A year's marketing on one page: the goal, the audience, the budget by channel and how you'll check it.
Plenty of marketing plans run to forty slides and get approved unread. A founder can finish Thimbleberry Heat Pumps' one-page plan in five minutes and answer yes or no. The company and its figures are invented. Copy the order: the ask, then the sums behind it.
Who it's for
A marketing lead, or a founder doing the marketing, who needs next year's budget agreed by two or three people. It goes out before the first money has to be committed, usually in late November.
It isn't a campaign brief or a content calendar. Those come after the yes, for whoever does the work. If finance wants monthly cash flow, send a spreadsheet as the appendix.
What a good one contains
- The goal and its price in the headline. "420 installs next year, on a marketing budget of $210,000." Beside it sit the decision and its deadline: approve by Friday, December 4, because the first mailer prints on December 9.
- The sum behind the goal. 1,750 quote requests × 24% = 420 installs. A founder can then argue with one assumption instead of the whole plan.
- Who you're after, and who you aren't. Two audiences, each with its share of the requests, then a "Not in 2027" line for new construction and large landlords. That line saves a meeting.
- Every channel with its money and its return. Seven rows of budget, requests and cost per request. Search ads at $120 beside email at $60 starts a better conversation than a pie chart.
- What changed since last year. Radio is out, referrals double, a tenth is held back for testing. Leadership remembers the old plan and will ask.
- A calendar tied to capacity. Requests and installs for each quarter, with a note that four crews fit 40 installs a month. Marketing that outruns delivery buys a waiting list.
- How you'll check, and what happens when it's off. Four measures, and a rule for when one slips: a channel above $180 a request for two months running is paused.
Before it goes to leadership
The common failure is a list of activities with no number at the end. "Increase brand awareness" can't be missed, so nobody can approve it either. Start from the result the business needs, work back to quote requests, then to dollars.
The next is arithmetic. Total the channel rows and hold the result against the headline, then do the same with the quarters. In the sample, 480, 420, 500 and 350 requests make the 1,750 in the goal.
Say when you'll be back. The sample names three review dates and promises updated numbers at the same link.
How to send it
To named people. Next year's budget and targets shouldn't reach a competitor or an agency pitching for the work. Open it to the two or three people who sign off, by name.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
