How to Build a Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy gives your marketing direction.

Without one, it is easy for marketing to become a collection of activities: a new campaign, more social media, some SEO, a website update, an email programme or the latest AI tool.

Each activity might have value.

But the important question is whether they are helping the business move in the same direction.

A marketing strategy helps answer that question.

It connects what the business wants to achieve with who it needs to reach, the value it offers, how it will compete and where its resources should be focused.

Strategy Comes After Understanding

A common mistake is trying to create a strategy before properly understanding the current situation.

That is why the previous stage — the marketing review — matters.

A useful review helps you understand where the business stands today: what is working, what isn't, what customers need, what competitors are doing and where the strongest opportunities may exist.

Strategy turns that understanding into choices.

The RAME material describes this transition clearly: the review identifies opportunities for improvement; strategy then turns those insights into direction that can guide future marketing decisions.

In simple terms:

Review → Understand → Decide

Don't start by asking:

“What marketing should we do?”

Start by asking:

“Based on what we know, where should we focus?”

A Strategy Is About Choices

Businesses rarely have unlimited time, people or budget.

Strategy therefore involves making choices.

Which markets matter most?

Which customers should you prioritise?

What problems are you best placed to solve?

How should customers perceive you?

What value can you offer that alternatives cannot?

Where should you invest your resources?

What will you deliberately not prioritise?

This last question is particularly important.

A strategy that tries to target everyone, use every channel and pursue every opportunity isn't providing much direction.

Strong strategy creates focus.

The RAME source material makes the same point about target markets: successful businesses rarely pursue every opportunity; they prioritise those offering the greatest potential and build from there.

Start With Clear Marketing Objectives

Your objectives define what marketing needs to achieve.

They might include generating qualified opportunities, increasing retention, supporting entry into a new market, improving conversion or building demand for a new service.

Whatever they are, they should connect back to the objectives of the business.

We explored this in How to Set Marketing Objectives That Actually Matter.

Here, their role is slightly different.

Objectives give the strategy a destination.

Without them, it is difficult to decide which markets, customers, propositions or activities deserve priority.

And it becomes even harder to decide whether the strategy is working.

Decide Which Customers and Markets Matter Most

One of the most important strategic decisions is where to compete.

Many businesses describe their audience too broadly.

“SMEs.”

“Manufacturers.”

“Business owners.”

“Marketing managers.”

Those descriptions may be technically accurate, but they don't necessarily provide enough direction.

Different customers can have different needs, buying processes, priorities, budgets and reasons for choosing you.

Strategy requires greater clarity.

Which markets represent the strongest opportunity?

Which customers are most valuable?

Where does your expertise create the greatest advantage?

Which audiences are easiest to reach?

Where are your resources most likely to create meaningful impact?

You don't necessarily have to serve only one market.

But you should understand which opportunities deserve priority.

Be Clear About the Value You Provide

Once you know who you want to serve, another question becomes critical:

Why should they choose you?

That's the role of your value proposition.

A strong value proposition isn't simply a slogan.

It explains the value your business creates for a particular customer and why that value matters.

Consider the difference between:

“We provide high-quality marketing services.”

and a proposition built around a specific customer problem, outcome or advantage.

The second gives strategy something much more useful to work with.

It can influence messaging, content, campaigns, sales conversations, website structure and even product development.

If the business itself isn't clear about the value it provides, customers are unlikely to work it out for themselves.

Decide How You Want to Be Positioned

Value proposition and positioning are closely related, but they aren't identical.

Your value proposition explains the value you provide.

Your positioning helps determine how you want customers to perceive you relative to the alternatives available to them.

The RAME strategy material describes positioning as the place a business occupies in the customer's mind. It influences how customers compare you with competitors and the value they associate with the business.

You might want to be known for specialist expertise.

Ease of implementation.

Premium quality.

Technical capability.

Speed.

Service.

Innovation.

Practicality.

The important thing is that your positioning should be meaningful to the customers you want to attract — and credible for the business to deliver.

