The Four Approaches to Choosing Tactics

Marketing strategy can be compared to military strategy. Many marketers use military terminology to discuss their campaigns. Words such as target, campaigns, supply chain, and strategies are rooted in army nomenclature. This is not a coincidence.

Unlike a military strategist, you don’t want to attack people or treat your stakeholders like enemies. But you do want to realize objectives in your campaign. You do want people to buy your product or service, and to advocate for your brand. That allows a company to win a market and defeat its competitors. In that sense, there is much to learn from military strategists.

One of the greatest texts on military strategy is The Book of Five Rings, by seventeenth-century Japanese samurai Miyamoto Musashi. The wisdom collected from his decades of victory is packed into Five Rings, and several of his battle tenets are relevant to the marketing executive’s fight to communicate a company’s message and achieve victory.