We marketers know that developing a marketing strategy is critical to effectively nurture our customers, improve our company’s bottom line, and increase the ROI of our efforts.
A marketing strategy is especially important if you want to take advantage of the highest ROI trends we’ve seen in 2024: short-form videos and AI. To achieve compelling results, you must carefully integrate both emerging trends and proven strategies into your plan.
I’ll share the critical components of a complete marketing strategy, followed by some examples for inspiration.
Table of contents
What is a Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy encompasses a company’s overall approach to promoting its brand to a target audience. The process includes research, goal setting and positioning.
A completed marketing strategy typically includes brand goals, audience personas, marketing channels, key performance indicators, and more.
I found a marketing strategy that offers:
- Align your team with specific goals.
- Help connect your efforts to business goals.
- Allow you to discover and test what resonates with your target audience.
- Allow you to benefit from new trends.
The latter is particularly important. Keep up Marketing trends are important to your strategy, but could be a full-time job.
Marketing strategy vs. marketing plan
I like to think of a marketing strategy as laying out the long-term goals and overall approach while a Marketing plan covers the specific actions and tactics to achieve these goals.
In other words, marketing strategy determines a company’s overall marketing efforts. This includes goal setting, market and competitive research, and messaging and positioning for a brand.
Let’s say you’re creating a marketing strategy for a new fashion brand. Your strategy could target young Generation Z students and position the brand as trendy and affordable.
However, a strategic marketing plan is a detailed tactical roadmap that outlines the specific actions and tactics designed to achieve the goals of the marketing strategy.
For example, the marketing plan for the above fashion brand might include:
- Targeted social media campaigns.
- Influencer partnerships.
- Online advertising timeline.
Both a marketing strategy and a marketing plan are crucial to the success of a business.
To succeed in the fast-paced marketing world and maintain a sense of relevance with your target audience, it’s important to stay one step ahead.
Below I’ll show you step by step how to create a comprehensive marketing strategy. But first, let’s go over the individual components that make up a strong marketing strategy.
Components of marketing strategy
- Marketing mix
- Marketing goals
- Marketing budget
- Competitive analysis
- Segmentation, targeting and positioning
- Content creation
- Metrics and key performance indicators
1. Marketing mix
The marketing mix, also known as The Four Ps of Marketing is the preliminary document you need to create to understand what you will market, where you will market it, and how you will market it.
The following Ps form this framework:
- product: What are you selling?
- Price: What is the price?
- Location: Where will you sell the product?
- Financial support: Where will you promote the product?
You can then convert this information into a comprehensive marketing plan for each advertising channel. It’s important to present the information in broad strokes so you understand the overall direction of your marketing strategy.
2. Marketing Goals
You can set your marketing goals in conjunction with your four Ps or directly after them. In any case, I recommend that you outline your marketing goals before building on your strategy. Why? Because your goals influence other components of the plan, including the budget and the content creation process.
With each goal, you should make sure to be as specific as possible. Try to create SMART marketing goals broken down by channel or advertising tactic, and remember that you can always revise your goals if your priorities change.
3. Marketing budget
A marketing budget is an essential part of your strategy. Without allocating resources to hiring the right talent, using the right software, advertising on the right channels, and creating the right content, your marketing strategy won’t make much of an impact. To get a high return on investment, you must first invest.
Pro tip: Remember, you can always start small – by focusing your budget heavily on one or two actions – and build on that once you see ROI.
4. Competitor analysis
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When developing a marketing strategy, it is important to know your competition. Without a competitive analysis, you run the risk of shouting into the void without achieving measurable results.
Worse still, you don’t know if you’re different enough from the competition to effectively capture your target audience’s attention.
You may already have an idea of who your competitors are, but I think it’s still important to sit down and find them. You may discover a surprising competitor vying for your target buyer’s attention and engagement.
5. Segmentation, targeting and positioning
Segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) refers to the process of delivering “more relevant, personalized messages to target audiences.” In other words, instead of publishing posts and ads on a whim, go through a methodical process of creating content that will resonate with your target buyer.
During the segmentation, targeting and positioning process, you complete three steps:
- Identify your target audience. This process includes not only surveying your current customers, but also conducting market research and creating buyer personas.
- Address part of your target group. It’s better to speak to a small group of highly qualified buyers than to broadcast your message to everyone.
- Position your brand alongside other brands. What do you do better than your competitors? When creating a marketing strategy, it is important to reflect this information.
