Marketing Tactics vs Marketing Strategy

As Zig Ziglar famously said, “ Money isn’t everything … but it ranks right up there with oxygen.” Yes, nothing – NOTHING – kills a business faster than a lack of “oxygen”(AKA money). There’s almost no business problem that can’t be solved with more money. Secondly, when you’ve taken care of yourself, you have a chance to help others. If you didn’t go into business to make money then you’re either lying or you have a hobby, not a business. And yes, we know all about delivering value, changing the world and so on, but how much of that are you going to do if you’re broke? How many people can you help?

Struggling business owners will spend time to save money, whereas successful business owners will spend money to save time. Why is that an important distinction? Because you can always get more money, but you can never get more time. So you need to ensure the stuff you spend your time on makes the biggest impact. 

Marketing itself is a vague term that is poorly understood even by so-called professionals and experts in the industry. Marketing is the strategy you use for getting your ideal target market to know you, like you and trust you enough to become a customer. All the stuff you usually associate with marketing is tactics. 

The Internet has literally opened up a world of competitors. Whereas previously your competitors may have been across the road, now they can be on the other side of the globe. 

As a result of this, many who are trying to market their business become paralyzed by the “bright shiny object syndrome”. This is where they get caught up in whatever the currently “hot” marketing tactics are like SEO, video, podcasting, pay-per-click advertising, and so on. They get caught up with tools and tactics and never figure out the big picture of what they’re actually trying to do and why. 

Tactics without strategy lead to the “bright shiny object syndrome”. Yet this is exactly how many business owners do marketing. They string together a bunch of random tactics in the hope that what they’re doing will lead to a customer. They create a website without much thought and it ends up being an online version of their brochure or they start promoting on social media because they heard that’s the latest thing and so on.

You need both strategy and tactics to be successful but strategy must come first and it dictates the tactics you use. This is where your marketing plan comes in. Think of your marketing plan as the architect’s blueprint for getting and retaining customers. 

Many business owners think that if their product is excellent, the market will buy.  Ask yourself, when does a prospect find out how good your product or service is? The answer of course is – when they buy. If they don’t buy, they’ll never know how good your products or services are. Marketing must be one of your major activities if you’re to have business success.

If you’re a small business owner, you’re no doubt given some thought to marketing and advertising. What approach are you going to take? What are you going to say in your advertising?

The most common way small business owners decide on this is by looking at large, successful competitors in their industry and mimicking what they’re doing. This seems logical – do what other successful businesses are doing and you will also become successful. Right? In reality, this is the fastest way to fail.

Here are two major reasons why.

#1 Large Companies Have a Different Agenda

#2 Large Companies Have a VERY Different Budget

The idea is that the more times you run ads for your brand, the more likely people are to have this brand at the top of their consciousness when they go to make a purchasing decision. If you’ve seen the ads from major brands such as Coca-Cola, Nike and Apple you’ll have experienced MASS Marketing.

It’s not that the small businesses aren’t good at “branding”, or mass media ads. It’s that they simply don’t have the budget to run their ads in sufficient volume to make them effective.

What are your marketing challenges? Tell us here.