Good ideas die of bad marketing every day.
Not because the owners did nothing. Because they did good things in the wrong order. Ads before the website could convert. A rebrand before anyone could find the brand. Content before anyone knew which searches mattered. Most businesses do not have a marketing problem. They have a sequencing problem, and a plan is simply the sequence, written down and costed.
Which is why the standard marketing plan template disappoints. The structure is usually fine. What no template can give you is the evidence: who actually takes your customers, where the demand sits, what your market types into Google and asks AI. A plan without that underneath it is a list of activities wearing a plan's clothes. This page gives you both halves. The structure is free, below. The evidence is work, and we will be straight with you about what that involves.
We pulled twelve months of Google's own Keyword Planner data for New Zealand and Australia across more than 60,000 search terms. Two findings every plan written this year needs to account for.
Your customers are asking AI. When someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI to recommend a business in your category, a name comes back, and whether it is yours is now a marketing question. Across our client base, visitors who arrive from AI assistants are the most engaged cohort we measure, and NZ searches for aeo (answer engine optimisation) grew 52% year on year. Being found now means Google and the AI engines, and most plans only budget for the first one.
Paid demand is surging. NZ searches for pay per click advertising went from a couple of dozen a month to more than 700 between June and August 2026, as businesses watch organic traffic fall and buy demand instead. More bidders in the same auctions means a plan that treats ads as a tap to turn on, without fixing conversion first, funds everyone's clicks except the ones that become customers.
And one number held completely steady through all of that movement: searches for marketing plan template did not drop at all. Owners are not looking for someone to take marketing off their hands. They are looking for the plan. If that is you, you are in the right place.
A working plan answers seven questions, in order. Each one maps to a section of the plan below.
01
Position.
Where you actually stand: what you sell, what it costs, what makes customers choose you over the next option, and how the market currently sees you. Written in plain language a stranger would understand. If this takes more than a paragraph, the thinking is not finished yet.
02
Audience.
Who the plan serves, and who it deliberately does not. The second half matters more. Every business we have diagnosed that felt invisible was trying to speak to everyone.
04
Channels, in sequence.
Not a list of everything you could do. The order you will do it in: get found where the demand already is, make the website convert the people who arrive, build the authority that earns trust and AI citations, then lead with the brand work. Sequence is the difference between channels compounding and channels competing for the same dollar.
05
Budget.
What you will spend, where, and what each dollar is supposed to produce. A plan without numbers is a wish. Include your own time at an honest rate, because it is the most expensive line you have.
06
Measurement.
The five or six numbers you will check monthly: enquiries, cost per enquiry, conversion rate, where each customer came from, what is growing. If enquiries are not being tracked properly, fixing that is action one of the plan. You cannot steer what you cannot see.
07
The next 90 days.
Ten actions maximum, each dated and owned. A twelve-month plan earns its keep in the first quarter or not at all.
The plan shown.
Here is the whole thing on one page, filled in. The business is fictional. The thinking is exactly how we build plans for real clients.
HARBOURLINE JOINERY · a worked example
01 · The business in one line. Custom kitchens and architectural joinery for Wellington renovations, $25k to $80k a project.
02 · Who it's for, and who it isn't. Renovating owners with an architect involved, who value finish over speed. Not new-build volume work, not price-first buyers.
03 · Why you. The phrase that repeats across their reviews: "they just handled it." The product is cabinetry. The promise is certainty.
04 · The market they're actually in. Two established firms win the searches. One of them dominates the AI recommendations, mostly on review volume. Nobody owns the cost question every customer asks first.
05 · The gap. Cost transparency. Every competitor hides pricing, every customer searches for it, and the AI engines have nothing local to cite. First mover takes the question.
06 · Twelve-month goals. 12 tracked enquiries a month by August · average project value to $45k · the first AI citation on the cost question by March.
07 · Channels, in sequence. Fix enquiry tracking and the contact page first, because the site converts at 1.1% and ads would be funding that leak. Then the cost guide and three project pages. Then reviews from the last ten installs. Only then $900 a month on Google Ads, once conversion clears 3%.
08 · Budget. $2,000 a month, plus the owner's four hours a week costed honestly at $150 an hour, because that is the scarcest line in the whole plan.
