Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

In marketing there are plenty of concepts to get your head around and let’s be frank they can be incredibly difficult to understand. Let’s break down two giants: marketing strategy and marketing plan. Although they are often interchangeably used amongst marketers, they are not the same and serve different purposes for your business. Here's why...

What is a marketing strategy?

In simplest terms a marketing strategy asks the big-ticket questions of how marketing functions in your business. Questions like: who is our targeted clients? Why would they be interested in our product or service? Where would our ideal customers be? It’s the overarching goal that aligns with your business strategy. Your marketing strategy can either be for the whole of your company or based on individual campaigns. The biggest function of your marketing strategy is to acts as the foundational goal for your marketing plan to solve.

So, what is a marketing plan?

The marketing plan is the action behind your strategy. It answers the how. If we’re talking big picture marketing for the whole company, the plan may determine which departments will need to be implemented to accomplish the strategy. If we are talking on a project or campaign basis, the plan will map out the details of how to execute the campaign. Your plan will outline things like, what needs to be created to support the strategy, where it will live, (as in will it go on social media, billboards, magazines etc.) and the budget and timeline behind it.

Let’s look at an example:

Recently the world came together to cheer on their respective countries during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™. During this event, the longest-standing sponsor of FIFA World Cup Football, Coca-Cola, launched their ‘Believing in Magic’ campaign. This was a strategic opportunity to share and bring to life a key brand value and the company’s new global philosophy; “Real Magic”: the celebration of embracing life as it comes. Coca-Cola launched this digital-driven campaign through a series of activations which included:

• Digital films, capturing the full extent of fans’ devotion for their beloved teams.

• The FIFA World Cup™ Trophy Tour by Coca-Cola.

• A unique digital hub for fans to make their winner predictions.

• And an exclusive partnership with Panini to create collectable player stickers.

Courtesy of The Coca-Cola Company

The main strategy in this scenario would be: to share and bring to life a key brand value and the company’s new global philosophy.

Whereas the plan (or at least part of it) would be: the digital films, trophy tour, fan hub, and Panini partnership.

Can you have a plan without a strategy?

The short answer is no. Think of it this way in a film, there’s a script and that script ultimately becomes the guiding light of the whole production. A major production company like Netflix let’s say, wouldn’t throw a bunch of money at a project without some sort of script to map out the bigger idea, right? I mean, what would the crew and actors even be making at that point? Your marketing strategy holds the same importance. Going into any sort of campaign or marketing plan without a bigger reason and purpose behind it is a waste of time and resources. So yes, your marketing strategy and marketing plan are both needed in order to have a successful result.

In conclusion, your marketing strategy acts as your big goal while your marketing plan tells you how to make said goal happen. This symbiotic relationship is a constant for any successful business and hopefully these two, what could be complicated topics, are now a bit clearer.