Digital Marketing Strategy vs Tactics
This article was published on December 27, 2025
Categorized in: Digital Marketing
If your marketing team is busy, this might not mean you should see results from their efforts. “Busy” in marketing looks suspiciously productive. Days are spent creating content, posting on social media, and finding new ways to get the word out about the business and the products or services. Yet, without a strategy to tie everything together, the marketing team is engaging in “tactics” not strategic digital marketing that will get results.
How do you know if your marketing team is busy in the right way? How do you know if they are taking a strategy-first approach? Here’s a look at the difference between tactics and strategy when it comes to digital marketing.
Digital Marketing Strategy Defines the “Why” and the “Where”
Marketing done with the big picture in mind is infinitely more powerful. It all starts by answering some foundational questions before strategizing even begins. Questions such as, where does our marking stand right now, what are the business goals, why are we marketing right now, and where do we need to go to achieve our goals, are all important to ask at this stage.
The reason for this is that strategy establishes direction and helps the marketing team understand what they need to go to reach where they need to be. Anything outside of this translates to busy work, and they are simply engaging in “tactics” that don’t have any bearing on the big picture.
Digital Marketing Tactics Are Not the Plan Itself
It’s not that tactics are necessarily bad. They are important. It’s just that tactics should be established long after the strategy is in place. Tactics, such as posting content or creating a social media schedule, are so important when used properly. They are infinitely more powerful when there is a strategy to create the tactical plan. In other words, tactics are the “how” not the “what”. The strategy should be the “what”.
The issue is when tactics are treated as goals. They are not. Your strategy is the expression of your goal. Tactics are simply the activities that are used to achieve the goals. This is a key distinction.
Digital Marketing Strategy Creates the Alignment Needed for Success
These days, success in business is all about alignment. Too often, we see departments within a business operating as if they are in a silo. This creates a disjointed effort that is often perceived as confusing and unfocused to the target audience.
When marketing is led by the strategy, all of the individual efforts, or tactics, reinforce each other. This keeps the messaging consistent and it audience receive clearer, more obvious signals. This is what alignment is all about, because without strategy, even the most talented of teams could feel they are being pulled in different directions, and this could dilute results.
Once you know the difference between tactics and strategy, you can steer the marketing team in the right direction. Their strategy should align with business goals and all their activities should align with the marketing strategy. This is exactly how you avoid the tactics versus strategy trap that many marketing teams fall victim too.
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About the Author: Brick Marketing President, Nick Stamoulis
Nick Stamoulis is President of Brick Marketing and has over 25 of years digital marketing experience. He specializes in solving complex digital marketing challenges through SEO, content marketing, social media, PPC, email marketing, SEO for AI (GEO) and conversion optimization.
