What is a Marketing Strategy & How to Create One?

A marketing strategy is a brand’s overall approach to spreading the word about its products or services. It involves setting goals and choosing tactics to promote the brand to its target customers. 

Marketing without a proper strategy is like building a home without a blueprint. You might get lucky, but you’ll probably not have the best property on the block. 

Building a marketing strategy will help you target the right customers, guide those customers down your sales funnel, and, with a little bit of practice, massively grow your bottom line. 

A marketing strategy is a high-level approach to promoting a brand to customers. It consists of several essential components: 

• Target audience: The customers most likely to identify with your product or service.
• Marketing mix: Essential details about your product positioning, how much you’re selling it for, where you want to sell it, and how you intend to promote it. 
• Goals: Clear goals and objectives your business wants to reach in the short and long term. 
• Financials: Your budget for investing in marketing, including investing in software, advertising, and content. 
• Competitors: Information about your competitors, giving you an overview of your current market positioning. 
• Marketing channels: The tactics and channels you plan to use to effectively reach your target audience, such as using AI agents to automate and optimise processes.
• KPIs: The quantitative metrics your business needs to hit to reach its goals and objectives. 

With a custom marketing strategy containing all of these elements, you can align your team on core marketing objectives, identify how best to connect with your audience and remain agile in the face of new marketing trends.

What’s the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan?

Your marketing strategy provides overarching goals and guides your overall marketing efforts. However, it doesn’t dive into your daily tactics to reach those goals. That’s the job of your marketing plan.

Think of your marketing plan as an action plan. It details the methods you will use to make your marketing strategy a reality.

Marketing plan vs marketing strategy example

Let’s say you’ve created a new business marketing strategy for your skincare brand. You want to target young professional women and position yourself as a luxury product.

Your marketing plan details the steps you’ll need to take to achieve this. How will you prove you’re a luxury item and engage with your demographic? After conducting market research, you might decide to:

• Create a sleek website that highlights the luxury of your brand.
• Form influencer partnerships with beauty influencers to promote your products.
• Start a regular blog talking about different aspects of skincare. 
• Send out promotional packages to potential customers to get feedback. 

A marketing strategy and plan are crucial for your success. Each will give you direction and give you a competitive advantage.

We’ll show you exactly how you can create your strategy soon. But first, let’s take a closer look at the different marketing strategy options available to you. 

Types of marketing strategies

Conventional marketing has taken a backseat in recent years and for valid reasons. It’s estimated that traditional methods generate 50% fewer customer interactions than digital marketing. This is bad news for billboards but great news for brands creating content online.

However, with the amount of competition online, some businesses are returning to tried-and-true methods to break through the digital clutter. 

What does this mean? Everything is on the table, and you should choose your strategy based on your audience and goals. To help you understand your options, let’s examine some marketing channels and tactics available. 

Traditional marketing strategies

Here are four traditional marketing methods that can still make an impact today. 

1. Television commercials 

TV is still the most effective form of traditional advertising. They provide a great platform for visual storytelling and can convert audiences en masse, especially if you can secure prime-time slots. 

2. Print advertising

Adverts in magazines and newspapers can still capture attention and generate sales with the right demographics. It all depends on your target audience. 

3. Radio ads

Radio ads are still valuable for local businesses. While reaching a mass market is challenging, a well-planned message can convert customers in a community or region. 

4. Direct mail

It’s a common belief that direct mail is a dinosaur — a relic of the pre-internet. 

Image source: Mckinsey

But consider this. 71% of customers want businesses to provide personalised experiences. What better way to do this than with a tailored letter? 

Traditional marketing might have fallen out of favour, but this doesn’t mean you should disregard it. Depending on your audience, it can bring a significant return on investment (ROI).

Digital marketing strategies

In 2024, online marketing is the undisputed king of brand promotion. It’s an essential part of any business strategy. Here are six different methods that work exceptionally well. 

1. Search engine optimisation (SEO)

SEO is a strategy for increasing your visibility in search engine results. It involves optimising your site to help more customers find your brand online. 

This often includes content optimisation for latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords, keyword research, developing link-building strategies, digital PR, and a wide range of other technical SEO issues, such as dealing with more complex issues like hreflang problems, keyword cannibalisation, plus a wide range of other SEO activities.  

2. Content marketing

Creating valuable content for your audience, like blogs and infographics, will help you attract new customers and guide them down your sales funnel. 

Image source: Salesforce

This is often combined with SEO strategies to help people find your content.  

3. Social media marketing

This approach uses social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok to connect with audiences. A social media campaign is useful for building brand loyalty and attracting customers through referral marketing. 

4. Email marketing

Nothing does personalisation better than email marketing. Distributing newsletters, discounts, and offers to potential buyers can support customer retention. 

