Let’s talk through the steps of SOSTAC
Whilst marketing isn’t simply frameworks and models, they do play a significant part in helping you organise your thoughts as a marketer and how to execute a campaign to achieve success.
Mainly, we use these models and frameworks as a conscious guide and help explain our rationale to our clients or colleagues to ensure we are ticking all the right boxes.
Whilst studying a CIM qualification you will encounter a number of these, no matter what the subject matter is. They will all appear at some point and prove extremely beneficial when responding to the assignment questions.
My own favourite is the SOSTAC framework – when broken down and followed correctly it is simple and effective. But what does it all mean? Let’s walk through it together.
- Situational Analysis – where are we now?
PR Smith recommends that we spend around half of our planning considering our Situational Analysis but what could we include with this? We would recommend kicking off with a SWOT analysis – this helps you clearly understand where you are now.
This helps you discover the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for your business. Once you have these move to the next step…
- Objectives – where do we want to be?
By now, you should have heard this time and time again – set goals & objectives for your business. Clearly define each of them to ensure they are achievable; in fact you should make sure each of them are SMART
- Specific – be precise and clearly define what you want to do.
- Measurable – you want to measure the effectiveness and impact this has on your business so you can do it again or refine it if it doesn’t work as planned
- Achievable – do you have the means to do this? That could be skills, budget, resources etc
- Reasonable – make sure they are something you can do. If you sell pencils, then it wouldn’t be wise to have an objective to make a rocket ship.
- Timely or timebound – have a clear end date
- Strategy – how do we get there?
What do you need to do to mobilise your organisation to make this all work? Do you need more budget? Do you want to outsource work or upskill current resources to complete the work in-house? All the things you need to get the wheels moving needs to be considered here.
- Tactics – how EXACTLY do we get there?
In this section you should be deciding which tools you will use to meet your objectives. Will it be your website, social media, email, out-of-home advertising? Link what you want to achieve with what you need to get you there. Also consider what tools you need to reach your desired audience – where are they viewing your competitors’ content might be worth considering also. To determine this, you might consider using the 4P’s framework from Part 1 of this blog series.
- Action – what is our plan
Here you are bringing to life everything you have decided upon above! This is where a structure and careful organisation is key. A gantt chart may be something you’d like to consider here – listing all the specifics of who, what, where, when.
- Control
This is about measurement. Tracking how effective your overall plan is in achieving your objectives and meeting your strategy. This will allow you to determine success and manage any changes you need to make. With your gantt chart plan in place you may be able to tweak some future aspects if you notice a trend or identify any that needs changed to achieve success. A great way to measure this is by adopting the RACE framework discussed in Part 2 of our blog series.
For more detailed information on SOSTAC you can check out PR Smiths – SOSTAC The Guide to your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan at https://prsmith.org/sostac/
This blog was written by Danielle Spackman – Head of Operations at Belfast Academy of Marketing. Danielle is also a freelance Business & Marketing Consultant for a number of independent clients within the UK. Danielle is an Affiliate Professional member of CIM and has completed a number of CIM awards in Marketing which complement her 15 year career history in operations, project management, change management and customer experience.
