The Ruthless Art of Writing a Marketing Plan

In the last month, I’ve written two full-blown marketing plans for clients and I’m diving into a third one this weekend for a very hands on project. Both were very different projects. Opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to target customers, budgets, and expectations. But here’s the funny part: both plans, unique as they were, netted out at exactly 45 pages each.

That wasn’t by design. I didn’t have a template I was plugging things into. It happened because that’s how much it takes to capture the real meat of a marketing plan when you’re not padding it with fluff.

And that’s the problem with most marketing plans I see. They’re not written to drive impact. They’re written to impress. Flashy decks, endless initiatives, “strategic pillars” that could have been pulled from a Fortune cookie. They collapse the second real-world business pressure shows up.

Let’s be clear: marketing leaders don’t need more initiatives. They need ruthless clarity on what drives impact, and the conviction to cut what doesn’t.

Busy Doesn’t Mean Effective

High-output marketing is often just hiding a lack of strategic clarity. A giant roadmap with thirty things checked off looks great in a boardroom, but the real question is: did it move the needle?

Most plans fail because they mistake “busy” for “effective.” The job isn’t to rack up activities. The job is to create outcomes. And outcomes come from ruthless prioritization. If your team is working on ten things but only two of them matter, congratulations, you’re burning time and budget on eight distractions.

Shut Up and Listen First

The best part of my process (and the most overlooked step in most plans) is listening. Not to customers, at least not at first. To sales, product, and support. These teams live at the sharp end of the stick. They know where the friction is, because they deal with it every day.

If sales keeps running into the same objection, that’s not just their problem, it’s your marketing problem. If support is drowning in tickets on one issue, that’s a signal. If product is quietly admitting they don’t know who the core user is, that’s not a small oversight, it’s a fire alarm.

You don’t start a marketing plan with tactics. You start by asking: where’s the real friction? Because that’s where the leverage is.

The Power of Saying No

Here’s the part people hate: saying no.

But boundaries are what give a marketing plan teeth. Cutting underperforming work isn’t a bottleneck, it’s what supports focus, speed, and actual impact.

Every marketer has been in a meeting where a leader suggests “just adding one more initiative.” Sounds harmless. Feels proactive. In reality, it’s death by a thousand cuts. Every new thing you add without cutting something else divides attention, waters down resources, and slows momentum.

Real strategy isn’t about how much you take on. It’s about what you’re willing to cut.

Why Marketing Plans Actually Fail

It’s rarely because the team is bad. And it’s not usually because the budget is too thin. Most marketing plans fail because they’re designed to look impressive, not to win.

They fail because someone wanted to show breadth over depth. Because no one had the guts to ask the hard question: What are we really trying to achieve?

Over the years, I’ve looked at dozens of marketing strategies across startups and scale-ups. And the patterns are obvious. Roughly 90% of startups fail within five years. Only 14% cite bad marketing as the reason, which at first sounds like a win for marketers. But the real kicker? Forty-two percent fail because the product isn’t solving a real problem.

And guess what: that’s still the marketer’s problem. If you’re at a company without product-market fit yet, your job is even harder. You can’t hide behind busywork. You have to be strategic, thoughtful, and painfully deliberate. You’re testing, not throwing spaghetti at the wall.

What I’ve Learned From Writing (and Living) Marketing Plans

I’ve worked with startups still searching for product-market fit and with successful scale-ups that already had something people love. The difference in approach is night and day. But the underlying lesson is the same:

Real strategy is ruthless.

It’s not about filling a 45-page document with clever slides. It’s about finding the one or two bets worth placing, and then cutting everything else that doesn’t directly support them.

Every time I sit down to write a plan, that’s what I’m hunting for. Not the laundry list of tactics that sound good in a meeting, but the short list of things that will actually matter when the market pushes back.

Because the truth is simple: marketing doesn’t fail for lack of ideas. It fails for lack of clarity.

Takeaway

If you’re building your own marketing plan—or reviewing one someone else just handed you, don’t ask “is this impressive?” Ask “is this ruthless?”

Does it cut the noise? Does it focus on real friction? Does it say no more often than it says yes?

If not, it’s not a strategy. It’s just a to-do list in disguise.