How to Write a Simple Marketing Plan (One-Page Template)

A simple marketing plan is one page that answers seven questions: how many customers you need each month, who they are, why they should choose you, which three channels you'll work every week, what you'll spend, how you'll know it's working and what happens over the next 90 days. This guide gives you the template, works through each box and fills it in for a mobile mechanic so you can see what "done" looks like.

Before you start

Long marketing plans get written once and never opened again; a one-page plan gets read every Monday and changed when the numbers say so. Before you write yours, run the free Marketing Health Check. It shows which basics are missing, and those gaps usually decide your first channel.

The one-page marketing plan template

Copy this into a document, a spreadsheet or a sheet of A4. Each box gets one to three lines. If a box needs a paragraph, you haven't decided yet.

Box	Question it answers
1. Goal	How many new customers do I need each month, and by when?
2. Ideal customer	Who exactly am I trying to reach?
3. Offer and positioning	What am I selling, and why should they choose me?
4. Three channels	Where will I show up, and what will I do there every week?
5. Budget	What will I spend in dollars and hours each month?
6. Measures	Which four numbers tell me whether it's working?
7. 90-day calendar	What happens in month one, two and three?

1. Goal: customers per month

Start with a number of customers, not "grow the business" or "raise awareness". Work backwards from the revenue you need:

Monthly revenue target, from your business plan or cash flow forecast.
Divide by your average sale or job value. That's customers per month.
Divide by the share of enquiries that become customers. That's enquiries per month.
Divide by four. That's enquiries per week — the number you'll actually watch.

If you don't know your conversion rate yet, guess conservatively. "15 enquiries a week by 30 November" can be checked every Friday. "More customers" can't.

2. Ideal customer

Not "anyone who needs a mechanic". The narrower the answer, the cheaper every channel becomes, because you know where to look and what to say. Describe your best customer in one or two sentences: where they live or work, what puts them in the market, what they care about most and how they go looking. If the description fits half the population, tighten it; the plan only decides who you go looking for.

3. Offer and positioning

Two lines. First, what you're actually selling — the specific service or product you want more of, not your whole price list. Second, your "why us" sentence: the reason someone should pick you over the next listing. The test is whether the business next door could say exactly the same thing. "Reliable, friendly service" fails. "Fixed price quoted before we start, or you don't pay" passes.

Everything in this box must be true and provable, because it's going on your Google Business Profile, your website and every flyer. The Australian Consumer Law applies to every marketing claim you make, including "cheapest", "best" and "guaranteed".

4. Three channels with weekly actions

Pick three. Not five, not one. Three is enough to compare, few enough to do properly, and if one fails you still have two working.

Which three depends on whether people search for you when they need you (trades, health, professional services) or discover you (gifts, food, fitness). Our complete marketing guide explains the difference; the short version is below.

Channel	Best for	Cost	Example weekly action
Google Business Profile and reviews	Searched-for	Free	One photo post; ask every customer for a review
Referral partners	Both	Coffee money	One conversation with a complementary business
Email or SMS to past customers	Both	Free to low cost	One useful message a month; needs consent and an unsubscribe link
One social channel	Discovered	Free	Two or three posts; reply to every comment
Letterbox flyers	Local trades, food	Printing	Drop flyers in the streets around each completed job
Google Ads (small test)	Searched-for, once the above converts	Fixed budget	Check spend against enquiries; pause what isn't converting

For each channel you pick, write one line: the channel, the weekly action and how long it takes. "Google Business Profile: post one job photo every Monday, text a review link to every customer the same evening — 30 minutes a week." That line is the plan. If you can't write the weekly action, you haven't chosen a channel; you've chosen a wish.

For almost every searched-for local business, channel one is your Google Business Profile — free, and what appears when someone searches your service and suburb. Don't pay for anything until the free channels are converting.

5. Budget: dollars and hours

Write two numbers: dollars per month and hours per week. Set the dollar figure from your goal and your cash flow, not from a percentage of revenue: add up what your three channels cost, add a small buffer for printing or a paid test, and check the total against your fixed costs. Write the hours as a fixed weekly appointment — "Monday 7–8am, Friday 4–5pm" — because marketing that happens "when I get time" doesn't happen.

6. Measures: the four numbers

Every plan needs a way to fail. Track four numbers:

Enquiries — calls, form fills, messages, walk-ins. Count them all.
Source — ask "how did you hear about us?" on every enquiry and write the answer down. This tells you which channel to double down on.
Conversion rate — enquiries that became paying customers.
Cost per new customer — dollars spent (plus your hours at a wage, if you're being honest) divided by new customers.

