What Is the Difference Between Strategies vs. Tactics?

As a business owner, you know that having a solid plan is crucial for success. Besides keeping everyone on the same page, planning sets a direction for your business, ensuring consistent results that align with your long-term vision.

When developing a business plan for the future, you’ll likely combine several elements that differ in purpose and scope, including a business strategy, tactics, and an operational plan.

Let’s take a closer look at these three elements, explore why you need them, and share a few examples.

Strategic Planning vs. Tactical Planning vs. Operational Planning

These definitions will give you a better idea of what the different levels of planning entail.

Strategic Planning

You can think of your business strategy as a plan that you implement to achieve specific business goals while establishing a path forward that aligns with your company’s mission and values. A good example is a business deciding to differentiate its products by being transparent about carbon emissions to reflect its environmental values.

A solid strategy will typically include a desired outcome, such as increasing brand loyalty or gaining market shares.

Tactical Planning

A tactic is an action you can implement to achieve a specific goal. In our example, a tactic would be to release monthly carbon emission reports on social media to increase transparency and keep prospective clients engaged.

While your strategic plan would typically focus on your long term vision, good tactics should inform your strategy execution with actions you can take daily or weekly.

Operational Planning

Operational planning connects strategy and tactics by identifying the concrete steps you can take to make your vision come to life. It can involve looking at your finances, gathering insights from different teams, or getting help from a consultant.

How Strategic Planning, Tactical Planning, and Operational Planning Work Together

The main objective of planning is to create a clear path forward and unlock growth opportunities for your business. While focusing on the big picture can be tempting, planning needs to happen at every level.

Defining the Differences

To sum up, your strategic plan is a company-wide roadmap that sets a course for your business. You can break down this overarching goal into short term actions or tactics, and the process used to identify these specific actions is known as operational planning.

These different levels of planning are equally important, but they differ in terms of purpose and scope.

Purpose

The purpose is the reason behind each level of business planning. Strategy, tactics, and operational planning serve different purposes.

Strategic Planning	Business Tactics	Operational Planning
Acts as a roadmap for your different teams, keeping everyone in the loop and providing a clear plan of action that echoes your company’s mission.	Breaks down your high level strategy into smaller achievable steps you can take daily, weekly, or monthly.	Helps you identify the best way to achieve your strategic objectives.
Ensures you achieve your broader goals on time and on budget.	Shapes your day-to-day activities with short term actions that support your long term success without you having to constantly refer to your ultimate goal.	Gives you a realistic insight into your capabilities and challenges, potentially leading to an updated long term strategy.
Provides a clear picture of where you want to go and makes you reactive if your approach requires adjustments.	Facilitates delegating tasks to teams or employees and ensures everyone can actively contribute to your mission.	Informs decision-making and ensures consistency in your day-to-day activities.
Creates a sense of belonging and a shared vision for your employees, strengthening your company culture.	Makes broader goals feel more tangible and achievable.	Ensures you’re heading in the right direction, allows you to measure key results, and helps you achieve your goals within a finite timeline.

Scope

Strategy and tactics are important elements of your business planning process, but they differ in terms of scope.

Strategy defines a roadmap that you develop to create a clear path between point A and point B in keeping with your core mission and values. Tactics are the smaller steps you’ll take on the way from point A to point B.

A good tactic should have a scope that doesn’t exceed specific actions or tasks. Your strategy should have a much broader scope that encompasses several teams and processes as well as annual business goals.

Ideally, you should have some specific tactics in mind when deciding on a successful strategy, but your tactics can be a flexible component that you can adjust through testing and measuring results with key performance indicators.

Operational planning focuses on the tactical execution of your strategy and tactics. It can vary in terms of scope since you might have to alternate between broad strategic goals and identifying the right tactics for each team or employee.

Besides looking at available resources the business can leverage, operational planning should consider external factors that could impact or support your ability to execute your strategy.

Strategy Vs Tactics Vs Operational Planning: Examples

A winning strategy calls for connecting strategy, tactics, and operational planning. It’s also important to keep in mind that your approach will vary based on your business size, industry, and growth stage.

