Marketing campaign plan template

Manage and optimize your marketing campaigns effectively with our campaign planning template

How will the planning template help me and my business?

Across the years we have worked with many businesses, large and small, creating campaigns and reviewing their marketing campaign planning. This template brings together all the components needed to create an effective marketing campaign plan.

We've designed this template to help marketers manage marketing campaigns more effectively - to help get the campaign plan right first time by increasing understanding between the person briefing the campaign and those completing it. The template is intended to help companies:

Set clearer goals and track them more clearly through analytics
Define target audiences more clearly
Develop a clearer message hierarchy
Review and select the right types of media for your campaign
Improve campaign integration between digital and non-digital channels

Who is the planning template for?

This campaign planning template is designed for:

Client side marketers who use it for planning campaigns they run in-house or for briefing agencies.
Agencies and consultants who use it to review their approaches to running campaigns and give to clients for briefing.

It's aimed at helping you create integrated inbound marketing campaigns, with digital marketing at their heart, for maximizing campaign reach, interaction, response and ROI. The template can be used either for digital parts of campaigns or as part of an integrated marketing campaign plan.

How is the planning template structured?

The marketing campaign planning template is in Word format so you can modify it to best suit your marketing campaigns. It’s not a blank template, instead it will take you through all the questions you need to ask to tightly define your campaign.

There is is a ‘quick brief’ summary on page 3, or (if preferred) a more detailed brief can be developed. This integrated campaign plan is aimed at creating a modern, inbound marketing campaign applying the Smart Insights RACE planning approach to maximize leads and revenue from the campaign.

The stages of marketing campaigns and the key issues covered are:

Campaign goals and tracking: What are we trying to achieve through our campaign and how will we know when we achieve it?
Target audience, customer insight and targeting: Who are we trying to reach and influence?
Key campaign messages and offers: How are we trying to position our company, products, and services? What campaign or product offers will engage and convert our audience?
Campaign media plan and budget: What media channels will you use to reach and influence your target audience? What will be the sequence and integration of media activities?
Campaign asset production: What individual assets must be managed to form the campaign?
Campaign execution: What needs to be tested before the campaign is live and adjusted during the campaign? The template also links to more detailed advice in our other guides on areas like targeting and campaign tracking through analytics.

Latest updates

Minor edit to one-page summary to aid readability
Text revisions to include the latest strategies and techniques
Copy refresh to aid engagement and readability

Resource Details

Authors: Dan Bosomworth and Dr. Dave Chaffey
Format: Unformatted Word document for you to add to with a one-page quick campaign summary and a more detailed 10-page plan included
Related resources: Our Integrated marketing campaign planning guide works alongside this template. You may also find our Excel timeline for campaign scheduling template and Excel editorial/content planning template useful.

About the authors

Dr. Dave Chaffey

Dave is co-founder of Smart Insights and creator of the Smart Insights RACE planning framework. For his full profile, or to connect on LinkedIn or other social networks, see the About Dave Chaffey profile page on Smart Insights. Dave is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing.

Dan Bosomworth

Danyl Bosomworth Dan helped to co-found Smart Insights in 2010 and acted as Marketing Director until leaving in November 2014 to focus on his other role as Managing Director of First 10 Digital.

His experience spans brand development and digital marketing, with roles both agency and client side for nearly 20 years. Creative, passionate and focussed, his goal is on commercial success whilst increasing brand equity through effective integration and remembering that marketing is about real people. Dan’s interests and recent experience span digital strategy, social media, and eCRM.

You can learn more about Dan’s background here on LinkedIn.