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The Australian Digital Marketing Strategy Guide 2024

The Role Of Digital Marketing Is More Important In 2024 Than Ever Before.

For as long as I’ve been writing about marketing, I’ve talked about how critical a practical marketing strategy is to ensure the future health of your business. After all, marketing plays a huge role in determining the future demand for your offering. And when demand for your offering is low, so too are your sales and profit.

While the pandemic is far behind us, as marketers, we are faced with new challenges we must navigate this year; the growing uncertainty around attribution, privacy and data challenges, the continued integration (and sometimes threat) of AI and machine learning. Add to that is the ever-present need to ensure we have our marketing mix ‘right’.

History has proven that those who market their businesses aggressively during tough times will reap the benefits during good times in the form of increased market share.

To those who were unable to maintain or increase their marketing spend over the past year, all is not lost. Now is the time to start chasing down those of your competitors who used marketing to break away from the pack in the past 12 months. It’s never too late to get moving. 

I encourage you as a marketer or a business owner to continue learning from history. You need to keep your marketing efforts front and center while navigating your way through what has become a very unpredictable world.

All the best,

James Lawrence

Chapter 1: Australian Marketing Strategy and the Big Picture in 2024

What you need to know to ensure your marketing plan has solid foundations, 1. digital marketing strategy foundations.

Surprisingly, the term ‘strategy’ is one of the most overused and misunderstood words in the marketing world. Simply running ads on Google or writing blog articles without any thought or clear objectives is not a strategy. It’s important to have a clear grasp of what digital strategy is and what steps you need to take in order to build an effective one for your business.

What is a digital marketing strategy?

A digital marketing strategy involves a plan to achieve clear marketing objectives or business goals using clearly defined marketing channels within a set period. Typically, an effective end-to-end marketing strategy defines your target audience, positioning, messaging and includes channels like SEO, Google Ads, social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, email etc, all of which will be discussed in depth in this guide. 

For a business building their digital marketing strategy in Australia, the marketing goals and activities essentially need to be aligned to the overall business objective; which in most cases is to drive revenue. Whether you're a local FMCG company, or an international B2B SaaS business, you need a strong and clearly defined marketing strategy that will help you generate leads, sales, and customers.

What’s the difference between a digital strategy and digital tactics?

A strategy shouldn’t be confused with the tactics themselves; though it commonly is. Think of ‘strategy’ as your overall goal or plan, and the tactics are the actions you take to bring your plan to life. For example, your strategy shouldn’t be to “do SEO”. Rather, a key goal in your strategy could be to increase organic traffic to your website, and optimising your website pages could be the SEO tactic that makes this actionable.

What are the 7 Ps of Marketing?

The 7 Ps of marketing, otherwise referred to as the ‘marketing mix’, are commonly used to identify the strengths, as well as the gaps and opportunities for improvement within a marketing strategy. What’s more, they help find ways for your business to remain competitive in the marketplace.

The 7 Ps include:

• Product: features, design, quality, and packaging of the product/service
• Price: pricing strategy, discounts, and payment options
• Promotion: marketing and public relations opportunities
• Place: channels of distribution, inventory management, and logistics
• People: hiring, training, and management of employees
• Packaging: design, labelling, and branding of the product/service
• Process: procedures, systems, and technologies used

You cannot form effective digital marketing strategies without having a clear understanding of your business’s 7 Ps.

What are the steps to create a digital marketing plan?

There is no set template or cookie-cutter approach to creating a ‘successful’ digital marketing plan. However, there are key steps you can take to ensuring you are creating a strategy that speaks to your target audience, uses resources and budget wisely, and ultimately generates revenue.

Marketing thought-leader, Mark Ritson , explains how you can create an effective digital marketing plan in three key phases:

• Diagnose the situation or problem
• Develop a clear strategy
• Plan the tactics you will use to deliver this strategy

Diagnose the situation

Start by reviewing your previous marketing plan; did you meet your previous goals and objectives? What performed well? What were the key challenges you faced? Your new marketing plan should not be built entirely from scratch. It’s important to analyse previous data and findings to determine your metrics for success. 

You then need to conduct research -  but you need to know what you’re researching. If your results from the previous period were not favourable and you are struggling to meet your key metrics, then in-depth market research should be your next step. On the other hand, a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) can give a great indication of the position of the business and where to grow. 

What should follow is market segmentation. These should be the 3-5 best audience segments that are perfect for your product or service. Remember, it’s not about your company, it’s about your audience .

Develop a clear marketing strategy

From these segments, you can then determine your target audience. Will you target previous customers who have stopped purchasing from you? Current leads who have shown interest, but haven’t made a purchase yet? Or, will you target new customers who don’t even know that your brand/product/service exists yet? What level of the funnel will you be targeting?

Now you can start getting into the nitty gritty! What does your target audience look like? In what part of the marketing funnel do they sit? What behaviours do they exhibit? Why do they want to purchase your product? A buyer persona grid is a fantastic tool to collect this information in a logical, concise manner. 

It’s now time to set SMART goals and objectives. This is the key part of your strategy! Your SMART goals should be; specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.

Plan the marketing tactics

What tactics are going to help you achieve your SMART goals? This will look very different depending on your type of business; whether you are B2B or B2C, if you’re an eCommerce company, or if you see FMCGs v SaaS services. 

Your budget is also going to significantly impact the tactics you should consider implementing. This should be thought out very carefully - what tactics are going to get you the best outcomes, and how much do you need to invest for the tactics to see tangible results?

Examples of tactics include implementing a certain bid strategy for your search ads on Google, launching new webpages with relevant content to boost your organic traffic or running a webinar to engage your database.

What are the top qualities of a digital marketer?

The top qualities of a digital marketer include being able to problem solve , having a strong ability to communicate well with others, to think strategically and analytically, as well as to work collaboratively with a fast-paced team.

Of course, how you exercise these qualities will change depending on your individual role. For example, if you work at an agency managing clients, then strong organisational and task management skills are imperative. If you are a digital marketing specialist, you might place more emphasis on analysing data and making critical decisions promptly on accounts. On the other hand, if you’re an in-house marketer, you need to be able to prioritise tasks effectively, and focus more on strategy and problem-solving.

2. If You’re Relying On Data For “Every” Decision You're Setting Yourself Up For Failure

The rise of digital brought with it a belief that all marketing activities could now be measured. Gone is the saying; "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don't know which half". With this came an obsession with hard metrics like cost per click, cost per lead, and cost per sale. For some marketers, things have moved so far that they won’t invest in activities they cannot measure.

Today, it’s important to understand that the buyer’s journey has evolved into a complex web of online interactions and multiple touchpoints, making it a challenge to measure attribution accurately. Making decisions purely based on a dollar-in-dollar-out analysis is no longer viable. It’s safe to say that we have reached peak immeasurability . 

One of the scariest things we hear when speaking to clients is that they intend to make all of their decisions based on data. That's because digital marketing has a dirty little secret: marketing data has serious issues and limitations, and if used poorly will deliver us far less than we think. Sometimes, it will do as much harm as good.

One of the scariest things we hear when speaking to clients is that they intend to make all of their decisions based on data.

If you take anything away from this digital marketing guide, it is that in 2024 you have a responsibility to be data-informed, not data-driven. We don’t recommend that you should blatantly disregard all marketing data and metrics. Rather that data shouldn’t be the only source of truth that you rely upon to make serious marketing and business decisions.

Let’s dive into why this is the case. 

What is Marketing Attribution?

Attribution, simply explained, is how you credit separate channels, or touchpoints within those channels, for the role they play in a prospect’s path to purchase or goal completion. If people visit your site a single time and then either convert or leave for good, attribution would be simple. The channel that drove them to the site, let’s say that’s Google Ads, would be correctly attributed to the full value of the purchase or goal.

But what happens in the real world, where most paths to purchase are complex and involve multiple site visits via likely multiple devices? Which channel deserves credit? Is it the one that drove them to you in the first place (known as first-click attribution)? Or is it the channel that delivered them to you when they finally reached the goal (known as last-click attribution)? Alternatively, does it make more sense for you to equally value all the channels that drove a particular person to your site before they converted (linear attribution)? These are only three of many ways to attribute credit to different marketing channels whenever a goal is reached.

Attribution is a critical part of making decisions but you need to know what attribution means for you, keeping the full buyer journey in perspective. Chances are that your marketing analytics platform is defaulting to a last-click attribution model.

Attribution is a critical part of making decisions but you need to know what attribution means for you, keeping the full buyer journey in perspective.

Ask yourself: How complex is your buyer’s journey? How likely is it that this model undervalues the earlier stages in the buyer journey and overvalues the final stage? How is this affecting the way you judge the performance of each channel? What impact is this having on how you set budgets and select future channels?

The Dawn of Google Analytics 4

While we know there are many activities and interactions with brands that remain impossible to measure (word of mouth, reviews etc.), we like to think that at least the data we do see is 100% accurate. 

In mid-2023, Universal Analytics (UA) was sunsetted to make way for Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This move promises to combine both AI and machine learning with data tracking which enables seamless tracking of user activity across multiple devices and platforms, providing a comprehensive view of a user’s digital journey.

While GA4 has it’s benefits and is clearly the way ahead, the switch from UA has posed a series of challenges for marketers. Firstly, businesses that left the move to GA4 to the last minute have faced difficulty comparing year-on-year data. Secondly, several key metrics in GA4 are measured differently than they were in Universal Analytics, specifically; users, page views, bounce rates and sessions, once again making year-on-year comparisons inaccurate. 

While we like to think that Google Analytics can accurately measure everything, it simply can’t. It is simply an estimate (but, a good one) on what Google believes is happening online.

It’s our job as marketers to educate senior stakeholders and our C-suite that our view on reports and dashboards on Google Analytics, as well as other analytics tools does not tell the whole story.

Dark Social

The concept of ‘Dark Social’, for most marketers is both shocking and intriguing. In essence, it refers to legitimate visits to your website by users originating from social and messaging platforms such as TikTok, Slack, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and YouTube that is reported as ‘direct traffic’ on platforms such as Google Analytics, instead of being attributed to ‘organic social’ or ‘referral’.

What this means, is that your efforts on organic social media platforms are potentially undervalued from a reporting and analytics perspective.

Consider the graph below; in a 2023 study done by Sparktoro where they tested 1000+ website visits across 11 major social networks, an alarming percentage of traffic was reported as ‘direct’ rather than the correct social media platform.

One speculation for why this occurs is that it leads us as marketers to overstate the impact of paid social activities, where perhaps we feel we need to be investing more. Tying back into the idea of attribution, especially in a multi-touchpoint, complex buyer journey, we cannot underestimate the impact that word-of-mouth, referrals and overall brand presence online has on our customer’s decision-making.

Tune into Smarter Marketer: Podcast EP 49 - Dark Social and Attribution Challenges with Rand Fishkin

The Response of BigTech Companies To Data Privacy Concerns

Globally, well-deserved attention is being paid to protecting the privacy of individuals. Australia has passed privacy laws to protect consumers against data breaches. As more users become conscious and concerned about their data, the bigtech companies are actively placing greater measures to protect user privacy. This shift poses a formidable challenge for us as marketers not only trying to reach the right audience but also our ability to gauge campaign success. 

A key example is that of Apple; since its iOS 14 update, Apple’s data restrictions have hindered Meta’s in-depth targeting capabilities. This has left a number of businesses confused and struggling to adapt to the change, with results fluctuating and ad costs steadily rising. Apple’s privacy protection features for Apple Mail stop marketers from tracking IP addresses, email opens and forwards, time stamps, geolocation, device type and browsers. 

Another example is that of Google; 1% of Chrome users will have third-party cookies disabled in 2024, with this number only expected to rise. Limited access to third-party cookies means tracking user behaviour across different websites becomes challenging. Overall, it will limit enhanced targeting options, and may limit the extent of ‘personalised’ ads and messaging that you can serve your audience.

In short, access to data will only get worse, not better.

Importance of Collecting First-party Data

There are three different types of data:

• First-party data refers to the information that a company collects directly from its own customers or users through interactions with its owned channels or touchpoints. 
• Second-party data refers to data obtained directly from another company or organisation. 
• Third-party data refers to data that is collected by external entities that are separate from the company using the data. 

With the turn away from third-party data and the ongoing tightening of privacy regulations, it’s now more important than ever to collect first-party data for your marketing efforts. 

Investing in a well-maintained CRM in particular will assist in future-proofing your business to some extent. In this case, building up your database legitimately and keeping your CRM database clean will give you better marketing opportunities. This contact database gives you a solid foundation to run email marketing campaigns. Plus, you can feed your first-party data into ad platforms like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn to present your ads to warm audiences, and as a result, stay top-of-the buyer’s mind. You can do this even when some contacts unsubscribe from emails.

No One Channel to Rule Them All

As we’ve seen thus far, switching on a single set of ads is unlikely to move the needle on the number of quality leads and sales that engage with your business.

