Planning Framework

for Digital Marketing Success

Planning Framework - for Digital Marketing Success

Digital marketing. Thats as simple as creating a website thats mobile optimised, building a few high quality links, being active on
social media, targeting your audience based on geo demographics and behaviour, improving the customer journey experience as
well as doing a gazillion-and-1 other things where time permits, right??.. Wrong!
If you dont use a tried and tested business planning model to plan your digital marketing activity, you run the risk of not fully
optimising your campaign efforts or worse, cause inimical harm to your business.
An effective planning framework will encourage you to streamline your global marketing plan which provides greater clarity to all
the people who will have some form of interaction with it. It will also enable your business or marketing department personnel to
implement the plan with the ever present consideration of a situation and its remedial objectives at all times for when they put
the plan into action.
Business leaders and managers can then easily analyse and measure the success of a campaign against this entire framework and
make refinements quickly.

The Sostac planning framework is a great business model that can help you achieve greater success.
The next slides provide a breakdown of what a Sostac framework looks like:

Planning Framework - for Digital Marketing Success

(S)ITUATION ANALYSIS
Assess: What are you doing at the moment? What is it achieving? Create your baseline to measure improvement.

Internal

External

STRENGTHS

WEAKNESSES

Internal capabilities that

may help a company
reach its objectives.

Internal limitations that may

interfere with a companys
ability to achieve its objectives.

OPPORTUNITIES

THREATS

External factors that the

company may be able to
exploit to its advantage.

Current and emerging external

factors that may challenge the
companys performance.

Planning Framework - for Digital Marketing Success

(O)BJECTIVE
Set Goals: What are you trying to get out of your digital marketing? Be as specific as possible.
Tip: Also, Consider the following:
o Business Mission?
o Business Objectives?
o Marketing Objectives Business Development?
o Marketing Communication objectives?
o The SMART Test for Objectives:
Make sure your objectives are practical and measurable.
Do they fit the following criteria?
Specific (with numbers).
Measureable (monitor progress and confirm achievement).
Actionable (can we do it?).
Reasonable (realistically attainable).
Timed (Incorporate deadlines).

Planning Framework - for Digital Marketing Success

(S)TRATEGY
Plan: How are you going to go about achieving your objectives? How are you going to measure whether or not youve succeeded?
Tip: Also, Consider the following:
o Segmentation How do you want to divide up the target markets?
o Targeting Which segments of the target market do you wish to focus upon?
o Positioning How do we want to be perceived in each different target segment?
Other Considerations - when strategically planning:
Perspective Garner different perspectives from your peers, sub-ordinates before carefully planning a remedial strategy.
No. of strategic initiatives and resource to manage it.
Strategy duration type i.e. short, medium, long term?
Team members and assigned responsibilities, accountabilities etc.

Planning Framework - for Digital Marketing Success

(T)ACTICS
Methods: What methods and approaches are you going to take? How exactly are you going to execute the strategy?
Tip: Also, Consider the following:
o Narrowing Your Focus Think only about effective, best fit tactical processes that will enable you to achieve strategic initiatives.
o Key Tasks Be clear in labelling and communicating what the key tasks are in executing the tactics.
o To-Do-Lists Create workflows, to-do-lists, worksheets etc, to help you keep track of the task status . Its important to try and
centralise this aspect as having too many checklists can lead to chaos. Especially if multiple people are working on implementing
the tactical plan.
Other Considerations - when implementing tactics:
Tools and Resources.
Time Management.
Output / Deliverables.

Planning Framework - for Digital Marketing Success

(A)CTION
Execute: Carry out your plan. You may need to adapt it as you do so.
Tip: Also, Consider the following:
o Procrastination Action your plan now! It can be easy to wait for 3rd parties but where possible take action immediately or at
least on elements within your influence and control, as it will give you more time to make refinements which often need to be
made and typically refinements are not already accounted for in the initial time management planning process.
o Priorities Do urgent and important tasks first, not the easy ones. A good rule to remember is that efficiency and effectiveness
are not the same. Effective people focus on the important tasks.
oCommitment Be committed to the decisions made during the sostac planning stages, its easy to make minor adjustments a
long the way but the key here is to implement the sostac framework to the end before measuring and making wholesale changes.
Other Considerations - when implementing actions:
Overarching Summary and Timelines Where possible at every stage of the sostac framework request regular updates on
progress and changes.
Rewards Prepare incentives and rewards for all personnel involved in the plan It can be as inexpensive or as lavish as you
wish, this helps keep morale high and work performance levels optimal.

Output / Deliverables Create a culture of soft deadlines and encourage pride in work. It is assumed that everybody involved
in the plan is already aware of their individual expectations. However, it can be hugely beneficial in setting up mini catch-up
moments or simply setting soft deadlines to help create a more fluid sense of expectation.

Planning Framework - for Digital Marketing Success

(C)ONTROL
Achieve and re-assess: Have you met your goals? How could you do better next time?
Tip: Also, Consider the following:
o Consistent Viewpoint Measurements Select measurements that are likely to give you a consistent return on data for you to
base your analysis on.
o Quantitative and Qualitative Data Do seek to analyse both numerical hard data and soft data possibly in the form of research
studies and findings, an objective view of different data sets empowers you to make better decisions.
oFrequency Reporting Decide what the best reporting frequency is in advance as doing so will prevent scope creep of data
analysis as data analysis can become very in-depth and extensive and its easy to get carried away as you seek to mine the data,
only obtain the data you need to satisfy the sostac plan, goals and objectives.
Thats it! .. A Planning framework that works in a digital environment.
Remember to Wash, Rinse and Repeat process
Hopefully this insight will give you an idea of how a good planning process model might help you achieve better efficiency within
your organisational structure.

Ref Sources: Sostac framework developed by Paul Smith prsmith.org/sostac/.