Strategic Planning Process Examples

Strategic thinking is about taking conscious steps to shape your business’ future. It can take different forms.

A Good Strategy for a Small Business

A small business owner will typically review the overarching strategy once a year. In our example, a small business defines its mission as offering an alternative to fast fashion with clothes made from recycled materials.

The goal is to keep the products affordable while connecting with the target audience over shared environmental values. A SWOT assessment reveals that the business has $5,000 in funding and three employees, but lacks visibility on online e-commerce platforms.

The business owner decides to focus on boosting online visibility, turning clicks into sales, and reinvesting profits to further enhance visibility. The strategic plan establishes quarterly objectives, including increasing website sales by 5% and increasing third-party e-commerce platform sales by 4%.

Corporate Strategy Example

Strategic planning typically involves more stakeholders for large corporations. The scope can be broader and involve multiple teams.

In our example, a corporation is in the process of moving away from a long legacy and building a more modern business model that aligns with a changing competitive landscape.

The board of directors decides to explore ways of using AI to gain a competitive edge. The board develops an assessment plan that will identify processes the corporation could automate and look for new services the company could offer with AI.

Healthcare Strategy Example

In our example, an optometry practice sets an annual business goal of improving the quality of care offered to patients, growing its outreach via a new marketing strategy that emphasizes education, and leveraging new technology to cut costs.

The strategic plan includes investing in training to improve compliance with digital health records requirements, outsourcing marketing efforts, and remodeling the practice to deliver a better experience.

Tactical Planning Process Examples

Let’s take a closer look at how these three businesses will achieve their overall strategy with the right tactics.

Small Business Tactics Examples

With $5,000 in funding, the small business can establish a $400 monthly budget for paid ads on search and social media. One employee is responsible for generating 20 impressions a day and is given specific criteria for targeting keywords and profiles.

Another employee is in charge of creating a new listing format with improved product images that will boost visibility on e-commerce platforms. This employee will also study and implement search engine optimization tactics to get more traffic for these product listings.

Corporate Tactics

The board of directors decides to have a multidisciplinary team meet once a week to experiment with different AI tools and find interesting use cases. If these brainstorming sessions don’t create enough value, the contingency plan is to explore merging opportunities with other corporations with successful AI strategies in place.

The board also decides that the sales department is a good candidate for automation. The head of this department will submit a model of the sales funnel and identify the touchpoints that can be automated with AI, starting with a customized email series.

Healthcare Tactics

The practice’s owner decides to reach out to other optometrists in the area for advice on designing a modern space for the remodeling project. Employees will test different software products and choose a solution that streamlines the keeping of electronic records.

The practice will also contract a marketing vendor who will develop five monthly blog posts as well as an educational packet in print format.

Operational Planning Process Examples

Here’s how these three businesses identified the tactics outlined above with operational planning.

Small Business Operational Planning

Based on their personal experience, the owner decided that paid ads made sense for gaining a competitive advantage. The business also plans on monitoring sales numbers to track progress and adjust its approach.

Conducting a market analysis helped the small business identify its top competitors and what made their product listings better, allowing the organization to act tactically by focusing on SEO and better product images.

Corporate Business Operational Planning

The corporation hired an outside consultant who audited various processes and identified the best candidate for automation. The company also leveraged historical data to better understand its audience and gauge interest for new AI-powered services.

Automating the sales department will provide valuable insights into this process and pave the way for enhancing additional processes in the near future.

Healthcare Operational Planning

The optometrist practice used a survey to connect with patients and assess their expectations. The practice’s owner also attended a professional event to learn about using software to improve compliance.

By choosing to work with a marketing vendor, this business was able to outsource a key part of its operational planning process and have a team of marketing experts identify opportunities for developing impactful content.

Final Thoughts

Successful business planning happens at multiple levels. The best strategy involves developing a roadmap that acts as an annual or multi-annual business plan. You should then break down your strategy into smaller steps or tactics by using operational planning to assess your capabilities and identify the best approach.

As a business coach, Lori Moen at Catalyst Group ECR possesses extensive planning experience and can help you set and execute the right strategy to unlock long-term growth. Contact Lori Moen today to get started!