What Is a Marketing Strategy and How to Create One

A marketing strategy is a concrete, documented long-term roadmap that aims to help you achieve your marketing goals. It contains details of the what, why, where, who and how to market. 

A marketing strategy is the long-term blueprint (a year or more) for how a business will attract new and retain existing customers. A marketing plan, on the other hand, contains the detailed methods and steps of implementing the strategy over a shorter period of time, usually a quarter of a year or monthly.

In short, a marketing strategy is a key factor that gives businesses a competitive advantage because when you align your marketing efforts with your business objectives, your strategy is more likely to be effective.

Keep reading to learn more about how to create a marketing strategy, its importance, and more. 

Why Is a Marketing Strategy Important?

Without a marketing strategy, businesses are lost at sea in a crowded marketplace. They aren’t able to take full advantage of their marketing efforts and this can stifle business growth. Conversely, a well-prepared marketing strategy that’s created in advance, and which includes all the important elements covered below, can help your business grow and experience success.

That’s how a marketing strategy helps your business grow:

• Aligns your marketing activities with your overarching business goals.
• Ensures effective use of marketing channels and resources.
• Identifies target markets and customer needs to optimise campaigns.
• Creates clarity for marketing teams and stakeholders.
• Helps businesses measure success using key performance indicators (KPIs).

The impact of an effective marketing strategy can therefore not be underestimated. It’s a powerful document that sets out how you’ll achieve your marketing objectives, who you will target and where, what efforts you’ll take, why you’ll do so and how you’ll reach your business goals.

Key Components of a Marketing Strategy

With so many key advantages for businesses in developing a sound marketing strategy, it’s always a good idea that you do the foundational work first, putting in place all the elements together to create it. 

What goes into creating a sound marketing strategy? Below is a detailed list of key steps and components to keep in mind. 

Defining business objectives

Whether your business sells products, services or a combination of both, you need to identify and clearly define your business objectives.

These may include increasing sales and revenue, expanding your market share/reach, improving customer satisfaction or others.

Once you know what goals you want  your business to achieve, you can start quantifying them and figuring out ways to reach your target demographic.

Identifying your target market

There is a false assumption that every business aims to sell to everyone. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. By aiming to sell to everyone, your efforts are likely to result in selling to no one. This is why defining your target market or audience is important.

Your target market has specific needs and pain points that your product or service addresses. But you need to clearly identify these. That’s why developing buyer personas is key in guiding your marketing campaigns. 

You need to focus on aspects such as:

• Age;
• Psychographics;
• Demographics;
• Geographical location;
• Purchasing power/income levels;
• Pain points your product/service solves;
• Buyer goals and motivations;
• Buyer behavior;
• Buyer values and beliefs;
• Buyer objections and barriers;
• The customer journey phase they are currently in;
• The offline and online channels they use;
• And more.

A clear buyer persona (or several) helps you define exactly who your ideal customer is. This clarity lets you tailor your message, highlight the right unique selling points, and choose the most effective ways to reach them.

Conducting market research

Another key component of a marketing strategy is market research. This involves analysing market trends, competitor strategies and consumer behavior. 

This aspect should not be taken lightly. You need to collect, analyse and interpret information about your target customers, competitors and overall industry. In turn, this will help guide you to make better business and marketing decisions. Why is it important? Because you’ll understand demand, trends and opportunities.

Collecting information can be done through surveys, interviews, social listening and competitor analysis. But first, you’ll need to clarify what you want to learn. Do you want to know more about your customer needs? What market size your business is or will operate in or do you want to learn more about your competitors’ strategies?

Once you’ve clarified this aspect, you need to collect data. This can be primary research and secondary research:

• Primary research or first-hand data involves surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations, test marketing, social listening, etc.
  
• Secondary research or existing/already published data can include industry reports, competitor websites, government statistics, trade publications and more.

To analyse your competitors, you’ll want to study both your direct and indirect competitors to understand their strengths, weaknesses, pricing and positioning. As for understanding consumer behavior, you’ll want to look at preferences, motivations and buying patterns of potential customers.

When it comes to measuring market trends and size, you’ll need to focus on evaluating demand, growth potential, seasonal shifts and emerging opportunities. Finally, you’ll need to interpret and report your findings. This means turning raw data into insights that will inform your decisions about your marketing strategy.

Crafting a value proposition

Having done your market research, it’s time to focus on aspects closer to home. That means shining a spotlight on your brand, product or service.

What makes them unique? What do you offer that your competitors don’t? How does your offering and brand differentiate itself from competitors? How do you stand out in a crowded market?

Once you have clarity on these aspects, you can create your business’ unique selling points (USPs) or unique value proposition. This is something that can and should be used consistently when you develop a more focused marketing plan later on. The reason is consistency.

