Most marketing plans are 50-page PowerPoint decks that nobody reads after the kickoff meeting. They cover so much ground that they end up driving no decisions — because everything looks important and nothing is prioritized.
What works instead: a one-page strategy document. Specifically, a document that forces decisions about positioning, audience, message, and bets. Here’s the template — and how to use it.
The five sections that matter
1. Positioning
One sentence: who we serve, what we do for them, and why we’re different. If you can’t say it in one sentence, you don’t have positioning. You have aspirations.
Example: “Olive Group is a strategic marketing agency for service businesses in Los Angeles that’s operator-led — we run brands ourselves before we advise yours.
2. Audience
Who are we trying to reach? Be specific. Job title, business size, situation, pain. Don’t write “small business owners.” Write “owners of $2M–$10M service businesses who have hit a growth ceiling and don’t know whether to hire in-house or use an agency.”
3. Message
What’s the one thing we want them to remember about us? Not five things. One.
Example: “We don’t just consult on marketing. We operate businesses.”
4. Bets
What are we going to actually do this quarter? Three to five concrete initiatives. Each one has an owner, a deadline, and a measurable outcome. Everything else is noise.
5. What we’re not doing
This is the section that makes the strategy real. What are we explicitly choosing NOT to do? If your strategy doesn’t have a “not doing” list, it’s not a strategy. It’s a wishlist.
How to use the template
- Fill it in. An hour of focused work.
- Show it to your team. Get their pushback.
- Revise. Two more iterations.
- Pin it where everyone can see it. Not in Notion. Not in a folder. Actually pinned.
- Reference it every time you make a decision. “Does this serve our bets, or are we drifting?”
- Refresh it quarterly. Strategy isn’t permanent. Markets shift.
What good strategy documents look like
The best ones share three traits:
- They’re short. If your team can’t recite the key points, the document is too long.
- They name a clear enemy. Who or what are you fighting? A competitor? An industry default? Inertia?
- They make tradeoffs explicit. “We’re choosing depth over breadth this year. That means saying no to [list].”
The common mistakes
- Trying to serve everyone. If everyone is the audience, no one is.
- Confusing tactics with strategy. “More content” isn’t strategy. “We’re going to own the answer engine optimization conversation for service businesses” is strategy.
- Updating too often. Strategy is the thing you don’t change every month. Tactics change. Strategy holds.
- Not measuring against it. Set quarterly review milestones. Did the bets pay off? Did we honor the “not doing” list?
If you’d like a copy of the template we use with our strategy clients, reach out. We’ll send the Notion link.
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