How to Build a Marketing Plan for 2027.

A useful marketing plan explains what the business needs to achieve, who you need to reach, what you will do about it, who owns each piece, what it costs and how you will know whether it worked. It should fit on a few pages and be specific enough that someone could check it against results each quarter.

What should a marketing plan include?

• Business objectives: revenue, new customers, market entry, retention or another outcome the business cares about.
• Audience research: who buys, who influences the decision, what they need and where they look for answers.
• Positioning: why someone should choose you over the alternatives, in plain language.
• Channel roles: what each channel is expected to do, not just a list of channels.
• Budget: how much, split between proven activity and tests.
• Ownership: a named person or team for each initiative.
• Timeline: what happens in which quarter, including seasonal peaks.
• Measurement: the metrics, data sources and review schedule you will use.

Start with business objectives

Begin with the outcome, not the tactic. "Grow qualified leads from commercial property managers by a set amount" gives the plan a direction. "Post on LinkedIn three times a week" does not. Agree on a small number of objectives, ideally tied to numbers the finance team already tracks.

Understand your audience and positioning

Talk to recent customers, review sales notes and look at what people search for. Identify the problems they are trying to solve and the words they use. Our Audience Strategy work starts there. Then write a short positioning statement your whole team can repeat.

Assign channel roles: demand generation and demand capture

Demand generation creates interest among people who are not yet looking. Demand capture reaches people who are already searching or comparing. Most businesses need some of both, in proportions that depend on the category, sales cycle and budget.

• Paid search: captures people actively searching for what you offer.
• Paid social: builds awareness and retargets people who already know you.
• Programmatic media: extends reach across websites, streaming TV and audio.
• SEO: earns ongoing visibility for the questions buyers ask.
• AI visibility: helps your business be represented accurately in AI assistants and answer engines.
• Website conversion: turns visits from every channel into inquiries or sales.
• Analytics: shows which of the above are working.

Not every business needs every channel. A local service company with a short sales cycle may lean on search and local visibility. A business entering a new category may need more awareness work first.

A sample planning table

The figures below are illustrative only, to show the format.

How to set testing budgets

Separate the budget into proven activity and tests. Keep tests small enough that a failure is affordable and large enough to produce a readable result. For each test, write down the question it answers, the metric, the duration and the decision you will make at the end. Stop or scale based on that decision, not on a single good week.

Plan for measurement before launch

Confirm that conversions are tracked correctly, that leads can be traced to their source in your CRM, and that reporting uses the same definitions every month. Without that groundwork, quarterly reviews turn into debates about data instead of decisions.

Quarterly review checklist

1. Are we on track against each business objective?
2. Which initiatives delivered, and which did not?
3. What did each test teach us, and what will we do about it?
4. Has anything changed in the market, our offer or our capacity?
5. Should budget move between initiatives?
6. Is tracking still accurate?
7. Who owns each change for next quarter?

If you want help building or pressure-testing your plan, our Marketing Strategy team works through these same steps. For keeping content current along the way, see our guide to content recycling.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a marketing plan be?

Long enough to cover objectives, audiences, initiatives, budget, owners and measurement. For most businesses that is a few pages plus a planning table. Length is not a measure of quality.

How much should I spend on marketing in 2027?

There is no universal percentage. Base it on your growth objectives, margins, customer value and what it has cost to win customers in the past, then reserve part of it for tests.

Should I plan for a full year or one quarter at a time?

Set annual objectives and a rough budget, then plan detailed initiatives a quarter at a time so you can adjust based on results.

What if I do not have historical data?

Start with small, well-measured tests in the channels most likely to reach your buyers, and use the first quarter to build a baseline.