6. Content creation
Once you have your budget, competitive outlook and STP information, it’s time to create your marketing content. However, it is important to be strategic when creating content.
Firstly, you don’t want to publish random content that is not relevant to the customer and secondly, you need to aim to capitalize on emerging trends so that your brand enjoys high visibility in the market.
Competition is fierce in all formats. According to HubSpot Research, 44% of marketers use short-form videos as part of their content strategy and 31% say they get the highest ROI of all content creation formats.
This makes it all the more important to invest in trends that have a high ROI, such as short videos, influencer marketing and social media DMs.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in blogging, one of the most proven content marketing techniques. In my opinion, it’s just important to know where to put the most resources, especially if you have a limited budget.
7. Metrics and key performance indicators
Last but not least, your marketing strategy must include metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure its effectiveness.
The KPIs you choose will vary depending on your business type and preferred customer acquisition channels. Examples of KPIs are:
Now let’s dive deeper into why it’s important to follow the steps of a marketing strategy.
Why is a marketing strategy important?
Without a defined strategy, you’re essentially throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. And this process costs you money, time and resources.
A solid marketing strategy will reach your target audience and convert people who have never heard of your brand into loyal repeat customers.
Here are just a few of the top reasons why I think a marketing strategy is essential:
Offers direction
A marketing strategy describes clear goals and defines the path to achieving them. It brings together all marketing efforts within an organization for optimal results.
Addresses the right target group
A clearly defined marketing strategy will help you find and understand your target audience. This helps your business tailor your messaging and positioning to reach the right people at the right time.
Builds brand identity
A marketing strategy helps you create a consistent and cohesive brand identity. This makes it easier to align all marketing initiatives towards higher brand awareness and loyalty.
Maximizes ROI
By analyzing market trends, competition, and customer behavior, marketing strategies help companies find the most effective marketing channels and tactics to invest in. This helps companies achieve maximum return on investment.
Evaluates performance
A marketing strategy defines key metrics and performance indicators. This makes it easier for your company to measure and track the success of marketing initiatives. Plus, you get everything you need to make data-driven decisions and optimize future campaigns for better results.
Marketing strategy process
- Conduct market research.
- Define your goals.
- Identify your target audience and create buyer personas.
- Conduct a competitive analysis.
- Develop key messages.
- Choose your marketing channels.
- Create, track and analyze KPIs.
- Present your marketing strategy.
1. Conduct market research.
Before you can start creating your marketing strategy, you need to collect useful data to make informed decisions. Market research is like playing detective, but instead of solving crimes, you uncover interesting details about your customers.
I think market research is important because it helps your business make data-driven decisions for your marketing strategy. It also makes it easier to understand your target market, find gaps, and make the most of your resources.
This process is important for understanding your customers and adapting to changing trends. If you’re new to this process, that’s it A market research guide and template can be helpful.
Once you have the data you need, you can set some marketing goals.
2. Define your goals.
What do you want to achieve with your marketing efforts?
Clearly defined goals guide your marketing strategy, whether you want to increase brand awareness, increase sales, or diversify your customer base.
The goals of your marketing strategy should reflect your business goals. You should also provide clear direction for marketing efforts.
Let’s say one of your business goals is to increase market share by 20% within a year. Your goal as a marketer could be to expand into new target markets, update your brand, or drive customer acquisition.
Other marketing goals could include increasing brand awareness or generating high-quality leads. You may also want to expand or maintain thought leadership in your industry or increase customer value.
I find that defining clear goals provides direction and clarity and guides marketing efforts toward desired results. It helps in resource allocation, decision making and measuring the success of marketing initiatives.
I recommend this SMART goal guide that can help you set goals more effectively.
3. Identify your target audience and create buyer personas.
To develop an effective marketing strategy, you need to understand who your ideal customers are. I suggest taking a look at your market research to understand your target audience and market landscape. Accurate customer data is particularly important for this step.
However, knowing who your audience is is not enough. Once you find out who they are, you need to understand what they want. It’s not just about their needs and pain points. This way, your product or service can solve their problems.
So if you can’t define who your target audience is in one sentence, now is your chance to do so. Create a buyer persona that represents a snapshot of your ideal customer.
Example of a buyer persona
For example, a store like Macy’s might define a buyer persona as “Budgeting Belinda,” a stylish thirty-something working-class woman who lives in the suburbs and wants to fill her closet with designer offerings at low prices.
