The Difference between a Marketing Strategy and a Marketing Plan.
Understanding the Marketing Strategy: The 'What' and 'Why'
A marketing strategy is the backbone of your business's outreach efforts. It answers the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of your marketing/BD. The strategy should encompass your businesses understanding of the market, who are your target audiences and what are there needs, your value proposition/s for these audiences and what makes you more relevant than your competitors, and the overarching goals you aim to achieve. It’s a long-term, broad-view approach which needs to be fully aligned with your business’s growth objectives.
The Marketing Plan: The 'How'
Conversely, a marketing plan lays out the 'how'. It translates your marketing strategy into actionable steps, detailing specific campaigns, chosen channels, budget, and timelines. The plan is about execution – making your strategic vision a reality.
How they fit together in practice
Consider a professional training and consulting firm aiming to expand its services into three new international markets by 2026.
Business Objective: Expand professional training services into three identified new international markets by 2026.
Aligned Marketing Strategy:
Localisation: Conduct market research and localise the website for each new market within six months.
Digital Marketing: Initiate a year-long targeted digital campaign in selected markets, aiming for a 20% increase in international enquiries to come through the new sites when launched.
Conversions: Work with the centralised sales team to support the conversion of a minimum of 25% of those new enquiries.
The Marketing plan would then deal with the realities of these 3 objectives and include the who, what, where and when.
A marketing strategy and a marketing plan are symbiotic. The strategy provides direction and purpose, while the plan is the vehicle driving your business towards its objectives. Without a strategy, your marketing efforts can become disjointed. Without a plan, even the most visionary strategy remains an unfulfilled potential.
However, don’t overlook the importance of having an aligned and robust back-office - To effectively implement these strategies, regardless of resources, plans and budgets, your back-office operations must be aligned and leak-proof. It's imperative to have the right systems and processes in place for capturing the pipeline data end-to-end to allow the business to quantify its planned marketing/BD activities. Without this, the efficacy of your external marketing efforts can’t be accurately measured, or indeed really measured at all. It’s important to get your operational foundations in place first or money can, and will, be wasted.
So, to sum it all up a marketing strategy is your business’s route map, outlining the destination and paths. The marketing plan is the vehicle, the specific routes, and the means to track the journey and never forget your need for robust foundations.