Tips for creating your marketing strategy
What better time to refine your marketing strategy and renew your marketing efforts than a new year?
The digital marketing world can shift significantly over the course of a year. That’s why reviewing your marketing plan at the beginning of each year is an ideal opportunity to refocus and set clear goals for moving ahead.
But where do you start?
We’ll share our top tips for how to kickstart your activity and breathe new life into your marketing in 2026!
1. Internal audit of marketing activity
Blindly moving forward is a recipe for disaster.
You should always explore what has worked in the past and how different activities performed. Did they reach the desired goals? Did something unexpected happened?
This includes everything under your marketing activity umbrella that can be tracked, social media, email, outreach, events, paid advertising.
This is the first part of a SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis which will enable you to look at your campaigns on a granular level and pull out the key strengths, weaknesses, and learnings.
A useful approach is to review your plan from the past 12 months and evaluate each action by its impact, how well it aligned with your target audience, and the results achieved in relation to your goals and intended KPIs. Here, it will be important to refer back to your CRM and any other marketing tools for data.
To plan effectively for the future, ensure your strategy aligns with your target audience. Reviewing past campaign data helps identify whether your goals, such as lead generation in a specific sector, were met. If you only reached a broad audience without generating leads, it may signal issues with targeting or messaging, guiding improvements for future campaigns.
Purpose: Review your campaigns, content, and channels to learn what worked and what didn’t for your target audience.
Quick takeaway: Understanding what resonated with your target audience helps you take effective actions that benefit marketing activities and the wider business.
2. Competitor analysis and external audit
The second part of a SWOT analysis is equally important to a marketing plan.
Here, you are looking externally to ascertain any opportunities and threats in the market, relevant industries, or among your competitors.
This isn’t just about looking at what your competitors are doing, it’s about learning what works for them, how their offer differs from yours, and how you can grow market share – assuming that is your goal.
It can also be useful to undertake a PESTLE analysis where you look at Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors and how they could affect your activity.
Purpose: Looking at the external landscape will guide you on what is working for others and the opportunities and threats in the market.
Quick takeaway: No marketing happens in a vacuum; it is important to look at other players in the market and the market as a whole to see where you fit into it and where there are opportunities to grow.
3. Align your marketing with business objectives
Marketing planning should be informed by the wider business objectives.
By orienting the marketing plan around business goals and aims, the strategy will be focused on the desired outcomes and moving the business itself forward.
This could involve going to a specific set of events, targeting a specific industry or running a new webinar series to attract a new audience.
This can also help the marketing team connect with other teams and the wider business, making internal stakeholder buy-in easier – you can read our blog about bridging the gap between marketing and sales teams here.
Purpose: Your marketing activity should support wider business goals to achieve set objectives and aid sales and service teams.
Quick takeaway: Marketing departments should not work in silos, you need to ensure that your marketing plan fits with wider plans and activity to advance the business as a whole.
4. Align your marketing activity with audience expectations
All marketing activity should be aligned with what your target audience wants and needs.
There should be no guesswork here; your decisions should be based on user personas, target demographics, and past campaign or research data.
This can help steer you on how to use budgets more effectively and ensure that you are appearing in the right places for your target audience.
This is essential so that you are not spending time or budget on activities that won’t connect with your audience.
Purpose: Ensure that your marketing activity is aligned with your target audience and all decisions, where possible, are supported by segmental data.
Quick takeaway: Marketing can be brilliant but if it’s not aligned with the target audience then it won’t produce any results. It’s important to craft any marketing around data and user pain points.
5. Determine marketing channels and remain consistent
It’s a simple fact that one team often can’t do everything.
The best course of action is to determine which marketing channels align most with your audience.
Start with the basics, figure out where to show up for your audience and their goals and build a plan based on that.
Email and website are priorities for most, with a selection of social media platforms too.
Then, depending on your goals, you can consider SEO (search engine optimisation), paid advertising, and PR.
Consistency and high-quality assets are rewarded by both platforms and consumers alike; activity needs to be authentic and meaningful to connect.
You should monitor your activity and review campaign data to ensure that everything is performing as expected and be prepared to be flexible and pivot if needed.
If your teams are overstretched, see point 6!
Purpose: Define where and how you will connect with your target customer and consistently show up to remain front of mind and build mind share.
Quick takeaway: It’s important to define what marketing channels and tactics you are going to use and how that will help reach your target audience and goals. Consistency is also rewarded by both platform algorithms and the recipients.
6. Engage an agency
Marketing agencies aren’t just there for the big campaigns and interim periods, the right partner can bring unparalleled expertise and support to your work for the long run.
Whether it’s support in creating and executing your marketing strategy, undertaking a specialist project, setting up your CRM system, or supporting with day-to-day tasks, an agency can take the pressure off a marketing team and allow greater focus and strategic thinking.
But finding the right agency for you is key. They should have industry expertise, understand your goals and needs, and work well with your team.
Purpose: Access platform and discipline-specific skillsets and outsource work to an agency partner to support you and give you more time to focus on strategy.
Quick takeaway: An agency can provide expertise and support that you do not have access to within your existing team, allowing you to expand your reach, improve your output, and focus on more.
The best time to start is now
The sooner you can create a marketing strategy and define your approach to marketing activity, the more focused and effective your marketing will become.
Following these tips will help you to craft a marketing strategy that creates clarity and encourages a focus on outcomes and results:
- Internal audit of marketing activity
- Competitor analysis and external audit
- Align your marketing with business objectives
- Align your marketing activity with audience expectations
- Determine marketing channels and remain consistent
- Engage an agency
With over 20 years’ experience working in digital marketing, we help brands elevate their marketing activities to grow revenue and build great customer relationships.
If you want to learn more about marketing strategy or think we might be the agency for you, you can contact us here.
