What Is a Marketing Roadmap?
A marketing roadmap designates a timeline and plan of action to reach specific marketing goals. Marketers can use a roadmap to plan and coordinate marketing campaigns. The roadmap can have milestones, a product launch schedule, and room to assign tasks.
Marketing roadmaps typically include timelines of specific actions, milestones, and deliverables, as well as the resources (such as budget and personnel) required to execute the plan. Additionally, a marketing roadmap helps align your organization's marketing efforts with overall business objectives.
What Is a Marketing Roadmap Template?
A marketing roadmap template features the components you need to complete a goal. The pre-designed document provides a consistent format and structure for a chronological marketing plan of action. It also helps keep the team and stakeholders aligned.
Common elements in a marketing roadmap template include the following:
- Alignment: A sentence or two that explains how the roadmap aligns with the business’s objectives.
- Metrics: The key performance indicators (KPIs) and other data points you’ll use to measure the success of the campaign.
- Objectives: A clear statement of the goals your marketing team intends to achieve.
- Resources: A list of what’s required for marketing efforts, including details of the budget, required personnel, and other necessary resources.
- Tactics: A list of specific strategies and actions the marketing team will use to reach its goals.
- Timeline: A visual representation that shows individual tasks, milestones, and deliverables in a chronological order, so you can easily see where activities overlap.
Components of a Marketing Roadmap Template
Types of marketing roadmap templates might differ, but the main components are more or less universal. Templates include milestones, due dates, and phases. There’s also room for tasks and their assignees, status updates, and priority.
Marketing roadmap templates include the following primary components:
- Roadmap Title: Decide on a name for the roadmap. The title should be contextual, so everyone knows its purpose.
- Assignee: Assign a team member or department to each task in the campaign.
- Content Title: Enter a title for each required piece of content (e.g., “Targeted Blog Post”).
- Due Date: Enter the start and end dates – and duration – for when each marketing team member will be working on a specific task.
- Milestones: Add the key milestones you need to hit to ensure the marketing campaign is on track.
- Phases: Enter a name for each phase in your marketing campaign (e.g., “Campaign Definition and Planning,” “Product Launch”).
- Priority: Add a priority level (e.g., High, Medium, Low) for each task. In a template, the priority status usually appears as a drop-down menu.
- Product or Project Launch Date: Provide the launch date(s) that your marketing campaign will use to start promotional activities.
- Status: Enter the status (e.g., “Not Started,” “In Process,” “Completed”) for each task in the marketing roadmap.
- Tasks: List each individual marketing-campaign task that must be completed (e.g., “Video Production,” “Social Media Promotion”).
Benefits of Using a Marketing Roadmap Template
The benefits of using a marketing roadmap template are that it has the components a marketing campaign needs. A template is also useful for maintaining consistency and listing success metrics.
Key benefits of a marketing roadmap template include the following:
- Consistency: Using a marketing roadmap template provides a consistent structure for creating marketing plans.
- Clarity: A marketing roadmap template provides clearly defined goals, activities, and required resources.
- Efficiency: The preformatted layout can save time and resources.
- Measuring Success: A roadmap template can provide a single source for tracking the progress of marketing efforts and measuring the success of your marketing plan.
Types of Marketing Roadmap Templates
Marketing roadmap templates vary, but they fall into five primary types. They include a basic format and strategic, digital marketing, presentation, and content marketing roadmaps. Use a marketing roadmap template from this article to produce a dynamic marketing strategy.
Simple Marketing Roadmap Template
Download a Sample Simple Marketing Roadmap Template for
Excel
|
PowerPoint
| Google Sheets
Download a Blank Simple Marketing Roadmap Template for
Excel
|
PowerPoint
| Google Sheets
Use this straightforward marketing roadmap template with or without sample text to schedule your marketing objectives, plan strategies, complete competitor research, and more. The template provides a timeline so that you can easily schedule, monitor, and close out the activities on your marketing roadmap.
See how this template can help keep your marketing team focused on planning, developments, and due dates, while you perpetually improve your marketing strategies.
Check out this article on free project roadmap templates for more options that cover different types of projects.
Strategic Marketing Campaign Roadmap Template
Download a Strategic Marketing Campaign Roadmap Template for
Excel
| Google Sheets
This strategic marketing campaign roadmap template features a dashboard view so you can always determine at a glance if your project is on track. Use the task table to set each task, the assigned team member, due date, status, and priority. The template will automatically add them to a Gantt chart. The marketing Task Status and Task Priority pie charts provide easy-to-read representations of outstanding to-do items and the number of high-priority tasks that remain to be completed.
For helpful details to ensure that your marketing efforts are aligned with your organization’s larger roadmap, read our guide with free marketing plan templates and examples.
Digital Marketing Roadmap Template
Download a Digital Marketing Roadmap Template for
Excel
|
PowerPoint
| Google Slides | Google Sheets
This digital marketing roadmap template enables you to note campaign-, product-, or project-specific digital marketing deliverables within a certain timeframe. Use this completely customizable template to specify whether each item in your marketing roadmap is for content (e.g., newsletters, blogs), SEO (e.g., keyword research, analytics implementation), email marketing, or social media (influencers, LinkedIn, Facebook). The template provides a swimlane for each, so you can monitor the fulfillment of each initiative.
For helpful details on ensuring your marketing efforts are effectively aligned with product schedules, read our article on free product roadmap templates.
Marketing Roadmap Presentation Template
Download a Sample Marketing Roadmap Presentation Template for
PowerPoint
| Google Slides
Download a Blank Marketing Roadmap Presentation Template for
PowerPoint
| Google Slides
This marketing roadmap presentation template is the perfect tool to plan and present your marketing roadmap strategy. The sample template includes example copy that you can use as a basis for your presentation. Use the month-by-month columns to set color-coded marketing goals, events, and individual tasks, making it clear to all stakeholders when to expect each product-, campaign-, or project-delivery milestone. This presentation-ready marketing roadmap template is also helpful for getting buy-in from the sponsors of your marketing efforts.
For more details on making your marketing planning assets more effective and better aligned with your organization’s product map, see this Smartsheet product release roadmap template.
Content Marketing Roadmap Template
Download a Content Marketing Roadmap Template for
Excel
| Google Sheets
Account for all of your content marketing efforts — and ensure that they’re on track for any campaigns or product updates — with this dynamic content marketing roadmap template. For each marketing-content effort, enter its targeted time of launch, content title, marketing copy, images, link, and click engagements (e.g., the number of likes, celebrations, shares). This content-scheduling-specific marketing roadmap template is the perfect tool for easily tracking each of your roadmap’s details in a centralized, shareable roadmap.
For more brand marketing resources and solutions as they relate to product roadmaps, see our complete guide to product roadmaps.
Boost Your Marketing Campaigns with Real-Time Work Management in Smartsheet
Timeline view in Smartsheet empowers users to plan, visualize, and collaborate on date-based work in real-time, enabling you to effortlessly organize tasks, track progress, and communicate status.
In just a few clicks, launch your project’s timeline on any sheet to visualize your work, understand the details, and adjust information, making it easy to track project progress, detect blockers, and communicate statuses.
Discover how timeline view in Smartsheet can help your team visualize date-based work and achieve greater efficiency and transparency across projects.
Learn more about timeline view in Smartsheet.