Every year, a new tactic becomes the answer.
Short-form video. Podcasting. Influencer marketing. Pinterest. AI-generated content. Chatbots. LinkedIn newsletters. Each arrives with case studies showing businesses that grew because they adopted it early. Each produces a wave of businesses adding it to their marketing mix. Most of those businesses produce the same results they were producing before the tactic was added.
The tactic is not the problem. The sequence is.
A new tactic applied to an unexamined foundation reaches more people with the same unclear message, on one more platform the business is now also managing. It adds cost and complexity without addressing the constraint that was producing the flat results before the tactic was added.
Why tactics feel like the answer
Tactics are concrete. Actionable. Immediately deployable.
When results are unclear, the pressure to do something tangible is real – and tactics are the most visible form of marketing action available. Starting a podcast. Launching a short-form video series. Working with an influencer. Running a new ad format. These are things that can be briefed, produced, and launched within weeks.
The question that does not get asked is whether the problem that is producing the unclear results is a tactics problem at all. Because if the constraint is in the positioning – if the message has never been confirmed, if the buyer has never been properly understood, if the direction the marketing is built on has never been examined – then a new tactic distributes the same unclear message on one more channel.
More distribution of an unclear message is not growth. It is reach without commercial purpose.
The pattern tactics create when applied without strategy
The business adds a tactic. Results do not follow at the expected rate. The conclusion: this tactic is not right for this business, or this audience, or this moment. The tactic is dropped or deprioritised. A new tactic is added.
Over time, the business has tried most of the available tactics. None has produced sustained commercial results. The conclusion tends to be that marketing is not working, rather than that the foundation the tactics were applied to was never confirmed.
The tactics were not wrong. Some of them were almost certainly producing partial results that the measurement framework was not capturing. But because each was evaluated against an implicit promise of commercial transformation, and none delivered that, each was abandoned before it could compound into anything.
This is not a creativity problem or a budget problem. It is a direction problem that tactics cannot fix.
What the right question is before the next tactic
Not “which tactic should we add next?”
The question that produces better commercial outcomes: does the marketing I am already running have a confirmed direction underneath it — a clear understanding of who the buyer is, what they are deciding, and what would make them choose this business?
If yes, the tactic question follows naturally. The confirmed buyer understanding tells you which channels your specific buyer is using at the specific stage of their decision where the marketing is trying to reach them. The tactic is chosen because it fits the confirmed strategy – not because it is popular or because a competitor is using it.
If no – if the direction has not been confirmed – then the most useful investment is not a new tactic. It is the examination that makes any tactic more effective than it would be otherwise.
When specific tactics genuinely do matter
This is not an argument against tactics.
Short-form video is an effective distribution format for certain buyers at certain stages of certain decisions. Influencer marketing produces genuine commercial results when the influencer’s audience matches the confirmed buyer and the collaboration is built around a specific commercial outcome. Chatbots genuinely improve conversion at specific friction points in specific buyer journeys.
The tactic works when it is chosen because the confirmed buyer understanding points to it – not because it is the latest answer to a question that has not been examined.
The Strategic Direction Review is the examination that confirms the direction before the tactic is chosen.
Find out what the direction underneath your tactics actually is
