The Chinese Culture;
Purnell’s model for cultural competence has a schematic combined a framework for organization applicable in nursing and other medical disciplines in practice. It is a holographic and complexity theory that helps practitioners and students in the healthcare sector to examine the culture and cultural influences on health in patient groups or populations.
1. Discuss the Death Rituals construct of Purnell’s model as it relates to your selected culture and address each of the sub-constructs list below:
a. Death Rituals
The death rituals in the Chinese culture follow a rich cultural tradition that dates back to the early Chinese dynasties. In modern China, families still follow these traditions, although there are minor exceptions. Death rituals are performed differently depending on the age and status of the deceased. The Chinese societies have great respect for the elderly people. According to the custom, a young person must always show respect for the elder people but the elders should not show respect for the younger individuals (Yick & Gupta, 2012). Therefore, the funeral rituals for a deceased elder must follow a prescribed protocol, despite the possible financial impact likely to result from the process. Soon after death, funeral rites must begin. A coffin is already set prior or after death, which must be purchased using the family’s resources (Yick & Gupta, 2012). The coffin is rectangular with three humps and is obtained from an undertaker. The undertaker oversees all the funeral rites. All statues of deities within the house of the bereaved are covered with a red paper while all minor deities are removed to ensure that they do not see the reflection of the coffin in a mirror, thus preventing further deaths (Corr, Nabe & Corr, 2010). Then, a white cloth is hung over the entrance to the house. A traditional gong must be placed on the right side of the doorway if the deceased is a female and on the left side for the male. The corpse must be cleaned thoroughly before it is placed in the coffin. A damp towel smeared with talcum powder must be used to dust the corpse. The corpse must be dressed in the deceased best clothes while any other clothing belonging to the deceased is burned (Yick & Gupta, 2012). Cosmetics must be applied on female bodies before the face and the rest of the body are covered with a yellow and blue clothing respectively (Corr, Nabe & Corr, 2010).
The coffin is then placed on a stand in the house or courtyard, with wreaths, gifts and photographs of the deceased placed on top. Food must be placed on the front side of the coffin as an offering to the dead person (Yick & Gupta, 2012).
b. Bereavement
In the Chinese culture, death is a feared phenomenon as it carries away the loved ones in a family and society. The bereaved individuals must remain in mourning for a number of days. For instance, the first son must remain in a mourning state for about 72 days (Corr, Nabe & Corr, 2010). He cannot wear red color or marry before six months are over after the death of the parents (Yick & Gupta, 2012). In case of death in a wealthy family, the family members must stay close to the grave or sometime. A hut used to be built close to the grave for the son, but this practice has declined. The family is not supposed to wear red clothing or any jewelry. After the burial, each member of the family must wear a piece of colored cloth on the sleeve for about 100 days (Yick & Gupta, 2012). The deceased’s children must wear black while the grandchildren wear blue. Great grandchildren must wear green clothing. However, if the deceased is a child or a wife, these rituals are not common (Corr, Nabe & Corr, 2010).
2. Discuss the Spirituality construct of Purnell’s model as it relates to your selected culture and address each of the sub-constructs list below:
a. Religious practices
Majority of the Chinese are Buddhists, a religion brought to the country from India 2,000 years ago (Tarocco, 2008). The religion is a nontheistic religion and composed of a number of beliefs, traditions as well as practices based on the teachings Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama). The origin of the universe and life is not imaginable because the universe and life do not have a beginning or an end (Tarocco, 2008). There is no creator or deity, but the universe, life and all other things are under the control of the mystic law (Tarocco, 2008).
