Whether you’re a seasoned marketing leader, a new head of marketing, or an agency partner building annual plans for clients, our annual marketing plan template will give you a solid starting point.
Brand marketers can use it to advocate for their budget and communicate the effectiveness of their marketing strategy. Or agency partners can use it to find the most optimum media mix.
This annual planning template includes:
- 10 questions you need to answer before starting your annual planning process
- A look back on various tactic performance from the previous calendar year
- A look ahead at your planned marketing mix
How can a yearly plan template help marketers?
Most marketers don’t get handed the perfect playbook for annual planning. That’s where our yearly plan template comes in. We built it on the proven planning style of successful brands that’ve done this hundreds of times across industries. Here’s how it helps you:
- Shortcut the annual marketing planning process without cutting corners: The year planning template gives you a ready-made structure that mirrors how top marketers build their actionable plans.
- Spot what you’ve been missing: Even seasoned marketers overlook things. This annual strategic plan template prompts you to think through key drivers like price, distribution, trade, and competitor moves, so nothing slips through the cracks.
- Enable new marketing leaders to hit the ground running: If you’re new to a company and planning for the first time (or just want a sanity check), the template acts like a cheat sheet, showing you how experienced teams structure their thinking and tie it back to business impact.
- Save time and stay focused: Instead of piecing together inputs from scratch, you’ll have a single tool that organizes goals, marketing channel mix, and expected outcomes. That means less back-and-forth and more time shaping strategy.
- Create team alignment: The annual marketing planning template gives everyone, from marketing and sales to finance, a shared view of the expected deliverables, the plan to get there, and where to adjust as things change.
What’s inside this free marketing plan example template
We’ve done the heavy lifting for you with our free marketing plan example template, which gives you a ready-to-use structure based on how experienced marketers go about annual planning, objective setting, and more. The template guides you with:
- Annual business goals and sales target framework: Tie your annual marketing plan directly to what the business needs to achieve, from incrementality to new product support.
- Marketing contribution calculator: Break down what marketing (vs. price, distribution, trade, and more) is expected to deliver toward your targets.
- Current vs. planned marketing mix grid: Compare your current cross-channel media allocation and plan reallocation for next year
- Channel-level budget and revenue view: Measure your full-funnel marketing strategy performance by tracking spend and impact for every channel.
- Competitor and market change prompts: Make sure you’re not overlooking new players or shifts that could affect your plan.
See the marketing plan template preview below.
How to use the annual plan template
This annual plan template is designed to help you move fast while making sure no key detail gets missed. To get the most from it:
- Set goals: Before you touch tactics or budget, use the template to map your sales targets and identify your marketing goals and objectives.
- Gather inputs across team members: Work with sales, finance, trade, and your agency partners. The template gives everyone a shared starting point, so you’re not building the plan in isolation.
- Compare current vs. planned spend: Fill in the current marketing mix grid, then map out your proposed channel investments for the year ahead.
- Stress-test your plan: Use the yearly planning template’s prompts to think through price, distribution, category trends, and competitor moves.
- Revisit it quarterly: This isn’t a document you fill out once and forget. Follow agile marketing and update your plan as conditions change. Or better yet, feed your data into Keen’s demand planning solution to forecast outcomes and optimize in real time.
Go beyond marketing templates: Plan with Keen
Our curated annual marketing planning template gives you a starting point. Once you’ve mapped your annual plan, you can use our marketing mix modeling platform to:
- Model different scenarios before you spend: Use scenario planning to see the impact of shifting budgets between channels or adjusting investment levels, without waiting for results.
- Forecast actual outcomes: Get data-driven projections on revenue, iROAS, and incremental impact before you spend your budget.
- Adapt your marketing plan in real time: Market conditions change. Keen helps you keep up with the changing marketing trends. Reallocate spend on the fly
- Measure cross-channel: Go beyond last-touch attribution with our marketing measurement solution. Track the cross-channel incremental impact of your channel mix.
Request a demo to see how Keen helps you optimize your annual planning, measure it, and make smarter decisions all year long.
Frequently asked questions
Is the yearly planning template really free?
Yes, our yearly planning template is free. No hidden costs or conditions. Just download it and start building your plan.
Do I need Keen’s platform to use the annual marketing plan template?
No, you don’t need Keen’s platform to use the annual marketing plan template. The template works on its own.
(But if you want to forecast outcomes, model scenarios, and optimize spend, Keen takes your plan further.)
Can I customize the annual planning template for my business?
Absolutely. Our annual planning template for marketers is designed to be flexible. Add, remove, or adjust sections to fit your goals, channels, and team structure.
