Developing a marketing strategy can be far easier with a template. A Microsoft Office marketing strategy template can walk you through each step of the process, helping you outline the necessary steps along the way. You can start out with something as simple as the marketing objective and then go through the template to determine the process plan to reach that objective. Along the way, you might need additional templates to break down the budget into categories and automatically calculate expenditures for your project. Here is what you can expect with a free Word marketing strategy template and an Excel budget template.

Tactical Marketing Plan Template

This template is available as a download. You can use it to create a professional marketing strategy document that others can sign off on. It’s one way to document your agreement before you actually start the work. Some of the sections included are:

• Objective – What are you hoping to achieve with this marketing campaign? Be succinct, but include an easy to understand objective. This is the first spot where you set the expectations of your client.
• Target Market – All good marketing plans need to understand their target market thoroughly. You will discuss the demographics you hope to target, both for product and contacts. The better researched this section, the more likelihood your strategy will be successful. Do not make it generic. Include statistics to support your target market claims.
• Message Summary – What is the message of your campaign? This should be a quick summary and not a long and involved statement.
• Call to Action – Set up buzz words, keyword (if using social marketing), and descriptive phrases that can engage some specific action from your target demographic. What do you want to accomplish with your call to action? Describe a pull-through offer.
• Process – What kind of strategies will you use in your marketing campaign? Will you be building a list or hosting an event. Describe the process by which you hope to roll out the marketing campaign.
• Opportunity Qualification Process and Criteria – How will you determine who to actively market? What types of qualifications or criteria will determine marketing opportunities?
• Project Plan – This is the most involved section and should be explicitly defined. You want to spell out your resource and budget requirements. Who will take what role in your campaign staff?

Once you have the document filled out, you can send it to approval for others to sign off on the plan. If you need more information on how to do a detailed budget or want to include it separately, you can use a separate template for that. Just make sure you get approval and sign off on the budget plan as well.

Budget Template

Another useful Excel template to lay out a budget for a marketing campaign is available as a download as well. Here are some of the categories found in this template:

• Research – Cost to do your own research or to outsource research. Why kind of research do you plan on doing and how many units do you expect to use of that type of research? What is the cost per unit?
• Communications – What medium are you going to use and how many units of each? For example, you might do 5 television ads and 1 website. What is the cost per unit?
• Networking – How will you network your campaign? Will there be affiliations you need to join? Are there subscription or membership fees associated with your networking?
• Events – What type of events will you attend? Will they include meals? What events will you host? What type of equipment and resources do you need and how much do they cost?
• Promotions – What kind of promotions will you offer? Include giveaways, discounts, and special offers. Pick a value for each and how many you plan to offer during the campaign to get a total cost.
• Advertising – This includes print, traditional, and digital advertising. This category includes things like brochures, mailings, postcards, and even billboards.
• Public Relations – Charity events that you help sponsor are included in this category. However, don’t forget employee promotions, too.

Once you fill out the quantity for each listing under the main category, you will also need to determine a unit price. Then, the Excel spreadsheet automatically calculates the cost across each individual line item, the entire category, and the entire campaign. When trying to figure out how to document your marketing strategy without overlooking anything, seek out a marketing strategy template that you can download and fill-in quickly to generate professional documents.