At Lead Genius, we believe in strategy before tactics. We apply a structured and systematic process to the challenge of marketing.
Let’s have a quick look at what you can learn from this video:
- What is strategy before tactics?
- Why is it so important for your businesses to understand the difference?
- How to implement this within your business structure
What is strategy before tactics?
Strategy is that overriding plan about the result you want to achieve and how you are going to get there. Here’s a sporting analogy: A rugby team maybe have a strategy to retain possession of the ball as much as possible while advancing into their opponent’s half. The tactics would be how they are going to do that!
Tactics serves the strategy and the strategy pulls the tactics together to serve a common goal. Strategy and tactics go hand in hand.
Why is it so important for your businesses to understand the difference?
Tactics in a marketing landscape might be publishing ‘Facebook’ adverts, brochures or running a network meeting. These are the tools that you have to help drive brand awareness, sales or promotions.
The strategy would dictate what sort of leads we want, how many leads we need and how we will convert those leads to happy customers.
How to implement this within your business structure.
How do you come up with a strategy? The best way is to sit down and talk with someone such as a consultant or similar, who has experience in these fields and can guide you. We offer a free 30 min strat session if you need some assistance.
When you have formulated a strategy, you can set about choosing the tools that serve that strategy in order to achieve your goal. For example, when a business wants to increase its brand awareness it may decide to do so by increasing website traffic. That's strategy, create more awareness by driving more traffic to your website.
The tactics are the tools you use to drive the traffic. They may use a Facebook ad campaign or a Google PPC campaign or email their data base with invite to a new offer presented on their website.
Tactics not held together by a strategy tend to fail. If one runs a Facebook ad campaign and simply drives traffic to one's homepage one is unlikely to see an increase in sales. The reason would be the home page has not been built with the same strategic intent as the Facebook ad. Rather a dedicated landing page is needed with a simple call to action to convert a FB ad clicker into a prospect. The strategy would then dictate that these leads need to be nurtured over time to become warm leads and ultimately customers.
It's like giving a person a bag of fancy tools and tell he/she to service a Mercedes-Benz. You may have the tools but it this doesn't mean that that person knows how to service the vehicle. You still need training in knowing how to service a Mercedes and how to use those tools.
Remember, strategy before tactics, with the strategies in place, you can set about learning, outsourcing or hiring the skills that are required to serve a strategy.
