TL;DR

Most marketing plans are annual documents that die in a drawer. Written in January, ignored by March, rediscovered at tax time. A 90-day marketing plan is different: short enough to actually execute, long enough for the results to compound.

Here's the full marketing plan template. Seven sections:

One goal - tied to revenue, not "brand awareness"
Who exactly you serve - one sentence, specific enough to exclude people
One core message - the thing you repeat until you're sick of it
Channel picks - maximum three, each with a written reason
Weekly actions calendar - what happens each week, and who does it
Numbers you track weekly - leads, enquiries, revenue. Not likes.
The Friday 15-minute review - the ritual that keeps the plan alive

That's it. One to two pages. The rest of this guide explains how to write a marketing plan using this structure, shows a filled-in example for a Hamilton plumbing business, and covers the mistakes that kill most plans.

Why Annual Marketing Plans Fail

If you've ever written a proper annual marketing plan for a NZ small business, you already know how this story ends. The plan was probably good. It just never got used.

Annual plans fail for predictable reasons:

They're too long

A 12-month plan is 12 months of guesses. You don't know what your market looks like in November. You barely know what it looks like next month. The further out the plan stretches, the more of it is fiction.

They're too vague

Annual plans fill up with goals like "increase brand awareness" and "grow social presence." Those aren't goals. They're moods. You can't fail at them, which means you can't succeed at them either.

They're written once and never revisited

Most marketing plans exist to be approved, not executed. They get written for a bank, a business advisor, or a January burst of motivation. Then real work takes over, and nobody opens the document again.

The person writing it is the person doing everything else

In most NZ small businesses, the marketing plan is written by the owner. The same owner quoting jobs, managing staff, and chasing invoices. A plan that needs ten hours a week from that person was never going to happen.

The fix isn't a better annual plan. It's a shorter one. A marketing plan only needs to do two things: tell you what to do this week, and tell you whether last week worked. A 90-day window does both.

How to Write a 90-Day Marketing Plan: The Template

Open a blank document. Add these seven headings. Fill them in honestly. That's the whole marketing plan template - no swimlanes, no SWOT matrix, no 40-page deck.

1. One goal, tied to revenue

Not three goals. One. And it must connect to money, because marketing that doesn't eventually produce revenue is a hobby.

Good examples:

"Book $30,000 of new work from marketing channels by 30 September"
"Add 25 qualified enquiries per month by the end of the quarter"
"Get 40 new bookings from returning customers this quarter"

Bad examples:

"Grow our brand"
"Be more consistent on social media"
"Get our name out there"

The test: could a stranger look at your numbers on day 90 and tell you whether you hit it? If not, rewrite it.

2. Who exactly you serve

One or two sentences describing your best customer. Specific enough that it excludes people. "Anyone who needs a builder" is not a target market. It's a hope.

Write down who they are, where they are, and what they actually care about when they buy. Most NZ businesses have never written this sentence, and it shows in their marketing: generic ads, generic website, generic results.

3. One core message

What's the one thing you want your market to associate with your name? Pick it, write it down, and repeat it everywhere for 90 days: ads, website, emails, van signage, how you answer the phone.

This feels repetitive from the inside. It isn't from the outside. Your customers see a fraction of what you put out. By the time you're bored of your message, most of your market is only just starting to notice it.

4. Pick your channels - maximum three

This is where most plans bloat. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Google Ads, SEO, email, flyers, sponsorship, radio. Ten channels done badly loses to two channels done properly, every time.

Pick a maximum of three, and write one sentence next to each explaining why. "Because our competitors are there" is not a reason. "Because people search for our service with high intent and we can measure cost per lead" is.

For most NZ service businesses, the shortlist usually comes down to:

Google Ads - fastest to results. People searching "emergency plumber Hamilton" want a plumber today. You pay for that intent, but you can measure every dollar.
SEO and your Google Business Profile - slower to build, but the leads are effectively free once you rank. For local businesses, the map pack alone is worth the effort.
Email to past customers - the cheapest revenue in your business. They already know you and trust you. Most small businesses never email them.
Your website's ability to convert - not a channel exactly, but if your site can't capture the leads your channels generate, everything upstream is wasted. Fix this before you spend on traffic.