With this description, Macy’s marketing department can envision Belinda’s budgeting and work with a clear definition in mind.
Buyer personas have important demographic and psychographic information. This may include:
- Age.
- Job title.
- Income.
- Location.
- interests.
- Challenges.
Notice how I included all of these attributes in Belinda’s description.
For B2B SaaS companies, remember that buyer personas are not just for the end user. When selling a product to another company, you also need to target the decision maker, the financial buyer, and the technical advisor, among others, says head of marketing at Entrapeer. Hillary Lyons.
“You need to be able to tailor your message to each of these unique people, even if most of them will never actually use the product,” says Lyons. “You have to sell each of them on the unparalleled value you offer without distorting your (overall) message.”
You don’t have to create your buyer persona with pen and paper. In fact, HubSpot offers one Free template to create your own (and it’s really fun).
You can also use a platform like Versiumthat helps you identify, understand and reach your target audience using data and artificial intelligence.
Buyer personas should be at the center of your strategy.
4. Conduct a competitive analysis.
Now that you understand your customers, it’s time to figure out who you’re competing with to get their attention.
To begin your competitive analysis, start with your top competitors. Reviewing their websites, content, advertisements, and pricing can help you understand how to differentiate your brand. I think it’s also a useful way to find growth opportunities.
But how do you know which competitors are most important? This competitive analysis kit with templates will walk you through the process. I like it because it helps you select and evaluate your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses and strategies.
This process helps you find gaps in the market, identify trends, and figure out which marketing tactics are most effective. Competitive analysis can also provide valuable insights into pricing, positioning and marketing channels.
5. Develop important messages.
You’ve figured out who you’re talking to, what they’ve already heard, and what they want to hear. Now it’s time to share your brand’s unique value proposition.
In this step, you create key messages that demonstrate the benefits of your product or service and resonate with your target audience. This process should highlight the research and work you have done up to this point. It should also involve your creativity, inventiveness and willingness to experiment.
In my experience, well-crafted key messages are:
- Differentiates companies from the competition.
- Resonates with the target group.
- Is flexible enough to be consistent across all marketing channels.
- Builds brand credibility.
- Creates an emotional connection with customers.
- Influences purchasing decisions.
The key messages in your marketing strategy are critical to driving engagement, loyalty and business growth. This Value Proposition Templates can be helpful if you’re not sure how to write this important message.
6. Choose your marketing channels.
You know what you have to say. Decide now on the best marketing channels for your message. Your ultimate goal at this stage of your strategy is to align your channel selection with your target audience’s media consumption habits.
Start with the media channels you already use. Then consider a mix of traditional and digital channels such as social media, TV, email marketing, podcast ads, SEO, content marketing and influencer partnerships.
To streamline this process, I like to look at your assets in three categories: paid, owned, and earned media.
Paid media
Paid media is any channel you spend money on to attract your audience. The majority of this spending is on advertising. This includes online and offline channels such as:
Own media
Owned media refers to (mainly) online channels owned by your brand, including:
It also refers to the media your marketing team creates, such as:
Earned Media
Another way to say earned media is user-generated content. Earned media includes:
- Shared on social media.
- Posts about your company on X or Threads.
- Reels posted on Instagram that mention your brand.
- Organic news about your company.
To decide which marketing channels are best for your marketing strategy, take a close look at each channel. Consider which channels are best for reaching your audience, staying within budget, and achieving your goals.
For example, a company targeting a younger demographic like Generation Z might consider using TikTok or Reddit to reach their target audience.
Don’t forget to take a look at new platforms and trends as you complete this review. You may also want to take a look at the content you have already created.
I suggest gathering your materials for each media type in one place. Then look at your content as a whole to get a clear idea of how to integrate it into your strategy.
Let’s say you already have a blog that publishes weekly content in your niche (owned media). You might consider promoting your blog posts in threads (owned media), which customers may then repost (earned media). Ultimately, this will help you develop a better and more comprehensive marketing strategy.
7. Create, track and analyze KPIs.
Once you have a clear overview of your marketing strategy, you need to think about how you will measure whether it is working.
In this phase, you go from being a marketing detective to a numbers nerd. With a little planning and preparation, your analytics can reveal the secrets of marketing performance and uncover great insights.
