How To Create a Marketing Plan That You Know Will Work in 2025

I own a branding and marketing agency, and the most stressful part of completing projects for me is “What are we doing for each project”? The nitty-gritty of details part.

I’ve been doing this kind of work in-house for the better part of a decade. A lot of the strategic marketing planning “process stuff” is in my head, not on a checklist for my team to see.

Since I know that freaks me out, I am very careful always to be 2 steps ahead with SOPs and how-tos for each kind of project and service that I offer.

How I Came Up With My Marketing Action Plan

On top of our bread and butter–SaaS branding–my agency specifically does marketing plans, GTM launches, and marketing management for baby companies, often solo founders pre-launch.

That means we’re doing the foundational strategy plus execution and setting the technical side up from scratch.

The blank slate part of me loves this. The control freak is having a meltdown.

There are a bajillion directions a company can take just starting out, and deciding which way to go is as much about the founder's personality and preferences as it is about solid business strategy, brand strategy, and marketing strategy.

On top of that, marketing teams work with existing information, so founder communication styles are crucial to staying within scope and delivering great work on time.

So, I started devising a way to figure out what marketing would work best for each client that would quell my internal SOP screaming.

Initially, I planned on making this an internal tool, but the more I worked on it, the more I realized that:

1. There was no marketing dashboard or tool that automatically suggested marketing decisions and strategies.
2. Just about every marketing how-to is a long blog post filled with jargon, not a clear step-by-step checklist, just a list of suggestions.
3. There’s no roadmap for narrowing down choices and channels as you grow.
4. This could work for all kinds of businesses, not just bootstrapped startups.

I’ve worked with lots of small businesses as well as start-ups and scale-ups, and the number one issue they have with their marketing is strategy + consistency. Often, they have a recognizable brand persona, but if they lack the marketing side, they don’t grow fast or consistently.

The more I built, the more excited I became. Here was my first SaaS tool growing before my eyes!

5 Steps To Build Your Marketing Strategy 

So, here's the quick and dirty way I've found to pick your marketing strategy when you have fewer than 100 paying customers

When you have 101+ paying customers, and your marketing is consistently successful in place, start by taking a look at the channels you’re already seeing success in and re-evaluate to find channels 2 and 3. Or just go straight to the daily schedule part.

If you’ve hit 101+ paying customers without any marketing or your marketing success is sporadic at best, then start like you have 0 to build your SaaS marketing plan.

1. Look at what your target customers are saying they need

The goal here is to see what the biggest problems your target audience has that are in the arena of your product.

Reddit is an excellent place to find that out, and GummySearch is the tool that I recommend because of it's AI capabilities to filter down to requests for help.

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1. Create an audience in GummySearch around your target audience

• Use the tools to drill down into what the core requests for fixes are
• List out what people need help with
• Brainstorm what possible ways are to answer their questions/solve their problems (content)

1. Create an audience in GummySearch around your target audience
2. Use the tools to drill down into what the core requests for fixes are
3. List out what people need help with
4. Brainstorm what possible ways are to answer their questions/solve their problems (content)

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Content doesn't have to be blog posts.

It could be

• a guide for how decide what pharmacy is the best fit for a pharmacy tech.
• a pre-recorded webinar or tutorial
• a landing page with a calculator walking through the ROI of x vs y decision

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5. list out distribution channels for where to post and publish the content

This could be Reddit, but it could also be Facebook Groups, your blog, forums, Slack groups. Wherever people speak of getting information or answers to their problems -> that's a possible distribution channel! If you're not seeing any pop up in the Reddit research, don't worry, you can find some in Step 2.

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If you have interviews with customers, then look for the problems -> content and the hangout spots -> distribution channels that they discuss on those calls as well as the Reddit research. Customer interviews are the foundation for deciding what content needs to be created and where to distribute it. 

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2. Collect all the proven distribution channels you’ve seen work for your kind of company

‍This is not the time to be experimenting with TikTok.

Start with the content + distribution channels that you found in Step 1.

If you have NO IDEA what kind of distribution channels are available, take a peek at these resources:

• With Darko’s 11 most common channels that work for founders
• Any you’ve seen work really well and that you have explicit step-by-step instructions for like Arnaud’s for FB group launches
• Anything that is specific to your business model - like Lenny’s suggestions for marketplaces

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Helpful note: Set a timer to avoid analysis paralysis. I recommend 45min, pomodoro style. This is the time for scanning and listing > deep researching. You're gonna filter these down and test them!

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Label and categorize the channels by content type and time required

Then go through and add:

1. The types of content that perform well -
2. Long-form writing
3. Short form writing
4. Videos
5. Pictures
6. Audio
7. The amount of time it takes per day to succeed on the channel, starting with the bare minimum.
8. This might take some research, but I’d start with a Google search of “how long does it take for Facebook/Reddit/etc.”