Religious practices include a belief in devotion to Buddha Amitabha or Lotus Sutra. Yoga is a meditative absorption to achieve liberation. There are various cerebrations throughout the year, mostly dedicated to the life of Buddha (Tarocco, 2008).
b. Use of prayer
In Buddhism, prayers are focused expressions of appreciation, yearning or commitment. However, Buddhism locates the divine within the inner soul of the person. It does not come from any outside being or source (Kieschnick, 2008). The prayer is meant to awaken a person’s inner capacities such as wisdom, courage and strength. As such, the prayer does not petition any external force. In most cases, prayers in the Chinese Buddhist culture are in form of a mantra, a word or phrase that is spoken aloud or in a person’s head repeatedly. It is thought to have a spiritual effect on the individual. For example, the prayers are made to achieve peace, healing and strength (Davis, 2005).
c. Meaning of life
In Buddhism, the primary purpose of life is to ensure cessation of suffering (Corr, Nabe & Corr, 2010). According to Buddha, humans suffer because they pursue material things that do not give them everlasting happiness. They desperately hold to such things as money, wealth, friends and health, but these things do not last.
Two major aspects define life- samsara and karma. Samsara is the repetitive cycle of life from birth to death and reincarnation (Corr, Nabe & Corr, 2010). It defines the process of birth, death and rebirth within the six realms of existence of life. It arises from ignorance and has suffering, dissatisfaction as well as anxiety. Karma is the force that controls or drives samsara. It includes the actions of the mind, speech and body, which bring consequence or results (Gyatso, 2001).
d. Individual strength
Individual strength is obtained from the inner soul rather than from outside forces. The four noble truths improve a person’s inner strength and include the truths of dukkha, the truth of the origin, cessation and the path to cessation of dukkha. In this culture, Samsara gives strength to people. It is a strength-based model of life. People gain strength because they believe that death is not the end of life but another beginning of life. In fact, death is a new opportunity, which gives people the strength to live (Guillain, 2008). The belief in Buddha’s teachings also gives positive inputs in life, which lead to positive outcomes. To gain individual strength, people should focus on positive directions such as not considering suicide as an alternative. Such negative directions as suicide or crime are believed to create an evil Karma in a person’s life, thus reducing individual strength (Gyatso, 2001).
e. Spirituality and health
The Buddhist perspective of human health is an important aspect in defining human health (Tarocco, 2008). The central focus of spiritual beliefs is to attain calm, clear state of mind that is not disturbed by suffering or worldly things (Koenig, 2009). The individuals seek to maintain a full state of enlightenment and compassion. In this case, the spiritual aspect of the culture hold that illness is caused by karma (Koenig, 2009). Therefore, illness is an inevitable consequence of a person’s actions in the current or previous life. It is worth noting that the Chinese culture, unlike other traditions, does not belief that illness is due to punishment by a divine power. However, it is believed that recovery and healing comes as a result of awakening to the wisdom of the Lord Buddha. The wisdom is the spiritual peace as well as freedom from anxiety and quest for worldly things (Koenig, 2009). Unlike other traditions, the Chinese culture does not belief in healing through faith. In addition, there have been no restrictions on such processes as surgical, organ donation, blood and blood products and autopsy (Koenig, 2009). Thus, the culture allows medications as long as they do not affect the clear and calm state of mind (Koenig, 2009).
The “Path of life” offers a description for the spiritual as well as ethical well being of the individual health (Tarocco, 2008). It exhorts people to have compassion and develop wisdom in order to gain good health and lead a good life (Koenig, 2009). The principles of health in Buddhism follow some specific outline (Guillain, 2008). First, people must refrain from killing, which means the protection of human life. Secondly, one must refrain from taking anything that is not given. Thirdly, people are discouraged from misusing senses, sexual misconduct, or use false or harmful speech (Guillain, 2008). Intoxicating drinks, drugs or foods that cloud the mind are believed to be harmful to the human mind (Tarocco, 2008).
