LESSON 6: PICK TACTICS THAT WILL BRING ALIVE YOUR STRATEGY, DON’T PICK TACTICS BECAUSE MAGAZINES LIKE THIS ONE ARE TALKING ABOUT THEM A LOT.
For example, using a celebrity, or influencers, or KOLs (key opinion leaders) are all tactics. Variations of the same idea. You want to use the importance of individuals to bring attention to your offer. Regardless of strategy one of these tactics may play a role :
Celebrity … using really famous faces and names gets quick awareness. It’s the tactic of “attraction”. It can be used to help bring all kinds of strategies alive. It can be used in all kinds of mediums. Often you hear criticism like “yeah, but it is lazy thinking and uncreative”. Often true. Using the most famous celebrity you can afford is just dumb. Finding a celebrity that reflects what your brand stands for and can add understanding of brand values while getting attention is great. Go look at Nespresso and George Clooney, a beautiful example of a brand character being projected through a globally recognized face. Most commonly and effectively used in strategies like “Look at me” or “We have a distinct style”.
Influencers … using people who have gained influence with your key audience. We get confused by thinking “influencer” is a product of the “social media” age. Not true. Using influencers is as old as marketing ( 1,000 of years ). But what is easier now is tactically finding different influencers for each of your current and potential audiences. Again don’t think “let’s pay this one influencer a lot and we can get her half million followers”. Think “who are our different audiences, which influencers are right to talk to each audience, how can that influencer add value to our strategy?”. It is a niche tactic or series of niche tactics best used when you want to bring alive a strategy like “we get you and your interests”.
KOLs … different again. People with real expertise. Your audience may not have heard of them but their qualifications make them impressive and their view important. Usually, though they are going to be people with high recognition to people involved in a specific field. We have seen a lot of this with food brands in recent years with the use of chiefs of high repute ( think about those judges on MasterChef ). Qualification matters and helps bring alive a strategy that is about “expertise”.
Now all of the above can be applied to Facebook, or television or and email media choice. How you select which medium is again a tactical decision to bring alive your strategy. But you also never have a single tactic in your marketing strategy. Using influencers on Facebook and other social media is an ok mix depending on: who are you trying to reach, will they see your messages, what else are they seeing, where are they seeing it, how much stronger is the message? And a lot more factors.
So think about what social media tactics will you use? Do you have tactics to attract people to the place of sale? The place of consideration?
Finally, a tactical consideration often was forgotten. For decades academics have discussed if advertising is primarily about awareness or reinforcement. The latter is the tactical idea that you communicate primarily not to get attention or conversion ( again different tactics ) but to satisfy people who have purchased your brand/product that they made a great decision. Think about that. What tactics are you using to make sure the people who have consumed what you have to offer are feeling they made a great choice. Do tactics like having a celebrity saying how much she liked the experience, influencers telling distinct audiences that if they had used your brand they were really smart?
Tactics are the detailed ways you bring your strategy to life. The above are just a sample of tactical decisions to be made. Most important is to remember that tactics need to be integrated into a single strategy.
NO.6 THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT TACTICS
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