This Is Marketing: You Cant Be Seen Until You Learn to See

 CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
Reaching the Right People
Goals, strategy, and tactics
A brief aside before we get into more tactics.
Tactics are easy to understand because we can list them. You use a tactic
or you don’t.
Strategy is more amorphous. It’s the umbrella over your tactics, the work
the tactics seek to support.
And your goal is the thing you’ll be betting will happen if your strategy
works.
If you tell your competition your tactics, they’ll steal them and it will
cost you.
But if you tell them your strategy, it won’t matter. Because they don’t
have the guts or the persistence to turn your strategy into their strategy.
Your goal is the change you seek to make in the world. It could be the
self-focused goal of earning money, but it’s more likely to be the change
you seek to make in those you serve.
The goal is your shining light, the unwavering destination of your work.
Your strategy is the long-lasting way you’re investing in reaching that
goal. Your strategy sits above the tactics. A strategy might be to earn trust
and attention. A strategy might be to be seen as the best and maybe only
alternative. A strategy might be to have alliances and partnerships that
enable you and your message to reach exactly the right people.
The way you use stories, status, and connection to create tension and
forward motion is a strategy.
A strategy, if successful, gets you closer to your goal. You might need to
change your strategy if it fails, but you don’t want to do it often.

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And the tactics? The tactics are the dozens or hundreds of steps you’ll
take on behalf of your strategy. If a tactic fails, that’s okay, because another
one can take its place and support the strategy you have in mind.
You can change tactics the moment you decide that they’re not helping
you achieve your strategy any longer.
For generations, Coca-Cola had a simple goal: get more people to drink
more Coke. Their strategy was to run an enormous number of ads to
persuade the mass market that Coke was part of the culture that made them
happy—and that everyone else was drinking it too. And the ads kept
changing, because the content of the ad was a tactic.
Patagonia’s goal is to get a tiny group of outdoor enthusiasts to care
about the environment and to express that care by wearing Patagonia
apparel. In their words, “These are all silent sports. None require a motor;
none deliver the cheers of a crowd. In each sport, reward comes in the form
of hard-won grace and moments of connection between us and nature.”
Their strategy is to redefine the way some people think about
environmental impact as well as clothing quality. To give that small group a
label and a tool they can use to evangelize their vision to their friends. To
create insiders and outsiders.
And their tactics range from finding new ways to recycle clothes, to
placing stores in brick buildings, to choices about materials, selection, and
price. When a tactic fails, they don’t abandon their strategy, the same one
they’ve had for more than thirty years.