Digital marketing strategy
Planning Template
Authors: Dr Dave Chaffey and Danyl Bosomworth
January 2013
Plan > Reach > Act > Convert > Engage
Introduction Situation Objectives Strategy Tactics Actions and controls Executive summary
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Digital marketing strategy
Planning Template
Table of Contents
3 Introduction Digital Marketing Planning Template
7 Situation analysis. Where are we now? Understanding your online marketplace.
10 Objective setting. Where do we want to be? Setting useful, actionable objectives.
12 Strategy. How are you going to achieve the goals? Setting a meaningful strategy.
16 Tactics. The details of strategy.
17 Actions and Controls. Making it happen.
18 Executive summary
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Introduction
Digital Marketing Planning Template
Welcome
Thanks for downloading this Smart Insights template. We hope you find it useful in creating
a plan to make more use of online marketing. It’s a sample of a wider selection of our
advice for marketers including 7 Steps Ebooks; online training courses; how-to-videos and
marketing toolkits. See the full range of content used by our Expert members.
First things, first…
Digital marketing planning is no different to any other marketing plan, in fact it’s increasingly
strange to have separate plans for ‘digital’ and ‘offline’ since that’s not how your customers
perceive your business. However, we’re often required to separate plans for “digital” only
based on the way teams and reporting is structured and to help the transition to digital –
before it becomes “business as usual”. A common format helps align your plan to other
marketing plans!
Some general advice to keep in mind when planning
þþ Start with the customer. Build your plan around customer insights and needs – not
around your products and tactics.
þþ Keep it flexible. Situations and plans change, especially online, so ensure plans are
usable by a clear vision for the year and keeping detail to a shorter term 90-day focus
þþ Set realistic goals. Include specific objectives in your plans but keep them realistic by
fact-based and state assumptions, so they’re easy for others to buy into.
þþ Keep it Simple! “Jargon light” is best. Again it helps others buy into what you’re saying
þþ Keep plans up to date. Review and update monthly or quarterly.
þþ There isn’t a perfect plan. What’s needed changes according to each business!
Creating a structure for your plan
Knowing where to start is often the hardest thing when writing a digital marketing plan. So
once you have a structure / framework to follow in a table of contents, it’s then almost a
matter of filling in the gaps…
At Smart Insights we recommend the SOSTAC® planning structure developed by PR Smith,
Dave Chaffey’s co-author on Emarketing Excellence.
SOSTAC® gives a great framework for business, marketing or digital marketing plans
since it’s simple and logical, so it’s easy to remember and to explain plans to colleagues
or agencies. Each of the six areas help in separating out the key strategies, for example
customer acquisition, conversion and retention.
What is it? SOSTAC®
SOSTAC® is a planning process framework to help structure and manage implementation of
plans. It stands for Situation, Objectives and Strategy, Tactics, Action and Control originally
developed by PR Smith for marketing communications planning. In their book Emarketing
Excellence Dave Chaffey and Paul Smith have adapted the SOSTAC® framework to apply it
to digital marketing as shown in the diagram on the next page.
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Where do I find more information on digital marketing concepts?
If you’re not familiar with some of the concepts we introduce in this template, naturally,
there’s more info online. We’ve created 200+ free Hubs to introduce the basic concepts and
provide stats, tools and Answers in one place. You can access these in our sitemap covering
all the main areas of digital marketing practice.
Expert members can download an editable Word template as part of our Digital Strategy
Toolkit which includes Powerpoint, Word and Excel templates to help build your marketing
plan and explain to colleagues or clients.
Expert members also get access to more detailed downloadable Ebook guides. We’ve
designed these to be quick to use with each varying from 50-100 pages in length with
emphasis on the main strategy recommendations, quick win tips and examples in each
section.
7 Steps to success guides on digital marketing strategy
These are designed for to help those responsible for marketing to help create or refine an
integrated digital strategy and roadmap:
þþ Digital marketing strategy
þþ Delivering results from digital marketing
þþ Content marketing strategy guide
Recommended resource? 7 Steps to a Digital marketing strategy Ebook
Use our 83 page 7 Steps to digital strategy Ebook for Expert members to create a
structured plan to grow your business using the SOSTAC® planning framework.
