Strategy is the choice of where you'll compete and what you'll deliberately not do; tactics are the specific actions that carry that choice out. In Michael Porter's terms, strategy is a unique and valuable position built on a different set of activities, while simply doing the same things better than rivals is operational effectiveness.
People use 'strategy' for almost anything that sounds important. A posting schedule becomes a 'social media strategy'. A discount becomes a 'pricing strategy'. That habit hides a useful distinction, and the clearest version of it comes from Michael Porter's 1996 Harvard Business Review article, What Is Strategy?
Porter's line: positioning versus operational effectiveness
In What Is Strategy? in Harvard Business Review, Porter argues that the root of many companies' problems is the failure to tell operational effectiveness apart from strategy. Operational effectiveness means performing similar activities better than rivals. Strategic positioning means performing different activities from rivals, or similar activities in different ways.
He defines strategy as 'the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities', and adds that 'the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do'. Without trade-offs, he writes, there'd be no need for choice and so no need for strategy, because any good idea would be quickly imitated.
Porter doesn't dismiss operational effectiveness. He says constant improvement in it's necessary for superior profitability but usually not sufficient: few companies have competed successfully on it over an extended period, and staying ahead of rivals gets harder every day. He also argues that fit between activities drives both competitive advantage and sustainability, since strategy is about combining activities rather than excelling at one.
Side by side
Here's how that maps onto marketing work. Tactics aren't quite the same thing as operational effectiveness, but they live in the same territory: they're about execution, and they can be copied.
| Strategy | Tactics | |
|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | Who are we for, and what will we refuse to do? | What will we do this month to reach them? |
| Time horizon | Years; changing it costs a lot | Weeks or months; swapped freely |
| Can a rival copy it? | Hard, because it rests on a set of linked choices | Easily, often quickly |
| Typical form | Serving a chosen customer with activities built around them | A webinar series, a referral offer, a new ad format |
| Failure looks like | Trying to serve everyone | Busy calendars and flat results |
| Usually owned by | Leadership | Whoever runs the channel |
Translating Porter into a marketing plan
Porter notes that most managers describe strategic positioning in terms of their customers, and warns that the essence of strategy is in the activities. Otherwise, he says, a strategy is nothing more than a marketing slogan that won't hold up against competition.
For a marketer that's a useful slap. A positioning line on the website isn't a strategy unless the business behind it does things differently. Imagine two bookkeeping firms with the same tagline about personal service. One answers the phone within the hour, limits how many clients it takes on, and builds everything around that promise. The other just says the words. Only the first has a strategy; the second has a slogan.
Tactics then follow from the choice. If the position is depth for a narrow group, tactics might include niche events, specialist content and referral partnerships inside that niche. If the position is low cost, tactics lean towards efficient channels and self-serve buying. The classic marketing mix and its four Ps is a handy checklist here: each of the Ps should reflect the same strategic choice rather than pull in different directions.
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This is also why a marketing plan isn't the same thing as a strategy. A plan schedules the tactics; the strategy decides which ones belong in it. Our piece on the difference between business plans and marketing plans covers where each document sits.
Mistakes that pass for strategy
In an interview excerpt published by Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge, Porter lists the most common strategy mistakes. The granddaddy of them all, he says, is competing to be the best: going down the same path as everybody else and expecting better results.
- Confusing marketing with strategy. Porter says strategy built only around the value proposition covers the demand side, but it also needs a tailored value chain on the supply side.
- Overestimating strengths. A real strength, in his terms, is something the company can do better than any rival because it performs different activities.
- Getting the definition of the business, or its geographic scope, wrong.
- Not having a strategy at all, which he calls the worst and most common mistake: most executives think they have one when they don't.
He also names the human problem. Most managers hate to make trade-offs and would rather serve more customers and offer more features. And he says strategy isn't about making every customer happy: you decide which customers and needs you'll meet, and accept that you'll disappoint the rest.
That last point is the one small businesses struggle with most. Every new customer type feels like growth. Porter's argument is that saying yes to all of them is how you end up competing on the same terms as everyone else, which is exactly the race he says is hardest to win.
A quick test for your own plan
Take your current marketing plan and run each item through these questions:
- Does this activity only make sense because of the customer we've chosen to serve? If any business could run it, it's a tactic, not evidence of a strategy.
- What are we not doing because of our position? If the answer's nothing, there's no trade-off, and probably no strategy.
- Would a competitor copying this tactic hurt us? If yes, the edge was operational, not strategic.
- Do our tactics reinforce each other, or does each one point a different way?
Low-budget, high-imagination tactics have their place once the position's clear; our guide to guerrilla marketing on a small budget covers that end. But no tactic, however clever, rescues a business that hasn't chosen what it wants to be.
Strategy is the choice and the trade-offs; tactics are the moves. If you can't name what you've decided not to do, start there.
