“Strategy beats tactics”.

I'm sure you've heard that more than a few times.

But what does it mean when it comes to marketing?

Strategy is understanding what your clients care about and what will motivate them to buy. Tactics are the latest whizzy survey tools.

Strategy is knowing that winning clients takes multiple steps. That you need to attract them and then nurture your relationship with them before they'll be ready to buy. Tactics are things like Facebook Advertising that might work today, but will be rather less effective in a few years time. Or the choice of which email marketing system to use (which tends to occupy 10x the amount of time as writing effective emails despite being 1/10 as important!)

Strategy is knowing that it's way easier to sell more to an existing client than to a cold one, so investing in marketing with lifetime value in mind. Tactics are which lead magnet or initial product you sell them.

Tactics are important, without them your strategy just doesn't work.

But good tactics last a few years. Good strategy lasts a lifetime.  

Understand strategy and you can pick the right tactics and outsource them to others if needed. Fail to understand strategy and you jump from silver bullet to silver bullet and are at the mercy of every vendor who tells you their tactic will “explode your business” or whatever the latest hype is.

So…what's your strategy?