7 Steps to success guides to get better results from digital channels
Focused on improvement, these guides are for marketers managing the details of digital
to ask the right questions of colleagues or agencies about how to get better results. They
include:
þþ Search engine Optimisation
þþ Google Adwords
þþ Social media marketing
þþ Improving results from your website and Landing page conversion
þþ Email marketing
þþ Google Analytics
Browse all 7 Step guides
Basic members of Smart Insights can use our free interactive digital marketing health check
to rate their current digital marketing capabilities and receive recommendations on how to
improve results. It’s just 5 steps and you get a report to keep at the end.
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The Smart Insights RACE framework
Our RACE framework is designed to help create and refine digital marketing plans; it’s used
as a way of structuring a lot of our advice. Use the interactive version online to navigate our
free hubs on different topics at http://bit.ly/smartrace.
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Situation analysis.
Where are we now?
Understanding your online marketplace
The immediate or micro-environment
A. Our customers
Always start with the customer, their characteristics, behaviours, needs and wants. You
should define:
þþ Options for segmenting and targeting – you should apply your traditional segments, but
also consider the new micro-targeting options available online –
see http://bit.ly/smarttargeting.
þþ Ideal customers – characteristics summarised in named personas are useful to get
started, think about demographics, searching and product selection behaviours and
unmet needs – detail here is very useful to talk about “What would John do.. or think
about…”. Also consider what your data tells you in regard to your most profitable, and
potentially profitable customers
Recommended resource? Personas toolkit
See our Personas toolkit showing key issues to consider when creating personas with
examples of different styles of personas.
B. Our market
þþ Market description – Focus on actionable needs and trends – are you meeting them, what
are they – this insight us useful for other teams and you should find out what other teams
know, what exactly is growing in the market, is there evidence you can draw from
C. Our competitors
þþ Benchmark against competitors for your customer personas and scenarios against the
criteria given in the strategy section, in particular their marketing mix.
þþ For key digital tactics like SEO and social media marketing, it’s also important to
benchmark against competitors.
Recommended resource? Competitor benchmarking guide
See our competitor benchmarking guide for how to complete competitor benchmarking
and free and paid data sources.
D. Intermediaries, influencers and potential partners
þþ Review customer use of different types of publisher or media sites which may influence
their decision for example, search engines, specialist news sites, aggregators, social
networks and bloggers
You can monitor your reputation across different influencers – see our social media marketing
guide.
E. Wider macro environment
These are the big picture strategic influences. We recommend you don’t go into too much
depth on these, instead review the influence of the main macro factors for digital; social, legal
and technology in the context of customer analysis and competitor benchmarking.
þþ Social – how have consumer attitudes changed?
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þþ Legal – checking your online marketing activities comply with privacy and online trading
laws before problems arise
þþ Environment – is your approach ethical and sustainable
þþ Political – can you take advantage of government funding schemes
þþ Technology – review of the latest technology
F. Our own capabilities
Once you have looked outwards (often missed), only then should you turn inwards and look
at your own capabilities.
In particular, you may find this in-depth digital marketing benchmarking audit spreadsheet
(Expert members) useful for benchmarking your current capabilities. There are also audit
spreadsheets available for SEO and Email marketing. Basic members can use the simpler
free digital marketing health check.
G. Digital-specific SWOT summary
Include a digital channel SWOT that summarises your online marketplace analysis findings
AND links to strategy. In a large organisation, or for a more complete summary complete a
SWOT for:
þþ Customer acquisition and conversion and customer development
þþ Different brands
þþ Different markets
þþ Different competitors – direct and indirect
We recommend using a TOWS matrix for SWOT – see our blog post: http://bit.ly/smartswot,
since this helps integrate your analysis with your strategy rather than the analysis being
placed on the shelf and forgotten.
Recommended resource? SWOT TOWs matrix
The Smart Insights digital marketing toolkit contains a SMART TOWs matrix with examples
for you to amend for your business or your clients.
Tips for completing your situation analysis
þþ 1. Garner evidence and data to help others understand your recommendations – visualise
with charts and graphs where you can – they’re much more effective than a long report.
þþ 2. Set-up your digital listening post to ensure you understand what’s going on around you
and listen in on conversation that could inform your understanding.
