A complete guide to marketing strategy

Understanding how to build an effective marketing strategy is one of the most important functions within marketing. This is because it sets the foundations upon which marketing operates within a business.

We’ll start by defining and understanding exactly what a marketing strategy is before explaining how to build a complete marketing strategy. We’ll then move on to explain how to build a marketing strategy in a particular marketing area or discipline.

As we’ve covered previously in our ‘complete guide to how marketing works’, marketing has evolved to become an increasingly complex and specialist business function. And this sets the scene for understanding how to build an effective marketing strategy. You may therefore want to read that first.

A ‘marketing strategy’ is a term used to describe how a business’ marketing activities have been designed to work together. At a basic level, this includes deciding which marketing touchpoints to use, but it also includes what to do within them, how to allocate resources to them and what to use in the process. This is because all of these factors determine whether the marketing strategy will be successful and therefore influence its design.

The term ‘marketing strategy’ is also often applied to specific areas of marketing. This is because marketing is typically considered too complex for one person to cover everything. As a result, the marketing strategy for particular marketing areas will be assigned to the marketers in charge of those areas. That said, the CMO or Head of Marketing will still be responsible for the overarching marketing strategy to make sure that the activities in each area are consistent and support the business’ priorities.

Perhaps the easiest way to consider what a marketing strategy is, is by considering what would happen if there was no marketing strategy. If this was the case, marketing as a business function would fail to function. There would be no understanding of the market requirements, how to allocate budgets, how to allocate resources and so on.

In other words, a marketing strategy is a prerequisite within any marketing function. However, the reason it draws so much attention is that there is a major difference between having a marketing strategy, and one that is completely aligned to the market requirements and operates with maximum effectiveness. For this reason, marketing departments and the marketers running them are constantly devising, implementing and evaluating a marketing strategy to make it as effective as possible.

Without delving too deeply into marketing theory, perhaps the best way to consider this is by considering the marketing mix. The marketing mix refers to 4Ps (often elaborated to 7P’s) that determine marketing’s impact on a business. Its origins can be traced back to the 1940s, when marketing as a specialist discipline was in its early infancy.

Within this definition, the 4Ps are defined as ‘Product’, ‘Price’, ‘Place’ and ‘Promotion’. It is still widely taught and used, but it provides a slightly skewed view of the marketing industry. This is because most marketers are now devoted to ‘Promotion’ and furthermore, most marketers within this field are performing roles that aren’t strictly promotion.

This is because the marketing mix was created before marketing communications exploded – before the colour TV, let alone the internet and mobile technology. It’s therefore simply a reference point to understand how marketing works, and particularly the early days of marketing.

Furthermore, the theory can easily lead people to believe that the marketing department is in charge of all the 4Ps, when more often than not, it provides more of an advisory capacity for all but the ‘Promotion’ part. This can be explained by marketing’s evolution to a specialist function, as covered in our guide to how marketing works.

That said, the CMO or Head of Marketing will still be responsible in part for the other three areas. Clearly, where a business sells, what products it sells and the price it sells them at will affect the way it promotes them.

As explained, ‘marketing communications’ typically refers to the final ‘P’ in the marketing mix, although the activities are not strictly focused on promotion. This is because the number of touchpoints has increased dramatically since the marketing mix was developed in the 1940s.

By ‘touchpoints’, we refer to every opportunity a person has to interact with a business. A customer may interact with a business by listening to the radio, going to an event, reading an article, trying a VR experience and so on. Because there are so many touchpoints, they are often grouped into disciplines to make them easier to manage and understand. For example, digital marketing, PR, social media or events.

The term ‘channel’ is also frequently used to define these disciplines. However, this definition is not to be confused with the more well-known definition of a marketing channel, which is used to define a route to market. In this later definition, a business may sell to customers either through a website or through a retailer, both of which would be different marketing channels.

This ability to group channels or touchpoints is typically referred to in marketing theory as the ‘promotional mix’, although in practice it is ever-changing to adapt to today’s world. As areas grow and diversify, they are recategorised, and marketing teams reallocated as required.

There are three parts to this, which, we describe separately. In practice, they are entwined and in constant consideration by the marketers in charge.

1. Understand the market requirements

Perhaps the most used and taught marketing framework for defining a target market is segmentation, targeting and positioning. This suggests that a business must first define its target market, then break it down into segments, identify the ones to target and subsequently position the business favourably against the competition.

