Plan and budget the work
Eight resources for deciding what to do and what it costs, before anyone starts doing it. They are listed in the order that avoids the most rework — the direction first, then whether the numbers can actually reach the target, then the schedule.
Which one do you need?
| If you need to… | Use | You get |
|---|---|---|
| Decide the direction, and what you will not do | Strategy examples | Four worked examples + Word template |
| Turn a direction into activities with owners and dates | Marketing plan | Word one-pager + 12-month Excel planner |
| Work out how much to spend, and defend it | Budget & forecast | Excel forecast with a viability verdict |
| Check a target is arithmetically reachable at all | Funnel calculator | Excel calculator + worked examples |
| Brief one campaign with a start and an end date | Campaign brief | Word brief with a post-campaign review |
| Decide which pages to create or refresh first | Keyword research | Excel template with clustering |
| Plan content by the job it does, not posts published | Content plan | Excel planner with refresh dates |
| Find out who is quietly taking your ground | Competitor analysis | Excel scorecard + worked example |
8 planning resources All free, no signup
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Marketing plan
Anyone who has agreed a direction and now needs the schedule that delivers it
DOCX + XLSX + PDF 60 minutes for the one-pager -
Strategy examples
Anyone writing a marketing plan for a business or a client
DOCX + PDF 60–90 minutes -
Campaign brief
Anyone running a campaign with a start date, an end date and a budget
DOCX 45 minutes for the brief -
Keyword research
Anyone planning which pages to create or refresh, in priority order
XLSX 2–3 hours for a first pass -
Competitor analysis
Anyone about to reposition, or losing ground without knowing to whom
XLSX + PDF 2–3 hours for three competitors -
Content plan
Anyone planning content who is tired of measuring posts published
XLSX 90 minutes for a quarter -
Budget & forecast
Anyone setting a budget who has been asked "how much do you need?"
XLSX 45 minutes -
Funnel calculator
Anyone whose target looks reasonable until you do the arithmetic
XLSX + PDF 20 minutes
The order that avoids rework
Most planning is redone because it was done in the wrong order — a budget agreed before anyone checked whether the target was reachable, or a content calendar built before the keyword clustering that would have reshaped it. This sequence costs nothing extra and prevents the expensive version.
- Strategy first, and keep it to one page. Direction and exclusions. Everything below inherits from this, so a vague strategy makes all of it vaguer.
- Find out what demand exists. Keyword research and competitor analysis. This is where an ambitious plan usually meets the size of the actual market.
- Test the target with arithmetic before it is agreed. The funnel calculator turns a customer target into the enquiries, sessions and impressions it needs. If that number is several times your current reach, change the target or the channel now — not in Q3.
- Then set the budget. Working backwards from a target you have already sanity checked produces a figure you can defend, which a percentage-of-revenue rule never does.
- Write the plan last. Activities, owners, dates. It is the most detailed document and the one that changes most, which is exactly why it should not be written first.
- Brief each campaign separately as it comes up, against the plan.
What planning cannot do
Planning does not make an unreachable target reachable, and it is worth saying so before you spend a week on documents. If the funnel arithmetic says you need four times your current traffic to hit the number, no plan fixes that — the answer is a different target, a different channel, a higher price or a better conversion rate. The most valuable planning outcome is often the discovery that the goal needs changing.
The other thing to be honest about: a plan longer than a page plus a schedule will not be reread. Every template here is deliberately short for that reason, not because detail is bad.