In marketing there are two key ingredients: strategy and tactics
Strategy is the overall plan on how a business will compete in the marketplace.
Tactics are they ways the business will enforce the marketing strategy.
I like to tell my clients, readers or audience that if marketing was a travel trip or journey, strategy would set the direction or destination of the voyage and tactics would try to get the business to its journey using the best marketing communications processes.
Those are two very basic ways to define strategy and tactics.
Strategy is more important than tactical implementation. I don’t know about you but I would rather head towards the right destination even if the way I get there is a little bit off as opposed to arriving at the wrong destination in style.
Tactical implementation is the easiest part of marketing. When you have the right strategy you can use proven tactics to reach your goals.
For instance, when launching a new product today, the obvious promotional tactic would be public relations.
However, finding the competitive strategy or what will make customers choose a company’s brand over the competitor’s is way more complex.
As a marketer, I really don’t worry about tactics as there are plenty of professionals out there who will know how to implement the strategy I come up with. The part that gets me sweating bullets is the figuring out the competitive strategy because if it’s faulty, all money, time and energy spent on tactical efforts will be wasted.
Read “Bottom-Up Marketing” by Al Ries and Jack Trout for a better and more comprehensive explanation.
