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.

An unsolicited e-mail I received today from a technical-training company began with this: Dear Jim Hinckley, I am writing to check if “JH Writing & Marketing Services” is seeking external help in BPM related services.

How about that: two major blunders in the opening sentence of a B2B e-mail.  First, what should I think when someone puts my company’s name in quotation marks?  Are they suggesting that the name is an alias, or that my business isn’t even real?  Feels that way to me.  Misplaced quotation marks tend to cast doubt on whatever is inside them.

In this case they also seem to emphasize that my company name is just one of the hundreds (maybe thousands) being slugged into this position in the e-mail by their software’s “personalization” function.  At first glance it’s a small thing, but look at it from the reader’s point of view: If you highlight the spots where you’re inserting data variables into the text, it doesn’t feel personal.  It’s more like a total stranger calling you by name and trying to get chummy with you: just plain creepy.

And then there’s the jargon: “BPM.” I think it stands for Business Process Management, but I don’t really know.  And sure, if I worked for a bigger company, in a certain job, I might throw around the term “BPM” all the time.  The larger facts are (a) not everyone on their mailing list knows what BPM stands for, and (b) there’s simply no reason not to spell it out the first time it’s used in the e-mail.  Then use the acronym throughout and every reader is on an equal footing.

But they didn’t do that, so my first impression of this e-mail (and the company sending it) is that it’s for someone else, a jargon-speaker . . . not for me.  No doubt the writer could have included a sentence or two about what BPM is and why the (“newbie”) prospect should care, without losing readers who have more BPM savvy.

The more complex a service or product is, the more its marketing communications need to educate (at least a little) while selling or attracting leads. If your copy makes the reader feel uninformed or “out of the loop,” your chances of selling to that reader are greatly reduced.

We’ve covered a lot of ground on testimonials in the last few posts . . . but you know how it is when the ideas start flowing, right?  Let’s review the basic steps which have been recommended in building your collection of testimonials:

Research: Find out from your customers (and if possible, from your competitors’ customers) which benefits of your product or service they consider most valuable.  Talk to them directly, or survey them, or conduct focus groups . . . but find out somehow.

Brand Statement: Develop a brand statement for your product that reflects how your audience prioritizes the benefits of your product.  See the earlier post here (Part 3, “The Art of The Ask”) for details.

Ask for Testimonials, using the best practices outlined in the previous post.  Sounds fairly simple, doesn’t it?  Probably the most challenging part is #3, for a variety of reasons: Your customers are busy, some of them may not want to be “featured” by name in your marketing communications (even if they love your product), or there may be other reasons.

Obstacles such as these are why many companies, even smaller ones, choose to hire a copywriter to work on obtaining testimonials for them.  A good marketing copywriter can create or help refine your brand statement, and then use it to ask your customers for the specific testimonial you want from each of them.  Another advantage: the writer can work with your customers to ensure that each testimonial is focused on the benefit it should be.  A professional copywriter also will ensure a consistent level of quality across all testimonials.

The point here is that testimonial editing is a key part of the process, it should begin as early as possible, and it should be handled by a professional.  The result you’re looking for is a group of testimonials that work together to reflect and increase the power of your brand statement.  In editing your customers’ testimonials, your copywriter should seek a balance between broad superlative statements (“Their product is the best I’ve ever used”) and specific, factual statements that prove the superlatives.  Too much of either is not a good thing: all of us absorb so much advertising day after day that our minds tends to dismiss short, empty claims of how ‘great’ a product is.  On the other hand, testimonials shouldn’t be too long.  So cramming in too many facts about why a product works so well is likely to lose the reader.

