Simple Business Marketing Planning

A Business Plan Should Be A Living Document. Used, Abused, Read, Cursed and Update Every Day!! Knowing how and when to use Strategies and Tactics makes it possible to keep your annual plan from gathering dusty on the self.

Recently I had the pleasure of participating in a panel for BOSS held at the Ferguson Law Center, in Tampa.  I was asked to define the difference between Strategies and Tactics (S & T) which turned out to be an opportunity for me to clarify in my own mind a simplified approach to business planning that I have struggled to create annually for many years.  If you're like me, you've read, heard, watched numerous "experts on organization" teach their business plan methods, most of which get so bogged down in minutia that the plan creation takes an inordinate amount of time. Then once the plan is done it is so complicated it is unusable thus just sits on the shelf until it's annual rewrite!   

In preparation for the panel, I had an "AHA" moment. To answer the question, "Define the difference between strategy and tactic" I incorporated S & T into a simple outline of a functional - referenced daily - business plan.

S & T place in your business and marketing plan is to support your Vision thru Goals:

  Vision (that wonderful dream of where you want to be)

Goals (the hurdles you must jump over)

Strategies (several for each goal)

Tactics (get 'er done)

Strategy is our plan -  Tactics are our work.  Notice how S & T leads       upwards to Goals then to Vision. So, think of strategies as the plan and tactics as what needs to be done to accomplish the plan. 

S  & T is the most important part of any business or marketing annual plan. Effective daily awareness of S & T makes it all happen for a purpose (goals & vision).  Here two things to keep in mind:

(1) If we use strategies to guide, monitor and measure our daily tactics then our business, marketing plan will truly be action plan - a living document - leading us to our vision by constantly keeping our goals top of mind. Question every working moment by asking:

   "Is what I'm doing right now part of a strategy?" 

(2) The human factor - as soon as one creates a vision and a goal one wants to jump right in doing stuff (tactics) which will lead to a shot gun, time wasting, minimally effective method for accomplishment. So, the most important thing to remember is: 

                Strategies must come before tactics.

And, there you have it. A simple, easy to use, working business, marketing plan methodology. As you can see it starts with a well thought out Vision, establishes Goals which really become the metrics of success, organizes goal achieving Strategies, finally gives us an element of time management - Tactics.