There's no real silver bullet to developing and changing your digital strategy overnight, and any one tactic alone won't work. A winning strategy will include the main channels used by your prospects as part of their buyer journey. For many prospects this includes a combination of organic search, paid search, social, email marketing and display. 

Performance channels along with variables such as your brand’s reputation in the market, online reviews, public relations quotient, pricing and the like will ultimately all impact the success of your marketing campaigns.

3. Businesses That Invest in Brand Make More Money

In a bid to drive leads and sales in a short period, businesses often turn to performance-based activities to target their bottom-of-funnel audiences. Many view it as a way to get quicker, more tangible results. However, there is a strong argument that marketers need to increase the time and effort spent on activities that introduce people to their brand and support them in the early and middle stages of the buyer journey. Essentially, aligning marketing efforts (and measurement) with the real-world actions of ideal buyers.

The rule of thumb is: marketers should be spending 60% of their budget on brand-building activities, and 40% on performance/activation-based activities for maximum effectiveness. 

Marketers should be spending 60% of their budget on brand-building activities

While this exact figure differs depending on your customer life-cycle and industry, if at the end of the day, if you’re not investing in your brand, you’re doing your business a huge disservice.

Long-term vs Short-term Marketing

Binet and Field’s work titled: ‘The Long and the Short of It’ dives into the crucial balance that businesses need to maintain between brand-building activities and performance marketing. The study explains the two different forms of marketing; long-term marketing vs short-term marketing, and how both are vital to driving sustainable marketing results.

Long-term marketing involves any activity designed to build a memorable link between a brand and a buyer for a future buying situation. It’s otherwise known as brand marketing or “the long of it”. Some great examples include; a leader from a Finance SaaS company speaking at a conference with CFOs in the audience, Commonwealth Bank sponsoring grassroots sport, or running an open-to-all webinar on key industry trends for your target audience, or applying and winning industry awards.

Short-term marketing, on the other hand, is designed to drive an often immediate response from your audience. It’s also known as performance marketing, demand generation, or ‘the short of it’. It is basically any action that intends to drive action quickly. CTAs for short-term ads are typically the likes of ‘visit our website’, ‘buy our new burger’, ‘test drive our latest car’, or ‘download our demo’. 

Consider the diagram below. When only focussing on short-term activities, sales will increase sporadically while ultimately dipping again when budgets are lowered, or activities cease. This means that when faced with budget cuts, or more macro challenges like a drop in spend in the economy, your sales will ultimately drop as a result. 

Long-term marketing activities, as evident below, typically lead to sustainable growth over an extended period of time, and your profits become less susceptible to environmental factors. It pays off as your brand becomes more recognisable and trusted within your market.

Short-term impact on profit

Long-term impact on profit

A key takeaway - when you combine both short-term and long-term marketing activities, and are strategically targeting your audience throughout the funnel, you will reap the benefits of immediate wins as well as sustained business growth.

Combined activities effect of short-term and long-term marketing on profit:

The 95/5 Rule

One of the reasons why the 60/40 split on brand vs performance activities is effective, is because there is a high chance that 95% of your target audience is not currently in the market for your product or service .

In reality, only 5% of your market is ready to purchase - and you need to share this 5% with all of your direct and indirect competitors. If you are hitting audiences with your ads by the time they’re in your market, and they’ve never heard of you, getting them to convert becomes undeniably difficult. Especially if we’re talking about high-intent, high-involvement purchases.

This is one of the core reasons why BMW markets to 20-year-olds now. It’s why XERO invests so much in content marketing and selling to business owners of the future.

When most marketing dollars are being spent on the 5%, not the 95%, you’ll find yourself stuck in a cycle of bottom-of-funnel activities, and playing catch-up with your competitors.

Good Content Marketing = Great Leads and Sales

As part of your 2024 marketing strategy, you should be implementing activities that will nurture the 95% of the market who are not ready to buy today. 

Let’s face it, most of these people are probably not aware you exist or possibly not even aware that solutions like yours could add value to them now or in the future. These people won’t be interested in your search ads and are highly unlikely to see the value in your paid social or display ads.

Often the best way to deal with these top and middle-of-funnel audiences is implementing a considered and well-planned content marketing strategy.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing involves creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain an audience. It can take the form of videos, blog articles, eBooks, webinars, emails and more. Ultimately, it provides value to specific personas so that when they are ready to purchase, your business makes it to the consideration list as a trusted authority that's also top-of-mind. 

Here are the main points to consider when developing your content marketing strategy:

• You need to have a deep understanding of your target personas and their problems.
• The content should be highly targeted and solve a specific and timely problem.
• Where possible, you should exchange your content for a user’s email address, either through a downloadable ebook or webinar, so that you can add the contact to your database.
• Branch out with your format of content - not everyone will find value from blogs. Webinars, podcasts, or video content allows your users to consume your content in whatever way suits them.
• Great content should be reused and repurposed. Transform your ebook into a series of blog posts. A blog post can turn into an informative EDM. Snippets from a YouTube video can then be promoted on organic social channels. 

Nowadays, average content is everywhere. Slapping together a 500-word blog article that tip-toes around actual advice isn’t serving anyone. Marketers should focus resources on creating genuinely useful and quality pieces of content.  

A time and resource-effective approach to this, is taking previously successful and high-performing content pieces, updating them for today and re-publishing them on the basis of creating evergreen content. This is known as the Hollywood vs Newspaper approach to content marketing .

Marrying Brand with Actionable Digital Marketing

Overall, you don’t need to overhaul your entire brand to make a profitable change to your digital marketing strategy. One could argue that there is scope to include a range of relatively low-budget, high-return 'brand-based' campaigns that are ’always-on’.

Examples include a brand-focused, value-based display retargeting campaign, via the Google Display Network, targeted towards website visitors. Another one is a brand-focused Google Ads display campaign.

The question about whether it’s worth paying for people searching for your brand via paid ads is a long-standing one. At Rocket, we are big fans of these brand campaigns and time and again we’ve seen them deliver strong results. The advantages of such campaigns are:

• You can control the message searchers see in an ad (as opposed to the generic organic results listing).
• An ad can direct searchers to a landing page of your choosing.
• An ad allows you to maintain top position even when competitors are bidding on your brand.
• Running brand ads allows you to dominate the search engine results page (SERP). (This is particularly true on mobile).

Anecdotally, as well as in tests we have run, when branded search has been turned off, the uplift in organic results plus the savings in the cost of branded search does not equate to the revenue that has been lost.

Running brand ads allows you to dominate the search engine results page

Review your marketing budget for 2024 with fresh eyes. Separate media budget you spend on brand campaigns vs other bottom-of-the-funnel campaigns. Remember, brand campaigns will always be cheaper and generate a stronger ROI than regular campaigns. This is OK though; the regular campaigns are valuable in introducing new people to your offering and these are the people who in the future will possibly be running brand searches. Ideally, you should be running both types of campaigns.

4. Embrace AI and Automation

With the overwhelming surge of generative AI including the likes of ChatGPT, Google Bard and Adobe’s Firefly, there’s an overwhelming degree of fear and uncertainty spreading around the industry . Will AI take over my job? Am I cheating or being dishonest if I use AI to help me with my tasks? Does using AI mean I need to start charging less for my services?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes time-consuming, repetitive tasks and works to find patterns more effectively than a single person can to produce solid solutions. However, while it has proven itself in many areas of ad management, it has in no way dispatched the need for a digital marketing specialist to manage ad campaigns. 

The biggest impact of AI in the short-term will be how it is rolled out on tools we already use; Google Suite, Google Ads, HubSpot, Salesforce and Microsoft. While it’s good to be abreast of all the new changes and AI features, it’s not advisable to be chasing every shiny new toy. As Rank Fishkin said; ‘What is happening in the marketing world is generally less important than what’s happening in your world’ . Focus on what you can control and what is going to directly impact your business over the next twelve months.

Use ChatGPT as a Research Tool, not as a Substitute Copywriter

ChatGPT has taken leaps and shaken up the world with surprisingly accurate and conversational text. Like most AI softwares, ChatGPT accesses extensive databases to answer simple or complex questions by generating clear, conversational copy.

The trick to using AI tools such as ChatGPT effectively, is to treat it as a helpful guide versus accepting it’s output as the final product or solution. 

When used efficiently, the software can be great for providing a foundation for copywriting tasks including blog posts, landing pages, FAQs, social media captions or even meta descriptions for your website pages. Its breadth of knowledge - while not being able to cover niche and brand -related topics, is extensive enough to offer fantastic copywriting support. 

Teams should be using AI to boost productivity and in some areas increase effectiveness. However, as marketers, you should never forget that standing out from your competitors is the key to success, and this will not be achieved if you just use AI. It should never (and will never) be as simple as copy and paste.

Boost Creativity with AI-Driven Design

AI-driven design tools such as Midjourney, Jasper and even Canva are opening up new opportunities for designers and businesses alike, to spark creativity and complete design tasks quicker and more efficiently. Design automation can reduce time on tedious and often repetitive tasks by automating image classification, colour palette selection and layout generation, meaning that designers can spend more time on the creative/strategic aspects of their work rather than the technical details.

Design algorithms are also a fantastic tool to spark inspiration by providing a template/sample of creative concepts. There are multiple tools/software platforms online that can generate logos, website layouts, social posts, slide decks or other creative designs. This is a convenient and often time-efficient solution for completing basic designs where you don’t want to put too much energy/focus, or you are trying to minimise a lengthy concept creation process.

Great Use Cases of AI

If you’re hesitant to use AI, or are doubting its efficiency, the best next step is to test it. Spend half a day playing around with the software, testing its capabilities and its responses to your typical work requests.

There are excellent resources online on how to write the best prompts , and how you can get the most out of each platform. 

Here’s a list of great use cases for AI software:

• Controlling budget pacing
• Building an organic social media calendar
• Design inspiration
• Reduce character count for ad copy
• Top-level competitor research
• Content ideation for blog articles, podcasts or webinars. This can include heading suggestions, title tags, descriptions and a body content outline
• Editing your work after completion for continuity, tone of voice and grammatical/spelling mistakes
• Writing schema mark-up scripts
• Keyword analysis and ideation

Don’t Leave Everything to Automation

The big players like Google and Meta will continue to push marketers into using their suite of automation options when running paid campaigns. The challenge will be to determine when this works in your business' interest and when it doesn't. There is no doubt that over the long term, automation will bring many benefits to the lives of marketers, but the question in the short term is when this will be the case and when it won't. 

Marketers need to be smart in determining when machines can do things more effectively and at a better level than humans. Most importantly, you need to use your judgement to identify the moments when technology won't understand the intricacies of a campaign and the nuances of your audience. This is where that human touch will still be needed. 

Regardless, the truth of the matter remains - businesses, even small ones, can no longer succeed without a highly tailored approach to audience segmentation as prospects now expect more than generic correspondence. This can only be achieved at scale with automation. 

Our prediction - businesses without marketing automation won't compete.

Review all tasks you complete within a week, and consider which low-effort or time-consuming activities could benefit from AI assistance. Once you have found a rhythm and a brief that works for you, turn this into a template that you can edit and tweak for future tasks.

Chapter 2: Everything You Need to Know About the Best Performing Digital Marketing Channels of 2024

What’s working in google ads, seo, paid social, email marketing and video right now, take google ads to the next level in 2024.

Google Ads is a platform that is constantly evolving. New ad types are being rolled out and new restrictions are being placed on existing ad types. Previously effective strategies are becoming less useful. Extra levels of automation mean less work, but they often go hand-in-hand with less transparency. 

Despite the growing popularity of Amazon, ChatGPT and social media search in Australia, Google Ads will still continue to dominate as a search engine in 2024. Search ads alone made up 58.1% of Google’s billion-dollar revenue in 2022 - and this number doesn’t seem to be budging. So, it’s likely that Google Ads, including Search Ads, Display Ads, Shopping Ads and YouTube Ads, is a core part of your marketing mix.

 The foundational tactics for results-driven PPC campaigns have remain the same year-on-year - these include consistent messaging across ad placements, displaying engaging ad creative and implementing considered targeting. Below are the core updates to Google Ads in 2023 that all marketers need to be aware about. While you don’t need to be an expert at running PPC campaigns, it’s important to stay abreast of platform changes so that you can have more meaningful and valuable conversations with those executing your ad campaigns.

Google Launches Two New Campaign Types

Demand gen campaigns.

Back in November 2023, all Discovery campaigns on Google Ads were upgraded to the new “Demand Gen” ad campaign type.

Deemed the “next generation of Discovery campaigns” , Demand Gen campaigns are likely to be one of the biggest changes to your Google Ads strategy in 2024. Powered by AI, Demand Gen campaigns are designed to target middle-of-funnel audiences with high-performing video and image assets across YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Discovery and Gmail.

