The world is a noisy place these days, and it is altogether to easy to become confused by the enormous list of terms and concepts needed to do business. Loads of business owners are still mixed up about SEO and how a digital marketing agency can help them with this part of an overall digital marketing strategy.

Yet, for many, the level of confusion is even more profound because they hear the word “strategy,” and do not realize that it is not the same as a “plan” where their marketing is concerned.

Digital Marketing Strategy v. Digital Marketing Plan

It is highly likely that you did not start your business to dedicate months or years of your time becoming your own, premiere digital marketing agency or expert. You fully expected to hire a team to do some of the heaviest lifting, and yet you need to be sure that they are delivering an authentic digital marketing strategy.

Let’s just do a quick rundown on those two terms – strategy and plan.

• Your marketing strategy is an itemization of the goals you have for the marketing efforts done. You have unique business goals, and the marketing strategy reflects them and helps to attain them.
• Your marketing plan is the route by which you are going to hit those goals. It is like a roadmap that takes you from the proverbial point A to the equally proverbial point Z, but it also itemizes all of the stops in between. Many of those stops are elements of the plan itself.

It is not a subtle distinction, but quite often a business owner is told all about the “how” of the marketing that an agency is going to do, without working hard alongside the business owner to find out the “what” they are marketing first. 

Digital Marketing Agency Priorities Matter

A reputable digital marketing agency is going to address a few key points when designing your digital marketing strategy, and these will include objectives or goals, the strategy that can help reach them, and only then the plans that will work to bring the strategy to life.

As an example, you want to see your product or service have a much broader market. Your strategy is to find new market segments, and so the plan is to reach out and identify what the new segment focuses on and needs. 

It can be quite formulaic when handled by experts. For instance, you identify the goal, and then they design the strategy indicating what has to be done. They make a plan that incorporates promotional content and individual campaigns, which are also measured. Then everything is implemented, and action taken. Chances are, it will also all be repeated and refined over time.

This is a lot, and if you have a consultant or team focusing only on the how, you won’t reach your goals. Organically uses that formulaic approach to achieve the goals essential to your business success and offers award-winning experts at every step.