Finally, the fun part. This is where you get creative. Plan, in broad strokes, what you’re going to do. You know what you want to do, and why, and available resources. Time for the how. This is the high-level look at the tactics you want to employ. Not the gritty details—more of a rough sketch.

This is the big wrap-up for your strategy. You need to clearly connect tactic to result to strategic goal. Everything else you’ve done lays the groundwork for this.

I usually organize this according to the marketing stack, too. I use the stack as a kind of map. It can help you show your boss how different actions at different levels of the stack can affect the levels above.

99% of clients will turn directly to this section. That’s fine! You’ve done your homework. They don’t have to. They can cut right to the chase.

The Big Idea

Hopefully, you now have a Big Idea. That one thing, creative or otherwise, that will drive this entire strategy. This is the part that you can’t do with data. It could be:

A new way to represent the brand.

A content initiative built around a certain content type.

A new way to use social media to build content attention.

A whole new site section, and a plan around how that can build our brand.

None of these are the strategy itself. They’re just the one guiding thing that can tie it all together. And, their impact stretches to all parts of the stack. That’s what defines a Big Idea.

For Lurie Space Tourism, it seems like everything leads back to clarity, simplicity and security. There are a few red herrings, like the fact that my customers like Battlestar Galactica, but I can chalk that up to good taste. My customers like simplicity and clarity (images of their destinations and simple, clear copywriting) and they like a sense of security/stability (fast pages, discussions of safety). So I need to reinforce those.

I ponder, drink whiskey in Draper-esque fashion and decide my message for the next year will be The Safest Space Tourism On Earth (and Off). Everything I do will reinforce a sense of security, stability and predictability. Let everyone else wax poetic about adventure. I can use my fantastic imagery to convey that. But I'll talk about how we'll help you see those great images, in person, without making you into a rapidly expanding fireball.

We’ll do lots of other stuff. But this will be the focal point, at least at the start.

The Tactics: What You’ll Say

Now we can get tactical. Every tactic is set in the context of the marketing stack, the metrics and minimum thresholds, and the Big Idea. Many are repeatable tactics, which are even better. We can keep looking for more and more folks who like Battlestar Galactica, for example, until we access that entire audience.

I like to include a one-paragraph summary of each tactic. That’s as detailed as I get. Later, you or the specialist hired to preform that tactic can expand it to a full tactical plan.

There will probably be a lot of paragraphs. I usually group them by marketing stack location, and then order them by priority, highest to lowest.

For Lurie Space Tourism, I ended up with this (again, this is a very shortened version). I work my way 'up' the marketing stack:

Infrastructure

This is where we have the most trouble. And it’s impacting every other layer of the stack (as expected). Most of our minimum thresholds—page views per visit and sharing, for example—depend on infrastructure. In many cases we can triple visitor value if we can improve this part of the stack. So:

Move to dedicated hosting. Get the LST site on its own server, with the site database on another server. That should improve performance and limit the performance bottlenecks we’ve seen. We’ll need the IT team in on this.

Priority: High

Improve site speed. Get every page on LST to load in 1.5 seconds or less. Our data shows that each second we can shave off between 5 and 1.5 will give us an 8% improvement. After that, though, we hit diminishing returns. We’ll need one person from the IT team and/or access to the site.

Priority: High

Server monitoring. Ideally, we should monitor server performance so that, if the server slows down, we’re alerted.

Priority: Low

All of this will reinforce a sense of security and stability, too.

Analytics

We have lots of metrics, but not as many minimum thresholds as I’d like. We need to improve analytics to collect more data and better set those thresholds. So:

Use retargeting. We need to use retargeting networks that allow demographic and psychographic criteria. That will help us with audience interests.

Priority: High

Install click location tracking. We can refine pages far better if we know where our audience clicks, how far down the page they scroll, etc. This is an easy install, requiring only a content specialist.

Priority: Medium

Enable A/B testing. Our e-commerce software has built-in A/B testing capabilities. Testing various page designs, content and assets will help us better model the ideal user experience. To enable A/B testing, we need to check one box in the admin back end.

Priority: Medium

Content

Write more about safety. Our audience cares, a lot, about safety. Our competitors don’t talk about it. We can grab a big advantage this way.

Priority: High

Talk about Battlestar Galactica. A huge chunk of our audience are BSG fans. By writing the occasional post about the latest episode, we can attract a lot of potential customers. It’s easy to do, with a great potential impact.

Priority: Low

Paid

Up our Adwords spend. Increase our Adwords spend 25% per month until we see diminishing returns. We need 30,000 more visitors this year than last. We’re missing big opportunities for growth here.

Priority: High

Invest in paid social. We should buy boosted posts, advertising and sponsored Tweets/Instagram photos/Google Plus posts. We can precisely target our ideal audience, and use these ads to drive ‘first contact’ visitors. That, in turn, will help us build the audience of potential customers and our retargeting audience.

Priority: High

Earned

More of the same: SEO tactics, unpaid social, audience targeting, PR etc. etc.

Owned

And again, same: User generated content, reviews, the house e-mail list, adapting for an audience that’s 90% mobile, etc.

Look for Digital Chaos Factors

Dramatic, yes?

Digital chaos factors are the online things that would force you to change your marketing strategy. This is part of your planning process: The ‘what ifs.’ They do not include changes in the industry, winning the lottery, etc. Those are broader business issues and need to be dealt with in the business strategy, not the digital one.

Calling these out helps set expectations: Yes, things may change. Even if an unforeseen different factor pops up, at least everyone knew change was a possibility.

And honestly, what digital marketing strategy runs unchanged to the end of its shelf life? A really bad one.

For LST, digital chaos factors include:

A new social media site An advertising vehicle shuts down A competitor stops buying advertising on one or more vehicles We get fantastic media coverage We get awful media coverage Something breaks

You don’t need to plan for every one of these. Just call them out. For specific, really bad things like ‘we get awful media coverage’ or ‘something breaks,’ it might pay to have some basic steps, like ‘contact IT’ or ‘call our PR agency.’

If necessary, you and your client can figure out specific actions when you review the plan.

Resources Required

You need to, in one place, show the hard and soft costs for this strategic plan.

Hard costs require direct payment of money to someone. Buying a new server, hiring consultants or a new employee and paying for advertising are all hard costs.

Soft costs require time or other resources that translate to money. Having the IT team work on a server move will incur soft costs. Dedicating 10% of a writer’s time to specific content is a soft cost.

You can write these out in a list, do them in a spreadsheet, whatever. You can weigh the costs against the micro-conversions to which they'll contribute, and at least give your client or boss a general idea how to prioritize. No example here, because if you can’t create a budget this way, you need to learn before you create a digital marketing strategy. I’m not saying that to be mean. It’s just the truth.

What I Skipped

Notice how I didn’t talk about keywords? Or ad creative? Or specific HTML code and changes?

Those aren’t strategic. You can add them if you want, but I guarantee the client will immediately drill down, and you’ll never get them to talk strategy, ever again. Set the strategy in everyone’s minds. Then get the specialists in the room and move on to tactics. If you’re a team of one, set the agenda: “In this meeting we’ll review strategy, which includes…”