RACE digital marketing strategy example

 

By Dave Chaffey 

An example of how to structure a digital marketing strategy plus examples from other sectors

We launched Smart Insights in 2010, to help marketers develop digital marketing strategies, since we saw that many businesses faced the challenge of where to start when creating a digital marketing strategy. The most popular downloads were templates for structuring a digital marketing strategy. We quickly found from member feedback that examples were important, and we now have examples of digital marketing strategies in many sectors, which we cover at the end of this post.

Although digital marketing platforms and technology has changed immensely in this time, particularly with the recent growth in use of Generative AI, the fundamentals of creating a digital strategy are the same. Some of the AI recommendations on digital marketing strategy and many of the human ones fail to get these essentials right, they go straight to recommending different digital marketing channels like organic and paid search and social media and email marketing. They miss the fundamentals we’ll cover in this example, i.e. starting with the customer, aligning the strategy with the business goals and using a data-driven approach.

Why use RACE for structuring digital marketing strategies?

We created the RACE (Reach, Act, Convert, Engage) framework since it helps give a simple, but sufficiently detailed approach for structuring digital marketing strategies. It offers a comprehensive, action-oriented, and customer-centric approach. By covering the entire customer lifecycle, RACE ensures that every stage, from awareness to loyalty, is effectively addressed. This framework integrates performance evaluation through key performance indicators, allowing for data-driven decisions and continuous optimization. Combining the RACE framework with the Opportunity > Strategy > Action (OSA) process provides a robust structure for both strategic planning and tactical execution.

Structure for an example digital marketing strategy

Let’s drill-into these fundamentals in more detail, what are the essentials of a digital marketing strategy to ensure comprehensive planning and effective execution. Here are the key components that should be included:

1 Detailed situation analysis including

• Marketplace Analysis: Understanding the market conditions, customer needs, and competitive landscape - particularly for online customer journeys
• SWOT Analysis: Identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats - we recommend the TOWs approach
• Internal capability and performance review. To start and audit we recommend our digital marketing benchmarking templates and Digital marketing strategy audit/health check.

2 Clear SMART objectives

Digital channels are the most measurable ever, so we need to put in place not only broad goals, but SMART Objectives, that’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound objectives that align with the overall business goals.

A key technique for setting objectives is to ensure that your objectives marketplace analysis and strategy are well defined. We use this technique in our templates across RACE to link these three. This works well as a one page summary of your strategy were a big fan of these efficient summaries!

I recommend this grid layout from our digital marketing plan workbook for aligning your strategies with your objectives, since it provides a simple one to two-page summary of your marketing strategy. Much more effective than a long report your colleagues or clients won't read...

3 Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

This is a fundamental of marketing and digital marketing strategy, but it will often be missed if you’re focused on digital channels. Our resources explain how digital channels can help support:

• Customer Segmentation: Defining and targeting different customer segments based on demographics, behaviour, and needs.
• Persona Development: Creating detailed customer personas to tailor marketing efforts.
• Brand Positioning: Establishing the brand’s position in the market and how it differs from competitors. Value Proposition: Clearly communicating the unique value the brand offers to its customers.

4 Digital acquisition strategy

This is the core tactical part of your plan, you should prioritize initiatives from these areas:

• Digital Traffic Generation: Techniques to drive traffic to your website or other digital assets including search, display ads, email and social media as featured on this table.
• Offline channel integration:
• Lead Generation: Methods to capture leads and grow the customer base.
  Conversion Strategy:
• User Experience (UX): Optimizing the website and landing pages for better user experience and higher conversion rates.
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Techniques to improve the rate at which visitors convert to leads or customers.
• Content strategy and calendar Aligns with customer needs, business goals and how to deploy them. It should also include engagement tactics: Strategies to engage customers through various channels like social media, email marketing, and community building.

5 Digital retention strategy

This includes:

Customer Loyalty: Strategies to retain customers and increase their lifetime value.

Engagement and Advocacy: Encouraging repeat business and turning customers into brand advocates.

Technology and Data Strategy: Marketing Technology: Tools and platforms used for marketing automation, data analytics, CRM, etc. Data Management: Collecting, analyzing, and leveraging data to make informed marketing decisions.

6 Budget and Resource Allocation

Of course, it’s essential your plan includes a budget.

