How To Write a Marketing Plan with a Simple, Three-Tabbed Spreadsheet

Updated: October 29, 2010

The first tab is the most important, as it represents a roll-up of how leads generated convert to sales opportunities and closed business each month or quarter. If you already know what your lead-to-opportunity and opportunity-to-close conversion rates are, you should be able to plug in the expected sales figures each month or quarter, and the formulas will work back to 1) the required size of sales pipeline at the beginning of the month/quarter, and 2) the required number of leads to achieve that pipeline. Relatively simple napkin math.

The second tab breaks down, by month and by channel, where those leads are coming from. It demonstrates explicitly which marketing channels you will lean on, and with what expected lead volume, to contribute to the required overall figure to fuel the sales model on tab one.

The third tab demonstrates how you are able to achieve certain lead volume by month and channel. For example, if you're counting on email marketing, it will demonstrate how many emails need to be sent in a given month, with what expected response and conversion rate, to hit that number of leads. Same for required search impressions and click rates, same for expected event or Webinar registration and/or attendance, etc.