How to Create a Marketing Strategy in 7 Steps

What Is a Marketing Strategy?

A marketing strategy is a company’s long-term plan to promote its products or services and acquire customers. It considers the company’s value proposition, target audience, messaging, positioning, and chosen marketing channels.

And a marketing strategy differs from a marketing plan, which is focused more on the actual tactics used to drive new customers and sales.

Why Is Creating an Effective Marketing Strategy Important?

Creating an effective marketing strategy is important because it helps you uncover ways to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Improve customer acquisition and retention
• Optimize marketing spend
• Drive revenue and business growth

How to Create a Marketing Strategy

Follow these seven steps to develop a marketing strategy for your business.

1. Set Clear Goals

Setting clear goals helps to focus your marketing efforts and provides clear metrics for tracking results.

A reliable way to structure goals is to use the SMART framework:

• Specific: Define your goal clearly 
• Measurable: Assign one or more metrics to track progress
• Achievable: Make sure the goal is realistic given current resources and constraints
• Relevant: Align the goal with key business objectives
• Time-bound: Set a deadline for completion

Here’s an example of a SMART goal:

Increase AI tool visibility by 15% in the next six months by publishing three optimized articles per week.

The goal we’ve specified fits this framework because:

• A 15% increase is clearly defined
• You can track AI visibility, mentions, and citations with a solution like Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit
• A 15% increase seems sensible and realistic
• More AI visibility is likely to support business goals—our research shows the average AI tool visitor is 4.4 times as valuable as the average search visitor based on conversion rate
• The six month range keeps the goal time-bound

2. Research the Market

Market research involves collecting data about your competitors and target audience to help you make data-driven decisions about your marketing strategy.

Without market research, you risk targeting the wrong audience, using ineffective messaging, and misallocating your resources.

Here are a few things you can do to get a better understanding of your target market and fine-tune your marketing approach:

Interview Customers

Interview existing or potential customers to learn more about their needs and pain points.

Ask them what they like about your product and what criteria they use when deciding on products or services like yours.

If you don’t have customers yet, gather insights indirectly by checking out relevant online communities. Subreddits and other niche groups can reveal what your target audience most cares about.

Read through the discussions to learn about common pain points and issues. 

Join in on the discussions when appropriate, but avoid posting promotional content to avoid suspension.

Run a Survey

Running a survey allows you to gather insights from a large number of people. For example, it can help you get quantitative, statistically relevant data about your target audience’s preferences.

You can create and run a survey yourself using tools like Google Forms or Typeform. Or use platforms with built-in audience pools like SurveyMonkey or Pollfish.

Analyze Your Competition

Analyzing your competition can help you uncover market gaps, refine your positioning, and improve your messaging. It also helps you optimize your pricing strategy.

Start by looking at one of your competitors’ websites. Notice how they address their audience and how they talk about their products or services.

Then, read reviews to understand what customers are saying about your rivals. Pay special attention to what customers don’t like about competing products. 

Thorough competitor research will help you improve your own product by avoiding making the same mistakes. But it’ll also help you adapt your messaging to cater to these pain points.

For example, if many customers point out an issue with the speed of a product, you can draw attention to how fast your solution is.

Not sure who your main competitors are? Enter your domain into Semrush’s Organic Research tool and go to the “Competitors” tab to see some of your top competitors from a search perspective.

Then, use Semrush’s Traffic Analytics tool to see how you and your competitors’ traffic compares.

Scroll to the “Traffic Channel Distribution" section to see which channels you and your rivals get the most traffic from.

Scroll to the “Traffic Journey” section to see the specific websites visitors come to each site from. And where they go afterward.

Use Social Listening

Social listening involves tracking specific keywords across social media platforms to learn what users are saying about a topic.

This can help you get a better understanding of your target market and the overall sentiment toward existing solutions.

The Brand Monitoring app tracks keywords related to your industry as well as competitor brand names. 

You can even set up Brand Monitoring to get email alerts whenever a specific keyword is mentioned online. Or when there’s a sudden spike in mentions.

Check AI-Generated Answers

Knowing what answers prospects are getting when they use AI tools like ChatGPT helps you understand which brands AI engines are recommending, which provides a rough estimate of your current AI visibility.

Start by opening up an AI tool and typing in a query a potential customer might use. Here are a few examples:

• “Best [product category] for [audience type]”
• “Alternatives to [competitor name]”
• “What’s the cheapest way to [solve pain point]?”

Next, analyze the answers. Note which competitors seem to appear consistently. And pay attention to how AI tools describe their strengths and weaknesses.