• Budget Planning: Allocating budget across various digital marketing activities.
• Resource Management: Ensuring the right team and tools are in place to execute the strategy.
  Measurement and Analytics:

7. KPIs, Metrics and performance improvement:

• Digital marketing dashboard: Defining key performance indicators to measure the success of digital marketing efforts.
• Agile Planning: Regularly reviewing and updating the strategy based on performance data and market changes.
• Experimentation: Running experiments and A/B tests to optimize different aspects of the digital marketing strategy.

The digital marketing strategy example

So these are the main requirements for an effective digital marketing strategy. You can see that there is a lot to consider, so it’s really important to have an efficient way of summarizing the strategy, using the Objectives > Strategy > KPIs table above.

I’ve selected the example below for a B2B laser eye treatment or surgery company since it’s an example of a high value complex product so it is also similar to a B2C strategy example.

Opportunity section — Where are we now, what do we want to achieve?

This section covers the marketplace analysis review of internal performance and objective setting.

Step	Category	Performance/Impact
Step 1: Performance Review	Year-on-year sales	-8%
	Year-on-year profitability	-6%
	Year-on-year website leads	-12%</
	Impact on leads by Google algorithm changes	-18%
	Retention	N/A within our laser eye treatment market
Step 2: Marketplace Review	Search intent affected by Generative AI	Fewer impressions in Google and lower CTR due to more SERP features
	Average position for target keywords	Declined, reducing organic site visits
	Paid traffic acquisition costs	Increased by 10%
	Importance of comparison sites	Less important than previously, advertising opportunity
Step 3: PESTLE Review	Economic	Decline in affordability of our services caused by ‘cost-of-living crisis’
	Technological	Generative AI now used by more competitors and consumers familiar
	Legal	No longer possible to buy third-party lists for online targeting
Step 4: Key Issues SWOT	Declining search intent (impressions) and clicks for our target keywords	Paid search acquisition costs have increased
	Social media ads potential	Greater potential due to targeting approach
Step 5: SMART Objectives	Sales forecast based on conversion funnels	Increase digital leads by 5% YoY
	Digital ad investment	Fixed at same as previous year

Strategy section — How will we prioritize investment to achieve our goals?

This section covers the marketing fundamental and prioritization of the strategic initiatives for digital marketing.

Step	Category	Details
Step 1: Brand Value Proposition	Local Brand Positioning	Updated local brand positioning featuring local expertise
	Digital Value Proposition	Improve digital value proposition featuring on reviews and ratings
	Tone-of-Voice	Update tone-of-voice to make service less technical and more reassuring
Step 2: Customer Segmentation and Targeting	Target Audience	Three core 25-40 y.o. target audience personas unchanged
	Personalized Content	Improve on-site personalized content recommendations for returning visitors
	Browse-based Targeting	Personalized browse-based targeting for outbound messaging
Step 3: Modern Marketing Mix	Place	Opening two new treatment centres
	Physical Evidence	New aftercare guarantee
	Pricing	Interest-free payments to be introduced
Step 4: RACE Communications Strategy	Reach	Test shifting proportion of budget from Google Ads to Social Ads
	Act	Content personalization
	Convert	Updated prospect email sequence featuring aftercare guarantee and interest-free payments
Step 5: Business Model Canvas Summary	Value Proposition	Aftercare guarantee and interest-free payments
	Channels	Social media ads increased

Action section — How will we implement and resource our plan?

This includes budgeting, measurement and implementation using 90-day planning. It also includes improvements to process.

Step	Category	Details
Step 1: Marketing Budget and Resource Plan	Acquisition	See digital channel budget
	Other expenditure	See Marketing budget
Step 2: Marketing Dashboard	KPIs	Define KPIs for reviewing performance across the customer lifecycle
	Updates	Updates to Google Lookers Studio monthly YoY dashboard using RACE
Step 3: Campaign Plan Process	Campaign Goals	Adopt new campaign-process template
	AI Policy	Define and launch Marketing AI policy and training
Step 4: Always-on Plan and MarTech	Automation	Implement RACE 90-day planning to achieve test-learn-refine approach to always-on
	Quarterly Targets	Set quarterly targets for always-on priority focus activities
Step 5: 90-day Action Plan Summary	Q1 Priority Activities	Reach: Home page AB tests to boost conversion
	Act	Introduce FAQ content to increase conversion
	Convert	Improved email nurture sequence
	Engage	Improve email and mobile push notifications for customer onboarding

https://tinyurl.com/4xnx3ttk

How to create an effective pharmaceutical marketing strategy in 2024

 

By Gavin Llewellyn 

Combine opportunity, strategy, and action to identify the right approach for your pharma brand

The last few years have been a rollercoaster ride for many of us, not least those within the pharmaceutical sector. Digital transformation is rapidly altering the way pharma brands communicate and deliver their products: consumers are becoming more knowledgeable and proactive, whilst businesses are having to adapt to an increasingly digital-first world.

