This video covers how an effective strategy can boost your business and deep dives into the SOSTAC® planning model for creating killer marketing strategies!
Download the strategy template and handout PDF here.
What is a Marketing Strategy?
- A marketing strategy is a long-term plan for your marketing efforts, normally for the next year. It can also be a plan that covers a specific campaign.
- As part of a strategy you will have a research phase where you do competitor research and internal evaluation.
- You will also set goals for what you want the strategy to achieve, and identify the ways in which you will measure how well you have achieved these goals.
- The next step is to identify the high-level ways you want to achieve the goals (create a content strategy, build social media campaign etc.)
- This is then broken down into actionable items (such as updating a web page, writing blog posts, budgeting etc.)
- Lastly, you will take time at the end of the strategy to evaluate how well it went, and whether there are any changes or improvements that can be made for the next strategy.
How to write a marketing strategy using SOSTAC®
Firstly, answer this question
This is a marketing strategy to:
- By stating the larger goal here you can ensure the strategy answers it.
- Examples could be:
- Improve effectiveness of social media in engaging current audience
- Improve effectiveness of website in improving the customer journey
Then, focus on the different elements of the SOSTAC model. Below you can see the sections of SOSTAC and some areas to focus on when writing your plan. Be sure to watch the video above where we go to more detail on each section.
Situation
- Overall brand and commercial goals are (in relation to the marketing strategy):
- Our current performance is:
- The target audience for this campaign is:
- Marketplace opportunities are:
Objectives
- Set one or two SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound) objectives here that will result in the desired marketing outcome.
- Objective(s) justification:
- The metrics we will use to measure success are:
- If you have the time / resources creating dashboards to quickly highlight how you’re doing is very useful
Strategy
- We plan to meet our objective by:
Tactics / Action
- Elements to consider here are:
- 90 day plans
- Media Schedule
- Editorial Calendar
- Be sure to consider whether you have the resources available in order to achieve your objectives, use the 5Ms to help you here.
- Manpower (staffing), Materials (this could include blog posts, social assets etc.) Machinery (equipment, tools, programs etc.), Minutes (time) and Money (budget!)
- Gantt Chart
Control
- The process we will use to monitor the performance of the campaign is:
- Was this strategy successful?
- Key learnings:
There are so many reasons to have a marketing strategy, and you can read all about them in our blog post here.
Visit our PADI Pros Site to see our Marketing Toolkits which offer you a range of marketing tools that you can use for your marketing strategies. If you have any questions, please contact your regional marketing team at:
EMEA: marketing.emea@padi.com
PAP: marketing@padi.com
The post How to Build a Marketing Strategy for Dive Shops appeared first on PADI Pros.
Marketing & Social Media, Marketing for dive shops, marketing strategy, PlanningPADI Pros