Google’s representative, Vidhya Srinivasan, VP & GM in Google Ads said; “The way consumers discover products is shifting — decisions are made throughout the funnel. To keep up with this evolving media landscape, social advertisers need to adapt their strategies to deliver results.” Demand Gen campaigns are ideal for brands that want to serve visually-appealing creatives across multiple formats by tapping on Google's most impactful surfaces available to any advertiser.

Some of the key features Demand Gen campaigns include:

• Using audience lists to tailor relevant creatives with brand-new lookalike segments. This could include your customer list, marketing database, past clients and the like. 
• Setting up location targeting at the ad group level, rather than traditionally setting different ad campaigns to target different locations.
• Optimising your ads for conversions, as well as maximise clicks bidding to drive immediate action.

Video View Campaigns

Google’s second new campaign type allows businesses to maximise views across in-stream, in-feed and YouTube Shorts, within a single campaign ( source ). To count as a view, users must watch your video ad for at least 30 seconds or until the end of the ad if it's less than 30 seconds.

On average, Video View ad campaigns are expected to receive 40% more views and 30% lower cost per view than regular In-Stream Skippable campaigns. 

This is an excellent option for businesses looking to drive brand awareness campaigns, as the objective is to reach as many people as possible within their target market.

Broad Match Brand Keyword Targeting

Change is the only constant at Google, and one of the changes is related to the keyword type used for Google Ads campaigns. Google has been encouraging advertisers to exclusively use ‘Broad match keywords’. This keyword type uses Google’s data to match relevant searchers with your ads, by using your keywords as an indication for relevance. 

What this means is, the keywords you upload are used to zero-in on thier meaning or a particular topic, but not necessarily the exact keywords. However, unlike other keyword targeting options, the specific keyword doesn’t need to be included in the user’s search query. One of the key benefits of broad match targeting is that you’re not limited to phrase and exact match keyword targeting, but you also won’t be overlapping with generic search queries. 

This would be best used for brand campaigns or performance max campaigns by setting your goal to either maximise conversions or maximise revenue. Adding a brand list is also an essential component of ensuring you will remind relevant to a broad spectrum searches that are linked to your brand name or specific branded product titles.

Auto Generated Search Ads

While Auto Generated Search Ads have been around for nearly two years, it was previously a feature exclusive to Dynamic Dearch Ad campaigns. Now, Google offers automatically generated ad copy for any PMAX and search campaign, in its growing push towards AI integration. 

Like all AI features, it can be a great tool to spark inspiration or for you to consider how Google would push your brand, products or services. However, one of the key limitations is that you don’t have as much control over your copy or messaging. It is likely the results Google supplies will be average or generic, which in turn could negatively impact your overall ad performance.

Old News, Worth Repeating - Always Start with Competitor Research

Why reinvent the wheel when you can take inspiration from your competitors? When it comes to Google Ads, treat your competitors less as rivals and more as friends or even mentors. 

Use tools like SemRush and SpyFu to identify the keywords your top competitors are using as the basis of their search campaigns. You should also review the ad copy they’re using to narrow down on the pain points of your prospects. Plus, it’s a good idea to compare your landing pages and promotions with your competitors and identify opportunities for improvement.

• If you’re looking to drive top-of-funnel brand awareness through video, consider the new YouTube Ads Video View Campaigns for driving brand awareness and scaling your audience reach at the top of the funnel. 
• Test the new Demand Gen Campaigns with considered, engaging creative and a clear message for your audience. If you feel your creatives assets aren’t driving results, get in touch . Our team of in-house designers have won awards for delivering high performing creative for our clients.
• Am I in the right place? (This is what you do/offer)
• Do they offer the service I need? (This is more detail on what you offer)
• Is this service/product right for me? (These are your typical customers)
• Why should I choose you? (This is why your business is perfect for the searcher)

Using Social Media Ads to Your Advantage in 2024

Tiktok as considerable channel for b2c ecommerce.

TikTok has become a major player in the social media space for businesses looking to drive both brand awareness, as well as sales, in particular for eCommerce businesses:

• 56% of TikTok users say that the ads encourage them to discover new products or brands 
• 70% of TikTok users say it’s easy to purchase products through the platform from the shopping-related ad they viewed

One key ad type that has strong cut through on the TikTok platform is user generated content (UGC) i.e. short-form videos created by consumers who share their reviews or common uses of products and services. This style of content is particularly successful, as it builds trust from referrals, and highlights practical product uses to drive desire. In fact, almost 80% of respondents in an eCommerce study said that user generated content influences their purchasing decisions ( Source ). 

And while TikTok has potential to drive impressive results for all types of businesses, B2C eCommerce brands have found particular success through the platform. It positions itself as “home to a shopping culture”, and uses in-built targeting and ad features to drive eCommerce sales. For this reason, in 2024 TikTok will be introducing video shopping ads ; shoppable videos that take users seamlessly from the For You page, straight to the checkout. While this is currently available for testing globally, there is great potential to shorten your buyer journey and increase sales made on platform. Something to keep an eye out for!

Performance Updates on Meta Ads

Facebook remains the most widely used platform and shares the top spot with Instagram in terms of return on investment (ROI) according to a 2024 HubSpot study . It’s no surprise that Meta advertising continues to be a critical advertising channel for B2B and B2C businesses alike. 

Meta Ads have made changes to ‘Ad Objectives’ which will impact your Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads in 2024. Simply put, Meta has consolidated it’s previous eleven ad objectives into six new ones:

• App Promotion

What’s more, from January 2024, you will no longer have the ability to import or duplicate campaigns, ad sets and ads using the original objectives. And later in the year, the original objectives will not be available at all. 

In order to stay on top of your Meta ad campaigns, especially with privacy and cookies impacting the ability to target niche audiences in the future, Meta encourages businesses to apply the ‘Performance 5’; five key activities that will allow you to see improved results across your ads:

• Simplified ad sets: Consolidate your ad sets in order to increase conversions. 
• Broad targeting: Instead of simply targeting by interest, broad targeting will allow you to reach bigger audiences with the aim to increase your traffic, leads and therefore sales.
• Mobile-friendly video: Reels and short form video content is the largest growing ad type for Meta. It’s important that your video ads have been optimised for mobile to drive more conversions. 
• Ad testing: A single ad creative and message could be great, but you’ll never know if its the best option if you don’t test it. A/B testing lets you refine your offer and learn what your audience is most engaged with.
• Conversions API: Connect the Conversions API to your Shopify or Wix in order to receive more accurate results for data and tracking.

There’s is also opportunity to improve your ad performance through Meta’s integration with AI through ​​advantage+ targeting. When you select advantage+, you are granting Meta the power to determine the best audience to receive your ads based on previous performance and user data. Though still in early stages, it’s proving mostly effective for many businesses by increasing leads and lowering CPLs.

Spotify for Brand Awareness

Spotify ads is and excellent advertising option to drive brand awareness to new audiences by offering an immersive auditory ad experience. In July of 2023, Spotify launched ad analytics for brands to measure the impact of their audio ads across the platform in a more streamlined way. This, in combination with new Spotify Pixel capabilities, has improved conversion tracking and attribution across all Spotify ad formats for marketers.

In September, Spotify also introduced ads across music and podcasts . The main difference for advertisers, is that while a user will typically listen to music in the background as they complete other tasks, they pay more attention and show greater intent when listening to podcasts, making it a great opportunity to promote your brand to an engaged audience.

What’s more, the number of listeners on the platform is rapidly increasing. In Spotify’s Q223 performance review , they recorded that their global number of monthly active listeners increased by 27% YoY to over 551 million! 

Tune into Smarter Marketer: Podcast EP 37 - What Marketers Need to Know About Spotify Ads with the Head of SMB at Spotify ANZ, Simon Connolly

eCommerce on Pinterest Made Easier

From food to fashion, travel guides to home decor… Pinterest is the platform your audience turns to for inspiration and new ideas (depending on your industry). With nearly all top searches being unbranded ( source ), Pinterest offers a fantastic opportunity to reach new audiences by sharing engaging, inspiring and relevant content. 

What’s more, 55% of Pinteresters use the platform to shop and purchase new products. For this reason, in September 2023, Pinterest announced a series of new platform updates to improve the marketing and sales experience for brands looking to leverage an engaged audience.These new features aims to drive action from users down the sales funnel; “ from discovery, to decision, to do ”. 

Pinterest has lauched Pinterest Businesses Manager, providing both businesses and marketers with better tools to target audiences, manage ad campaigns and measure results. 

Key updates to consider for your Pinterest ads in 2024 include: 

• The launch of showcase ads that display multiple Pins in one unit. In this particular ad set, every separate Pin can link to a different page on your site - this is very effective for high intent clicks.
• Quiz Ads ask your users a specific question to gain insight into their personal preferences, and you can then provide specific product/service recommendations for different answers.
• Premiere Spotlight ad placements have been added to the Home feed, allowing you to maximise attention by being the first ad placement when a user opens the app.
• The addition of ‘mobile deep links’ takes users directly from your Pinterest ad to the relevant product page in your mobile app. 

And while it hasn’t launched yet, Pinterest has revealed its Creative Studio feature to be available in months to come. Pinterest discovered that lifestyle images, on average, drive better Pinterest results than products shown with plain backgrounds . Creative Studio aims to provide businesses with a quick and easy way to generate lifestyle imagery to create product pins, by offering a selection of background images that match a brand’s products and services.

LinkedIn Takes B2B Advertising To the Next Level

Despite its clunky ad interface and questionable user experience for marketers, LinkedIn stands strong as the obvious channel for B2B marketers. This is especially true for prospecting campaigns focused on lead generation.

Year-on-year, we’ve seen huge growth in LinkedIn, a network that now boasts over 12.7 million Australian members. Your prospects likely turn to LinkedIn to stay up to date with industry news, share information and job updates and follow thought leaders and companies that resonate. 

In LinkedIn, prospects are attuned to learning something new and native sponsored content can successfully drive targeted traffic to your site. With sponsored Messaging (previously: sponsored InMails), you get twice the opportunity to catch the attention of your audience - one on the LinkedIn platform itself and again in your prospect's email inbox. Plus, there are notifications to support the InMail being sent.

LinkedIn has introduced a new ad type for businesses to build brand awareness and engagement on the platform by promoting thought leaders. It allows businesses that want to showcase their knowledge and expertise to promote an individual, or thought-provoking and educational content at a campaign level.

What’s more, setting up the campaigns is pretty straightforward! Simply search for an employee associated with your company page, decide on a post you want to promote and request the poster’s permission. This will become even more important on the content-sharing platform as LinkedIn announced from December onwards, there will be no such things as carousels.

• If you’re keen to trial TikTok for your business, don’t use the same content as other platforms expecting good results. Research trending topics and audio on the platform, and match it with your branding and messaging. Ensure that the tone of voice and messaging is central to your brand.
• Curious about how you can drive brand awareness with audio advertising? Test Spotify ads for a minimum spend of $250, and reach audiences in an engaging media environment.

SEO Is More Important Than Ever

In the digital landscape, SEO stands strong as a veteran. While many turn to paid channels for quick, measurable wins, the COVID-19 recession taught us that businesses that invested in their organic strategy continued to drive results, even when their marketing budgets were cut. 

What’s more, with organic visits driving over 50% of all traffic on the internet, and Google being responsible for 97% of searches, organic search should be a priority in your 2024 digital marketing strategy in Australia.

Google’s “All New Search Engine”

Early in 2023, Google announced its latest (and perhaps greatest) development known as ‘Project Magi’. Coined an “all new search engine” ( source ), it’s predicted to combine AI integration and personalisation through a conversational, almost human-like interface.

The New York Times reported that the personalised search engine would attempt to “anticipate user’s needs” in their searches, while Google announced it would allow searchers to “complete transactions, such as buying shoes or booking flights”. Consider it like an intelligent AI assistant that should transform the way we interact with search and influence our purchasing habits. 

While there’s no clear timeline for the official launch, businesses should expect to respond to a brand-new Google interface and search experience. As with all major updates in the digital space, you need to consider what you can do to equip your website and online presence now to succeed in the future.

If we have learned anything from how ChatGPT operates, it's that businesses and products that already have a strong digital footprint, and are heavily associated with branded keywords, are going to benefit from automated responses, especially as AI combines average and popular opinions across the internet.

Google's Gemini Sparks the "AI Arms Race"

If Project Magi wasn’t enough, Google has thrown its hat into the ever-evolving AI arena with the announcement of 'Google Gemini.' This groundbreaking AI system is predicted to compete with heavyweights like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, aiming to redefine the way we interact with AI.

Developed by a talented team of experts from Google Brain and DeepMind, as well as drawing from DeepMind's AlphaGo, known for its mastery of the complex game of Go, Gemini inherits problem-solving prowess and enhanced reasoning capabilities. It's designed to understand and process various types of data, from text and voice to imagery and more. This means you can input a diverse range of prompts and receive contextually relevant responses.

