The importance of differentiating between strategy, tactics, and plan in digital marketing

When it comes to digital marketing, understanding the difference between strategy, tactics, and plan is crucial. It's not just a matter of technicalities; it's the foundation for achieving results.

Strategy is our map and compass; it defines how we will allocate our resources to achieve our objectives. Example: Increase brand awareness among millennials.

On the other hand, tactics are the specific actions, tools, and techniques we use to get there. Example: Using Instagram Ads and TikTok Ads, as this demographic group heavily populates these platforms.

The plan would be the complete guide that includes the strategy and tactics to achieve the goal. Example: A detailed schedule of when and how the advertising campaigns will be launched on Instagram and TikTok, what content the ads will have, and how the performance of these actions will be measured and adjusted.

Why does this distinction matter?

Efficiency: Without a clear strategy, tactics can be a waste of resources. Knowing the difference prevents efforts empty of intention.

Effectiveness: The right tactics, aligned with a solid strategy, lead to measurable results.

Adaptability: Understanding this difference allows you to quickly adjust your tactics without losing sight of your goal.

In summary, differentiating between strategy, tactics, and plan is not just theory; it's the key to making smart decisions and achieving your objectives in the digital and business world.

How to use Facebook Ads Dynamic Creative to optimize your ads

If you have some experience in Facebook Advertising, there is a strategy you can use to accelerate the testing phase, using the Dynamic Creative feature.

For those who don't know about it, Dynamic Creative allows advertisers to automatically create multiple combinations of an ad's creative elements, such as images, videos, titles, descriptions, and call-to-actions (CTAs). Instead of manually creating each ad variant, advertisers provide a set of creative assets, and Facebook's AI machine learning algorithm automatically generates various ad combinations, inside that individual ad, and tests them to determine which combination performs best.

This is particularly useful because you can run this for some time and then create a separate ad with all the winning elements to have the best combination in that one ad. Then, you can run another test using the best previous combination elements and test them against different headlines, creatives, titles, CTAs, etc., making a feedback loop to improve performance continuously.

Very importantly, you would want a transition where a new winning combination ad would run for 3–4 days (depending on budget) before pausing the previous ad to prevent a drop-off in results.

This is a balanced strategy between leveraging data-driven insights to capitalize on successful ad combinations and continuous testing to discover even more effective creatives and other elements. In addition to the cautious strategy in the rollout of new ads to prevent any dip in results, allowing a period of overlap with the previous successful ads to maintain performance stability.

Trends in Digital Advertising in Spain

In Spain, word of mouth and search engines continue to be the dominant channels for discovering new brands, products, and services. This highlights the importance of maintaining a good online reputation and optimizing presence on search engines, such as Google, for businesses.

Moreover, recent research points to a growth in digital advertising spend in Spain for 2023, with estimates ranging between 2.3% and 12%. This reflects two trends: the increase in competition on digital advertising channels and the perception among advertisers that the channels they are using are profitable for them.

If you're wondering which digital advertising channel to start with, especially if you're considering using Google Ads or Facebook Ads, I would first suggest looking at whether there is demand on Google, i.e., if people are searching for what you offer, and then choose accordingly.

Generally speaking, for more visual ads, building audiences, and advertising to those audiences, Facebook Ads can yield good results. Google Ads is more sophisticated as it features Search, YouTube, Shopping, Discovery, etc. If there is demand on Google for what you offer, and you know how to use Google Ads, you can achieve good results.

At the end of the day, the best course of action is to test both channels and adjust the budget according to the performance you achieve.