Marketing Strategy: Six Winning Templates
Marketing strategy is a crucial aspect of any business. Whether you're a small business, scaleup, or enterprise - you need marketing. It’s the process of setting your goals, identifying the target audience, understanding their needs and core messaging, and creating a plan to reach them. A well-thought-out marketing strategy can help businesses reach more prospects, achieve their goals, and gain a competitive advantage. This blog post will discuss marketing strategy basics and provide references to marketing strategy templates - so you don’t have to go find them.
What is Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy is an action plan. It is designed to set your objectives to promote and sell a product or service. A good marketing strategy should be based on research and analysis of the market, competition, and customer behaviour. It should also be aligned with the overall business goals and objectives.
Why is Marketing Strategy Important?
Marketing strategy is mission-critical because it helps businesses achieve their strategic goals and gain a competitive advantage. A well-crafted marketing strategy can help businesses:
Identify their target audience
Understand their customers’ needs and preferences
Create a unique value proposition
Develop a strong brand identity
Reach their customers through effective channels
Increase sales and revenue
The difference between a Marketing Strategy and a Marketing Plan
A Marketing Strategy is a high-level approach that outlines what a company needs to achieve its goals. It is a long-term plan that defines the company’s target audience, value proposition, and competitive advantage.
On the other hand, a Marketing Plan is a detailed document outlining the steps a company will take to achieve its marketing goals and support the established strategy. It includes the tactics and strategy-implementation tasks to help a company meet its goals. A marketing plan focuses on individual tactics that will help a company meet its goals, such as branding, scheduling, budgeting, and assigning responsibilities.
In summary, a marketing strategy is the why behind the work, while a marketing plan is the what and when that describes the work. Both are important parts of an organisation’s success, and it’s essential to consider both when growing a business.
Marketing Strategy Templates
Creating a marketing strategy can be daunting, especially for small businesses. Fortunately, many marketing strategy templates available online can help simplify the process. Here are some of the best marketing strategy templates available:
Smartsheet: Smartsheet offers a variety of free marketing strategy templates in different formats, including Excel, Word, Google Docs, and PowerPoint. This page includes a marketing strategy template, a basic marketing strategy template, and a marketing strategy slide deck template.
Business.gov.au: Business.gov.au provides a free marketing plan template and guide to help you create a marketing plan for your business. The template includes Marketing Strategy prompts and sections for market research, target audience, marketing objectives, and more 2. There are also other great resources for small businesses.
Aha!: Offers a collection of templates to capture details about your goals, market, target audience, and where your offering stands relative to competitors. This collection includes a marketing strategy template to help you establish your strategy and ensure launches, campaigns, and activities. It is accessible on the Aha platform, and a free trial is usually available.
HubSpot: HubSpot provides a free marketing plan template generator that can help you create an outstanding marketing plan. The template includes sections for business summary, SWOT analysis, business initiatives, customer analysis, and competitor analysis. HubSpot is another excellent resource for all things marketing.
Asana: Asana is my go-to team collaboration tool and offers an effective and attractive marketing plan template. It combines a Marketing Strategy and Marketing Plan and is only accessible in Asana, so you will need an account to get started. There are also templates for content planning, social media planning, and product launches.
Pitch: A presentation design and visualisation platform, offers their pre-designed Marketing Strategy and Go-To-Market Strategy template all-in-one. Not only will you have your strategy completed, it will be visually appealing too!
Need some help?
If you’re still not sure where to start, let’s find a time that suits you to chat. We can help you bust some myths about marketing strategy so that you can confidently get started.