It’s important to note that Gemini is an entirely different system from Bard, Google's conversational AI chatbot. Bard has now been rebranded to Gemini. Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, revealed during the 2023 Google I/O developer conference that systems like Bard are merely waypoints towards more advanced chatbots.

Pichai envisions Gemini and its future iterations as "incredible universal personal assistants" deeply integrated into people's daily lives, spanning across areas like travel, work, and entertainment. Google plans to gradually infuse Gemini into all its products, including the Chatbot feature and Google Workspace.

How will Gemini compare to ChatGPT?

While ChatGPT excels at text data tasks, Gemini’s multi-modal intelligence network allows it to handle a diverse array of data types simultaneously, from text and images to audio, video, 3D models, and graphs. This makes Google Gemini a powerful and versatile contender in the AI space, possibly surpassing the likes of ChatGPT.

Content Continues to be King

Content continues to be instrumental for businesses, but long gone are the days of keyword stuffing and publishing content for the sake of it. A 500-word blog article that gives specific and detailed information for your audience is always valued more by search engines, and by your audience, than a 2000-word article with fluffy content. 

For this reason, Google is prioritising content based on the E-E-A-T structure ; experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. This determines if your website is sharing valuable and insightful information that users will want to engage with. Whether this includes blog articles, case studies, free guides, FAQs or even podcast episodes… your focus should be on quality over quantity.

A great way to build up your E-E-A-T is to create ‘author pages’ for each of your team’s content writers. The page should highlight who they are, their specialty, and their experiences that qualifies them to be writing this content, and specialising in their field. This is where you can add author schema to indicate the strength of the author to Google. 

Secondly, user need should be the focus of any content that you are sharing online. At the end of the day, answering your target audience’s most pressing problems is going to increase your website traffic, user engagement, and ultimately, higher-quality leads.

Reach Your Local Customers

Investing in a Local SEO strategy is a great and measurable way to improve the visibility and credibility of your website in geographically related searches. It drives local users directly to your business, whether they’re searching for ‘furniture stores near me’ or ‘family lawyers in Sydney’. This means you’re targeting the users most likely to purchase from you. 

A simple and practical win is to update your Google Business Profile (previously: Google My Business)

• Make sure your business name, address and phone number are all up to date. 
• Add any relevant and high-quality images of your business, products, services or team members. 
• Update business descriptions - this is a great opportunity to add in relevant keywords. 
• Verify your profile. 

Your focus should also be a review strategy where you're encouraging your customers to post a review, and potentially even upload a photo. Reviews are not only effective in showing Google that audiences are regularly engaging with you, but positive reviews are fantastic for enticing customers and promoting your offering in general. Finally, it’s best to respond to all reviews, even poor ones, to highlight your engagement and responsiveness as a business. 

Implementing a Local SEO Strategy for businesses that have a franchise model or multiple locations is essential to capture users from relevant geographical areas successfully.

• Review all content pieces on your website (blogs, free guides etc) and make a note of which pieces should be deleted, which should remain the same, and which should be refreshed with up-to-date information. This should then be implemented in a clear content plan for regular updates.
• Create author pages for each of your content writers that explain their qualifications and experience in the industry. Then, link any piece of content that they write to their relevant page.

Video is for Winners

In 2024, platforms focused on video content such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are projected to experience the most substantial growth, according to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report . The same report revealed that Short-form video content specifically is predicted to yield the highest return on investment and is expected to receive more investment compared to all other formats.

Adding video to your digital marketing strategy is a no brainer for any business.

YouTube Dynamic Lineups

In Australia, it’s currently the second-most visited website. Millions of Australians watch YouTube on their TV screens each and every day.

The great thing about YouTube is that you don’t have to be a big brand capable of spending millions creating an ad and buying media to promote it. We’ve seen lots of awesome examples of YouTube ads shot on an iPhone with someone talking directly to the camera. The bottom line - if that person is giving genuine value to the audience then the right people will engage with it. 

One major update to the YouTube platform is its new targeting feature; Dynamic Lineups. They allow you to target either video or music playlists with the same interest and intent-based targeting. The lineups are then aligned to moments, topics, relevance or popularity that blend the context of your audience and brand.

Google recommends this ad type specifically for the 18 to 24-year-old demographic, as this is the audience that consumes YouTube playlists the most. 

Two key points to keep in mind with these new ad types is:

• The ads target CPM, and you can’t choose to maximise conversions. 
• You can’t overlap YouTube Dynamic LIneups with any other type of targeting and exclusion, which means you don’t have control over any sensitive content.

Create Short-Form Video Content That Will Perform

If there’s one thing you shouldn’t do on Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok, it’s to chop up your existing YouTube Ads and TVCs and share them as short-form video content - audiences are just going to skip them! Any content that isn’t purpose-led or feels unnatural is just a waste of time, energy and dollars. 

Here are some tips to keep in mind when creating short-form video content:

• It takes Gen Z 8 seconds to decipher what content is interesting and what isn’t worth their time ( source ). This means your video needs to get to the point quickly - leaving your core message to the end of the video runs the risk of audiences skipping it. 
• Create something eye catching. Use bold colours, have a clear message, or make your offer stand out. 
• Keep in mind that trends come and go quickly - sometimes in a matter of days. If you take too long to make your mark, you might have just missed your chance.  
• Low-fi, raw and real content works better on Reels and TikTok. Don’t worry about making it polished and heavily edited - audiences want relatable and entertaining content on these platforms.

Email Marketing

Will email marketing continue to deliver results in 2024? Yes. Positively. Definitely. 

Email marketing is the strongest owned channel, giving you direct access to your prospects. 

If implemented well, with the right segmentation, timing, content relevance and design, emails will certainly help move your buyers further down the marketing funnel. It’s arguably the best channel to deliver the “right message at the right time to the right person”.

Include User-Generated Content

Adopt social proof within your email content by including case studies, testimonials and reviews of your products and services within emails, where it makes sense.

As you share positive experiences of your customers, you’ll ultimately increase your business’ authenticity and credibility while reducing any uncertainty your audience has about your products and services.

Elevate Your Emails Further for Mobile Readers

Optimising your email design for mobile is standard practice over the past few years. In 2024, you need to take things one step further by ensuring your emails maintain their quality across dark and light modes.

The most common mistake marketers make is using png images with transparent backgrounds that render oddly on either of these modes. Be mindful of your choice of font colour and font size and more recently, font weight so prospects reading your emails on mobile are not having a poor experience.

Hot Tip: Make sure your email size is limited to 102kb. GMail clips all content that appears after that limit is reached, prompting users to ‘View entire message’. Keeping this in mind, make sure the most important part of your message (including your CTA) is included at the beginning of your email vs the end.

Micro-segmentation in Email Lists Deliver Better Outcomes

Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue ( Source ). Marketers are moving away from sending blanket emails to their database. Instead, the trend is moving towards creating better segments based on demographic data like location and buying role along with behavioural data like page views, past email clicks and the like. Better segmentation will also enable strong personalisation opportunities. 

The same email message can be easily duplicated and slightly tailored to different segments to make a bigger impact - a better open rate, click rate and read rate. You can find some detailed tips on segmentation tips in this blog article on improving email marketing campaign results.

Expect Inaccurate Email Engagement Stats

Since the launch of iOS 14+, Apple has made it nearly impossible for all email marketing tools including MailChimp, HubSpot and ActiveCampaign to report on a range of stats including email open rates. 

With approximately 47% of Australians using iPhones (Source), we can assume close to 50% of your email marketing stats will be inaccurate. Essentially, any email campaign relying solely on open rates as a measure of success may become unreliable. A/B tests based on open rates will also stand statistically insignificant. Automations based on email opens will become trickier to design. 

While platforms like Hubspot have introduced 'adjusted open rates' to provide a more accurate snapshot of your email performance, there is no certainty in the data you’re seeing.

Interactive Emails are Here and Here to Stay

As it is with any content, well-designed, dynamic, interactive emails are increasingly gaining attention from marketers who want to get cut-through in their prospect’s mail-filled inboxes. 

Interactive emails can include multiple features like GIFs, embedded surveys, slide-shows, roll-over effects on images or CTA buttons. Interactive emails don’t require the recipient to open a link in a new tab to take action and thus, reduce the number of clicks required to get the result. 

Such emails are bound to gain higher engagement rates. 2024 and beyond, we are bound to see email marketing platforms making it easier for marketers to build and send interactive emails.

Review your email stats to check ‘Opens by Email Client’ which breaks down your ‘opens’ by Gmail, Chrome, Office, Yahoo Mail and the like. Accept that the opens from Apple Mail will be unreliable. Work with metrics other than open rate such as click rate, reply rate and unsubscribe rate. Adjust your automated email scripts so they make sense even if someone has not opened prior emails.

Time To Make It Happen

As we’ve covered, the buyer’s journey has become more complex and touch points are increasingly unmeasurable across industries. But, as always, is our responsibility as marketers to find the best ways to reach the right audience with the right message at the right time. 

While data and attribution challenges will only increase, and AI will continue to improve in performance, we need to balance our short-term and long-term marketing efforts. This is the only way that as marketers, we can ensure that we’re meeting leads and sales targets in the present, and building a foundation for sustainable results in the future.

More than ever, a winning digital marketing strategy will require businesses to dabble in multiple channels and with highly effective messaging and creative. Ironically, you’ll have to invest in marketing activities without a simplistic dollar-in-dollar-out approach to maximise the impact of your marketing budget. Investing in your brand is likely to become the norm, capturing the attention of your prospects much before they are ready to buy. I urge you to consider what you can action in the next quarter or 6-18 month period to set your business up for success over the next three years. 

Rocket Agency has helped scores of businesses drive genuine marketing results with our multi-award-winning team. Our experts in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, Media Buying and Creative have proven their skills time and time again with tailored marketing strategies in Australia that directly link to business outcomes.

If there is anything the team at Rocket can do to help, or any question we can answer to give you clarity, don’t hesitate to be in touch at rocketagency.com.au/contact or 1300 059 620.

Good luck in 2024 and beyond!

James is co-founder of multi-award-winning Australian digital marketing agency Rocket, keynote speaker, host of Apple’s #1 Marketing Podcast, Smarter Marketer, and co-author of the 2019 Amazon Australia’s #1 best-selling marketing book of the same name. He was also a finalist in 2019 and 2020 B&T Marketer of the Year.

James’ 15-year marketing career working with more than 500 in-house marketing teams inspired the 2019 release of Smarter Marketer. It has been endorsed by marketers at some of Australia’s leading brands, including Hubspot and KPMG.

In 2022, James launched the Smarter Marketer podcast, the definitive podcast for Australian marketers. Released fortnightly, James sits down with local experts and global authorities to discuss how Australian marketers can become more successful in their careers.

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• Preparing your marketing plan
• Resource Centre
• Tools and downloads

Creating a marketing plan will provide you with a roadmap of who you need to reach (target audience), how you will reach your target audience, and what you need to do to encourage them to purchase your product or service. Marketing plans guide you in how to bring business to you.

By outlining clear, realistic and measurable objectives, including deadlines, budgets, and the key performance indicators, you are able to understand the success of your efforts. Marketing plans can include market research, which helps you to identify:

• your key customers, where they are located, their needs and values, and how much they’ll likely pay for your offering
• your key competitors, where they’re located, and how your offering stacks up
• your marketplace issues and how these can impact your business operations.

Regular market research can help you adjust your offering over time in line with your industry.

• Use the template as a guide. Don’t attempt to complete the plan straight away. First, decide which sections are relevant for your business. Feel free to add or remove sections if you need to. Then work your way through the plan by filling in the empty boxes section by section.
• Determine who the plan is for. Does it have more than one purpose? Will it be used internally or will it be provided to a third party, like a bank, accountant or potential business partner? Deciding the purpose of the plan can help you target your answers. If third parties are involved, what are they interested in? Don't assume they are just interested in the finance part of your business. They will be looking for the whole package.
• Do your research. You will need to make decisions about your business, including structure, marketing strategies and finances, before you can complete your plan. By having the right information to hand you can be more accurate in your forecasts and analysis.
• Reliable sources of data and statistics . See below in 'where to find data and statistics' for a list of reliable sources to find your information.
• Use the [italicised text]. The italicised text in the template is there to help guide you by providing more questions you may like to answer when preparing your response. If a question doesn’t apply to your business idea, you can ignore it.
• Write your summary last. Use as few words as possible. You want to be clear and concise but not overlook important facts. This is your opportunity to sell yourself. But don’t overdo it. You want third parties to quickly read your plan, find it realistic and be motivated by what they read.
• Seek help . If you aren’t confident in completing the plan yourself, you can enlist the help of a professional (i.e., Business Enterprise Centre, business adviser or marketing expert) to look through your plan and provide you with advice.
• Review. Review. Review. Your marketing plan is there to make a good impression. Errors will only detract from your professional image. Ask several impartial people to proofread your final plan.

