Understanding the difference between marketing strategy and tactics

Marketing planning

1 Dec

Written By Maria Soleil

Soleil Marketing - Strategy v tactics.png

There aren't many ancient military texts that are still being quoted more than 2,500 years later.

This excerpt from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War gets shared a lot, but for good reason:

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”

— Sun Tzu

Many small and medium-sized businesses jump straight into the tactical side of marketing before considering strategy.

A perfect example of this happens every time a new feature is launched on social media. Twitter recently launched Fleets, posts that are only shown for 24 hours, like Instagram Stories. But before joining the noise and jumping into using it for your business, understand whether it supports your strategy first.

There are many reasons companies jump into tactics and ignore strategy. Usually due to resource, budget and cash flow restraints. This can be a fallacy, because without proper planning, it’s likely you’ll be heading in the wrong direction when making tactical decisions.

What is marketing strategy?

Marketing strategy is about deciding where to play and how to win. So, it’s about deciding your SMART objectives (three at the most) which comes after segmenting your market, deciding on targeting and setting your positioning.

Think about it this way: you wouldn't jump into buying running kit and pace planning without deciding whether to run a 10k, half or full marathon.

You would decide what race to run and plan how your going to train for it first.

What are marketing tactics?

Conversely, you wouldn't run a race without planning out how to build fitness, manage your pace and energy levels for best results.

In a marketing sense, substitute building fitness, pace management and energy levels for Facebook campaigns, social media posts and blog content.

You don’t focus on the means without deciding on the end first. How do you know if it is achieving your objectives for the year? Strategy is what guides you, tactics come from strategy.

If you don’t follow this process, you could end up costing yourself more in wasted resource and budget, by focussing on activities that bear no relevance and add no value to your original goals.

How I can help

I can take you through the marketing planning and strategy process to help you get clarity on your market, your target audience and your positioning. We can work on setting objectives and then run through tactical ideas including content and copywriting, email marketing, social media and campaigns. I also offer 90 day content plans so you can let me take the strain and remove the hard work of planning for each of your marketing channels.