Digital Marketing (SOSTAC Essay Guidelines)
This short document has been designed to function as a set of guidelines for the SOSTAC essay you are asked to hand in for this module. You might like to use it as a
form of checklist as you enter the final phase of your writing.
Please use a 12 point serif font in your document. Make sure to double- space lines and to leave roughly 4cm margins all round.
The essay will be marked according to the marking criteria published in the separate document, “Assessment Digital Marketing 2014”, already uploaded to the module’s
KEATS page. Please make sure to keep those criteria in constant sight when you are planning and writing your SOSTAC essay as they indicate how you will earn marks.
Please be careful with plagiarism. Be particularly mindful of the issue of self-plagiarism, which is where you use work from an essay you yourself have written on
another module at KCL or any other educational institute (this includes pre-sessional modules).
SOSTAC Essay
• The title of your essay should be something simple which includes the name of the brand you have chosen – i.e. ‘SOSTAC Essay for Brand X’.
• The essay’s structure should follow the sections of the SOSTAC plan. You then add your references list at the end. There is no need for a separate introduction,
conclusion, or implications section.
The Situational Analysis section works as your introduction to your chosen brand’s current online situation. You can use a SWOT analysis to do this, or you can take a
more narrative approach. The choice is yours. I suggest you take the time here to examine the online pres- ence of your main competitors. You can use
business/media/personal correspondence sources for this information and those sources need to be cited properly and put in the references list.
• Make your Objectives concrete (i.e. measurable). Include a time com- ponent (i.e. 50% increase in online transactions by when?) If you do not have financial
information to base financial objectives on that is OK. Find other things you can more easily measure – buzz, loyalty, brand awareness, etc.
• I suggest you start your Strategies section with a consideration of the VP and OVP. The difference between strategies and tactics is a difference of ‘how’ level. In
other words, the strategies answer the first level of how regarding your objectives, the tactics then answer the second level of ‘how’ regarding your strategies. So,
for example, an objective is ‘increase online buzz by 50%’, a corresponding strategy is ‘content marketing to provide online users with interesting, constantly
changing news about how to use my brand that they will want to share with others’, and one corresponding tactic might be ‘invite a guest blogger (give the name) to
write a series of weekly how-to blogs on the website site that we also re-post on Facebook and announce on Twitter’.
• The Action section should just cover the basic skills and related per- sonnel that your proposed campaign will need. You do not need to discuss budget. I suggest
that you also consider development time very roughly and also think about what time of year you might want to release the campaign (or have the site go live) – i.e.
are there any seasonal elements to your business?
• The Control section is where you discuss what exactly you will measure (and how you will measure it) in order to judge whether your objectives are being met. It is
also an opportunity to suggest what you might be able to tweak or change if it looks like you are not on-target to meet those objectives. Both the Action and
Objectives section should not be particularly long – the main focus in the essay should be the Strategies and Tactics section.
• You are expected to use academic sources to back-up your strategy and tactics decisions. However, you should not be doing this by creating any form of literature
review. You simply provide citations out to academic sources which can help prove that a particular strategy or tactic is appropriate. 5 or 6 academic sources would be
fine for the essay, though you could use more.
• The word count does not include the references list. . .
Project Marking Criteria
Structure/Organization
– 10 points Is my essay structured clearly? Is it easy for the reader to tell what I am talking about at any particular point of the essay? Is it easy to see how the
various sections connect and relate to each other?
Clarity of Argument
– 10 points Is my language clear? Have I explained my choices fully? Have I given support for any assertions I might have made? Is my argumentation effective?
Engagement with Literature
– 20 points Have I used the academic literature to effectively support my choices of strategy and tactics? Have I used appropriate sources? Have I used a good range of
sources?
Presentation of Strategy (Implementation of SOSTAC)
– 30 points Have I followed the SOSTAC struc- ture? Have I demonstrated that I know what each of the SOSTAC sections is for and are my choices appropriate for each of
those sections? Are my strategies really strategies; are my tactics really tactics?
Persuasiveness of Strategy
– 20 points Is my SOSTAC plan realistic? Does it follow both common sense and the indications of the business intelligence that I have access to? Does it take into
account the current state of the market? Have I explained fully and convincingly how my choices will effect the target audience and why they will work in the way I
have planned?
Appropriate Referencing
– 10 points Have I cited, quoted, and referenced correctly and fully? Are all my business sources included and fully referenced? Are all my academic sources included
and fully referenced? Is my reference list alphabetically organised?Have I really included all the required publication information for each one of the entries on my
references list?
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