For results-based marketing that actually has a serious impact on your business’s bottom line, both a marketing plan and a marketing strategy are important pieces of the puzzle.

It’s not uncommon for people to get these two documents confused — even many professional marketers can have trouble telling one from the other. So, let’s take a moment to compare and contrast. This will help you get clear on which is which, why they go together so well and how they can both make a positive difference for your business.

Which comes first, the marketing plan or strategy?

While you could theoretically do a marketing plan without a marketing strategy and vice versa, they both play a unique role in how your marketing efforts roll out. Before you consider embarking on either one, it’s worth knowing which is logically best to tackle first.

At AJ Marketing, our advice is to start with the marketing strategy first. Why? Because this is the reasoning behind what marketing activities you will do for your business. The marketing plan on the other hand spells out what those activities are. Let’s unpack each document next — this will make doing them in this order even more obvious.

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy provides the ‘why’ that underpins all marketing efforts you might consider undertaking. It is closely aligned with your business strategy and strives to support it.

Your marketing strategy will cover your business’s background, what you offer, who it’s for, the goals you want to achieve and the challenges you might face.

A marketing strategy will generally be divided into a number of sections. Typically, these might be:

• Target market information: There are countless ways you could choose to market your business or product. What shapes the way you opt to showcase your offering is your target market. Who is the demographic you’re trying to attract? What do you know about them? Consider building buyer personas to make this super clear — these are outlines defining your ideal customer and can be a useful shortcut when making marketing decisions.

• Business goals: Setting goals helps your business keep its eyes on the prize and keeps marketing accountable. What does the organisation want to achieve short term? What about over the longer term? What can marketing bring to achieve these goals?

• Competitor analysis: Who is your business up against? Consider their offering, what you have in common and what sets you apart? Comparing your strengths and weaknesses can assist you in identifying opportunities for your marketing efforts.

So, with that bigger picture look at your marketing and the steps needed to bring it to life.

Enter, the marketing plan.

What is a marketing plan?

If the marketing strategy is the ‘why’, then the marketing plan is the ‘how’. It covers more of the day-to-day marketing activities that will be implemented to fulfil the promise of the strategy.

In a marketing plan, you should aim to include:

• The marketing channels you will leverage: utilise your buyer personas to establish where your customers are, your plan will outline which channels your business will use. Social media? Email? Billboards? For each, include your intentions from a practical perspective.

• Resources and budgets: again, a bit more practically minded, the marketing plan will cover what amounts will be allocated to where across website, socials, events, digital, print, and more.

• Responsibilities and timelines: who is doing what and when? Lay it out in the marketing plan so everyone knows who is in charge of which marketing activities and who should be held to account for meeting the deadlines.

• Goals and KPIs: What do you want to achieve with each activity and how will you measure the success? For social media, it might be more clicks on your ads or more followers on your pages. For your website, do you want to increase your web traffic by a certain percentage?

Including these specifics in your marketing plan help you to get on track and stay on track.

A strategy and plan go hand in hand

With the overarching marketing strategy in place and a marketing plan to get serious on a tactical level, your business will be unstoppable. And remember, neither document is a set and forget. They can and should evolve and grow alongside your business.

If you’re ready to make a start, let’s chat