Marketing communication plans are also refered to as marcomms and are the next level down to your marketing plan; it’s important that they build on the corporate and marketing plan and not duplicate them. Writing a digital marketing communications plan is much like writing an overall digital marketing audit and plan, the difference being that your subject matter is about communicating with your key stakeholders, particularly your customers. There’s a marketing communication plan framework (MCPF) which was developed by Chris Fill, but I tend to use the COSTAC framework which is similar to SOSTAC and is used in our free all in one marketing audit and plan template.

COSTAC is broken down as follows:

Context

Very similar to situation analysis in the SOSTAC framework and helps set the scene. Context should be based on research, the objective here is to set the tone and platform to help position the messages to the key stakeholders. Context could include audience awareness, perception and attitudes; competitor analysis, how it will build on the corporate and marketing plan; STEEPLE factors, organisational values, culture and budgetary considerations.

Objectives

Set SMART comms objectives around brand/product awareness, customers attitudes and perceptions e.g. raise brand awareness score by 20% by 2015.

Strategy

Use the 3P communications strategy; Push, Pull and Profile which may include above the line, or below the line communication channels.

Tactics

Break your strategy down into a more granular view. For example, your strategy might include social media communication; the tactics part of this could be a break down into which tools e.g. Twitter and what accounts you set up e.g. a corporate profile, an industry expert profile and a corporate ‘vacancy/jobs’ profile.

Actions

What actions need to be taken? This could be an overall plan or broken down by department or person for example.

Control

How will you measure the success of your communications plan? e.g. Twitter following has increased or sales have grown.

To make it easy, download our free Digital Marketing communications plan template. Enjoy.

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