The 7-sentence marketing plan is a framework for strategic planning related to business goals, marketing activities, desired customer responses, and key performance indicators (measuring success).

1. Introduction to the
7-Sentence Marketing Plan
by Monique Trottier

2. 7-Sentence Marketing Plan
Sentence 1: What is the purpose of your marketing?
Sentence 2: How will you accomplish your purpose?
Sentence 3: Who is your target market?
Sentence 4: What is your niche in the marketplace?
Sentence 5: What tools and tactics will you use to carry out your marketing?
Sentence 6: What is your business identity?
Sentence 7: How will you measure success and allocate time and budget?
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

3. #1 What is the purpose of
your marketing?
What are your goals? These need to be specific and measurable:
• Reach a new audience (#, %)
• Promote an event (#, $)
• Get sales (#, $)
Identify the top 3 goals and tailor them to be specific to your client/project. Be as
specific as possible (i.e., drive # people to the FB page who will enter the contest
(est. 10% conversion rate)
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

4. Sentence #1: Example
Let’s say you run a service that teaches people basic internet marketing practices.
We’ll call it the “QuickLearn Training series.”
Here’s how a 7-Sentence Marketing Plan would work for you.
1. The purpose of the QuickLearn Training series is to educate business
professionals on all aspects of internet marketing. Our secondary goal is to increase
awareness and adoption of internet marketing best practices.
We will offer in-class training and educational sessions for individuals and business
professionals looking for internet marketing education.
In the marketing of QuickLearn, our objective is to fully book 100% of the organization’s
available time for internet marketing education:
- 2 hour sessions
- 1 session per month
- estimate 5-20 participants
- estimate $100-150 per participant per session
- estimate $10-50 per e-book, online training video Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

5. #2 How will you accomplish your goals?
What are you going to do?
For example, you could:
• Set up a Facebook page to host the contest
• Execute an outreach campaign by contacting bloggers and
influencers
What is it you will do to meet the business goal?
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

6. Sentence #2: Example
2. QuickLearn will accomplish its purpose by:
• establishing the credentials of its educators,
• having sessions in a central location and/or made easily available online,
• positioning the learning series as a fast way to hone or improve one’s internet marketing skills.
Sessions will be hyper-focused, will fit into a regular weekday evening, and will be of high-quality.
Benefits (keyword phrases):
- Hyper-focussed
- Fits into regular day
- Fast way to hone or improve internet marketing skills
Competitive Advantages:
- People are too busy to take a full course
- Full courses or training are often not specific enough or take a general overview approach instead of offering
how-to knowledge
- We can accommodate small class sizes
- Reasonable cost
- Difficult to find this type of training
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

7. 3. Client’s Target Audience (or Audiences) is:
Who are the people you want to reach?
Create representative personas:
• what kind of people are they?
• what characteristics do they share?
• what social media channels do they use?
• how do they engage online?
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

8. Sentence #3: Example
3. Our target market is local small business and marketing staff in medium- to large-
sized businesses who are currently managing some aspect of their company’s online
marketing activities or who would like to learn more so they can take on those roles.
They are beginners or intermediates in internet marketing. They value internet
marketing and want to drive their businesses with the web or with an online strategy
that is in-line with their overarching business strategy.
Our secondary audience is the same type of professionals in other markets who are
willing to learn via distant education.
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

9. Sentence #3: Example Persona
Name: Steve
Title: Search Marketing Coordinator
Basics: (Includes demographics and psychographics – age, gender,
location, family life, likes and dislikes, location in adoption curve [i.e.
innovator, early adopter, early majority, late majority)
Professional and personal background: (includes job title, job
history, role, leisure activities)
Quote: If I could learn this stuff through osmosis, I would. There’s
never enough time in the day to stay up to date. I need something that
can fit in between my job duties and dad role.
Favourite Sites: (with context to this project)
Goals: (i.e. what is this person’s goals when looking for the services/
product you’re offering?)
I need / I want: (i.e. what does this person need and or want in order to
reach the above goals. Remember to keep in mind the characteristics
you described above) Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

10. Sentence #4: Client’s niche in the
marketplace
How will you position yourself? Use the S.P.H.E.R.E. acronym:
• So What: Why does your client’s product/service matter? What makes your
client different from its competitors? (list competitors – name, URL) Why do
consumers choose your client over someone else?
• Personality: What are the adjectives that describe your client’s brand?
• Hook: What’s your client’s story angle? Use phrases that are easy to
remember to helps to spread your client’s story via word of mouth.
• Ego: Who does your client need to engage with? Who can benefit from
promoting the brand amongst their friends? Why do people want to engage
with the brand?
• Relevancy: What is the relevancy between the audiences’ motivations and
what your client is trying to do?
• Effort: What does your client need to do in order to keep the audience
engaged throughout the campaign as well as after the campaign is finished.
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