You need to communicate your business’ value proposition consistently across all platforms (online and offline) so that you create a strong, respected and authoritative brand. After all, a business’ reputation may be intangible but it has real-world effects on your bottom line. 

Selecting marketing channels

Having done the hard work until this point, you’ll be better informed as to where and how you will approach your target market through your marketing efforts. This means clearly identifying the marketing channels to reach them. There are a few marketing channels that you can use as part of a varied marketing strategy. 

Here are several examples to consider:

• Digital marketing strategy: Websites, search engines, and email;
• Content marketing strategy: Blogs, videos, and user-generated content;
• Social media marketing strategy: Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn;
• Inbound marketing strategy: Attracting customers through valuable content such as downloadables, infographics, PDFs, guides, etc.

In practice, these strategies are often implemented together as a cohesive whole simultaneously. This means the need for effective coordination and excellent planning.

Setting marketing objectives and KPIs

Next, you will want to set your marketing objectives and establish your KPIs. 

Examples of goals for a marketing strategy may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Increase your customer base;
• Enhance brand visibility;
• Boost product adoption.

Meanwhile, KPIs or measuring performance can be done through key metrics such as:

• Conversion rates;
• Return on investment (ROI);
• Reducing customer acquisition cost (CAC);
• Increasing customer lifetime value (CLV);
• Increasing website traffic; 
• Raising social media engagement;
• Improving email marketing metrics (such as lowering unsubscribe and increasing open rates);
• Increasing the customer retention rate;
• And others.

Quantifying what you want to measure in your marketing helps you make informed, data-driven decisions. This allows you to refine and improve future campaigns and strategies with greater precision.

Developing marketing tactics

Last but not least, you need to create actionable steps to execute your strategy. This means preparing and launching your marketing campaign. However, as mentioned earlier, this often entails a combination of marketing tactics launched simultaneously across different channels.

For example, you might combine influencer partnerships with paid advertising such as Google Ads and social media campaigns. You can also use email marketing to nurture leads, support it with a content strategy that includes blog articles, videos, and podcasts, and add Public Relations (PR) to boost brand awareness and credibility.

Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Marketing Strategy

Having laid the groundwork for an effective marketing strategy, it’s time to get down to preparing the documentation for implementation. 

Below are the eight steps to follow that can help you achieve this.

Step 1: Define your goals

Before you start mapping out campaigns, establish clear short-term and long-term marketing objectives. 

Here are some examples of marketing goals:

• Short-term: Increase website traffic by 20% in the next three months.
• Long-term: Grow sales from online payments by 30% within one year.

Goals give your strategy focus and allow you to measure success.

Step 2: Conduct a situational analysis

Understanding where you currently stand in the market is essential. This step helps you uncover opportunities and anticipate challenges.

Here are some ways to conduct your analysis:

• Competitive analysis: Look at how competitors accept payments, their pricing strategies, their advertising channels and slogans, their USPs and value proposition or their customer loyalty programmes.
• SWOT analysis:
  • Strengths: Offering online payments or card payment methods.
  • Weaknesses: Limited brand awareness in a new market.
  • Opportunities: Rising preference for contactless payments in the UK.
  • Threats: Competitors offering discounts on transaction fees.
• Market and customer data: Use customer surveys, Google Analytics and industry reports to understand what your customers expect from your product/service and business as a whole.

At the end of the day, a situational analysis isn’t about ticking boxes – it’s about really seeing the bigger picture. It’s how you spot the gaps competitors leave behind, notice what your customers are asking for, and recognize the trends that could shape your next step. When you connect those dots, the path forward feels less like guesswork and more like making informed, confident choices.

Step 3: Identify your target audience

A successful strategy speaks directly to your ideal customer. Here are several steps to define your audience:

• Research customer demographics (age, income, location) and behaviours (buying habits, payment preferences).
• Segment your customers. For example, independent retailers may want affordable, reliable card machines, while restaurants may need mobile POS systems for tableside payments.
• Create buyer personas such as: “Sarah, 35, a small boutique owner who wants to reduce cash handling and speed up checkout times.”

When you can picture your customer’s day-to-day struggles and what makes their work easier, your strategy stops being generic and starts feeling personal. That’s the difference between selling a product and offering a solution that truly resonates.

Step 4: Choose your marketing channels

Your target audience determines where you should focus your efforts. In marketing and advertising, these channels are broadly divided into online and offline channels. Below is a brief breakdown of each one.

Online channels:

• Website and blog content (e.g., educating customers);
• Email marketing (newsletters with updates on features);
• Social media (sharing success stories from customers);
• Paid ads on search engines or social platforms.

Offline channels:

• Industry events and trade shows to demo your product;
• Printed flyers or brochures for a local marketing presence;
• PR in small business magazines or local news outlets.

