Strategy vs tactics: the simple guide

Do you know what the difference between a strategy, a tactic, or a plan is? Really?

Most marketing and business professionals should know this difference, however, it is surprising how many people still get the concepts confused. Generally, this can happen because they don’t have them clearly defined so one term can become a synonym for another in the context of that organisation.

As such, let’s jump into what these three things are and how they work together. We’ll also pull in a few more concepts along the way.

Quick author note: there are countless resources out there that go into this in much detail, I am trying to run through this in a simplified manner, and show how they work together.

Let’s start at the top:

Your mission and/or vision

The mission is the reason why the company exists today and what it aspires to do or be.

Larger, more established businesses will likely separate mission and vision out into individual statements, but for smaller businesses, this isn’t really required.

What is required is to have a clear statement of what you are trying to do and achieve, as this is the north star that you look for when making decisions with incomplete information.

Having a clear mission/vision helps a team have a common purpose. After all, when JFK asked a NASA janitor in 1961 what he was doing, the janitor responded with:

Well, Mr President, I’m helping to put a man on the moon.

Your aim/objective

The aim or objective adds some tangibility to the abstract mission/vision statement. This allows you to know if/when you have actually achieved what you have set out to achieve.

The aim/objective should ideally be set out in a SMART format so that it adds clarity to what you are doing as part of your achievement. Usually, this is best done not in monetary units, but something that is more intrinsic to the business. It might be:

• For a SaaS company, the number of new customer signups with a certain churn rate threshold
• For a restaurant, a certain amount of covers consistently over a period of time
• For a cloud hosting service, a certain volume of data being under management

This really gives the team a common cause to get around, with a common metric that everyone can keep an eye on. It tells them how well they are tracking towards achieving the mission.

Photo by Oliver Roos on Unsplash

Your values

Your organisation or brand values provide a bit more of the boundaries of the framework for achieving the mission/vision.

Think of it this way: your values will generally tell you what you cannot do, or what direction you should take when you see two seemingly similar options.

If values are done well enough, they should also permeate into your everyday life within your organisation. I.e. they are lived and breathed by everyone.

One tip here: don’t fall into the trap of having multiple sets of values, i.e. one set of brand values and one set of company values — this doesn’t often work and just ads confusion to how the team should behave.

Your strategy

Your strategy is how to pursue the aim/objective; the process of what you are going to do in order to achieve the aim/objective.

This is how you define what connected activities you are going to do in order to achieve your aim/objective.

Strategy is a great opportunity for the organisation to obtain a point of differentiation from competitors. Think of Michael Porter’s four generic strategies as a good place to start.

Now, most companies want to sell as much product or services as possible, whilst maintaining long-term profitability and a sustainable market environment. But, their strategy describes how they get there. Here are some more famous case studies:

• Red Bull’s positioning as the choice for extreme sports.
• IKEA’s successful strategy of providing a wide range of good quality home furniture at low prices.
• Salesforce.com’s ‘no software’ strategy educated businesses that there was an alternative to frustration-rich traditional CRM software and as a result, coined the term ‘software-as-a-service’.

Finally, strategies can and should have milestones or strategic objectives that form part of the process, en route to the main aim/objective of the organisation. These can tell if you are on track or starting to veer off-course.

Your tactics

Tactics are the individual tasks or activities that, when performed in a coordinated manner, will help propel the team towards the main goal.

They are the ‘single steps’ in the process — the strategy — towards achieving the aim/objective.

They could be things like:

• Sponsoring an event
• Developing a lead nurturing programme
• Running a TV ad
• Issuing a press release

Tactics are things that support the strategy. Now, of course, larger tactics can have their own strategies defined within that scope, i.e. a content marketing strategy, however, in the grander scheme of things, they are ongoing tactics that help the wider organisation achieve its aim/objective.

Your plan

Your plan can cover anything and everything.

I know, that is not really helpful, is it?

The key to planning effectively is scope.

A plan’s scope defines where the plan fits into the grand scheme of things. I.e.:

• A strategic plan will define an overall strategy, with the aim of achieving the organisation's aim/objective with milestones along the way.
• A content strategy will define how the tactic of content marketing will work towards the organisation’s wider aim/objective.
• A content plan or content calendar defines what individual content pieces will be produced in order to achieve the goals set out in the content strategy, which will then, in turn, work towards the main organisation's aim/objective.

As such, you can and should plan as much as possible, but be sure to define the scope of the plan so it is clear where that plan sits in the grand scheme of an organisation.

Where to begin?

Have you ever heard Peter Drucker’s famous quote:

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

It’s a simplified way of saying that an organisation has got everyone 100% behind its mission and values.

Most companies, especially smaller ones, don’t need to have all of these defined as it can reduce their agility, however, by having a mission/vision and values in place, it can really help speed up day-to-day decision making as it provides a framework, a north star, that can guide those decisions.

That would then give you your bare minimum for ongoing decision-making.

Ideally, then you would define the strategy, which would then further help to devise tactical activities and plans.

What about a marketing strategy or sales strategy?

When you are looking to create a marketing strategy, the process is the same, except the frame of reference changes, i.e.:

• Mission/vision is the same for the larger organisation or can be directly written as something like ‘this is to help X achieve its strategic plan’.
• Aim/objective is either the same as the larger organisational one, or it is as close to it as can be in the scope of this plan.
• Values should be the same as the organisation’s as a minimum. You may though want to build on these by adding more contextually specific values, such as being data-driven for marketing if that does not appear in the wider organisational values.
• A strategy is made up of the main tenants of what you will be doing to achieve the mission/vision. For a marketing strategic plan, where the strategic objective is to generate enough qualified leads/MQLs for a sales team to reach their goals, this
• Tactics are the individual actions that you will do to achieve the goals in this plan. By extension, it will then roll up into helping the organisation achieve its own goals.