How to Create a Marketing Plan That Actually Works

This guide is different. It's the framework we use at Boost to generate marketing plans for SaaS founders, e-commerce owners, and consultants who don't have time to waste on tactics that won't move the needle.

By the end, you'll know exactly what goes into a marketing plan that works—and why most of what you've seen before doesn't.

What a Marketing Plan Should Actually Include

Forget the 40-page strategy documents. A marketing plan that gets executed has six components:

1. Specific, Measurable Goals

“Get more customers” isn't a goal. “Acquire 50 trial signups in 30 days from organic search” is.

Your goal needs a number, a timeframe, and a channel. Without all three, you're just hoping.

2. Target Audience (The Real Version)

Demographics are useless. “Marketing managers aged 25-45” tells you nothing about what they need or where they spend time.

Instead, answer these:

• What problem are they actively trying to solve?
• Where do they look for solutions? (Reddit? LinkedIn? Google?)
• What have they already tried that didn't work?
• What would make them switch from their current solution?

3. Competitive Landscape

This is where most plans fall apart. You can't build an effective strategy without knowing:

• Who else is competing for your audience's attention
• What channels are working for them
• What positioning they've claimed
• Where the gaps are that you can own

More on this in a minute—it's the hard part.

4. Channel Strategy

Pick 1-2 channels to start. Not seven. Not “omnichannel.”

The channel depends on your business type, your audience, and where your competitors are weak. A B2B SaaS company and a DTC candle brand need completely different approaches.

5. Timeline with Milestones

A plan without deadlines is a wish list. Structure yours in 30-day sprints:

• What are you doing in week 1?
• What metrics will you check at day 14?
• What's the decision point at day 30?

6. Success Metrics

Define what “working” looks like before you start. Otherwise you'll move the goalposts or, worse, keep doing something ineffective because you never defined what effective meant.

Why Most Marketing Plans Fail

After analyzing hundreds of marketing plans across industries, the failure modes are predictable:

Generic Templates

That marketing plan template you downloaded? It was designed for no one in particular, which means it works for no one in particular.

Templates give you structure. They don't give you strategy. Strategy requires knowing YOUR market, YOUR competitors, YOUR audience.

Copy/Paste Tactics

“Just post on LinkedIn” or “start a newsletter” isn't advice. It's a tactic stripped of context.

What worked for a productivity app selling to developers won't work for a coaching business selling to executives. The platforms might be the same. The approach is completely different.

No Competitive Analysis

This is the biggest gap. Most founders have a vague sense of who their competitors are but zero insight into:

• What keywords they rank for
• Where their traffic actually comes from
• What positioning they've claimed
• What gaps they've left open

Flying blind means wasting months on tactics your competitors have already proven don't work in your market.

Too Many Tactics, Zero Execution

The 50-idea brainstorm feels productive. It's not.

Every idea on your list has an execution cost. Most founders dramatically underestimate this. Better to do three things well than seven things poorly.

No Prioritization Framework

Not all marketing tactics are equal. Some move the needle in week one. Others take six months to pay off.

Without a framework for deciding what to do first, you'll either pick randomly or default to whatever feels comfortable—which is usually not what your business actually needs.

How to Research Your Competitors (The Hard Part)

This is where marketing plans become useful or useless. Good competitive research takes time and tools most founders don't have access to.

Here's what you're trying to learn:

Who You're Actually Competing With

Your competitors aren't just companies selling similar products. They're anyone competing for your audience's attention and budget.

For most businesses, the biggest competitor is “do nothing.” Your prospect decides to keep using spreadsheets, keep doing it manually, keep putting off the problem.

Beyond that, map out:

• Direct competitors: Same product, same audience
• Indirect competitors: Different product, same problem
• Substitutes: Different approach entirely

Where Their Traffic Comes From

Knowing a competitor gets 50K monthly visitors is useless. Knowing they get 30K from organic search on “email productivity tips” and 15K from LinkedIn is actionable.

Tools like Similarweb, Ahrefs, and SEMrush can show you this—but they cost $100-400/month and take time to learn.

Keyword and Content Gaps

Your competitor ranks for 500 keywords. Which ones are actually driving customers? Which ones are they missing that you could own?

This analysis alone can define your entire content strategy for six months.

Their Positioning

How do they describe themselves? What benefits do they lead with? What audience are they explicitly targeting?

This tells you what positioning is already claimed—and what territory is still available.

The Stop/Start/Continue Framework

Most marketing plans only add. Here's what to do. Here's what else to do. Here's more to add to your plate.

That's backwards.

Before you start anything new, you need to figure out what to stop. The Stop/Start/Continue framework forces prioritization:

Stop Doing

What marketing activities are consuming time without producing results?

Common culprits:

• Posting on social platforms where your audience doesn't hang out
• Creating content for keywords you'll never rank for
• Attending events that don't generate leads
• “Brand building” activities with no measurable outcome

Stopping the wrong things frees up capacity for the right things.

Start Doing

Based on your competitive research, what high-leverage opportunities are you missing?

These should be specific and tied to gaps you've identified:

• “Start creating content for [keyword cluster] where Competitor X is weak”
• “Start building presence on [platform] where our audience is active but competitors aren't”
• “Start outbound to [specific segment] that competitors are ignoring”

Continue Doing

What's actually working? Most founders can't answer this clearly because they're not tracking the right metrics.

Whatever is working, do more of it. This sounds obvious but most marketing plans ignore current wins in favor of new tactics.

Quick Wins

Separate from the above: what can you do THIS WEEK that will have impact?

Quick wins build momentum and buy you credibility (with yourself, your team, your investors) to execute the longer-term plays.

Building Your 30-Day Marketing Roadmap

Thirty days is long enough to see results, short enough to stay focused. Here's how to structure it:

Week 1: Foundation

Goal: Get the basics right before scaling anything.

• Lock in your positioning (one sentence that explains who you help and how)
• Define your primary metric (the one number you're trying to move)
• Pick ONE channel to focus on
• Set up tracking so you can actually measure results

Don't skip this. Scaling without foundations means scaling problems.

Week 2: Content and Outreach

Goal: Start creating assets and making contact.

For content-driven businesses (SaaS, e-commerce):

• Create 2-3 pieces of content targeting your priority keywords
• Optimize existing pages based on competitive gaps
• Start building backlinks or social distribution

For relationship-driven businesses (consulting, services):

• Launch outreach to 20-30 qualified prospects
• Publish 1 piece of thought leadership
• Activate your network for introductions

Week 3: Optimization

Goal: Learn from the data and adjust.

• Review metrics from week 1-2
• What's getting traction? What's flat?
• Double down on what's working
• Kill or pause what isn't
• Run one A/B test on your highest-traffic page or best-performing channel

Most founders skip this week and keep pushing forward blindly. Don't.

Week 4: Scale

Goal: Take what's working and amplify it.

• Increase volume on your winning channel
• Repurpose your best content for other formats
• Start testing a second channel (only if channel one is working)
• Document what you've learned for the next 30-day cycle

Real Examples by Industry

Theory is nice. Here's what this looks like for real businesses:

Skip the Guesswork

You now know what goes into a marketing plan that works.

The hard part isn't the framework. It's the research.

Finding your real competitors. Analyzing their traffic sources. Identifying keyword gaps. Understanding what positioning is available. Prioritizing tactics based on YOUR situation, not someone else's playbook.

This research takes 10+ hours with expensive tools—or 10 minutes with Boost.