Running an organization without a strategic plan is like sailing a ship without a precise destination in mind or a map on deck. No matter how great a captain you are, you won’t be able to successfully navigate the waters to get your ship to the desired point B.
That’s why strategic planning is crucial for any organization. Tech startups need it. Growing businesses need it. Local governments, nonprofits, advocacy groups, and healthcare providers all need a strategic plan.
Not sure where to start? We prepared 10 successful strategic planning examples for a variety of scenarios. Below, our experts break down each example of strategic planning, along with best practices for effective strategic planning.
Strategic Planning: Your Crash Course
Before we dive into examples of strategic planning, let’s briefly cover what strategic planning involves. In a nutshell, strategic planning is a process during which you define your organization’s long-term priorities. Once you determine those, you’ll need to set goals, outline key steps to achieve them, and define KPIs to track success.
Strategic planning is a collaborative undertaking. The organization’s leadership (board members, C-suite executives, etc.) usually takes charge. Still, input from staff and other stakeholders is valuable for securing buy-in across the organization. In a nonprofit strategic planning example, stakeholders also include donors, program participants, and volunteers.
At the end of your strategic planning, you should have a strategic plan ready. This document outlines:
- Strategic goals
- Current state analysis
- Strategic initiatives
- Operational plan
- Financial projections
- Risk assessment
- Key metrics and KPIs
10 Sample Strategic Plans for Any Need
1. Tech Startup: Expanding into a New Market
First, we have a strategic plan for a tech startup that sells an AI-powered fraud detection and prevention tool and currently targets e-commerce retailers. After doing some research, the team behind it decided CPG retailers represented an ample opportunity for expansion.
To pursue this opportunity, the startup prepared a strategic plan. The plan outlines key strategic goals, such as gaining at least 5 mid-to-large clients from the CPG vertical within a year and generating 15% to 20% of the total revenue from sales to CPG clients.
The plan comes with a solid market analysis that illustrates the opportunity this untapped client segment represents. It also clearly defines target customers and outlines a go-to-market strategy.
The plan is complete with an operational plan, financial projections for the first year, and a risk assessment. These sections are important for tracking success as much as for securing buy-in among investors.
2. Nonprofit: Fundraising for Awareness Campaigns
Next up, we have a radically different strategic plan: this one, created for a mental health awareness nonprofit, focuses on fundraising instead of business expansion. With it, the nonprofit aims to increase fundraising income by 40% and bring year-on-year donor retention to 70%.
The plan outlines the fundraising landscape and the opportunities, challenges, and trends that come with it. To maximize the effectiveness of the nonprofit’s fundraising efforts, the plan lists five fundraising strategies, each designed for a specific primary fundraising source.
On top of that, the plan covers the three most pertinent risks that could undermine fundraising efforts, each complete with a solution to mitigate its impact. The success metrics, in turn, are well-defined and neatly tie back to the stated goals, which will help the nonprofit easily monitor its progress later on.
3. Corporation: Driving Employee Engagement
While strategic plans can focus on financial gains from fundraising or sales, that’s not an absolute must. This strategic plan, for example, seeks to drive employee engagement across a mid-sized corporation.
Of course, employee engagement can be somewhat subjective. So, the plan clearly defines the metrics to measure it and the corresponding goals. The stated objectives include reducing voluntary turnover by 15% and reaching 75% participation in surveys.
To ensure a structured approach to boosting employee engagement, the plan outlines five engagement pillars:
- Communication and transparency
- Career development and learning
- Recognition and awards
- Well-being and work-life balance
- Leadership and management development
Each pillar comes with three core strategies for acting on it in practice. For example, ensuring communication and transparency involves holding quarterly AMA sessions and bi-weekly team huddles, as well as launching an internal platform for news and employee recognition.
4. Online Store: Improving Customer Retention
Next up, we have a strategic plan for an online toy store that wants to give its customer retention rates a boost. To that end, the plan breaks down five strategies for enhancing customer experiences. Those include adding loyalty and rewards perks, personalizing product recommendations, and improving post-purchase experiences.
The plan sets the key goal to increase repeat purchase rates by 25%, but the objectives don’t end there. Complementary goals focus on loyalty program adoption (50% of existing customers), customer experience quality (90%+ CSAT score), and revenue growth (30% of total revenue from returning customers).
To get the lay of the land, the plan’s authors conducted a SWOT analysis of the online store. It breaks down relevant strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The operational plan, in turn, provides a clear roadmap for putting the strategic plan in motion, with metrics directly linking back to the defined goals.
5. Apparel Retailer: Diversifying Product Line
Next, let’s take a closer look at a mid-market apparel retailer seeking to secure its future business growth and maintain competitiveness in an increasingly saturated market. Based on those two overarching goals, the retailer decided to diversify its product line to reach new customer segments.
