Strategy vs. Tactics

Posted: March 12th, 2013
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“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

One major topic of discussion at Think! is whether a client who ask for strategy really wants a strategy, or wants a list of tactics.

Here’s a guide to strategy and tactics.

STRATEGY VS. TACTICS

A strategy is a long-term approach to achieving a big goal. It spans over a longer period of time and describes an approach to achieve that goal. It’s often complex and muli-layered. A strategy allows you to set priorities and focus your resources. It should also define what success looks like.

Tactics are smaller, short-term actions to deliver on the strategy. Tactics need to be evaluated and adjusted constantly based on what is learned along the way. But a strategy needs time and typically stays in place for a longer time unless the goal or other macro variables change.

THE DANGER OF TACTICS WITHOUT STRATEGY

Some people are focused on doing. Strategy to them looks nebulous and intangible. It doesn’t contain specific tasks. But random tactics without a strategy leads to short term actions with unpredictable long-term results. It’s like driving a car around without knowing how to reach your destination. And everybody on your team is driving their cars around in all directions hoping to eventually get there.

That’s why every tactic needs to deliver on a strategy. “Running ads to grow a Facebook page” is a tactic. But why are we doing it? What purpose does it serve? Why is it more important than anything else? And once we have more fans, then what? And how does Facebook fit in with everything else?

WHAT TO ASK YOURSELF (AND US)

  • Do you need ideas for things to do over the next few months based on your existing strategy? You need a tactical plan.
  • Do you need an approach in order to reach a long-term goal and the starting points to go about it? You need a strategy with tactical starting points.

NOTE: This post is reprinted from wilhelmus.ca, the blog of Think!’s William Bakker.

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Walk run fly.

Posted: June 2nd, 2010

A good strategy is one that finishes with clear tasks that are capable of implementation.

So many strategies fail to deliver because despite amazing contents, the company isn’t capable of actually implement any of it. Walk – Run – Fly is a cute name for a process that William Bakker devised as the core of our strategy workshops. Walk refers to steps that should be taken today. Run is a road map for what to do next. The Fly phase usually hasn’t been thought of yet (because social media is evolving so quickly) but will become apparent during the Run phase.

In my last post I noted that formulating a strategy requires hard work. Here’s an insight into our strategy process that should help you to formulate your strategy, or revisit it if you already have one.

When we’re creating a social media strategy for clients, we start by examining everything a business could be doing online (the maximum set of opportunities available to your business). Then we analyze activities that you are doing already. Most companies fall somewhere in the Walk phase; either standing still and about to take their first step or they’re walking all over the place.

Next we look at your target market. We figure out who your audience is and break them down using geographic and demographic segmentation. Then we look at what your audience is doing online, i.e. how they actually use social media. There are many different ways people choose to engage themselves and that doesn’t just mean the tools they choose, it’s how they use them. There are tools that help you to analyze these things. You can do a free technographics breakdown on Groundswell’s blog and you can pay for others like Hitwise.

The next thing we need to ascertain is where to focus in the sales funnel to get maximum results right now. Where a prospect or client is in their decision process dictates how you should communicate with them, the content of your message and also the tone of your message. The mistake that most people I’ve seen make is to assume that one message fits all. To be effective, you need to know which part of the funnel to target in order to help prospects move closer to making a purchase decision.

Next, we take a look at your objectives (either outlined in a marketing plan or we extract them from managements craniums) and create a strategy to Walk, Run and then Fly. This is the secret sauce that combines everything outlined above. Implementation is key and yet so often it is overlooked. Allocate small, important and measurable tasks to key people. You must take available resources into account when devising a strategy. Time and money are essential to ability to execute and should constrain the strategy.

How does your social media strategy support your marketing plan?

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Throwing mud at a (Facebook) wall.

Posted: May 31st, 2010

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard enough about social media that you have thought about creating a Facebook page or Twitter account for your business. Maybe you heard someone talk about some social media success stories at a conference. Maybe you’re competitors are using it. Regardless, before you start flinging mud at a wall, its critical to have a strategy around social media communication.

We are all so busy at work already, why would we want to add one more thing to the list? Especially something that could be time consuming and might not get immediate results. Why do I need a Facebook Fan Page? What will I use it for? How will that actually help my business and who is going to manage all of this? These are all very valid questions.

Individuals can communicate with other individuals anywhere on the planet in real time. There are a huge number of tools that now allow us to communicate using text and this type of communication requires far less investment than verbal communication ever did. Having a conversation requires me to sent and receive many messages and cost money if it required a phone call to do it (until Skype came along). As a result of this change, we are experiencing huge uptake in social media use (SMS messages, tweets, online chats, forums, blogs, messages and emails).

Once you begin to embrace the changes that have impacted our ability to communicate with other people it’s easy to quickly become overwhelmed. If you’re just getting started, it’s very difficult to determine what is most important to your business because there are so many opportunities. You cannot do it all straight away and blindly mimicking your competitors is never a good choice. Social media is not free. As Charlene Li puts it: “Social Media trades media costs for time costs”. You have to make a decision on how to allocate limited resources.

At Think!, we base all of our clients’ strategy around three phases in a Walk – Run – Fly process. It doesn’t matter what you call it but the important thing to remember is not to try and bite off more than you can chew. Paul Cubbon from the University of British Columbia (who also helps Think! with client strategy and workshops) has a great analogy for this: if you’re going to eat an elephant, you have to start with its tail. Ask yourself; what efforts are going to get me the best results and what is the most effective allocation of my budget and time?

It’s harder to be strategic than it is to just rush in because strategy requires planning. Planning takes time and is more taxing than rushing to begin. Articulating plans also requires a lot of commitment. Planning to measure performance requires a commitment to execute. Effectively executing a plan takes even more time. Despite this, strategic planning for social media use is absolutely essential.

A clear strategy will show how your social media use and aligns with other activities to achieve your business objectives. This stops you from wasting time and money on ineffective activities and helps you to allocate resources to real results. In my next post, I’ll share the process we use when creating a social media strategy for our clients.

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