Perfect Life

One of the greatest areas for confusion for business owners is understanding that there are actually two types of marketing… strategic and tactical. Once a business owner understands and accepts that there are in fact two types of marketing, then the challenge becomes understanding the difference between the two and what comes first.

Most business owners only operate on a tactical marketing level and never really understand that you must work on the strategic side first if you’re going to get extraordinary results with your marketing efforts. They mistakenly assume that when you talk about marketing, you’re automatically talking about “Tactical” marketing – placing ads, generating leads, sending out mailers, attending trades shows, creating brochures, implementing a follow-up system, and so forth.

So, what is the difference between strategic and tactical marketing?

Strategic Marketing has to do with what you say, how you say it and who you say it to. It’s the content of your messages to your target market and the positioning of your brand, product and service.

The tactical marketing plan, on the other hand, has to do with the execution of the strategic plan as far as generating leads, placing media, and implementing a follow-up system.

This distinction between strategic and tactical marketing strategies is huge and one you need to be completely aware of anytime you start to talk about marketing.

When marketing results are less than optimal, the tendency is almost always to blame the tactical marketing medium or tactical part of the plan, without any regard to the strategy behind that marketing piece. Most of the times when a marketing campaign is unsuccessful it is usually a direct result that the strategy behind the campaign, what the communication said wasn’t compelling enough and didn’t resonate with the target audience.

Why am I telling you this?

Because marketing represents an area in your business, when done more effectively, can be leveraged. The content of your communications and who your communications are targeted to, can make the difference between a highly successful campaign and one that is a complete bust. You have much more control over the end result than you might imagine.

Also, you need to make sure the person or company that you take your marketing advice from, knows what they’re talking about and they understand that your strategy includes:

• What you say -the content of your message
• Who you say it to – a clear idea of your target audience
• How you say it – how the message is written.

Don’t spend another dime on marketing and advertising until the strategic side of your business is sound.