Marketing and communications strategy and planning
What, why, and for whom?
It all starts with planning
Understanding who you are trying to reach, how, and with what resources will help you plan and manage your marketing and communications activities on a day-to-day basis, and achieve your goals.
Marketing and communications planning is a strategic process of defining objectives, target groups, messages, and channels to effectively communicate and market your products or services.
We can help you create an effective, practical marketing and communications strategy, and a practical marketing and communications plan to go with it, and even sort out your content plan. Planned well, your strategy doesn’t have to be a hundred-page all-singing-all-dancing affair but fit into a single one-page document.
Once this basic plans are in place, it’s better to leave all hype and cool marketing trends to the side, and just see what works for your organisation, and for your content. We believe that only experimentation will tell you what really makes a difference. We’ll adjust the process in an agile way to maximise your returns.
Strategy
A marketing and communications strategy is a long-term plan that guides the marketing and communications of an organisation in a holistic way. It is always based on the organisation’s business plan and strategy.
A marketing and communications strategy may include the following elements:
- Mapping the current situation
- Measurable, clear targets
- Clearly defined target audience(s)
- Competitive advantage – what differentiates your business from your competitors and how to communicate it
- Core brand message and key messages
- Communication and marketing channels
- Budget and resources
- Metrics and monitoring
Planning
Once you have a marketing and communications strategy, it’s easy to make plans. A marketing and communications plan is a concrete plan of action – what, to whom, when, and through which channels. The plan can include schedules for different campaigns, budgets, channel-specific tactics and metrics to monitor activities and their impact.
The content plan is the next step in the design process. It defines in more detail what kind of content will be produced. The content plan includes the themes, target audiences, formats (e.g. social media update, video, blog post), and publication schedules and channels.
Read more about our content production services.