How to Identify Marketing Tactics that Support Your Marketing Strategy

  Marketing Tactics Checklist
The company you work for has just asked you to come up with a new marketing campaign.  You review the information, frame your mind to come up with the right strategies and you start to map out how you’ll succeed in your marketing efforts.Once you’ve developed your marketing strategy it’s time to start planning out the tactics. How do you actually get from A to Z?  This is where the planning really counts.

As marketers we are equipped with various marketing channels and at times that can often make it difficult to choose which one to use without worrying about opportunities that you might miss.

What if you had a checklist that would help you in deciding which tactics were best suited for your strategy?  I know when I’m confident that I have a well thought out marketing plan it relieves some anxiety, perhaps the same is true for you.

I break my checklist into three sections including:

•  Objectives and Strategy
•  Tactics and Channels
•  Resources and Outside Influence

Now let’s take a look at each one individually.  It’s very important when answer the questions below that you be as specific as possible.

Marketing Objectives and Strategy

• What do you want to accomplish?
• What are your goals?
• What is your time frame?
• Have you identified your key performance indicators for this campaign?
• Do you have measurement tools in place to properly monitor results and determine effectiveness?

Marketing Tactics and Channels

• Will this channel or tactic help you to meet our overall objective?
• Is your target audience engaged with this channel?
• Will this channel support your brand identity adequately?
• Have you used this channel before? If so, what was the outcome?
• Will it support and drive your customer lifecycle and support other tactics being considered?
• Will you able to reach you goals using this tactic within the timeframe that you have?
• Does this tactic support the overall business objectives?

Resources and Outside Influences

• Does your internal team have the skillset needed to implement this tactic? If not, do you have outside resources to help?
• Do you have enough time to create and write messaging?
• Can this tactic be covered by your budget?
• Can you effectively monitor and measure the results from this tactic?
• How soon should you expect to see results using this tactic and does that fit the expectation of the key stakeholders?
• How will this tactic drive the consumer to complete the call to action?
• Are your competitors using this tactic currently?  If so, are they a threat to the success of your execution?
• Does your budget enable us to compete with competitors in this channel?

Using the questions above you should be able to draft out a clear roadmap of tactics that will support your overall objectives and strategy.   As you work through the checklist you may run into some road blocks, but just keep working through it until your plan is solid.  I guarantee that working through these questions will help to ensure that you have made sound choices and eliminate missed marketing opportunities.


By Laura Lake
http://marketing.about.com/