One other thing to remind your copywriter is that even customers who say they are going to provide a written testimonial . . . sometimes just don’t get around to it.  Always start by giving the customer an opportunity to submit a statement of their own, but if they keep putting it off, your writer should offer to interview them, develop a testimonial based on the discussion, and give it to the customer for review.  The more testimonials you’re trying to get, the more likely it is that your writer will need to do this at some point.  And as long as the customer gets to review and comment on what’s been written, it is a valid way of creating a testimonial

We’ve discussed the need for testimonials that focus on the primary benefit of your product or service.  Remember that you also need testimonials about your product’s less prominent benefits . . . just as the star of a show needs a supporting cast, and vice-versa.  Once you feel confident that your brand statement is true to both your audience research and your product’s benefits, it’s time to start asking for testimonials.  How you go about asking will make all the difference.  Here are three ways to ensure you get it right:

1) Do you have one or a few customers whose opinion(s) are likely to have a strong impact on other customers or prospects?  If so, work first on getting this customer(s) to discuss a primary benefit of your product in his/her testimonial.  Getting this high-profile endorsement early can help you persuade other (usually smaller) customers to give their testimonials, which could help you build a large collection of testimonials sooner.

2) Are you  sure your product will get a positive review from each of the customers you plan to ask?  Like a job seeker hoping for positive recommendations from former employers or co-workers, this is not the place to make casual assumptions.  Before you ask for a testimonial, “put out some feelers” to try to confirm your likelihood of getting a strong thumbs up.  One way is to do this in a B2B setting is to have your assistant talk to the assistant of “Ms. Big,” the well known client from whom you’d like a testimonial.  If asked, Ms. Big is more likely to speak candidly about your company to her assistant than she is to you.  If the word comes back that Ms. Big is (or was) actually less impressed with your company than you had hoped, don’t immediately ask for the testimonial.  Instead, begin trying to address her concerns, so that when you do finally ask for the testimonial, you’ll be in a stronger position.

3) Ask your customer in writing for their testimonial: Yes, it’s fine to use a phone call to make the initial ask for the endorsement.  Just remember, everyone is busy, and you are asking for a favor, so follow up with an e-mail to make it as easy as possible for your customer.  If you don’t, chances are you won’t even get a testimonial. Besides, you want the customer to focus on a specific benefit of your product in his/her testimonial, so you need to reinforce that point in writing.  Your e-mail should:

- Start by thanking the customer for her willingness to help build your business (that’s literally what they are doing).

- Explain that this testimonial can also help build her business as you plan to feature it prominently on the following marketing communications (list them).  Also very important: emphasize that you will show the testimonial to the customer before you use it, so she can have final-edit privileges.  Do this even if the customer doesn’t ask you to: it will increase her trust in you.

- Ask that she begin her testimonial  by focusing on the benefit(s) you specify.  Don’t tell the customer what to say (unless asked!), just ask him to write as factually as possible about how that benefit(s) helped his or her organization achieve a key goal.  If you can, also have the customer explain why that goal is (or was) so important to her or to the organization.

- If it’s a B2B testimonial, ask the customer to confirm her current job title, so you can use it in your marketing pieces.  If it’s a personal (non-B2B) testimonial, confirm the customer’s city and state of residence, and ask for permission to feature both her first and last name. 

- Be sure to hand-write a thank you note to the customer after you receive his/her final OK on the text of the testimonial.  They deserve this.

These are the best practices that came to mind first when I started thinking about how to ask for a testimonial.  I’m sure there are many others which have been or are being used successfully today.  Please log in and share any that you know of or, better yet, have used.

I hope the example in the previous post helped you write a brand statement that can guide you in building a great set of testimonials.  Oh, but I was just getting warmed up!  First let’s backtrack a bit, then move forward to “the ask.”

In earlier posts I didn’t mention the importance of audience research, so here it is:  Your brand statement should be based on more than your own “gut feeling” about which benefits of your product matter most to your target audience.  You need some real feedback from those people, who should be defined as specifically as possible.  For our fictional Sunrise Rent-a-Car, the audience is not just “travelers” or “Central Florida visitors,” but “budget conscious families and business people visiting Central Florida.”

The more your product is like those of your competitors (and chances are your offering is more like theirs than it is unlike), the more essential it is to know how your specific audience prioritizes benefits.  If your company is small and can’t afford to hire a research firm, at least do some online surveys.  Free, web-based tools like surveymonkey.com make it easier than ever to create and administer surveys, and even allow you to graph and analyze your survey results.  Especially if you have a relatively small number (say, fewer than 100) customers and prospects willing to be surveyed, these online research providers can be an ideal solution.