In line with that vision, the retailer’s strategic plan focuses on introducing at least two additional product lines and ensuring that they contribute at least 20% to the company’s total revenue. The plan also strives to expand the customer base by 30% with an influx of consumers from previously overlooked demographics.
The plan contains an overview of the current state of the apparel market (including major competitors) and new product categories to be introduced. Since the demand for sustainable and inclusive apparel is a key opportunity, the plan outlines how to seize it. Other diversification strategies include expansion to other sales channels and rebranding to reflect the new product line expansion.
6. Healthcare Provider: Expanding Coverage
Healthcare providers, much like any other business, need a clear mission, vision, and strategy to achieve long-term goals. For example, if a healthcare provider strives to provide care for people living in medical deserts, a strategic plan can outline key steps for making it a viable venture in the long run.
This strategic plan focuses on exactly that: opening five new clinics in areas designated as medical deserts. Besides opening the clinics, the plan also sets the goal to serve at least 50,000 new patients and break even within two years.
To achieve the set goals, the provider has a clear step-by-step breakdown for opening the clinics. It involves selecting sites, choosing the care delivery model, recruiting staff, partnering with stakeholders, and achieving financial sustainability.
7. CPG Company: Solidifying Brand Identity
In the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, even when the sales routinely hit their targets, there’s always room for improvement. Consumer behavior can change abruptly, after all. Plus, competitors don’t lie low, either.
That’s why a beverage and soda company with a diverse portfolio may decide to focus on strengthening its brand identity during strategic planning. This plan, for example, outlines the new positioning that would boost brand trust by 20%, all while ensuring its consistency across markets.
The plan includes a SWOT analysis of its current brand identity, along with strategic initiatives to undertake within three years to improve it. For example, one of the initiatives involves revising messaging to focus on health and sustainability. Those initiatives are expected to bring an ROI in the form of 25% more sales for healthier beverages from the company’s product line.
8. Electronics Manufacturer: Achieving Operational Excellence
When it comes to profitability, revenue is just one side of the equation. On the other side of it, you also have to consider all of the company’s expenses and ensure your resources are allocated in the most effective way possible.
This plan for an electronics manufacturer seeks to do exactly that by boosting operational efficiency within three years, both on the factory floor and beyond. It outlines a whole transformation, from adopting lean manufacturing processes and Industry 4.0 automation capabilities to optimizing supply chains and energy efficiency.
The manufacturer strives to secure an ROI of 25-30% margin improvement with higher operational efficiency. Eliminating waste, automating processes, and optimizing the supply chain, for one, is meant to reduce production costs by 15%. That’s in addition to the objectives of high equipment effectiveness (target: 20%) and shorter lead times (target: 25%).
9. Local Government: Strengthening Community Engagement
Yes, city councils and county governments don’t operate like regular private companies or nonprofits. But that doesn’t mean they can’t or shouldn’t have a clear long-term strategy in place.
This strategic plan for a city council, for example, aims to improve community engagement in local government. It seeks to increase participation in consultations and forums by 30% and increase local citizen satisfaction rates by 25%.
To that end, the plan provides a SWOT analysis of the current state of community engagement and outlines five strategic initiatives to encourage and facilitate engagement. The initiatives include adopting inclusive practices, modernizing communication and outreach methods, and promoting participatory decision-making.
To make those initiatives happen, the city council would need funding, of course. The plan outlines its main sources, along with the expected return on the investment.
10. Nonprofit Advocacy Group: Improving Online Presence
Nonprofit advocacy groups need to build their online presence as much as any business out there. That’s one of the most effective ways they can raise awareness and gain traction for their initiatives, after all.
This strategic plan recognizes that. In it, an environmental justice advocacy group focuses on improving its presence online, striving to boost its audience by 50% and engagement rates by 30%. To guide its efforts, the plan contains a concise SWOT analysis of the group’s current digital presence and outlines five strategic initiatives to improve it.
The initiatives include overhauling the website and the group’s branding, enhancing social media presence with a content strategy, and implementing digital advocacy tools. Spanning three years, this strategic plan distributes the initiatives year by year and sets clear metrics to track their success.
7 Best Practices for Effective Strategic Planning
Make It a Collective Effort
To be effective in the long run, your strategic planning should involve stakeholders across your organization (and outside of it if necessary). Avoid performative collaboration: seek input and feedback – and act on those. Walk the walk instead of just talking the talk, in other words.
Who should have a say in your organization’s long-term vision and activities? Internal staff and board members are the obvious choice, but they’re not the only stakeholders. You can also turn to your customers, donors, or community members for input. Involve them from the very beginning and keep them engaged throughout.
Clearly Define Roles and Responsibilities
While collaboration is essential, someone has to take charge of the process, gather and analyze feedback from stakeholders, and ensure everything gets done on time. This usually falls onto the shoulders of the organization’s leaders, such as:
- Chief executive officer (CEO)
- Chief operational officer (COO)
- Chief financial officer (CFO)
- Head of marketing
- Head of finance and accounting
Formalize their roles in the process by creating a strategic planning committee. Outline their duties and responsibilities before kicking off the planning itself.
Bring the Board on Board
If your organization has a board, its members will have a wealth of ideas and input for its long-term vision, goals, and activities. So, bring together a group of board members willing to share their ideas. To make it effective, however, keep the group’s size under ten members.
Involving the board in strategic planning is a no-brainer. Board members’ feedback will help align the strategic plan with your organization’s mission and vision, as well as its governance.
Set Up a Stakeholder Committee
This committee sets the framework for stakeholder involvement in the strategic planning process. It can include:
- Customers/clients
- Beneficiaries
- Community members
- Donors
- Volunteers
The purpose of this committee is to ensure your strategic plan actually aligns with the real needs of your customers, clients, or community members. To this end, ask the committee members to provide feedback on the plan to help shape it in the right direction.
Follow the Tenets of the DARCI Model
How will you decide on which ideas actually make it to your strategic plan? The DARCI decision-making model can be the answer to ensuring all voices are heard and all decisions are fair. The acronym itself describes different categories of decision-makers:
- Decision-maker
- Accountable
- Responsible
- Consulted
- Informed
Whether you opt for this model or another one, a structured, clear approach to decision-making is crucial for making sure no one gets confused or exasperated over how decisions are made.
Collect Feedback at Key Milestones
Feedback shouldn’t be a one-and-done task you undertake at the very beginning of your strategic planning. Consider the whole process an iterative affair. Ask for initial input, draft the first components of the plan based on it, and gather feedback. Then, rinse and repeat.
This iterative approach ensures the final strategic plan truly aligns with stakeholders’ needs and expectations. It’s also the foundation of a collaborative culture, and it fosters a sense of shared ownership among participants.
Don’t Lose Sight of Mission and Vision
If your organization doesn’t have a clear mission and vision yet, you should define those before strategic planning. During planning, keep them in mind and ensure every goal and step aligns with them.
In a similar vein, your strategic plan should also follow the spirit of your organization’s values. A disconnect between your strategic plan and the stated values will undermine trust among both your employees and customers.
In Closing
Any organization needs a strategic plan, whether it’s a tech startup, an established retailer, a nonprofit, or a local government. That’s because a strategic plan serves as the roadmap for achieving your organization’s long-term goals and its overall mission.
Without such a roadmap, you’d have to shuffle around blindly with disparate, small-scale initiatives, unable to make or even notice tangible long-term progress where it matters. A strategic plan is also a must for creating a shared, forward-looking culture across the organization and allocating resources effectively.
Ready to kickstart working on your strategic plan? Save our 10 strategic planning examples and use them as your guiding star. You can learn a lot from these strategic plan examples, from what to include in your plan to how to do it concisely yet in detail. And, of course, these examples showcase how its components should tie into a cohesive roadmap.
Need a hand with your strategic plan? EssayService’s experts can refine your draft or write it from scratch. Have your strategic plan ready in hours!
Frequently Asked Questions
Jennifer is a student currently pursuing a Journalism major. She oversees the EssayService blog team and uses her journalism skills to ensure all blog posts are accurate, trustworthy, and engaging.
- Cote, C. (2020, October 6). Why is strategic planning important? Harvard Business School. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/why-is-strategic-planning-important
- How to Create a Strategic Plan | UAGC. (2023, August 15). UAGC. https://www.uagc.edu/blog/how-create-strategic-plan
- Raman, S. (2024). HOW TO WRITE A STRATEGIC PLAN. https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/hks-communications-program/files/pp_how_to_write_a_strategic_plan.pdf
- Welcome Strategy Leader! (n.d.). https://www.asumidsouth.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Complete-Guide-to-Strategic-Planning.pdf
- Trounce, E. W. (2023, August 14). Leaderful Organizing Tool: DARCI Grid to Clarify Roles and Responsibilities. The Commons. https://commonslibrary.org/leaderful-organising-darci-grid/
- Welcome Strategy Leader! (n.d.). https://www.asumidsouth.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Complete-Guide-to-Strategic-Planning.pdf
- Weller, J. (2019, April 12). Quick Guide: How to Write a Strategic Plan | Smartsheet. Www.smartsheet.com. https://www.smartsheet.com/how-to-write-strategic-plans
- Wright, T. (2021). How To Write A Strategic Plan (Updated 2021). Www.cascade.app. https://www.cascade.app/blog/how-to-write-a-strategic-plan
New posts to your inbox
Your submission has been received!