbucks marketing plan:

This one-page marketing plan example from coffee chain Starbucks has everything at a glance. The bold headers and subheadings make it easier to segment the sections so readers can focus on the area most relevant to them.

What we like about this example is how much it covers. From the ideal buyer persona to actional activities, as well as positioning and metrics, this marketing plan has it all.

Another marketing plan example that caught our eye is this one from Cengage. Although a bit text-heavy and traditional, it explains the various sections well. The clean layout makes this plan easy to read and absorb.

The last marketing plan example we would like to feature in this section is this one from Lush cosmetics.

It is a long one but it’s also very detailed. The plan outlines numerous areas, including the company mission, SWOT analysis , brand positioning, packaging, geographical criteria, and much more.

2. Content marketing plan

A content marketing plan highlights different strategies , campaigns or tactics you can use for your content to help your business reach its goals.

This one-page marketing plan example from Contently outlines a content strategy and workflow using simple colors and blocks. The bullet points detail more information but this plan can easily be understood at a glance, which makes it so effective.

For a more detailed content marketing plan example, take a look at this template which features an editorial calendar you can share with the whole team:

3. SEO marketing plan

Your SEO marketing plan highlights what you plan to do for your SEO marketing strategy . This could include tactics for website on-page optimization , off-page optimization using AI SEO , and link building using an SEO PowerSuite backlink API for quick backlink profile checks.

This SEO marketing plan example discusses in detail the target audience of the business and the SEO plan laid out in different stages:

4. Social media marketing plan

Your social media marketing plan presents what you’ll do to reach your marketing goal through social media. This could include tactics specific to each social media channel that you own, recommendations on developing a new channel, specific campaigns you want to run, and so on, like how B2B channels use Linkedin to generate leads with automation tools and expand their customer base; or like making use of Twitter walls that could display live Twitter feeds from Twitter in real-time on digital screens.

Edit this social media marketing plan example easily with Venngage’s drag-and-drop editor:

5. Demand generation marketing plan

This could cover your paid marketing strategy (which can include search ads, paid social media ads, traditional advertisements, etc.), email marketing strategy and more. Here’s an example:

1. Free marketing plan template

Here’s a free nonprofit marketing plan example that is ideal for organizations with a comprehensive vision to share. It’s a simple plan that is incredibly effective. Not only does the plan outline the core values of the company, it also shares the ideal buyer persona.

Note how the branding is consistent throughout this example so there is no doubt which company is presenting this plan. The content plan is an added incentive for anyone viewing the document to go ahead and give the team the green light.

2. Pastel social media marketing campaign template

Two-page marketing plan samples aren’t very common, but this free template proves how effective they are. There’s a dedicated section for business goals as well as for project planning .

The milestones for the marketing campaign are clearly laid out, which is a great way to show how organized this business strategy is.

3. Small business marketing strategy template

This marketing plan template is perfect for small businesses who set out to develop an overarching marketing strategy for the whole year:

Notice how this aligns pretty well with the marketing plan outline we discussed in previous sections.

In terms of specific tactics for the company’s marketing strategy, the template only discusses SEO strategy, but you can certainly expand on that section to discuss any other strategies — such as link building , that you would like to build out a complete marketing plan for.

4. Orange simple marketing proposal template

Marketing plans, like the sample below, are a great way to highlight what your business strategy and the proposal you wan to put forward to win potential customers.

5. One-page marketing fact sheet template

This one-page marketing plan example is great for showcasing marketing efforts in a persuasive presentation or to print out for an in-person meeting.

Note how the fact sheet breaks down the marketing budget as well as the key metrics for the organization. You can win over clients and partners with a plan like this.

6. Light company business fact sheet template

This one-page sample marketing plan clearly outlines the marketing objectives for the organization. It’s a simple but effective way to share a large amount of information in a short amount of time.

What really works with this example is that includes a mission statement, key contact information alongside all the key metrics.

7. Marketing media press kit template

This press kit marketing plan template is bright and unmistakable as belonging to the Cloud Nine marketing agency . The way the brand colors are used also helps diversify the layouts for each page, making the plan easier to read.

We like the way the marketing department has outlined the important facts about the organization. The bold and large numbers draw the eye and look impressive.

8. Professional marketing proposal template

Start your marketing campaign on a promising note with this marketing plan template. It’s short, sharp and to the point. The table of contents sets out the agenda, and there’s a page for the company overview and mission statement.

9. Social media marketing proposal template

A complete marketing plan example, like the one below, not only breaks down the business goals to be achieved but a whole lot more. Note how the terms and conditions and payment schedule are included, which makes this one of the most comprehensive marketing plans on our list.

What should marketing plans include?

Marketing plans should include:

• A detailed analysis of the target market and customer segments.
• Clear and achievable marketing objectives and goals.
• Strategies and tactics for product promotion and distribution.
• Budget allocation for various marketing activities.
• Timelines and milestones for the implementation of marketing strategies.
• Evaluation metrics and methods for tracking the success of the marketing plan.

What is an executive summary in a marketing plan and what is its main goal?

An executive summary in a marketing plan is a brief overview of the entire document, summarizing the key points, goals, and strategies. Its main goal is to provide readers with a quick understanding of the plan’s purpose and to entice them to read further.

What are the results when a marketing plan is effective?

When a marketing plan is effective, businesses can experience increased brand visibility, higher customer engagement, improved sales and revenue, and strengthened customer loyalty.

What is the first section of a marketing plan?

The first section of a marketing plan is typically the “Executive Summary,” which provides a concise overview of the entire plan, including the business’s goals and the strategies to achieve them.

Now that you have the basics for designing your own marketing plan, it’s time to get started:

More marketing design guides and templates:

• Marketing Infographics: The Definitive Guide [Includes Infographic Templates]
• 20+ Business Pitch Deck Templates to Win New Clients and Investors
• 20+ White Paper Examples [Design Guide + White Paper Templates]
• The Evolution of Marketing [Timeline Infographic]

Marketing Plan

Quick Definition: A marketing plan documents an organization’s marketing objectives and what it will do to achieve those objectives.

Key Takeaways:

• A marketing plan offers a consolidated view of everything from high-level business goals to marketing campaign frameworks, buyer personas, messaging, and content strategy.
• A marketing plan clearly defines an organization’s marketing goals and focuses departments across the organization on the same business objectives and metrics.
• Whether you’re part of a small business or large enterprise, developing a marketing plan follows the same process.
• A marketing team that has researched their ideal customers and understands them can create thoughtful and relevant experiences
• You’ll know your marketing efforts are successful when you are consistently achieving your business objectives.

The following information was provided during an interview with Jeff Siteman, director of global portfolio marketing, content strategy, and operations at Adobe.

What is a marketing plan? Why is a marketing plan important? How do you make a marketing plan? What are some examples of marketing planning tools? What are the benefits of making a marketing plan? What are common obstacles to making or following a marketing plan? What does building a marketing plan look like for small businesses vs. larger enterprises? How will marketing plans evolve in the future?

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan documents an organization’s marketing objectives and what it will do to achieve those objectives.

An organization’s marketing plan offers a consolidated view of everything from high-level business goals to marketing campaign frameworks, buyer personas, messaging, and content strategy.

Why is a marketing plan important?

A marketing plan clearly defines an organization’s marketing goals and focuses departments across the organization on the same business objectives and metrics. An organization’s marketing plan also presents the current situation in the market, identifying the challenges that the business is facing.

This part of the plan shows stakeholders how the organization plans to tackle those challenges.

How do you make a marketing plan?

To make an effective marketing plan, start by gathering customer insights. Marketers must understand their potential customers’ demographics and their affinities and goals. Marketing teams should define what their target customers’ pain points are and how their product will resolve those pain points and deliver value.

After defining your target customers and their pain points, craft your messaging. How will you tell the story of your product’s value in a way that new customers will understand, and that will make them want to interact more with your brand?

With those first two foundational elements in place, marketers can construct a framework or campaign model to target audiences and industries. Within this framework, you’ll determine what content you will use across your marketing channels to engage target customers.

After you define your marketing mix — or your marketing objectives and marketing tactics — you’ll need to establish your measurement framework. How will your marketing system support what you’re trying to do? What metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) will you use to track your progress and your marketing efforts’ success? Answering these questions will help you create a successful marketing plan for your company.

What are some examples of marketing planning tools?

There are many types of tools that can help you create your marketing plan:

• Work management tools keep teams on track and manage tasks and content.
• Analytics tools gather and present valuable customer insights.
• Adobe Experience Cloud is an innovative solution made up of tools that help marketers execute their marketing plans and includes both work management tools and analytics tools.

What are the benefits of making a marketing plan?

A marketing plan clearly documents the roadmap of what a business is going to do, how it will do it, and how it will measure success. It benefits both the organization and the customer. A marketing team that has researched its ideal customers and understands them can create thoughtful and relevant experiences much more easily with a thoughtful marketing plan.

What are common obstacles to making or following a marketing plan?

The most common obstacle to a great marketing plan is time. Primary customer research — which helps inform marketing decisions — is essential, but time-consuming. Not only do marketers have to explore data insights on personas and behavior, but they also need to spend time talking to sales teams to understand how customers are really feeling about their brand. And because marketing plans can only operate for a set time frame, they require periodic updates, which can also take time.

What does building a marketing plan look like for small businesses vs. larger enterprises?