A marketing plan can consist of these elements:

• Summary. The summary should be completed last and be no longer than a page. Your answers should summarise your more detailed answers provided throughout the body of the plan.
• Future aspiration. Prepare a brief vision statement for the future and clearly state your overall goals for your business.
• Environmental/industry analysis. This section should outline your market research results and should address several key questions. Is the area experiencing population growth? Are there long-term employers in the area? Is the region's economy stable? Are there seasonal variations? What is the size of the market? What recent trends have emerged in the market? What growth potential is available and where do you fit in? How will the market or customers change when you enter the market? What external factors will affect your customers?
• Customers. Describe your target customers. Is your market narrow or wide? Where are they located? What are their demographics (age, gender, income), values and needs? You can also explore how you’ll best serve them and what type of relationships you’ll develop.
• Competitors. Compare your business against your competitors, and how you could improve what they offer. Depending on your type of business, try comparing as many as five competitors.
• Unique selling position. Explore whether your offering will compete through low cost or differentiation. What makes your business stand out from your competition? What product gap or service need does it fill for your customers?
• Marketing strategy. What is your overall marketing strategy? What steps or activities will you undertake to achieve your goals/objectives? Who will be responsible and what are your deadlines?
• Advertising and promotion. What do you want to achieve/communicate (brand awareness, online sales, etc.)? What social media tools do your customers use (e.g., blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)? What strategies can you use to network and communicate effectively with these customers? Who will maintain your social media presence – do you have the internal staff or would you need to engage an external organisation?
• Sales. What sales techniques could you use? What are your strategies behind these techniques? How is this different from/better than your competitors?
• Finances. This section includes a spreadsheet to enter expected marketing activity costs. These figures can be used in your business plan template.
• Monitoring/measurement activities. How will you measure success? What indicators will you use and when will you use them to help identify what worked and what didn't?

You may wish to use the following sources of data and statistics, which are divided into three categories: public, commercial and academic. Government. Government sources are often the most economical, as they're usually free and offer a lot of useful information. Australian Tax Office – Small Business Benchmarks Australian Bureau of Statistics – Data Services Australian Bureau of Statistics – Census Data Australian Bureau of Statistics – South Australia Statistics Commercial. Commercial sources are equally valuable, but may involve a cost. You should consider if buying reports will be better value than hiring a research team to collect data tailored to your needs. IbisWorld - Australia’s largest provider of industry-based research Academic. Academic institutions in South Australia and around the world can be a rich source of information and knowledge for market research. Flinders University - Research University of Adelaide - Research University of South Australia - Research

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Marketing basics for business and the 7 Ps

Effective marketing will help to achieve your goals and grow your business. It will build awareness, attract customers and build lasting, profitable relationships.

Defining marketing

Marketing is about planning and executing the development, pricing, distribution and promotion of products and services to satisfy the needs of your customers.

The main role of marketing is to deliver customer value to attracting new customers and keeping existing ones. This is achieved by:

• knowing what customers need
• coming up with solutions to meet these needs.

Marketing is about the principles that guide your customer-focused actions.

It is a comprehensive process that determines how to go to market with your products and services. For your marketing to be successful, you'll need a strong understanding of your brand positioning and the needs of your customers .

'Marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit.'

Dr. Philip Kotler

Both science and art are important elements of marketing practice. The science of insights, analytics and metrics, and the art of creative ideas and clever execution should work together.

Marketing challenges

Many businesses find it challenging to do effective marketing because of:

• lack of time and resources (like staff and money)
• new technology and new channels, which require new skills and specialisation
• increased competition, which has given customers an abundance of choice.

Technological advances have made customers more connected, informed and empowered than ever before. To meet the changing expectations, preferences and behaviours, your business must be:

• brand driven
• customer focused.

In practice this means that you should start with strategic thinking, marketing strategy and planning before getting into the tactics (the steps and activities).

By understanding your current situation, you'll be better able to recognise gaps and make improvements. To get more out of your marketing efforts, answer the following questions:

• What role does marketing currently play in your business?
• Does your marketing strategy align with your business strategy?
• Does your business have the right marketing skills and resources?

The 7 Ps of marketing

Marketing is delivered through a combination of elements—the 'marketing mix'. These elements are also often referred to as the 7 Ps of marketing.

This popular and practical marketing model can help you to:

• do a marketing audit
• refine your value proposition
• do a competitive analysis.

Review your 7 Ps regularly

Assess your 7 Ps regularly to make sure they keep up with:

• your competitors
• changing customer needs
• technological advancements.

Product refers to what you create and deliver to meet the needs of your customers.

It requires you to think about:

• what problems you're solving for your customers
• how to exceed their expectations.

It includes your products and services, as well as the features, benefits, and value your products and services offer customers.

Value is not just about price, quality and style

Value also includes:

• availability (e.g. trading hours and access to online ordering)
• options (e.g. a choice of payment methods or added extras)
• packaging (e.g. using sustainable or recycled materials or innovative designs)
• accessories (e.g. offering a customisable range or product bundles)
• warranties (e.g. offering express and extended guarantees)
• repairs (e.g. annual maintenance or on-site callouts)
• support (e.g. account managers or online tutorials).

You can do customer research to find out which of these factors your customers value most.

Price refers to your business pricing strategy and how customers pay for your products and services.

It's the all-important value exchange—that is, the price customers are prepared to pay for the benefits you deliver.

When deciding on prices, you need to know:

• how much demand there is for what you're offering
• how much your customers are prepared to pay for it
• your expenses and costs
• your required profit margin .

To attract and retain customers, your ideal pricing strategy should:

• align with your business type and goals
• reflect your desired brand positioning
• consider your competition.

You can read more about pricing strategies and use our pricing calculators to work out the best approach for your business.

Place refers to where your products and services are made, found, distributed, sold and supported. It can be a physical location, a digital presence, or both.

Whether it's real or virtual, the design must:

• project your business brand
• be based on customer needs
• give customers easy and convenient access to your products and services.

You may engage directly with customers, or your distribution model could include third-party intermediaries, such as:

Your distribution model forms part of the customer experience and must be actively managed.

You could also do a review of your marketing channels to see if you're targeting your promotions in the right places.

Starting a business?

If you're starting a new business, you can read our guides on:

• finding the right business location
• building and managing a business website .

Promotion is about communicating information about your products and services to your target customer segments . It's usually designed to create a response.

As part of promotion, also consider your other communication, for example, to your partners and employees.

Choose the right promotional activities

Through the marketing strategy and planning process , you'll be able to choose the right mix of promotional activities for your business needs.

Select your promotional activities based on the media use and preferences of your target market.

Your promotional activities should use the right:

• channels (where and when you communicate to customers)
• messaging (what you say to them, and how you say it).

Types of promotional activities

• Advertising —you can promote your brand across many channels, for example, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, outdoor and online. Find out how to make your business advertising successful .
• Personal selling —effective personal selling, such as telemarketing, requires strong interpersonal and communication skills . You need a good understanding of your customers and back this up with expert knowledge.
• Public relations —positive publicity is earned media (media or exposure you haven't paid for). This can be achieved through, for example, press releases and interviews with national, regional or local media. Learn more about public relations for your business .
• Sales promotions —a proven technique to generate interest is to run short-term sales incentives. This includes discounts, competitions, and coupons. Find out more about running sales promotions and using coupon websites .
• Direct marketing —this represents an efficient way to engage with customers. This can range from targeted direct mail through to letterbox drops. It's worthwhile to learn more about direct marketing methods .
• Online marketing —the digital world offers many cost-effective marketing opportunities. Find out how to develop your digital marketing strategy .

Do the research

You can make more informed decisions about promotional activities by researching your customers .

This refers to the individuals who work for your business, including yourself. It's the people who deal with your customers, either directly or indirectly.

This is the human side of your business. When you provide outstanding service and support, you add value to the experience and encourage word-of-mouth and referrals.

Think about how often online customer reviews focus on exceptionally good, friendly service or on rude, bad service.

Consider all interactions, including:

• face-to-face
• through your contact centre
• though online (live) chats and email correspondence
• on social media .

You can give your business a competitive edge by:

• recruiting the right people
• training your staff to improve their communication skills
• retaining good staff through a supportive and pleasant workplace culture.

Workplace culture counts

Your brand becomes the external expression of the internal culture of your business.

Learn more about what you need to do to employ and retain the right people for your business.

This is about the activities involved in delivering your products or services. In simple terms, it's about being 'easy to do business with'.

An effective process helps you to:

• achieve repeatable and consistent customer service levels
• save time and money by increasing your operational efficiency.

Action item: map out the process

It's helpful to map out the end-to-end journey from your customer's perspective. Explore all potential brand interactions, for example:

Also consider the technology you use and the partners you deal with.

Discover more about business processes and procedures together with customer journey mapping.

This refers to all existing and potential features customers see when engaging with your business.

Physical evidence:

• is the tangible proof that establishes credibility
• includes the look and feel of your business branding
• spans the physical and digital environment.

Physical evidence may be:

• a retail store
• interior design
• a business website
• online ratings and reviews
• the uniforms and behaviour of employees.

Consider everything about your business that can be seen or otherwise observed, and how it can help to reinforce your brand and elevate your business.

Look at retail design

Think about how your store layout, fixtures and signage can build you brand and increase your sales.

Action item: review your 7 Ps of marketing

To maximise your success, you need to make the most of your marketing mix. The power of marketing lies in combining the different marketing elements in an effective way.

To help you do this, use our template to evaluate your 7 Ps .

Marketing in practice

Marketing is an essential part of your business. Take a practical and phased approach by following the step-by-step guide to develop your marketing strategy and plan .

Before taking the next step, think about these critical success factors:

• resources —do you have the right people, time and budget?
• expertise —do you have the right knowledge and skills?
• communication —do you have a collaborative approach?

These factors will determine if you can reach your marketing goals. Identify where you need to focus your effort on by completing the interactive marketing health check .

Also consider...

• View our marketing strategy and planning webinar for information, tips and resources from our Mentoring for Growth mentors.
• Find guidelines and templates to write a marketing strategy and marketing plan .
• Read about how you can expand and retain your customer base by becoming a customer-focused business .
• Learn more about branding your business .
• Find tips and strategies for marketing on a small budget .
• Last reviewed: 29 Aug 2022
• Last updated: 29 Aug 2022

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What is a Marketing Plan & How to Write One [+Examples]

Published: December 27, 2023

For a while now, you've been spearheading your organization's content marketing efforts, and your team's performance has convinced management to adopt the content marketing strategies you’ve suggested.

Now, your boss wants you to write and present a content marketing plan, but you‘ve never done something like that before. You don't even know where to start.

Fortunately, we've curated the best content marketing plans to help you write a concrete plan that's rooted in data and produces results. But first, we'll discuss what a marketing plan is and how some of the best marketing plans include strategies that serve their respective businesses.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a strategic roadmap that businesses use to organize, execute, and track their marketing strategy over a given period. Marketing plans can include different marketing strategies for various marketing teams across the company, all working toward the same business goals.

The purpose of a marketing plan is to write down strategies in an organized manner. This will help keep you on track and measure the success of your campaigns.

Writing a marketing plan will help you think of each campaign‘s mission, buyer personas, budget, tactics, and deliverables. With all this information in one place, you’ll have an easier time staying on track with a campaign. You'll also discover what works and what doesn't. Thus, measuring the success of your strategy.

Featured Resource: Free Marketing Plan Template

Looking to develop a marketing plan for your business? Click here to download HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template to get started .

To learn more about how to create your marketing plan, keep reading or jump to the section you’re looking for:

How to Write a Marketing Plan

Types of marketing plans, marketing plan examples, marketing plan faqs, sample marketing plan.

If you're pressed for time or resources, you might not be thinking about a marketing plan. However, a marketing plan is an important part of your business plan.

Marketing Plan vs. Business Plan

A marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics.

A business plan is also a strategic document. But this plan covers all aspects of a company's operations, including finance, operations, and more. It can also help your business decide how to distribute resources and make decisions as your business grows.

I like to think of a marketing plan as a subset of a business plan; it shows how marketing strategies and objectives can support overall business goals.

Keep in mind that there's a difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy.

Free Marketing Plan Template

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

• Pre-Sectioned Template
• Completely Customizable
• Example Prompts
• Professionally Designed

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

A marketing strategy describes how a business will accomplish a particular goal or mission. This includes which campaigns, content, channels, and marketing software they'll use to execute that mission and track its success.

For example, while a greater plan or department might handle social media marketing, you might consider your work on Facebook as an individual marketing strategy.

A marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies. It's the framework from which all of your marketing strategies are created and helps you connect each strategy back to a larger marketing operation and business goal.

For example, suppose your company is launching a new software product, and it wants customers to sign up. The marketing department needs to develop a marketing plan that'll help introduce this product to the industry and drive the desired signups.

