A marketing strategy that starts with the arithmetic
A one-page marketing strategy that starts with what a customer is worth and the most you can pay to win one. Free template, no email needed.
A one-page marketing strategy should start with three numbers: your gross margin, what a customer is worth over their lifetime, and the most you can pay to win one. Every channel decision sits downstream of those. After them come the customer, the channels with a 90-day test for each, the offer, how you will measure it, and what would make you stop. The US Small Business Administration describes the same idea for business plans: a lean plan is typically one page and can take as little as an hour to write (SBA).
Most strategy templates open with vision and positioning. This one opens with the arithmetic, because a plan that cannot be costed cannot be judged.
The short version
- Start with margin, lifetime value and the most you can pay for a customer. Pick channels after those numbers exist.
- The most you can pay per enquiry is what a customer is worth to you, times the share you will spend to win them, times the share of enquiries that become customers.
- Every channel on the plan gets a reason, a cost and a 90-day test with a written result for continue and a written result for stop.
- Write down what you are not doing. That line stops a plan quietly growing into everything.
- Be honest about capacity. Enquiries you cannot serve cost money and annoy existing customers.
- The template is free to download as a plain markdown file, with no email address needed.
Download the file
Download the MD. No email address, no gate. It is a plain text file, so it opens in any text editor or notes app, and you can paste it into a document if you prefer.
It is written for owners and marketing leads at businesses under about fifty people, planning a quarter or a year. Allow about an hour, longer if section three sends you hunting for numbers.
What should a one-page marketing strategy include?
Seven sections, each forcing one decision. The table shows what each records and the question it makes you answer.
| Section | What it records | The question it forces |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The business | Average order value, gross margin, lifetime value, current revenue and spare capacity | Could we serve more customers this quarter if they came? |
| 2. The customer | Who buys, what triggers them, what they search, what they compare you against and what stops them | What makes someone start looking, and what stops them buying? |
| 3. The numbers | The most you can pay for a customer and for an enquiry | What is the most we can pay for a customer and still make money? |
| 4. Channels | Each channel with a reason, a cost and a 90-day test, plus what you are not doing | What are we explicitly not doing, and why? |
| 5. The offer | What someone gets when they enquire, how fast you respond, what it commits them to | Why would someone choose us over the obvious alternative? |
| 6. Measurement | The primary metric, the secondary ones, and what you will not judge it on | Which single number tells us this is working? |
| 7. The 90-day plan | Month by month actions and the stop condition | What would make us stop? |
For section two, you do not have to guess what customers search. If you have a website, Search Console’s Performance report shows the queries that already bring people to it (Search Console Help). Google’s Keyword Planner shows estimates of how often wider category terms are searched and what they cost to target (Google Ads Help). For what customers compare you against, the SBA’s guide to competitive analysis is a plain starting point (SBA).
Photo: Felicity Tai on Pexels.
How do you work out the most you can pay for a customer?
Start from gross margin, not revenue, and work down to a cost per enquiry. That last figure is the one you compare channels against.
| Step | The sum | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| What a customer is worth | Average order value × gross margin × number of purchases over their life | Your accounts and order history |
| The most you will pay per customer | What a customer is worth × the share you are willing to spend to win one | Your decision, written down |
| The most you can pay per enquiry | The most per customer × the share of enquiries that become customers | Your CRM, inbox or job sheet |
Here is the sum with made-up round numbers, only to show the arithmetic. A $400 job at a 50% margin, bought three times over a customer’s life, is worth $600 in gross profit. If you are willing to spend a third of that to win the customer, the ceiling is $200. If one enquiry in four becomes a customer, you can pay up to $50 per enquiry.
Put that next to real costs in your market. LocalIQ’s 2026 search advertising benchmarks put the average cost per lead across industries at $66.69 (LocalIQ). A business with a $50 ceiling would need to beat that average by a clear margin for paid search to work, which is a very different conversation from “should we run ads”.
How do you use the template?
Fill it in top to bottom, with four habits that make the difference:
- Do section three before section four. If you pick channels before you know your ceiling, you will pick them on familiarity and discover the arithmetic afterwards.
- Be honest about capacity in section one. In more than one engagement we have seen, the limit was how many jobs the business could take on, not how many enquiries it could get.
