In our case, a marketing class from Northeastern took us on as their semester project and gave us invaluable information that led to our first redesign in June.

But take the startup restaurant, clothing boutique, widget maker, or whatever your lifelong dream happens to be. With Marketing Plan Pro, you have a $150 marketing professional at your fingertips. The software is really easy to use and gievs you dozens of sample plans and step-by-step advice to start from scratch. It gives you SWOT analysis, tactics and target forecasts as well as break-even analysis, project planning and color charts to visualize it all.

Marketing Plan Pro also lets you export your work to Microsoft Office or Adobe PDF to easily collaborate with colleagues.

The software even includes “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding,” by Al and Laura Ries and “On Target: The Book on Marketing Plans,” by Tim Berry.

While there’s not a whole lot of competition out there, Palo Alto’s Marketing Plan Pro has been the top-selling marketing-planning software seven years in a row. It’s easy to use, intuitive and invaluable for business owners and marketing professionals looking for an all-in-one resource.

Quick hits:

Publisher: Palo Alto
Developer: Palo Alto
Platform: Windows PC
Genre: Business software
Launch Date: April 18, 2006

Overall: 5 out of 5 stars Editor’s Choice