7 actionable steps to create a marketing strategy

Whether you're an entrepreneur or a marketer, understanding the core principles of marketing strategy is essential for creating impactful campaigns, engaging with your target audience, and ultimately achieving remarkable growth.

Join us as we dive into the essential elements and practical steps needed to create an exceptional marketing strategy that'll take your business to new heights. 

The components of a marketing strategy

The marketing mix

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Known as the 4 Ps of marketing, the marketing mix provides a blueprint for understanding essential aspects of your marketing efforts. It includes:

• Product: define the features, benefits, and unique qualities of your product or service, and understand its value proposition.
• Price: determine the appropriate pricing strategy based on production costs, market demand, competitor pricing, and perceived value.
• Place: identify optimal distribution channels and locations where your product or service will be available to customers.
• Promotion: develop a comprehensive plan to promote your product or service, including suitable marketing channels and persuasive messages.

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Marketing goals or objectives

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Establishing marketing objectives alongside the 4 Ps framework is crucial for a solid foundation. Clear objectives help allocate the budget effectively and guide content creation.

To create practical marketing goals, follow the SMART framework:

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• Specific: clearly define objectives.
• Measurable: establish metrics to track progress.
• Attainable: set realistic goals within available resources.
• Relevant: align marketing goals with business objectives.
• Time-bound: set a timeline or deadline for achieving goals.

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You must regularly evaluate and adjust goals to stay responsive to changing business landscape.

Marketing budget

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A well-defined marketing budget is vital. Allocate funds for skilled professionals, software, advertising, content creation, and ROI-generating channels to make a powerful impact.

Competitive analysis

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Competitor analysis is essential to understand the competition and differentiate yourself effectively. Take your time doing market research and analyzing the landscape. This will help you perform a SWOT analysis and deduce your competitive advantage. 

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Segmentation 

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Segmentation and targeting help deliver personalized messages.   Identify your target audience, focus on specific segments, and highlight what sets your brand apart through content that resonates with your target buyer. 

Content creation 

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Approach content creation strategically by leveraging emerging trends and utilizing formats such as videos, images, blog articles, infographics, and podcasts. Understanding your target segment will help you decide on the most relevant content types. 

KPIs 

Incorporate metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. Examples include Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Organic Traffic, Conversion Rate, and Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs).

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Following a structured marketing strategy and optimizing initiatives based on data analysis can skyrocket your brand visibility and ultimate growth.

Now, let’s go through the necessary steps to execute a marketing strategy.

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A 7 steps marketing strategy

Create a marketing plan

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Isn’t a marketing strategy the same as a marketing plan? What’s the difference? 

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Your marketing strategy is a roadmap that outlines the resources, actions, and goals your marketing team will focus on throughout the year. It sets the direction for your marketing efforts. 

Whereas a marketing plan is a detailed document that outlines the specific actions and initiatives you will undertake to execute your marketing strategy effectively.

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Having a well-structured marketing plan is crucial for successful implementation. It enables you to allocate your budget effectively, prioritize key initiatives, and determine the appropriate marketing channels to reach your target audience. 

Create buyer personas

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A buyer persona is a snapshot of your ideal customer, providing valuable insights into their characteristics and preferences.

When drafting a buyer persona, make sure you list all the essential demographic and psychographic information, including age, job title, income, location, interests, and challenges they may face. 

A clearly defined buyer persona is critical to the success of your marketing and sales initiatives. 

Identify your goals

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Now that you have identified your buyer persona, it’s time you decide on your concrete goals. 

Remember that aligning your marketing strategy goals with your overall business goals is crucial for driving success. By ensuring that your marketing goals directly contribute to your business objectives, you can maximize the impact of your marketing efforts. Think of it in terms of hierarchy; small steps will lead to an overarching bigger vision. 

Marketing strategy goals can include expanding market leadership, increasing brand awareness, or generating a number of leads. 

Identify the necessary tools

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The right tools to track, analyze, and measure your success are critical to moving forward. Don’t act out like a superhero; you can’t achieve everything alone. 

Tools can include ready-made templates for marketing plans, any other template, and software like Google Analytics and SEO tools. 

Identify all the tools you will need throughout the execution of your marketing plan so that you can manage your budget effectively. 

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Review your media

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This exercise is of high importance whether you’re just getting started or you are initiating a new marketing strategy. Assess the resources at your disposal to build your marketing strategy. These resources can be categorized into paid, owned, and earned media.

• Paid media: the channels where you invest your money to reach your target audience, such as television, social media, etc. It includes ads and sponsored content on any of those channels. 
• Owned media: this is the content created by your marketing team, including images, videos, podcasts, ebooks, infographics, and other materials you have complete control over. It also includes the channels that you create and your online store or website. 
• Earned media: this is the user-generated content that promotes your brand, such as social media shares, tweets, and Instagram posts that mention your business.

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Organizing these media types and content gives you a clear overview of your available resources and how to improve them to maximize your marketing strategy. 

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During this evaluation, it’s also critical that you identify resources that do not align with your goals and eliminate them. Identify any gaps in your content and decide what channels have the higher ROI to invest in them more. 

Plan your campaigns

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At this stage, you should be on top of your marketing strategy; everything is clear, and you are just waiting for the drum roll to begin. It’s time to turn your strategy into actionable steps, assign roles, and set timelines. 

Now you should start crafting your social media campaigns and prepare content for your most vital channels, including your website. You should be able to decide what information your target audience needs the most and in what format. 

Make a separate plan for social media and another for the website, for instance. Nevertheless, both should address the pain points of your persona. 

Make it happen

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Congratulations! You’ve now reached your destination! 

As cliche as that might sound, your marketing strategy is a journey or route taking you to a desired destination. Now, you only need to give the green light and watch the results unfold. 

Have everything outlined in a pillar document to ensure you stay on track and start executing your strategy. 

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With hindsight, you will probably be able to edit your marketing strategy and introduce changes to best fit your goals and overall business vision.

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