Often prospective clients come back from an Executive Planning Session with a single line-item on their corporate marketing to do list -- build a new website. When we ask why, they say because they want to increase sales. Upon further inquiry, we discover they aren't selling anything online. How, then, does building a website increase sales again?

Companies sometimes put the cart ahead of the horse when it comes to their web strategy. Building a website or even paying for a search engine optimization (SEO) or pay per click (PPC) campaign won't necessarily lead directly to increased sales. That is because these things are individual web tactics confused as whole web strategies.

Objectives and Goals

Objective and goals can both be considered as something toward which effort is directed. The main difference is that a goal is usually a specific, quantifiable and measurable achievement.

Put another way, your goal isn't to increase sales. That is your objective. Your goal would be a measurable achievement such as increasing direct sales 43% and indirect sales 23%, or even to drive $1M in sales.

In a moment we will find that it is these objective and goals that help us provide meaning and value to our strategies.

Strategies and Tactics

strategy- the set of decisions made to best ensure achievement of the desired objectives
tactic - a device for accomplishing an end

In other words, a strategy consists of several tactics. As they are relative to another, these tactics benefit and hurt if they aren't properly combined. The right strategy makes tactics better or easier to execute.

To put it simply:

Tactics = Winning the battle.
Strategy = Winning the war.

Building a Winning Web Strategy

To build a wining web strategy and know which tactics they should select, one must make an assessment based on their current situation/position, capabilities and shortcomings, and competitive position. Once this is understood, they will then be armed with the information necessary to select the unique and precise combination of tactics for a successful web strategy. Enter the "web strategist".

You will note that it isn't "strategic" to deploy a website, SEO, or email marketing. Rather, these are individual tactics that when combined into a single strategy will help you achieve your desired objective or goal.

Web Strategy Example

A example of which is a client who invests in a search engine campaign that drives a 1000% increase in traffic. But what good is all this traffic if the site visitor has trouble with the check-out process, or can't figure out how to contact you, or can't find the information they are seeking? In such a situation, pairing the SEO tactic with an usability research tactic would reap great benefits. And understanding this would be the beginning of a winning web strategy.

Bringing it all together -- objectives, web strategies, and tactics

An example for the primaries today

Objective: Win the primary.
STRATEGY: Paint our opponent as inexperienced.
TACTICS: Run a commercial about his lack of experience; compare other inexperienced leaders and their lackluster track record; release summaries of bad decisions they have made