A spreadsheet with four columns is enough.

7. The 90-day calendar

Break the plan into three months with a theme each:

Month one — foundations. Complete your Google Business Profile, fix the website basics, start asking for reviews and start logging where enquiries come from.
Month two — momentum. Run the weekly actions without fail. Send the first email to past customers.
Month three — measure and decide. Fill in the four numbers. Drop what produced nothing. If the free channels are converting, run a small paid test with a fixed budget. Rewrite the plan for the next 90 days.

Put the month-one tasks in your calendar with dates; a plan without dates is a list of good intentions.

Worked example: a mobile mechanic's one-page plan

Here's the template filled in for a hypothetical one-van mobile mechanic servicing cars at customers' homes in outer-suburban Melbourne. The figures are illustrative; the shape is what matters.

Box	The mobile mechanic's answer
1. Goal	30 jobs a month by 30 November (average job $300 = $9,000 revenue). Assuming half of enquiries book, that's 60 enquiries a month, or 15 a week.
2. Ideal customer	Households within 25 minutes of home base with cars five to twelve years old, who'd rather not lose a day dropping the car at a workshop. Secondary: tradies with one or two work utes.
3. Offer and positioning	Logbook servicing and brake work in your driveway. "Fixed price quoted by text before we start — the price you're told is the price you pay."
4. Three channels	(a) Google Business Profile: one job photo every Monday; text a review link to every customer that evening — 30 min/week. (b) Letterbox flyers: 50 flyers around every completed job, "Just serviced a car in your street" — 20 min/job. (c) Referral partners: one coffee a week with a tyre shop, detailer or property manager — 1 hour/week.
5. Budget	$100/month printing, $40/month coffees, $0 for Google Business Profile. From month three, a Google Ads test at $400/month if the website is converting. Hours: 4 a week, Monday 7–8am and Friday 4–6pm.
6. Measures	Enquiries per week, source of each (asked on every call), booking rate, cost per new customer, total Google reviews. Logged every Friday.
7. 90-day calendar	Month one: complete the profile, review requests to the last 10 customers, first flyer batch, one-page website. Month two: weekly actions without exception, first three partner coffees. Month three: fill in the numbers, decide on the Ads test, rewrite.

Notice what isn't in it: no logo redesign, no "brand awareness" spend. Everything on the page either produces an enquiry or measures one.

How the marketing plan plugs into your business plan

Your marketing plan is the marketing section of your business plan, expanded to a page. Two numbers flow between them:

The customer goal in box 1 is the number that drives your sales forecast. If the business plan says $9,000 a month and the marketing plan can only plausibly deliver 20 jobs at $300, one of them is wrong — better to find out now.
The budget in box 5 goes into your fixed costs, alongside insurance and software. Our business plan guide shows where it sits in the financials.

If you're still writing the business plan, the free Business Plan Builder steps through each section, including the marketing summary. The one-page plan is the working version you run each week.

Keeping it alive: the monthly review

Once a month, sit down with the plan and the four numbers and ask three questions:

Did I do the weekly actions? If not, the plan isn't failing — it hasn't been tried. Fix the calendar, not the channels.
Which channel produced enquiries, and at what cost per customer? Move hours and dollars towards it.
Which channel produced nothing after 90 days of genuine effort? Replace it, once.

Every 90 days, rewrite the page from scratch. If it reads the same in December as it did in September, you stopped measuring.

Key takeaways

A marketing plan fits on one page: goal, ideal customer, offer and positioning, three channels with weekly actions, budget, measures and a 90-day calendar.
Write the goal as customers per month and work backwards to enquiries per week — a number you can check every Friday.
Three channels, each with a written weekly action, beats dabbling in ten. For most local businesses, channel one is a free Google Business Profile.
Track enquiries, source, conversion rate and cost per customer, and ask "how did you hear about us?" on every enquiry.
The customer goal feeds your business plan's sales forecast and the budget feeds its fixed costs.

Where to get help

business.gov.au — Develop your marketing plan — the government's free marketing plan template and guide, if you want a longer version behind your one page.
Digital Solutions — Australian Small Business Advisory Services — free digital marketing workshops and low-fee one-on-one advice for sole traders and businesses with fewer than 20 employees (as at September 2026).
ACCC — advertising and promotions — what you can and can't claim under the Australian Consumer Law.
ACMA — avoid sending spam — consent, identification and unsubscribe rules for email and SMS marketing.
Your accountant — for setting a marketing budget your cash flow can carry and confirming how marketing costs are treated at tax time.