How to Create a Marketing Strategy

Once you've launched a business, you'll want to do everything in your power to help it succeed. Organizing your promotional activities around a well-researched marketing strategy is one of the best ways to set goals and measure your progress.

What is a marketing strategy? 

A marketing strategy is one of the most important parts of your overall brand or business strategy. It's a written document that provides a broad framework for the marketing activities you'll do to promote your work, your products, or yourself. 

You'll typically create a marketing strategy when you want to achieve specific goals or reach certain milestones. This could be increasing your sales numbers or social media followers or raising or reinforcing brand awareness.

Making a marketing strategy can also provide clarity on your goals and help you stay organized.

What goes in a marketing strategy?

Components of a marketing strategy typically include:

• Information about your business and its niche

• Your business goals

• Your target customer or ideal audience

• Research on your competitors

• A broad look at your proposed marketing activities

• How you'll measure success

All of these components are tailored to your specific business needs. You can think of a marketing strategy like a fingerprint. Your business has unique goals, and so the path toward success will also be distinct.

Marketing strategy vs. marketing plan

A marketing strategy is closely related to a marketing plan, but the two things have different purposes. A strategy proposes what you're looking to accomplish, while a plan tackles how this will happen.

A marketing plan also outlines the specific things you'll do to execute your marketing strategy. 

A strategy might propose using social media to promote the launch of a new product. In the plan, you'll then spell out how often to post on Instagram per week, or outline ways you'll repurpose content across digital channels. 

Think of the strategy as a blueprint for a new building, and the plan as the raw materials used in construction. A marketing plan needs the structure of a marketing strategy to be successful.

When do I need a marketing strategy?

There's no right or wrong time to create a marketing strategy, but it's generally more effective once your business is up and running. You'll be able to measure the effectiveness of promotional approaches on an audience familiar with your work. Building a customer base from the ground up also requires a different mindset and strategy.

Consider creating a marketing strategy when:

• You're expanding your services. A wedding photographer might want to advertise that they're now offering family photo shoots. 

• You want to grow your audience or customer base. When you have the capacity to add clients or want more people to know about your products, a marketing strategy can help you figure out the best approach.

• You've done a brand refresh or business pivot. Marketing strategies are a great way to reintroduce yourself to past customers and attract new ones.

• You have a specific product to promote. Designers who might have product drops around certain holidays or seasons can often benefit from a tailored marketing strategy. 

• You want to promote yourself. Content creators can position themselves as subject matter experts or thought leaders to get speaking engagements or freelance assignments. 

Create a marketing strategy in 10 steps 

Defining a marketing strategy can feel daunting, but taking a step-by-step approach can make the process less overwhelming. 

1. Establish your online presence

Create a marketing strategy after you've built a website and set up your social media channels. Your brand and business are built on this foundation. From an analytics perspective, websites and social media channels can also inform your marketing research.

2. Put together an elevator pitch for your business

Before marketing your business to other people, make sure you can describe it yourself.

Consider writing one-sentence, two-sentence, and paragraph-long descriptions of your business. Outline what you do, what services you provide, and your unique value proposition. Having these top of mind can help direct your research and focus your goal-setting.

3. Research what your competitors are doing

An effective marketing strategy is informed by research, particularly into the marketing activities of competitors.

Conducting research into other businesses within your niche provides insights into things you're doing right and areas where you can improve.

Some questions you might ask include:

• What marketing channels are they using?

• How often are they posting on social media?

• Are they prioritizing photos, video, or written content? 

• What are competitors not doing that you could adopt?

• What promotional activities do you find most appealing?

• Where do our marketing approaches overlap?

4. Analyze your own channels

Your own social media channels and website are invaluable sources for your marketing strategy. These clues can steer your business and strategic decisions.

Use your website and social media analytics to gather information about your existing customer demographics, how people are finding your business, social media engagement, and popular posts or web pages.

You can also look for patterns in your own promotional activities. Perhaps you've noticed that the people who comment on your social media posts are gravitating toward a specific piece of writing or product. 

5. Identify your target audience or ideal customers

Market research helps you identify your existing audience and define potential customers. That research can help you figure out what makes you stand out. Your business might be providing a service that's unique in your area or offer more competitive pricing. 

