Marketing plan for a 50-person company: what goes in it

At fifty people, marketing is no longer something the founder does in the evening, and not yet the job of a ten-person department. There are often one or two dedicated people, salespeople waiting for contacts, a leadership team asking what the budget brings in, and a list of good ideas longer than the year. The marketing plan is there to cut through that list: it says what the team will do this year, why, with what resources, and what it will not do.

This guide describes what such a plan contains, part by part, for teams of 20 to 500 people. It complements our guide to marketing automation for SMEs, which starts from the tasks repeated every week: the plan decides which of them are worth it.

What is a marketing plan for in a 50-person company?

Three things. Aligning: sales, leadership and marketing read the same document, with the same objectives. Deciding: when the idea of a trade show, a video or a new social network comes along, you check whether it serves an objective of the plan, and if not, you note it for the next review. Measuring: at the end of the quarter, you compare what was planned with what happened, and you adjust.

A plan that serves none of these three purposes ends up in a shared folder. The surest sign of a good plan is that people open it in meetings.

What does a marketing plan contain?

Eight parts, in this order. Each fits on one page, often less.

1. 01The starting point.

   Where last year’s signed customers came from: referral, Google search, trade show, outbound. The CRM tells you, if sources are recorded there.

2. 02The target and its problem.

   Which companies, which roles, which problem you solve for them, in their words.

3. 03The objectives.

   Qualified enquiries, meetings, sales, tied to the year’s sales target.

4. 04The messages and their proof.

   What you say, and what proves it: a customer case, a sourced figure, a demonstration.

5. 05The channels.

   Two or three, chosen where the target searches or reads, and the ones you leave aside.

6. 06The budget.

   In euros and in hours, per channel.

7. 07The calendar.

   The year’s key moments, then what runs every week.

8. 08Measurement and review.

   The few figures tracked every week, and the date of each quarterly review.

The following sections go back over the parts where plans most often go wrong.

Start from sales, not from channels

The classic trap is to start with the list of channels: “we need to be on LinkedIn, run a newsletter, launch Google Ads”. The plan then reads like a list of activities, and nobody can say whether it worked.

Start from the sales target and work backwards. If the team must sign forty new customers, how many meetings does that take, how many qualified enquiries to get those meetings, and where do the enquiries that become customers come from today? These ratios are read in your CRM, not in an industry average. They set marketing’s objective as a number of enquiries, and they show straight away whether the current source is enough or whether another must be opened.

One limit to keep in mind: not everything marketing does turns into an enquiry within the quarter.

So the plan keeps a share for being known by those who will buy later: content that can be found again, a newsletter people keep, a presence on LinkedIn. That share is measured by something other than enquiries, and the plan says so.

Which channels to choose, and which to leave aside?

Choose where your target searches or reads, and what the team can sustain over time. One person alone cannot sustain five channels; they can sustain two well, with a third on trial. Also write down what you are leaving aside this year, and why: that is the line that stops the debate reopening at every meeting.

A few pointers, covered in detail in our other guides:

• When the buyer looks for a solution on Google, SEO and search advertising answer an existing demand. To choose between ad platforms, see Google Ads or Meta for a B2B SME.
• When you need to be known by a small number of decision-makers, a regular presence on LinkedIn, a newsletter and a webinar run as a sales channel do the work over time.
• When the site already gets visits, content offered in exchange for an email address turns part of those visits into contacts.
• When you target a foreign market, choosing markets comes before translating: see International SEO: choose your markets before translating.

How much to spend on marketing?

The most quoted reference comes from Gartner’s annual survey of marketing leaders:

That figure describes large companies, not a fifty-person team: it gives an order of magnitude, not a target. A budget that holds up is derived from the objectives. How much does a qualified enquiry cost on each channel, how many do you need, and how many hours can the team put in? Time counts as much as money: a newsletter, a webinar or a regular presence on LinkedIn are paid for first in team hours, to be estimated before you promise them.

Finally, set aside a line for tools and measurement: without tracking the source of each enquiry, the plan cannot be judged.

The calendar: key moments, then a rhythm

The calendar starts from the moments when your customers buy: seasons, trade shows, budget closings, contract renewals. Place these key moments first, then what runs every week or month around them.

For a B2B company, the principle is the same with other dates: prepare content six to ten weeks before your buyers start searching.

Who does what

The plan names one person responsible per channel, even if they rely on an agency or on tools. It also says what sales brings (the questions heard in meetings, the customer cases) and what it receives: when does a contact pass from marketing to sales, on what criteria, and how quickly is it followed up? Without that written rule, both teams blame each other for the quality of contacts.

AI can draft versions of texts, summarise meeting notes or sort replies. It replaces neither the person who chooses the messages nor the one who reviews what goes out in the company’s name: we explain this split in AI and digital marketing: what changes for agencies.

Measure, then review every quarter

Few figures, tracked without copying: enquiries received by source, qualified enquiries, meetings, signed sales, cost per channel. The rest helps you understand, not judge. How to connect Analytics, Search Console and the CRM is in our guide to automated marketing reporting, and tracking each contact through to the sale in Twenty CRM in production.

We have run this site’s content plan this way since 25 August 2026: a register of objectives per search query, a daily scan of Search Console that compares actual positions with that register, and a work queue that follows from it. Every review starts from those gaps, not from an impression.

At each quarterly review, three questions are enough: what produced qualified enquiries, what produced nothing and why, and what do we change for the next quarter?

Where to start

Start with the part you can write this week: the starting point. Pull from the CRM the source of last year’s signed customers; if it is not recorded there, that is the first job, before any channel. Then work back from the sales target to the number of enquiries. The rest of the plan follows.

For the tasks that will run every week once the plan is written, the method for running an email campaign takes over. And to build this plan with an outside view, then connect advertising, SEO and the CRM through to the sale, see our digital marketing offer.

Frequently asked questions