Bring the Strategic Decisions Together

At this point, several important decisions begin to connect.

Your objectives establish what you need to achieve.

Your market and competitor understanding establishes the environment you are operating in, the opportunities available and the alternatives your customers can choose.

Your customers establish who you need to serve.

Your value proposition establishes the value you provide and why it matters to those customers.

Your positioning establishes how you want to be perceived relative to the alternatives.

Your priorities establish where you will focus your time, budget and resources.

Your measurement establishes how you will judge progress and learn what needs to improve.

Together, these create the strategic direction for your marketing.

The RAME library already contains a Strategic Framework built around exactly these seven connected elements: Objectives, Markets and Competitors, Customers, Value Proposition, Positioning, Priorities and Measurement.

Strategy Should Guide Activity — Not Become Activity

Once the strategic direction is clear, you can make better tactical decisions.

Should you invest in SEO?

Should you use LinkedIn?

Should you create video?

Should you run paid advertising?

Should you build an email programme?

Should you attend exhibitions?

Should you use AI to accelerate content production?

There isn't a universal answer.

The appropriate choice depends on the strategy.

For example, if your priority audience relies heavily on specialist search when researching suppliers, search visibility may deserve greater investment.

If buying decisions require significant education, useful content may become important.

If sales cycles are long, lead nurturing may deserve more attention.

If your customers congregate around particular industry events, those events may play a strategic role.

The channel comes after the decision about what you're trying to achieve and who you're trying to reach.

This is why RAME makes a clear distinction between strategy and execution. Existing material summarises it particularly well:

Strategy comes before execution.

A Strategy Also Helps You Say No

One of the less obvious benefits of a strategy is that it gives you a filter for new ideas.

Marketing constantly presents businesses with opportunities.

A new platform.

A new technology.

A new advertising format.

A new supplier.

A competitor doing something interesting.

A new AI tool.

Without a strategy, each can trigger another change in direction.

With a strategy, you can ask:

Does this help us achieve our objectives?

Does it help us reach a priority audience?

Does it reinforce our positioning?

Does it strengthen our value proposition?

Is it a better use of resources than our existing priorities?

If not, the answer may simply be no.

That's not a missed opportunity.

It's strategic discipline.

AI Can Help Develop Strategy — But It Needs Context

AI can be extremely useful during strategic planning.

It can help analyse research, explore market segments, compare competitors, challenge assumptions, generate alternative positioning ideas and identify questions that haven't been considered.

It can also help businesses explore different scenarios.

But AI shouldn't be given a vague instruction such as:

“Create my marketing strategy.”

Without sufficient context, it may produce something that sounds convincing but is based on assumptions.

A better approach is to provide relevant evidence and use AI to help explore and challenge your thinking.

For example, ask it to question you about your objectives, customers, competitors, capabilities and constraints before suggesting alternatives.

The final strategic decisions still belong to the business.

Your Strategy Should Be Usable

A strategy doesn't create value simply because it has been written down.

It should help people make decisions.

A useful strategy should make it easier to answer:

What are we trying to achieve?

Who are we prioritising?

Why should those customers choose us?

How do we want to be perceived?

Where are we focusing our resources?

How will we know whether we're making progress?

If those answers aren't clear, the strategy probably needs more work.

The purpose isn't to create the longest strategy document.

It's to create clarity and direction.

Strategy Creates the Bridge to Action

A marketing review tells you where you are.

Objectives help define where you want to go.

Strategy determines the choices that will guide you there.

Only then should those choices be translated into content, channels, campaigns and other marketing activity.

That creates a much more disciplined progression:

Understand → Decide → Build → Implement → Measure → Improve

Marketing strategy sits at the point where understanding becomes decision-making.

And that is why it matters.

A good marketing strategy doesn't tell you to do more marketing. It helps you decide which marketing deserves to be done.

Continue Your Learning

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Related Framework
Marketing Strategy Framework

Related Learning Kit
Module 3 – Building Your Marketing Strategy