The term "strategic marketing" is frequently misused to the point where its real meaning has become diluted and confused with other marketing terminology. There is a difference between a strategy and a tactic.
A marketing strategy is a goal. It is what you strive to achieve or what you want to become. Within this there are long term strategies and short term strategies. Short term strategies are something you wish to achieve within a year. Long term strategies can be what you wish to be in 3 to 5 years. Some major Japanese corporations are know for developing 200 year and 500 year strategies, but that is a bit unrealistic for most businesses and is just be an exercise in developing imagination and strategic thinking.
A long term strategy might be a desire to become the lowest cost manufacturer in an industry, or the largest volume retailer. It can be a goal to achieve $1 million in sales with a 20% net profit or it can be to become the industry leader by selling the highest quality products. You can have multiple strategies, but if you try to achieve too much with too few resources, you will very likely fail. It is frequently better to pick a long terms strategy and a short term strategy and focus on those. The short term strategy can be a stepping stone to achieving the long term goal.
Always be careful how you choose and define your strategy. It can be relatively easy to achieve $1 million in sales if you sell your products at or below your cost, but you will never be profitable. If you are selling products or services, a profit goal should always be part of a revenue strategy. Revenue alone does not pay the bills. You must have sufficient gross profits to pay the bills and worker salaries. If you do not choose your strategy wisely, it can be detrimental to your business.
Always make sure that a strategy is realistic. It may not be realistic to think that you can put a major player like Amazon.com out of business, but a good tactic might be to build a strong niche that takes away some of their business.
Tactics are the marketing methods used to achieve the goal. Achieving a high search engine rankings can be a tactic to drive lots of user traffic to your web site. Developing a very user friendly web site is a method to build sales once a user finds your site. Writing compelling content that helps convert visitors into customers is another tactic. Driving down costs is a common tactic to improve profitability.
Knowing the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing tactic can help you to better define your goals and the methods you will use to achieve those goals.