þþ 3. Use these sources of free information to help support your argument: http://bit.ly/
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smartstatistics. We also have a competitor benchmarking guide for Expert members.
Recommended resource? Digital marketing strategy toolkit templates for Expert members
Use our Digital marketing toolkit templates to prepare a customised plan for your business
or your clients. The toolkit contains unbranded Word, Excel and Powerpoint templates for
you to amend to help form a plan for your business or your clients’ businesses.
Benchmark your capabilities compared to your competitors
We’re big fans of scoring the current digital marketing capabilities of a company, so you can
show your colleagues how your different digital marketing activities rate now and how they
need to be improved in future. This is a core technique for arguing for additional investment
in digital marketing and for reporting on progress.
Recommended resource? Smart Insights Benchmarking Tools
We have developed a series of tools to help develop strategy and to make the case for
more investment in digital marketing. These are:
þþ Digital Marketing Healthcheck. Score your company or clients in the 5 key areas of
PRACE. This is more suited to small and medium sized companies and is available
free for use by Basic members.
þþ Digital marketing audit. A more detailed spreadsheet based technique for assessing a
company in 6 key areas. More suited to larger organisations.
þþ Business case template. Improvement needed can be justified through this template
and the companion Ebook.
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Objective setting
Where do we want to be?
Setting useful, actionable objectives
We recommend four different types of measures to help you and colleagues look forward to
the future offered by digital marketing:
So we suggest this hierarchy of measures may help in larger organisations:
þþ 1. Top-level broad goals to show how the business can benefit
from digital channels
þþ 2. Mid-long term vision to help communicate the transformation needed in a larger
organisation
þþ 3. Specific SMART objectives to give clear direction and commercial targets
þþ 4. Key performance indicators to check you are on track
You should be as specific as possible in your goals. We recommend these should be:
þþ SMART, that’s Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Time-limited.
þþ Based around the customer lifecycle – we use the mnemonic RACE to define this and
give a full list of KPIs in our digital marketing toolkit for Expert members.
þþ Define what the R is in ROI for you – it will likely be monetary but don’t forget digital
marketing can be more than that
þþ Divided into key digital strategy areas of customer acquisition, conversion, customer
development and growth – this is important to ensure you’re covering all of the areas
þþ Broken down into short, medium and long-term goals
Align goals to the business and marketing goals and how you substantiate them using the
approach described in our improving results from digital marketing ebook. This example
shows how one Expert member used the “menu” of KPIs in our Ebook to select the most
relevant measures for them to put into their reporting.
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Tips for setting SMART objectives
þþ 1. Make sure your online goals align with organisational goals – your colleagues will
believe more in your strategy when you show how they relate.
þþ 2. Once you have completed the KPIs, go back up to the big picture and define a
long-term vision for how digital will help the organisation grow into the future, again
aligned with organisational vision.
þþ 3. When creating the strategy make sure it is aligned with these goals, a table linking
goals, substantiation (situation analysis) and strategies as shown in our Strategy Ebook
can help here.
þþ 4. Finally, remember to revisit this section to align with your control and review process.
Simplify to the “strategic levers” which really control business results. These are your
Critical KPIs.
þþ 5. In a nutshell, objective setting is about alignment and integration between the different
sections of your plan.
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Strategy
How are you going to achieve the goals?
Setting a meaningful strategy
The key elements of digital strategy involve revisiting and aligning the main thrust of your
marketing strategy in an online context, make sure you draw from other plans, if there isn’t
one then use these headers. Don’t get drawn into the details at this stage. That’s the tactics.
We recommend you summarise your strategy in a table like the one shown here: http://bit.ly/
smartintegration – this provides a great summary and integrates goals with situation, strategy,
tactics and measures!
But you may want to summarise the essence of some or all of the digital strategies below.
How are you going to leverage the potential of digital marketing to your business, and how
does that meet the objectives? This is about your approach only, not the detail.
