Strategy vs. Tactics and Brand vs. Marketing

Aug '23 in Other

Strategy vs. Tactics...

In the online business and content creation world, I see endless discussions about tactics, but not much about strategy.

e.g. So much info about sales funnels, VSLs, and youtube thumbnails (tactics), but little about crafting your mission, communicating and differentiating your positioning, and breaking down your audience to understand their behaviors/where they spend time/how they talk about their pain points to inform the tactics you choose (strategy).

I see the need for it, but I'm wondering... are people here interested? Do you want to be more strategic with your brand and business or do you not care as long as you make money and grow subscribers?

To illustrate what I mean, the graphic below outlines a standard marketing process.

It's more detailed than most of us need, but it's representative of the steps a larger brand or marketing team takes.

The supermajority of online biz content focuses on the last few steps (circled) with little coverage of the initial steps, which are foundational to making better choices down the line.

Brand vs. Marketing...

There's also lots of chatter about marketing but not brand building, even though marketing choices should be based on your brand strategy.

People tend to use "brand" to reference a name, visual identity like logos, or the person/product, but those are just parts of the whole.

Strategy is simply an approach or plan, so you can have a...

brand strategy (your personality, value, differentiators)
marketing strategy (your communication and messaging plan with platform choices)
execution strategy (the specific things you'll do for each platform)

... but they are different things.

My brand/marketing experience comes from Fortune 500 brands, where millions to billions are invested into brand building and strategies before the tactics, so I'm curious if these ideas and this language also resonates with online entrepreneurs and content creators.

If so...

What questions do you have?

What do you struggle with on the strategy or branding front?
What would you want to learn?

I'm thinking about starting a free Skool group to help people articulate their mission, brand, and message, but don't know what people would want to focus on so would love your thoughts.

6 comments