{"id":1829,"date":"2025-03-27T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nurseagence.com\/?p=1829"},"modified":"2025-03-27T12:16:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T12:16:46","slug":"how-to-create-a-complete-marketing-strategy-data-expert-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nurseagence.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/27\/how-to-create-a-complete-marketing-strategy-data-expert-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Create a Complete Marketing Strategy [Data + Expert Tips]"},"content":{"rendered":"
As a marketer, I know that a marketing strategy is essential to nurture future clients, improve my business\u2019s bottom line, and increase the ROI of my efforts. But that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s easy \u2014 74% of small and medium businesses say<\/a> they lack confidence in their marketing strategies.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n To stay consistent and see powerful results, you need a clear roadmap for your objectives, audience, positioning, and tactics.<\/p>\n Here, I\u2019ll share the critical components of an effective marketing strategy, complete with data from HubSpot\u2019s latest State of Marketing report<\/a> and a free marketing template so you can hit the ground running.<\/p>\n Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n A completed marketing strategy typically includes brand objectives, target audience personas, marketing channels, key performance indicators, and more. Overall, 82% of marketers<\/a> say they believe their marketing strategies are effective.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve found that a marketing strategy will:<\/p>\n I like to think of a marketing strategy as outlining the long-term goals and overall approach, while a marketing plan covers the specific actions and tactics to achieve those goals.<\/p>\n In other words, marketing strategy guides a business’s overall approach to marketing. It includes goal-setting, market and competitor research, and messaging and positioning for a brand.<\/p>\n For example, say you\u2019re creating a marketing strategy for a new fashion brand. Your strategy might target young Gen Z students and position the brand as trendy and affordable.<\/p>\n But, a strategic marketing plan<\/a> is a detailed tactical roadmap that outlines the specific actions and tactics that should achieve the marketing strategy\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n For example, the marketing plan for the fashion brand mentioned above might include:<\/p>\n Both a marketing strategy and a marketing plan are essential for a business\u2019s success.<\/p>\n To succeed with the fast pace of change, stay relevant with your audience, and integrate AI in marketing, it\u2019s vital to stay ahead of the curve.<\/p>\n Below, I\u2019m going to show you step by step how to create a comprehensive marketing strategy. But first, let\u2019s go over the individual components that make up a strong marketing strategy.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Believe it or not, \u201cgaining more customers\u201d isn\u2019t the only marketing objective to consider. While one company may want to focus on lead generation and customer acquisition, another may want to increase brand awareness and industry authority. Others may prioritize customer engagement, loyalty, and referrals.<\/p>\n I always recommend that you outline your marketing objectives<\/a> before building upon your strategy. Why? Because your goals will inform other components of the plan, including the budget and content creation process.<\/p>\n With every objective, be as specific as possible. Aim to create SMART marketing goals<\/a> divided by channel or promotional tactic, and don\u2019t forget that you can always come back and revise your goals as your priorities change.<\/p>\n The marketing mix, also known as the four Ps of marketing<\/a>, is the preliminary framework you must create to understand what you will be marketing, where you\u2019ll be marketing it, and how you\u2019ll be marketing it.<\/p>\n The following P\u2019s make up this framework:<\/p>\n Once you have these broad strokes, you can extrapolate this information into a full-fledged marketing plan for each promotional channel.<\/p>\n A marketing budget<\/a> is an essential element of your strategy. Without allocating funds to hire the right talent, use the right software, advertise on the right channels, and create the right content, your marketing strategy can\u2019t succeed. To get a high return on investment, you must first invest.<\/p>\n Pro tip: <\/strong>Remember that you can always start small \u2014 hyper-focusing your budget on one or two efforts \u2014 and build upon them once you generate an ROI.<\/p>\n Knowing your competition is key when creating a marketing strategy. With a competitive analysis<\/a>, you will know where your marketing and positioning stand in relation to the market.<\/p>\n You might already have an idea of who your competitors are, but I think it\u2019s still essential to sit down and analyze them. You may end up uncovering a surprise competitor who\u2019s vying for your target buyer\u2019s attention and engagement.<\/p>\n With this analysis, you can position your brand alongside other brands. What do you do better than your competitors? It\u2019s essential to map this information when creating a marketing strategy\u2014 grab HubSpot\u2019s free competitive analysis template<\/a> to get started.<\/p>\n Segmentation and targeting refer to the process of delivering more relevant, personalized messages to target audiences. In other words, rather than blasting out generic campaigns to everyone, you\u2019ll go through a methodical process for creating content that resonates with specific audiences.<\/p>\n Personalized marketing is more important than ever: 96% of marketers report<\/a> that personalized experiences have increased sales. Segmentation and personalization at scale are game-changers for B2B marketers using AI to boost engagement and conversion rates.<\/p>\n During this process, you\u2019ll take three steps:<\/p>\n Once you have your budget, competitive outlook, and targeting information, it\u2019s time to create a content strategy<\/a>. First, refer back to the marketing channels chosen in your marketing mix.