SOSTAC - Setting up a Digital Marketing Strategy

Hi Folks, 

Glad to see you’re back.

This week I want to tell you a bit more about how to use the SOSTAC® Model from PR Smith to set up a Digital Marketing Plan. SOSTAC® is a Marketing Model that helps companies to set up a Marketing Strategy or improve their current ones. 

The Model was developed in the 1990s to help Marketers structure their plans in six simple steps. 

S Situation – where are we now?

O Objectives – where do we want to go?

S Strategy – how do we get there? 

T Tactics – how exactly do we get there? 

A Action – details of tactics

C Control – measure your performance 

SOSTACS gives you a logical order to coordinate and structure the processes (Chaffey, 2019).

The Situation analysis shows what you or rather your company stands for, who your customers are and who your competitors are. Afterwards, you should analyse where you want to go, what exactly is your vision and mission. Generating profit? Increasing customer demand? Increasing popularity? (Cowley-Cunningham, 2016). 

Well, it’s time to figure it out before you can head over to stage three. Stage three is the most complex one, it should point out which strategy you want to use to fulfill your vision and mission from stage two. It’s time to define your target groups and market segments you want to reach out to. Afterwards, the Tactics pick up the details of the strategy and now you decide which tools (e.g. Marketing Mix) will be used (Swan, 2019). After focusing on all the planning, it’s now time to bring your plans to life. “The action section covers what needs to be achieved for each of the tactics listed in the previous section of the SOSTAC® plan to realize the objectives of your digital marketing plan.” (Swan, 2019)

After you’ve set up everything you have to keep tracking your performances and processes.

Did you get where you want to be? KPI’s and Metrics will help you to figure it out.

If you reached your goals, well done, if not - go through your stages again and try to make it better the next time 😉

 Stay tuned! 

Reference List: 

Chaffey, D. (2019) ‘SOSTAC marketing planning model guide’, SmartInsights. Available at: 

https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/sostac-model/ (Accessed 18.10.2019)

Cowley-Cunningham, M. (2016) ‘Jellies & Jaffas’: Applying PR Smith’s SOSTAC Marketing Model to an Online Confectionery Start-Up, SSRN Electronic Journal [online]. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315488492_'Jellies_Jaffas'_Applying_PR_Smith's_SOSTAC_Marketing_Model_to_an_Online_Confectionery_Start-Up (Accessed 18.10.2019)

Swan, S. (2019) ‘A SOSTAC plan example’, SmartInsights, Available at: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/sostac-plan-example/ (Accessed 18.10.2019)

Graphic: https://digitalmarketingvtos.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/sostac-mini-image1.jpg?w=487&h=486