A marketing strategy involves discovering your goals, market, product, pricing, and promotion strategies to help you get where you want, without wasting your time and money on ineffective actions. 

Without a marketing strategy, you become a jack of all trades but master of none. If you do not know where you are going, how will you get where you want to be? A marketing strategy is the bridge between your vision and marketing actions that will get you real results. 

  1. Get to know your reasons and set goals

The first step you should take is to develop a deep understanding of your reasons. This part is essential and will keep you from going off course when something (or everything) does not go as planned. You can use systems that have proved to be effective for setting goals, such as GROW or SMART models. 

The GROW model will help you create a full-cycle overview of what you want to achieve, taking into account your current situation and finding ways to overcome obstacles:

G. State your goal

R. Examine your current situation

O. Define your options for moving forward 

W. Build an action plan. 

 You can come back to the “Will” part at the end when we talk about building a marketing plan. 

The other efficient method for goal setting is SMART. You have probably heard about it many times, however, let us remind you about metrics your goal should have:

Here are additional golden rules from the video you can check out on setting SMART goals: 

  • The goal should motivate you. This rule implies creating a goal that corresponds to your values and makes it worthwhile. You can start with defining a value statement that will help you keep on going. 
  • Goals love paper. Writing everything down will help your brain focus on the goal. Try using the words “I will” instead of “I would like” to create an intention. 
  • Make an action plan. Ensure that you have broken your goals into clear, achievable action steps.
  1. Get to know your market

Studying your market involves discovering its size, demand, demographics, statistics, and other components. It will provide you with valuable insights on market value, competitors, and obstacles you may face. 

Another important part of the market analysis is estimates. You can study more about bottom-up and top-down approaches to build your estimates in this article. 

If you are looking for marketing analysis tools, check this guide. 

  1. Understand your 4 Ps

Product, place, price, and promotion are the 4 most important factors involved in marketing. 

Product is what you offer to your client — it can be a good or a service. Ideally, once you have analyzed your market, you will better understand your product and can create its life cycle. 

For defining a price, you should link the value of the product to its price, taking into account a segment of your product and developing a discount system. 

Place is the platform (offline or online) on which your product will be marketed. 

Promotion includes promotional strategy, advertising, and PR. Once you determine your product and its value, it is time to make sure the ideal customers get to know you. How to define the ideal customer though? Let’s dive in. 

  1. Get to know who you are selling to 

You should be interested in building a realistic and detailed target persona, as it allows you to create relevant experiences for your customers. Speaking their language will give you insights into their needs, which should be at the core of your strategy. 

A target persona implies discovering your customer’s pain points, motivation, learning their behavior and even diving into psychographic aspects. You can use dedicated platforms such as GlobalWebIndex to get more insights about your target persona. 

Once you create your ideal customer, it will facilitate the process of reaching out to your audience, creating ad promotions, and building your marketing plan. 

  1. Build a marketing plan

While the marketing strategy provides an overall vision of your goals and plays a fundamental role for the business, the marketing plan is your guide with clear actions you can take to fulfill your strategy. 

The marketing plan can include your budgeting, initiatives you are willing to take, as well as tools, knowledge, and resources you need to bring your strategy to life. 

A well-defined strategy is all you need to kick off any project — once you understand your goals and have a clear action plan in place, everything else is just a matter of time and effort.