7 Steps to Create a Complete Marketing Strategy in 2023

As a business owner, it's crucial to have a solid marketing plan that will help you take care of your customers, increase your revenue, and maximize the returns on your marketing investments. With the latest marketing trends like short videos, influencer marketing, and branded social media taking the lead in 2023, having a well-thought-out marketing strategy is even more vital.

Combining emerging trends and time-tested strategies is the key to achieving powerful marketing results. Whether you're just starting or looking to revamp your current marketing plan, it's essential to carefully craft a strategy that aligns with your business goals and target audience.

To get you started, let's explore the essential components of a complete marketing strategy for 2023. We'll also share some inspiring examples to understand better how to craft a strategy that works for your business.

Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy is like a roadmap that guides a company's promotional efforts across different platforms and channels. It's a well-structured plan that usually includes objectives, target audience profiles, content creation steps, key performance indicators, and other important components. Keeping up with the latest trends is critical in the ever-changing marketing landscape but can be overwhelming and time-consuming.

A marketing strategy will:

• Align your team to specific goals.
• Help you tie your efforts to business objectives.
• Allow you to identify and test what resonates with your target audience.
• Empower you to capitalize on emerging trends.

In the last year alone, we've witnessed a significant shift towards short-form video content, the rise and fall of new platforms like Meta, and the ongoing impact of the global pandemic. What worked for your marketing strategy in the past might not be effective today.

To stay relevant and succeed in the fast-paced marketing world, staying ahead of the curve is essential. That means proactively and continuously adapting your strategy to meet your audience's changing needs and preferences.

Marketing Strategy Components

1. Marketing Mix (4 Ps of Marketing)
2. Marketing Objectives
3. Marketing Budget
4. Competitive Analysis
5. Segmentation, Targeting, & Positioning
6. Content Creation (Including Trending Content)
7. Metrics & Key Performance Indicators

1. Marketing Mix

The marketing mix, also known as the 4 Ps of marketing, is a foundational tool that helps you understand what you'll be selling, where you'll be selling it, and how you'll be promoting it. It's a crucial document that lays the groundwork for your overall marketing strategy. The following P's make up this framework:

• Product: What exactly are you offering to your customers?
• Price: How much will you charge for it?
• Place: Where will you sell your product or service?
• Promotion: How will you promote your product or service?

You can create a clear roadmap for your marketing efforts by answering these fundamental questions. You can then take this information and develop a comprehensive marketing plan for each promotional channel.

2. Marketing Objectives

Setting your marketing objectives is an important first step in developing your strategy. Whether you do it alongside your 4 Ps or afterward, outlining your goals will help guide other components of your plan, such as budgeting and content creation.

To set effective marketing goals to be as specific as possible. That means creating SMART goals tailored to each promotional channel or tactic. Remember that your goals may need to be revised as your priorities change.

3. Marketing Budget

Having a marketing budget is crucial for the success of your strategy. It's important to allocate funds to hire the right talent, use the right software, advertise on the right channels, and create high-quality content. Without these investments, your marketing efforts may not yield the results you're hoping for.

It's important to keep in mind that you don't need a huge budget to get started. You can begin with a small budget and focus on one or two tactics to generate a return on investment. Once you see positive results, you can scale up your efforts and expand your budget accordingly.

4. Competitive Analysis

Understanding your competition is critical to creating a successful marketing strategy. Without this knowledge, you may be wasting your efforts and resources, and it will be difficult to measure your results.

It's important to differentiate yourself from competitors to capture your target audience's attention effectively. While you may already know who your competitors are, it's crucial to take the time to identify them fully. Doing so may even discover a new competitor competing for your target audience's attention.

Don't risk "yelling into the void" with your marketing efforts. Ensure you clearly understand your competition and differentiate yourself in a way that resonates with your audience. By doing so, you'll be well on your way to creating a successful marketing strategy that generates measurable results.

5. Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning

You must go beyond publishing random posts and ads to create a marketing strategy that truly resonates with your audience. Segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) is a process that helps you deliver more personalized, relevant messages to your target audience. Here are the three steps:

1. Identify your target audience: You must interview your existing customers, conduct market research, and create buyer personas.
2. Target a specific audience segment: Instead of reaching everyone, focus on a narrow group of highly qualified buyers who will most likely engage with your message.
3. Position your brand: You need to identify what sets your brand apart from your competitors and use that information to position your brand uniquely and compellingly. This is critical when developing a marketing strategy that stands out in a crowded market.

