Digital Marketing Plan (SOSTAC)

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What is SOSTAC?

SOSTAC is a widely used tool for marketing and business planning developed by PR smith in the 1990’s

It is an acronym and stands for Situation, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Actions, Control and is a framework used when creating marketing plans.

SOSTAC mini image

Image Credit (edited by N. Doyle): SOSTAC / Smart Insights Website

Using SOSTAC to review a process:

Initially, you should start by applying the SOSTAC method to create a marketing plan to suit your goals. Time needs to be taken to plan out the steps using the SOSTAC plan so that you end up with a marketing plan that actually suits your needs.

 

Using SOSTAC to have a balanced plan:

Most of the time, marketing departments spend too much time on analysis within a plan and not enough actual time on setting the strategies. It is better to leave the action and control sections of the plan with less detail and the situation analysis, the objectives, the strategies and the tactics sections with the most detail as these are the key sections to focus on.

With that in mind, this is how the balance of content might look as recommended by Smart insights themselves:

  • Situation analysis (20%)
  • Objectives (5%)
  • Strategy (45%)
  • Tactics (30%)
  • Total = 100%

The best thing about a SOSTAC plan also is that in can be used by any business or company, no matter how big or small. (see the example by me below)

 

SOSTAC Example in action:

Sostac 1

Image: N. Doyle

Situation analysis: Where are we now?

Marketplace SWOT analysis would be used here as well as customer insights, competitor analysis and internal capabilities and resources.

Take for instance Jimmy. Jimmy is a self employed painter who wants to build his business up from where it is currently.

Painter cartoon

 

He has been in the trade for many years and currently has his regular customers who call on his services every now and again.

Objectives: Where do we want to go?

One of the objectives for Jimmy is to acquire new customers using digital marketing via social media platforms. What would be investigated in this part of the plan is the 5 S objectives.

  • Sell – Customer acquisition and retention targets
  • Serve – Customer satisfaction targets
  • Sizzle – Wow factor (which can lead to added value for the brand/business)
  • Speak – Engaging customers
  • Save – quantified efficiency gains

 

Strategy: How do we get there broadly speaking?

S.T.O.P. and S.I.T. would be looked at here…

  • Segments
  • Target Markets
  • Objectives
  • Positioning

AND

  • Sequence
  • Integration
  • Targeting and segmentation

Ideas about getting the word out about Jimmy and his painting business to new customers via social media. By advertising on social media platforms. Who does Jimmy want to target? What areas does he want to target? Etc.

Tactics: How do we get there – Individual steps

What would be discussed in this part of the plan would be the marketing mix and the communications mix which includes:  Content plan, Contact plan and the 8 p’s… which are:

  1. Product
  2. Price
  3. Place
  4. Promotion
  5. People
  6. Process
  7. Physical Evidence
  8. Productivity & Quality

 

In Jimmy’s case, such topics as those would be discussed along with ideas like:

  • Opening a Facebook page for the business separate but linked to Jimmy’s own personal Facebook account.
  • Opening a Google+ account and listing all the details for his business on the account.
  • Upgrading (or creating a brand new if not already existing) website for the business with a gallery of previous work carried out for customers, tip and tricks for visitors regarding painting and DIY in general and testimonials from previous customers.
  • By engaging with customers on Facebook – responding to questions and queries and keeping a quick response rate when it comes to responding to these messages.
  • By posting content to do with DIY and painting on the Facebook page at a rate of 5 to 10 posts a week as not to annoy viewers (and in turn lose page likes due to flooding viewers with posts and turning them off the page altogether)
  • By posting sales related posts and general content posts at a split rate of 30/70 as per suggested guidelines from the likes of Hubspot.com. 70% informative posts on social media (i.e. the videos and posts about general content (painting tips, decorating tips, “how to…” posts), versus a 30% for actual sales posts. This balance is needed so as not to drive away the viewers of the posts.
  • And so on…

 

Action: Specific action for each step

In this section of the plan, great detail would be provided regarding how each step in the tactics section would be achieved. This would give great insight on what needed to be done, who was responsible for doing it and when.

Information about responsibilities and structure, processes and systems, internal resources and skills and if any external agencies needed to be brought in to complete any of the steps would be discussed in this part of the plan.

Control: How do we monitor performance?

Web analytics, Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and the 5 S’s would be looked at again in this step of the plan as well as the frequency of reporting, and user experience reviews.

In Jimmy’s case again, points of interest in this step would be:

  • Are sales up due to this marketing plan?
  • If sales are up, how do we improve on them again?
  • Are customers enticed to use his services due to the marketing plan he has in place?
  • Is the Facebook page promoting the business creatively and efficiently?
  • Is the website ranking well in search results and being visited often?
  • Are conversion rates high?
  • What is not working for the business and what can be done to improve/fix those issues?

 

 

YouTube Video credit: PR Smith

Painter Cartoon Image Credit: 123rf.com

 

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