I asked Christine how she would describe tactical marketing, and here’s what she said:

“My interpretation of tactical marketing is the planned marketing activity that companies execute.

An example was Hoover setting up the Training and merchandising team and choosing to outsource it.

Companies attending exhibitions demonstrates tactical marketing along with the provision of promotional staff in place to support achieving objectives.

Leaflet drops, advertising, merchandising, direct mail, and other marketing activities are included in tactical marketing.”

James Bell makes a nice comparison between Strategic versus tactical marketing here, and makes an important point:

“Just putting a marketing message in an appropriate medium for John Smith to hear or read is not good enough. The strategy must derive from an understanding of what’s important to John Smith. Otherwise, this tactical part of the marketing process will be much less effective, resulting in ads that under-perform.”

The Times 100 has an article that compares the two, and comes to a slightly different conclusion - that strategic marketing is the overall long term plan of where an organisation wants to be, and tactical marketing involves using the elements of the Marketing Mix to get there.

They also have a great summary of marketing techniques that should give you a better understanding of how you should plan your marketing activity to include research, strategy & tactics.

You can read more about what Christine did with the Hoover team to improve their tactical marketing activities here.

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