Whether you’re part of a small business or a large enterprise, developing a marketing plan follows the same process. What may be different are the teams and specializations leading that effort. For instance, a small business may have a single person who heads up marketing, while an enterprise may have several different departments that all play a role.

How will marketing plans evolve in the future?

Customers are changing their behavior by the minute, so marketing plans need to evolve just as quickly. Organizations will move away from highly structured annual plans toward quarterly, monthly, and weekly planning. Optimization can then take place at scale, especially with the help of advancing automation technologies. Marketing planning tools will offer more flexibility and agility to meet these demands.

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What Is a Marketing Plan and How Can You Create an Effective One?

If you want to get to a specific place, you need a map. For the business world, that map is the marketing plan .

Having a well-developed marketing plan as a part of your advertising strategy is imperative for every business regardless of sector or size. However, there are still many companies that start advertising without having a clear marketing strategy or a concrete plan.

In this article, we will go through everything you need in order to create an effective digital marketing pla n for your business.

Marketing Plan Definition

The definition of a marketing plan is a document that lays out the strategy (or strategies) you will implement in order to advertise, reach your target audience with your message, generate leads, and finally increase your sales. Your marketing plan will of course define your overall goals, but it should also include some of the smaller steps you will take in order to achieve those goals.

How to Create the Best Marketing Plan for Your Business

A marketing plan has to align with the overall  objectives you want to achieve, so be sure to create a detailed plan that reinforces the commitment of your team and defines a long term vision. This will also improve the efficiency of your team and can even help prevent mistakes (and solve them rapidly if they are made).

When creating your marketing plan , organization is key. There are a series of elements that every plan should include and a logical order in which they should be carried out in order for the final result to be coherent and successful.

Below we will explain in detail the five basic sections of a marketing plan and what should be included in each of them. If you want to make the process even easier, you can download our marketing plan template here . This checklist contains 20 basic points that we recommend covering before setting anything in motion.

1. Analysis of the Current Situation

The first step is to analyze the current situation of your business. This step is necessary because, without it, you cannot define where you want to go.

With this analysis, you will be able to see the influence of external and internal factors. The external factors can include things like the overall social and economic situation in your industry or country or the particulars of the sector and market you work in. The internal ones refer to the business itself. For example, your team and resources.

To systemize the analysis and guarantee that you are not missing anything, you can always use the classic SWOT scheme: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

• Strengths are the positive internal aspects of the company, those that make it stand out from the competition and that make the team proud. In the strengths we find the key competitive advantage like having a highly qualified team, or being considered the best for X product.
• Weaknesses are the internal aspects of the company that are lacking, areas where the company is positioned below its competitors or which can be improved. To find them, pose questions such as, in which aspects are our competitors better or what things are we least satisfied with? Some examples of weaknesses could be lack of finances or a limited range of products.  
• Opportunities represent the external factors that are in your favor and that can be used to the company's advantage. You can find opportunities by researching the current trends and changes within your target market . For example, there can be a legislative change that favors your brand or a product that you sell becoming a trend.
• Threats are external negative elements that can potentially affect you. They are the factors that can put your business in danger or reduce your market share. Identifying them quickly can help you neutralize them. To find them, pay attention to current changes and market trends. For example, new competitors could present a threat.

Besides SWOT, do a deep buyer persona analysis. Your buyer persona represents your ideal customer. It gives a name and face to your target market by creating a semi fictional representation of it. At minimum it should include the following sections:

• Who is your buyer? Here you'll need to pick up all the general information about your buyer profile, like demographic information and personal identifiers.
• How can your buyer persona help your business? Define the goals and the primary and secondary challenges of your buyer persona and explain how your business and brand can help him/her obtain them.
• Look at the challenges and needs of your customers and the most common complaints they have. Here, you can get some inspiration from the real comments you received during your research.
• Define the marketing and sales messages that will be communicated in order to reach this potential customer.

2. Benchmark Against Your Competitors' Products and Services

This is another aspect in the overall analysis of external factors, but it deserves its own section within the marketing plan due to the important role it plays in the future of your business.

After assessing who your main competitors are, you'll need to answer the following questions:

• What is their budget and their business volume? Big companies publish their annual or quarterly results, so the information is easily accessible. For smaller companies, you can try to ask for reports on databases such as einforma or asexor. Y ou can also extrapolate based on data such as the number of employees on staff (LinkedIn is very useful in these cases) or the breadth of their catalog.
• What are the prices of their products or services? For B2C companies, this information is easy to find, while for B2B companies, you will have to do a little more research. Once you have this information, develop a price range and think of where you want to position your business.
• What is their sales process? From the first contact until conversion, the customer journey of your competitors can provide a lot of clues for your business. The most common way to find out about this is by playing the “client” role and asking for the information yourself.
• How do they get their clients? This refers to their marketing strategies. It is easy to find that out about their digital marketing strategies by checking their website, social networks, and any other digital channels. You can also use tools such as SEMrush and Google Alerts.

3. Objectives

Now that the starting points are clear, you have to define where you want to go and how to get there. It's time to set your marketing objectives.

This is one of the most important steps in any marketing plan, and perhaps the most neglected. Many times the management team sets unrealistic objectives based more on their "wishful thinking" than on the real and current standing of the company. To avoid this, always base the objectives on the SMART acronym:

• S or "specific": the objectives must be specific. The "increase brand awareness" kind of goals are too broad because they could mean almost anything and be justified in many different ways. Instead, something like "increase brand mentions on social networks by 20%" would be more adequate.
• M or "measurable": to know if a goal has been achieved, you have to be able to measure it. Therefore, in addition to defining the objectives with precision, you also need to clarify how you are going to measure them. Using the previous example, you could decide to measure the amount of brand mentions on a monthly basis through the Social Mention tool.
• A or "achievable": Trying to become the next Amazon in two days only serves as a discouragement for your team. When you set objectives, you have to take into account the effort, time required, and other costs derived, always starting from your current situation. Then, you can establish whether the goal is realistic or not.
• R or "relevant": for example, many digital marketers aim to increase their website visits. But if those visits are not "high quality" and do not lead to any conversions, in reality, they don't mean anything. The marketing objectives have to respond to the business objectives and be relevant.
• T or "time-bound": every objective needs a time frame to make sense, so do not forget to define your deadlines.

4. Action Plan: Marketing Strategies

With all this work done, you have arrived to the heart of the marketing plan: what are the actions that will lead you to achieve your goals?

In this section, we will define the marketing strategies, always going from the broad to the specific. In the end, the steps to follow and the order in which they will be carried out need to be extremely clear.

To organize and classify the strategies, it is very common to use the famous "4 P of marketing" :

• Product strategy. Even if you have a very well defined and positioned product line, changes always occur. For example, you can launch new products, change the positioning of existing ones or update packaging.
• Price strategy. Here it is very useful to analyze the information that you have about the competition. You need to define the launch prices of new products, consider whether you should make changes to those already on the market and, perhaps most importantly, decide the strategy around discounts, promotions and offers. Do not forget to take into account seasonal campaigns, like for summer, Black Friday, Christmas, etc.
• Sales and distribution strategy: if you have detected any weaknesses in the customer experience or simply want to optimize it, you can make changes in this area. For example, search for new suppliers, include new distribution channels such as online sales, improve delivery times, and reduce shipping costs.
• Promotion and communication strategy: here all the actions come into play to make your brand known through both online and offline media. Given the rapid evolution of the online marketing environment and the digital habits of consumers, this is one of the sections that you will have to review the most over time.

5. Real Time Review of the Plan

Last but not least, you have to keep in mind that your marketing plan is not a one time thing. You must constantly modify it so that it always responds to the changing needs of the company.

For this to happen, it's best to organize regular meetings to evaluate the progress of the plan. The following five points can serve as guides for this:

• Objectives: are the objectives set being met? Looking back, were they realistic, too ambitious, or did they fall short?
• Compliance : are you following the actions planned? If you have strayed, why is that? If this is the case, it does not always make sense to correct these deviations; sometimes it's better to modify the plan and adapt if it is working.
• Strategies : what are the most appropriate actions according to performance?
• Budget : does the plan fit the current budget of your business? How is the plan affecting the income and expenses? Is it necessary to make modifications?
• Review : refers to any modifications and extensions of the plan. For example, you can decide to complete the first version by adding a schedule of actions, assignments and tasks.

Marketing Plan Template

Once you have considered and analyzed the points above, you are ready to begin creating your own marketing plan. To get you started with this, we have a useful marketing plan template that you can access here . This will help you formulate your marketing plan and make sure that you are not missing any key steps or points.

All of the above will help set you on the path to success, as a great marketing plan will improve your ROI and results!

How can we help you with your marketing plan?

Marketing Content

• What is Marketing? What it is and how it works
• The best marketing plan for your business
• What is email marketing and how do you create a marketing strategy?
• What is digital marketing or online marketing?
• What is direct marketing? Advantages and examples
• What is viral marketing? How it works and the benefits it holds
• Mobile Marketing: What is it and what advantages does it have for businesses?
• What is performance marketing?

What is a Marketing Plan? Definition and Examples

If you want to be sure that your company will grow, you should have a marketing plan, i.e., a marketing strategy for your products or services for the next year, half year, or quarter.

A marketing plan is an outline or document in which all your marketing and advertising efforts for a given period are laid out in detail.

Your marketing plan should contain an overview of the marketing and advertising goals of your company. It compares your current marketing position with where you would like to be at a given time in future. It also details how you plan to get there.