Consider breaking it down as well, it’s often easier to explain in smaller, bite-size chunks, this
also helps when it comes to tactics which should hang from the strategies below:
A. Targeting and segmentation
þþ A company’s online customers have different demographic characteristics, needs and
behaviours to its offline customers. It follows that different approaches to segmentation
may be required and specific segments may need to be selectively targeted though
specific content and messaging on your site or elsewhere on the web. This capability for
“micro-targeting is one of the biggest benefits of digital marketing.
þþ Specific targeting approaches to apply online include: demographic, value-based,
lifecycle and behavioural personalisation.
B. Positioning
þþ How do you position your online products and services in the customers mind? Consider
þþ Reinforcing your core proposition. How do you prove your credibility.
þþ Define your online value proposition. This should flow from your positioning and be what
the customer sees immediately when they interact with you online.
þþ Define these in key messages for different audiences, e.g. prospects against existing
customers, segments with different value.
þþ You need clear messaging hierarchies to effectively communicate your positioning both in
online and offline media.
C. Proposition and the marketing mix
Think about the digital marketing mix – how can you provide differential value to customers
through varying the 4Ps online through Product, Price, Promotion and Place and how
can you add value through service. And don’t forget what PR Smith calls the Eighth P of
“Partnering”. Particularly if you sell online, you will want to explain how you will modify the
marketing mix.
For example:
þþ Product. Can you offer a different product range online? How can you add value to
products through additional content or online services?
þþ Price. Review your pricing and consider differential pricing for online products or services.
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þþ Place. Identify your online distribution issues and challenges. Should you create new
intermediaries or portals or partner with existing sites?
þþ Promotion. Discuss the problems and opportunities of the online communications mix.
These will be detailed in the acquisition and retention communications strategies. Review
approaches for online promotions and merchandising to increase sales. You may want to
include exclusive promotions to support the growth of different digital channels, i.e. email,
mobile, Facebook, Twitter.
þþ People. Can you use automated tools such as FAQ to deliver “web self-service” or should
you provide online contact points through Live Chat or Phone Call-back?
þþ Processes. List the components of process and understand the need to integrate them
into a system.
þþ Physical evidence. Identify the digital components that give ‘evidence’ to customers of
your credibility such as awards and testimonials
þþ Partners. The eighth P. So much of marketing today is based on strategic partnerships,
marketing marriages and alliances that we have added this ‘P’ in as a vital ingredient in
today’s marketing mix.
D. Brand strategy
Gaining ‘street cred’ online is now paramount to success, how and where are you going to
do that – brand favourability follows credibility and trust – what do you understand will be
the reasons to engage with your brand, why would they click through – or not – how will you
demonstrate credibility online?
Recommended resource? Content marketing 7 Steps Guide
Use our content marketing strategy guide to define a plan to develop the most relevant
content to grow your audience through sharing (amplification) and increase brand appeal.
The content marketing matrix is a great way we recommend to review current use of
content marketing and identify new types of content.
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Benchmark yo
E. Online representation or presence
This includes your own Web site strategy (one site or four, sub-domains, what are the
site goals and how will they be achieved…) and priorities for social presences. Our digital
marketing radar helps you prioritise your online presence to reach and engage your
audience.
F. Content and engagement strategy.
Which content will feature to gain initial interest, support the buying process (text and
rich media product content and tools) and stickiness and to promote return visits (blogs
and community). Remember user-generated content too, such as reviews, ratings and
comments. You will have to prioritise content types and ensure you devote sufficient resource
to it to create quality content which helps you compete. All effective online companies see
themselves as publishers!
G. Digital channel acquisition communications strategy
Outline how you will acquire traffic, what are the main approaches you will use? Don’t forget
to consider how you drive visitors through offline media and integrated campaigns.
þþ Key digital media channels for traffic acquisition would include:
þþ Search engine marketing (natural and paid)
þþ Social media marketing and Online PR (think brand strategy)
þþ Partner and affiliate marketing
þþ Display advertising
þþ Email marketing to leads database
H. Digital channel conversion strategy
How does the user experience, which depends on information architecture, page template
design, merchandising, messaging and performance help you make it easy for visitors to
engage and convert?
