Common mistakes businesses make with their marketing plans (and how a fCMO helps you avoid them)

If you’re a business owner or director, you’ll probably already be aware of the importance of having a marketing plan in place. Perhaps you’ve not had a marketing plan previously and felt that as a result, you haven’t been getting enough leads coming in. Or you might have had a marketing plan in place but felt it fell flat or didn’t deliver the return on investment (ROI) you were hoping for. 

So if you want to put together a marketing plan but don’t want to make any of the common mistakes associated with doing so, read on. In this article, we’ll take a look at the following:  

• Why it’s important to put a marketing plan together the right way 

• The essentials of what your marketing plan should include 

• Steps to follow while you’re putting it together  

• Why bringing in a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (fCMO) could be a great option if you don’t have the time or expertise to do it yourself 

Why is it important to have a marketing plan? 

If you’re running your business without a marketing plan in place, you’re essentially working in the dark: the people actually doing marketing activities for you won’t won’t have the clarity and alignment to know what their objectives are or how they should go about achieving them, and in turn you won’t know what exactly they’re doing to build your brand or bring new leads into the sales funnel. 

As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure, and more importantly you can’t measure if you don’t have a roadmap that sets out your budget, coordinates your team and sets KPIs to help achieve your goals. 

But here’s the challenge: creating an effective marketing plan that makes the most effective use of your budget takes time, marketing expertise and objectivity.  

Far too often, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) will delegate the task of putting together a marketing plan to a junior member of your marketing team, or try to piece something together within the leadership team. As well-intentioned as either of these approaches may be, the outcome may be less than ideal. You could end up with wasted advertising spend, misaligned priorities or missed opportunities that end up costing you a chunk of potential revenue. 

Research we conducted in 2024 showed that a shocking 64% of SMEs lacked a marketing plan, with less than a third reporting that they were generating enough leads to achieve their growth objectives. The cost of not planning properly and engaging in “random acts of marketing” is high: research shows that up to 60% of digital marketing budgets are wasted due to inefficiencies in execution and a lack of proper planning. 

What should my marketing plan include? 

To understand what a good marketing plan looks like, it’s also useful to understand what it shouldn’t look like.  For example, it shouldn’t just contain a laundry list of objectives or a list of tactics. A solid marketing plan looks more like a framework that connects the dots between marketing activities and SMART business goals, with clear budget lines, milestones and timelines. 

1. Clear business objectives

Your marketing plan should start with a clear sense of alignment. Is your main goal achieving revenue growth? Market expansion? Brand awareness? Whatever your goals are, every team member and business function within your organisation needs to work together to support your overall business goals, so you’ll need to communicate well to achieve prioritisation and focus. 

You’ll need to have a clearly defined value proposition and understand your target audience thoroughly to be able to set yourself apart from your competitors. Without clear brand positioning and stakeholder messaging, even the best marketing campaigns can fall flat. 

Once you understand your target audience, you’ll be able to define which marketing channels will offer the best ROI for your brand and prioritise your marketing activities around them accordingly.  

4. Budget allocation

It’s essential to set aside a proper budget for marketing and plan how you will use it ahead of time. Most companies allocate around 5-10% of their revenue for re-investment into marketing. You’ll also need to balance spend on proven platforms with new opportunities for innovation. It’s tempting to pour money into channels that have worked in the past, but you should also leave some wiggle room for testing and adapting new strategies. 

Without clear KPIs, you can’t track success or hold your marketing team accountable. Your plan should define what key metrics you will measure your SMART goals against and monitor them regularly. 

Markets can change very quickly, so your plan should be flexible enough to adapt to sudden changes in the external business environment. It’s becoming increasingly important to ​​build flexibility into your marketing budget to change tactics when needed without losing sight of your long-term goals. 

What are the common mistakes businesses make when putting together a marketing plan?

1. Making decisions on gut feel alone

In today’s competitive business environment, plans that lean too much on guesswork won’t work against competitors who are leveraging huge amounts of data and experienced marketing leaders to back up their strategic decision making processes. 

If every team is focusing on their own preferences or short-term wins and not enough on achieving the overall business objectives, this can derail growth. Communication about shared priorities and a clear roadmap of who is responsible for what element of the plan is essential. 

3. Copying competitors

What works for other businesses you’re competing with for market share may not work for you. If you copy what your competitors are doing, not only are you putting yourself a step playing catch-up with the rest, but you’re also taking essential time and resources away from innovating on your own service or product offering. 