I recommend doing this as a Notion table so It’s easy to visualize and sort.

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Here's my template to get you started!

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3. Evaluate what kind of channels are a best fit for you(r) company

A marketing channel is a combination of a) content and b) distribution.

Make a list of all the content + distribution channels for your company.

Then do a quick bit of research and next to each one, add:

• How much time it takes to typically see results from the channel
• How much money it costs to get setup
• What the core tasks are to get it setup
• what the core tasks are to keep it going
• Key success metrics (KPI's) - leading and lagging indicators

You can usually find "Ultimate Guides" for most marketing channels, but case studies from companies similar to you (by growth stage, B2B vs B2C, and founding team skillsets) that you can reverse engineer are usually more helpful. Lenny's Newsletter and Podcast are a great source for these.

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Now, realistically decide:

• What kinds of content do you create best?
• How much time do you honestly have and want to spend on marketing daily/weekly?
• What channels do you really want (or don’t want) to use?

If you're using a notion database, Filter to show just the channels that meet that criteria.

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4. Choose just 3 channels to focus on

Channel #1

1. It is in the sweet spot of the kind of content you like to create
2. The amount of time you have per day to spend creating content and interacting on the platform
3. It is a platform you already have a basic familiarity with
4. It’ll give results in 1-30 days – not something super long-term like SEO
5. It compounds over time
6. Becoming the resident expert in a forum answering questions and cold emails fall into this group

Recommended read: 4 Steps to Come Up With A Brand Name - And How We Picked “Ignore No More”

Channel #2

1. Bonus if you can repurpose content from channel #1
2. fits into your daily time window
3. falls into the type of content you like to create
4. Will give results in 30-90+ days
5. This is the channel you work on consistently over time
6. Reddit, Twitter, and content-driven SEO fall into this group

Check out how we create conversion lovin’ copy at Ignore No More.

Channel #3

1. Requires minimal effort; this is your third channel, after all!
2. Building integrations with complementary tools, data importers from competitors, webinars, productized services to get cash flow until you can get the product up and ROI calculators for your website all fall into this
3. Can give short-term and long-term results

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List out or mark in the table anything else that you want to try once you have the first 3 channels working smoothly and seeing results. Or once you have ruled them out as not a good fit.

Once you nail those channels, you can always branch out!

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5. Create a daily marketing to-do list

Do your research on each of the three channels (30-45 minutes each, so the rabbit hole isn’t too deep). Here’s a roadmap for your research: 

1. How to get started and what assets you need (profile pic, background images, etc.)
2. If there are templates or tools that make your life easier (cold email templates, tracking software, X-formerly Twitter-auto-posting, and scheduling tools)
3. Pick just one tool per channel
4. What needs to be done daily to see growth in the channel
5. It might take several articles to pull bits from each one

Write down a list of:

• The assets you need
• The tools you’re going to use

And what your daily marketing schedule needs to be for each channel.

Ta-da! Your B2B SaaS marketing plan is now complete!

Now, you can block out marketing time and know exactly what to do with it to see growth and not be overwhelmed.

But, if the thought of going through all that makes you queasy, then I’m happy to walk you through it.

Here’s my Calendly. Let’s talk through your biggest marketing plan questions!

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FAQs 

1. How do I create a simple marketing plan?

You can create a simple marketing plan by:  

1. Talking with customers or potential customers 1:1 about their problems, how they find solutions, and where they look for help
2. Deciding what kind of content (tools, guides, workbooks, blog posts, or tutorials) would solve their problems and can point to your product as a possible solution. 
3. Research distribution channels where your target audience hangs out and create the type of content that would best answer their questions and solve their problems
4. Honestly evaluate your time and resources to prioritize what kind of content you can make. Think distribution down to 3 channels and 3 content types. 
5. From that, create a list of the assets you need, the tools you will use, and the daily marketing schedule you require to start with your 3 chosen channels and content types successfully. 

This proven approach will help you build a marketing plan that is simple and effective. 

2. How to evaluate the effectiveness of a marketing plan?

The best way to evaluate the effectiveness of a marketing plan is to look at the key metrics of each marketing channel or experiment from the marketing plan. 

For each experiment, decide the key metrics (KPIs) that would tell you if the experiment was successful. It could be the number of leads, sales, or conversions. Most marketing experiments take 1-3 months to see if they are successful but check in daily or weekly to see how things are going and what needs to be tweaked. 

3. What are the steps of a marketing plan?

There are 5 steps to creating a marketing plan that works. 

1. Talking with customers or prospects 1:1 about their problems and searching for solutions
2. Deciding the kind of content that would best solve their problems
3. Research distribution channels where your target audience hangs out
4. Honestly evaluate your time and resources to prioritize the 3 channels you should start with
5. Write a list of next steps: assets, daily marketing schedule, and tools you need to automate tasks

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