6. Content Creation

Now it's time for the fun part - creating your marketing content! But before you dive in, it's crucial to do so strategically. After all, you don't want to waste time and resources on content that doesn't resonate with your target audience, and you certainly don't want to be left behind in the latest trends.

It's a competitive world out there, with marketers using a variety of formats to reach their audience. From videos to images, blogs to infographics, podcasts to audio content, you must stay on top of emerging trends to stand out.

7. Metrics & Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

To truly understand the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, it’s crucial to include metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs will be unique to your business and channels to reach your customers. Some common examples include Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Organic Traffic, Conversion Rate, and Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs).

7 Steps of a Marketing Strategy Process

1. Build a marketing plan

Think of your marketing strategy as the big picture and your marketing plan as the individual brushstrokes that make up the painting. Your strategy outlines the what and why, while your plan outlines the how and when. Both are essential to your marketing success.

Your marketing plan will include specific tactics such as content creation, advertising, email marketing, social media marketing, and more. It will also detail how you'll measure the success of each tactic, including key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics.

2. Create buyer personas

Knowing who your customers are is crucial to any successful marketing strategy. Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers that capture their demographics, behaviours, motivations, and goals. By understanding your buyer personas, you can create tailored marketing campaigns that resonate with your target audience and drive conversions. Your buyer personas should be a central component of your marketing strategy, guiding your messaging, content, and tactics to ensure they speak directly to your customers' needs and preferences.

3. Identify your goals

Your marketing strategy should be aligned with your business goals. Setting clear and specific marketing goals that tie into your overall business objectives is crucial. For instance, if you aim to have 300 attendees at your upcoming conference in three months, your marketing goal could be to boost online registrations by 10% at the end of the month to ensure you reach your target. Other marketing objectives could include enhancing brand awareness, generating high-quality leads, becoming a thought leader in your industry, or increasing customer value. Once you've identified your marketing goals, you can plan to achieve them and measure your progress over time.

4. Select the appropriate tools

To make sure your marketing strategy is effective, you need to be able to measure your progress toward your goals. That's where the right tools come in. Social media schedulers and other online software can provide valuable analytics that helps you understand what your audience is responding to and what's not working. By monitoring these metrics, you can fine-tune your strategy and ensure you deliver content that resonates with your target audience.

5. Review your media

When building your marketing strategy, it's important to assess what resources you already have at your disposal. Start by categorizing your assets into three types: paid media, owned media, and earned media. Paid media refers to any channel you invest in to reach your target audience, while owned media encompasses the content your marketing team creates, such as videos, podcasts, and infographics. Earned media, on the other hand, is user-generated content, like social media shares, tweets, and photos that mention your brand.

Once you have an inventory of your materials, consolidate them in one place so you can have a clear view of what you have and how to use them to achieve your marketing objectives.

6. Audit and plan media campaigns

To connect with your target audience, it's important to focus on your owned media and how it aligns with your marketing goals. Take a look at your blog posts, for example - can updating your call-to-actions at the end of each post help increase RSVPs for your upcoming event?

Your buyer personas should also be top of mind when developing your content creation plan. If your ideal customer is struggling with adding sound effects to their videos, why not create a short demo video on Instagram showcasing how your product can help solve that challenge?

To stay organized and on track, it's important to create a content creation plan that outlines topic clusters, goals, format, and channels for each piece of content. Make sure to tie each piece back to a specific challenge that your buyer persona is facing.

7. Bring it to fruition

Now that you've done your research and planning, it's time to implement your strategy! This involves coordinating with different teams to ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

To do this effectively, you must create a detailed plan outlining the specific actions and steps to execute your campaign. This plan should cover everything from your channels and tactics to the resources and teams involved.

Remember to think long-term when creating this document. A well-structured strategy should cover a 12-month timeline and be the foundation for all your future marketing efforts.

The Bottom Line

Crafting a successful marketing strategy requires patience and perseverance. It's not something that can be accomplished quickly or without effort. You must be committed to reaching your target audience most effectively, no matter when or where they are online.

Don't get discouraged; take advantage of the resources we've provided in this article. Remember, as you progress, research and customer feedback will guide you in refining your strategy to ensure that you're dedicating your time to the marketing channels that matter most to your audience. With time, you'll gain a deep understanding of what works and what doesn't, and you'll be able to make better decisions about allocating your marketing resources.