09 · Measurement. Enquiries · cost per enquiry · conversion rate · source of every job won · one grow-number: non-brand search clicks.
10 · The next 90 days. Ten dated actions, starting with conversion tracking, because you cannot steer what you cannot see.
That is a complete marketing plan. One page, every dollar accountable, every action in order.
If you want the blank structure to copy, it is right below, as plain text on this page. No PDF, no email, no funnel. Take it. Write short. If an answer runs past three sentences, it is not finished thinking yet.
01 · THE BUSINESS, IN ONE LINE
What do you sell, who buys it, and what does it cost?
02 · WHO IT'S FOR, AND WHO IT ISN'T
Describe your best customer: the one who pays well, refers others, and values the work. Now name the customer you will stop chasing. The second answer shapes the plan more than the first.
03 · WHY YOU
The real reason customers choose you over the next option, in their words, not yours. Check your reviews. The phrase that repeats is your answer.
04 · THE MARKET YOU'RE ACTUALLY IN
List the three businesses that win the customers you should. Not who you think of as competitors. Who shows up when your customer searches, and who the AI engines recommend when asked. If you do not know, that is finding number one.
05 · THE GAP
What does your market want that nobody serves well? Weak search results, questions AI answers badly, complaints that repeat in competitor reviews. Write what you believe now, in pencil. This is the section evidence most often rewrites.
06 · TWELVE-MONTH GOALS
Three at most, each with a number and a date. "More enquiries" is a hope. "25 tracked enquiries a month by September" is a goal.
07 · CHANNELS, IN SEQUENCE
Not everything you could do. The order you will do it in: First, get found: where does your demand already look? Google, AI assistants, maps, a directory, a trail association, a trade channel? Second, convert: what must the website do before it deserves more traffic? Third, build authority: what content, reviews, and citations earn trust from people and AI engines? Then, lead: the brand work that makes you the obvious choice. Write one line against each.
08 · BUDGET
Monthly spend, where it goes, and what each line is supposed to produce. Include your own hours at an honest rate. It is the most expensive line you have.
09 · MEASUREMENT
The five numbers you will check monthly: enquiries · cost per enquiry · conversion rate · source of each new customer · the one number that must grow this quarter. If enquiries are not tracked properly today, fixing that is action one below.
10 · THE NEXT 90 DAYS
Ten actions maximum. Each one dated. Each one owned. A plan earns its keep in the first quarter or not at all.
A template is a map you draw yourself
Here is the limit of every template, including ours. It can hold your answers. It cannot tell you whether your answers are true.
Which competitors actually take your customers. Which searches and AI answers you should own and currently do not. Whether your website converts well enough to deserve ad spend. Where the gap in your market genuinely sits. That is diagnosis, and it is the hard part.
And here is the honest part. You could fill this in yourself across a few quiet weekends, if quiet weekends were something you had. Being too busy to do your own marketing homework is not a failing. It is the actual problem a consultancy exists to solve.
Sphynx 2.0 is how we solve it. A competitive intelligence diagnostic of your market: your real position, your real competitors, the available gap, and all ten sections of the plan answered from the data rather than from instinct. It takes about a week, costs NZD $489, and ends with a 60 to 90 minute walkthrough and a branded report that is yours to keep regardless of what happens next. If a larger engagement follows, the $489 comes off the first invoice.
The first conversation is free, and we will tell you honestly if a diagnostic is not what you need yet.
What a plan built
from evidence looks like
6% conversion rate against a 2% industry average · 550+ new clients in the firs year after launch · cost per acquisition down from NZD $70.70 to $47.52 · 1st in AI visibility across all Auckland beauty competitors.
From zero NZ rankings to position 1 inside 24 hours on its priority terms · 0 to 83 NZ organic keywords in four months
"Everything I learned matched exactly what you had explained."
Chika Fisk, Japan360 Travel
From zero measurable enquiries to 18 tracked contacts in month one · AI recommendation rate from 40% to 90% at launch. They found Kyttn the same way their customers increasingly find them: through an AI recommendation.
Every number above is the client's own, measured in their accounts, and every engagement is month to month with no lock-in. We never promise rankings or results. We promise measurement and honesty.
