Effective tactics are built on meaningful strategy, that sits on top of solid research, floating on a crystal clear understanding of what you actually have and want. Herewith a (very) simple formula for creating that understanding.

I must be turning into a proper marketing wanker, as I experienced a brief smugness last week after inventing a new acronym. I sat back, sipped my americano and thought, “great, I should blog this!”

I should probably kill myself now.

Nevertheless, there was a mote of sanity in my coffee table scribblings so I share them with you now.

The acronym is S.O.M.A. – Story / Objective / Market / Audience. It’s a quick reference list of the main attributes to cover when analysing an organisation or project for a new strategy. I’m not trying to coin some groundbreaking feat of business theory, I’m not hoping to hear other people using the term at the next TED conference. It’s a throw-away mnemonic to serve as a kind of checklist of what needs to be covered in order to understand where the client / project is at, and where it should be going.

In detail then…

Depending on the project, and resources at hand, one can spend months on situation analysis in order to formulate a solid strategy, be that digital strategy, business strategy or any other kind. I’ve been in circumstances where we’ve just had to do it in a few hours and go with what we’ve got. No matter what depth you go to, the principal factors remain the same. SOMA is one way to define them. I hope it will be most useful in those initial new business meetings where I’m facing someone who could become a client one day, who’s regaling the pained history of the organisation and all the tricks they’ve tried to succeed. In those meetings I try to ask the right questions and convey the right prompts until I’ve slotted as much information as possible into the boxes below:

Story

• History; origins; the Idea
• Status
• Brand; marcomms activities
• Structure; resources

Objective

• Vision
• Mission
• Objectives (on all levels, eg. entire business, project, communications)

Market

• Competitors
• Collaborators (I wrote about this recently)
• Best Practice
• The 4 Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion)

Audience

• Demographics; segmentation
• Influencers
• Channels
• New targets

SOMA is one way of categorising the necessary data on which to found your strategy. You can cut your research anyway you like. I tried all sorts of acronyms, like SHOBMA, but none of the others made a real word, or a cute literary reference.

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