Review your strategy and select measurable KPIs to track the effectiveness of your efforts. Choose one Software solution for marketing analysis This allows your team to collect and measure your data.
Ideally, I recommend choosing an analytics platform that allows you to track data across all your marketing channels – from email to social media to your website. This centralizes all of your data, making it easier to understand how each channel contributes to your overall strategy.
You can then plan to review and analyze the performance of your strategy over time and identify the channels that produce the best results. This can help you refine your approach based on results and feedback.
Lexi Boesean eCommerce growth strategist and co-founder of The Digital Opportunists, recommends making data a priority when developing your marketing strategy.
“The more data you can leverage, the easier it is to track your success,” she says. “This could be as simple as understanding which channels convert the most customers (to determine how your team should prioritize ad spend), or assessing whether you have a higher number of first-time or repeat customers to determine whether this should be focused on internal or external marketing.”
Analyzing KPIs helps companies stay agile, refine their strategies and adapt to changing customer needs.
8. Present your marketing strategy.
A finished marketing strategy combines the sections and components mentioned above. It may also include:
Summary
A concise overview that outlines the marketing goals, target audience and key marketing tactics.
Brand identity
You may want to create a brand identity as part of your strategy. Brand positioning, voice and visual identity can also be helpful additions to your marketing strategy.
Marketing plan and tactics
Your marketing plan consists of the specific actions you take to achieve the goals of your marketing strategy. Your plan can include campaigns, channel-specific tactics, and more.
Don’t know where to start? The Free marketing plan template can help.
Download for free
Budget allocation
By setting a budget for your marketing strategy, you can demonstrate that your planned resource allocation aligns with business goals.
I think it’s important to be clear about your expenses and how your proposed budget will impact the company’s overall business goals.
Timeline and milestones
Marketing strategies can be complex and difficult for stakeholders to understand. It can be helpful to create a schedule that describes the different tactics, milestones, and deadlines.
Your marketing strategy is a living document. Achieving your long-term goals requires constant reviews, revisions, and optimizations. Be prepared to revise your marketing strategy at least once a year to reflect market trends, customer feedback, and changing business goals.
Examples of successful marketing strategies
Digital strategy: owned media
Regal shares interactive Instagram content that is not only relevant to its film-loving customers but also encourages them to interact with the content.
Regal’s Instagram post is an example of owned media because the company had full control over the responses it shared with its followers. Interacting in the comments section was an opportunity for Regal to showcase his voice and brand to his audience.
And it obviously worked well. The post received half as many comments as likes, with an impressive 207 comments.
Best for: I think social media is a great dedicated channel to experiment with new ideas for your overall marketing strategy.
Digital strategy: user-generated content, earned media
I think user-generated content is one of the best ways to give your strategy traction.
It shows your appreciation for loyal customers, builds community, and incentivizes other users to promote your products for a chance to win a similar award.
Plus, sometimes the content created by your brand loyalists is really, really good. In this case, the consumer creates a handmade needlepoint using the brand’s product.
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Pro tip: UGC is not reserved for consumer brands that offer visual products to share. B2B companies can also use UGC by sharing positive reviews of their product and integrating them into their messaging.
Digital strategy: owned media
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Small Girls PR is a boutique PR firm based in New York, and one of the company’s talents is connecting with great clients. This Instagram post is a powerful marketing example because it increases brand awareness and provides social proof by showcasing high-profile customers.
Pro tip: I find that owned media in the form of PR is a great way to highlight company executives and position them as industry leaders.
Digital Strategy: Paid Media
Eye tracking software company Tobii ran a LinkedIn ad to promote a lead magnet. While the brand may have created the guide specifically for paid promotions, it’s also possible that it turned a high-performing blog post into a downloadable PDF.
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In this case, all they had to do was repackage their current content, build an ad with creative assets around it, and run it.
What I like: In previous sections, I discussed the power of using multiple forms of media in your marketing strategy. This is a great example of that.
Digital strategy: Owned media, influencer partnership
If you have time for influencer partnerships, I recommend you take full advantage of them.
In influencer marketing, you work with influencers to promote your content on their website. This way, your content reaches new audiences that you might not be able to reach organically:
Target recently teamed up with fashion expert and influencer Jeneé Naylor to collaborate on its Future Collective line. What made this campaign even more impactful was that Naylor was a former Target team member.
I love how this collaboration highlights Target’s commitment to supporting its team members, even after they leave the company.