5. Affiliate marketing

This method involves relying on a third party to advertise for you. It’s called ‘affiliate’ marketing because the affiliate usually gets a commission from every sale, incentivising them to promote your product or service. 

6. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

It involves bidding on digital ads that search engines will display to targeted users. You’ll need to pay every time someone clicks on your page, but there’s no better way to drive fast traffic to your site. 

The best part about digital marketing is that most of it is very low cost. This gives you more freedom to use multiple tactics at once. This is especially true with the popularity of generative AI marketing, which you can use to provide personalised experiences, generate marketing ideas, and make data-driven decisions. 

Other helpful marketing terms to know

Many terms get tossed around in marketing, so let’s dispel some confusion. Here are some of the other marketing tactics you should be familiar with.

• Mass marketing: Aiming your products at a wide audience rather than specific demographics. Think IKEA and Levis. 
• Niche marketing: Targeting a specific demographic, regional, or interest-based group. Think bee wraps, lightweight camping gear, and gaming keyboards. 
• Outbound marketing: Reaching out to customers through traditional methods to promote your product. Examples include direct mail, cold calling, and TV ads.
• Inbound marketing: Creating valuable content and experiences so your customers find your brand naturally. Think blogs, social media posts, and videos. 
• Guerilla marketing: Using surprising methods to catch people off guard and promote your product or service. For example, think of KFC’s partnership with Crocs. 

How to develop a successful marketing strategy?

Let’s get into it. Here’s how to make a marketing strategy from square one. Whether you’re marketing your small business idea or scaling your multinational brand into a new market, these strategies will work.

Step 1: Identifying your target audience

Your audience is the basis of your marketing campaign. The more you know about them, the easier it is to create goals, position your product, and build targeted marketing campaigns. 

The first step is to determine your product’s target audience. Perhaps this is obvious to you already. But if it isn’t, there are a few ways to do it. 

• Review your current sales metrics to see who is currently buying your product.
• Look at your direct competitors to see who they’re targeting their products at. 
• Conduct interviews to understand consumers’ needs and wants. 

Once you’ve identified your audience, create an ideal buyer persona (IDP) to fill any gaps in your knowledge. This persona should contain essential information about your ideal customers, like:

• Age and gender.
• Geographic location.
• Job title and income.
• Buying habits.
• Motivations and beliefs.
• Pain points.

Pain points are important here. Until you know the problems your target audience is facing, you can’t create a market strategy that offers a solution. Building these personae will help you create a marketing message that resonates with your audience. The more information you can gather here, the better.

Step 2: Reviewing the competition

Now that you’ve honed in on your target audience, you need to take stock of what you’re up against with competitor analysis. 

Research your top direct competitors. Look at their websites, how they advertise, their unique value propositions, and how they position their products. This will let you assess how brands are converting consumers into paying customers. It will also give you ideas about how to differentiate your offering. 

Step 3: Set clear and measurable goals

Next, you should begin defining your marketing goals. Common business objectives include:

• Driving traffic to your website.
• Increasing sales.
• Building trust with potential customers.
• Increasing engagement with your target audience.

But there’s a problem. All of these goals are too broad and open to misinterpretation. To land on a clear and measurable goal, we need to follow the SMART framework:

1. Specific: Make sure your goal is clear and specific. 
2. Measurable: Ensure your goals can be measured.
3. Achievable: Make sure you can reach your goals realistically.
4. Relevant: Ensure the goal is relevant to your organisation. 
5. Time-bound: Set a timeframe for this goal to be achieved. 

Let’s revisit the goal of ‘increasing sales’ and rephrase it to align with the SMART guidelines. 

“I want to increase sales by 15% over the next 6 months through content strategies, email newsletters, and outbound cold calls.” 

This goal is specific and realistic. We can easily measure it through KPIs and have a timeframe to achieve it. Score!

Expert tip: You don’t necessarily need to know the exact details of how you will achieve your goals at this stage. You’ll work that out when you break down your strategy into tactics. For now, creating one or more SMART goals is enough. 

Step 4: Define your value proposition

You now understand what your audience needs and have researched the competition. Next, you need to explain your products to your customers and hone in on the unique value your brand offers.

A ‘feature-benefit’ approach is an excellent place to start with your brand’s message. It works like this:

• Describe a feature of your product. 
• Explain how that feature benefits your target audience. 

Here’s an example of this approach from the Salesforce homepage:

“We help your marketing, sales, commerce, service, and IT teams work as one from anywhere – so you can keep your customers happy everywhere.”

The feature here is combining all departments on one platform and communicating seamlessly. This will allow you to keep your customers happy at every touchpoint.

Keep your brand identity, IDP, and brand voice in mind here. Your goal is to resonate with your customers and make them see why you’re the solution to their problems. This brand positioning will also help you set yourself apart from the competition. 

Step 5: Choose your marketing channels

You now know what you need to say to your audience. Next, you need to decide how you will spread the word. 