11. Sentence #4: Example
4. We will position ourselves as the prime source of one-on-one and
small-group training, guaranteed instruction on the management of
internet marketing campaigns.
We are good and fast.
Benefits:
- hyper-focussed
- fits into regular day
- fast way to hone or improve internet marketing skills
Competitive Advantage:
- People are too busy to take a full course
- Full courses or training are often not specific enough or take a
general overview approach instead of offering how-to
knowledge
- We can accommodate small class sizes
- Reasonable cost
- Difficult to find this type of training
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

12. Sentence #5: Marketing tools
we plan to employ
• List all the possible marketing tools or tactics that could be used to meet your
desired goals. Review the Social Media Starfish or
http://TheConversationPrism.com
• Pick the ones that align with #1 - your business goals, marketing purpose
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

13. Sentence #5: Marketing tools
we plan to employ
http://TheConversationPrism.com
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

14. Sentence #5: Example
5. Marketing tools to be used will be a combination of
• personal emails
• client testimonials
• blog posts
• printable brochures
• search engine marketing
• advertising specialties (perhaps in Business in Vancouver or other
business trade magazines)
• free seminars
• conferences and presentations for industry groups, trade/commerce
boards and organizations
• online sampling (videos, ebooks, etc.)
• professional location for sessions and business-casual instructor
attire
• a website offering a free newsletter (session alerts), case studies,
marketing articles, session information, sample videos and ebooks
• publicity in the local newspapers, on radio talk shows, and on
television.
• On-going activities in communities of our peers and friends Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

15. Sentence #5: Tool-use visual graph
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

16. Sentence #6: The client’s business identity
Describe in as few sentences or words as possible the feelings,
voice and tone the company/brand evokes, and the brand
attributes you want it to convey.
For example:
➡ Warmth, friendliness, reassurance, comfort, excitement,
caring, honesty, humour, professionalism, intelligence,
sophistication, reliability, and trustworthiness
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

17. Sentence #6: Example
6. Our identity for QuickLearn will be a blend of professionalism, personal attention, and
respect for our students and the role of the web in their lives and their businesses.
Work for us is about fun, innovation and creativity.
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

18. Sentence #7: Plan to measure success
and allocate time and budget
• Align this sentence with #1, 2 and #5 – looking at your goals how will you
measure the effectiveness of your tactics? List the key performance indicators
(KPIs)
• How much time and money will your client devote specifically to social media?
• Estimate 2 hours per channel per week.
(Number of hours a week you can commit to social media / 2 = Max. number of
social media channels you can take on)
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

19. Sentence #7: Example Grid
Actions that will Desired Audience
Goal achieve goal Why Response KPIs
Book 100% of time •Outreach to Online buzz means •Register for the •Registrants
for internet minimum 1,000 more people know course •Timeline for
marketing qualified leads about the event; •Sign up for the Registrations
education (max. per event aim to reach 1,000 newsletter (Days of the
20 participants, 1 announcement; qualified leads •Share email/ Week, Time from
session per month) •Build newsletter (assuming 2% forward to a 1st
audience for response rate) friend Announcement),
course alerts/ •Open the email •Time of day
registration, registering
special offers for •Newsletter
email members subscribers
Goals > Actions > Response > KPI
Goals (#1) > Actions (#2, 5, 6) > Response (#3, 4) > KPI (#7)
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

20. Action Steps
The process of creating a 7-sentence marketing plan is not so that it can languish in
a filing cabinet.
After creating a 7-sentence marketing plan, you should:
• Show the plan to everyone in your organization who is involved with marketing
and ask for feedback and input.
• Show the plan to each employee, even if they are not involved with marketing.
They often have insights into sales or customer service that make not be
apparent to you.
• Breath life into the plan by doing what you say you’ll do in the plan and
measuring all your marketing activities against the strategy.
• If a proposed activity does not follow the strategy, change the activity or
discard it.
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

21. Summary
A good 7-Sentence Marketing Plan is a strategy that can guide your efforts for the
lifetime of the organization (or at least the lifetime of your marketing campaign).
The Plan has to be reviewed regularly and adapted as your audience’s needs change and
as your business evolves.
If you understand:
• the overall business goals (#1)
• how you will accomplish those goals (#2), and
• who your audience is (#3)
then you are able to use that knowledge to refine:
• how you will present yourself to the market (#4--the So What),
• what tools are best to use (#5), and
• how to leverage your corporate culture (#6).
Measure ALL marketing materials you plan to use.
No matter how much you may love a marketing idea, if it does not fulfill your strategy,
toss it out. Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

22. Next Steps
ASSIGNMENT:
Use the worksheet provided to write a 7 Sentence Marketing Plan. Follow the
format described in this presentation and the worksheet.
http://bit.ly/7-sentence-exercise
READINGS FOR NEXT WEEK:
Chapter 2 and 3 of Friends with Benefits
Boxcar Marketing, "Defining Your Target Audience with Personas,"
http://www.boxcarmarketing.com/blog/defining-your-target-audience-with-
personas/
Forrester, “Social Technographics Defined 2010,”
http://www.forrester.com/empowered/ladder2010
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing