Kerin & Hartley Marketing

What separates a clever marketing tactic from a successful marketing strategy? A tactic might earn clicks this week. A strategy connects those clicks to customers, revenue, and sustainable growth.

The Rhode Island Small Business Development Center argues that effective marketing increasingly depends on connected systems. Social posts, advertisements, email, search, and customer service should guide buyers through a coordinated journey rather than operate as unrelated activities. First-party data strengthens this system by helping organizations understand, personalize, and improve customer relationships. This does not mean familiar tactics have lost their value. Email, direct mail, and social advertising are strong performers when marketers select clear audiences, integrate channels, and measure actions such as purchases or appointments rather than focusing simply on opens and impressions. A postcard with a QR code, for example, can connect a traditional medium to a measurable digital experience.

Revolt’s transformation into Offscript Worldwide demonstrates how organizational strategy can make marketing strategy more powerful. By bringing content, creators, commerce, sports, music, and other media properties under one parent company, Offscript can offer advertisers coordinated access to audiences across multiple channels. The structure supports their value proposition: brands can build broader campaigns through fewer partnerships. CMO Erika Bennett’s work further illustrates that strategy requires internal alignment. Integrating public relations, social media, partnerships, strategy, and business operations helped Revolt increase social engagement and views. Those results did not come from finding one magical promotional channel. They came from organizing people and resources around shared goals.

In the end, channels matter, but connections matter more. Successful strategy aligns the organization, its customer value proposition, its marketing activities, and its performance metrics. Without that alignment, even wildly creative tactics can become expensive noise.

Discussion Questions and Activities

1. What is the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing tactic?
2. Why might three proven channels – email, direct mail, and social advertising – perform better together than separately?
3. How does Offscript Worldwide’s organizational structure strengthen its value proposition to advertisers?
4. Which metrics best demonstrate whether marketing contributes to organizational goals?
5. Review the RISBDC’s 2026 marketing trends. Which trend would be most important for a small business with limited resources, and why?
6. Conduct an online strategy audit. In teams, visit the website and social channels of a company selected by the team. Use the HubSpot customer journey guide to evaluate how consistently the organization guides customers from awareness through retention. Present one strength, one gap, and one recommended improvement.
7. Build a connected marketing system. Select a local business and map five stages: customer entry point, data capture, nurturing, conversion, and retention. Recommend one tactic for each stage.
8. Turn tactics into strategy. Design a campaign combining email, direct mail, and social advertising. Define the target audience, value proposition, role of each channel, call to action, and two performance measures.

Sources:

Ad Age Staff. (10 August 2026). Erika Bennett rebuilt Revolt’s marketing strategy. Ad Age; Herren, P. (24 April 2025). How Revolt is changing its business model, and what it means for its upfront strategy. Ad Age; Rhode Island Small Business Development Center. (12 March 2026). Marketing trends for 2026: What’s changing & how established businesses can expand their customer base. University of Rhode Island. Zhang, K. (26 June 2026). I’ve managed dozens of brand campaigns in the last few months -These 3 tactics quietly outperform everything else. Entrepreneur.