Put shortly, choosing the right channels is less about being everywhere and more about being where your audience actually pays attention. 

For instance, email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective tools, generating on average $36 for every $1 spent. Content also plays a powerful role: 90% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding which brands they support (CrowdRiff, 2023). 

And offline efforts still matter – 72% of trade show attendees say they are more likely to buy from companies they meet in person. 

The key is choosing one or two digital channels that deliver measurable reach, then pairing them with offline touchpoints that build trust face to face. That balance helps you get visibility without stretching your resources too thin.

Step 5: Develop your key messaging

Your marketing messaging should highlight your unique value and resonate with your customers’ needs.

A few tips for effective messaging include:

• Address customer pain points.
• Highlight your USPs.
• Adapt to each channel.

The key is maintaining consistency across channels so that there is no brand dilution or mixed messaging that can confuse your audience.

Step 6: Set your budget and resources

Be realistic about how much you can spend and who will execute the plan. 

Consider aspects such as:

• Budget allocation: Advertising spend, design costs and marketing tools.
• Resources: Decide whether your in-house team will handle campaigns or if you’ll partner with external agencies.

For example, a start-up might invest more heavily in social media ads, while an established retailer may split the budget across events, online ads and PR.

Step 7: Create marketing campaigns

Now it’s time to put the strategy into action. 

Below are a few examples of campaigns you can launch:

• Email campaigns: Send a series of emails educating your customers on the benefits of using your products/services or choosing your brand.
• Content marketing: Write blog posts on helpful topics.
• Social media campaigns: Share customer testimonials and reviews.
• Seasonal promotions: Offer discounts on products/services ahead of busy retail periods like Christmas.

While there are many more options you can follow, these examples aim to show that you need an integrated and comprehensive approach that aligns your chosen marketing channels with your marketing goals through which to achieve your campaign objectives.

Step 8: Define KPIs and measure success

To know whether your strategy is working, you need to set measurable benchmarks. 

Although we already mentioned some examples of marketing KPIs, the list below is the most frequently used one by many businesses across the UK:

• Website traffic: Track increases in visits to product pages.
• Sales conversions: Measure how many website visitors sign up or buy a product/service.
• Engagement rates: Monitor likes, shares and comments on social media.
• Email performance: Open rates and click-through rates.

Regularly review these KPIs to refine your strategy and focus on what works. Then, when your decisions are driven by data, you can make further tweaks to fully optimise your campaigns.

Types of Marketing Strategies

Every business needs a tailored approach to marketing. The right strategy depends on your goals, target audience and budget. Some businesses benefit most from digital-first campaigns, while others see stronger results from community-driven initiatives.

Below are five of the most effective marketing strategies small and medium-sized businesses in the UK can adopt.

Digital marketing strategy

A digital marketing strategy focuses on promoting your business across online platforms where your audience spends the most time. This approach typically includes search engine optimisation (SEO) to boost website visibility, pay-per-click (PPC) ads to drive targeted traffic and email marketing to nurture leads.

Business social media also plays a role, as it helps businesses connect with customers through tailored posts and promotions. For example, a small retailer in Manchester could use PPC ads to target local searches and then retarget visitors with email campaigns.

The advantage of digital marketing is its measurability. Businesses can track website traffic, conversions and cost per lead in real time, which allows for quick adjustments and improved ROI.

Content marketing strategy

Content marketing is about creating and sharing valuable, relevant content that attracts and retains customers. Instead of overtly selling, this strategy positions your business as a trusted resource.

Examples include blogs, case studies, whitepapers, how-to videos, and infographics.

For instance, a small café could publish a blog post explaining the benefits of different coffee types, while a YouTube tutorial might show how to make your own favourite cup of coffee.

Over time, consistent content builds brand authority and improves SEO, making it easier for new customers to discover your business online. By addressing customer pain points with insightful content, you educate and nurture trust. This makes customers more likely to choose your product or service when they’re ready to buy.

Social media marketing strategy

A social media marketing strategy leverages platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok to promote products, engage audiences, and build communities.

This approach works well for small businesses marketing and helps connect directly with their customers. Campaigns can include organic content, paid ads, and interactive posts such as polls or stories.

Social media is also effective for customer support and relationship building. Quick replies to comments or direct messages enhance trust and improve brand loyalty. Additionally, analytics tools allow businesses to track engagement, reach, and conversions. As such, this makes it easier to measure success and refine campaigns.

When done consistently, social media marketing becomes a cost-effective way to boost visibility and drive sales.

Inbound marketing strategy

Inbound marketing focuses on attracting customers by offering solutions to their problems, rather than chasing them with traditional advertising. It revolves around creating helpful, tailored content that guides prospects through the customer journey.