It is easy to perform conceptually, but in reality can lead to decisions being made on untested assumptions. This is because it’s very difficult to gain and analyse information on which to base these decisions. It requires an in-depth understanding of how people make decisions (behavioural science) supported by data to explain current market conditions.

There isn’t any single data set that can easily predict consumer behaviour. It requires vast amounts of data from multiple data sets combined with behavioural science to make sense of it.

One way to consider this is by thinking how we all make purchasing decisions. We’ve defined seven elements that are in a constant state of flux with a buyer’s mind. This framework can be applied to any purchase and then validated with data from multiple sources.

However, understanding how a buyer considers a purchase doesn’t provide an insight into how they live their lives. To do this, it is possible to consider audience mindset. This is particularly important for the storytelling process. This is because the best marketing campaigns often tap into societal issues as opposed to product benefits.

2. Select appropriate marketing activities

The next step involves using this precise understanding of the market to decide upon a set of marketing activities. There are three parts to this.

Selecting the right marketing channels

The choice of marketing channels can be decisive in determining business success (see growth hacks analysis). Furthermore, many businesses with similar business models typically choose very different marketing channels to focus on.

To make this easy to understand conceptually, we’ve defined eight marketing areas, as presented in the video below.

Allocating budgets to each channel

Channel selection is, of course, dependent on the budgets available. With global brands allocating multi-million pounds a year to marketing, these decisions can be critical. For startups, budget constraints often limit their activities to a handful of channels that may not be best suited to their business model.

Selecting the creative activation for each channel

The selection of marketing channels, and the budgets allocated to them, are made in sync with decisions about what to do in each channel. The storytelling process must be adapted accordingly. Furthermore, the most successful campaigns tell a story across multiple channels to become more than a sum of their parts.

3. Deliver them as efficiently as possible

The third and final part of a marketing strategy requires deciding how best to complete the activities. This involves considering the team’s expertise, the tools, and services they need to be most effective, and the availability of additional specialists or agencies. These decisions may be labelled ‘3’ for the purposes of this guide, but in practice, they are made synchronously with the other two parts.

Deciding on marketing team size

Due to ever-changing marketing conditions and budgets, the number of people required will be in a state of flux. These decisions are based on a consideration of whether it’s best to bring in permanent team members, contractors or outside agencies. Employees are cheaper in the long run, but take a long time to find. Furthermore, making people redundant is certainly best avoided.

By contrast, agencies can be brought in for comparatively short periods of time. They bring additional expertise because they work on a variety of clients. Furthermore, they can be hired relatively quickly, making it relatively easy to scale up a marketing footprint.

Deciding on the tools and services to support the team

It is almost impossible to keep track of the speed at which the marketing landscape changes. Marketers are constantly having to understand the latest tools and techniques. This is made more difficult by the changing fortunes and cost associated with marketing SaaS providers.

Deciding on whether to bring in outside support

Working with outside agencies or freelancers is not the preserve of global brands. In fact, often startups work with agencies simply because it means that they don’t need to hire people for the long term.

With this in mind, it’s important to consider that hiring an agency is not simply a case of finding the best agency that a business can afford. Cultural fit is a vital part of the process. We’ve defined seven decision-making criteria that can be used for this process.

Having considered how to build a complete marketing strategy, we now turn our attention to building an effective marketing strategy in a particular channel.

The first point to consider is that the person responsible for creating a marketing strategy in a particular area is very unlikely to control the overall marketing budget. This is because (except for startups), the marketer responsible is unlikely to be the CMO or Head of Marketing. As a result, they are likely to make budget recommendations, but not be ultimately responsible for setting them. Instead, they will be responsible for maximising the effectiveness of the budget allocated to them.

This has practical implications for the way they are able to build a marketing strategy. Whatever strategy they develop will be dictated in part by the activities at a higher level. This includes following a set of brand/business guidelines to retain consistency and a set of targets to achieve.

With this in mind, it’s logical that the marketer in charge of a specific area, will have to create a marketing strategy in the same way as the CMO or Head of Marketing but with one key difference – scope.

Because they have much less to analyse, fewer channels to build a strategy in and few tools and services to learn, they are able to perform the process with greater focus. Furthermore, they will often be constantly considering these processes as a natural part of their role.

In summary

In this guide, we’ve explained what a marketing strategy is and how to build one. We’ve refrained from going too far into marketing theories and instead focused much more from a practical perspective of how marketing operates day to day in every business.

To continue your understanding of this subject, you may be interested in our other guides, videos and blogs. Book a complementary call below to learn more.