The first edition of my Internet, Marketing, Strategy and Planning book from 2000 contained a template for creating what we then called an Internet Marketing Plan.
Ten long, but exciting years later, marketers are understandably even more hungry for guidance, given the importance of digital media today. So here is a template based on ten plus years experience of creating and reviewing digital marketing plans for companies and helping students develop them. Thanks to Dan Bosomworth, one of my co-founders of Smart Insights for his help in shaping this.
Please let us know your suggestions on how to improve, since we plan to refine and then update. TIA!
In response to earlier comments to simplify we have created this “cut out and keep” summary which you can download: Online marketing strategy guide tool.
You can review the marketing planning template onscreen here, or Download v1.1 Digital Marketing Plan Template Word document.
Our planning framework uses the SOSTAC™ framework developed by PR Smith, Dave’s co-author on Emarketing Excellence. It’s a great framework since it’s simple, memorable and logical.
SOSTAC stands for:
• Situation – where are we now?
• Objectives – where do we want to be?
• Strategy – how do we get there?
• Tactics – how exactly do we get there?
• Action – what is our plan?
• Control – did we get there?
Going into more detail, this is the main sections we cover in the template:
1. Situation analysis. Where are we now?
Understanding your online marketplace
The immediate, or micro-environment
A. Our customers
B. Our market
C. Our competitors
D. Intermediaries and potential customers
E. Wider macro environment
F. Our own capabilities
G. Internet SWOT summary
2. Goal-setting. Where do we want to be?
Setting useful, actionable objectives
3. Strategy. How are you going to achieve the goals?
Setting a meaningful strategy
A. Targeting
B. Positioning
C. Proposition and the marketing mix
D. Brand strategy
E. Online representation or presence.
F. Content and engagement strategy.
G. Acquisition communications strategy
H. Conversion strategy
I. Retention communications strategy
J. Data strategy
K. Multichannel integration strategy
4. Tactics, action and control
Tactics
Control
Governance
5. Executive summary
Advice type: Best Practice, Digital marketing templates
Expertise level: Essentials
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Some feedback by email for my record:
Thank you very much for the follow up, it is very useful. I found it works particularly well with the book we got at the course. I think the template guides very well through the process. The two things that would be helpful to me personally would be
1. 1 page version of digital strategy – how it could be summarized to present to others
2. Make the guidance more structured, I e steps 1,2,3 etc.
My suggestions:
I think the one pager could just cover 2-3 sentence on each of SOST or maybe just OS?
Anyway, we will update once we have some more feedback in a few weeks.
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