You arrive at your workplace and ask yourself, “What do I have to do today?” Do you know what you are going to do today but not tomorrow? Are you lost in a sea of projects, actions and ideas that never materialize? Are you one of those who practice the “ we will do this tomorrow ” attitude? Do you plan to present a project on a specific date and the deadline is much longer than expected? Did the project consist of one thing and in the end you are asked to do something completely different? Do you not have a publication calendar?
strategic marketing plan
If you have experienced any of these situations, something is not right. You need a strategic marketing plan!
Lack of planning is a problem that mainly affects small and medium-sized businesses.
According to sources from the Ministry of Employment and Social Security in 2017, more than 90% of Spanish companies are SMEs. And the lack of planning is one of the main factors of failure.
strategic marketing plan
Applying this data to Marketing and specifically to Digital Marketing, we know that the absence of a Marketing plan is present in 3 out of 5 Spanish companies.
Source: Pure Marketing
Do we know how to distinguish between a Strategic and Operational Marketing plan in Digital?
These terms are often confused and we really don't know if we gambling data philippine are acting in an organized way to achieve specific and measurable objectives. Or, on the contrary, we are "surfing the wave" and implementing different improvement actions without really understanding what we want.
Before starting, it would be interesting to differentiate between strategic marketing and operational (or tactical) marketing:
Strategic Marketing : This is more related to the long-term objectives of the company. To do this, you will have to know the environment in which you operate and also the market. It is useful for this strategic part to know: where are we? and where are we going?
It seeks a competitive advantage. Some of its functions would consist of segmenting the market, analyzing the competition or delimiting the company's own market of action.
Operational (tactical) marketing: the “day-to-day” of your company. The set of actions we carry out to achieve our Digital Marketing objective. In addition to the different tools we have to achieve the objectives established by the strategic plan (advertising, PR, emails, posts, content on social media, etc.).
As you can see, the topic "gives a lot to talk about." So, if you are interested, you can continue reading more in the following link of the Marketing Forum : Operational Marketing vs Strategic Marketing .
How do you know if your company is currently using a strategic or tactical approach to its online marketing plan?
strategic marketing plan
Some symptoms of a lack of planning in a company without a strategic marketing plan may be the following:
Not knowing what you are going to write about on your blog, or having defined keywords to work on based on those words.
Not defining a weekly or monthly publication rhythm to launch your posts.
Launching offers "left and right" with the sole objective of generating sales, with the corresponding loss of profit margin.
Not establishing an annual calendar of actions with important dates for your company (Easter, Book Day, Valentine's Day, Black Friday, etc.).
On social media you don't know what to share and when you do share you don't have a specific objective or a constant rhythm of publications.
You do not measure results periodically nor do you draw conclusions or produce weekly or monthly reports.
These 6 examples are a small sample of the fact that something is not going well and the blueprint for digital planning.