The department decides to launch a blog dedicated to this industry, a new YouTube video series to establish expertise, and an account on Twitter to join the conversation around this subject. All this serves to attract an audience and convert this audience into software users.

To summarize, the business's marketing plan is dedicated to introducing a new software product to the marketplace and driving signups for that product. The business will execute that plan with three marketing strategies : a new industry blog, a YouTube video series, and a Twitter account.

Of course, the business might consider these three things as one giant marketing strategy, each with its specific content strategies. How granular you want your marketing plan to get is up to you. Nonetheless, every marketing plan goes through a particular set of steps in its creation.

Learn what they are below.

• State your business's mission.
• Determine the KPIs for this mission.
• Identify your buyer personas.
• Describe your content initiatives and strategies.
• Clearly define your plan's omissions.
• Define your marketing budget.
• Identify your competition.
• Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

1. State your business's mission.

Your first step in writing a marketing plan is to state your mission. Although this mission is specific to your marketing department, it should serve your business‘s main mission statement.

From my experience, you want to be specific, but not too specific. You have plenty of space left in this marketing plan to elaborate on how you'll acquire new customers and accomplish this mission.

Need help building your mission statement? Download this guide for examples and templates and write the ideal mission statement.

2. Determine the KPIs for this mission.

Every good marketing plan describes how the department will track its mission‘s progress. To do so, you need to decide on your key performance indicators (KPIs) .

KPIs are individual metrics that measure the various elements of a marketing campaign. These units help you establish short-term goals within your mission and communicate your progress to business leaders.

Let's take our example of a marketing mission from the above step. If part of our mission is “to attract an audience of travelers,” we might track website visits using organic page views. In this case, “organic page views” is one KPI, and we can see our number of page views grow over time.

These KPIs will come into the conversation again in step 4.

3. Identify your buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a description of who you want to attract. This can include age, sex, location, family size, and job title. Each buyer persona should directly reflect your business's current and potential customers. So, all business leaders must agree on your buyer personas.

Create your buyer personas with this free guide and set of buyer persona templates.

4. Describe your content initiatives and strategies.

Here's where you'll include the main points of your marketing and content strategy. Because there's a laundry list of content types and channels available to you today, you must choose wisely and explain how you'll use your content and channels in this section of your marketing plan.

When I write this section , I like to stipulate:

• Which types of content I'll create. These might include blog posts, YouTube videos, infographics, and ebooks.
• How much of it I'll create. I typically describe content volume in daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly intervals. It all depends on my workflow and the short-term goals for my content.
• The goals (and KPIs) I'll use to track each type. KPIs can include organic traffic, social media traffic, email traffic, and referral traffic. Your goals should also include which pages you want to drive that traffic to, such as product pages, blog pages, or landing pages.
• The channels on which I'll distribute my content. Popular channels include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.
• Any paid advertising that will take place on these channels.

Build out your marketing plan with this free template.

Fill out this form to access the template., 5. clearly define your plan's omissions..

A marketing plan explains the marketing team's focus. It also explains what the marketing team will not focus on.

If there are other aspects of your business that you aren't serving in this particular plan, include them in this section. These omissions help to justify your mission, buyer personas, KPIs, and content. You can’t please everyone in a single marketing campaign, and if your team isn't on the hook for something, you need to make it known.

In my experience, this section is particularly important for stakeholders to help them understand why certain decisions were made.

6. Define your marketing budget.

Whether it's freelance fees, sponsorships, or a new full-time marketing hire, use these costs to develop a marketing budget and outline each expense in this section of your marketing plan.

You can establish your marketing budget with this kit of 8 free marketing budget templates .

7. Identify your competition.

Part of marketing is knowing whom you're marketing against. Research the key players in your industry and consider profiling each one.

Keep in mind not every competitor will pose the same challenges to your business. For example, while one competitor might be ranking highly on search engines for keywords you want your website to rank for, another competitor might have a heavy footprint on a social network where you plan to launch an account.

Easily track and analyze your competitors with t his collection of ten free competitive analysis templates .

8. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

With your marketing plan fully fleshed out, it's time to explain who’s doing what. I don't like to delve too deeply into my employees’ day-to-day projects, but I know which teams and team leaders are in charge of specific content types, channels, KPIs, and more.

Now that you know why you need to build an effective marketing plan, it’s time to get to work. Starting a plan from scratch can be overwhelming if you haven't done it before. That’s why there are many helpful resources that can support your first steps. We’ll share some of the best guides and templates that can help you build effective results-driven plans for your marketing strategies.

Ready to make your own marketing plan? Get started using this free template.

Depending on the company you work with, you might want to create various marketing plans. We compiled different samples to suit your needs:

1. Quarterly or Annual Marketing Plans

These plans highlight the strategies or campaigns you'll take on in a certain period.

Forbes published a marketing plan template that has amassed almost 4 million views. To help you sculpt a marketing roadmap with true vision, their template will teach you how to fill out the 15 key sections of a marketing plan, which are:

• Executive Summary
• Target Customers
• Unique Selling Proposition
• Pricing & Positioning Strategy
• Distribution Plan
• Your Offers
• Marketing Materials
• Promotions Strategy
• Online Marketing Strategy
• Conversion Strategy
• Joint Ventures & Partnerships
• Referral Strategy
• Strategy for Increasing Transaction Prices
• Retention Strategy
• Financial Projections

If you're truly lost on where to start with a marketing plan, I highly recommend using this guide to help you define your target audience, figure out how to reach them, and ensure that audience becomes loyal customers.

2. Social Media Marketing Plan

This type of plan highlights the channels, tactics, and campaigns you intend to accomplish specifically on social media. A specific subtype is a paid marketing plan, which highlights paid strategies, such as native advertising, PPC, or paid social media promotions.

Shane Snow's Marketing Plan for His Book Dream Team is a great example of a social media marketing plan:

When Shane Snow started promoting his new book, "Dream Team," he knew he had to leverage a data-driven content strategy framework. So, he chose his favorite one: the content strategy waterfall. The content strategy waterfall is defined by Economic Times as a model used to create a system with a linear and sequential approach.

Snow wrote a blog post about how the waterfall‘s content strategy helped him launch his new book successfully. After reading it, you can use his tactics to inform your own marketing plan. More specifically, you’ll learn how he:

• Applied his business objectives to decide which marketing metrics to track.
• Used his ultimate business goal of earning $200,000 in sales or 10,000 purchases to estimate the conversion rate of each stage of his funnel.
• Created buyer personas to figure out which channels his audience would prefer to consume his content.
• Used his average post view on each of his marketing channels to estimate how much content he had to create and how often he had to post on social media.
• Calculated how much earned and paid media could cut down the amount of content he had to create and post.
• Designed his process and workflow, built his team, and assigned members to tasks.
• Analyzed content performance metrics to refine his overall content strategy.

I use Snow's marketing plan to think more creatively about my content promotion and distribution plan. I like that it's linear and builds on the step before it, creating an air-tight strategy that doesn't leave any details out.

3. Content Marketing Plan

This plan could highlight different strategies, tactics, and campaigns in which you'll use content to promote your business or product.

HubSpot's Comprehensive Guide for Content Marketing Strategy is a strong example of a content marketing plan:

At HubSpot, we‘ve built our marketing team from two business school graduates working from a coffee table to a powerhouse of hundreds of employees. Along the way, we’ve learned countless lessons that shaped our current content marketing strategy. So, we decided to illustrate our insights in a blog post to teach marketers how to develop a successful content marketing strategy, regardless of their team's size.

In this comprehensive guide for modern marketers, you'll learn:

• What exactly content marketing is.
• Why your business needs a content marketing strategy.
• Who should lead your content marketing efforts?
• How to structure your content marketing team based on your company's size.
• How to hire the right people for each role on your team.
• What marketing tools and technology you'll need to succeed.
• What type of content your team should create, and which employees should be responsible for creating them.
• The importance of distributing your content through search engines, social media, email, and paid ads.
• And finally, the recommended metrics each of your teams should measure and report to optimize your content marketing program.

This is a fantastic resource for content teams of any size — whether you're a team of one or 100. It includes how to hire and structure a content marketing team, what marketing tools you'll need, what type of content you should create, and even recommends what metrics to track for analyzing campaigns. If you're aiming to establish or boost your online presence, leveraging tools like HubSpot's drag-and-drop website builder can be extremely beneficial. It helps you create a captivating digital footprint that sets the foundation for your content marketing endeavors.

4. New Product Launch Marketing Plan

This will be a roadmap for the strategies and tactics you‘ll implement to promote a new product. And if you’re searching for an example, look no further than Chief Outsiders' Go-To-Market Plan for a New Product :

After reading this plan, you'll learn how to:

• Validate a product
• Write strategic objectives
• Identify your market
• Compile a competitive landscape
• Create a value proposition for a new product
• Consider sales and service in your marketing plan

If you're looking for a marketing plan for a new product, the Chief Outsiders template is a great place to start. Marketing plans for a new product will be more specific because they target one product versus its entire marketing strategy.

5. Growth Marketing Plan

Growth marketing plans use experimentation and data to drive results, like we see in Venture Harbour’s Growth Marketing Plan Template :

Venture Harbour's growth marketing plan is a data-driven and experiment-led alternative to the more traditional marketing plan. Their template has five steps intended for refinement with every test-measure-learn cycle. The five steps are:

• Experiments

I recommend this plan if you want to experiment with different platforms and campaigns. Experimentation always feels risky and unfamiliar, but this plan creates a framework for accountability and strategy.

• Louisville Tourism
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Visit Oxnard
• Safe Haven Family Shelter
• Wright County Economic Development
• The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County
• Cabarrus County Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Visit Billings

1. Louisville Tourism

It also divides its target market into growth and seed categories to allow for more focused strategies. For example, the plan recognizes Millennials in Chicago, Atlanta, and Nashville as the core of it's growth market, whereas people in Boston, Austin, and New York represent seed markets where potential growth opportunities exist. Then, the plan outlines objectives and tactics for reaching each market.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

• The plan starts with a letter from the President & CEO of the company, who sets the stage for the plan by providing a high-level preview of the incoming developments for Louisville's tourism industry
• The focus on Louisville as "Bourbon City" effectively leverages its unique cultural and culinary attributes to present a strong brand
• Incorporates a variety of data points from Google Analytics, Arrivalist, and visitor profiles to to define their target audience with a data-informed approach

2. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

For example, students who become prospects as freshman and sophomore will receive emails that focus on getting the most out of high school and college prep classes. Once these students become juniors and seniors — thus entering the consideration stage — the emails will focus more on the college application process and other exploratory content.

• The plan incorporates competitive analysis, evaluation surveys, and other research to determine the makeup of its target audience
• The plan lists each marketing program (e.g., direct mail, social media, email etc.) and supplements it with examples on the next page
• Each marketing program has its own objectives, tactics, and KPIs for measuring success

3. Visit Oxnard

This marketing plan by Visit Oxnard, a convention and visitors bureau, is packed with all the information one needs in a marketing plan: target markets, key performance indicators, selling points, personas, marketing tactics by channel, and much more.

It also articulates the organization’s strategic plans for the upcoming fiscal year, especially as it grapples with the aftereffects of the pandemic. Lastly, it has impeccable visual appeal, with color-coded sections and strong branding elements.

• States clear and actionable goals for the coming year
• Includes data and other research that shows how their team made their decisions
• Outlines how the team will measure the success of their plan

4. Safe Haven Family Shelter

This marketing plan by a nonprofit organization is an excellent example to follow if your plan will be presented to internal stakeholders at all levels of your organization. It includes SMART marketing goals , deadlines, action steps, long-term objectives, target audiences, core marketing messages , and metrics.

The plan is detailed, yet scannable. By the end of it, one can walk away with a strong understanding of the organization’s strategic direction for its upcoming marketing efforts.

• Confirms ongoing marketing strategies and objectives while introducing new initiatives
• Uses colors, fonts, and formatting to emphasize key parts of the plan
• Closes with long-term goals, key themes, and other overarching topics to set the stage for the future

5. Wright County Economic Development

Wright County Economic Development’s plan drew our attention because of its simplicity, making it good inspiration for those who’d like to outline their plan in broad strokes without frills or filler.

It includes key information such as marketing partners, goals, initiatives, and costs. The sections are easy to scan and contain plenty of information for those who’d like to dig into the details. Most important, it includes a detailed breakdown of projected costs per marketing initiative — which is critical information to include for upper-level managers and other stakeholders.

• Begins with a quick paragraph stating why the recommended changes are important
• Uses clear graphics and bullet points to emphasize key points
• Includes specific budget data to support decision-making

6. The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County

This marketing plan presentation by a cultural council is a great example of how to effectively use data in your plan, address audiences who are new to the industry, and offer extensive detail into specific marketing strategies.

