Why Is Strategic Planning So Important In Internet Marketing?

Narek Gabrielian — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:23:26 +0000

A very important question to ask is:

How much money do you want to make by doing what, by when?

Less than a year ago, I listened to a call between Rich Schefren and Paul Lemberg. Both of them are extraordinary business coaches. While I was listening to the call, I made some notes… and today I would like to expand on some of the points they made. First of all, let’s make it certain.

What is strategy and what is tactic? Most importantly, what’s the difference between those two?

According to Wikipedia, strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. According to Tony Robbins, strategy is a specific way of organizing your resources in order to consistently get the result you want. According to Wikipedia, tactic is a conceptual action.

The difference between strategy and tactic:

In military terms, tactics are concerned with the conduct of an engagement while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked. In other words, how a business is built is a matter of tactics: the terms that it is built on and whether it should be built at all is a matter of strategy.

Same thing in marketing. How a product is marketed is a matter of tactics: the terms that it is marketed on and whether it should be marketed at all is a matter of strategy.

In military terms, a tactic is used by a small unit of the larger the division to implement a specific mission and achieve a specific objective, or to advance toward a specific goal. A tactic is implemented as one or more tasks.

Same thing in marketing. A specific mission, in this case, would be a specific objective that you have to achieve, such as building a list of 5000 subscribers, getting high search engine ranking, getting back links, writing an e-book, getting the graphics done, looking for affiliates, etc.

Here is a visual example for you:

If you imagine that chain, the whole chain will be the strategy and the links would be your tactics. Therefore, strategy is not an absence of tactics. Strategy is simply a specific way you put those tactics together in order to form a plan that will get you where you want to get.

Rich Schefren: An effective strategy is not the absence of killer tactics. It’s the right packaging of the right tactics to get you what you want.

With that in mind, there are two mindsets that Paul Lemberg and Rich Schefren mentioned on this call. Opportunistic thinking — which can be considered tactical thinking and strategic thinking.

When you think opportunistically, you’re thinking: “What’s the pay off?”

When you think strategically, you’re thinking: “What’s the trade off?”

There is always going to be a pay off in whatever you do.

However, what is it that you’re trading off?

Paul Lemberg: Entrepreneurs are time shifters. Time shifters and risk shifters.

What this means is that an entrepreneur is someone who trades off risk for reward.

Risk today, for the reward in the future. They see the opportunity, weigh whether it is worth taking risk for, so that they can build it up and have it worth more in the future.

Paul Lemberg: Opportunity seekers tend to spend a lot of time on the things that don’t make sense.

Sometimes there is a pay off, but most of the time there is just energy spinning around or they spend time.

However, when there isn’t, then it’s going to pay off over time.

Being opportunistic and using solely tactics to make money online is still fun as long as you know that it is not a long-term and you’re fine with it.

Have you heard of Dan Kennedy? I was listening to one of his seminars, and one of the things that struck me the most was this (you might want to write this on a piece of paper and tape it to your wall on top of your desk).

Tools change

Principles NEVER change

Strategies rarely change

Tactics occasionally change

By knowing this, you can now choose what to focus on and in what proportion.

Read the rest of this post for a very important question to ask whenever you stumble upon an opportunity.

>>> Why Is Strategic Planning So Important In Marketing? (Part 2)