Online Marketing: Strategy Versus Tactics
Posted on | December 9, 2009 | No Comments
Strategy and tactics in the world of online marketing are indeed separate, but sometimes businesses have trouble differentiating the two. With the ever-growing set of media channels, tools and technologies it’s sometimes good to sit down and re-evaluate your business.
To offer some background, a strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal and focuses on how the goal will be achieved. Tactics, on the other hand, focuses on the specifics of what will be done to pursue the strategy and achieve the goal. For example, a small business has a goal of increasing profitability by making online sales (strategy) by offering a discount to subscribers of a weekly email newsletter (tactic). Therefore, a strategy should be developed first.
Asking questions like: Who Am I? What Are My Goals? And Who Are My Customers? is a good place to start when building a strategy. With an understanding of the basics, additional questions can be answered to make business planning easier, like How Do My Customers Consume Media? What Channels Do They Use? How Do I Determine a Media Mix? Needless to say, automatically jumping on tools like Twitter is not be a good idea.
Let’s start simply by answering a few questions:
- Who Are the Decision Makers for Your Product? (industry, job titles, company size, geography, age, gender, average income, etc.)
- What Are the Decision Makers Media Habits? Ask current customers. Do surveys. Speak to media vendors. Prospect on websites like LinkedIn and ask questions.
- Keep in Mind Other Factors, like budget, seasonality and promotions.
After the research is done, it’s time to develop a strategy. In this case, the strategy is a general statement of how you’re going to reach your target audience with enough frequency, reach, impact, and engagement. Maybe it’s internet advertising; social networking, radio, out-of-home , or direct mail. At Dinkum, we recommend a media mix strategy to reach audiences consuming multiple media for optimal impact. The strategy answers not just what to use, but when, where, and why (rationale).
After developing a strategy, tactics must be considered. As a review, tactics answer the “how.” The use of online advertising is a strategy, but Google pay-per-click, Yahoo display ads, or e-newsletter sponsorships are tactics. Using Out-of-Home Media is a strategy, but billboard, transit, movie theatre ads, are tactics.
Once tactics have been developed, measurement must be considered. To adequately assess the company’s marketing plan, measurement criteria must be developed. For each tactic, how will it be measured? What is in place to measure your social media? There are programs on the Internet that can help. How are you tracking your leads? Are you scoring them? How are you creating relationships with your leads?
While there is much more to planning a successful online marketing plan than above, the basics do not change. Since most companies have limited resources, it’s often a good choice to partner with an online marketing company, who regularly assist businesses in overcoming the learning curve to maximize the return on their investment.
No matter what a company chooses to do, it’s wise to have a plan in place before the Facebook page goes up, employees start tweeting or the newspaper ads are placed. Have a strategy, then plan the tactics.
Paul Mosenson
Keywords: Online Marketing, Online Marketing Company, Online Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing Tactics
Tags: online marketing > Online Marketing Company > Online Marketing Strategy > Online Marketing Tactics
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