- Fill in the “explicitly not doing” line. A strategy that includes everything is a list. Naming what you are declining is most of the value.
- Write down what would make you stop, with a number and a date. Without it, an underperforming channel survives on the argument that it needs more time.
How long should each channel test run?
Ninety days, with the continue and stop results written before it starts. In the accounts we manage, that is long enough for most paid channels to show a pattern and too short to judge organic search on enquiries. Google does not publish a timeline for SEO, and its own advice is to ask whoever does the work what results they expect and in what timeframe (Google Search Central). Judge search at ninety days on early signals, such as impressions and pages indexed, rather than on enquiries.
Photo: Vitaly Gariev on Pexels.
Where does it earn its keep?
- Planning a quarter without a full agency engagement.
- Briefing an agency, so the conversation starts from your numbers rather than their service list.
- Checking a proposal you have been sent against what you can actually afford.
If you are deciding between search channels specifically, SEO or Google Ads: which to start with applies the same arithmetic to that choice.
The bottom line
A strategy is only as good as the numbers underneath it. Work out what a customer is worth and what you can pay for one before you choose a single channel, and write down what would make you stop. One page you re-read every month does more than thirty pages nobody opens twice.
Questions people ask about this
Why is it only one page?
Because a longer one does not get re-read, and a strategy nobody re-reads is a document rather than a plan. Everything here is a decision. If a section needs an appendix, that appendix is research, not strategy.
What if I do not know my lifetime value?
Estimate it from average order value multiplied by how many times a typical customer buys, and mark it as an estimate. A rough number you can improve beats leaving the field blank, which is what makes the rest uncostable.
Is this specific to digital?
No. The arithmetic sections apply to any channel including offline. The channel section is where digital tends to dominate for the businesses we work with, but nothing forces that.
How do I work out my maximum viable acquisition cost?
Start with gross margin on a typical sale, not revenue. Multiply that margin by the number of times a customer buys over their life with you. Then decide what share of that profit you are willing to spend to win the customer. The result is the ceiling for any channel. If a channel’s cost per customer sits above it, the channel loses money however busy it looks.
Should I fill in every section on the first pass?
Yes, even if some entries are rough. A blank field is a decision you have deferred, and deferred decisions are where plans drift. Put a best guess in, mark it as a guess, and come back when you have better data. The template works because every section forces a choice. Leaving one empty removes the constraint that makes the rest useful.
How often should I revisit the plan?
Once a quarter for the full page, and once a month for the numbers section. Margin, capacity and acquisition cost move faster than positioning does. If the stop condition you wrote down has been met, revisit it that week, not at the quarter end. Reading the page takes minutes, which is the whole point of keeping it short.
What if my capacity is the real constraint?
Then the plan should say so, and the channel section should shrink. Generating enquiries you cannot serve lengthens the queue, annoys the customers you already have and wastes the spend. Use the quarter to fix capacity first: hiring, process or pricing. A higher price is often the cheapest fix, because it lowers demand and raises margin at the same time. Marketing comes after.
Can I use this for a single campaign rather than a year?
Yes, and it works well that way. Keep sections one to three as they are, because the economics do not change per campaign. Then fill the channel, offer and measurement sections for that campaign alone. Write a stop condition with a number and a date. A campaign with a written stop condition ends cleanly. One without it runs on hope.
Which channel should a new business test first?
The one where your customers are already looking for what you sell, if that search exists. Paid search tells you within weeks whether demand is there and what it costs, which is data you can put straight into section three. If nobody searches for your category yet, start with the offer and a referral ask, because both are close to free. Test one channel at a time so you know what worked.
What counts as a good 90-day test?
One channel, one clear metric, a budget you would not miss, and a decision written before it starts. The decision has two halves: the result that means continue and the result that means stop. Ninety days is long enough for most paid channels to show a pattern and too short for organic search. Judge search on leading signals such as impressions and pages indexed rather than on enquiries.
Who should fill in the template?
The owner, or whoever knows the margin and the capacity, with the marketing lead beside them. The first section cannot be delegated to marketing, because marketing rarely knows what a job costs to deliver. If those two people disagree on lifetime value, that disagreement is worth an hour on its own. It usually explains why previous plans felt expensive.
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