TACTICS

While strategy is the overall direction, the long-term mile markers, and/or the guiding force of how the organization moves forward, tactics are the specific steps that are taken to implement the strategy. Strategy tends toward the longer term; tactics are the shorter-term steps taken to achieve the long-term strategy.

For example, XYZ Company is a health and fitness center. Strategically, the firm leadership has decided to develop a center targeted at the 30 to 65 year-old woman and create a comfortable environment in which she can exercise, lose weight, and learn more healthy life habits. The firm’s strategic geographic positioning is to provide centers in suburban areas where the largest number of these women live. The tactics used for carrying out this strategy include developing consistent messages and advertisements reflecting the mission of the firm targeted to this market segment, hiring other women trainers so the women customers will be comfortable, and providing health and fitness education materials specific to the mature woman customer that will create a relationship between XYZ Company and this market segment.