# One-Page Marketing Plan Template

**Businessman Talk · businessmantalk.com/marketing/marketing-plan/ · v1.0 (August 2026)**

Paste into Google Docs or Word. Everything above the stop rule is the plan and it fits on one page; everything below it is reference you delete before printing. Fill the fields in order and write one line in each.

A marketing plan is a functional-level plan. It does not decide who the business is for or what it sells — those are settled upstream, in the business strategy — so section 1 is copied, not written. If section 1 is blank, stop and write the strategy first; a marketing plan built on an unnamed customer describes activity.

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**Business:** ________________________   **Plan period:** ________ to ________   **Written by:** ________________   **Date:** ____ / ____ / ________

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## 1. Inherited from the business strategy (copy, do not rewrite)

| Line | Where it comes from | Copy it here |
|---|---|---|
| **The business objective this marketing serves** | The strategic plan's objectives — one objective, with its number and its date | |
| **The customer the business has chosen** | The formulation stage: which customers the business competes for | |
| **The offer and the advantage** | The formulation stage and the marketing mix: what is sold, at what price, and the one thing a competitor cannot easily copy | |

*If your marketing "who" disagrees with the mission statement's "for whom", the mission is usually the one that is wrong. Fix it there, then come back.*

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## 2. The five fields

| # | Field | The question it answers | Write one line | The limit or test |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | **Customer** | Who are we for, described as a person in a situation? | | One sentence, in the words of the last enquiry. A situation and a trigger, not a demographic. "Everyone" fails. |
| 2 | **Message** | What do we say to them? | Problem:<br>Promise:<br>Proof: | Three sentences. The problem in their words, the promise in yours, one piece of proof. The proof is a named customer, a number you can defend, or a before and after with dates. Never an adjective about yourself. |
| 3 | **Channels** | Where will they hear it, and how often? | 1.<br>2.<br>3. | Two or three, no more. Each with a weekly cadence you can keep for six months. Chosen from the rows your customer already sits in, not the fastest rows. |
| 4 | **Budget** | What will it cost in hours a week and cash a month? | Hours/week:<br>Cash/month: | Hours first. The cash figure is what you can spend for a month with no return and not mind. |
| 5 | **The number** | How will we know in three months? | Measure:<br>Value today:<br>Target:<br>Date: | One measure only. A baseline, a target, and a date three to six months out. A measure with no baseline is a wish with a number on it. |

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## 3. The review

**Reviewed:** every quarter, on the first Monday, against the number. **Next review:** ____ / ____ / ________

Three questions, and nothing else: is the number moving toward its target; which channel produced the enquiries you can trace; what did the budget line actually cost.

Change the channels and the cadence freely. Change the customer and the message only when the enquiries say the card was wrong. **Leave the number alone until its date** — a target that moves is not a target.

**Log (append only; a missed target goes in the first sentence of its entry):**

| Date | What the number read | What changed, and why |
|---|---|---|
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |

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**Stop rule: when the five fields have one line each, the plan is finished. If it needs a second page, you are writing the long form, and the long form is for a lender. Print this one and put it where you can see it.**

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### Reference and filling notes (delete before printing)

**The seven channels a small business can actually run.** Read the table from the first column. Start where your customers already sit; the fastest row is rarely the best-returning one. Pick two or three for field 3.

| Channel | Who it reaches | Time per week | Cash | Time to first result | What it is bad at |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Referrals and word of mouth | People who already trust someone who trusts you | Under an hour, if you ask | None | Weeks | Scaling; you cannot schedule a referral |
| Search (SEO) | People already looking for what you sell | Two to four hours | Low | Months | Reaching people who do not yet know they have the problem |
| Social media, one platform | People who follow you or the topic | Two to three hours | None to low | Weeks to months | Selling anything on first contact |
| Content marketing | People with the question you answer | Two to three hours | None | Months | Anything urgent |
| Email to your own list | People who have already said yes to hearing from you | One hour | Low | Days | Reaching anyone new |
| Paid advertising, search or social | Whoever you pay to reach | Two hours, plus the learning | Medium to high | Days | Working without a message and a page that converts |
| Local and in-person | People in your area or your trade | Varies; events cost days | Low to medium | Weeks | Anything you sell outside your area |

**Run one new channel at a time.** Two started in the same month cannot be told apart when the enquiries arrive.

**What the long form asks for, and what you can skip.** The eight sections below are the ones the US Small Business Administration lists for a traditional business plan.

| Long-form section | Keep, fold, or skip | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Executive summary | Skip | The one page is the summary |
| Company description | Skip | You know what the company is |
| Market analysis | Fold into field 1 | The analysis ends in a persona; the persona is what you use |
| Organisation and management | Skip | Until there is a team to organise |
| Service or product line | Fold into field 2 | The offer is decided in the marketing mix; the message carries it |
| Marketing and sales | Keep | This is the whole one page: how you attract and retain customers, and how a sale actually happens |
| Funding request | Skip | Unless you are asking for funding, in which case write the long form |
| Financial projections | Skip | Field 4 is the projection you can defend |

**Rules of thumb that are not plans.** The 3-3-3 rule (three channels, three months, three measures) is a cadence for reviewing this page. The 5 C's (company, customers, competitors, collaborators, climate) are the analysis that produces field 1. And 70-20-10, a split between what works, what might, and what is new, is a way of spending field 4 once there is enough to split. None of them replaces the five fields.

**How long it takes.** An afternoon, if section 1 already exists. Field 1 takes the longest, because it is the only one that needs your files open: read the last ten enquiries and write the situation, the trigger, and their words.

**Why one page.** Most marketing plans are read twice — once when written and once when something has gone wrong. A page that costs two minutes to read gets read on the first Monday of the quarter instead, and changes what you do that week.

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*The five fields explained, a worked example filled in with real baselines and dates, and what the long-form plans include: businessmantalk.com/marketing/marketing-plan/ · Choosing the channels: businessmantalk.com/marketing/ · Free to copy and adapt for your own business; please keep the source line if you share it.*