gary a. sanchez * Blog * How I Can Help * Corporate * Small Business * About Me * subscribe via RSS
Understand the Difference Between Strategy and Tactics to Unlock the Power of Your Social Media Marketing by garyasanchez
“Strategy is doing the right things. Tactics is doing things right.” ~various attributions, including Peter Drucker and paraphrased from Sun Tzu I recently posted a series of slides from prominent social media thought-leaders as to why social media is not a retail marketing strategy. The point was not to diminish the potential value of social media or inbound marketing, for there are considerable benefits to be realized. Rather, my point was to assert that the use of social media and inbound marketing tactics can benefit tremendously by being used to support general marketing strategies and online content strategies. Starting your marketing efforts with well thought out strategies will help you manage limited resources, help you understand what’s driving success and failure, and accelerate success by unlocking the creativity that exists within your organization.
Goals, strategies and tactics
Before you can speak intelligently about the differences between strategies and tactics, you first need to start with the purpose of having strategies and tactics. The biggest reason is to help you achieve a goal. A goal is a specific result that your business needs to achieve in order to sustain itself, usually through revenue growth or expense reduction, but also sometimes in terms of market share or cash flow. A goal is more often than not a financial measure, should be your measure of what success looks like, and it should be S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-bound). Often, multiple goals are established to reflect the various ways a business can succeed. For example, let’s say you operate a chain