Recommended resource? Improving results from your website 7 Steps Guide
Our improving results from your website guide shows how to review your key customer
journeys and brand messaging for quick wins to help boost conversion.
I. Digital channel retention communications strategy
Often neglected, what will be the main online and offline tactics to encourage repeat visits
and sales. Again integrated campaigns involving offline touchpoints are crucial here.
J. Data strategy
What are your goals in permission marketing and data capture – what/where/how/when/why,
what tools and value adds are you going to use? You might alternatively reference these in
the conversion strategy.
How do you improve the quality of your customer data across channels to help increase the
relevance of your messages through personalisation?
K. Multichannel integration strategy
How you integrate traditional and digital channels should run through every section of your
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strategy since it’s key to success. One way to structure this is to map customer journeys
across channels as channel chains.
L. Social media marketing strategy
We would argue that social media marketing is part of a broader customer engagement
strategy plus brand, acquisition, conversion and retention strategies, but many organisations
are grappling with how they get value from this, so it may help to develop an overall social
media marketing strategy.
M. Digital marketing governance strategy
In larger organisations how you manage digital marketing is a big challenge. Questions
that the governance strategy seeks to answer are how do we manage internal and external
resources through changes to structures and skills needed for digital and multichannel
marketing.
Recommended resource? Ecommerce Success Mapping
Our Ecommerce Success Mapping template can be used as a management tool to help
you review and work on improving the key factors that drive online sales.
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Tactics
The details of strategy
Tactics are where the rubber hits the road to get results, so you need to define how you will
implement your strategy in the real world – when you’ll do it, with what, your goals for each
tactic aligned to the main objectives and how that will that be measured.
þþ Each of strategy sections A to M will need implementation details which you can get
specialists in your team or agencies to develop. Remember that with digital, “the devil is
in the detail”. The best digital strategies can fail if the execution is poor – search, social
and email marketing and creating a persuasive web design are classic examples of this
we see daily.
þþ If there’s only you, create a plan and Just Do It! You have the benefit that you can be
more nimble, so can test and learn
þþ How are you going to divide the year up – thinking about campaigns versus seasonal
or business focusses, this helps to get the plan actionable. Consider quarterly (90 day)
blocks to focus on and ensure objectives, strategies and tactics are focussed on that.
þþ Keep this section light and fact based and avoid too much description repeated in the
strategy section. Hang your tactics under the strategic hangers, for example traffic
acquisition, so that it’s easy for others follow.
Optimise your digital channels
You can get detailed advice on all the core digital channel tactics in our 7 Step guides:
þþ Search engine optimisation
þþ Google Adwords
þþ Social media marketing
þþ Improving results from your website and Landing page conversion
þþ Email marketing
þþ Google Analytics
Recommended resource? Search and social media marketing guides
We believe that search and social media marketing are the most important channels for
growing your audience cost-effectively. See our detailed 7 Step Guides to these channels
for a DIY approach to improving their effectiveness or reviewing with your agency/clients:
þþ Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) 7 Steps Guide
þþ Google Adwords Paid Search 7 Steps Guide
þþ Social media marketing 7 Steps Guide
Introduction Situation Objectives Strategy Tactics Actions and controls Executive summary
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Actions and Controls
Making it happen
Create measurable KPIs to align against objectives and stay on track
Issues to reference include:
þþ Budgets – media, digital platform investments and resources
þþ Timescales including a longer-term roadmap if necessary
þþ Organize your measuring in dashboards so that it’s easy to summarise and keep up to
date against the plan.
þþ Consider KPIs (key performance indicators) that relate to tactics, strategies and so
objectives, sometimes a KPI is an objective, for example a KPI could be weekly total
natural search traffic, home page bounce or email open rate. These can be good early
warnings to objectives like ‘online sales revenue’ or ‘new leads’ not being met. Plain old
Excel will suffice and will allow you to keep the latest results to hand.
