In order to deliver our digital marketing strategy we need to understand three things:
- Where are we now?
- Where do we want to get to?
- How do we get there?
The first of these is answered through research, data analysis and insight. The second is designed through the construction of a vision and mission. This therefore focuses on the third question: how?
Digital marketing has created its own challenges here. Many digital channels can be switched on and off in real time and at a low cost and so are sometimes added into marketing campaigns and plans at the last minute. The power of effective planning, however, is in the early thinking, co-ordination and integration of the key elements of your strategy – without planning, your strategy is at serious risk of failing. Without effective planning you can spend twice as much time, money and resource trying to fix problems and find solutions, you can demotivate your people and even find yourself having to pay suppliers to help you when that should not have been needed. In extreme cases this can even lead to budgets being used up too quickly, staff resignations and your overall strategy being seriously compromised. A good planning process is essential.
In this we examine some of the processes and approaches to planning that can help guide the implementation of your strategy.
The planning processes
Pablo Picasso once said, ‘Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.’ Whilst it is fairly unlikely that he was talking about digital marketing, it is certainly a point that applies here. The starting point and the key to success with planning is to have a process in place and to stick to that process. We look at the discipline of that later in this chapter, but let’s start by looking at the process itself.
There are several planning models that can be used for effective planning and in this section we look at two core methods:
- vision-based planning and
- real-time planning.
1. Vision-based planning
Definition: the process of creating a vision and following a clear six-stage process of delivering against it.
This method is probably the most common form of strategic planning. There are six phases to this model, beginning with creating a vision and ending with analysis and evolution where needed. This method takes you from a starting point through to a final result which may remain fluid. It is an excellent way of organizing the delivery of your strategy and helps to guide your thinking during the strategy development process. It is, however, more structured than some organizations would be willing to implement and more rigid than the real-time planning model we look at below. It also works on a future to present time frame, ie there are specific goals to be achieved by a specific point in time and this may not be relevant to every plan.
Let’s look at the six stages:
- Identify your vision statement.
- Produce your mission statement.
- Establish your primary goals.
- Create specific objectives and strategies to reach each goal.
- Implement action plans to fulfil each strategy.
- Put the action plans into effect, evaluate and evolve.
Mission statement
There is often confusion between vision and mission statements. The easiest way to remember the difference is that your vision statement is an expression of your desired future state, whereas the mission statement expresses your current state. With this differentiation in mind we can look at the two examples above and begin to see a clear difference. Creating this mission is important for your business but just as important for your digital strategy. Knowing what you are trying to achieve now alongside the future vision begins to clearly lay out a path that the rest of your planning process can follow.
Real-time planning
Definition: a plan that retains fluidity to your planning process to ensure your plans are malleable to the circumstances.
The real-time model is effectively a ‘casual’ version of the vision-based model. This model is notable for its lack of structure and, some may even argue, its lack of a model, which is a fairly odd way to start an explanation of a planning model when we have already discussed the importance of structure. The reason this was developed, however, is because the modern world changes at pace and so building a formalized five-year plan is considered by some to be an outdated concept. The world in five years’ time is likely to be very different from now, so how can such a long-term plan still be as relevant as when it was finalized? The real-time model therefore keeps the planning process ‘alive’ as an ongoing piece of work. It is never formally documented and so evolves continuously. It is reviewed at regular intervals, for example monthly board meetings, and therefore develops alongside real-time issues and developments within and external to the company.
The advantage is therefore that your strategy stays highly relevant and can change quickly to meet current insights. There are, however, two primary disadvantages to this approach and both ultimately come back to the lack of documentation. The first is that there is no document to share with your business. It can be extremely difficult to articulate your strategy to the wider business in this situation and so can create confusion and lack of synergy if your communication is not excellent. One way to address this is to ensure that the project lead or equivalent for the delivery of your strategy develops and manages an internal communications plan. This could involve e-mails to key stakeholders, steering group meetings, regular update seminars, internal desk drops or even launch events. The extent of this is down to the size and culture of your organization but you should never assume that people will know how the project is progressing – so great communication is essential.
Second, there is no fully formed document to share externally. Should investors or other external stakeholders wish to understand your strategy it would not look very professional only to be able to articulate this verbally from what was discussed at the last meeting. This can be tackled by ensuring that the core principles and stages of the plan are documented and the flexible elements are regularly updated and version controlled.
That is not to say that there is no structure here at all. A process of planning what the goals are and how the business aims to achieve them is still followed in a similar style to the vision-based approach we mentioned above, but you do not need to stick so rigidly to these goals for a set period of time and so are more able to retain the flexibility that this process demands. For example, the doughnut company we mentioned above would still go through the same six steps to create their plan but this may not then be documented and may evolve just a few weeks later. Should your competition launch a viral video campaign, you would change your social media plans to adapt to this challenge and perhaps create a video-based advertising campaign for YouTube that will both reach a different audience and reduce the gains your competitor makes from their video campaign.