Written by Roshni Wijayasinha, CMO of Foxquilt Insurance and Founder of Prosh Marketing, specializing Go-To-Market strategies for technology startups

Developing a marketing plan for your company ensures you have a strategy to reach your target customers and provides a structured approach for tackling marketing implementation. As a chief marketing officer (CMO) or marketing leader, it is your responsibility to lead the process of putting a marketing plan together.

A good marketing plan examines the internal and external environment, provides a deep understanding of your customers and provides a clear road map of activities, which makes it a vital playbook for your marketing team and vendors to execute on. I’ve created a number of different marketing plans across different industries and based on varying resources. Here are some tips I’ve gathered for how to create an effective marketing plan:

READ the Seven Tips on Forbes from the Forbes Communications Council