And this has all happened alongside broader trends which KPMG believes will have a significant impact on revenues and business and operating models:

“The pharmaceutical sector is at a crossroads. In a heavily disrupted marketplace, characterized by shifting payer attitudes and patient empowerment, neither incremental adjustments nor steady evolution are likely to halt the decline of the traditional pharmaceutical business model.”

As a result of these different trends, it’s important for businesses to evaluate their digital communications and value delivery. Within the pharma sector, brands need to continue innovating and make their online experiences and customer engagement communications more effective. Moving into 2024, it will be crucial to have a clear, coherent and joined-up marketing strategy to compete. 

But why is it important to have a marketing strategy? I’ve highlighted below some of the key elements from Smart Insights’ marketing strategy definition to help explain why?

“A proactive, data-driven approach to marketing and communication activity across all channels and touchpoints. The marketing strategy informs all marketing activity taking place for the business since all marketing plans stem from this overarching structure and vision. Once the strategy is set and communicated, marketers use tactics to put into place their actions that drive to the result.”

Smart Insights has a wide range of strategic marketing guides, resources, and templates for pharmaceutical and healthcare companies looking to develop their marketing strategies. As we know, to succeed in pharma marketing today, marketers and managers must apply a data-driven, customer-focused approach to their strategy and planning, such as our popular RACE Framework lifecycle.

Take steps to optimize your marketing by joining Smart Insights as a Free Member today. Gain instant access to a wealth of digital marketing tools, some of which are mentioned in the article below, designed to help you convert more customers.

Within this post, we’re going to look at some of the key steps you can take to create a pharma marketing strategy that will set you up for success in 2024. 

3 key trends in the pharmaceutical sector

Although many strategic marketing models, frameworks, and plans can be applied to companies across different sectors, we need to first acknowledge the key trends in the pharma sector that will underpin your marketing strategy.

1. The impact of digital transformation and AI on content marketing

Whilst increased global use of AI is no doubt the major trend impacting the pharmaceuticals sector, it’s worth exploring how it has influenced marketing. The pandemic has forced many pharma operations to move online and provided new options to communicate with customers. This has given pharma brands an opportunity to create content for both healthcare professionals (HCP) and patients, and distribute this across different channels.

Now, we see generative AI used to increase content production, although at Smart Insights we recommend taking a blended approach. You can read our Free ChatGPTprompt cheatsheet for more tips on working collaboratively with AI to improve your work.

Needless to say, it’s become more important than ever to have a clear idea of the customer/ patient information journey and how to communicate with them at different stages:

2. The consumerization of healthcare

Pharmaceutical consumers want to have the same experience in healthcare that they have from other businesses. The presence of tech brands like Amazon, Netflix and Meta has exposed us to new information and levels of service that weren’t present 10-15 years ago. This has influenced what we expect from other brands, meaning marketers must take a customer-first approach to their marketing planning.

If you're not already familiar with it, don't miss this handy infographic on 15 uses of Machine Learning, Propensity Modeling, and AI. Even if you're not using all elements depicted in the lifecycle, you can use this structure to plan improvements to your customers' online experiences of your brand.

3. Enhancing consumer engagement

Competitiveness within the pharma sector and the consumerization of healthcare mean that engaging and retaining healthcare customers is crucial. This trend requires pharma companies to review and invest in platforms that they can use to create a consistent view of the customer across many touchpoints, including targeting, segmentation, and performance management:

Use RACE to structure your pharma company's digital strategy

Find out more about how your company can benefit from utilizing the RACE Growth System to strategize each component of your marketing funnel.

From strategy and planning to reaching customers and getting known, from encouraging interaction to increasing conversions, and keeping hold of loyal customers and advocates, the RACE Framework has everything your pharmaceutical marketing team needs to achieve your goals.