The main point is to take what you learn from your research and use it in creating your brand statement.  Others in your organization may feel a particular benefit has to be the star of the brand statement . . . but if you have the facts on your side, stick to them. If your research shows that benefit X is by far the most important one to your target audience, your brand statement should “lead with it,” and you know you’ll need more than one testimonial focused on it.

In the April 12 post, we looked at a strategic approach to getting customer testimonials for your product or service (we’ll say product from here on, but the advice applies to services as well).  I thought it would help to give an example of this approach in use:

Let’s suppose your product is a car-rental service, operating exclusively in central Florida, called Sunrise Rent-a-Car.  Here’s how your brand statement might look:

For budget-conscious families and business travelers coming to central Florida, Sunrise Rent-a-Car provides higher-quality vehicles and better service than the national car-rental giants.  Sunrise makes your visit to central Florida easier and more pleasant, because we:

- deliver your rental to you at curbside, just outside of baggage claim

- add points to the airline-miles account of your choice every time you rent from us

- guarantee that every car we rent will get at least 35 mpg, saving you on fuel costs

- provide with every rental a Garmin GPS for the customer to use during his/her visit

Remember, you don’t need–and probably shouldn’t have–one testimonial that covers all these points.  The impact on your prospects will be greater if you have (on your web site or other marketing communications) a series of shorter, easier-to-read testimonials, each focusing on one or at most two of these benefits.  It’s usually much easier to get these shorter statements from your customers, because you will be asking them to “testify about” a specific benefit(s).

That doesn’t mean all your testimonials are equal in value, of course.  In the brand statement above, the words in bold type are your product’s primary benefits–the words that you want your audience to associate most strongly with your product.  For each of these benefits, your first step is to acquire either one great testimonial, or a minimum of two very good ones.

For now I’ll leave it up to you to decide what makes a testimonial great (or very good), based on your own knowledge of your industry and the players in it.  But don’t wait until you’ve got these primary-benefit testimonials before pursuing the ones that reflect your brand statement’s supporting bullets.  You need ”stars” as well as “supporting actors” in your testimonial production–because neither type can win over your prospects all by themselves.

Sure, customer testimonials are everywhere . . . but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them on your web site or in other marketing communications.  Do testimonials right and they still can help lift your product or service above your competitors.

Doing them right means doing certain things before you ever ask someone to give their opinion of your product (we’ll say product only from here on, but the advice applies equally to services). The first thing to keep in mind is that you’re going to need multiple testimonials in order to get the overall impact you need.  You don’t want your testimonials to all sound the same, so it’s best to plan out an entire set of them all at once.

Your planning should be guided by a brand statement for your product.  Make it as concise as possible–just a paragraph or two that describes who your product is intended for, the one or two primary benefits that it provides, and the ultimate desired result that it produces or helps to produce.

This brand statement should be supported by bullet points,  some of which “prove” the claims made in the statement, and others that briefly explain additional, less-important benefits of the product. Now, use this brand statement to define the focus of each testimonial you\’d like to have.  Testimonial #1 should focus on one of your product’s primary benefits, and #2 should emphasize a different primary benefit.

Additional testimonials can focus on the support points in your brand statement, but should also refer (at least briefly) to one of your primary benefits.  Focusing like this helps in two ways:

- First, it makes it much easier to ask for and receive a testimonial from your customer.  “Pat, I appreciate your business, and I was hoping you could give me a testimonial about [benefit #1] for our marketing materials” is a specific request that your customer can respond to fairly easily.  On the other hand, “Pat, could you give me a testimonial?” is too broad.  Don’t make Pat (or anyone) figure out what to focus on when crafting their testimonial.

- Second, because the focus ensures that the testimonial will be about something, it’s more likely that the testimonial will have a real impact on the reader.  It also ensures each testimonial will be different enough to be worth reading.Important: Don’t tell your customer exactly what to say.  Assume they are capable of some original thought, and let them express their thoughts in their own words.  No matter how good an original testimonial is, it almost always needs at least minor editing.

Key question, however: If your customer says, “Oh, I’m too busy . . . just write up something for me, e-mail it to me and I’ll let you know if it’s OK to use,” are you really getting a valid testimonial from that customer?