þþ The key is that (assuming your objectives were clear, detailed and relevant) you have the
headers to site your KPIs and measure against.
þþ Consider how you will measure and report using web analytics
þþ Are there other measurement tools and resources needed
þþ What is the process to measure and report, for example looking at keyword level traffic
daily is not actionable, but home page bounce can be if site changes are made
þþ Think about creating a KPI summary dashboard
Governance – who does what?
In larger organisations, you also have to think about resourcing, i.e.
þþ Skills – internal and agency requirements to deliver on your plan
þþ Structure – do you have a separate digital team or can you integrate
þþ Systems – the processes to make things work and keep you agile
Using the power of analytics to test, learn and refine
We believe in the power of analytics to review and improve your campaigns, social media
marketing and site(s), but it’s difficult to know where to start beyond browsing charts of
trends in visits. Our guides, templates and online training on Google Analytics will give you a
structure to mine more from your analytics.
All the best for your journey
Creating a plan is just the beginning of the journey to making the most of digital and social
media. We hope our guide has helped you on your way?
Please do feedback to support@smartinsights.com and check out our full range of advice
used by our expert members.
Do join the discussion on our active, practical Linked In Group to learn more from the Smart
Insights community Join our best practice group to learn & share: http://linkd.in/smartinsights.
Thanks, Dave Chaffey, Dan Bosomworth and the Smart Insights team
Introduction Situation Objectives Strategy Tactics Actions and controls Executive summary
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Executive summary
No, you’re still not quite finished! After your plan is created, go back to the beginning and
create a 1 page summary that a busy, senior executive can understand and believe in!
The same exec summary is useful for Powerpoint presentations should you need to
present the bones of your plan, and the ROI. An important part of your role is helping others
understand what digital marketing is, and the immense value that it can add to the business.
Naturally the Exec summary should contain a 2 line summary of the different parts of
SOSTAC® (challenging!) but stressing the need for investment in digital channels and
showing the key issues.
1 Situation
þþ Key issues requiring action
2 Objectives
þþ Our vision
þþ Key goals
3 Strategy
þþ Segmentation, targeting and positioning
þþ Brand development and customer engagement
þþ Customer acquisition
þþ Customer retention and growth
4 Tactics, Actions and Control
þþ Investment and budget
þþ Resourcing
þþ Timescales
þþ Success factors for managing change
þþ Measurement and testing
There’s no denying it. The next step, convincing others through conversations and
presentations, is tough. We hope our business case guide can help here or Ask us and other
members through our free Digital Marketing Answers Forum.
Recommended resource? Business case
You will also need to think how you convince your colleagues or clients.
þþ Business case template. Improvement needed can be justified through this template
and the companion Ebook.
Introduction Situation Objectives Strategy Tactics Actions and controls Executive summary
© Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides.
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About the Smart Insights Expert member resources
Our Expert member resources are focused on one thing – helping members get better
results from their marketing. Our resources are all practical, showing members how to
create strategies and then execute them using best practice. The guidance includes videos,
workbook templates and the in-depth 7 Step Guides.
The 7 Step Guides
We’ve created our 7 Step Guides for Expert members to be your constant companion as
you learn, review and improve your approach to digital marketing. We know you’re busy
and under pressure to get results, so they’re written to help you do just that. They take you
through the questions you should be asking to improve performance and suggest the right
approaches.
Our Ebooks are all created to help you:
þþ Improve results. A focus on getting the best results from your digital marketing.
þþ Review your current approach. A unique workbook format helps create a plan.
þþ Apply analytics. Integrated advice on using Google Analytics to improve performance.
þþ Learn best practice. Strategy recommendations and practical tips highlighted
throughout.
What members say about our resources
“We are at an early stage of our digital marketing journey, the templates, papers, videos and
tutorials help us check and learn as we go”. Stuart Sykes, Digital Marketing Manager.
“Smart Insights is the first place I go for good, practical advice on digital marketing. The
material available is very comprehensive but also current”. Jon Vasey, Ecommerce
Manager.
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