The Top 20 Marketing Plan Questions Every Marketing Person Should Ask and Answer

Creating a successful marketing plan starts with asking the right questions. These marketing plan questions help you understand your business, target audience, and market conditions, ensuring your strategy is effective and aligned with your company’s goals.

 

The 20 Essential Marketing Plan Questions to Guide Your Strategy

 

1. What are the overall business goals and objectives?

Why it Matters

Your marketing strategy should align with the company’s broader business goals, such as revenue growth, market expansion, or product launches. Understanding these objectives ensures marketing efforts directly contribute to the company’s success.

 

2. Who is our target audience?

Why it Matters

Defining the target audience is crucial for tailoring marketing messages and selecting the right channels to use. Without a clear understanding of the audience, marketing efforts will likely miss the mark.

 

3. What is our unique value proposition (UVP)?

Why it Matters

Your company’s unique value proposition is the differentiating factor that uniquely positions and separates your brand from competitors. Knowing what sets your product or service apart is essential for crafting compelling marketing messages that resonate with your audience. Learn more about positioning.

 

4. What are the current market trends and dynamics?

Why it Matters

Staying informed about market trends helps identify new opportunities and uncover potential threats to your market position. Staying curious about your industry and competitors helps you position your brand effectively within the current market landscape.

 

5. Who are our main competitors, and what are their strategies?

Why it Matters

Understanding the competition allows you to identify gaps in the market, learn from their successes and failures, and differentiate your brand more effectively. A competitor is simply an alternative your target customers can make when selecting a solution to their most pressing needs.

 

6. What are the success measures for your plan, and how will you measure them?

Why it Matters

Success measures, like Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), provide measurable benchmarks for tracking the effectiveness of the marketing strategy. They help ensure the strategy is on track and aligned with business goals.

 

7. What budget will you need for marketing?

Why it Matters

The budget dictates the scope and scale of marketing activities. Knowing the financial constraints allows for prioritization of tactics and ensures that resources are allocated efficiently. Don’t ask, “What money do we have available?”.  Instead, start by identifying what you will need.

 

8. Which marketing channels are most effective for reaching our audience?

Why it Matters

Different channels work better for different audiences. Identifying the most effective channels ensures that marketing efforts are focused where they will have the most impact.

 

9. What are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT)?

Why it Matters

Conducting a SWOT analysis gives you a comprehensive view of internal and external factors that can influence the marketing strategy’s success.

 

10. What is the current brand perception in the market?

Why it Matters

Understanding how your brand is currently perceived can help identify areas for improvement and opportunities to strengthen brand positioning. Asking your current customers can be a good idea to start understanding your brand perception.

 

11. What are the primary customer pain points and needs?

Why it Matters

Solving customer pain points and needs in your marketing strategy ensures that your messaging is relevant and resonates with your audience, leading to higher engagement and conversions.

 

12. What is the sales funnel, and where are the bottlenecks?

Why it Matters

Understanding the sales funnel, how it works, and how the Sales team views the customer journey helps identify stages where customers drop off, allowing targeted strategies to improve conversion rates at each stage.

 

13. How can we measure the ROI of our marketing activities?

Why it Matters

This is not easy. However, measuring ROI is crucial for justifying marketing spend and optimizing future campaigns. It ensures that resources are used effectively to generate the best possible return.

 

4. What is the current customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer lifetime value (CLV)?

Why it Matters

Knowing CAC and CLV helps in setting realistic goals and budgets and understanding your marketing efforts’ long-term profitability.

 

15. What are our key product or service differentiators?

Why it Matters

Highlighting product differentiators in your marketing strategy can help attract customers looking for specific features or benefits your competitors may not offer. The more your marketing plans can solve the problems your customers face, the higher the engagement and conversion rates.

 

16. What are the main barriers to purchasing that our customers face?

Why it Matters

Understanding and addressing as many barriers to purchasing your customers have, such as price, convenience, or trust issues, can help in crafting messages and offers that overcome these obstacles. This information can directly feed future content your team can produce.

 

17. What customer insights can we gather from previous campaigns or data?

Why it Matters

Analyzing past data provides insights into what has worked and what hasn’t, helping to refine and improve future marketing strategies.

 

18. What role does content play in our marketing strategy?

Why it Matters

Content is a critical component of modern marketing strategies. Understanding its role helps develop a content plan supporting overall marketing objectives, such as lead generation or brand awareness.

 

19. How do we ensure alignment between sales and marketing?

Why it Matters

Alignment between sales and marketing is essential for creating a seamless customer journey. It ensures that both teams work towards the same goals and that marketing efforts support sales objectives. Work with your sales team early and often to bring them along on your marketing plan journey.

 

20. What are the key challenges and risks we might face?

Why it Matters

Identifying potential challenges and risks allows for developing contingency plans, ensuring the marketing strategy can adapt to unforeseen circumstances.  Be prepared to react to changing market conditions and expect that some changes to your plan will be necessary.

Could you answer these questions to start building your marketing plan? This process helps you align with your business goals and sets the foundation for a successful marketing strategy. These 20 marketing plan questions can guide your efforts and maximize your marketing ROI.

Get started on your own marketing plan today.

Download our free Google Sheet checklist of marketing plan questions.