<\/p>\n A content strategy should outline the content formats best for your audience and the goals for your content\u2014 whether that\u2019s to educate, entertain, or generate conversions.<\/p>\n Last but certainly not least, your marketing strategy must include metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs)<\/a> to measure how well you\u2019re performing.<\/p>\n The KPIs you choose will vary depending on your business type and preferred customer acquisition channels<\/a>. Examples of KPIs include:<\/p>\n Now, let\u2019s dive into why it\u2019s important to follow the steps of a marketing strategy.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Without a defined strategy, you\u2019ll essentially be throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. And that process will cost you money, time, and resources.<\/p>\n A robust marketing strategy will reach your target audience and have the power to turn people who\u2019ve never heard of your brand into loyal repeat customers.<\/p>\n Here are just a few of the top reasons I think a marketing strategy is essential:<\/p>\n A marketing strategy outlines clear goals and defines the path to achieve them. It pulls together all marketing efforts within an organization for optimal effects.<\/p>\n A well-defined marketing strategy helps you find and understand your target audience. This helps your business tailor your messaging and positioning to reach the right people at the right time.<\/p>\n A marketing strategy helps you create a consistent and cohesive brand identity. This makes it easier to align all marketing initiatives for increased brand recognition and loyalty.<\/p>\n With analysis of market trends, competition, and customer behavior, marketing strategies help businesses find the most effective marketing channels and tactics to invest in. This helps businesses get the maximum return on investment.<\/p>\n A marketing strategy defines key metrics and performance indicators. This makes it easier for your business to measure and track the success of marketing initiatives. It also gives you what you need to make data-driven decisions and optimize future campaigns for better results.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n \n Before you can begin creating your marketing strategy, you need to gather useful data to make informed decisions. Market research is like playing detective, but instead of solving crimes, you uncover juicy details about your customers.<\/p>\n I believe that market research is important because it helps your business make data-driven decisions for your marketing strategy. It also makes it easier to understand your target market, find gaps, and make the most of your resources.<\/p>\n This process is essential for understanding your customers and adapting to changing trends. If you\u2019re new to this process, this complete market research guide and template<\/a> can help.<\/p>\n Once you have the data you need, you\u2019ll be ready to set some marketing goals.<\/p>\n What do you want to achieve through your marketing efforts?<\/p>\n Well-defined goals will guide your marketing strategy, whether you\u2019re increasing brand awareness, driving sales, or diversifying your customer base. Your marketing strategy goals should reflect your business goals. They should also offer clear direction for marketing efforts.<\/p>\n For example, say one of your business goals is to increase market share by 20% within a year. Your goal as a marketer could include expanding into new target markets, updating your brand, or driving customer acquisition.<\/p>\n Other marketing goals might be to increase brand awareness or generate high-quality leads. You might also want to grow or maintain thought leadership in your industry or increase customer value.<\/p>\n I find that defining clear goals provides direction and clarity, guiding marketing efforts toward desired outcomes. It helps with resource allocation, decision-making, and measuring the success of marketing initiatives.<\/p>\n I recommend this SMART goal guide<\/a> which can help you with more effective goal-setting.<\/p>\n To create an effective marketing strategy, you need to understand who your ideal customers are. I suggest taking a look at your market research to understand your target audience and market landscape. Accurate customer data<\/a> is especially important for this step.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not enough to know who your audience is. Once you\u2019ve figured out who they are, you need to understand what they want. This isn\u2019t just their needs and pain points. It\u2019s how your product or service can solve their problems.<\/p>\n So, if you can\u2019t define who your audience is in one sentence, now\u2019s your chance to do it. Create a buyer persona that\u2019s a snapshot of your ideal customer.<\/p>\n For example, a store like Macy\u2019s could define a buyer persona as Budgeting Belinda, a stylish working-class woman in her 30s living in a suburb, looking to fill her closet with designer deals at low prices.<\/p>\n With this description, Macy\u2019s marketing department can picture Budgeting Belinda and work with a clear definition in mind.<\/p>\n Buyer personas have critical demographic and psychographic information. This can include:<\/p>\n Notice how I included all those attributes in Belinda\u2019s description.<\/p>\n For B2B SaaS companies, keep in mind that buyer personas don\u2019t apply solely to the end user. When you\u2019re selling a product to another business, you also have to address the decision-maker, the financial buyer, and the technical advisor, among other roles, says Head of Marketing at Entrapeer, Hillary Lyons<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need to be able to tailor your message to each of these unique personas even though most of them will never actually use the product,\u201d says Lyons. \u201cYou have to sell each of them on the unparalleled benefit you provide without muddling your [overall] message.\u201d<\/p>\n You don\u2019t have to create your buyer persona with a pen and paper. In fact, HubSpot offers a free template you can use to make your own<\/a> (and it\u2019s really fun).