Common inbound tactics include SEO-optimised blogs, lead magnets (like eBooks or guides), webinars, and personalised email sequences. 

When customers find this type of content during their research process, they’re more likely to trust the brand and consider it as an option.

Inbound marketing is powerful because it nurtures leads over time, building stronger relationships and turning prospects into loyal, long-term customers.

Influencer marketing and user-generated content

Influencer marketing and user-generated content (UGC) add credibility by showcasing real people who use and recommend your products. Partnering with influencers allows you to tap into their audience and benefit from their established trust.

Similarly, encouraging customers to post their experiences (like sharing photos of how they use your product on Instagram) creates authentic, word-of-mouth promotion.

Another good aspect of UGC is that it can be repurposed into testimonials, reviews or social posts. This can amplify your marketing reach without large ad spend.

Both strategies rely on authenticity, making them highly effective for small and medium-sized businesses looking to build brand awareness and trust.

Common Challenges in Creating a Marketing Strategy

One of the biggest challenges is identifying the right target audience. Without a clear understanding of who your ideal customer is, campaigns can fall flat or attract the wrong leads.

Another obstacle is choosing the most effective marketing channels. With so many options (ranging from social media to email and events), it’s easy to spread efforts too thin instead of focusing on where customers actually engage.

Businesses also struggle with balancing budgets and allocating resources efficiently, particularly small enterprises with limited funds. Deciding how much to invest in paid ads versus content creation can be difficult.

Finally, measuring ROI and adjusting strategies often poses a challenge. Tracking results requires the right tools and consistent monitoring. Without this, it’s hard to know what’s working and what needs improvement. That’s why strategy refinement is a continuous process.

How Payment Systems Fit Into Marketing Strategies

Payment systems aren’t just operational tools. Instead, they play a vital role in your overall marketing strategy. 

By offering modern solutions such as card machines and convenient online payments, businesses can appeal to today’s customers who expect fast, secure and convenient transactions. 

Choosing the right payment methods also helps you stand out by aligning with customer preferences, which ultimately improves satisfaction and loyalty.

Simplifying the customer experience

Seamless payments reduce friction at checkout, encouraging repeat purchases. 

Whether through in-store card machines or mobile point-of-sale (POS) devices, businesses that simplify transactions build trust and increase customer retention.

Promoting payment flexibility

Highlighting your payment options in marketing campaigns can also attract customers. 

For example, showcasing the benefits of contactless payments or instant settlement in social media ads not only demonstrates innovation but also positions your business as customer-focused.

Conclusion

A successful marketing strategy should be considered as a roadmap that aligns your business goals with the needs of your target audience.

By clearly defining objectives, understanding your customers and selecting the right marketing channels, you can create campaigns that deliver measurable results. Staying adaptable is key. This means regularly reviewing your business’ performance metrics and refining your approach to make sure your strategy remains effective in a changing market.

Ultimately, a well-planned marketing strategy, combined with modern payment systems, helps your small business grow while enjoying better engagement and long-term success.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can you attract customers?

A business can attract customers by understanding their needs and offering solutions that genuinely help. Start by defining your target audience, then use a mix of digital channels like social media, SEO and email to reach them. Offering promotions, excellent customer service and building trust through reviews or testimonials also encourages people to choose your business over competitors. Consistency and clear messaging make your brand more appealing to potential customers.

How does marketing attract customers?

Marketing attracts customers by creating awareness, generating interest and showing why your product or service solves their problems. Through targeted campaigns, businesses can highlight their value proposition. Effective marketing speaks directly to customer pain points, builds trust with helpful information and motivates them to act. Actions can range from visiting a website and making a purchase to engaging with your brand.

How to market a product?

To market a product effectively, start by identifying your target audience and understanding their needs. Develop a clear value proposition that explains why your product is the best solution. Use a mix of channels such as social media, email marketing, paid ads and in-person events to reach potential buyers. Share engaging content (like tutorials, case studies or testimonials) to build trust. Consistent branding and messaging help create recognition and encourage sales.

How to choose a marketing strategy?

Choosing a marketing strategy starts with defining your business goals and understanding your target audience. Assess which channels your customers use most (such as search engines, social media or in-person events) and focus on those. Consider your budget and resources, as some strategies (like PPC advertising) require higher investment, while others (like content marketing) take more time. Align your choice with measurable outcomes and ensure your strategy supports growth and customer acquisition.

Which is the most successful marketing tactic?

The most successful marketing tactic depends on your business, audience and goals. That being said, content marketing combined with digital channels is often highly effective. Helpful, relevant content attracts customers organically and builds trust. When paired with social media and email campaigns, it nurtures leads into buyers. For small businesses, word-of-mouth and customer reviews are equally powerful. Ultimately, the best tactic is one that consistently reaches your audience and drives measurable results.