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Strategic and tactical planning and development

Industrial marketing services

Koch Group, Inc. is an industrial marketing consulting firm that has provided marketing solutions to manufacturers and industrial service providers since 1967. One of the hardest tasks that our client base of non-Fortune 500 manufacturers has is developing a meaningful strategy for their organization coupled with supporting tactics.

Strategic and tactical development is part of the market planning process and should follow market research to understand the motivations of existing customers or target market companies. Otherwise, the development of strategy and tactics may be based on erroneous assumptions and any ensuing planning may be flawed.

• Strategy
• Tactics
• Summary

Strategy

A definition of strategy Koch Group uses when putting on seminars or industrial marketing presentations is that strategy is a statement of the basic intent and external means of the company to accomplish its internal objectives.

Strategy and tactics are often most easily understood when used in a military context. The military is very good at understanding all the elements of proper planning. The strategy employed during Desert Storm was: Take complete control of, and main total air superiority of the combat theatre airspace using all available air resources to minimize the ability of the Iraqi military to offer significant resistance and coalition ground forces’ casualties while defeating the Iraqi military. During Desert Storm, this strategy was executed with minimal casualties and lightning speed.

The stated intent was to take control of and maintain total air superiority. The external means were the use of all available air resources while the internal objective was to minimize coalition losses and at the same time defeating the Iraqi military. The Desert Storm strategy meets our definition. The biggest mistake manufacturers make when developing strategy for their market planning is to develop multiple strategies. They do this out of lack of understanding and the inability to create a single comprehensive strategy. Why? Because it isn’t easy. Koch Group can help.

Tactics

Koch Group consultants use the following definition when defining tactics. Tactics are a series of specific actions necessary to support and accomplish the strategic, overall plan. This states that if an action does not support the strategy, it cannot be an effective tactic.

Many manufacturers just get lost developing lots of tactics that either don’t support and even conflict with their strategy. It isn’t easy, but it is a task that Koch Group consultants have repeatedly accomplished. Let’s go back and take a look at the tactics the military used during Desert Storm to support their strategy.

Some of the tactics included:

• Destroy Iraqi Air Warning and Control facilities using B-2 stealth bombers and F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighters – eliminate their radar systems.
• Use high payload aircraft like the A10 Warthog to destroy enemy positions and armor.
• Bomb targeted Iraqi and Kuwaiti airfields to limit Iraqi fighter use.
• Bomb munitions and supply depots to eliminate Iraqi fuel and weaponry supplies.
• Target Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries with frequency bombs guided by battery radar.
• Destroy strategic bridges, highways, and rail lines to eliminate the ability of the military to resupply.
• Destroy planes on fields and in hangers to eliminate the Iraqi fighter air threat.
• Use Navy Seals to laser target especially strategic targets to ensure their destruction using laser-guided smart bombs.

The list goes on and on, but the point is that the tactics employed during Desert Storm totally and completely support the overall strategy. The strategy employed by a manufacturer must be totally supported by the marketing tactics developed.

The marketing tactics should encompass the 4 traditional marketing Ps:

• Product
• Price
• Promotion
• Place / distribution

We like to add three more P’s of our own and they are:

• Potential
• Planning
• Profit

When developing tactics to support a marketing strategy, Koch Group consultants work to include a tactic that covers each “P” at a minimum.

Summary

The development of well thought through strategy and tactics for a company’s marketing plan is part of the critical planning process. Strategy and tactics are intimately linked. You cannot have one without the other and both need to be able to be supported by the other.

“Ivory tower thinkers” should not develop strategic and tactical thinking, but rather, they should be developed by personnel involved in the trenches of marketing warfare on a routine basis. They truly understand the price of failure more intimately than a company’s conceptual thinkers. Koch Group can assist in the development of a manufacturers strategy and tactical development.

Contact us if you would like more information about the industrial marketing services we offer to manufacturerss. Please use our contact form, email us at info@kochgroup.com, or call us at 630-941-1100.

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