Navigating the overwhelming world of marketing tactics—how do you choose the right one? How are you marketing your product or service to your audience? Is it even working?!

Marketing Tactics Vs Strategy: What’s the Difference?

While marketing tactics and marketing strategy are closely related, they serve different purposes. Marketing strategy outlines the overall plan and big-picture approach to achieve the company’s goals, while marketing tactics focus on the specific actions and steps taken to execute the strategy. In simpler terms, strategy is the “what” and tactics are the “how”.

Marketing strategy involves identifying target markets, defining value propositions, and positioning the brand within the market. On the other hand, marketing tactics involve activities such as advertising, social media campaigns, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), summits, retreats, podcasts, bundles, and more. It’s crucial to have a well-defined strategy in place before implementing various marketing tactics to ensure they align with your overall business objectives.

What are Marketing Tactics?

A marketing tactic is the actions that you take to succeed and navigate a challenge. But let’s back up a second…

Before we can discuss marketing tactics and really grasp what they are – we need to back up and discuss what a marketing strategy is.

Your strategy is step one of figuring out how you’re going to market your business. The strategy is where you figure out how you’ll deal with a challenge. It’s where you specifically outlined the marketing direction, established your goals, got clarity on positioning your services or products, and made informed decisions on where to allocate resources.

Your tactics are what build out your plan and the specific actions that you take to make the goals of the strategy a reality.

Choosing the Right Marketing Tactics

When I’m writing a marketing strategy and 90-day plan for a client, I look at a few things.

• Offers: Depending on what you sell, some tactics are a more natural fit.
• Timelines: Some tactics take longer to execute than others. For example, hosting a summit for list growth takes a lot longer to pull together than a Facebook Ads campaign. Not only do I look at the timeline to execute the strategy but also how long it takes to deliver results. Some strategies are more of a long play while others can yield immediate results.
• Experience level: Not all tactics are made for beginners! If you’re comparing your marketing to someone 10-steps ahead of you and what they’re doing currently to “be successful” you’re likely missing what they did in the beginning that lifted them to that level.
• If they’ll need stakeholders (and if they’re okay with collaborators): Not every business strategy or marketing strategy need collaboration to be successful. But sometimes having affiliates and other collaboration partners can be extremely beneficial!
• Anticipated expenses and budget: I love tactics that leverage what you already have and know in your business! But sometimes there are expenses that are necessary to leverage a tactic.
• Customer journey: Tactics can fit into different parts of your funnel and be seen by different people in your audience and buyers journey. Someone in the interest stage is much different than someone in the action stage! How can your tactics support your customer journey?
• Goals and needs: The goal and problem the tactic is solving should be super clear before you even start to execute. What are you looking for the results of this tactic to be? That can range from things like email list growth or sales revenue or even SEO benefits and credibility. I also like to look at the needs of the overall business here too. What do you need for the season of business you’re in?
• Audience: I’m NOT big at saying or even asking “where does the audience hangout?” because honestly – your audience is everywhere. But I do consider how they’re used to consuming content and how we can not only get in front of how they consume content but also shake up what they’re used to.

Setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Whenever you’re trying a new tactic or adding a tactic to your marketing plan, it’s important to measure the success. Some tactics have a longer runway before you’ll be able to measure the success and others you can see results from fairly instantly. Here are some KPIs you may consider:

• Sales Revenue: Did the tactic increase your bottom line?
• Cost per Lead (CPL): How much did it cost you to get a lead?
• Customer Acquisition Cost: How much did it cost to aquire the customer?
• Leads Generated: How many leads did the tactic get you?

There are a ton of different KPIs depending on the tactic you’re using and not every KPI applies to every tactic.

Applying Tactics to your Marketing Plan

I’m a big believer in having a 90-day Marketing Plan. We can ALL commit to something for 90-days and that’s the perfect amount of time to test something new. It takes 90-days to see results from the marketing you do now.

The easiest way to apply tactics to your marketing plan is to pull out a calendar (I like a paper calendar for this!) and start laying out the tactic. If you don’t know how exactly to use a tactic, begin mapping out the investments, team, or education you’ll need to run with your chosen tactic!

Final Thoughts

Navigating the intricate web of marketing tactics and strategies is no small feat. However, with an understanding of the difference between the two and the knowledge of how they work in tandem, you’re already several steps ahead in the game. Remember, strategy provides the roadmap, while tactics are the vehicles driving you to your destination.

It’s essential to approach marketing with intentionality and clarity. Before diving headlong into any tactic, ask yourself if it aligns with your broader strategy and business goals. The right tactics, chosen thoughtfully and executed well, can propel your brand to success, but mismatched or haphazardly selected tactics can waste precious resources.

While the ever-evolving digital landscape might introduce new tactics and tools regularly, the fundamental principles remain: know your audience, measure your results, and continuously adapt.

In the end, the journey of marketing is one of experimentation, learning, and refinement. So, take the time to understand the nuances, test different approaches, and find what resonates best with your brand and audience. The path to marketing success is seldom linear, but with determination and insight, you can navigate its twists and turns with confidence.

But why do it alone? I’ve created a Marketing Matchmaker mini-course and Airtable base where you can sort through Marketing Tactics. Each tactic is broken down in detail to provide you with a deep understanding of how it works and its potential impact on your business. The best part? It should only take you 10 minutes to have a plan for what marketing tactic you’re going to employ next AND you’ll know what to expect before you get into it.