The difference between marketing strategy and marketing plan

Figuring out the number of troops, the kinds of weapons, and estimating the best time to fight will vary depending on many different aspects. You cannot blindly go to war without figuring out what gives the best edge for you to win.

If the opponent uses a lot of air troops, you need to prepare with weapons that shoots through the air. If you don’t have air troops and weapons to combat air attack, you will most likely lose. Hence, in marketing terms, you need to have an established marketing strategy before planning on preparing.

After you have the perfect war strategy, you would need to implement it ASAP and that’s where your marketing plan comes in. It should be created after the marketing strategy. Your marketing plan should describe the actions how you will execute on your strategy.

A marketing strategy can contain many different marketing plans to accomplish marketing goals.

Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy is the “why” behind your marketing. It should reflect your short and long-term business strategy that involves around your brand’s voice and personality, mission, vision, and message.

A proper marketing strategy should address what needs to happen for your product or service to reach the right consumers and perform in the market. It helps the team to understand aligned around the same shared goal.

In creating a marketing strategy, there are 4 things to pay attention to:

1. Competitors

Knowing your competitors well means to know the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, their market position, and who they are.

2. Goals

Your marketing strategy goal should reflect on your short- and long-term business goals. Identify what they are how you are going to achieve it.

3. Target Market

Your marketing strategy should also contain the information of your ideal customers, the customers you’re trying to reach. You could do this with a buyer’s persona which describes your ideal customer. 

4. Positioning

You need to be able to identify what makes you different from your competitors and why your customer should buy from you and believe in your brand. This can be done through a situation analysis which helps you understand your business’ strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats that could prevent your business from succeeding to its full potential

Marketing Plan

So, if a marketing strategy outlines the “why” behind the marketing effort, on the other hand, marketing plan highlights the “how” behind the strategy. It is simply how you’re going to execute on your strategy. Its purpose is to lay out marketing efforts which details on what, where, and when you will implement and how you will track its success.

A marketing plan can include so many different things, but these are some common ones:

1. Website

Is it well designed? Does it reflect your business and resonate with your audience?

2. Social media channels

How do you use it? Which social media channels is most appropriate for your audience and where are they most active? How frequent should you post?

3. Content strategy

What kind of content should you post? Keep in mind of the engagement from different types of contents. Does it support your marketing strategy?

4. Budget

How much are you willing to spend for your marketing efforts?

To help you understand further… Here are some examples

Company A is trying to become an industry leader. (Goal)

To achieve this goal, Company A’s marketing strategy might be to highlight its brand strengths and competitive advantages and present the brand in a way that is professional, fun, ethical, and knowledgeable and then raise brand awareness to reach a larger customer base. (Marketing Strategy)

To do this, remember that a marketing plan is like a roadmap to implement the strategy so for example to raise brand awareness and at the same time highlighting the brand’s strength, Company A could utilise Instagram for influencer marketing and build relationships between a large number of micro influencers to boost the relevance of its products or service towards its audience. (Marketing Plan)

Marketing Strategy and Marketing Plan is indispensable to your business’ marketing efforts, where one cannot exist without the other. A good marketing strategy with a bad marketing plan don’t get you anywhere and vice versa. So, it is very important to pay attention to both for the best chance to rocket your business to the moon.

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