For instance, an entire slide is dedicated to the county’s cultural tourism trends, and at the beginning of the presentation, the organization explains what an arts and culture agency is in the first place.

That’s a critical piece of information to include for those who might not know. If you’re addressing audiences outside your industry, consider defining terms at the beginning, like this organization did.

• Uses quality design and images to support the goals and priorities in the text
• Separate pages for each big idea or new strategy
• Includes sections for awards and accomplishments to show how the marketing plan supports wider business goals
• Defines strategies and tactics for each channel for easy skimming

7. Cabarrus County Convention & Visitors Bureau

Cabarrus County’s convention and visitors bureau takes a slightly different approach with its marketing plan, formatting it like a magazine for stakeholders to flip through. It offers information on the county’s target audience, channels, goals, KPIs, and public relations strategies and initiatives.

We especially love that the plan includes contact information for the bureau’s staff members, so that it’s easy for stakeholders to contact the appropriate person for a specific query.

• Uses infographics to expand on specific concepts, like how visitors benefit a community
• Highlights the team members responsible for each initiative with a photo to emphasize accountability and community
• Closes with an event calendar for transparency into key dates for events

8. Visit Billings

Visit Billing’s comprehensive marketing plan is like Cabarrus County’s in that it follows a magazine format. With sections for each planned strategy, it offers a wealth of information and depth for internal stakeholders and potential investors.

We especially love its content strategy section, where it details the organization’s prior efforts and current objectives for each content platform.

At the end, it includes strategic goals and budgets — a good move to imitate if your primary audience would not need this information highlighted at the forefront.

• Includes a section on the buyer journey, which offers clarity on the reasoning for marketing plan decisions
• Design includes call-outs for special topics that could impact the marketing audience, such as safety concerns or "staycations"
• Clear headings make it easy to scan this comprehensive report and make note of sections a reader may want to return to for more detail

What is a typical marketing plan?

In my experience, most marketing plans outline the following aspects of a business's marketing:

• Target audience

Each marketing plan should include one or more goals, the path your team will take to meet those goals, and how you plan to measure success.

For example, if I were a tech startup that's launching a new mobile app, my marketing plan would include:

• Target audience or buyer personas for the app
• Outline of how app features meet audience needs
• Competitive analysis
• Goals for conversion funnel and user acquisition
• Marketing strategies and tactics for user acquisition

Featured resource : Free Marketing Plan Template

What should a good marketing plan include?

A good marketing plan will create a clear roadmap for your unique marketing team. This means that the best marketing plan for your business will be distinct to your team and business needs.

That said, most marketing plans will include sections for one or more of the following:

• Clear analysis of the target market
• A detailed description of the product or service
• Strategic marketing mix details (such as product, price, place, promotion)
• Measurable goals with defined timelines

This can help you build the best marketing plan for your business.

A good marketing plan should also include a product or service's unique value proposition, a comprehensive marketing strategy including online and offline channels, and a defined budget.

Featured resource : Value Proposition Templates

What are the most important parts of a marketing plan?

When you‘re planning a road trip, you need a map to help define your route, step-by-step directions, and an estimate of the time it will take to get to your destination. It’s literally how you get there that matters.

Like a road map, a marketing plan is only useful if it helps you get to where you want to go. So, no one part is more than the other.

That said, you can use the list below to make sure that you've added or at least considered each of the following in your marketing plan:

• Marketing goals
• Executive summary
• Target market analysis
• Marketing strategies

What questions should I ask when making a marketing plan?

Questions are a useful tool for when you‘re stuck or want to make sure you’ve included important details.

Try using one or more of these questions as a starting point when you create your marketing plan:

• Who is my target audience?
• What are their needs, motivations, and pain points?
• How does our product or service solve their problems?
• How will I reach and engage them?
• Who are my competitors? Are they direct or indirect competitors?
• What are the unique selling points of my product or service?
• What marketing channels are best for the brand?
• What is our budget and timeline?
• How will I measure the success of marketing efforts?

How much does a marketing plan cost?

Creating a marketing plan is mostly free. But the cost of executing a marketing plan will depend on your specific plan.

Marketing plan costs vary by business, industry, and plan scope. Whether your team handles marketing in-house or hires external consultants can also make a difference. Total costs can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands. This is why most marketing plans will include a budget.

Featured resource : Free Marketing Budget Templates

What is a marketing plan template?

A marketing plan template is a pre-designed structure or framework that helps you outline your marketing plan.

It offers a starting point that you can customize for your specific business needs and goals. For example, our template includes easy-to-edit sections for:

• Business summary
• Business initiatives
• Target market
• Market strategy
• Marketing channels
• Marketing technology

Let’s create a sample plan together, step by step.

Follow along with HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template .

1. Create an overview or primary objective.

Our business mission is to provide [service, product, solution] to help [audience] reach their [financial, educational, business related] goals without compromising their [your audience’s valuable asset: free time, mental health, budget, etc.]. We want to improve our social media presence while nurturing our relationships with collaborators and clients.

For example, if I wanted to focus on social media growth, my KPIs might look like this:

We want to achieve a minimum of [followers] with an engagement rate of [X] on [social media platform].

The goal is to achieve an increase of [Y] on recurring clients and new meaningful connections outside the platform by the end of the year.

Use the following categories to create a target audience for your campaign.

• Profession:
• Background:
• Pain points:
• Social media platforms that they use:
• Streaming platforms that they prefer:

For more useful strategies, consider creating a buyer persona in our Make My Persona tool .

Our content pillars will be: [X, Y, Z].

Content pillars should be based on topics your audience needs to know. If your ideal clients are female entrepreneurs, then your content pillars can be: marketing, being a woman in business, remote working, and productivity hacks for entrepreneurs.

Then, determine any omissions.

This marketing plan won’t be focusing on the following areas of improvement: [A, B, C].

5. Define your marketing budget.

Our marketing strategy will use a total of [Y] monthly. This will include anything from freelance collaborations to advertising.

6. Identify your competitors.

I like to work through the following questions to clearly indicate who my competitors are:

• Which platforms do they use the most?
• How does their branding differentiate?
• How do they talk to their audiences?
• What valuable assets do customers talk about? And if they are receiving any negative feedback, what is it about?

7. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

Create responsible parties for each portion of the plan.

Marketing will manage the content plan, implementation, and community interaction to reach the KPIs.

• Social media manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Content strategist: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Community manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]

Sales will follow the line of the marketing work while creating and implementing an outreach strategy.

• Sales strategists: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Sales executives: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]

Customer Service will nurture clients’ relationships to ensure that they have what they want. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Project Managers will track the progress and team communication during the project. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Get started on your marketing plan.

These marketing plans serve as initial resources to get your content marketing plan started. But, to truly deliver what your audience wants and needs, you'll likely need to test some different ideas out, measure their success, and then refine your goals as you go.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in April 2019, but was updated for comprehensiveness. This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure t o learn more about how we use AI.

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Marketing and brand-building in Australia: a comprehensive guide

What's this about?

Building your brand and defining your marketing approach form the foundations of a successful market entry strategy. Start your Australian brand-building and marketing journey with this extensive guide, which includes resources, research, tips and trends.

Know It, Show It, Grow It: A brand framework for export success

The ‘Know It, Show It, Grow It’ 3-step framework was developed to help you understand your brand’s strengths and weaknesses, and then successfully build your brand in international markets.

But first, there are some key factors to know about marketing in Australia. Getting to grips with these before using the framework will benefit your brand-building and marketing efforts ‘across the ditch’.

Overview of Australia’s marketing industry

Australia’s advertising and marketing industry has over 9500 marketing agencies and employs more than 83,000 people, according to IBISWorld . Almost half of these employees work in New South Wales, and most marketing agencies are concentrated in state capital cities, particularly Sydney and Melbourne.

Australian marketing is a mix of both traditional and digital. Whether one is favoured over the other depends on the industry. For example, the car industry typically spends more on television and newspaper advertising, whereas influencers and digital marketing are all-important in the skincare sector.

Trends shaping Australian marketing

Inclusivity

Sustainability, corporate responsibility, and social awareness

Use of data and research to drive marketing strategies

The rise of the influencer

Personalisation via emerging technologies (for an example, see Understanding Australia’s retail tech scene )

Omnichannel marketing, particularly in the retail sector

Brand experience is integrating cutting-edge technologies like AI, VR and AR.

Hyper-personalisation for meaningful experiences as customers increasingly want an experience tailored to how they shop both in-person and online.

Read: 15 of Australia's Top Marketing Pros Reveal the Hottest Trends for 2023

Useful resources

Resources, events, training: Association for Data-driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA)

Leading association for online advertising: Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)

Professional development: Australian Marketing Institute

Industry reports, news, training: Advertising Council Australia

News and insights from industry professionals: Marketing Trends

Mentoring, coaching, leadership programmes: The Marketing Academy Australia

Advertising, Marketing and Media news’ B&T - Advertising, Marketing and Media News

B2B or B2C?

Part of planning your strategy involves deciding whether to take a B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumer) approach. Many businesses use both to target different segments of their market. For example, Australia’s edtech sector takes both a B2B and B2C approach .

Companies that focus on selling products or services to other businesses or organisations (vs. consumers) typically use B2B marketing strategies. Your customers are typically professionals, decision makers or procurement teams.

B2C marketing targets individual consumers or households as end-users. This includes people from various demographics and unlike B2B, may not involve complex decision-making structures. This could involve online selling directly to your customers, and to reach a broader customer base you will likely use more channels (e.g. social media, TV).

If you wish to sell to government, visit AusTender , the federal government procurement portal, and the procurement portals for individual states and territories, to find tender opportunities and determine the most suitable approach.

Understanding Australian consumers

Australia is a large market with key differences to New Zealand. Getting to know Australian consumers is vital for effective brand-building and marketing.

Australia is huge compared to New Zealand, and it isn’t one market

Australia is huge – it’s not just a larger version of New Zealand. The country is divided into 6 states and 2 territories. The country’s geographical scale, along with its diverse, multicultural society, means the market can be incredibly varied from one place to the next.

A one-size-fits-all approach does not work in Australia. You’ll need to understand who your customers are, where they live and what they value, so you can more effectively tailor your marketing.

Culture and values matter

Migration waves from different countries over time have contributed significantly to the diversity of Australia’s population; it has one of the most culturally diverse populations in the world, with people from more than 200 countries. In 2022, one third of all migrants living in Australia were born in England, India, China or New Zealand, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics . To ensure your marketing is appropriate and culturally respectful, you need to thoroughly understand who you are targeting. Business culture in Australia provides additional information.

It's also important that your marketing is culturally respectful of Australia’s First Nations peoples. Insensitive or inappropriate messaging can harm your brand.

Online learning programmes, research and resources: Diversity Council Australia

The SBS Inclusion Program online courses, including an excellent First Nations education and inclusion course .

Humour and language matter too

Getting to grips with language differences – not just between Australia and New Zealand, but from one Australian region to the next – is key before you begin planning your marketing strategy.

While sometimes Australians can seem more direct than New Zealanders, they generally don’t take themselves too seriously and their (often dry) sense of humour is well known. Take these aspects into account so you strike the right tone with consumers.

Know your customers

Consider how Australian consumers perceive New Zealand and its products and services, and look at your specific industry. The latest perceptions research study run by NZ Story highlights major perception shifts.

Consumer behaviour in Australia can be influenced by economic conditions, societal changes and global events, so prepare to be flexible.

Tips for marketing your product or service in Australia

For the most effective brand-building and marketing strategies, base your approach on data and market research, and consider these points:

Your budget will influence the scale of your marketing; for smaller budgets, creativity, strategy and targeted campaigns can yield positive results.

Digital marketing is increasingly important, but print, TV, OOH and radio advertising still have a place in Australia.

Localised marketing strategies can enhance your relevance to specific regions and/or target audiences.

Australians are open to new technologies and trends, and many embrace innovation. However, adoption rates can vary by age, region and industry.

Avoid greenwashing. Australians care about sustainability and it’s increasingly important any claims you make are honest, transparent and can be backed up with evidence.

SEO remains a critical part of Australian digital marketing. Optimise your online presence for search engines to improve your visibility.

Think quality, not quantity. Quality content that provides value to your audience is key to building trust and engagement.

Use our Marketing for export template to help kickstart your planning.

Growing brand awareness in Australia

Growing brand awareness is a fundamental step to success in the competitive Australian market.

It takes time to build brand awareness, financial investment, and commitment. Be prepared to stay in it for the long-term – branding requires consistency to become recognisable and increase your brand equity.

Applying what you’ve learnt about your customers to your brand awareness efforts will help you build a strong reputation. Take note of these tips:

Tell your story

Start by getting clear on your values, vision and mission .

Leverage NZ’s reputation

In some sectors, leveraging New Zealand’s ‘clean and green’ reputation can benefit your business and help grow brand awareness.

For an excellent example and a ready-to-use F&B toolkit, see Made With Care: How to capitalise on New Zealand’s F&B reputation .