Remember, overspending on the same old “safe” channels won’t necessarily help you to achieve your growth targets. It’s always a good idea to keep testing emerging opportunities to maximise your returns. Avoiding new tactics or channels stifles innovation and long-term growth. 

It’s easy for smaller organisations, or small marketing teams without senior expertise, to fall into these traps.  Each of these mistakes can result in wasted ad spend, missed revenue opportunities, and slower business growth. 

​​What steps should be followed when putting together a marketing plan? 

A marketing plan can follow various types of structures, but to ensure that it has the greatest chance of success, you’ve got to make sure you cover all the bases. Here are some of the most essential steps you should take when putting your plan together. 

Step 1: Start with a thorough market analysis. You may have done this exercise before, but markets change really quickly. Map out your competitors and what they’re offering, and then do a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. 

Step 2: Check your value proposition. Have you clearly defined what really sets you apart from your competitors? What are your competitive priorities?  

Step 3: Segment your target audience. Get a thorough understanding of who all your stakeholders are, and then build up a picture of your potential customers through buyer persona profiles and buyer journey mapping exercise to understand how they move through the awareness, consideration and decision stages. 

Step 4: Set your SMART goals and KPIs. Now that you’ve mapped out your business, the market and your buyers, you can set specific goals that are aligned to your overall business objectives. 

Step 5: Outline your content plan and channel strategy. The content plan will cover the messaging and types of content you will use to target your specific target audience at various stages of the buyer’s journey, and the channel strategy covers where you will put that content to be most likely to reach your audience. 

Step 6: Set your budget. It takes money to make money, so set a realistic budget that will allow you to achieve your goals. This should cover everything from staff, freelancers, agencies, ad spend, campaigns and software tools. 

Step 7: Assign responsibilities. Make sure that you have the right resources to accomplish your goals. If you’re lacking specific skills and expertise, you’ll need to find them sooner rather than later. 

Step 8: Track your progress. Make sure you’re collecting and analysing data that will help you measure your performance. If something isn’t performing according to plan, you’ll need to know sooner rather than later so that you can adjust the plan accordingly. 

Why an fCMO is a great way to get expert guidance 

Want to put a really solid marketing plan together but feel you don’t have enough in-house expertise to do it properly? The right answer might be a fractional CMO (fCMO) who can offer c-suite level marketing leadership at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CMO. They can bring decades of experience on a part-time basis to help solve the following challenges: 

Common questions asked about fCMOs: 

Isn’t a fractional CMO going to be really expensive?  

Not at all. fCMOs offer the same level of experience and knowledge, but on a flexible, part-time basis. They can provide 80% of the value of a full-time CMO at roughly 20% of the cost, making them an ideal solution for businesses that need senior-level guidance without the overhead. 

But surely we just need a tactician, not a strategist? 

Tactics without strategy is worthless. Without a captain steering the ship and giving orders, how will the crew reach its destination? An fCMO combines strategic vision with practical execution, ensuring your marketing plan is both robust and adaptable. 

Can’t we just use AI instead of hiring an fCMO? 

Fractional CMOs act as a catalyst for your team, directing their output and ensuring every marketing activity drives measurable results. AI lacks the creative thinking, oversight and business context needed to craft a plan that is tailored precisely to your goals.  

Where can I find fCMOs that provide real impact? 

We make sure that businesses that work with fCMOs from The Marketing Centre see tangible, measurable improvements in marketing performance. For example, The Marketing Centre helped hospitality tech leader It’s Lolly achieve over 25% year-on-year growth by providing strategic marketing guidance through a fractional Marketing Director. At a critical stage in its expansion, the company needed a clear, focused plan to scale effectively. The Marketing Centre refined It’s Lolly’s strategy by targeting two key sectors and aligning their messaging with their vision and values. This approach secured major new contracts with top tertiary educational institutions, strengthened Lolly’s reputation as an innovator, and drove sustainable growth.  

It’s clear that a well-crafted marketing plan is one of the most important elements of sustainable business growth. The good news is that you can avoid the common mistakes that cost organisations time and money by working with an fCMO from The Marketing Centre. With our network of proven marketing directors to choose from, we’ll help you create a plan that aligns with your goals, uses your budget efficiently, and adapts to change so that you can do what you do best – focus on running your business. 

Ready to build a marketing plan that works? Contact us today to discover how a fractional CMO can make all the difference.