Bill Petro just sent me a link to an August blog post by Seth Godin titled When tactics drown out strategy. Seth made some great points as usual and it got me to thinking about the many times I have been asked to execute a marketing campaign when the person doing the asking could not clearly articulate the strategy behind the campaign.  Or the strategy was something that wasn’t a real strategy like: generate a bunch of leads, or fill a Webinar with attendees.

So how do we define the difference between Strategy and Tactics?  First of all, strategy is set once and changed only in extraordinary circumstances. Strategy is a guidepost for everything that happens in a business and encompasses vision, objectives, value propositions, branding, choice of target audience, and selling models.  It is the big picture – the forest and not the individual trees.  By contrast, tactics are not the goal, but they are the means you use to achieve a particular goal – they are the trees.  Unlike the immutable strategy, tactics are highly fluid and vary with circumstances. If you are asking “Why are we doing this?” it is probably a strategy question. If you ask “How are we doing this?” it is probably a tactical question. 

This is why I always make sure my clients understand the “why” before we discuss the “how.”  Both questions are important but they must be asked in the correct order. Flawed tactics can be overcome but a flawed strategy is usally fatal. As Sun Tzu stated in The Art of War: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Here’s a link to the Set Godin posting:http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/when-tactics-drown-out-strategy.html

Carpe Ocasio