Marketing strategy is the central nervous system for every growing business. Without one, you're more likely to grow more confused than your business. By definition, a marketing strategy outlines your plans for tackling the target market and communicating your value proposition to your audience whilst staying true to your core beliefs and values. This includes:

• What are your core values?
• Who is the market segment?
• What is the value proposition?
• What are the key messages?
• Who do you communicate with?
• How do you communicate?
  

Putting these things into a document establishes priorities, protects against internal politics and ensures that people are working in tandem towards a common goal. It also shows clients how you plan on working with them to grow their business, allowing them to manage their money better.

Your core values

What are your company's core values? Why do they exist? What do they mean to you and your team? Understanding the answers to these questions can help you develop a marketing strategy aligned with your company's mission, goals, and culture. 

Your company's core values should serve as a guide for all of your marketing decisions. They should influence how you position your brand, the messaging you use, and the type of content you create. 

When developing your marketing strategy, ask yourself how each decision will impact your core values. If something feels off, it probably is. It's also important to remember that your core values should be flexible enough to adapt as your company grows and changes. As new challenges arise, take a step back and reconsider what those challenges mean in relation to your core values. Use them as a compass to find the best way forward.

Who is the market segment?

There are a few ways to identify your target market, and the first step is to segment your customers by various criteria. This could include factors like age, gender, income, location, interests, or any other metric that you think would be relevant to marketing your product or service. Once you understand your target market, you can craft a strategy for reaching them.

What is the value proposition? 

Your value proposition is the unique selling point that sets your product or service apart from the competition. It should be something that your target market finds appealing and relevant to their needs. When crafting a value proposition, you should keep in mind what benefits your product or service provides and how it meets the needs of your target market. 

What are the key messages?

Your key messages are the core ideas you want to communicate to your target market. These could be things like the features of your product or service, how it solves a problem for customers or anything else that you think would be important for them to know. Keep in mind that your key messages should be aligned with your overall marketing strategy.

Who do you communicate with? 

Now that you know your target market and what messages you want to communicate to them, it's time to plan how you'll reach them. This involves deciding which channels you'll use to reach them (e.g., social media, email marketing, paid to advertise, etc.) and what specific tactics you'll use on each channel (e.g., blog posts, whitepapers, ebooks, webinars, etc.). 

How do you communicate?

The final puzzle piece is figuring out how you'll communicate your key messages to your target market. This will involve creating content containing those messages and distributing it through the channels you've selected. The type of content will vary depending on the channel - for example, a blog post would be appropriate for most social media platforms but wouldn't work so well for email marketing. Once you've created your content, make sure to promote it regularly and keep an eye on how it's performing so that you can adjust your strategy as needed.