Social media can earn a spot, but for most trades and service businesses it's a supporting act, not the headline.

5. The weekly actions calendar

Break the 90 days into 13 weeks. For each week, list the specific actions, and put a name next to each one. An action without an owner is a suggestion.

Keep it boring and repeatable. A realistic week looks like:

Monday: check weekend enquiries, respond to all leads (Owner)
Tuesday: request reviews from last week's completed jobs (Office)
Wednesday: publish one piece of content or one customer story (Owner)
Thursday: check Google Ads spend and pause anything wasting money (Owner)
Friday: 15-minute review (Owner)

Front-load setup work into weeks 1 and 2 (landing page fixes, ad account setup, email list clean-up), then let weeks 3 to 13 run on rhythm.

6. The numbers you track weekly

Pick three to five numbers, and make them numbers that pay the bills:

Leads - calls, form fills, messages
Qualified enquiries - leads that were actually your target customer
Quotes or proposals sent
Jobs won / sales made
Revenue from marketing-generated work

Notice what's missing: followers, likes, reach, impressions. Those are vanity numbers. They can be useful diagnostics, but they don't belong on the scoreboard. A business with 300 followers and 30 enquiries a month beats a business with 30,000 followers and 3 enquiries.

Put the numbers in a simple spreadsheet with one row per week. That's your entire reporting system.

7. The Friday 15-minute review

This is the section that separates plans that work from plans that rot. Every Friday, 15 minutes, same time, calendar invite and everything. Three questions:

What were this week's numbers versus last week's?
What worked, and what stalled?
What's the one change for next week?

One change. Not five. If Google Ads produced ten leads and Facebook produced none, shift budget. If nobody opened your email, change the subject line next week. Small weekly corrections are how a 90-day marketing plan compounds - by week 13 you've made a dozen evidence-based improvements instead of one big guess in January.

Miss the review twice in a row and the plan is officially dead. Protect it.

A Worked Example: A Hamilton Plumber's 90-Day Plan

Here's the template filled in for a fictional but realistic business: Whitmore Plumbing, two vans, based in Hamilton, doing a mix of maintenance callouts and bathroom renovations.

1. Goal: Book $30,000 of new work from marketing channels by 30 September, split roughly between two bathroom renovations and steady maintenance callouts.

2. Who we serve: Homeowners in Hamilton and surrounding Waikato towns with houses 15+ years old. They need urgent repairs or bathroom upgrades, and they care more about a plumber who turns up on time than the cheapest quote.

3. Core message: "The plumber who turns up when we say we will." Every ad, every page, every email backs this up: response-time promise, booked time slots, photos of the actual team.

4. Channels (three, with reasons):

Google Ads on "plumber hamilton", "emergency plumber hamilton", and "bathroom renovation hamilton" - highest intent searches in the area, measurable cost per lead, results within days. Budget: $1,200/month.
Google Business Profile + reviews - the map pack is where locals actually choose a tradie, and review count is the biggest lever. Target: five new reviews per week, photos uploaded weekly.
Email to past customers - 600 past customers on file, never emailed once. One useful email per month (seasonal maintenance tips plus a renovation offer). Near-zero cost.

5. Weekly calendar (abridged):

Weeks 1-2: fix the website's contact page so the phone number and form sit above the fold, set up call tracking, launch ads, write email one, set up the review-request text template.
Weeks 3-13: run the Monday-to-Friday rhythm - respond to every lead same day, request reviews after every completed job Tuesday, check ad spend Thursday, review numbers Friday.

6. Weekly numbers: calls, form enquiries, quotes sent, jobs booked, revenue booked, Google Ads cost per lead.

7. Friday review in practice: In week 4, Whitmore notices emergency callout clicks cost $6 while "bathroom renovation" clicks cost $19 but produce quotes worth 20 times more. The one change: shift $200 of weekly budget toward renovation keywords. That's the whole system working as intended.

Nothing in that plan is clever. All of it is doable by a two-van business, and almost none of it is being done by their competitors.