<\/p>\n You can also use a platform like Versium<\/a>, which helps you identify, understand, and reach your target audience through data and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n Buyer personas should be at the core of your strategy.<\/p>\n Now that you have an understanding of your customers, it\u2019s time to see who you\u2019re competing with to get their attention.<\/p>\n To begin your competitive analysis, start with your top competitors. Reviewing their websites, content, ads, and pricing can help you understand how to differentiate your brand. I think it\u2019s also a useful way to find growth opportunities.<\/p>\n But how do you know which competitors are most important? This competitive analysis kit<\/a> with templates will walk you through the process. I like it because it will help you choose and evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and strategies of your competitors.<\/p>\n This process will help you find market gaps, spot trends, and figure out which marketing tactics will be most effective. Competitive analysis can also offer valuable insights into pricing, positioning, and marketing channels.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve figured out who you\u2019re talking to, what they\u2019ve already heard, and what they want to hear. Now, it\u2019s time to share your brand\u2019s unique value proposition<\/a>.<\/p>\n In this step, you\u2019ll craft key messaging that shows the benefits of your product or service that resonate with your target audience. This process should show off the research and work you have done up to this point. It should also incorporate your creativity, inventiveness, and willingness to experiment.<\/p>\n In my experience, well-crafted key messaging:<\/p>\n The key messaging in your marketing strategy is critical to driving engagement, loyalty, and business growth. These value proposition templates<\/a> can help if you\u2019re not sure how to draft this important messaging.<\/p>\n You know what you want to say. Now, decide on the best marketing channels for your message. Your top goal for this stage of your strategy is to align your channel choices with your target persona\u2019s media consumption habits and interests.<\/p>\n Start with media channels you\u2019re already using. Then, consider a mix of traditional and digital channels. The top channels used for marketing in 2025 according to Salesforce are social media, website\/app, digital ads, email marketing, and email.<\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n For social media, you\u2019ll need to determine which specific channels are best to reach your audience. Consider your audience\u2019s demographics when making a choice and limit yourself to social channels where you know you can produce high-quality, consistent content.<\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n To streamline this process, I like to think of your assets in three categories\u2014 paid, owned, and earned media.<\/p>\n Paid media is any channel you spend money on to attract your target audience. Most of this spending is on advertising<\/a>. This includes online and offline channels like:<\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Owned media refers to (mostly) online channels your brand owns, including:<\/p>\n It also refers to the media your marketing team creates, such as<\/p>\n Another way to say earned media is user-generated content. Earned media includes:<\/p>\n To decide which marketing channels are best for your marketing strategy, look carefully at each channel. Think about which channels are best for reaching your audience, staying within budget, and meeting your goals.<\/p>\n For example, a business targeting a younger demographic, like Gen Z, might consider using TikTok or Reddit to reach its audience.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also important to choose a number of channels that\u2019s manageable for your team and budget. 82% of small and medium businesses agree<\/a> that using multiple marketing channels generates better results, but it\u2019s important to avoid taking on too much. It\u2019s much better to market on three channels well than on 10 channels poorly.<\/p>\n I suggest looking at your content strategy as a whole to get a clear vision of how you can integrate different content formats and channels into your strategy.<\/p>\n For example, say you already have a blog that\u2019s rolling out weekly content in your niche (owned media). You might consider promoting your blog posts on Threads<\/a> (owned media), which customers might then repost (earned media). Ultimately, that will help you create a better, more well-rounded marketing strategy.<\/p>\n Once you have a clear outline of your marketing strategy, you\u2019ll need to think about how you\u2019ll measure whether it\u2019s working.<\/p>\n At this stage, you\u2019ll shift from marketing detective to numbers nerd. With a little planning and prep, your analytics can unveil the mysteries of marketing performance and unlock super insights.<\/p>\n Review your strategy and choose measurable KPIs<\/a> to track the effectiveness of your efforts. Pick a marketing analytics software solution<\/a> that works for your team to collect and measure your data.<\/p>\n \u200b\u200b<\/p>\n Ideally, I recommend choosing an analytics platform that allows you to track data across all of your marketing channels \u2014 from emails to social media and your website. This centralizes all of your data, which makes it easier to understand how each channel contributes to your overall strategy.<\/p>\n You can then plan to check and analyze the performance of your strategy over time and identify the channels that bring the best results. This can help you refine your approach based on results and feedback.<\/p>\n Lexi Boese<\/a>, an ecommerce growth strategist and co-founder of The Digital Opportunists, recommends making data a priority when building your marketing strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more data you can use, the easier you can track your success,\u201d she says. \u201cThis could be as simple as understanding which channels convert the highest amount of customers (to determine how your team should prioritize ad spend), or assessing whether you have a higher amount of first-time or returning customers to [determine] if you should focus on internal or external marketing.