In this article, April Dunford presents 7 Key Eelements of a marketing plan. She follows a systemic approch showing how to structure a marketing plan: You have a product people love and you understand who the people are that love it. Now would be a great time to build a marketing plan:

"You have a product people love and you understand who the people are that love it. Now would be a great time to build a marketing plan. The plan will change and evolve over time but having a structure helps to make sure that your marketing spend is aligning with your goals without being completely ad-hoc, spray and pray, or flavour of the day. The plan shouldn’t be a massive undertaking – it’s a rough guide that documents what you are planning on doing and why you are doing it."

Find below a resume of her tipps and the link to the original article.

Good plans should contain the following:

Segmentation

At this stage you should understand what segments love you offering and why. If you don’t, you probably aren’t ready to build a marketing plan yet and you should go back and focus on finding a fit between your offering and a set of markets. This is where you document with as much detail as humanly possible the segments that you are going to target. Who are the groups, what are their characteristics and how do you identify them.

Competitive Alternatives

This is a documented list of what your customers would consider alternatives to your product or service. Don’t go crazy on this documenting every little bit of functionality. The purpose of this section is to help you articulate what really differentiates your offering from others in the space. These are generally macro things and not niggly detailed nuances of features.

Differentiated Points of Value (by segment)

For each segment, what are the top 3 or 4 differentiators that your offering has versus others. Remember this isn’t just about technology or features. It often includes things like pricing, delivery options, ease of use, time to value, etc.

Messaging and Positioning (by segment)

Working from the previous section create a set of messages for each segment. This should be a succinct set of no more than 3/4 messages that get across your key points.

Marketing Goals and Measures

What are the goals of your marketing plan and what metrics are you tracking that are associated with those goals? For example you might decide that increasing customer acquisition by x% is a key goal. You can tie acquisition to site visits, product signups, email or blog signups, abandon rates, etc.

Tactical Plan, Budget, Owners

Based on the above goals and measures this is the set of marketing plans you plan on executing to drive those results and the costs associated with each of those tactics. The tactics are broken into discreet items of work (i.e for example a tactic such as a webinar will include creating the invite list, writing/designing the mailer, sending the invite, creating the webinar content, etc.) and assigned to an owner.

Timeline

The tactics need to be broken into work items and plotted on a timeline so they can be tracked on a regular (for my teams it’s usually weekly) basis.

Source: www.rocketwatcher.com/blog/2010/05/7-key-elements-of-a-marketing-plan.html