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Start from the business priority, not the channel
The month’s plan begins with a sentence from the owner: what the business needs this month. Enquiries for a specific service that has capacity. Bookings for a slow season. Dealer leads in a new district. Reactivated customers ahead of a launch. Not “more brand awareness” — a priority is something you could count at month end. From it, an enquiry target: how many, of what kind, by when, derived from the revenue needed and your conversion rates.
Then the state of things: last month’s numbers by channel, what worked, what did not, what the sales team said about lead quality, and what is already committed — an exhibition, a launch, a holiday. The plan is written in the last week of the previous month, in an hour, by the marketer with the owner.
Translate the priority into channel objectives
Each channel gets one job and one number for the month, or it gets nothing. Search ads: enquiries for the priority service, at a cost per qualified enquiry under a stated figure. The Business Profile and local search: calls and direction requests. Content and SEO: the two questions to answer this month and the page to improve. Email and WhatsApp to the existing base: the reactivation or the offer, with a reply target. Social: the proof to publish — the real work, the customer, the team — and the retargeting audience it feeds. Referrals: the customers to ask this month.
The discipline is in the channels that get nothing. A month with three channels working toward one priority beats one with seven channels doing what they always do. Write the objectives as sentences — “search ads produce 25 qualified enquiries for laser cutting under ₹X each” — so that success and failure are visible on the last day.
Build the calendar: campaigns, content, budget, names
Four rows on the page. Campaigns: which ad campaigns run, on which platform, from when to when, to which landing page, with what budget. Content: the two answer pages, the case study, the profile updates, the posts cut from them — with the expert interview booked in week one and the publish dates in weeks two and four. Budget: the month’s spend by line, with the total against the annual plan, and a small reserve for what the first fortnight teaches. Responsibilities: a name and a date on every line — who writes, who builds, who approves, who reads the numbers — because a line with no name is a line that does not happen.
Keep it to one page. If it needs two, there are too many activities for the priority, and the second page is where the budget leaks.
Weekly reviews and the monthly learning cycle
Weekly, fifteen minutes, the same three questions: are the lines on the calendar happening on their dates; what do the numbers say so far — enquiries, cost, qualification, response time; and what one thing changes this week — a search term added, a creative swapped, a landing page headline, a follow-up chased. Small corrections weekly are what make a month’s budget produce; a month left alone produces a report.
Monthly, one hour: each channel’s objective against its result; the sales team’s view of lead quality; the cost per qualified enquiry and, where the cycle allows, cost per customer by channel; three lessons written in sentences; and the decisions for next month — what gets more, what gets less, what stops. That hour writes most of next month’s page.
Worksheet · use it here or print it
Monthly marketing plan
One page, written in the last week of the previous month, reviewed every Monday. If a line has no owner or no number, delete it rather than leave it.
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Mistakes, and what a working plan feels like
The mistakes: planning by channel — “this month we will do Instagram” — with no priority above it; objectives without numbers; a calendar without names; budget allocated by habit rather than by last month’s results; skipping the weekly check so the month is judged only at the end; and a plan written by the agency with no owner input, which optimises for what the agency can show rather than what the business needs. A safeguard: if the owner cannot say the month’s priority in one sentence, do not plan the channels yet.
A working plan feels boring: the same page every month, the same three weekly questions, the same monthly hour, and numbers that improve slowly and explain themselves. That is the campaign planning we run with SMEs and their in-house marketers — the monthly page, the calendar, the weekly check and the monthly review — and the free audit will show you what last month’s plan would have looked like if it had been written down.
Questions owners ask
Who should write the monthly plan?
The marketer or agency, with the owner supplying the priority sentence and the sales team’s view of lead quality. An hour together in the last week of the month. A plan written without the owner optimises for the wrong thing.
How many channels should a month include?
Two or three working toward the priority, plus the standing routines — the profile, the follow-ups. More than that and none gets the attention that makes it produce.
What if the priority changes mid-month?
Change the page and the calendar, and note it in the monthly review. Plans are for steering, not for obedience. Weekly checks exist so that changes are deliberate rather than drift.
How do we set the budget per line?
From last month’s cost per qualified enquiry by channel and this month’s enquiry target, with a reserve of about a tenth for what the first fortnight teaches. Habit is not a budgeting method.
Do we need a tool for this?
One page and a shared calendar are enough for most SMEs. The numbers come from the ad platforms and the CRM; the plan itself is a document, not software.
What does GullySales do?
The monthly page with you, the calendar and the campaigns, the content production, the weekly check and the monthly review with numbers — as the outsourced marketing function or alongside your marketer. Scoped in the free audit and priced in writing.