Marketing Plan – Timeline

A six-month or twelve-month marketing plan, for example, contains a timeline which shows when certain tasks will be carried out.

At various points during that period, you should include a description of how you will measure the success of your actions.

According to the Corporate Finance Institute :

“A marketing plan is a document that lays out the marketing efforts of a business in an upcoming period, which is usually a year. It outlines the marketing strategy, promotional, and advertising activities planned for the period.”

The Marketplace, Rivals, and Market Research

Your marketing plan can help you and other employees gain a better understanding of the marketplace and and the behavior of your main rivals. It shows you which way to move forward, i.e., which direction to take for future tasks.

Before creating your plan, you will need to gather and analyze vital information, which market research can provide .

Marketing Plan Includes Your Goals and Objectives

You must specify what your goals are , such as boosting market share from 10% to 15%, plus how you plan to get there.

How you plan to get there, i.e., what you will do each month, are your objectives . The ultimate aim – to reach 15% market share – is your goal. Hence the term, goals and objectives.

Marketing Budget

It is not possible to have a six- or twelve-month plan without working out how much it will all cost. Make sure you include a detailed outline of your company’s allocation of financial resources for marketing activities, i.e., you need to have a marketing budget.

It is also important to keep within the stated budget – don’t overspend.

A good marketing plan can help your business grow solidly. It can help you reach your goals, and will give you a clearer view of not only what needs to be done, but also why.

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What Are Marketing Plans?

Marketing plans often include a variety elements including details about the campaigns that are planned to achieve targets. Often produced as a written document, a marketing plan outlines how a team will present and market a company’s brand. By following this approach, businesses can better understand how to portray themselves and produce successful marketing campaigns .

What are the elements of a marketing plan?

• While many components make up a marketing plan, teams should dedicate their energy toward developing a campaign calendar with goals for reaching their target audience.

The major element of a marketing plan is to have a calendar of campaigns that will run throughout the year that allows marketers to effectively reach their target audience and achieve the goals they have put in place. This plan includes reasoning for why certain campaign elements will garner audience attention and interaction while also including documentation of other key projects that will improve operations, tech stack, lead flow, etc., helping the team operate more efficiently and improving the execution of campaigns. Each individual campaign will then be scrutinized to develop a deeper understanding of who is being targeted, what they care about, where the audience spends time, budgeting needs and promotion channels.

The campaign of calendars is the first documentation of how teams plan to activate its strategy. Additionally, marketers must also create an overarching budget and method of determining how to measure campaign results. As long as teams keep these marketing plan essentials in mind, they can conserve resources while implementing campaigns that stay with audiences long after their initial exposure.

What are the steps of a marketing plan?

• Marketing plans help teams learn how to navigate the relationships between their brands, potential customers, and the competition.

A customer-first approach requires companies to define their target audience and shape their strategy around audience traits. By focusing on the customer, businesses can explain their mission statement and products in terms of how they serve people. Additionally, knowing where consumers spend their time enables companies to pinpoint ideal marketing channels, which is crucial knowledge in a digital age full of options. 

Studying the larger field also expands a team’s understanding of what competitors are doing and how to make their own products and services stand out. Once marketers handle these variables, they can determine concrete methods for measuring success and monitoring data collection. With these steps in mind, marketing teams can craft campaigns that are more relevant to consumers and more insightful for their businesses.

How do you write a marketing plan outline?

• A marketing plan outline lays out a foundation by summarizing brand guidelines, campaign goals and other factors.

A marketing plan is only as organized as the thinking behind it, which is why teams take the time to develop a thorough outline. Every outline includes an executive summary, serving as a narrative to explain how the company will stand out and connect with its target audience. To develop a more tailored and substantial campaign , teams can craft a mission statement, develop SMART goals, and conduct a strengths and weaknesses analysis.  

Managing these minutiae will help teams better understand their brand and audience and what they need to accomplish, which makes it even easier to decide on campaign success metrics. However, teams shouldn’t view this outline as something set in stone. Keeping a flexible mindset will help organizations adapt on the fly and make changes when a marketing campaign heads in an unexpected direction.

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Marketing Plan

Example of a marketing plan, how to make a marketing plan, what are some common challenges in creating a marketing plan, .css-uphcpb{position:absolute;left:0;top:-87px;} what is a marketing plan, definition of a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is a document that defines a marketing strategy for a company in order to reach their targeted audience and to track their marketing strategies over a period of time.

As stated above, the overall purpose of a marketing plan is to generate leads and reach your targeted audience. For this, you will need to set realistic goals and implement a solid strategy to accomplish said goals.

Leveraging Product Strategy

What does that look like? For each company, a marketing plan will look different. Depending on your goal, your plan will be different. Regardless of the goal and the plan, however, you should always be focused on what’s best for the company.

A good example of a marketing strategy could include a content plan. This should include:

An editorial calendar

Competitive research

Keyword analysis

Desired tone of voice

And much more

Again, depending on your marketing plan’s goal, this will look different. This is merely an example of what yours could look like.

Even though each company will have a different goal and a different marketing plan, the structure for the marketing plan is the same:

State your mission

The first step should always be to state your mission. This is a marketing-specific plan, but it should mirror the company’s mission overall.

Determine your KPIs

KPIs are important in any project, and creating a marketing plan is no exception. Determining your KPIs upfront will help you stay focused.

Define your target audience

Each company attracts certain buyers . Knowing these people, what they expect of you, and how to attract them in larger quantities is a very important step in any marketing plan.

Create a content strategy

We touched on this above, but it is a very important part of any marketing plan. Without content, you won’t have a way to attract new customers organically.

Research what others are doing

Your competition is likely doing this same thing as we speak. In any circumstance, it helps to know what the competition is doing, how they’re doing it, and how it’s working out for them.

Determine budget

Hidden costs can sneak up on you in the midst of your marketing endeavors. Defining the budget upfront will help you identify what’s essential and what isn’t as necessary. 

Assign roles

Every stakeholder has a role in the marketing plan. In order to avoid chaos, assigning roles and sticking to those roles will help keep things organized, and the plan will go much more smoothly.

Overall, there will be 3 main challenges in creating a marketing plan. Other than potential changes, this is what you can expect to challenge you:

Identifying your customers

Ideally, you already know who your customers are. But in a marketing plan, you need to identify them specifically. The reason this can prove to be a challenge is that it can require a lot of work. You may have to invent an entire user persona profile for multiple different kinds of customers.

Determining the budget

As this is an essential part of creating a marketing plan, this is a challenge that everyone will have to go through. Not everyone has a massive budget, so depending on the final numbers, the budget can make or break the entire plan.

Setting goals

A marketing plan should involve everyone in the marketing team. Agreeing on goals, and determining what’s realistic and what isn’t can prove to be a challenge. The plan absolutely will not work smoothly if everyone is not on the same page.

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Aug 28, 2023 | Business & Strategy , glossary

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For a marketing agency, a marketing plan is an invaluable tool for helping clients reach their goals. It can provide a roadmap for the agency to follow, ensuring that all marketing efforts are focused on the right objectives. It can also help the agency identify potential opportunities and develop strategies to capitalize on them. By creating a comprehensive marketing plan, a marketing agency can ensure that its clients are getting the most out of their marketing efforts.

Table of Contents

Introduction to marketing plans, identifying goals and objectives, developing strategies and tactics, implementing the plan.

• Measuring Results

Key Takeaways

• Understand the purpose of a marketing plan and its components
• Identify goals and objectives for the plan
• Develop strategies and tactics to achieve the goals
• Implement the plan and measure the results

A marketing plan is a critical component of any successful marketing strategy . It provides a clear roadmap for the agency to follow, ensuring that all marketing efforts are focused on the right objectives. It also helps the agency identify potential opportunities and develop strategies to capitalize on them.

When creating a marketing plan, there are several key elements to consider. These include:

• Defining the target audience : Identifying the target audience is essential for any marketing plan. It helps the agency determine which strategies and tactics will be most effective in reaching the desired audience.
• Setting objectives : Establishing clear objectives is essential for any marketing plan. It helps the agency focus its efforts on the right goals and measure progress towards them.
• Developing strategies : Once the target audience and objectives have been identified, the agency can develop strategies to reach them. This includes selecting the right channels, creating content, and developing campaigns.
• Tracking progress : Tracking progress is essential for any marketing plan. It helps the agency measure the success of its efforts and make adjustments as needed.

By creating a comprehensive marketing plan, a marketing agency can ensure that its clients are getting the most out of their marketing efforts. It can provide a roadmap for the agency to follow, ensuring that all marketing efforts are focused on the right objectives. It can also help the agency identify potential opportunities and develop strategies to capitalize on them.

Once the target audience and objectives have been identified, the next step is to develop strategies to reach them. This includes selecting the right channels, creating content, and developing campaigns. It is important to ensure that the strategies are aligned with the objectives and target audience. This will help the agency maximize its efforts and ensure that the desired results are achieved.

When developing strategies, the agency should consider the following:

• Budget: Establishing a budget is essential for any marketing plan. It helps the agency determine how much it can spend on each strategy and ensure that it is within the client’s budget.
• Timing: Timing is key when it comes to marketing. The agency should consider when the best time is to launch a campaign or create content.
• Channels: Selecting the right channels is essential for any marketing plan. The agency should consider which channels are most effective for reaching the target audience.
• Content: Creating content that resonates with the target audience is essential for any marketing plan. The agency should consider what type of content will be most effective in reaching the desired audience.
• Measurement: Measuring the success of the strategies is essential for any marketing plan. The agency should consider which metrics to track and how to measure progress.

By identifying goals and objectives, and developing strategies to reach them, a marketing agency can ensure that its clients are getting the most out of their marketing efforts. It can provide a roadmap for the agency to follow, ensuring that all marketing efforts are focused on the right objectives. It can also help the agency identify potential opportunities and develop strategies to capitalize on them.

Once the strategies have been developed, the next step is to develop tactics to implement them. Tactics are the specific actions that the agency will take to reach the target audience and achieve the desired objectives. Tactics should be tailored to the specific strategies and objectives.

When developing tactics, the agency should consider the following:

• Advertising: Advertising is a great way to reach a large audience. The agency should consider which platforms and channels are best for reaching the target audience.
• Social Media: Social media is a powerful tool for reaching a target audience. The agency should consider which platforms are best for reaching the target audience and creating content that resonates with them.
• Events: Events can be a great way to reach a target audience. The agency should consider which events are best for reaching the target audience and creating content that resonates with them.
• Public Relations: Public relations can be a great way to reach a target audience. The agency should consider which channels are best for reaching the target audience and creating content that resonates with them.
• Content Marketing : Content marketing is a great way to reach a target audience. The agency should consider which platforms are best for reaching the target audience and creating content that resonates with them.

By developing strategies and tactics, a marketing agency can ensure that its clients are getting the most out of their marketing efforts. It can provide a roadmap for the agency to follow, ensuring that all marketing efforts are focused on the right objectives. It can also help the agency identify potential opportunities and develop strategies to capitalize on them.

Once the strategies and tactics have been developed, the next step is to implement them. This involves taking the necessary steps to ensure that the strategies and tactics are executed effectively. The agency should consider the following when implementing the plan:

• Timing: Timing is key when implementing a plan. The agency should consider when the best time is to launch the plan and ensure that all elements are in place.
• Resources: The agency should consider the resources that are needed to implement the plan. This includes personnel, budget, and other resources.
• Measurement: The agency should consider how it will measure the success of the plan. This includes setting key performance indicators and tracking progress.
• Communication: The agency should consider how it will communicate the plan to the target audience. This includes developing a communication plan and ensuring that all stakeholders are informed.

By taking the necessary steps to implement the plan, the agency can ensure that the strategies and tactics are executed effectively. This will help the agency achieve its desired objectives and ensure that the client is getting the most out of their marketing efforts.

What is the purpose of a marketing plan?

The purpose of a marketing plan is to outline the strategies and tactics that will be used to reach a company”s marketing goals and objectives. It is a document that outlines the steps that need to be taken in order to achieve the desired results.

What are the components of a marketing plan?

The components of a marketing plan typically include an introduction, identifying goals and objectives, developing strategies and tactics, implementing the plan, measuring results, and a conclusion.

How often should a marketing plan be updated?

A marketing plan should be updated regularly, as the market and the company”s goals and objectives may change over time. It is important to review the plan regularly to ensure that it is still relevant and effective.

What are the benefits of having a marketing plan?

Having a marketing plan can help a company to focus its efforts and resources on the most effective strategies and tactics. It can also help to ensure that the company is working towards its goals and objectives in an organized and efficient manner.

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An Explanation of Marketing in Business

Susan Ward wrote about small businesses for The Balance for 18 years. She has run an IT consulting firm and designed and presented courses on how to promote small businesses.

Image by Derek Abella © The Balance 2019 

Marketing is the process of interesting potential customers and clients in your products and/or services. The key word in this marketing definition is "process"; marketing involves researching, promoting, selling , and distributing your products or services.

It's a huge topic, which is why there are tomes written on marketing, and why you can take a four-year marketing degree. But essentially marketing involves everything you do to get your potential customers and your product or service together.

When you're putting together a marketing program for your business, concentrate on the basics, the four key components of any marketing plan: Products and Services, Promotion , Distribution, and Pricing.

The name of the game in marketing is attracting and retaining a growing base of satisfied customers. Creating and implementing a marketing plan will keep your marketing efforts focused and increase your sales.

Apple Inc. Marketing Success Story

Started from a garage in California's Los Altos in 1976, Apple Inc. became the first U.S. company to reach $2 trillion in market capitalization. With over 147,000 employees worldwide and $247.5 billion in revenue in 2020, if Apple was a country, its market capitalization would make it among the largest countries in the world by GDP.   

In addition to developing the Apple I and Apple II lines of personal computers starting in 1976, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs went on to develop a number of unique and innovative technology products, including the Mac computer, the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and the Apple Watch. 

While Steve Jobs is considered a technical genius, he was also a brilliant marketer.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak once said that marketing was Jobs' greatest skill. He is recalled for his trademark "One More Thing..." joke that he often used in presentations, and his keynote introduction of the iPhone on the Macworld stage in 2007 is still regarded as one of the finest marketing performances ever.

Apple's 1984 Super Bowl ad for the launch of the Macintosh is widely considered to be the best Super Bowl commercial ever. The decision to proceed with the ad was highly controversial within Apple. The board of directors was not in favor of the ad, viewing it as costly and a slap in the face to competitor IBM. However, Jobs loved the ad and Apple was not able to sell off the last time slot that it had already purchased before the board began to dissent, and so the ad ran. Within the first 100 days after the Super Bowl airing, Apple recorded $155 million in sales of the Macintosh.   

Jobs had a passion for making innovative, beautifully designed products for the mass market. 

“I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost much,” he once stated. “It was the original vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod.” (Smithsonian Magazine)  

Beauty and simplicity became core brand values of Apple, but while many Apple products were very good at marketing themselves, Jobs recognized early on that he needed to integrate form, function, and great marketing to become really successful, and by doing so he propelled Apple into one of the world's most recognized consumer brands.

Even when Apple was not first out of the gate with a revolutionary new product, it was often the company that took an existing product, re-engineered it in a unique fashion, developed a brilliant marketing campaign, and made it into an enormous commercial success. The iPhone is such an example, which when released destroyed competitors such as Nokia and Blackberry within a few years.​

Apple's marketing success revolves around building and sustaining brand loyalty . Apple customers tend to be extremely loyal to the brand and many devoted Apple fans will purchase every new release of an Apple product. It is not uncommon for consumers to line up for hours or days for a new iPhone or other Apple product release. According to BankMyCell, Apple's iPhone led Samsung, LG, and all other smartphones in brand loyalty with a 74.6% trade-in rate in 2019.   

Apple is a consistent winner of awards for marketing excellence, including:

• Apple Inc. “Get a Mac” Named the Most Successful Marketing Campaign of the year at the 2007 Annual Effie Awards.   (The "Get a Mac" ad campaign was hugely successful for Apple, and they experienced 42% market share growth in its first year. The series portrayed a young, hip Mac owner versus a bumbling, nerdy-looking, decidedly uncool PC owner.)   In 2010, Adweek declared "Get a Mac" to be the best advertising campaign of the decade.  
• The CMO Survey Award for Marketing Excellence overall winner for 12 consecutive years through 2020.  
• "Technology Brand of the Year" in 2013 by marketing research firm Harris Interactive.  

Marketing Example: One of the maxims of marketing is that a profitable sales volume is more desirable than the maximum sales volume.

Apple. “ Form 10-K [FY 2020] ,” Pages 4, 19. Download “2020 10-K.” Accessed Jan. 5, 2021.

Fred S. Goldberg. “ The Insanity of Advertising: Memoirs of a Mad Man ,” Search inside for "$155 million over the next 100 days." Chicago Review Press, 2019.

Smithsonian Magazine. “ How Steve Jobs’ Love of Simplicity Fueled a Design Revolution .” Accessed Jan. 5, 2021.

BankMyCell. “ Smartphone Brand Loyalty Statistics (2019) .” Accessed Jan. 5, 2021.

Effie. ” 2007 .” Accessed Jan. 5, 2021.

Effie. “ 2007 Effie Awards ,” Page 24. Accessed Jan. 5, 2021.

Adweek. “ Apple’s ‘Get a Mac,’ the Complete Campaign .” Accessed Jan. 5, 2021.

The CMO Survey. “ CMO Survey Award for Marketing Excellence .” Accessed Jan. 5, 2021.

The Harris Poll. “ Best of 2013 ,” Page 6. Accessed Jan. 5, 2021.

What is Marketing, and What's Its Purpose?

Updated: January 24, 2022

Published: February 25, 2021

Dictionary.com defines marketing as, "the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising."

If you work in a marketing role like I do, it's probably difficult for you to define marketing even though you see and use it every day -- the term marketing is a bit all-encompassing and variable for a straightforward definition.

This definition feels unhelpful.

The selling part, for instance, overlaps a little too snuggly with a "what is sales" definition, and the word advertising makes me think of Mad Men brainstorming sessions.

But upon digging deeper, I began seeing that actually, marketing does overlap heavily with advertising and sales. Marketing is present in all stages of the business, beginning to end.

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What is marketing?

Marketing refers to any actions a company takes to attract an audience to the company's product or services through high-quality messaging. Marketing aims to deliver standalone value for prospects and consumers through content, with the long-term goal of demonstrating product value, strengthening brand loyalty, and ultimately increasing sales.

At first, I wondered why marketing was a necessary component during product development, or a sales pitch, or retail distribution. But it makes sense when you think about it -- marketers have the firmest finger on the pulse of your consumer persona.

The purpose of marketing is to research and analyze your consumers all the time, conduct focus groups, send out surveys, study online shopping habits, and ask one underlying question: "Where, when, and how does our consumer want to communicate with our business?"

Here, let's explore the purposes of marketing, along with types of marketing, the 4 P's of marketing, and the difference between marketing and advertising.

Whether you're a seasoned marketer looking to refresh your definitions, or a beginner looking to understand what marketing is in the first place, we've got you covered. Let's dive in. 

Purpose of Marketing

Marketing is the process of getting people interested in your company's product or service. This happens through market research, analysis, and understanding your ideal customer's interests. Marketing pertains to all aspects of a business, including product development, distribution methods, sales, and advertising.

Modern marketing began in the 1950s when people started to use more than just print media to endorse a product. As TV -- and soon, the internet -- entered households, marketers could conduct entire campaigns across multiple platforms. And as you might expect, over the last 70 years, marketers have become increasingly important to fine-tuning how a business sells a product to consumers to optimize success.

In fact, the fundamental purpose of marketing is to attract consumers to your brand through messaging. Ideally, that messaging will helpful and educational to your target audience so you can convert consumers into leads.

Today, there are literally dozens of places one can carry out a marketing campaign -- where does one do it in the 21st century?

Types of Marketing

Where your marketing campaigns live depends entirely on where your customers spend their time. It's up to you to conduct market research that determines which types of marketing -- and which mix of tools within each type -- is best for building your brand. Here are several types of marketing that are relevant today, some of which have stood the test of time:

• Internet marketing: Inspired by an Excedrin product campaign that took place online, the very idea of having a presence on the internet for business reasons is a type of marketing in and of itself.
• Search engine optimization: Abbreviated "SEO," this is the process of optimizing content on a website so that it appears in search engine results. It's used by marketers to attract people who perform searches that imply they're interested in learning about a particular industry.
• Blog marketing: Blogs are no longer exclusive to the individual writer. Brands now publish blogs to write about their industry and nurture the interest of potential customers who browse the internet for information.
• Social media marketing: Businesses can use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and similar social networks to create impressions on their audience over time.
• Print marketing: As newspapers and magazines get better at understanding who subscribes to their print material, businesses continue to sponsor articles, photography, and similar content in the publications their customers are reading.
• Search engine marketing: This type of marketing is a bit different than SEO, which is described above. Businesses can now pay a search engine to place links on pages of its index that get high exposure to their audience. (It's a concept called "pay-per-click" -- I'll show you an example of this in the next section).
• Video marketing: While there were once just commercials, marketers now put money into creating and publishing all kinds of videos that entertain and educate their core customers.

Marketing and Advertising

If marketing is a wheel, advertising is one spoke of that wheel.

Marketing entails product development, market research, product distribution, sales strategy, public relations, and customer support. Marketing is necessary in all stages of a business's selling journey, and it can use numerous platforms, social media channels, and teams within their organization to identify their audience, communicate to it, amplify its voice, and build brand loyalty over time.

On the other hand, advertising is just one component of marketing. It's a strategic effort, usually paid for, to spread awareness of a product or service as a part of the more holistic goals outlined above. Put simply, it's not the only method used by marketers to sell a product.

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Here's an example (keep reading, there's a quiz at the end of it):

Let's say a business is rolling out a brand new product and wants to create a campaign promoting that product to its customer base. This company's channels of choice are Facebook, Instagram, Google, and its company website. It uses all of these spaces to support its various campaigns every quarter and generate leads through those campaigns.

To broadcast its new product launch, it publishes a downloadable product guide to its website, posts a video to Instagram demonstrating its new product, and invests in a series of sponsored search results on Google directing traffic to a new product page on its website.

Now, which of the above decisions were marketing, and which were advertising?

The advertising took place on Instagram and Google . Instagram generally isn't an advertising channel, but when used for branding, you can develop a base of followers that's primed for a gentle product announcement every now and again. Google was definitely used for advertising in this example; the company paid for space on Google -- a program known as pay-per-click (PPC) -- on which to drive traffic to a specific page focused on its product. A classic online ad.

Where did the marketing take place? This was a bit of a trick question, as the marketing was the entire process . By aligning Instagram, Google, and its own website around a customer-focused initiative, the company ran a three-part marketing campaign that identified its audience, created a message for that audience, and delivered it across the industry to maximize its impact.

The 4 Ps of Marketing

In the 1960's, E Jerome McCarthy came up with the 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, place, promotion.

Essentially, these 4 Ps explain how marketing interacts with each stage of the business.

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Let's say you come up with an idea for a product you want your business to sell. What's next? You probably won't be successful if you just start selling it.

Instead, you need your marketing team to do market research and answer some critical questions: Who's your target audience? Is there market fit for this product? What messaging will increase product sales, and on which platforms? How should your product developers modify the product to increase likelihood of success? What do focus groups think of the product, and what questions or hesitations do they have?

Marketers use the answers to these questions to help businesses understand the demand for the product and increase product quality by mentioning concerns stemming from focus group or survey participants.

Your marketing team will check out competitors' product prices, or use focus groups and surveys, to estimate how much your ideal customer is willing to pay. Price it too high, and you'll lose out on a solid customer base. Price it too low, and you might lose more money than you gain. Fortunately, marketers can use industry research and consumer analysis to gauge a good price range.

It's critical that your marketing department uses their understanding and analysis of your business's consumers to offer suggestions for how and where to sell your product. Perhaps they believe an ecommerce site works better than a retail location, or vice versa. Or, maybe they can offer insights into which locations would be most viable to sell your product, either nationally and internationally.

This P is likely the one you expected from the get-go: promotion entails any online or print advertisement, event, or discount your marketing team creates to increase awareness and interest in your product, and, ultimately, lead to more sales. During this stage, you'll likely see methods like public relations campaigns, advertisements, or social media promotions.

Hopefully, our definition and the four Ps help you understand marketing's purpose and how to define it. Marketing intersects with all areas of a business, so it's important you understand how to use marketing to increase your business's efficiency and success.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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• Content Marketing

35 Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know

Stay informed with the latest content marketing statistics. Discover how optimized content can elevate your digital marketing efforts.

Content continues to sit atop the list of priorities in most marketing strategies, and there is plenty of evidence to support the reasoning.

Simply put, content marketing is crucial to any digital marketing strategy, whether running a small local business or a large multinational corporation.

After all, content in its many and evolving forms is indisputably the very lifeblood upon which the web and social media are based.

Modern SEO has effectively become optimized content marketing for all intents and purposes.

This is when Google demands and rewards businesses that create content demonstrating experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) for their customers – content that answers all of the questions consumers may have about their services, products, or business in general.

Content marketing involves creating and sharing helpful, relevant, entertaining, and consistent content in various text, image, video, and audio-based formats to the plethora of traditional and online channels available to modern marketers.

The primary focus should be on attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience, with the ultimate goal of driving profitable customer action.

Different types of content can and should be created for each stage of a customer’s journey .

Some content, like blogs or how-to videos, are informative or educational. Meanwhile, other content, like promotional campaign landing pages , gets to the point of enticing prospective customers to buy.

But with so much content being produced and shared every day, it’s important to stay updated on the latest trends and best practices in content marketing to keep pace and understand what strategies may be most effective.

Never has this been more true than in 2024, when we’re in the midst of a content revolution led by generative AI , which some feel represents both an opportunity and a threat to marketers.

To help you keep up, here are 35 content marketing statistics I think you should know:

Content Marketing Usage

How many businesses are leveraging content marketing, and how are they planning to find success?

• According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 73% of B2B marketers, and 70% of B2C marketers use content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy.
• 97% of marketers surveyed by Semrush achieved success with their content marketing in 2023.
• A B2B Content Marketing Study conducted by CMI found that 40% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy; 33% have a strategy, but it’s not documented, and 27% have no strategy.
• Half of the surveyed marketers by CMI said they outsource at least one content marketing activity.

Content Marketing Strategy

What strategies are content marketers using or finding to be most effective?

• 83% of marketers believe it’s more effective to create higher quality content less often. (Source: Hubspot)
• In a 2022 Statista Research Study of marketers worldwide, 62% of respondents emphasized the importance of being “always on” for their customers, while 23% viewed content-led communications as the most effective method for personalized targeting efforts.
• With the increased focus on AI-generated search engine results, 31% of B2B marketers say they are sharpening their focus on user intent/answering questions, 27% are creating more thought leadership content, and 22% are creating more conversational content. (Source: CMI)

Types Of Content

Content marketing was synonymous with posting blogs, but the web and content have evolved into audio, video, interactive, and meta formats.

Here are a few stats on how the various types of content are trending and performing.

• Short-form video content, like TikTok and Instagram Reel, is the No. 1 content marketing format, offering the highest return on investment (ROI).
• 43% of marketers reported that original graphics (like infographics and illustrations) were the most effective type of visual content. (Source: Venngage)
• 72% of B2C marketers expected their organization to invest in video marketing in 2022. (Source: Content Marketing Institute – CMI)
• The State of Content Marketing: 2023 Global Report by Semrush reveals that articles containing at least one video tend to attract 70% more organic traffic than those without.
• Interactive content generates 52.6% more engagement compared to static content. On average, buyers spend 8.5 minutes viewing static content items and 13 minutes on interactive content items. (Source: Mediafly)

Content Creation

Creating helpful, unique, engaging content can be one of a marketer’s greatest challenges. However, innovative marketers are looking at generative AI as a tool to help ideate, create, edit, and analyze content quicker and more cost-effectively.

