Specific Methods to Accomplish Business Goals
A metric is what you are measuring. A tactic, on the other hand, is a specific method created with the intention of accomplishing a business goal. Each tactic should have an associated metric in order to quantify efficacy.
For example, if you’re goal is to generate new email subscribers, a pop up for visitors to opt-in to the email list is a tactic to generate those subscribers. The metrics by which you judge how effective the pop up is are the total subscribers and weekly subscriber growth.
A good rule of thumb is that for every goal, you and your team should come up with anywhere from 1 to 3 metrics, and for every metric, you should come up with one or more associated tactics.
Tactics are what you or your employees tangibly do to affect your KPI’s in order to meet the firm’s goals, so it’s crucial that the tactics are designed to do what you intend. Growing email subscriptions by sending out more emails to an existing list, is probably a bad tactic. Creating a call to action at the bottom of an email to share the email with a friend would probably be a better tactic.
Make sure your tactics support goals; not the other way around. If you start with tactics—goals and strategy may be misaligned. For instance, if you’re focused on email automation (a tactic) when your goal is really to gain exposure on LinkedIn, you’re wasting time and money.
"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise of defeat."~Sun Tzu
Thanks and be well,
~Your Friendly Animus Rex Team
Tactics will be next in the Align Your Marketing Strategy and Business Goals Series:
Start with WHY | SMART Goals | Buyer Personas | Performance Metrics | Tactics | Tracking | Analyze & Repeat | Selling Alignment Internally | Determine the Value of an Initiative | Selling Alignment Internally Conclusion
~
Animus Rex builds world-class websites and provides no-nonsense, well-considered advice like this to all our clients. Want to know more, or have a question? Please Contact us. We're happy to help.