A quick Google search will show that this is an often blogged about topic. And as always I'd like to bring it to the Digital realm as the difference (or lack of perceived difference) is creeping into too many proposals as of late. Tactics are being disguised as strategies, and most recently, so are tools.
Let's start with the most recent: Senator McCain at the September 26th Presidential Debate in Mississippi---"I'm afraid Senator Obama doesn't understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy..." (full transcript)
Don't worry, Mr. Obama...whether you do or don't, there are many agencies out there confusing the two.
Now, let's go to the earliest clarification I can find on record: Sun Tzu circa 500 BC--
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
This blog post won't be a lecture on the differences, but know this: there is a difference. A quick recap:
Strategy is the "big picture." This is the blueprint, if you will, the overall plan smartly crafted to guide the marketing program. Whereas tactics are the specific activities that build on each other to execute on your strategy. They are often immediate or short-term means designed to achieve specific goals. The culmination of the tactics and how they are designed is, again, the strategy.
Everyone else likes to bring Seth Godin's description in their blog post, so I'll play along. In reference to skiing (it was January when he posted) "Carving your turns better is a tactic. Choosing the right ski area in the first place is a strategy."
However, here is a more obscure analogy I'd like to pass along:
The objective is to win the war.
The strategy is to take the hill.
The tactics are "skinny guys behind the trees, fat guys behind the rock."
But there is a new confusion that has risen up with all the hype and gold rush mentality of everyone jumping into the Digital marketing arena: Tools. Not that tools are new, but tools are becoming strategies somehow.
Tools are not strategies.
Tools are tools. Nothing more. If part of a proper strategy, and used to achieve specific tactics, the new social media tools can do great things as part of any program. But writing a proposal that simply states "social networking, twitter, blog outreach, and a facebook page" is not a proposal with a strategy, it's a laundry list of tools. Twitter is not a strategy, nor is it even a tactic. A tactic would be to use Twitter to search for recent Tweets on IT problems in your area and then Tweeting them back about how you can help them. I'd like to see that in a proposal. Now, granted, Facebook (or any of the social networking sites out there) is a tool and a page could be seen as a tactic. But what is the strategy? What goes on that page? How does it fit into the bigger picture? Or does it even fit in the bigger picture?
There is a bigger picture, right?
More times than not....No. Chris Brogan has a nice post about how social media tools are like phones and in his recent keynote here in St. Louis, I chuckled when he asked "What's your phone strategy?" Sounds kind of silly when you put it like that. But that's what's being written in hundreds of proposals every week. And, for the next 15 minutes I guess, they will continue to look like Digital rock stars for just proposing that their client use diigo. Just do me one favor. To get through this period quickly, simply ask them "Why?"
Seth Godin also said "It takes real guts to abandon a strategy, especially if you've gotten super good at the tactics. That's precisely the reason that switching strategies is often such a good idea. Because your competition is afraid to."
I'd like to add that it takes some intelligence and participatory experience to even have a digital marketing strategy in the first place. That's why having one is a good idea. Because your competition probably doesn't have one.
More to come...