\u201d<\/p>\n Analyzing KPIs helps businesses stay agile, refine their strategies, and adapt to evolving customer needs.<\/p>\n Think of a content strategy like a plan for how you want to communicate with people through things like social media posts, blog articles, videos, or even emails.<\/p>\n You already know who you’re trying to reach, but this determines how you\u2019re going to say it and in which format. A content strategy should outline the type of content you\u2019ll share, goals, how often, and an editorial calendar for planning content.<\/p>\n In 2025, multimedia content and visual storytelling are king. According to the State of Marketing<\/a>, 30% of marketers use short-form videos as part of their content strategy, and 31% say it generates the highest ROI of all content creation formats.<\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s even more essential to invest in formats that have a high ROI, such as short-form video, audio content, and user-generated content. Consider adding podcast and audio content to your strategy: 91% of marketers planned to increase<\/a> their investment in podcasts and audio content in 2025, and 46% of weekly podcast listeners have purchased a product or service after hearing about it on a podcast.<\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean you shouldn\u2019t invest in text-based content like SEO and blogging<\/a>. It\u2019s simply important to be strategic about where you allot the most resources, in my opinion, especially if you have a limited budget.<\/p>\n Your boss may have asked you how you plan on using AI this year. If you\u2019re like me, you\u2019re learning on the fly. 48% of marketing leaders<\/a> have invested in AI tools for their teams, but just 47% of marketers<\/a> have a clear understanding of how to use AI in their marketing strategy.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s be clear, AI isn\u2019t a marketing strategy on its own.<\/p>\n It\u2019s simply a tool that can make everything else\u2014 identifying buyer personas, creating personalized content, prospecting, and even analytics\u2014 faster and more effective. 75% of marketers say<\/a> they use AI to reduce manual task time, and 86% say that AI saves them over an hour a day.<\/p>\n In your marketing strategy, document how you plan to integrate AI into your processes and workflows.<\/p>\n A finished marketing strategy will pull together the sections and components above. It may also include:<\/p>\n A concise overview that outlines the marketing goals, target audience, and key marketing tactics.<\/p>\n You may want to create a brand identity<\/a> as part of your strategy. Brand positioning, voice, and visual identity may also be helpful additions to your marketing strategy.<\/p>\n Your marketing plan is the specific actions you\u2019ll take to achieve the goals in your marketing strategy. Your plan may cover campaigns, channel-specific tactics, and more.<\/p>\n Not sure where to start? This free marketing plan template<\/a> can help.<\/p>\n Download for Free<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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1. Marketing Objectives<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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2. Marketing Mix<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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3. Marketing Budget<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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4. Competitive Analysis<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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5. Audience Segmentation, Targeting, and Personalization Strategy<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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6. Content Strategy<\/strong><\/h3>\n
7. Metrics & Key Performance Indicators<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Why is a marketing strategy important?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Offers Direction<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Targets the Right Audience<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Builds Brand Identity<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Maximizes ROI<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Evaluates Performance<\/strong><\/h3>\n
1. Conduct market research.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
2. Define your goals.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
3. Identify your target audience and create buyer personas.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Buyer Persona Example<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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4. Conduct competitive analysis.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
5. Develop key messaging.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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6. Choose your marketing channels.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Paid Media<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Owned Media<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Earned Media<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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7. Create, track, and analyze KPIs.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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8. Create a content strategy.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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9. Create an AI strategy for marketing.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Examples of AI in Marketing Strategy<\/h4>\n
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10. Present your marketing strategy.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Executive Summary<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Brand Identity<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Marketing Plan and Tactics<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Budget Allocation<\/strong><\/h4>\n