Creating a marketing strategy is essential as it gives you something to follow, improves the bottom line of your business, and increases the ROI of your efforts.

A marketing strategy is a detailed, structured plan of a company’s promotional efforts across a wide range of platforms and channels. A marketing strategy typically includes objectives, target audience profiles, content creation steps, key performance indicators, and other components.

People often use the terms “marketing strategy” and “marketing plan” interchangeably, but in reality, they are two different processes.

A marketing plan describes the concrete actions and marketing tactics undertaken to complete a marketing campaign. Meanwhile, a marketing strategy outlines the big picture of a marketing effort, such as the business’s target customers. The strategy describes what the marketing objectives are, while the plan describes how those objectives are going to be achieved.

How to create a marketing strategy:

1. Define your business and marketing goals
   • What are you trying to achieve with your market growth strategy? The answer to this question will inevitably depend on your particular place in the market and your own comfortability with different risk levels.
2. Conduct market research
   • Who are you trying to target?
   • Where are they located?
   • What are your competitors like?
   • What are they doing that is/ isn’t working?
   • What is your market size?
   • Where is there a gap in the market where you can add value?
   • As you gain a better understanding of the market, you will also understand better how and where you fit in and where you can grow in it.
3. Create a customer profile
   • Who is your target audience and how can you grab their attention?
   • What are their key demographics and what are you doing now to aim your product at them?
   • Consider your target audience in relation to the 4Ps to ensure you cover everything
     

• What is your product’s value proposition to your customer? (Product)
• How much is your target audience willing to pay for your product or service? (Price)
• Where does your target audience shop? (Place)
• What marketing tactics are most persuasive to your target audience? (Promotion)

If you want to partner up with another business or attract new ventures, a marketing strategy is particularly important as it will show the fundamentals of your business, where you aim to go and everything in between – As a result, this makes your business seem more stable and more likely to succeed in the long run.