Step One
State of Business. Answer the following questions to help you verbalize:
In a few sentences, what is your company vision?
What are our company strengths? And weaknesses?
What is your differentiator in the market?
Step Two
Define your Audience and Competition. Think about who your ideal customer is that this marketing strategy will be reaching. For competition, what kind of market share do you currently have? Are there specific competitors you should be keeping an eye on. Tip: 99.9% of the time there will be plenty of competitors. Set up google alerts to keep you abreast of what your competition is up to.
Step Three
Marketing Methods. For this section, jot down how you plan on reaching said Audience above. Are you going to create an email campaign, a social marketing competition, or get in the trade show circuit? Be as detailed as you can about how you are going to execute your method(s). Keep it simple - better to do one method really well and grow from there than half-assing several with no real traction.
Step Four
Budgets. If this is your first stab at a marketing plan, it's ok if you need to come back and adjust this, but make an educated guess based on your current cash flow as to how much money (or time!) you can afford to put into marketing. Be sure to outline your timeframe here, as well. For a very simplistic example, I have $1000 for January - June 2016 and I want to spend 25% on email marketing, 25% on social marketing, and 50% on live events. Further breakout by monthly, weekly, even daily, if you are able.
I should mention here - budget doesn't have to necessarily be monetary. I am a big advocate of growth hacking and good old fashioned manpower/time spent. Don't limit yourself to staying inside the lines. Your budget could also look like this: Between January - June 2016, I will spend 4 hours/week making phone calls to prospective clients to get your name out there and 4 hours/week hanging/distributing flyers for a total of 192 hours.
Step Five
Goals. Now you have listed at the mission and vision of your company. You have defined your Audience and your Competition. You have decided what methods you'd like to use to reach that audience and how much money and/or time you will dedicate to your marketing efforts. What's the point of all of it? Here's where you will write down what you expect to see in return for your efforts above. This could be earning more money, selling more product, gaining more users, developing a brand voice, etc. Again, be as specific as possible (i.e. By June 2016, I expect to see 20% increase in new users).
Congrats! You have outlined your marketing plan and can get started! There are plenty of free templates online for you to drop the above into for a snazzy professional look. Stay fluid and feel comfortable adjusting your strategy as your business needs grow and shift.