TurboTactics™

Tactics Defined

Tactics and strategy are often confused. Both terms have been borrowed from the military and adapted for use in business. They are always relative to one another. Strategy is a term that comes from the Greek strategia, meaning "generalship."

Simply stated, tactics are the actual means used to attain an objective, while strategy is the overall plan, which may involve a number of individual tactics.

Here is an example of their relationship in marketing planning:

• Objective: Increase the number of new patients per month from 15 to 30 during the next quarter. The results will be measured by a report review at our staff meeting at the end of that time period.
  
  
• Strategy: Utilizing a multi-faceted marketing mix and an approved budget of $15,000 our team in association with our marketing agency will strive to attract and schedule a minimum of 90 new patients over the next three months.
  
  
• Tactic #1: Creation of a referral promotion for use with our current patients that motivates them to introduce their family and friends to our practice.
  
  
• Tactic #2: Develop a direct mail piece with an attractive new patient promotion and a specific niche focus that will be mailed twice (6 weeks apart) to a pre-selected target audience of 5,000 households in our community.
  
  
• Tactic: #3: Purchase a monthly new resident mailing list for our primary three zip codes and send a welcome letter (featuring our new patient promotion) with a unique/related incentive gift. Two weeks after each mailing a follow-up welcome telephone call will be made.

In closing, the tactics are always the nails...the strategy is the hammer.