Most importantly, check whether your brand is being mentioned. If not, you have a visibility gap. This might be due to a number of reasons, such as lack of clear differentiation or a low number of online reviews or brand mentions.

Use Semrush’s Visibility Overview dashboard to streamline looking into your AI mentions. Just enter your domain and scroll down to see prompts that generate answers mentioning you (“Your Brand Mentions”) and prompts that generate answers mentioning only your competitors (“Opportunities”).

3. Define Your Positioning

Defining your positioning involves clarifying why customers should choose your product or service over competing options. 

Answer these questions to create strong positioning:

• Who is your target audience?
• What problem does your product or service solve?
• How does your product or service solve the problem better or differently than competing products or services?
• What category are you competing in?

Then, write a positioning statement—a short description of your product or service and how it serves your target market. 

Here’s a formula:

[Product/service name] helps [target audience] [the problem you solve], so they can [key benefit].

For example:

Semrush helps marketers and businesses improve their online visibility, so they can build more awareness, drive more traffic, generate leads, and outperform their competition.

4. Craft Your Messaging

The next step is to craft consistent messaging that communicates your position and value across all channels (website, ads, email, etc.). 

Here’s how to do it:

Highlight Your Primary Value 

Explain why your product or service matters—not just what it does. 

• What: "Our project management software has drag-and-drop functionality."
• Why: "Finish projects 30% faster with intuitive workflows that adapt to how your team actually works."

Showcase Your Benefits 

Turn each feature into a clear benefit for your customer. 

• Feature: "Our app includes calendar integration."
• Benefit: "Never miss another deadline or important meeting. Your schedule stays synchronized across all devices."

Emphasize Differentiation 

Explain exactly how your solution is unique. Avoid vague statements like “competitive pricing.” 

• Vague: "We offer competitive pricing."
• Clear: "Instead of charging per user, our community plan allows unlimited team members. So your collaboration tools can grow with your business.”

5. Choose Your Marketing Channels

Choose the marketing channels that best reach your target audience and fit your budget. 

Here’s what to consider when deciding on which channels to use:

See Where Your Target Audience Spends Time

Identify where your target audience spends time online (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.) and how they prefer to consume content (e.g., text or video).

To find these platforms, open the Traffic & Market Toolkit’s Behavior dashboard. And scroll down to the “Social Media” widget to see the platforms your target audience uses most.

Determine Your Sales Cycle Length

Consider the length of your sales cycle when choosing marketing channels—it matters more than you might think. 

Paid advertising and direct response channels tend to work well for businesses with a shorter sales cycle (e.g., B2C ecommerce).

For longer sales cycles (e.g., B2B SaaS), invest in content marketing, SEO, and generative engine optimization (GEO). 

Consider Your Time Frame and Budget

Your time frame and budget affect which channels make sense to pursue. 

Paid search ads often show faster results but can be expensive. GEO may deliver better returns over time but takes longer to see results. 

Which channels you choose will therefore affect how you distribute your budget across your marketing efforts.

6. Set Your Budget

Set your marketing budget as a percentage of revenue, typically 5%-20%. The exact amount will depend on your industry, growth goals, and business stage. 

The average marketing budget is 9.4% of revenue, according to Deloitte’s The CMO Survey. And here’s the breakdown by economic sector:

Early stage startups often need to invest more into marketing to see results. And well-established businesses with steady organic growth can often spend less.

Once you set your marketing budget, divide it across marketing channels. 

A large portion of your budget should go toward the channels that are most likely to drive results. Based on the goal we established in the first step, that’s creating content to drive AI tool visibility. And perhaps highly targeted ads on a few social media platforms the audience is most active on.

Reserve 10%–15% of your budget for testing newer, more experimental channels if at all possible. If it works, increase spending later as you’re able.

7. Launch Your Strategy and Monitor Progress

Start executing your marketing activities, then measure progress by tracking the metrics you outlined in the goal-setting stage.

If your goal is to drive more AI tool visibility,track how often your brand is mentioned in Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.

Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit can help. It allows you to get a full breakdown of your brand’s AI presence.

In the Brand Performance report, you’ll see your share of voice in AI answers compared to your competitors.

Go to the Perception report to see overall sentiment toward your brand. And how you’re perceived relative to your competitors. 

And keep an eye on the Visibility Overview dashboard. Monitor the “Your Brand Mentions” tab—a growing number indicates your strategy is working. 

Hone Your Marketing Strategy

Keep in mind that your marketing strategy isn’t set in stone. Revise it every quarter or so based on the insights you gain.

You need the right tools to make those data-driven decisions.

If AI visibility is a priority, that means the AI SEO Toolkit could be a great fit. Try it today.