Sense and Sophiability

Goals, strategies, and tactics all sound synonymous, but in reality are completely different things. A company’s goals are what they set out to achieve, whether that be to increase revenue by 25%, expand product line by 4 offerings, or increase consumer satisfaction by 10%. A strategy is the general idea or vision that one makes in order to achieve that goal. The tactics the company uses are the singular steps that they use to execute their strategy (Southwell, 2019).

SMART goals take strategies and tactics and uses them in tandem to create the most effective plan to achieve your goals. SMART is an acronym for

Specific (is the goal pinpointing a problem or opportunity?)

Measureable (can you create a metric to measure results?)

Actionable (will this improve performance?)

Relevant (is this goal applicable to the business’ problems?)

Time-related (can this information be used to identify trends?)

By creating clearly defined goals that meet these five requirements (Southwell, 2019), a company can move forward to create a sensible strategy that easily translates into specific actions, or tactics. Staying focused and acting in ways directly in correlation with one’s goals is the most effective way to achieve their objective. For example, when creating a marketing campaign, all parts of the campaign must align. When the marketers use SMART goals, each decision is made in line with the “big idea” of the campaign. Using specific language to communicate the objective creates clear communication within the marketing team, and by using time-related and measurable goals they can identify trends and successes. Their ideas must be relevant to their brand and consumers, as well as actionable in order to make tactical decisions (Grinnell, 2020).

Marketing tactics, or those singular actions that marketers make, align with strategies in order to create an engaging brand that consumers flock to. For example, if the goal was to increase brand awareness for consumers, the SMART goal might be to increase website traffic from Instagram by 15% over the course of 2 months. The strategy would be to gain more followers on the social media platform. The marketing tactics would be increasing the number of posts to 1-2 times per day, using the same edits in each post, posting 3+ stories per day, use specific hashtags, and engage with at least 2 other similar businesses’ posts per day. These tactics align with the Instagram algorithm, in order to gain followers, who will be more inclined to go to the company website.

A business can ensure that its goals are met using KPI’s, or key performance indicators. By choosing which metrics to use, the goal becomes measurable in terms of marketing success (Marketing Metrics & KPI’s, n.d.). Using the same goal of gaining website traffic, a company might use number of visits to the website per month as their KPI.

Grinnell, C. (2020, August 28). Council post: From Strategy to Action: Five tips for Smarter Marketing. Forbes. Retrieved March 15, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2020/08/31/from-strategy-to-action-five-tips-for-smarter-marketing/?sh=6f2395968c8a. 

Marketing Metrics & KPIs. Klipfolio.com. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2022, from https://www.klipfolio.com/resources/kpi-examples/marketing.

Southwell, C. (2019, July 15). Marketing Strategy vs. Tactics – Explaining the Difference. charliesaidthat. Retrieved March 15, 2022, from http://charliesaidthat.com/digital/digital/difference-between-marketing-strategy-vs-tactics-an-example/.