What's more, all our marketing tools, training, and templates are integrated across RACE, meaning you can adapt and prioritize key customer journeys to target high-value customers, using data and insights to confidently make decisions about your marketing strategy. Download your free digital marketing plan template to start today.

Optimize your marketing strategy using the Opportunity > Strategy > Action Framework

Opportunity, Strategy, Action is a perfect starting point for pharmaceutical marketing leaders looking to audit and reinforce their marketing strategies. This simple 3-step approach empowers marketers to adapt and react to internal and external factors influencing their customers' lifecycles:

1. Opportunity
2. Strategy
3. Action

To help bring this further to life, let’s look at each section of the OSA framework with some examples of how it can be used to create an effective pharmaceutical marketing strategy.

Opportunity

This stage is about evaluating the current contribution of marketing channels by reviewing your data and setting future objectives.

The consumerization of healthcare will give you a macro view of the current situation and where to explore further. The trend of people influencing and controlling their medical and wellness care is here to stay and is only likely to grow:

The consumerization of healthcare means that there is an opportunity for providers to develop strategies and market offerings that fulfill customer needs and preferences while fully engaging them in an end-to-end customer experience. 

With this background insight in mind consider the following:

• Your current performance and business contribution from digital channels
• The digital maturity of your organization - are you currently set up to tackle the new challenges?
• Review employees marketing skill-set to ensure they have the right tools and capabilities 
• Benchmark your company vs. the competition 
• Set SMART objectives informed by your audience and marketplace analysis

Strategy

Once you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve (objectives), you must define a strategy for how you will get there and which tactics you will use for customer acquisition (Reach), conversion (Act and Convert), and customer retention/loyalty (Engage).

The objective you’ve set in the first stage will help you shape your strategy. For example, if you are developing a new product offering, you may need to focus on Reach to build awareness of your brand and grow your audience. But if you are already established you may instead want to focus on Act to prompt interaction, subscribers, and leads.

The key steps to consider at this stage include:

• Review new business model options
• Update your brand positioning, including your value proposition
• Ensure you have a content marketing strategy 
• Brand governance, including new planning processes or new controls on communications
• A long-term roadmap - it’s likely that your strategic initiatives won’t be achieved within 6 months or even a year 

Action

Finally, you will need to define how your team will execute the strategy and the methods you will use to measure and track success.

In this stage, you will take your objectives and strategy and translate them into an action plan. If your pharma strategy is going to take a very content-oriented approach to inform and engage consumers, for example, Smart Insights’ Content Marketing Blueprint provides a structure and workflow for planning a content marketing program:

Once you’ve established the key actions, the next step is to define the metrics and KPIs to determine success.

The key steps to consider at this stage include:

• Create 90-day action plans for each quarter that show the focus on different techniques across paid, owned, and earned media
• Structure different strategic initiatives and improvements for 90-day plans across RACE (Reach, Act, Convert, Engage)
• Create a detailed budget for prioritized activities across paid, owned, and earned media
• Define dashboards and KPIs to review progress against your targets
• Create a resourcing and development plan to ensure your team has the right skills 

Pharmaceutical marketing bottom line

Pharmaceutical marketing leaders looking for pharma/healthcare marketing solutions need to consider their marketing strategies in the context of the RACE Framework and OSA. By applying a practical, data-driven approach, you can streamline your marketing activities and focus on your patients' customer journeys.

Interested? Discover new opportunities for your company and implement quick changes to start optimizing your marketing funnel. Join as a Free Member to find out more.

https://bitly.ws/3gB5j

The Content Marketing Matrix

 A content marketing planning tool to help marketers generate ideas for the most engaging content types for their audiences

We created our Content Marketing Matrix to help our members audit their content marketing assets as part of creating a content marketing strategy. It can also be used for content ideation, i.e. to brainstorm future content ideas to generate leads, nurture prospects, encourage sharing and generate backlinks for SEO.

Since we created it eight years ago it's been shared many times and has inspired many 'mashups' in different formats as this Google search shows; great to see it's been useful!

I think our Content Marketing Matrix is a powerful mindtool for marketers since it's a content mapping tool, structured to help you think through two key dimensions of which types of content will best support the path to purchase for your target audience. The two dimensions are:

• 1. Awareness through to purchase conversion funnel shown on the horizontal axis
• 2. Emotional to rational content engagement formats available shown on the vertical axis

Here is our latest version:

The two dimensions used in this marketing matrix help you review how content can support the business to achieve its goals against how different formats appeal to different types of people.

