LESSON 5: STUDY, THINK, EVALUATE AND DECIDE ON A STRATEGY THAT WILL ALLOW YOU TO WIN: THEN PICK TACTICS THAT WILL HELP YOU ACHIEVE THAT STRATEGY. NEW TACTICS SHOULD BE EVALUATED AND USED AS A MEANS OF EXPRESSING YOUR STRATEGY.
Nothing seems to confuse marketers today as much as an understanding strategy versus tactics. We get confused by terms like “digital marketing strategy,” “content marketing strategy,” “social marketing strategy.” Well of course none of these are a marketing strategy. At best they are tactics as a part of a strategy.
Strictly speaking, these topical terms are of course terrible English and not really about strategy. For example “digital marketing strategy” would mean the strategy of marketing digital; which is not what most marketers want to do. They want a plan to market their brand/product/service. Using digital for sales, distribution, messaging or anything else is a tactic to bring your strategy alive. In a modern world, they will probably have to use digital, content, social tactics, all of them, to make their strategy come alive.
The strategy is the big integrated picture. As a marketer, you are measured and focused on getting desired results: producing a brand that answers the needs or carefully considers the audience by ensuring the product caters to the need. Furthermore, it has to be available at a price and a place that make it accessible and communicate the brand’s story including its features, advantages, mythology, desirability.
Strategies are about the overall plan to tackle a situation. Historically they were based on careful analysis to understand your own advantages within the overall situation and deciding on how best to win your objectives. For today’s marketers that means good market research and analysis and the application of the learning to build a complete strategy, often explained in simple terms, but applying to all aspects of marketing :
– “encirclement” is a strategy … making sure that wherever you target potential consumer is they will find the brand talking to them, available to them. Famously Coke’s “always within arms reach” acted as a strategy that defined everything from distribution to pricing to manufacturing and of course has added possibilities in a digital age.
– “change the debate” is a strategy … taking a category and changing the way people will think about it. When MasterCard developed the “Priceless” campaign, it was more than an advertising tactic, it was a strategy to change the way the brand was marketed.
– “ubiquity” is a common strategy. Think about Facebook. Almost from it’s beginning the premise has been that it allows you to link up and share with your “friends” and that your “friends” are all there. Brilliant. And applicable to all aspects of their marketing.
In the 1970s Pepsi was losing ground to Coke in the USA. They introduced a new strategy built on “exclusivity.” All Cola’s positioned themselves on their physical and mental refreshment. Pepsi now talked about the idea that its brand was for a new generation. A brand for a generation that was young and rejected the ways of its parents. A generation that self-defined itself as cool. The Pepsi Generation. By saying the brand was “for you” too young people it was saying it was not for everyone or only those that thought of themselves of that new generation. A strategy that said, “let everyone else drink that other stuff, we are just for you”; a great strategy that could be applied to all aspects of marketing.
Now here is the critical thing: strategies do not change because it is January 1st. Or because the season has changed, or the competitors, or because the new marketing director, brand manager or advertising agency has been appointed. To think they do or should is wasteful and bad management. Nor should strategy change because mediums do. Strategies are the backbone of decision making. Remember that adage “strategy is the elimination of what is not important.” And then build a strategy for continued growth. Then work out the tactics.
TACTICS ARE THOSE THINGS YOU USE TO ACHIEVE YOUR STRATEGY. MORE ON THAT NEXT MONTH.
NO.5 STRATEGY DOES NOT STOP, TACTICS BRING IT TO LIFE
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