Here are some stats around content creation and just how quickly AI is changing the game.

• Generative AI reached over 100 million users just two months after ChatGPT’s launch. (Source: Search Engine Journal)
• A recent Ahrefs poll found that almost 80% of respondents had already adopted AI tools in their content marketing strategies.
• Marketers who are using AI said it helps most with brainstorming new topics ( 51%) , researching headlines and keywords (45%), and writing drafts (45%). (Source: CMI)
• Further, marketers polled by Hubspot said they save 2.5 hours per day using AI for content.

Content Distribution

It is not simply enough to create and publish content.

For a content strategy to be successful, it must include distributing content via the channels frequented by a business’s target audience.

• Facebook is still the dominant social channel for content distribution, but video-centric channels like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are growing the fastest .  (Source: Hubspot)
• B2B marketers reported to CMI that LinkedIn was the most common and top-performing organic social media distribution channel at 84% by a healthy margin. All other channels came in under 30%.
• 80% of B2B marketers who use paid distribution use paid social media advertising. (Source: CMI)

Content Consumption

Once content reaches an audience, it’s important to understand how an audience consumes the content or takes action as a result.

• A 2023 Content Preferences Study by Demand Gen reveals that 62% of B2B buyers prefer practical content like case studies to inform their purchasing decisions, citing “a need for valid sources.”
• The same study also found that buyers tend to rely heavily on content when researching potential business solutions, with 46% reporting that they increased the amount of content they consumed during this time.
• In a recent post, blogger Ryan Robinson reports the average reader spends 37 seconds reading a blog.
• DemandGen’s survey participants also said they rely most on demos ( 62% ) and user reviews (55%) to gain valuable insights into how a solution will meet their needs.

Content Marketing Performance

One of the primary reasons content marketing has taken off is its ability to be measured, optimized, and tied to a return on investment.

• B2C marketers reported to CMI that the top three goals content marketing helps them to achieve are creating brand awareness, building trust, and educating their target audience.
• 87% of B2B marketers surveyed use content marketing successfully to generate leads.
• 56% of marketers who leverage blogging say it’s an effective tactic, and 10% say it generates the greatest return on investment (ROI).
• 94% of marketers said personalization boosts sales.

Content Marketing Budgets

Budget changes and the willingness to invest in specific marketing strategies are good indicators of how popular and effective these strategies are at a macro level.

The following stats certainly seem to indicate marketers have bought into the value of content.

• 61% of B2C marketers said their 2022 content marketing budget would exceed their 2021 budget.
• 22% of B2B marketers said they spent 50% or more of their total marketing budget on content marketing. Furthermore, 43% saw their content marketing budgets grow from 2020 to 2021, and 66% expected them to grow again in 2022.

Content Challenges

All forms of marketing come with challenges related to time, resources, expertise, and competition.

Recognizing and addressing these challenges head-on with well-thought-out strategies is the best way to overcome them and realize success.

• Top 3 content challenges included “attracting quality leads with content” ( 45% ), “creating more content faster” (38%), and “generating content ideas” (35%). (Source: Semrush’s The State of Content Marketing: 2023 Global Report)
• 44% of marketers polled for CMI’s 2022 B2B report highlighted the challenge of creating the right content for multi-level roles as their top concern. This replaced internal communication as the top challenge from the previous year.
• Changes to SEO/search algorithms ( 64% ), changes to social media algorithms (53%), and data management/analytics (48%) are also among the top concerns for B2C marketers.
• 47% of people are seeking downtime from internet-enabled devices due to digital fatigue.
• While generative AI has noted benefits, it also presents challenges for some marketers who fear it may replace them. In Hubspot’s study, 23% said they felt we should avoid using generative AI.
• Another challenge with AI is how quickly it has come onto the scene without giving organizations time to provide training or to create policies and procedures for its appropriate and legal use. According to CMI, when asked if their organizations have guidelines for using generative AI tools, 31% of marketers said yes, 61% said no, and 8% were unsure.

Time To Get Started

As you can clearly see and perhaps have already realized, content marketing can be a highly effective and cost-efficient way to generate leads, build brand awareness, and drive sales. Content, in its many formats, powers virtually all online interactions.

Generative AI is effectively helping to solve some of the time and resource challenges by acting as a turbo-powered marketing assistant, while also raising a few procedural concerns.

However, the demand for content remains strong.

Those willing to put in the work of building a documented content strategy and executing it – by producing, optimizing, distributing, and monitoring high-value, relevant, customer-centric content, with the help of AI or not – can reap significant business rewards.

More resources:

• 6 Ways To Humanize Your Content In The AI Era
• Interactive Content: 10 Types To Engage Your Audience
• B2B Lead Generation: Create Content That Converts

Featured Image: Deemak Daksina/Shutterstock 

Jeff has been helping organizations manage, measure and optimize their Web presences for over 20 years. He has deep knowledge ...

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What Is Marketing?

Understanding marketing.

• What Are the 4 P's of Marketing?

Types of Marketing Strategies

• Limitations

The Bottom Line

• Marketing Essentials

Marketing in Business: Strategies and Types Explained

Ariel Courage is an experienced editor, researcher, and former fact-checker. She has performed editing and fact-checking work for several leading finance publications, including The Motley Fool and Passport to Wall Street.

Investopedia / Lara Antal

Marketing refers to the activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of its products or services. Marketing includes advertising and allows businesses to sell products and services to consumers, other businesses, and organizations.

Professionals who work in a corporation's marketing and promotion departments seek to get the attention of key potential audiences through advertising. Promotions are targeted to certain audiences and may involve celebrity endorsements , catchy phrases or slogans, memorable packaging or graphic designs, and overall media exposure.

Key Takeaways

• Marketing refers to all activities a company does to promote and sell products or services to consumers.
• Marketing makes use of the "marketing mix," also known as the four Ps—product, price, place, and promotion.
• Marketing used to be centered around traditional marketing techniques including television, radio, mail, and word-of-mouth strategies.
• Though traditional marketing is still prevalent, digital marketing now allows companies to engage in newsletter, social media, affiliate, and content marketing strategies.
• At its core, marketing seeks to take a product or service, identify its ideal customers, and draw the customers' attention to the product or service available.

Marketing as a discipline involves all the actions a company undertakes to draw in customers and maintain relationships with them. Networking with potential or past clients is part of the work too and may include writing thank you emails, playing golf with prospective clients, returning calls and emails quickly, and meeting with clients for coffee or a meal.

At its most basic level, marketing seeks to match a company's products and services to customers who want access to those products. Matching products to customers ultimately ensures profitability.

Formal Definition:

"Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. " —Official definition from the American Marketing Association, approved 2017.

What Are the 4 P's of Marketing?

Product, price, place, and promotion are the Four Ps of marketing. The Four Ps collectively make up the essential mix a company needs to market a product or service. Neil Borden popularized the idea of the  marketing mix and the concept of the Four Ps in the 1950s.

Product refers to an item or items the business plans to offer to customers. The product should seek to fulfill an absence in the market or fulfill consumer demand for a greater amount of a product already available. Before they can prepare an appropriate campaign, marketers need to understand what product is being sold, how it stands out from its competitors, whether the product can also be paired with a secondary product or product line , and whether there are substitute products in the market.

Price refers to how much the company will sell the product for. When establishing a price, companies must consider the unit cost price, marketing costs, and distribution expenses. Companies must also consider the price of competing products in the marketplace and whether their proposed price point is sufficient to represent a reasonable alternative for consumers.

Place refers to the distribution of the product. Key considerations include whether the company will sell the product through a physical storefront, online, or through both distribution channels. When it's sold in a storefront, what kind of physical product placement does it get? When it's sold online, what kind of digital product placement does it get?

Promotion, the fourth P, is the integrated marketing communications campaign. Promotion includes a variety of activities such as advertising , selling, sales promotions, public relations, direct marketing, sponsorship, and guerrilla marketing .

Promotions vary depending on what stage of the product life cycle the product is in. Marketers understand that consumers associate a product’s price and distribution with its quality, and they take this into account when devising the overall marketing strategy.

Marketing refers to any activities undertaken by a company to promote the buying or selling of a service. If there is a limited quantity of a product, a company may market itself in an attempt to be better positioned as one of the few who get to buy something.

Marketing is comprised of an incredibly broad and diverse set of strategies. The industry continues to evolve, and the strategies below may be better suited for some companies over others.

Traditional Marketing Strategies

Before technology and the Internet, traditional marketing was the primary way companies would market their goods to customers. The main types of traditional marketing strategies include:

• Outdoor Marketing: This entails public displays of advertising external to a consumer's house. This includes billboards, printed advertisements on benches, sticker wraps on vehicles, or advertisements on public transit.
• Print Marketing: This entails small, easily printed content that is easy to replicate. Traditionally, companies often mass-produced printed materials, as the printed content was the same for all customers. Today, more flexibility in printing processes means that materials can be differentiated.
• Direct Marketing : This entails specific content delivered to potential customers. Some print marketing content could be mailed. Otherwise, direct marketing mediums could include coupons, vouchers for free goods, or pamphlets.
• Electronic Marketing: This entails the use of TV and radio for advertising. Through short bursts of digital content, a company can convey information to a customer through visual or auditory media that may grab a viewer's attention better than a printed form.
• Event Marketing: This entails attempting to gather potential customers at a specific location for the opportunity to speak with them about products or demonstrate products. This includes conferences, trade shows, seminars, roadshows , or private events.