As you read from left to right the matrix shows how different content assets can develop audience awareness and reach through the purchase process to nurturing and prompting purchase. This can be categorized as:

• TOFU - Top of Funnel
• MOFU - Middle of Funnel
• BOFU - Bottom of Funnel

More visual, interactive content to support emotional buying triggers is shown at the top of the matrix with more static content at the bottom supporting rational decision-making, also recognized as:

• Limbric brain - Your trust/'gut' feelings
• Neocortex - Your rationalization and communication brain

For more detail, don't miss my blog on the Golden Circle model, ie the what, how, and why of consumer decision-making.

If you're looking to develop your approach content marketing, I strongly recommend doing so within a strategic marketing structure, such as the RACE Framework, which will help you tie together all your different assets, channels, and platforms.

Thousands of Smart Insights members around the world are applying the RACE Framework to their marketing campaigns, to monitor KPIs at each stage of the customer journey and use data to rapidly optimize their marketing funnel. If you haven't already, download our free RACE Growth System template to structure your plan.

Did you know - nearly half of companies don't have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy? These companies are missing opportunities for better integration and risk losing customers due to out-of-date processes. With Smart Insights you can access ready-made tools and templates designed to help you drive performance using the latest digital marketing techniques.

How to use this content marketing planning template

The recommended process we use for applying our content matrix to companies or brands is:

• Step 1. Review how you assess the value of different types of content. Define how you will evaluate your content marketing ROI.
• Step 2. Review the current use of content marketing within a company by plotting the different content formats you use now on the grid.
• Step 3. Review competitor use of these content types through plotting on the grid based on the content assets they deploy on their website, social media, and email marketing
• Step 4. Brainstorm future content types possible.
• Step 5. Use your criteria from Step 1 to select new content types. When reviewing the potential of each content type, you should also think about its potential as evergreen content to attract inbound links and then organic visits to your site to help with SEO.

While you're at it, check out the 18 most important digital marketing techniques to make sure you're not missing any opportunities.

A more sophisticated content mapping approach will map content for each individual persona as shown in our persona template. We've also developed a Content Distribution Matrix which enables you to audit your use of digital media.

As always, all our content marketing tools and templates are integrated across the RACE Framework so you can confidently apply the most appropriate content techniques across all the key customer touchpoints in their decision-making journeys.

Credits - how we created our Content Marketing Matrix

We originally published this article in March 2012 when I worked with Dan Bosomworth who was our marketing director at the time. Dan, now at agency First 10,  had this graphic on a Post-It note in our office for months and we worked together and eventually published it!

By Dave Chaffey

https://www.smartinsights.com/

Marketing strategy vs tactics – why the difference matters

 

9 key differences between strategy vs tactics

‘What is the difference between strategy vs tactics?’ is one of the most common questions that 'crops up' when I’m running training workshops or discussing creating marketing plans with businesses.

It’s no surprise since the difference between these two activities often isn’t distinct. Yet, it’s an important question to answer since our research shows that so many businesses don’t have a clear marketing strategy or plan.

Without a clear strategy, it’s likely some of your tactics may be poorly directed, so may not be propelling the business in the direction needed.

9 key features that distinguish marketing strategy vs tactics

In this article, I will show the difference between strategy and tactics by looking at the characteristics of marketing strategy, which distinguish it from tactics. I’ll give examples that help show the difference between the two based on essential strategic activities.

What's the difference between strategy vs tactics?

Strategy dictates the marketing activity needed to achieve your business goals and vision, whereas tactics, the 'detail of the strategy', answer how exactly that will happen.

The 9 points below can be used to check if your current marketing strategy is high-level enough, compared to a tactical plan. You can also highlight the benefits of a marketing strategy when advocating for a more structured approach to strategy and planning within your business.

1. Strategy defines competitive advantage

Looking at strategy through the lens of how precisely you can compete against competitors is a good way of distinguishing between strategy and tactics. If it fits your mindset, you can think of it as your ‘rules of engagement’ in a battle or war.

