As a marketer, strategy’s in your blood. Focusing on your next big goal doesn’t just come naturally—it fuels your marketing fire.
But every goal needs tactics to succeed. Translating high-level goals into effective marketing tactics that move the needle can be tough—especially if you’ve got deadlines to meet. That’s why it’s important to develop a tactical marketing plan.
We built a free tactical marketing plan template to help you break your larger strategies down into actionable steps so you can deliver results right on schedule.
Think of a tactical marketing plan as the how behind what you want to achieve. Marketing tactics are the campaigns and initiatives you’ll implement to reach your strategic marketing goals. These could include SEO optimization, email campaigns, pay-per-click advertising, or social media promotions.
Just keep in mind that a tactical marketing plan doesn’t replace your full strategic marketing plan for the year. Use a tactical marketing plan to map out shorter time frames or sprints, with smaller steps that level up to your larger marketing strategy.
Strategic and tactical marketing go hand-in-hand. You need both to succeed. So what’s the difference between strategic vs. tactical marketing?
Strategic marketing focuses on the big picture of how marketing supports your organization’s overall business direction. It’s what drives growth and determines your high-level marketing goals—such as increasing brand awareness or boosting customer retention—and how you’ll spend your budget.
Tactical marketing puts action behind your plan. It focuses on the detailed steps you’ll take to make good on your strategic marketing goals.
Looking for a simple tool to map out your strategic marketing goals? Try our strategic marketing plan template. It’s great for communicating your big-picture plan and tracking progress toward your goals.
Now that you understand the basics, let’s talk about how to structure a tactical marketing plan. These steps can help you strategize smart tactics that help you meet your marketing goals.
Before you dig into tactics, take a moment to remind yourself of the larger objectives your marketing team should be striving toward.
Feel free to outline these goals briefly in the introduction of your tactical marketing plan. Or if you’ve already scoped them out in detail in a strategic marketing plan, attach the document as a supplement to your tactical marketing plan.
You know what you want to achieve. The next step is figuring out how you’re going to get there. Consider key pathways that will help you and your organization meet your strategic goals.
Let’s say your company wants to grow revenue by 15% this year, and converting 2,500 leads into paid customers is one of the marketing goals you set to drive revenue. Targeting a new market segment is one strategy that could help you increase leads.
This is where your plan gets nitty-gritty. Lay out the tools and tactics you’ll use to bring each of your marketing strategies to life.
For example, you might put your marketing strategy into action by launching a new landing page and running paid social media ads that target your new market segment.
This simple example shows how you might work your way from overarching business goals to specific marketing tactics.
Put your marketing strategy into action sooner with our free tactical marketing plan template. With TeamGantt’s ready-to-go template, you can save time on plan setup, easily make updates, and streamline communication with your team.
Here are some examples of how to use this online template to build and track your tactical marketing plan so you know what’s done and what’s to come in your project pipeline.
A gantt chart enables you to see exactly when you’ll execute the tactics outlined in your plan and how any changes affect your overall timeline.
Configuring your tactical marketing plan is as easy as dragging and dropping tasks—or entire task groups—into their new rightful place. Click and drag the edges of each taskbar to set a new task duration.
Tactical tasks typically have to be completed in a particular order. For instance, you can’t efficiently develop a website without creating content and design first. Ensure tasks get completed in the correct order with dependencies.
Collaboration is easy with TeamGantt's discussion feature. Share important information, instructions, and documents directly from a task’s Comments section. For example, you could upload your full strategic marketing plan to the project so everyone has easy access to it.
Need to chat about a task? Tagging a user in a comment will send them an email notification, so they don’t even need to log in to be part of the conversation.
Calendar view enables you to turn your gantt chart into a calendar in one click. That makes it easy to see what’s happening at a glance and evaluate how tasks are stacking up on any particular day, week, or month.
Toggle to List view to work with your plan in a simple task list format. This easy-to-scan view is great for checking off to-dos and rallying the team around action items during meetings.
Ready to develop a tactical marketing plan of your own? We’ve created a free tactical marketing plan template for you in TeamGantt so you can jump right in!
Customizing the template is quick and easy, thanks to TeamGantt’s drag and drop simplicity. And since everything’s online, your whole team can collaborate on campaign tactics in real time.
Sign up for a free TeamGantt account today, and save time on project setup with this free template!