Digital Marketing

The marketing industry has been forever changed with the introduction of digital marketing. From the early days of pop-up ads to targeted placements based on viewing history, there are now innovative ways companies can reach customers through digital marketing.

• Search Engine Marketing: This entails companies attempting to increase search traffic through two ways. First, companies can pay search engines for placement on result pages. Second, companies can emphasize search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to organically place high on search results.
• E-mail Marketing: This entails companies obtaining customer or potential customer e-mail addresses and distributing messages or newsletters. These messages can include coupons, discount opportunities, or advance notice of upcoming sales.
• Social Media Marketing: This entails building an online presence on specific social media platforms. Like search engine marketing, companies can place paid advertisements to bypass algorithms and obtain a higher chance of being seen by viewers. Otherwise, a company can attempt to organically grow by posting content, interacting with followers, or uploading media like photos and videos.
• Affiliate Marketing: This entails using third-party advertising to drive customer interest. Often, an affiliate that will get a commission from a sale will do affiliate marketing as the third party is incentivized to drive a sale for a good that is not their own original product.
• Content Marketing: This entails creating content, whether eBooks, infographics, video seminars, or other downloadable content. The goal is to create a product (often free) to share information about a product, obtain customer information, and encourage customers to continue with the company beyond the content.

In 1978, Gary Thuerk sent a message to roughly 400 people using ARPANET, the first public packet-switched computer network. With that message, the first ever recorded spam e-mail message had been sent.

What Are the Benefits of Marketing?

Well-defined marketing strategies can benefit a company in several ways. It may be challenging to develop the right strategy or execute the plan; when done well, marketing can yield the following results:

• Audience Generation. Marketing allows a company to target specific people it believes will benefit from its product or service. Sometimes, people know they have the need. Other times, they don't realize it. Marketing enables a company to connect with a cohort of people that fit the demographic of whom the company aims to serve.
• Inward Education. Marketing is useful for collecting information to be processed internally to drive success. For example, consider market research that finds a certain product is primarily purchased by women aged 18 to 34 years old. By collecting this information, a company can better understand how to cater to this demographic, drive sales, and be more efficient with resources.
• Outward Education. Marketing can also be used to communicate with the world what your company does, what products you sell, and how your company can enrich the lives of others. Campaigns can be educational, informing those outside of your company why they need your product. In addition, marketing campaigns let a company introduce itself, its history, its owners, and its motivation for being the company it is.
• Brand Creation. Marketing allows for a company to take an offensive approach to creating a brand. Instead of a customer shaping their opinion of a company based on their interactions, a company can preemptively engage a customer with specific content or media to drive certain emotions or reactions. This allows a company to shape its image before the customer has ever interacted with its products.
• Long-lasting. Marketing campaigns done right can have a long-lasting impact on customers. Consider Poppin' Fresh, also known as the Pillsbury Doughboy. First appearing in 1965, the mascot has helped create a long-lasting, warm, friendly brand for Pillsbury.
• Financial Performance. The ultimate goal and benefit of marketing are to drive sales. When relationships with customers are stronger, well-defined, and positive, customers are more likely to engage in sales. When marketing is done right, customers turn to your company, and you gain a competitive advantage over your competitors. Even if both products are exactly the same, marketing can create that competitive advantage for why a client picks you over someone else.

According to MarTech, a digital marketing provider, the world will spend $4.7 trillion on marketing by 2025. This estimate includes an increase of $1.1 trillion from 2021 to 2025.

What Are the Limitations of Marketing?

Though there are many reasons a company embarks on marketing campaigns, there are several limitations to the industry.

• Oversaturation. Every company wants customers to buy its product and not its competitors. Therefore, marketing channels can be competitive as companies strive to garner more positive attention and recognition. If too many companies are competing, a customer's attention may be strongly diluted, resulting in any form of advertising not being effective.
• Devaluation. When a company promotes a price discount or sale, the public may psychologically eventually see that product as worth less in the future. If a campaign is so strong, customers may even wait to purchase a good knowing or remembering what the sale price was from before. For example, some may intentionally hold off buying goods if Black Friday is approaching.
• No Guaranteed Success. Marketing campaigns may incur upfront expenses that hold no promise of future success. This is also true of market research studies, where time, effort, and resources are poured into a study that may yield no usable or helpful results.
• Customer Bias. Loyal, long-time customers need no enticing to buy a company's brand or product. However, newer, uninitiated customers may. Marketing naturally is biased towards non-loyal patrons as those who already support the company would be better served by further investment in product improvement.
• Cost. Marketing campaigns may be expensive. Digital marketing campaigns may be labor-intensive to set up and costly to maintain the scheduling, implementation, and execution of the plan. Don't forget about the headlines that promote Super Bowl commercial expenses in the millions.
• Economy-Dependent. Marketing is most successful when people have capital to spend. Though marketing can create non-financial benefits such as brand loyalty and product recognition, the ultimate goal is to drive sales. During unfavorable macroeconomic conditions when unemployment is high or recession concerns are elevated, consumers may be less likely to spend no matter how great a marketing campaign may be.

Marketing is a division of a company, product line, individual, or entity that promotes its service. Marketing attempts to encourage market participants to buy their product and commit loyalty to a specific company .

Why Is Marketing So Important?

Marketing is important for a few reasons. First, marketing campaigns may be the first time a customer interacts or is exposed to a company's product. A company has the opportunity to educate, promote, and encourage potential buyers.

Marketing also helps shape the brand image a company wants to convey. For example, an outdoor camping gear company that wants to be known for its rugged, tough goods can embark on specific campaigns that embody these traits and make these emotions memorable to prospective customers.

What Is the Purpose of Marketing?

An important goal of marketing is propelling a company’s growth. This can be seen through attracting and retaining new customers. 

Companies may apply many different marketing strategies to achieve these goals. For instance, matching products with customers' needs could involve personalization, prediction, and essentially knowing the right problem to solve. 

Another strategy is creating value through the customer experience. This is demonstrated through efforts to elevate customer satisfaction and remove any difficulties with the product or service.

What Are the 4 Ps of Marketing?

A commonly used concept in the marketing field, the Four Ps of marketing looks at four key elements of a marketing strategy. The Four Ps consist of product, price, place, and promotion. 

What Are the Types of Marketing?

There are dozens of types of marketing, and the types have proliferated with the introduction and rise of social media, mobile platforms, and technological advancements. Before technology, marketing might have been geared towards mail campaigns, word-of-mouth campaigns, billboards, delivery of sample products, TV commercials, or telemarketing. Now, marketing encompasses social media, targeted ads, e-mail marketing, inbound marketing to attract web traffic, and more.

Marketing is an essential part of any business. It allows for a business's products or services to be known to consumers and it helps entice consumers to buy its product over a competitor's. Though marketing costs a significant amount of money, companies create marketing budgets as a part of expenses in the hope that sales and profits will outweigh the marketing costs.

American Marketing Association. " What Is Marketing? "

World Economic Forum. " 40 Years On From the First Spam E-mail, What Have We Learned? "

Pillsbury. " How Well Do You Know the Pillsbury Doughboy? "

MarTech. " Worldwide Spend on Marketing to Hit $4.7 Trillion By 2025 ."

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The 2024 solar eclipse is next week! Here's everything you need to know.

The april 8, 2024 total solar eclipse will cross the united states, with millions of americans witnessing the spectacle. here's info on the eclipse's time, path, how to find glasses and more..

We are exactly one week from the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse that'll cross a wide swath of the United States, with an expected 34 million Americans witnessing the celestial show.

The 2024 solar eclipse will last longer than the one viewed  by more than 20 million people in August 2017 , and according to NASA won’t happen again  for another 20 years . Fifteen total solar eclipses have been recorded in the U.S. in the last 150 years, with the next one expected in August 2044 .

Even if you're not in the path of totality, like most of Michigan, you can still watch the spectacle. You will need special eclipse glasses to be able to take in the experience so you don't risk eye damage . Thankfully, there is still time to get your hands on a pair — or create your own eclipse viewer at home .

Here's everything to know about the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse.

What is a solar eclipse?

Solar eclipses occur when the moon passes directly between the sun and Earth’s orbits , creating an eclipse of Earth’s view of the sun. The term "eclipse" traces its roots to the Latin  “eclipsis,” drawn from the Greek  “ekleipsis.”

The  path of totality  is the predicted path of the eclipse; in this case, from Mexico, through the U.S. across Texas and North America to the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. States  in the path of totality  for the 2024 solar eclipse include Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

What is the 2024 solar eclipse path?

Use the map below to see NASA's prediction of the April 8 solar eclipse's path of totality. Keep in mind that this is a prediction, and predictions can vary, but they may only affect you if you're on the very edge of the path .

More: What is the meaning of the word 'eclipse'? Here is its origin ahead of April 8 event

When is the solar eclipse 2024? When does the solar eclipse start near me?

