Piecing together your digital marketing strategy
I have one of those friends that no matter what game we are playing they always have a strategy to win. It’s this type of instinct we need to embrace when creating our digital marketing strategy. Afterall, we are trying to win the hearts and minds of customers in a noisy world of digital media, and that’s not an easy task. What’s even harder is to drive that interaction on a pre-planned journey to achieve the goals your business is aiming for.
So how should we approach it? Following the Digital Marketing Strategy playbook, they break it down using the PR Smith’s SOSTAC® model – Situation, Objectives and Strategy, Tactics, Action and Control. What I like about this model is takes you through how to write the marketing strategy in the order you figure it out. So, piece by piece the puzzle comes together.Â
Here’s how it works…
Piece One – Situation
The SOSTAC ® model tells you to use a SWOT analysis to understand what to leverage within your business and the market. The tough part is this model is a little vague on its own, so I would overlay it with other models to make it work. By using the Porters Value Chain you can analyse the internal strengths and weaknesses of your digital marketing team. Whilst the external analysis such as the PESTLE model or the Porters 5 Forces model will help understand the opportunities and threats.
This lays the groundwork for the rules of the digital marketing game, your competitive positioning, and the unique skills your team has to offer.
Piece Two to Four – Objectives, Strategy, and Tactics
Use the 5S model to understand where you want to be and the POEM framework to decide on the media types you will use. As an example, in the engineering services industry you might want to serve your customers by sharing insights on your website. The goal or measure is increased stickiness to your website or more online services being used.
The strategy is defining the outcome of the objectives we just mentioned.  As an example, Mott Macdonald, an engineering consulting firm, could be planning towards being leaders in Smart Infrastructure. They have defined their market segmentation as infrastructure owners.  They are targeting those that manage and maintain their assets.  Plus, they are using RACE activities or tactics to drive engagement with their brand and pointing them towards their website. This is combined with a marketing mix across their website, into their online portal, and is building their CRM of new potential clients. Pretty clever isn’t it!
Images: Mott Macdonald website encouraging increased stickiness whilst gaining further market insights.
Piece Five and Six – Actions and Control
The final pieces are what actions and controls will be placed into the strategy to ensure it is performing and helping the business achieve the desired outcomes. The best way to develop this section in your marketing strategy is to use SMART goals.  Good examples of this if we keep the focus on Mott Macdonald, is they are changing their social media activities to drive traffic to this particular page of their website. The specific social media metrics change from comments to interactions/clicks. The SMART goal is the aim to increase the number of clicks to the website by 5% within 2 months. Then once the customers hit the website the metrics are reviewing the stickiness on the page before they enter the portal or micro-site to begin scoring their business and so on.
Overall, following the SOSTAC ® model certainly helps piece your digital marketing strategy together.
So, after reading this, do you feel like a marketing strategy has ever directed you on a journey like Mott Macdonald did for me?
4 thoughts on “Piecing together your digital marketing strategy”
Interesting blog Belinda, I liked how you put a video in the blog to help explain what SOSTAC was. I agree that the SWOT analysis is good but a little too vague and would need additional models such as the PESTLE analysis. Its good that you found multiple models for the different stages of the digital marketing strategy, it gives people a good reference when doing their own marketing strategies.
Overall enjoyed reading this a lot and liked that you had many pictures to make the blog visual appealing.
Hey James,
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog and leaving a comment. I enjoyed doing the research into the the additional strategic models and was excited to find the detail. As you said, they should be of great use for someone writing their own marketing strategy.
Thanks again!
Wow Belinda very interesting blog appreciate the time you put in sharing such an amazing work regarding strategic marketing plan!! You clearly mentioned what needs to be done in the upcoming assignment very helpful and useful!!
Very well done! Keep it up and looking forward for more of your blogs 🙂
Atheer,
Thank you so much for reading my blog and providing your feedback. I had a great time researching and developing the content. I’m glad you found it helpful and useful.
Thanks again!