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Objectives, Strategy and PlanningTweet

The words strategy and planning are often used interchangeably in the world of marketing and business; this can be confusing. A simple way to explain the difference between the two is to use an example. Let's use 2 cereal companies as our example:

Company A and Company B decide that they want to sell 3 million cereal boxes a year. Company A decide that they would like to do this through selling cereals which have their company's branding on the cereal boxes. Company B decide that they will make cereals which have their branding on the boxes and will also make cereals for supermarkets to sell with the supermarket's branding on the boxes. Once this has been decided both companies draw up a list of actions which describe what, where, when and how they will do this. Let's label each of these activities

Company Name	Objective (Goal)	Strategy	Plan
A	Sell 3 million cereal boxes a year	Sell as many cereal boxes as possible with Company A branding on them	A list of actions describing how Company A will aim to increase sales of cereal boxes containing Company A branding.
B	Sell 3 million cereal boxes a year	Sell as many cereal boxes as possible with Company B branding on them and make cereal to sell to the supermarkets with the supermarket's branding on the cereal boxes	A list of actions describing how Company B will aim to increase sales of cereal boxes containing Company B branding and supermarket branding

In summary

An Objective is the overall outcome that the company would like to achieve. (See SMART Objectives for more details)

The Strategy is the way in which the company would like to achieve the objective. It will decide the rules or framework that the plan should follow.

The Plan describes the actions the company will take to achieve the objective. Each action in the plan is often broken down into the following categories:

What actions will the company take

Where will the action be completed

When will the action be started (start date) and when will it be completed by (deadline)

How will the action be completed

Who will complete the action

The plan writer (s) may decide to follow the SMART principles when drawing up the plan. For further information click here.

Example plan

 

What	Where	When		How	Who
		Start	End
List clients to contact and arrange sales meetings with.		4 th May	11 th May	Company Database	Sales Team Director
Review marketing plan		26 th April	28 th April	Assess the effectiveness of each action in the plan	Marketing Team
Research locations for new factory		1 st June	20 th June	Estate agents	Facilities Manager

 

 

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