Take an omnichannel approach

An omnichannel approach generally works best in Australia, but do your homework into which approaches are most effective in your industry.

Channels include:

direct marketing (mail and email)

TV and radio advertising

social media

using influencers (take note of Australian Consumer Law regarding social media promotions)

trade shows

in-store tastings for F&B

Consistency is also important – Australian consumers expect a seamless experience of your brand across all channels.

Many Australians are brand loyal. Foster this with your own brand by building trust and customer relationships through your marketing and delivering consistent value.

Brand expression: How to develop strong brand guidelines

Building your skincare brand in Australia

Building a brand in Australia’s foodservice market

Building your edtech brand in the Australian market

Partnering with a marketing agency

Partnering with an in-market agency allows you to leverage the agency’s local knowledge and experience. Social media, advertising, content, PR, digital, creative and market research are just a few agency specialists to consider. Importantly, any agency you work with must be aligned with your own values, vision and goals.

These videos are another useful resource: Digital Snapshots Australia .

Follow these steps to ensure a good fit:

Get started

First, define your marketing needs and goals so you are clear on what you want from an agency before approaching them. This can involve assessing your strengths and weaknesses – for example, do you struggle with data analytics or social media use? Do you need help to determine which marketing is best for your intended customers? How much are you willing to spend on marketing? Check out the Australian government’s marketing toolkit .

Search for agencies online and in industry publications. Don’t forget to consider an agency’s location and reach – remember that Australia isn’t one market, but many.

Create a shortlist of agencies you feel will support and work with your values, vision and goals.

You’ve made a shortlist – now ask plenty of questions

Questions to ask

What is the agency’s experience? Do they have any areas of expertise? What campaigns have they led in your sector/industry?

Can the agency give you examples of previous campaigns, including results? Do they have client references, testimonials or case studies?

Request detailed proposals from your shortlisted agencies. These should show you the agency’s approach, strategies, timelines and pricing.

Make sure you understand the KPIs and metrics the agency uses to measure its performance and demonstrate its results to you.

Discuss budget and planning to ensure both you and the agency understand each other’s expectations and financial constraints.

Discuss terms, pricing and payment schedules.

Review contracts and agreements and seek legal advice if you need help to understand the details before signing.

Working with your chosen agency

Work closely with the agency during the onboarding process and ask any questions up-front. Specify any requirements you might have.

Periodically review the agency’s performance to ensure it continues to align with your goals and expectations.

Advertising Agencies - Marketing.com.au

Advertising Agencies in Australia - AdForum Directory

The Best Advertising Companies in Australia - The Manifest

Setting up distribution and partnerships in Australia

Could an in-market digital agency help you succeed?

Find a PR Consultancy (cpra.org.au)

Useful templates

Download our brand attributes template

Download our brand positioning template

Download our employee attributes template

Download our mission statement template

Download our purpose template

Value proposition template

Download our values template

Download our 'how to create a vision statement' template

Check out How to build a brand that works overseas using the Know it, Show it, Grow it 3-step framework.

Join NZTE now to access guidance, tools and events that help grow your business overseas.

Are you exporting, or considering it? Become an NZTE customer today

The journalists on the editorial team at Forbes Advisor Australia base their research and opinions on objective, independent information-gathering.

When covering investment and personal finance stories, we aim to inform our readers rather than recommend specific financial product or asset classes. While we may highlight certain positives of a financial product or asset class, there is no guarantee that readers will benefit from the product or investment approach and may, in fact, make a loss if they acquire the product or adopt the approach.

To the extent any recommendations or statements of opinion or fact made in a story may constitute financial advice, they constitute general information and not personal financial advice in any form. As such, any recommendations or statements do not take into account the financial circumstances, investment objectives, tax implications, or any specific requirements of readers.

Readers of our stories should not act on any recommendation without first taking appropriate steps to verify the information in the stories consulting their independent financial adviser in order to ascertain whether the recommendation (if any) is appropriate, having regard to their investment objectives, financial situation and particular needs. Providing access to our stories should not be construed as investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any security or product, or to engage in or refrain from engaging in any transaction by Forbes Advisor Australia. In comparing various financial products and services, we are unable to compare every provider in the market so our rankings do not constitute a comprehensive review of a particular sector. While we do go to great lengths to ensure our ranking criteria matches the concerns of consumers, we cannot guarantee that every relevant feature of a financial product will be reviewed. We make every effort to provide accurate and up-to-date information. However, Forbes Advisor Australia cannot guarantee the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of this website. Forbes Advisor Australia accepts no responsibility to update any person regarding any inaccuracy, omission or change in information in our stories or any other information made available to a person, nor any obligation to furnish the person with any further information.

How To Set Up A Business In Australia

Published: Apr 5, 2024, 1:18pm

Table of Contents

Determine how you’ll make money, decide on a business structure, register your business, open a business bank account, know the rules and protect your business, set up your online channels, frequently asked questions (faqs).

Want to be your own boss? Got an idea for a new or improved product or service people will pay for? Starting a business in Australia is exciting, but there are many conditions and costs involved in setting one up.

Know what’s needed for you to legally start trading by following the most essential steps we’ve outlined below.

Related : How to Make Money From Home

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Unless you can fund your business operations and then generate enough revenue to make a profit, your business is destined for failure eventually. You need to determine if your business is viable and how you’ll attract customers or investors.

It’s wise to develop a business plan that articulates your core goals and how you’ll achieve them. You can do this independently or seek the guidance of a professional business consultant.

A business plan might cover:

• What you’ll offer and how, your target market, your unique selling points, and pricing.
• Market research, branding, marketing plans, sales channels and customer service strategies.
• Location, equipment, inventory, software, payment systems, and suppliers you’ll need.
• The high-level legal, compliance and risk management facets of running your business.
• Whether you’ll have employees and how they’ll be recruited, paid and managed.
• Establishment and overheads costs, funding/loans, sales and cash flow projections.
• The timing, people, resources and activities needed to make your plan a reality.

Business Queensland and Business Victoria both provide helpful business plan templates.

Another critical aspect of business set-up—once you know your business idea has legs—is choosing a business structure that aligns with how you’ll operate. The structure you chose will affect how you’re taxed and your administrative burden.

There are four business structures in Australia:

• Sole trader: This gives you full control but also means you’re personally responsible for all business liabilities. It’s simpler too: you’ll report your business income in your individual tax return.
• Partnership: Two or more people who share control and business liabilities. Partnerships must prepare a separate partnership tax return.
• Trust: A separate legal entity where a single person/entity, the trustee, holds the business’ assets and is responsible for how its run—on behalf of others, known as beneficiaries. Requires a formal trust deed and can be more costly and complex to set-up. Liability is limited where the trustee is a company.
• Company: A separate legal entity. While your personal liability is limited with a company, it’s also more expensive and complex, requiring registration with ASIC and placing legal responsibilities on the director/s.

It generally pays to seek professional advice if you’re not sure whether a sole trader, partnership, trust or company structure is right for you.

There’s a multitude of different registrations needed to stay above board. Fortunately, you can do many in one online application process via the government’s Business Registration Service .

Here are the key registrations for Australian businesses:

Australian Business Number (ABN)

An ABN is a free, unique identifier you’ll need to:

• Add to your invoices to show clients and suppliers you’re legitimate.
• Avoid having businesses you invoice withhold tax.
• Be able to claim tax credits on business expenses.
• Set up a domain name with ‘.au’ in the URL.
• Register for GST and pay as you go (PAYG) withholding.

You’ll need an ABN before you can register your business name—but you can apply for both at once.

If you choose a company structure, you’ll first need to apply for an Australian Company Number (ACN) and company name. Be aware that fees apply .

Note, you’ll receive a separate Tax File Number (TFN) for your business—automatically issued by the Australian Tax Office (ATO)—once you apply for an ABN for a partnership, company or trust.

Business Tax Registrations

Common tax registrations include:

• Goods and Services Tax (GST)
• Pay as You Go (PAYG) withholding

As soon your annual business turnover cracks the $75,000 mark, you’re required to register to collect the Goods and Services Tax (GST). So, if you think you’ll be on track to earn more than that in your first year of operation—registering for GST up-front is smart.

According to the ATO , you also must register for GST if:

• Your business charges passengers for taxi services or limousine travel (including ride sharing).
• You want to claim Fuel Tax Credits (FTC) or need to register for the Wine Equalisation Tax (WET) or Luxury Car Tax (LCT).

Once you’re registered for GST, you’ll need to complete regular business activity statements (BAS) .

If you’ll be employing people or have company directors to pay, you’ll need to register for PAYGW so you can collect tax from the income—and then report and pay this tax to the ATO. You’ll also need to register for PAYGW if you’ll be paying businesses that don’t provide you with an ABN.

[pro_tip As soon your annual business turnover cracks the $75,000 mark, you’re required to register to collect the Goods and Services Tax (GST). So, if you think you’ll be on track to earn more than that in your first year of operation—registering for GST up-front is smart

Business Name Registration

Your business name isn’t necessarily how you brand or market yourself. It’s the legal entity name of your business and allows you to operate Australia-wide.

ASIC’s fees for registering and renewing a business name are:

• $42 for one year
• $98 for three years

ASIC will send you a reminder by email 30 days before you need to renew your business name registration. A common and misleading tactic targeting business owners is unofficial letters or emails reminding you to renew and pay for your business name registration.

If it isn’t official correspondence from ASIC, you can ignore it. They’re either trying to scam you (the letter or email is fake), or profit from providing a service you don’t need (they add a charge on top of ASIC’s fee). Of course, some people may prefer to deal with a private service provider, accountant or solicitor to manage registrations and renewals—but carefully check their fees and legitimacy beforehand.

Registering a trademark isn’t required, but it could be a savvy way to protect your brand. For example, if another business owner trademarks a similar name to the one you use for your business, they could bring legal action against you.

Trademarking comes at a cost—a minimum of $250 and up to $600 through IP Australia .

You may wish to search existing trademarks before you settle on a business trading name.

Business bank accounts are critical for clean record-keeping for your business, even if you’re a micro business or sole trader. Keeping business funds separate is also a requirement if your business is structured as a company, trust or partnership.

Learn more in our guide to the best business bank accounts for Australians .

In addition to a business account, you might also explore accounting software that links to your bank transactions and helps you streamline invoicing, budgeting and organising your tax obligations.

Managing risk and staying compliant should be high on your list. It’s important to familiarise yourself with national and state fair trading laws and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission regulations that you’ll be subject to, so you’re not in conflict with industry standards, consumer law, safety rules or ethical practices.

Other legal matters to investigate include:

• Privacy and data collection laws. If you collect people’s details through a contact form on your site, you should also provide a privacy policy link.
• Employment, superannuation and workplace health and safety laws.
• Legal requirements around importing and exporting.
• Environmental protection laws, depending on your business kind.

Insurance can also provide a solid foundation for your business. Consider your need for:

• Workers’ compensation insurance (mandatory if you employ people).
• Public liability insurance (compulsory for some companies).
• Equipment or stock insurance.
• Income protection insurance.
• Management liability insurance.
• Cyber risk insurance.

Online shopping and research is the default nowadays, so one of the first steps you should take when setting up your business is securing your online presence. Regardless of whether you sell flowers from a market stall, have a bricks-and-mortar clothing store, or you build mobile apps—you’ll likely need a website for your business, and use social media for promotion.

Remember, you’ll need an ABN if you want to register a domain name for your website that indicates you’re Australian-based, such as ‘. com.au ‘, or ‘. net.au ‘. You may opt for .com if you’re selling into overseas markets.

Once you’ve determined the channels you want to focus on (e.g., Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn), you should set up accounts and choose a username that aligns closely with your business name. It’s probably unrealistic to have your business on every kind of social platform—you’ll need time to create content, engage with audiences and monitor messages.

Don’t forget your online presence on major marketplaces and search engines—such as a Google My Business profile, or dual listings of your products on sites like Amazon or eBay.

How much does it cost to register a business in Australia?

Registering your business name through the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) costs $42 for one year and $98 for three years.

What do you need to open a business in Australia?

To open a business in Australia, it’s recommended that you: develop a plan for how you’re business will attract customers and make a profit; select a business structure; apply for an ABN and register your business name; register for tax purposes such as GST and PAYG withholding; open a business bank account; become familiar with legal obligations; take out business insurance; and set up a website and other online channels for promotion.

Does ABN cost money?

Getting an ABN (Australian Business Number) is free, and anyone operating a business (or taking steps to start a business) in Australia is eligible. You can apply via the government’s Business Registration Service .

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Jody McDonald is a freelance writer based in Brisbane who specialises in writing about business, technology and the future of work. She’s helped a range of SaaS platforms and tech companies share their stories, and has written for the Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia magazine, MYOB Pulse, Anthill Magazine, Crypto News Australia and The Chainsaw.