Strategy in the Driver's Seat
Heinrich Marketing
Strategy in the Driver’s Seat
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
- Sun Tzu
It’s a common practice for marketers, but is it the wisest? The choice to execute a tantalizing tactic before its studious sister, strategy. Why do marketers do this? Digital marketing, including social media marketing, allows us to communicate instantly. And we often feel the need to react and respond to what we perceive is the new norm. Because it’s so tempting to push out our latest marketing idea, we can lose sight of the bigger picture. True, individual tactics can be quick hits and profit boosters, but often, are a short term fix.
MarketingSherpa’s 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report executive summary noted: “In the past year, marketers have been captivated by the ample hype about Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media platforms … [but] they jumped into this new medium thinking tactically about the latest social media platforms they could add to the mix rather than thinking strategically about the objectives they needed to achieve.”
These tactical pursuits aren’t confined to social media, either. For example, shock-value promotions and excessive coupons are also popular, yet not necessarily profitable. Unless your core differentiating strategy is about discounting, coupons will only train your audience to be couponseekers instead of a community of loyal consumers.
“You have to ensure that your marketing tactic is aligned not only with your strategy, which should come first, but also with your brand mission and revenue objective,” says Sandi McCann, senior vice president at Heinrich.