What does “a strategy” actually look like?

Ask three people, get five definitions

With all this talk of strategy, it is still an *idea.*

It is fuzzyy.

It doesn’t have a common definition of what everyone agrees it is.

So, what am I even talking about when I say strategy? What do I point to and say “this is it?”

Here’s what I mean

Here are the nuts and bolts (to me) of what makes up the strategy – the pieces of it – and how to use them.

When I work with you as a client, I approach your strategy in this way:

Deep dive into who you are and what you offer, and to whom. And why that is important.

What you have to offer, how are people finding it and indicating that they want it? How are they finding you or your business, and indicating they are interested in it?

What are the steps you need, which of those steps do you already have in place, and how effective is each step in taking your people to the next step?

That combination of knowing ourselves, our people, our destination, and knowing the general terrain is the strategy.

Are we going to use a people-based approach? Are we going to use a digital approach? Hint: It’s almost always a combination of both.

Then comes tactics

We look at the terrain and choose the tactics to use in actual practice within that strategy to reach that goal. What vehicles will we use to cross that terrain?

For air, we can choose a plane, helicopter, hot air balloon, parasailing. For water we can choose a yacht or a fishing boat or we can swim.

The tactics we use to implement the strategy have to do with who we are and who we serve and what makes most sense given the goal we want to achieve.

What tactics would be effective for each step of your strategy plan? What tactic do you want to choose for that step, as your method for moving forward (not all the tactics, just one to start with)?

For real, live organizations, this is what it looks like

Here are some ways of looking at strategy and tactics, highlighting what these three organizations actually do:

Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation

https://powerofspeech.org/

What is their strategy?

Their goal is to promote the regular study of positive speech among groups, families, and individuals. They are pursuing a “let’s make it super easy for people to learn the material on a continual basis” strategy.

What tactics are they using?

In order to make it super easy, they provide multiple ways of consuming the material: telephone, digitally, joining a group, etc. The tactics that work for them are the tactics that make the material easy to consume regularly.

Chai Lifeline

https://www.chailifeline.org/

What is their strategy?

Their goal is to let people know how they help, to get volunteers, and to get donations. This is a big goal for online assets to reach. Their strategy is the person to person connection. They put a strong focus on physical participation for reaching these goals.

What tactics are they using?

They use a lot of live events and peer to peer marketing. Bikeathon, chai cards, chai a thon… This tactic works for them in building an in-person connection and leveraging the power of each member’s network.

Agudath Israel of America

https://agudah.org/

What is their strategy?

Their goal is to let people know they advocate for the Jewish people on Jewish issues. Buth on a government level and on a practical, community level. National projects involving many rabbanim, camps, government advocacy - federal and state, etc. state by state divisions. Education, housing. They want to let people know they are working on things important for klal yisrael and important for each individual personally. Inspiring the youth about Judaism.

Their strategy is a multi-channel social media outreach approach. Most of their online activity is about what they are involved in, helping the community, and showing how they help the community. Their contact page is where they have most of their calls to action.

Taking the next step, determining what next step you want to take - happens on their contact page. There are many many options, they list their projects according to interest area. The main crux of the website seems not to be getting volunteers and donors, per se. It seems to focus on letting people know and understand what they do. Because they have so many different divisions.

What tactics are they using?

Social media, blog posts (by individual topic and in general under News)

Now, you

From this quick glimpse of a few organizations and their online assets, you can see that these organizations use strategies that are specific to their goals. And the tactics they employ are used to further those specific strategies.

For organizations both large and small, the effectiveness of your marketing, both online and off, stems from the strategy you are employing to reach your goal.

© 2024 by Dina Gaines. All rights reserved.

Site designed and developed by Urbach Design Group