Marketing can get unnecessarily complicated quickly. If you offer a product or service people want, then marketing should be as simple as telling them about it. What we are going to outline here is a way you can address all the important parts of your marketing plan in a single page. Forget about complicated strategies. There are three phases to every marketing plan: prospect, lead, and customer. 

The prospecting phase is all about the right target market, what to say to them, and how to deliver that message. The lead phase covers how you capture a prospect's contact info, how you stay in touch with them, and ultimately how you convert them to a customer. The customer phase is all about providing world-class service, increasing the lifetime value of your customer, and encouraging them to refer their friends. As we go through the course, write your answers in the corresponding box on the Marketing Plan Canvas PDF.  

Before we get started, it's important to remember that effective marketing it's not about being right the first time; it's about testing and iterating. So the answers that you give here are your current best assumptions. These assumptions should be educated by your experience, research and the processes you've gone through so far in mapping out your business model, business plan, and your target market. So our goal is to spend as little money as possible testing each of the assumptions in this marketing plan once we have it completed. It's doubtful that your first attempt will work perfectly. Therefore your answers to each of the questions below will change and evolve as you test your marketing plan. This is a living document designed to be updated regularly to reflect your current strategy.