Sun-Tsu was certainly  the first to write about this and Sun-Tsu's strategic thinking can be readily applied to marketing strategy, his well-known, but likely apocryphal quote illustrates this well:

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat".

If you're looking for a marketing strategy to reach and acquire more customers, why not book a free consultation to kick off your strategic planning? Identify your problems, and discuss solutions that work for your business. Find out more about the RACE Framework, and integrated marketing strategy tools covered in this blog.

2. Strategy defines top-level resource allocation

Every business has limited resources of budget, people, and time at their disposal in the same way a general does. So, an essential part of the strategy is deploying these resources to drive the biggest impact.

I like the technique of informing strategy by deciding what you WON’T invest in addition to deciding where you will focus. In this classic Harvard Business Review paper, it's suggested that many strategies fail because they are not strategies at all, instead, they are simply aspirations...

"One major reason for the lack of action is that “new strategies” are often not strategies at all. A real strategy involves a clear set of choices that define what the firm is going to do and what it’s not going to do".

3. Strategy sets a specific long-term vision

Within our RACE Growth System we explain the process of strategy development as Opportunity > Strategy > Action to distinguish between strategy and tactics.

Here the O includes performance and marketplace analysis, objectives and vision setting.  You need specific targets to work towards and review performance against. Lack of specific targets to be delivered by communications is a common problem when there is no strategy and people in a business are focusing on tactics only.

As well as these hard numbers, having a softer idea of future vision is important so you can communicate your direction with the people inside a business and beyond to partners and other stakeholders. Your strategy should define the linkage between vision, goals, objectives and how to achieve them through resource allocation.

4. Strategy sets specific long-term objectives

Collectively, tactics should support the overall direction of a business. They should contribute to the overall aims of the business. The best way to ensure that the tactics are contributing to overall strategic objectives is to LINK align objectives against strategies.

We also recommend building forecasts based on conversion models to ensure that strategic investments are going to give us the returns we need.

5. Marketing strategy defines priority markets, audiences and products

This is where Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning fits. Tactics will involve devising the best way to communicate these to audiences but typically won’t involve a strategic review of which are the best audiences or product/market fit.

In a larger business, using the BCG Matrix to review your portfolio of products and set future priorities for growth is a key technique.

Another key part of STP is defining key audiences and marketing personas which will inform the tactics of how you reach and communicate to these audiences.

6. Strategy defines brand positioning

Once our target audience characteristics, preferences and behaviors are defined through personas, the strategy involves defining how we want our brand to be perceived relative to competitors.

With extra financial pressures on customers, competitive advantage is even more critical for businesses in crowded marketplaces. In our experience, having a defined strategy can be the difference between make or break. If you're still looking for buy-in for investment in marketing, don't miss these 10 reasons you need a digital marketing strategy.

7. Strategy defines how to engage the audience through branding

Branding can be considered at a tactical level, for example, which brand idents and color-ways to use. But branding should also be thought through at a strategic level, to consider how a business can appeal to audiences through key messaging including message architecture and tone-of-voice, again part of positioning relative to competitors. That's why we recommend using the RACE Framework to plan your brand marketing strategy.

8. Strategy defines a long-term roadmap for investment in technology and other major investments

In today’s marketing, we also need to exploit data and technologies to get a better response from our tactics. We should techniques like AB testing available through conversion optimization tools to get the best results from the tactics we use. But to do this modern marketing strategy requires a marketing technology stack to be defined to achieve this

In this era of digital transformation, many organizations are running change initiatives to use marketing technology to improve their processes and use of customer insight and data.  The investments in digital experiences, marketing automation and, in future, artificial intelligence and E-learning will be significant.

So often, it won't be practical in terms of the cost of technology or the complexity of investment to implement everything required in one year. So longer-term roadmaps of martech to build an integrated martech stack need to be defined to support marketing goals.

9. Strategy helps steer activities through governance

Finally, a marketing strategy should link through to give businesses an overarching control of the tactics. This involves the Action part of OSA. As part of strategic planning, we need to make sure we have the best tactical process to ensure tactics are aligned with a strategy to make sure they are kept on track.

All businesses use tactics to run their marketing because these happen organically, but a marketing strategy doesn’t, instead it requires a proactive effort to define it and communicate it to inform tactics. It’s vital to define a strategy since ultimately this is what will make your business successful by differentiating it from your competitors.

By Dave Chaffey

https://www.smartinsights.com/