Common Marketing Plan Mistakes

The template is simple. These are the ways people break it anyway:

1. Five goals instead of one

Multiple goals means no priority, and no priority means the urgent beats the important every week. Pick one. The others can have the next 90 days.

2. Choosing channels by comfort, not customers

Owners pick Instagram because they use Instagram. Meanwhile their customers are typing problems into Google. Pick channels based on where buying decisions happen, not where you enjoy scrolling.

3. Actions without owners

"Post more content" belongs to nobody, so nobody does it. Every action in the calendar needs a name, even in a one-person business, because writing your own name next to a task on a specific day is what turns intention into schedule.

4. Scoring the plan on vanity numbers

If the weekly scoreboard is reach and likes, the plan will optimise for reach and likes, and the bank account won't move. Track leads, enquiries, and revenue.

5. Changing everything at once

Two slow weeks and the panic sets in: new channels, new message, new offer. Now you have no idea what caused what. Channels like SEO and email need the full 90 days to show their shape. Make one change per week and let the data speak.

6. Writing it and never reading it again

The oldest mistake in marketing. The Friday review exists specifically to prevent it. A mediocre plan reviewed weekly beats a brilliant plan reviewed never.

Should You DIY This or Get Help?

Honest answer: this marketing plan template is genuinely enough for a lot of NZ businesses. If you have one clear offer, a rough sense of who buys it, and the discipline to hold the Friday review, do it yourself. That's exactly what the template is for.

Getting help makes sense when:

You've plateaued and can't tell which lever is stuck - the offer, the message, or the channels
You're already spending on marketing with no clear read on what it returns
You genuinely don't know which channels fit your business, and 90 days testing the wrong ones costs more than getting a straight answer
You want the plan built properly once, so your team can run it

That last group is who our Strategy Sprint exists for. It's the research, positioning, channel plan, and 90-day roadmap done for you in two weeks, from $1,500. You get a written plan in this same structure - one goal, defined audience, core message, justified channel picks, weekly roadmap, measurement plan - and then you can run it yourself or have us run it with you. No lock-in either way.

But start with the free version. Plenty of businesses never need more than this template and the discipline to use it.

Marketing Plan FAQ

How long should a marketing plan be?

One to two pages. If it's longer than that, it won't get read weekly, and a plan that isn't read weekly isn't a plan. Detail lives in the tools (your ads account, your email platform, your spreadsheet), not the document.

What should a small business marketing budget be in NZ?

A common rule of thumb is 5-10% of revenue: nearer 5% to maintain an established business, 10% or more if you're pushing for growth. For a $500,000 revenue business that's $25,000 to $50,000 a year across ad spend, tools, and any outside help. If that number feels impossible, start smaller but start measurable: $500 to $1,000 a month on one high-intent channel with proper tracking teaches you more than $200 scattered across five.

What's the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan?

Strategy is the choices: who you serve, what you promise, why you win. The plan is the actions: what happens each week to act on those choices. Sections 1 to 4 of this template are strategy. Sections 5 to 7 are the plan. Most businesses skip straight to actions without making the choices, which is why the actions don't work.

How often should I update my marketing plan?

Review it weekly in the Friday 15 minutes, rewrite it every 90 days. Between those two rhythms, leave it alone. Mid-quarter rewrites are usually panic wearing a strategy costume.

Can I use this template if I'm just starting out?

Yes, with one adjustment: your goal is validation, not scale. Something like "get 10 paying customers and find out why they bought" beats a revenue target you have no baseline for. Everything else - one audience, one message, three channels, weekly numbers, Friday review - applies from day one.

Final Word

The best marketing plan for a NZ small business is not the most thorough one. It's the one that's still being used in week nine.

Copy the seven headings. Fill them in this week. Put the Friday review in your calendar before you do anything else. Ninety days from now you'll either have hit your goal or learned exactly why you didn't - and both of those beat another annual plan in a drawer.

Want a professional set of eyes on it instead? Our Strategy Sprint delivers the research, positioning, channel plan, and 90-day roadmap for you, from $1,500. Or book a free 30-minute call and we'll give you an honest read on where your marketing is stuck - even if you don't end up working with us.

Marketing Plan Template NZ: The 90-Day Plan That Actually Gets Done (2026)