The 2024 solar eclipse is Monday, April 8, 2024. Its path of totality will cross the United States from approximately 2:27 p.m. to 3:35 p.m. Eastern time. That's when, if you're in the path, the sky will darken for several minutes and the air will get colder.

Use the ZIP code locator below to find out when the eclipse begins and ends in your area — and what it will look like. (Can't see it? Hit refresh.)

What time is the solar eclipse in Michigan?

Only one small sliver of Michigan is in the 2024 eclipse's path of totality, in southeastern Monroe County. That includes Luna Pier, which sits along Lake Erie, just north of Toledo. Its residents are getting excited , albeit a little concerned about potential traffic snarls.

Most of the rest of Michigan will see somewhere between 90-99% coverage of the sun , though it won't be visible to the naked eye; you'll need special glasses or a viewer (more on that later).

When is the solar eclipse in Detroit?

In Detroit, where there will be 99.4% coverage of the sun, the 2024 solar eclipse will begin at 1:58 p.m. and reach maximum totality, or coverage, around 3:14 p.m. It will conclude with a final partial eclipse at 4:27 p.m.

What is the April 8, 2024 weather forecast in Michigan?

Clear skies will be essential to viewing the eclipse, especially since most of Michigan doesn't fall in the path of totality.

As of Friday, the latest weather forecast for southeast Michigan shows potential cloud cover, but encouraging signs that it'll be clear enough to view the eclipse .  AccuWeather  predicts a high of 63 degrees in Detroit on April 8, with "variable cloudiness" and a chance of a shower in the morning.  Weather.com  also predicts partly cloudy skies and a high of 66 degrees.

If these predictions hold up, that would give eclipse viewers in southeast Michigan  a chance to see the eclipse at least somewhere within the 2.5-hour window, as long as the clouds break at any point. (But remember, it's Michigan; the weather forecast changes fast. Stay tuned to Freep.com for the latest.)

How to find 2024 solar eclipse glasses

First of all, make sure the eclipse glasses you're searching for are safe. According to  NASA's eclipse safety website , the agency does not recommend specific eyewear for eclipse viewing but  does  recommend glasses that come with an IOS compliance label, or standard, of 12312-2, on the packaging. The eyewear may also be labeled IOS 12312-2:2015. According to NASA, torn, scratched, or otherwise damaged eyewear should be discarded.

While local hardware and big box retailers may have eclipse eyewear on their shelves, buyer beware, especially if they claim to be endorsed by NASA. NASA does not make specific recommendations.

Here's where to find eclipse glasses :

• The American Astronomical Society  has a list of approved solar-eclipse glasses suppliers  here .  You'll be able to find eclipse glasses on  Amazon  in bulk; just ensure they are approved before you buy them. Here are more ideas on where to find free eclipse glasses .
• Warby Parker , the eyewear company,  is giving away eclipse eyewear at its stores beginning Monday , but does not have details about the availability of the free glasses at its locations. According to its website, the chain has six stores in Michigan: Grand Rapids, Novi, Troy, Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Birmingham.
• Check your local library: You also may be able to find free eclipse glasses at your local public library in Michigan, along with special programs. Check your library nearest you for details.
• Check these retailers: The American Astronomical Society says some locations of these retailers may sell eclipse glasses: Walmart, Lowe's, Menards, Kroger, Meijer and Staples.

Here's more information on how to safely view the eclipse . Also try the the American Astronomical Society's website  or to  NASA .

More: Michigan Science Center offers eclipse glasses for $2, plans viewing event at Ford House

Watch for eclipse glasses scams!

Please don't forget the scams. Consumers should exercise caution when buying eclipse-related experiences or goods, according to Melanie Duquesnel, president and CEO of BBB Serving Eastern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula.

So far, she said, the Michigan BBB has not received eclipse-related complaints or scam reports. Even so, you want to take extra care to avoid fake products, like counterfeit eclipse glasses, and rip-offs, like too good to be true deals for  special tickets  or deals on hotel rooms. Here's finance columnist Susan Tompor with more tips on avoiding eclipse glasses and hotel scams.

How to make your own eclipse viewer

Want to watch the eclipse without glasses? You don't necessarily need special glasses or filters, but it takes a little creativity and a handful to household supplies to make your own pinhole box or pinhole projector, also known as a pinhole camera.

Here's what to know, including step-by-step instructions , about building your own eclipse viewer.

Will the eclipse affect my pets? Will it affect other animals?

There are four things likely to happen to animal behavior during the April 8, 2024 eclipse, according to Erica Cartmill, professor of anthropology, animal behavior and cognitive science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana:

• Animals won't do anything unusual.
• Animals will do evening behaviors. For example, if a dog is used to a bedtime treat, he may go to the kitchen to wait for it.
• Animals will display signs of increased anxiety such as scratching, yawning, circling and pacing or if they are animals that typically flock together, they will start grouping.
• Animals display unexpected behavior.

Here's more on what to know from reporter Jamie LaReau .

When is the next solar eclipse after 2024?

Not for another 20 years. According to NASA, after the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, the next total solar eclipse that can be seen from the contiguous U.S. will be on Aug. 23, 2044 . Here's how we're able to predict eclipses so far ahead of time.

It'll be much longer before another solar eclipse's path of totality crosses Michigan. The next solar eclipse to cross the state will be Sept. 14, 2099, when  the path of totality crosses the southwest Lower Peninsula .

Follow the Detroit Free Press on Instagram ( @detroitfreepress ), TikTok ( @detroitfreepress ), YouTube ( @DetroitFreePress ), Twitter/X ( @freep ), and LinkedIn , and like us on Facebook ( @detroitfreepress ).

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I quit my tech job to be a stay-at-home boyfriend who cooks, cleans, and sews for my girlfriend. I have no plans to return to the 9 to 5.

• William Conrad, 25, and his girlfriend Levi Coralynn, 26, have been together for three years. 
• Conrad is a stay-at-home-boyfriend, while Coralynn, a content creator, supports them financially. 
• Conrad previously worked in tech but has no plans to return.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with William Conrad, a 25-year-old stay-at-home boyfriend and content creator from Canada. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

For the last three years, I've been a stay-at-home boyfriend. I cook, clean, and do the laundry — and I've never been happier.

My girlfriend Levi is big on social media and makes enough to provide for us both financially. She works from home, and I do 90% of the domestic chores. Our dynamic very much flips societal norm on its head, but it works for us, and we love it.

On a typical day I wake up a little earlier than Levi to make us some coffee. We usually share a coffee, hang out for a while, and do Wordle together. Then, she'll do some work while I either prepare food or do other household chores. If we're not ready to eat, I might do some work on the computer alongside her.

Since she works from home, we pretty much spend every minute of every day together, which I love because she's my best friend before anything else.

We lead a very communal life, and that applies to how we navigate money too. We've never had the perspective of "this is my money, this is your money." It's very much a joint venture, and most of our purchases are done together anyway.

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I help with the backend of her business, doing the accounts and bookkeeping, just as much as I do things around the house.

Being a stay-at-home boyfriend allows me to do what I love

Levi and I met on Hinge around three years ago when we were living in different cities. I was living in Toronto, near where I grew up, while she was in Alberta. We started talking online and knew we needed to meet in person, so she came to see me in Toronto.

Our first date was a week long and we stayed in an Airbnb . Shortly after that, we moved in together in Ontario, and we've been together ever since.

Growing up, I didn't have a strong sense of what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't want to sit in an office all day looking at a monitor. I've always liked creating things and working with my hands. But I ended up studying computer science at college and then found a job at a tech startup .

When I met Levi, I was doing freelance jobs here and there, and some more consistent stuff in the tech world. She was deep into her career as a content creator and needed help running her online business. She thought I'd be the perfect fit and asked if I would work for her. So I quit my job and became a full-time stay-at-home-boyfriend.

It wasn't that I didn't enjoy my job, but this was just a greener pasture that I could step toward. It was an opportunity that was better suited to me, I think, in the long run. I was really into cooking and sewing before I even met Levi, and this meant I could focus on those interests more and hone my skills.

I have no plans to return to the 9-to-5 and would only do so if our online businesses stopped working.

I started posting online to show the world a softer type of masculinity

In August 2022, I started posting snippets of my life on TikTok. My videos mainly showcase the meals I cook for Levi, but sometimes it's me braiding her hair, hemming her clothes, or fixing things around the house. I'm soft-spoken and have a gentle manner, and the comments from my mainly female audience have been overwhelmingly positive. These are all things I do anyway, but it was Levi's idea to share it with the world.

It was around the time that Andrew Tate , the anti-feminist influencer, was really popular, and there was an oversaturation of toxic masculinity online. We saw this need and an opportunity to present a kind, loving man in the online space. One thing I'm very proud of is showing the duality a man can have. I have both feminine and masculine characteristics, but I'm still a man.

I was raised in a very nurturing household where both my parents worked and split the domestic tasks evenly. Everyone contributed to the household, and gender was never tied to a specific role, so living this way has never affected my sense of masculinity.

Social media is giving young men a skewed image of what women want

Women often comment things like "Where do I buy mine?" on my content. And while it's always nice to hear that someone thinks I'm a good boyfriend, it's also sad that a loving dynamic seems to be a scarce thing.

Lots of women are looking for a man who will cook them a nice meal and be gentle, but maybe not enough men value these things.

I think toxic masculinity on social media might be giving young men and boys a skewed perspective of what women want. I hope to inspire other men to lean into their feminine traits more without feeling like it threatens their manhood.

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