I recently read a nice article listing some tips that would be useful for web strategists (On a side note, how many times have you heard, “Business Strategist” as a job title? Yeah me neither. I guess “analyst” or “consultant” isn’t cool in the web industry). But while I found the article interesting and indeed useful, I wasn’t sure how these tips applied to strategists per se. From what I can tell, the tips were more akin to tactics than strategies. For instance, “Be proactive, not reactive” is great advice, but it really doesn’t tell me what strategic direction to go. Also, “Be an enabler” sounds more like advice you’d give to some shady drug dealer than a client. After reading the article, I came to the realization that most so-called web “strategists” are mere “tacticians”.
Tactics vs. Strategies

I think we need to take a few steps back and clarify the difference between what is a tactic and what is a strategy. Here are a few examples of what are absolutely not strategies:

• Maximize revenues
  Now if this is something you actually had to decide to do, it might be time to close the shop as you’re in for a rough ride.


• Eliminating pain-points
  If I had a nickel for every time I heard this one.Does any business run itself byincreasing customer friction?


• Use best-practices
  Not many clients will go, “You know what? I’ll stick to worst practices thanks.”

What do these examples have in common? They don’t, in themselves, tell you what to do next. Here are some better examples of strategies:

• Expand your target market to another geography


• Differentiate your product to lessen the industry forces on your company


• Be a low-cost leader in your industry

In the end, a strategy is a direction to take your business, while a tactic is what helps make it happen. Seth Godin has a great skiing analogy, “Carving your turns better is a tactic. Choosing the right ski area in the first place is a strategy.” Thus a web strategy (or social media strategy) should speak to what direction the company should go. It isn’t about optimizing conversion rates or implementing analytics. It’s not even about benchmarking. These are all tools or tactics.

As its web presence is not the business itself  but merely the actualization of a tactic, a company’s web strategies have to refer to its business strategies. Web strategies should not, and cannot, stand on their own. Any direction that a web strategy suggests should be inline with a business strategy.

So the next time you want to start pitching your services as “web strategy” ensure what you put forward addresses at least one the following:

• The top level goal of the company


• The company’s competitive advantage


• How to grow the business, not just the web presence


• The industry forces that the company faces

Otherwise, sorry, you’re not a strategist but merely a tactician. However, you might still qualify to be a “guru”.