Taktical Digital company Multan

Tactical is a social-first creative agency that delivers bold mobile experiences. Our mobile-first approach means that we evolve with the audience and move organically into the future. We cover all bases with our fully in-house team of strategists, animators, producers and social specialists. We are first, different and real.

Strategic Taktical

Strategy. It is starting to become one of those cringe-worthy words. You know the words I mean: "circling back", "data-driven", "transformation", "synergistic", "low-hanging fruit" - the words that make the nails-on-a-chalkboard sound in your head when you hear them in a sentence.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these terms (although "circling back" does need to end, quickly). These words have valuable meaning, they have an important application, and they have practical relevance to the digital marketer.

The problem with some of these buzzwords is that they are often used to make a mountain out of a molehill. When you want to get stuff done, you now have to think of the synergistic opportunities available in going for the low-hanging fruit. And of course, you need to have a transformation strategy before you can do anything. They are massively overused and often misused to the point where they start to lose that meaning.

The word “strategy” is perhaps the current poster child for misused digital buzzwords, often being used to describe tactics, and vice versa.

It seems that everything is strategic these days, there’s a strategy around every corner. You cannot sit through a digital marketing meeting without at least one drop of the word "strategy". It seems that digital cannot get by without it.

Strategy and tactics are defined by perspective

Business strategists will often state the difference between the two in terms of scale.

• Strategy - the big vision, the macroscopic objective
• Tactics - the individual actions required to deliver the strateg
• The distinction is apparent - strategy is the overarching stuff; tactics are the actions that get you there. But even this evident differentiation changes when you look at it from different perspectives
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• Let's look at a hypothetical example. The executive board defines the business strategy for the next five years, profitability targets, headcount and resource allocation, overall budgeting, etc. The business strategy is then executed by the various departments – finance, marketing, HR, production, IT, etc. If we focus on the marketing aspect, the CMO will look at the business strategy and produce a marketing strategy for the coming year. The strategy might include who to market to, what the messaging will be, how to position the product range, etc. From the perspective of the CMO, this is a strategic plan that has long-term, high-level objectives. However, from the perspective of the board, this is one of several tactical plans from each department to deliver the overall business strategy.

• The CMO delivers the marketing strategy to the respective marketing teams. The head of digital will produce a digital strategy, and this will outline the channels to use, the objectives for digital, etc. From the perspective of the head of digital, this is a strategic plan. It has long-term, high-level objectives. From the standpoint of the CMO, it is a tactical plan, which sits alongside the tactical plans from the other marketing teams to deliver the overall marketing strategy.

The head of digital delivers the digital strategy to the digital marketing teams. The search manager produces a search strategy, which identifies how to balance paid and organic search, which keywords and content require focus and how to proportion budgets. For the search manager, this is a strategic plan with long-term, high-level objectives and KPIs. For the head of digital, this is a tactical plan, which sits alongside the plans from other digital disciplines to deliver the overall digital strategy.

Each of these levels of strategic documentation is perfectly valid, they are strategic approaches, but they are also tactical, depending on your viewpoint. It doesn't matter whether the CMO calls the strategy a tactical plan or a marketing strategy plan; it's irrelevant. What matters is that, like Russian dolls, everything fits nicely nestled together, and ultimately everything rolls up into the same bigger picture.

Digital marketing taktical prioritisation template

Download our FREE template to help you score and prioritise your digital marketing tactics – a key part of your planning process that will ensure you’re focused on the activity that’s going to have the best impact. 

Some strategic/taktical

Ultimately, everything has to roll up to the overall business strategy. Like nested Russian dolls, each strategic plan should fit nicely into the next level up, which in turn complements and inserts into the level above it.

Strategic plans at one level are the tactical actions at the next until you reach the top. As such, every strategic level must be defined by the one above it. If this doesn't happen, you end up with a disjoint where the actions are not trying to accomplish the bigger picture.

Digital marketers often get caught up on what is strategic and what is tactical. Honestly, it doesn't matter; it's just buzzword BS. Just define what you need to accomplish and how you're going to go about delivering that accomplishment. If the upper level of that plan is labelled as the strategy, while the more in-depth detail is called tactics, then so be it.

With the busy schedules that everyone has, getting that plan down on paper is often overlooked. Channels operate without clearly stated objectives, or multiple areas don't roll up to shared goals and objectives.

The lack of a plan leads to a lack of integration and the all-too-common siloed operational structure. It doesn't matter what you call it, but have a plan that you can refer back to as a reference point.