I often hear people refer to “Facebook” or “email” or “texting” as a campaign “strategy,” when they’re not. Those are the tactics that will help make a strategy successful, but they, themselves, are not the strategy.

I’m not a military person, so forgive me for speaking a little out of turn. But if a mission is to “beat the bad guys” and an objective is to “take twice as many of them as they take of us,” a strategy might be “to surround them,” and the way that’s done tactically might be “you go over here, they go over there…”

If you think those tactics are actually your strategy, your “strategy” just sounds like “running all over the place.”

Your higher-ups would certainly ask, “And why will you have these people running all over the place?”

The right way to think about that is, “going in those directions is how I tactically implement the strategy of surrounding them.” Boom. Makes tons more sense now.

Same with thinking “Facebook,” “email” and “texting” are your strategy. Your higher-ups, rightfully so, will ask, “And why are those good ideas?”

This series of articles is about building the best campaign by knowing your mission, your objectives, your strategy (which we’ll discuss here), and your tactics.

I’d like you to start thinking of these elements as business-centric or audience-centric.

  • Mission: Audience-centric–you should aim to add value to your customer in some way.
  • Objective: Business-centric–this is the measurable goal you hope to reach.
  • Strategy: Audience-centric–this should identify your customer, be considerate of what it will take to reach them, what resources you’ll need to do that, and what valuable content you plan to reach them with.
  • Tactic: Audience-centric–these are the places where your customer can be reached and also dictate the type of valuable content you create.

Let’s say you’re in marketing for a local sports franchise. Perhaps your mission is to provide high-quality family entertainment to your local community. Your objective is to sell 20% more tickets next year than this year.

Your strategy is not “Facebook” and “email” and “texting.” A smarter, audience-centric strategy:

  • takes into consideration your target audience (remember, your mission was to provide high-quality family entertainment, so your target audience might be parents of young children),
  • what it will take to reach them (perhaps these parents have corporate jobs, book clubs and accounts on social media platforms; perhaps their kids are in elementary and middle school and are in sports themselves),
  • what resources you’ll need to do that (possibly a combination of public relations, media buyers and creative artists),
  • and what valuable content you plan to reach them with (a 10% discount might be valuable to a family of 4 or more while not costing you too much revenue when trying to sell 20% more tickets).

To rephrase those items, your strategy to meet your 20%-more-ticket-sales objective could be:

  • Reach parents of young kids through their jobs and social events, including their kids’ activities, with an offer for discounted tickets in exchange for their email addresses for future marketing.

We’ll talk more about tactics next time, but spoiler alert: You could use tactics like blogs, press releases, corporate partnerships, school sponsorships, and social media advertising to accomplish that strategy.

Of course, there are lots more strategies to implement to achieve higher ticket sales–loyalty programs, referral programs and more–but in any case, consider your audience and what’s valuable to them, then decide what it will take to reach them.

When you’re thinking less tactics-first and less business-first, and you’re instead thinking audience-first, you’re thinking strategically.