What Is a Marketing Strategy?

A marketing strategy is a company’s long-term plan to promote its products or services and acquire customers. It includes the company’s value proposition, target audience, messaging, positioning, and chosen marketing channels.

It differs from a marketing plan, which is focused more on the actual tactics used to drive new customers and sales.

Why Is an Effective Marketing Strategy Important?

Creating an effective marketing strategy is important as it helps you:

• Increase brand awareness: By getting more people to learn about your brand and improve brand recall
• Improve customer acquisition and retention: By making it easier to attract and keep new customers
• Optimize marketing spend: By letting you allocate your marketing budget more effectively to get a better return on your investment
• Drive revenue and business growth: By generating more revenue for your business and speeding up growth

How to Create a Marketing Strategy

Follow these seven steps to develop a marketing strategy for your business.

1. Set Clear Goals

Decide what you want to achieve through your marketing efforts.

A good way to think about goals is to use the SMART framework:

• Specific: Define your goal clearly 
• Measurable: Assign one or more metrics to track progress
• Achievable: Make sure the goal is realistic given current resources and constraints
• Relevant: Align the goal with key business objectives
• Time-bound: Set a deadline for completion

Here’s an example of a SMART goal:

Increase organic traffic by 15% in the next six months by publishing three search engine-optimized pieces of content per week.

2. Research the Market

Market research provides you with insights that allow you to make data-driven decisions when crafting your marketing strategy.

Without proper market research, you’d just be making assumptions. And this might lead to targeting the wrong audience, using ineffective messaging, and misallocating your resources.

Below are a few things you can do to get a better understanding of your target market. So you can fine-tune your marketing approach.

Interview Customers

Interview existing or potential customers to learn more about their needs and pain points.

Find out what they like about your product. And what criteria they use when deciding on products like yours.

If you don’t have customers yet, take an indirect approach to gather these insights by checking out relevant forums.

Whatever you’re selling, there are probably multiple online communities where people who fit your target audience gather. Try to find relevant subreddits and forums where potential customers are having discussions.

Read through the discussions to learn about common pain points and issues. 

Join in on the discussions, but refrain from posting promotional content to avoid having your account suspended.

Run a Survey

A survey allows you to gather insights from a large number of people. For example, it can help you get quantitative, statistically relevant data about your target audience’s preferences.

You can create and run a survey yourself using tools like Google Forms or Typeform. Or use platforms like SurveyMonkey or Pollfish, which have built-in audiences.

Analyze Your Competition

Analyzing your competitors can help you uncover market gaps, refine your positioning, and improve your messaging. It also helps you optimize your pricing strategy.

Start by looking at one of your competitors’ websites. Notice how they address their audience and how they talk about their product.

Then, read reviews to understand what customers are saying about your rivals. Pay special attention to what customers don’t like about competing products. 

This will help you improve your own product by avoiding making the same mistakes. But it’ll also help you adapt your messaging to cater to these pain points.

For example, if many customers point out an issue with the speed of a product, you can draw attention to how fast your solution is.

Not sure who your main competitors are?

Use Market Explorer to find them.

Select the “Find Competitors” tab. Then, enter your domain and click “Research a market.”