You can also tailor your marketing strategy toward your likely customers. If your audience is younger, they might prefer one social media channel over another or relate better to video marketing. Someone who has a wedding photography business will want to target newly engaged couples. 

6. Define specific, realistic goals

Success looks different for every business. But a marketing strategy is built around well-defined goals that spell out what you're looking to accomplish. 

Some possible outcomes might be:

• Raising awareness of your business

• Generating more sales and revenue

• Gaining customers

• Increasing your social media following

• Growing newsletter subscribers

The S.M.A.R.T. acronym can be helpful for goal-setting. This stands for:

• Specific: Your goal should be straightforward and well-defined.

• Measurable: This is a goal that's quantifiable, where success is concrete.

• Achievable: Make sure your goal is realistic and not too ambitious for your business growth. 

• Relevant: Make sure your goal aligns with your mission, values, and focus. 

• Time-bound: Propose a finite time frame to reach a certain goal.

For example, you might set a goal to increase your newsletter subscriber count by 30 people within the next six months.

Within a marketing strategy, consider defining short- and long-term goals. Having milestones to reach along the way can keep you motivated and allow room for changes when applicable.

It's also important to be realistic about what you have the capacity to achieve. Don't try to take on too much at once. Consider starting out with one or two big goals and then adding more as your strategy progresses. 

7. Prioritize your marketing activities

You might not have the time or financial resources to implement a multi-channel marketing strategy. In that case, it's best to focus on one or two activities most likely to help you maximize your marketing success.

Common marketing methods include:

• Social media: A photographer might decide that a visual-heavy channel like Instagram is the best way to promote their work. In contrast, an author might turn to TikTok to find readers.

• SEO-optimized content: Creating a website driven by a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy can help small businesses reach a bigger audience. 

• Email marketing: Launching an email newsletter is an excellent way to keep in touch with people interested in your business.

• Multimedia content: A well-crafted video or beautiful photos are excellent promotional tools, but take time to produce.

• Blogs or other written content: You can add a personal touch to your marketing by sharing insights into your work, like a behind-the-scenes look at a photo shoot.  

• Paid advertising: You can reach new customers and connect with existing ones by promoting your products and services via social media ads.

Keep in mind that each channel might require its own marketing strategy because they attract different audiences or are built around a specific medium. This might have an impact on where you direct your time. 

8. Ensure your strategy aligns with your brand 

Your brand is one the most powerful elements of your business, as it communicates your values and approach to your work. Make sure your marketing strategy aligns with the impact you want to have on the world. 

Your strategy and how you present yourself should also match your brand visuals. If you haven’t written down your mission and vision for your brand, that can also help guide your marketing decisions. 

9. Schedule frequent strategic check-ins

When you're busy running a business, it can be tough to take a step back and assess your progress.

Frequent check-ins ensure you can identify any potential problems sooner rather than later and adjust your goals and strategy accordingly. You can also assess timelines and promotional activities and see whether any need to be updated.

10. Be open to strategic pivots

Running a business can be full of surprises. And even the most well-organized marketing strategy might not account for unexpected things.

You might uncover an entirely new customer base or discover that certain kinds of content no longer resonate with your audience. In cases like these, a marketing strategy pivot isn't just appropriate, it's necessary.

Once you reach certain strategic milestones, it also might make sense to create more granular marketing strategies for specific marketing channels. 

These can include:

• Digital marketing strategy: This kind of strategy analyzes your online presence and activities, including your website, email newsletters, and social media. You might spend a few months building your newsletter subscribers or do a website copy refresh.  

• Social media strategy: You might discover that one social media channel is more effective than others. Creating a social media strategy around just this channel can help you build an audience there and leverage existing strengths.

• Paid advertising strategy: Once you have the budget for marketing activities, consider paid advertising. This involves paying to boost certain social media posts or creating a dedicated digital ad campaign. Social media advertising tends to be more cost-efficient and provides instant access to robust analytics that can guide your work.   

• Content marketing strategy: A content marketing strategy looks at the ways you can use writing to build your brand and business. In practice, this could mean creating a content calendar to map out a schedule of blogs by topic and frequency. 

Granular strategies often overlap. For example, you might incorporate a paid advertising strategy into your approach to social media marketing and boost posts a certain times a week. A digital marketing strategy will often touch on your content or social media activities.