A small company's marketing plan can fit on one page for 90 days. It sets one goal in numbers, the customer you are targeting, the offer you make them, one or two channels, a budget, and who owns each task. Stretch it to twenty pages and everyone forgets it before the first month ends.
Here you get a template to copy and fill in during a two-hour session, a completed hypothetical example, and a weekly review that keeps the plan alive. All you need to bring are your sales figures for the last six months and the people who sell for you.
Why one page for 90 days is enough
Ninety days is long enough to read a campaign's result and short enough to fix what fails before the year is gone. The US Small Business Administration's guide says most marketing plans cover the target market, competitive advantage, a sales plan, goals, a marketing action plan and the budget. The template below brings those together and adds what a small company needs: who does the work, and when.
Your long-term vision and how you differ from competitors belong in a separate document. If you do not have one, start with the one-page sheet in how to build a brand strategy, then come back.
The fill-in marketing plan template
Copy the table to a shared file and fill each row with a sentence or a number. The cell you cannot fill is the first problem to solve.
| Section | Question | Your answer |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | How many deals or orders in 90 days, from which service? | |
| Current position | How much did you sell in the last 90 days, and where did your best customers come from? | |
| Customer | Who buys, and what problem sends them looking now? | |
| Competitor | Who does the customer compare you with, and why do they pick them? | |
| Offer | What does the customer get, and what first step do you ask for? | |
| Channels | Which one or two channels, and why those? | |
| Budget | How much for ads, content and tools? | |
| Measurement | Which weekly number tells you the plan is working? | |
| Follow-up | Who answers leads, and how quickly? | |
| Ownership | Who does each task, and in which week? | |
| Stop rule | At what number will you stop a channel or change the offer? |
How to fill in each section without getting lost in detail
Goal
Work down from profit, and do not work up from follower counts. "20 new maintenance contracts in 90 days" is a goal you can hold a team to. "Raise brand awareness" never tells you when you have succeeded.
Customer and competitor
Do not write "all companies" or "young people aged 18 to 45". Call three of your latest customers and ask what they did before calling you, who they compared you with, and what settled the decision. Their answers fill the customer and competitor rows, and give you wording you can use in your ads as they said it.
Channels
A small company needs one channel that works, and weak presence everywhere does not help. Start with what your current customers tell you, then review the order in where to start with digital marketing. If you are torn between ads and organic search, the table in SEO or paid ads first settles it for your situation.
Budget
Work it backward from the goal, and skip general percentages. The full method is in how to set your company's marketing budget, and it also tells you if the goal itself is realistic.
Stop rule
This is the most important row and the most neglected. Write it before you spend, while your judgment is calm. For example: if cost per deal exceeds its profit after 30 days, we change the message once, and if nothing improves in the next two weeks we stop the channel.
A completed hypothetical example for a service company
This company and its figures are invented, to show the level of detail you need: an air conditioning maintenance firm serving companies and shops in one city.
| Section | Hypothetical answer |
|---|---|
| Goal | 12 annual maintenance contracts in 90 days |
| Current position | 4 contracts in the last 90 days, mostly from referrals |
| Customer | A facility manager with repeat breakdowns before summer |
| Competitor | A cheaper independent technician who misses appointments |
| Offer | A free inspection visit and a report on the units' condition |
| Channels | Google search ads and the Business Profile |
| Budget | Based on cost per lead, reviewed every two weeks |
| Measurement | Inspection requests and visits completed each week |
| Follow-up | The sales coordinator replies within two working hours |
| Stop rule | Fewer than 3 contracts after 45 days: review the offer and page |
Notice what the plan leaves out: no TikTok, no blog, no brand campaign. Those are not bad decisions, but they do not serve this company's 90-day goal. A line saying what you will not do protects the budget as much as a line saying what you will.
A 90-day execution calendar
| Period | What happens | How you know it is done |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1 and 2 | Set up the basics: the service page, measurement and the lead reply path | A test request arrived and was recorded |
| Weeks 3 to 6 | Run the first channel with two different messages | A first cost per lead for each message |
| Weeks 7 to 10 | Keep the better one and fix the weakest point, on the page or in follow-up | An improved cost per deal |
| Weeks 11 to 13 | Add a second channel if the first is profitable, and write the next 90-day plan | A written decision to continue or change |
Measurement matters most in the first two weeks. Start ads without conversion tracking and you will end the 90 days without knowing what worked.
A 20-minute weekly review
A plan nobody reviews becomes a historical document. Set a fixed slot each week with whoever sells and whoever runs ads, and answer four questions only:
- How many leads came in, and how many got a reply on time?
- How much did we spend, and what was the cost per lead?
- What did customers say about why they did not buy?
- What one change will we make this week, and who will make it?
One change a week is enough. Change the message, page and budget together and you will not know which made the difference. To read ad figures in terms of profit, see how to calculate customer acquisition cost.
Your next step
Book two hours this week with whoever sells for you, fill the table with what you know, and put a question mark beside what you do not. The first cell with a question mark is the first task in your plan. If you want someone to review the plan, run the channels and measure them, take a look at PlanKit's digital marketing service.