Once again, your customer profile is the best place to start. How does your audience like to communicate? What social media channels do they frequent? Are they old-fashioned or tech-focused? 

There are a few different marketing approaches you can take. For instance, if you want your customers to find you organically online, you could use:

• Blogs.
• Attractive website landing pages.
• Social media posts.
• Webinars.
• Ebooks.
• Infographics.
• Videos.

Alternatively, you can opt for paid media (spending money to bring in your audience). Options include:

• Billboards.
• Print advertising.
• TV ads.
• Radio.
• Pay-per-click advertising.
• Direct mail.

Look carefully at the channels available to you and think about which will connect with your audience. It’s also essential to take stock of your funds at this stage — TV ads may help you bring in traffic, but if your marketing budget is stretched too thin, you may incur a loss. 

Step 6: Create a marketing plan

You’re almost ready to put your strategy into action. But first, you need to get specific. 

If the marketing strategy is the ‘what’, your business plans are the ‘how’. It encompasses all the tactics you will use to make your strategy a reality.

Image source: Salesforce

For instance, if your goal is to drive customer engagement with a social media marketing strategy, you need to determine which social media tactics you will use to reach that goal. You could:

• Reach out to your loyal customers to encourage them to share their experiences.
• Create a weekly poll that asks your followers thought-provoking questions. 
• Host a giveaway that requires users to like, comment, and share the post.
• Create weekly customer success stories outlining the benefits of your product.
• Collaborate with local influencers to promote your products. 
• Provide a behind-the-scenes look into how your brand operates. 
• Create shareable images and infographics about key topics. 

The more specific you can be with your plan, the easier it is to align your team and help everyone move toward your objectives. 

Step 7: Monitor and measure performance

Once you’ve implemented your marketing strategy, you’ll need to assess the results regularly to refine your approach. Effective project management will help ensure that your marketing initiatives are executed smoothly and that you stay on track. It’s time to choose some KPIs.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable metrics that measure progress toward your goals. They turn your results into numbers, showing how well your strategy and tactics perform. 

There are dozens of different marketing metrics to choose from, but here are some we like best:

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): This metric tracks how much it costs to acquire a new customer through marketing. It helps you see how cost-effective your strategy is for gaining new customers.
  
• Conversion rate: What percentage of visitors to your website make a purchase, fill out a form, sign up for your newsletter, or reach out to your sales team? You can use this data to understand how your marketing engages your audience successfully.
  
• Return on investment (ROI): This is the easiest way to measure the profitability of your marketing efforts. It involves measuring your actual returns against the costs of your strategy.
  
• Cost per lead: Similarly to CAC, this measures the cost of generating a lead through marketing.
  
• Lead-to-customer ratio: How frequently do you convert a lead into a customer? This metric can help you discover bottlenecks and find ways to optimise your sales funnel.
  
• Organic traffic: How much website traffic do you get organically each month? This is an essential way to measure the effectiveness of your SEO and content marketing efforts. 

Choosing relevant KPIs and regularly analysing them will help you adapt your strategies and evolve to meet your customer’s needs. 

An example of a marketing strategy

Let’s examine a real marketing brand strategy example to see how different components come together to drive business success.

Air New Zealand

Air New Zealand’s inspiring ad campaign centres on a father and daughter’s journey across the globe through the lens of bedtime stories. It encourages Kiwis to see travel as a wondrous adventure. 

You’ll instantly notice that the link to Air New Zealand isn’t immediately apparent in this video. Instead, the brand focuses on dynamic storytelling and the core benefit of travelling — getting to experience everything the world has to offer.

Expert tip: Creating an emotional connection with your audience is vital to selling the benefits of your product and fostering brand loyalty.  

How Salesforce Marketing Cloud can help?

Marketing is more art than science. It’s impossible to find a winning formula 100% of the time. But with the right data behind you guiding your decisions, you can increase your chance of success and grow your bottom line for less. 

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the best way to deliver exceptional customer experiences across every business touchpoint. Our marketing software combines all departments in one platform and centralises your customer data, providing a 360-degree view of your business’s data.

This results in a unified profile that allows you to fine-tune every stage of the customer journey, from brand awareness to the point of sale. Here are some of the features we offer:

• Audience Builder: Segment your audience to create a unified view of every customer and target specific demographics. 
• Unified customer journeys: Build unique customer journeys for websites, adverts, mobiles, and more, delivering a seamless customer experience that guides customers down your sales pipeline.
• Content creator: Create, optimise and manage content in one place with the help of our advanced categorisation features. 
• Analytics: Easily track your campaigns’ performance and discover new insights through our AI-driven predictive analytics. 

Want to find out what else the Salesforce Marketing Cloud can do for your marketing campaign? Explore our Marketing AI tools here or sign up to watch the free demo.