Best for: Influencer Marketing Continues to Show Strong ROI – 86% of marketers say influencer marketing has been effective for their marketing strategies in 2023.
Recommended Resources
Here I have compiled a list of some tools with different features that can help you track and measure the success of your marketing goals.
With the Marketing Hub you can connect all your marketing tools on a central platform.
Too often you find a tool that is powerful but not easy to use. This tool allows you to attract users with blogs, SEO, and live chat tools. You can then convert and nurture these leads through marketing automation, website and landing page builder, and lead tracking features.
With custom reports and built-in analytics, you can analyze your data and plan your next move.
What I like: HubSpot Marketing Hub can be integrated into over 800 toolsThis allows you to easily create a tech stack that meets your specific business needs.
Prices: Free plans are available; Starter – $15/month; Professional – $800/month; Enterprise – $3,600/month.
Trello keeps your marketing team informed and openly communicating about the projects you’re working on. You can create boards for individual campaigns, editorial calendars, or quarterly goals.
Built-in workflows and automation features streamline communications, and simplicity ensures your marketing team can focus on the work that matters.
What I like: Trello’s visual elements and easy organization make it easy for everyone to stay on the same page.
Prices: Free plans available; Standard – $5/month; Premium – $10/month; Enterprise – $17.50/month for 250 users.
TrueNorth is a marketing management platform that helps you achieve your marketing goals. Designed specifically for marketing teams, TrueNorth turns your marketing strategy into a visual projection of your growth, used to create monthly milestones to help you stay on track.
What I like: TrueNorth centralizes all your ideas, campaigns and results in one place, with everything tied to your goal.
Prices: Plans cost $99 per month, with a 14-day free trial available.
Everything on Monday.com starts with a whiteboard or visually controlled table. Create and customize workflows for your team and keep groups, items, sub-items, and updates synchronized in real-time.
You can also transform timeline data and use Gantt views to track your projects on Monday.com and ensure you meet your deadlines.
And with more than 40 integrations – from SurveyMonkey to Mailchimp and of course HubSpot – You can visualize your data and ensure your entire organization is working together.
Best for: I think it’s best suited for companies with locations around the world or many remote employees, as it keeps everyone connected and up to date, regardless of where they are.
Prices: Monday.com is free for two places; Basic – $27/month; Standard – $36/month; Pro – $57/month. Contact Monday.com for Enterprise pricing. All plans are billed annually.
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SEO is still a huge factor in the successful ranking of your website. But you need the right tools to make it successful.
With Semrush, you can conduct a technical SEO audit, track daily rankings, analyze your competitors’ SEO strategy, research millions of keywords, and even brainstorm ideas for increasing organic traffic.
But the benefits aren’t just limited to SEO. I like that you can also use SemRush for PPC to develop and measure an effective social media strategy, content planning, and even market research.
Best for: Creating, implementing and tracking your marketing strategy.
Prices: Pro – $139/month; Guru – $249/month; Business – $499/month.
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BuzzSumo allows you to analyze data to improve and advance your marketing strategy while exploring high-performing content in your industry.
Use the platform to find influencers who can help your brand, track comments and find trends to get the most out of each round.
What I like: If your needs change, you can also use their crisis management and video marketing tools.
Prices: Content Creation Plan – $199/month; PR and Communications Plan – $299/month; Suite Plan – $499/month; Enterprise Plan – $999/month.
Do you need to optimize your website?
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I highly recommend starting with Crazy Egg. You can identify “attention hotspots” on your product pages, track advertising campaign traffic on your website, and understand whether shoppers are clicking where they want.
You can even make sure your “Buy Now” buttons are in the right place.
Crazy Egg also offers recording, A/B testing, and more to ensure your website offers the best user experience.
Best for: If your marketing strategy includes optimizing your website, Crazy Egg is the right tool for you.
Prices: Plus – $99/month; Pro – $249/month; Enterprise – $499/month.
What to expect after following the steps of your marketing process
Ultimately, creating a complete marketing strategy cannot be done overnight. It takes time, hard work and dedication to ensure you reach your ideal audience – whenever and wherever they want to be reached.
Stick with it (and use some of the resources I’ve listed in this post), and over time, research and customer feedback will help you refine your strategy to ensure you’re serving your target audience’s marketing channels most of the time dedicate the most important thing to your heart.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2019. It has been updated for relevance and accuracy.
