In today’s competitive landscape, companies must strategize to stay in business and thrive in a forever-changing market.
While knowing basic things like market sizing can help you make the best decisions for your business, it's essential to have a shared document or plan that can act as a roadmap to success when starting a project.
Developing and implementing a strategic plan can help you define where your business stands and the resources you currently have. It can also outline all the considerations and steps your organization should take to achieve your objectives.
To understand the benefits of strategic planning and how it affects your organization’s goals, you must first know what strategic planning is.
Strategic planning is a business process through which business leaders and owners map their vision for the business’ growth and help define how the company will reach its 30, 60, or 90-day goals.
A strategic plan is one of the many tools, similar to an action plan, that helps you navigate and achieve your company’s goals by mapping out strategic objectives and growth metrics to support your organization and stay ahead in the changing market.
Strategic management is strategy implementation. Through the strategic management process, businesses establish ongoing practices to ensure an organization’s processes and human resources support the mission and vision of the plan.
A solid strategic plan cultivates a strong organizational culture and guarantees your company, departments, and teams are all working with a clear sense of direction on projects and services that will have the most impact on your business goals.
Here's a comprehensive overview of the strategic planning framework to help you better understand this process:
The strategic planning process is explained
Step 1: Setting objectives and goals
The strategic planning process starts with strategy development. First, consider your company’s current position, where you are, and where your organization stands in the marketplace.
Then, create a strategy map and draw inspiration from your company’s vision, mission statement, and competitive advantages. Identify and define the long-term goals for the business and where you want the company to be in 10 years.
Your strategy map should include financial forecasting and projecting to meet your strategic planning goals, track progress, understand your financials and expected cash flow, and invest in new opportunities that arise in the market.
Implementing strategic planning tools such as capacity planning or 'Plan on a page' can help streamline your business’s approach and enable you to achieve the desired outcomes of your strategy.
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Step 2: Environmental analysis
As you develop your strategic framework and map out the mission and vision of your company, it's important to run an environmental analysis.
An environmental analysis is crucial for the initial assessment phase of the strategic planning process. It helps you understand the external environment, such as marketing trends, advancing technology, and the competitive landscape.
To run an environmental analysis for your strategic plan, your company's leadership team and upper management should collect relevant industry and market data, employee feedback, and customer insights to learn what they would like from your business.
Strategic planning tools such as a SWOT analysis can help you assess the business's current and future potential and any upcoming weaknesses, opportunities, or threats.
Step 3: Strategy formulation
A successful strategic plan includes a strategy formula that outlines your company’s priorities and goals for the next three to five years based on your SWOT analysis.
Creating a high-level strategy map can help your business organize and visualize timelines for initiatives and projects while drafting profit margins to help with strategy execution. Use related KPIs and critical indicators to help track progress and ensure the company’s progression is aligned with the organization's strategic objectives.
When outlining profit margins for the strategic plan, budget for three to five years, clarify the most important initiatives and leave room for flexibility with market changes.
Step 4: Strategy implementation
Strategy implementation is essential in planning as it involves clear communication throughout your organization. Ensuring all team members know their responsibilities for the strategic plan, how to implement it, and how to measure its success is vital.
Confirm that your team's daily activities align with your long-term strategic objectives. Include key performance indicators in your strategic planning to help map goals, and utilize software and tools to implement and track the progress of your plan.
Establish check-ins and regularly monitor the strategic plan throughout the company to keep everyone up to date, make adjustments, and reinforce the plan's importance to the organization’s goals.
Step 5: Monitoring and evaluation
You’ve finally executed your strategy and moved into your company’s new strategic framework. Now, it’s time for the final step in the planning process: monitoring and managing your strategic plan.
Revisiting your plan regularly and employing management styles centered around a company's strategic oversight, such as macromanagement, can help ensure that strategic objectives remain aligned with the strategic vision.
A successful strategic plan grows with your company’s long-term goals. As new market opportunities and threats arise, regularly revisiting and updating your strategic plan can ensure your company achieves the most out of its goals.
When crafting your strategic plan and defining your mission, it is important to engage and involve your entire team so that they can gain a diverse perspective and knowledge of your company, team, and processes.
As you begin strategic planning, you can align your core values and objectives with your company's vision. Just remember to stay grounded while thinking about long-term flexibility for your company’s vision and strategic plan to overcome challenges and take advantage of opportunities in the market.
A SWOT analysis can help with the strategic planning process by assessing your company's position in internal initiatives and the overall marketplace. Conducting a SWOT analysis allows you to identify unique strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to your company, business plan, service, or product.
Establishing strategic objectives and initiatives for your strategic plan should be based on the resources available to your company and what is achievable through those resources. Be specific and set clear goals that don’t leave room for anything but the desired outcome.
To make tracking progress easier, measure quantifiable criteria in your strategic plan, such as environmental and resource constraints, and ensure your company goals are attainable, realistic, and relevant.
Develop strategic plan objectives relevant to the direction of your company’s goals and set a clear timeline for reaching milestones in a timely and focused manner.
Structure and allocate your resources and budget effectively to support key components of your strategy and achieve business goals. Budgeting directly for goals allows companies to adjust when circumstances change and prioritize accordingly.
Here are a few key considerations to keep in mind when creating a strategic plan:
Flexibility and adaptability in planning
Flexibility and adaptability in a competitive, ever-changing market are essential to successful strategic planning. Long-term projects need to consider future trends, technological advances, and competitors to adapt to the challenges and opportunities they bring to their strategic plans.
Involving stakeholders in the process
It is important to involve stakeholders in the strategic planning process because stakeholders define and review the company’s mission and vision, identify strategic goals and objectives, and help conduct competitive assessments.
When developing the strategic plan, stakeholders will help guide the framework through strategy mapping. They also have a deep knowledge of the overall objective and the roles they'll play in achieving the strategic plan.
Regular review and revision of the plan
Strategic planning relies on regular review and revision to ensure it remains aligned with the organization’s long-term goals.
Depending on the project, it is important to schedule a weekly, monthly, or quarterly strategic planning meeting to assess the strategic plan. Doing so allows you to review key performance indicators and any new marketing threats or opportunities that arise to guarantee your company achieves the most out of your strategic planning goals.
Common challenges and how to overcome them
Some common challenges in strategic planning include stubbornness and resistance to change, lack of clear communication, and overlooking implementation and execution of the strategic plan.
Don’t let that deter you from your strategic planning needs. Mailchimp offers a wide selection of tools and processes to help you achieve your objectives and turn your strategic plan into a reality.