The Copywriting & Design Blog

What is the difference between strategy and tactics in marketing? Does it really matter how these words are used when planning and executing a marketing campaign?

Yes, it does matter, especially when working with a copywriter, designer, or other marcom-service provider.  Compare your marketing campaign to a trip you need (or want) to take.  The first thing you need to know is your destination.  It’s OK to start your planning with a broad answer like “Phoenix” or simply “Arizona” . . . but you quickly need to zero in on a more specific location, such as “The Downtown Hilton” or your trip will not be successful.

The lesson for us marketers is simple: Clarify your objectives—the more specific, the better—before you even think about strategy.  In our trip analogy, strategy is the short list of basic options we have for getting to our destination.  For example: flying, driving, taking a train, teleconferencing (a ‘virtual’ way to be there), or even bicycling (if our destination is close enough).

Just as these are the common options for traveling within the U.S., most companies have certain basic strategy options to choose among when deciding how to market their product(s) or service(s).  They can emphasize high quality, low price, great service, innovativeness, or other benefits.

And while your trip might involve more than one mode of transportation, it’s usually most efficient and effective to use only one.  The same is often true for marketing strategies: Choosing one and emphasizing it in your marketing communications tends to deliver the best results.  Yes, you can discuss more than one benefit in your copy, but the main message of your marketing should be based on a single, focused strategy.
Once you know the strategy for your marketing (whether it’s a particular product, service, or your company in general), then it’s time to think tactics.

Going back to the trip analogy: If you’ve chosen to drive, are you going to drive yourself or take a bus?  If you’re going to drive yourself, are you going to take your own car or rent one?  If you’re going to rent, which company will you rent from?  These nitty-gritty questions about how to execute the chosen strategy are what tactics are all about.

Too often a company’s marketing decision makers will focus on tactical issues before fully understanding their company’s objectives or choosing a strategy.  Even when objectives and strategy are given their due, it’s easy to lose sight of them if the tactical-execution process is very rushed <em>(“we don’t have time to think about that!”) or very prolonged <em>(“uh, what did we agree to in that meeting six weeks ago?”)

What to do about these challenges?  Make the words objective, strategy, and tactics—in that order—a common part of your company’s daily vocabulary.  Make phrases like, “OK, just to confirm, our strategy on this campaign is . . .”.  And at least once a week, remind yourself and others of the difference between strategy and tactics, in terms of the taking-a-trip example above.   Don’t hesitate to share the trip analogy with your copywriter, designer, and other marcom-service providers.  The better they understand your thinking, the better they can do their jobs for you.

It’s an old story, familiar to most of us in marketing: A competitor surprises you with a new campaign. Or the boss insists on having an ad in a particular media vehicle. Or you’re told that the campaign now must launch three weeks earlier. Or someone with clout in the creative-development process says, gee, our ad really ought to emphasize this.

Whatever the reason, suddenly you’re scrambling, rushing to meet the urgent marcom demand that’s been thrown in your lap.  That’s when it’s easy for a copywriter, designer, or anyone to get so focused on what (they believe) needs to be done that they lose sight of the key issues: what’s the campaign’s goal, what its basic marketing message should be, and how best to deliver that message.  In other words, the campaign’s objectives, strategies,and tactics.

These three concepts are simple enough, but the challenge is using them day-to-day and in the right ways.  The following best practices might seem obvious, they are well worth reviewing and adopting:

1) Ideally, a company’s annual business plan should guide its marketing plan for the year.  Even if there is no written business plan (many smaller companies don’t have one), at minimum there should be a clear understanding between the company’s top leader(s) and its marketing team (in-house, outsourced, or both) of:

• what the company’s revenue and profit goals for the year are
• who the primary and secondary audiences are
• what products/services are (and are not) to be promoted to these audiences, at what price(s)
• the year’s budget for marketing expenses

2) Using these four points, the marketing team should take the lead in defining the company’s marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics.  In most cases, the primary marketing objective should be simply the company’s total-sales goal.  If the company sells by multiple channels (e.g., online vs. by phone vs. live salespeople), the marketing objective might be only a portion of the total-sales goal.

3) Each month, the leader(s) and the marketing team should revisit the four bullet points above.  Together they should agree on any changes in the numbers, audience definitions, and product/service definitions.

4) The marketing team also should take the lead in setting the company’s marketing strategy, first at a company-wide level and then for each marketing campaign during the year.  In both cases, “setting the strategy” means deciding what basic message(s) will motivate the audience to buy the product/service (or to take some other desired action).  The message should focus on a primary benefit to the audience, with other benefits supporting it.  The marketing team and the company’s leaders should agree on the message(s) before discussing any marketing tactics.

5) Marketing tactics is all about deciding the best way to execute the agreed-on strategy: what media vehicles to use, how much to spend on each, when to use each, which creative approach to use, and much more.  These tactical discussions should come only after the marketing strategy for the company and the campaign have been decided.  Again, the marketing team should take the lead in recommending the company’s marketing tactics to its leaders . . . and in managing the execution of those tactics.

Note the sequence of these five best practices (you might even call them ‘steps’): Objectives provide the basis for choosing a strategy.  Strategy provides the basis choosing tactics.  While all three can change over the course of a year, keeping them in this order gives the company the best chance of success.  Your copywriter and designer need to understand them just as much as the president of your company.