Defining Marketing Goals, Strategies and Tactics

by Jessica Miller, Marketing Manager

Marketing Strategy

Marketing manager presenting strategy pointing on flip chart

Setting your marketing goals, strategies and tactics is a team effort. So, it helps if everyone has the same understanding of each of those terms before you pinpoint the details.

And that helps you enhance the effectiveness of your marketing plan and set clear expectations for your team members.

Defining ‘Marketing Goals’

It’s common to see broad definitions of the term marketing goal, like “the aims a company wants to achieve.”

But using a broad definition can result in weak goal statements, such as “increase brand awareness.” And that makes it difficult to measure ongoing performance toward achieving the goal.

A good rule of thumb is setting SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

SMART goal statements include a specific direction, a metric by which to measure performance and a deadline for hitting that performance metric. They also help you analyze if the goal is relevant to high-level business objectives and if the performance metric is achievable.

Here’s an example of a SMART goal: “Increase customer engagement by 20% by December 31, 2023.”

Defining ‘Strategies’ and ‘Tactics’

These two terms are often used interchangeably. While they certainly relate to one another, they’re very different concepts.

Your marketing strategy is the action plan you follow to achieve your marketing goals. For example, a strategy that supports the SMART goal identified above could be “Create social media content that increases the likelihood of audience engagement, such as likes, clicks and shares.”

Tactics are the individual steps you take to execute the strategy. When choosing tactics, consider all the details you need to know about your strategy.

What kind of content does your social audience engage with?
Are there specific days or times of day when your audience is more likely to engage?
Is your social audience different from others in your industry? If so, when do those audiences engage with content on social media and what kinds of content do they engage with?

The answers to those questions can help you identify the right content to push on social media to get current and potential audiences to interact.

For instance, you may learn that your audience engages with video content more than image posts. So, one tactic to support the strategy above could look like this: “Create video content every week and share on Wednesdays at 6:30 pm.”

Need help developing SMART goals for your marketing plan or the strategies and tactics that will help you achieve them? Give us a call at +1.419.462.9000.

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Defining Marketing Goals, Strategies and Tactics

Marketing Strategy

Defining ‘Marketing Goals’

Defining ‘Strategies’ and ‘Tactics’

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