There is a lot of confusion on whether you have a plan or a strategy, let’s take a look at each one and discover why you need both.

A marketing strategy and plan are two key components of a great integrative marketing program. Each component serves a different purpose and focus on different aspects of your overall marketing activities.

A marketing strategy is the high-level, overarching plan that outlines the overall approach to achieving your marketing or organization goals and objectives. It sets the tone and direction for all of your marketing efforts and budget spend. In other words, it points all of your marketing arrows (efforts) at the same target.

Your marketing strategy focuses on long-term goals and how to achieve them. When creating your marketing strategy you want to understand your target market (customer personas), your brand’s position in the market/industry, identifying your competitive advantage, and identifying the overall tactics you’ll use to achieve your goals. You’ll also include KPIs (key performance indicators) or measurements on how you’ll track movement towards your goals.

A marketing strategy typically includes:

Market analysis: What does the total market for your product look like? What are the overall industry trends? Where are the growth areas? Is the market slowing or growing? Is there white space in the market (customers with specific needs not being met).

Competitive analysis: Who are your competitors, the customers they target, what segment of the market are they targeting their product, what is their competitive advantage, pricing, etc.

Segmentation: Analyze the overall market and identify groups of customers with similar characteristics, needs or pain points. You’ll use this information to better understand and meet the needs of these customers in an intentional and thoughtful way.

KPIs: What is your brand’s overall goals for the next 3 – 5 years? Increasing brand awareness? Increasing sales? Increasing downloads? Engagement with social content?

Once you have identified the overall picture of the market and your goals, you can move onto creating your marketing plan. The marketing plan provides a detailed roadmap for implementing your strategy with specific actions, tactics and resources. The strategy sets the course, while the plan navigates the journey.