SOSTAC Digital Marketing Strategy Development Training Course

Course overview

Digital marketing teams are often asked to increase qualified demand, improve conversion and justify channel spend while working from disconnected plans, vague targets and inconsistent reporting. SOSTAC provides a disciplined structure for turning business priorities into a workable digital marketing strategy: Situation Analysis, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Actions and Control. This course helps practitioners replace channel-led activity lists with evidence-based plans that define audiences, value propositions, budgets, responsibilities and measurable commercial outcomes.

Over five days, participants apply the SOSTAC method to a realistic or live business challenge. They conduct digital situation analysis using customer, competitor, channel and performance data; set SMART and funnel-based objectives; select strategic segments and positioning; translate strategy into paid, owned and earned media tactics; build action plans; and establish control dashboards. Practical work covers SWOT and TOWS, RACE planning, persona and journey design, channel attribution considerations, KPI trees, budget allocation, campaign calendars, RACI ownership and test-and-learn plans.

Instructor-led workshops combine worked examples, facilitated critique, team planning exercises and hands-on use of analytics and reporting tools. Participants progressively build a complete SOSTAC digital marketing strategy document, including an executive summary, diagnostic findings, objectives, channel plan, implementation roadmap, budget assumptions, measurement framework and optimisation schedule. The finished plan is reviewed against commercial priorities and presented as it would be to a marketing director or client stakeholder.

The course is suited to experienced marketers, digital specialists moving into planning roles, campaign leads and managers responsible for approving or coordinating multi-channel marketing activity.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Conduct a SOSTAC Situation Analysis using market, audience, competitor, channel and performance evidence
• Build a SWOT and TOWS matrix that converts digital marketing findings into strategic priorities
• Define SMART, funnel-based objectives and KPI trees linked to revenue, demand, retention or conversion goals
• Segment priority audiences and create actionable personas, journey maps and value proposition statements
• Develop a channel strategy using the RACE framework across paid, owned, earned and partner media
• Produce a tactics and action plan with campaign calendars, RACI responsibilities, budgets and dependencies
• Design a measurement and control framework using dashboards, targets, attribution assumptions and test plans
• Present a board-ready SOSTAC digital marketing strategy document with justified recommendations

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Digital Marketing Managers — who must turn commercial targets into coordinated channel plans and accountable measurement
• Marketing Managers — who need a repeatable method for connecting brand, demand generation and customer retention activity
• Campaign Managers — who coordinate multi-channel launches and require clearer objectives, ownership and optimisation controls
• Performance Marketing Specialists — who want to translate channel data into broader strategic recommendations
• Content and Social Media Managers — who need to align editorial and community activity with audience journeys and business KPIs
• Marketing Consultants and Account Directors — who develop client strategy proposals and must defend channel and budget choices

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience of digital marketing activity, such as managing campaigns, content, social media, email, websites or paid media, and should understand common measures including traffic, conversion rate, cost per acquisition, leads and return on ad spend. Familiarity with spreadsheets and access to a laptop are expected; experience of Google Analytics 4, Google Ads or Looker Studio is useful but not essential. This is not a coding, web-development or graphic-design course, and no advanced statistics, data engineering or prior formal SOSTAC training is required.

Training methodology

The instructor introduces each SOSTAC stage through short teaching segments, annotated examples and critique of real marketing plans. Participants work individually and in groups on a continuing case or their own approved business context, using templates for SWOT/TOWS, personas, RACE channel selection, KPI trees, RACI matrices and dashboards. Facilitated review sessions test assumptions, expose gaps between strategy and execution, and practise stakeholder presentation. The final session is an application-planning workshop in which each participant prioritises actions for implementing the completed strategy at work.

Course outline

Day 1: Situation: establishing the strategic evidence base

• SOSTAC structure and the relationship between planning, execution and control
• Business model, revenue drivers and marketing contribution analysis
• Digital audit of website, search, social, email, CRM and paid media activity
• Customer insight sources including analytics, CRM, search behaviour and voice-of-customer evidence
• Competitor benchmarking across propositions, content, search visibility and conversion journeys
• SWOT analysis for digital marketing decisions
• TOWS matrix for converting diagnostic findings into strategic options

Workshop: Participants complete a situation-analysis pack and produce a prioritised SWOT/TOWS summary for their chosen business case.

Day 2: Objectives and strategy: deciding where to compete

• SMART objectives aligned to revenue, pipeline, acquisition, retention and customer value
• Funnel metrics and KPI trees from business outcome to channel measure
• Segmentation methods using needs, value, behaviour, lifecycle and intent
• Persona development based on evidence rather than demographic assumptions
• Customer journey mapping across awareness, consideration, conversion and loyalty stages
• Positioning, value propositions and message hierarchy
• Strategic choices for target markets, priorities and resource concentration

Workshop: Participants create an objective hierarchy, priority persona set and journey map with stage-specific barriers and opportunities.

Day 3: Tactics: building the integrated channel plan

• RACE framework for reach, act, convert and engage planning
• Paid, owned, earned and partner media roles within the marketing mix
• Search, social, email, content and landing-page tactic selection
• Google Ads campaign structure and intent-based keyword planning
• Content pillar planning, editorial formats and distribution mechanics
• Conversion-rate optimisation hypotheses for priority journey stages
• Budget allocation using expected reach, conversion, marginal return and test capacity

Workshop: Participants produce an integrated RACE channel plan with tactics, messages, audience segments and budget assumptions.

Day 4: Actions: turning strategy into executable work

• Marketing action plans from strategic initiative to campaign workstream
• Campaign calendar design, sequencing and launch dependencies
• RACI matrices for internal teams, agencies, sales and technology stakeholders
• Briefing standards for creative, media, content and web-development partners
• Resource planning for people, budget, data, approvals and marketing technology
• Risk registers covering compliance, brand safety, data quality and delivery delays
• Test-and-learn roadmaps using hypotheses, variants, sample considerations and decision rules

Workshop: Participants build a 90-day implementation roadmap with RACI ownership, milestones, risks and an experimentation backlog.

Day 5: Control: measurement, optimisation and executive approval

• Measurement frameworks linking objectives, KPIs, data sources, targets and reporting cadence
• GA4 event, conversion and audience concepts for strategic measurement
• Attribution models, incrementality limits and channel performance interpretation
• Looker Studio dashboard design for executive and operational audiences
• Control thresholds, optimisation triggers and corrective-action procedures
• SOSTAC strategy document structure and executive-summary writing
• Stakeholder presentation techniques for defending strategic choices and investment requests

Workshop: Participants finalise and present their SOSTAC strategy, including dashboard specification and 90-day control plan, for peer and instructor review.

Tools & standards covered

SOSTAC, Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, Looker Studio

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions