Finding a good marketing strategy and sticking to it is one of the most difficult things businesses contend with these days. The rise of digital marketing and the never-ending need to produce online content means brands have to work harder than ever to stay relevant and capture audience attention.
Inbound marketing is a long-term strategy that attracts potential customers through digital marketing tactics such as SEO, content marketing, and email marketing.
With so many brands now in the digital space, securing a competitive advantage that guarantees sales, brand loyalty, and market influence is crucial.
Thankfully, there are some effective marketing strategies that span both the digital and traditional landscapes. From conquering search engines and keeping the newspapers on your side, to optimizing your social media accounts and working with influencers – there’s a lot you can do.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the various marketing strategies in play today. We’ll look at core strategies before branching out into certain sectors, such as digital, traditional, and partner marketing.
We’ll then look at which strategies might be best for your business. Remember, brand marketing is impossible without a strategy – so let’s take a look at some.
In This Guide:
Our guide is split into four sections, each of which deals with a different type of marketing strategy. Within each type are various, more detailed strategies that can help you fine-tune your marketing.
Core Types of Marketing Strategies
Market Penetration Strategy
Market Development Strategy
Product Development Strategy
Diversification Strategy
Digital Marketing Strategies for Today's Marketplace
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategies
Content Marketing Strategy
Social Media Marketing Strategy
Email Marketing Strategy
Influencer and Relationship-Based Strategies
Influencer Marketing Strategy
Affiliate Marketing Strategy
Traditional Marketing Strategies
Direct Marketing Strategy
Traditional Media Marketing Strategy
Guerrilla Marketing Strategy
How to Choose the Best Marketing Strategy for Your Business
Final Thoughts on Implementing Marketing Strategies Effectively
Frequently Asked Questions
Core Types of Marketing Strategies
Let's start with the four key approaches that can drive growth and success in any business. Keep these approaches in mind when we look at other effective marketing strategies later in this guide, as there's likely to be some overlap.
Market Penetration Strategy
A market penetration strategy focuses on boosting the sales of your existing products in your current market. Your aim is to do more within the market and get more back in return.
For example, a brand with a loyal but small customer base might try this strategy to expand its base.
Ways to deploy a penetration strategy include:
Lowering prices to attract more customers
Increasing advertising to raise awareness
Offering promotions or discounts
Improving product features or quality
Market penetration can be an effective, cost-effective option because it's less risky than trying to enter a new market. Here, it's all about tweaking your product, your pricing, and your brand awareness to drive more sales.
Market Development Strategy
Have you ever thought about introducing your existing products to new markets? This is called market development, where you find fresh audiences and new markets.
You might not need to go far. A small business might decide to expand its free delivery service to a wider area. A large corporation may seek to sell products in a new country.
Ways to utilize market development include:
Targeting new customer segments
Expanding to new geographic areas
Adapting products for different uses
Market development helps you grow, without the costs of creating new products. This makes it a really good option for brands that are struggling in a competitive marketplace and can't afford to make big product changes.
It can be challenging, though, as you'll need to understand new customers and compete with established brands.
Product Development Strategy
Product development is about tweaking your existing products or launching new ones, and introducing them to the current market. Candy brands do this all the time. They'll create limited edition snacks that customers will trust because of the strength of the brand.
Options for brands seeking to do product development include:
Improving existing products
Developing entirely new offerings
Adding features to meet changing customer needs
Product development keeps your brand fresh and exciting. It can be costly and time-consuming, but it helps you stay ahead of competitors and meet evolving customer demands.
Diversification Strategy
Finally, we come to diversification. This is about entering new markets with new products. It's the toughest strategy to get right and can be expensive – but the rewards can be huge.
Ways to get started with diversification include:
Creating new products for new customer groups
Buying or merging with companies in different industries
Developing new skills and technologies
One of the most successful marketing strategies that focused on diversification came from the Dutch electronics company Philips. Having once produced everything from audio equipment to kitchen units, Philips pivoted away from consumer goods to the medical market in the 2010s. It remains a hugely respected corporation and avoided the financial headwinds that came with new tech companies entering the consumer electronics space.
Digital Marketing Strategies for Today's Marketplace
Now it’s time to look at the digital marketing tactics companies use to navigate a highly competitive business landscape. These strategies often align with one or more of the aforementioned core strategies.
Event marketing is a dynamic strategy that has evolved, but still emphasizes face-to-face interactions, whether in-person or virtual. It is crucial for developing and hosting various promotional events such as conferences and exhibitions, which are essential for raising brand awareness and boosting sales.
For example, a brand might choose to diversify into a new market and launch a number of social media marketing campaigns to aid the transition.
Here are four to be aware of.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy
SEO helps your website show up higher in search results. It's pretty much as simple as that. However, search engine marketing is about ensuring the right audiences find your website.
For example, a charity might want to attract users who want to gain information about a social issue. They'd make sure their SEO is aligned to make information gathering as easy as possible.
Meanwhile, a clothes store would pivot their search engine marketing toward sales.
There are some fairly easy ways to improve your presence on search engines, including:
Doing keyword research to find what people search for
Using those keywords in your content and page titles
Making your website fast and mobile-friendly
Getting other sites to link to yours
Good SEO takes time, but it pays off with steady traffic.
Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is a catch-all term for any content you create that aims to improve your brand reputation, boost awareness, drive sales, etc. This encompasses videos, photos, newsletters, blogs, and more.
Your content is what attracts people to you. It builds trust and keeps people coming back. Inbound marketing plays a crucial role here by creating valuable interactions and relationships that draw leads, contrasting it with outbound marketing, which involves reaching out to customers directly.
To succeed with content marketing, you need to:
Know your audience’s interests, likes, dislikes, questions, and problems
Make content that meets those needs
Share your content where your audience spends time online
Use different types of content to see what sticks
You can try content amplification tactics to spread your message further. However, make sure you strategize your content before creating it. It’s a lot harder to reach a target audience if you don’t do the research first.
Social Media Marketing Strategy
Brands need a social media strategy these days, as it's the easiest way to speak to audiences and handle crises. You can build a community around your brand and spread the word about your products. That's what successful influencers do, while even very small brands can "go big" on social media and rapidly expand.
Social media marketing is a balance between pushing your brand and appearing organic. Users are suspicious if they feel they're being "sold to".
So, make sure you follow these tips if you're using social media channels for your marketing efforts.
Pick the right platforms for your audience
Post at a reliable, consistent rate
Find what your audience likes and keep doing it
Be proactive and engage with followers
Track potential issues with a crisis management tool
Try both organic posts and paid ads
Social media may become the place where you launch fresh ad campaigns, target different audiences, or pivot to a whole new market.
However you intend to use social media, make sure you're professional at all times and address criticism if it comes your way.
Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing works really well when you have an audience that wants to click on your messages. Brands can struggle to provide the personalized marketing messages required to get eyes on their emails here. However, there are ways you can make an email marketing strategy work.
It's all about incentives. From getting people to sign up to your newsletter to convincing them an email is worth their time – what does your audience get in return?
Here are some of the most effective marketing strategies for emails:
Offer future discounts for signing up to a newsletter via your website
Make personal connections in emails about users' specific interests
Email users when they have items remaining in their cart
Segment your mailing list to send relevant content to each group
Include a call-to-action in every email
There isn't a perfect marketing tactic for emails. Some people love receiving special offers, while others view any branded emails as junk. If you can segment your audience, then that's a great place to start, as you can align each email batch to suit different preferences.
Influencer and Relationship-Based Strategies
Now let's look at an increasingly prominent marketing strategy, which helps brands with their market penetration and development. We're talking about influencer and relationship-based marketing strategies.
These focus on building connections with key individuals and partners to promote brands and products. It's all about creating a level of trust and authenticity that helps brands reach their target audiences more effectively.
Influencer Marketing Strategy
Influencer marketing taps into the power of social media personalities to promote products and services. Whereas once it was celebrities who influenced people, now anyone with a large enough following can do the same job for brands.
By partnering with an influencer, a brand gets instant access to their followers. This is great – but only if their followers are willing to go along with it. If a partnership feels fake or not genuine, then both the brand and the influencer can suffer reputational damage.
There are different types of influencers based on their follower count:
Mega-influencers (1M+ followers)
Macro-influencers (100K-1M followers)
Micro-influencers (10K-100K followers)
Nano-influencers (1K-10K followers)
Most small brands will start out forging a relationship with a local nano-influencer. Medium-sized and larger brands may opt for those with followings upwards of one million. Big corporations like Coca-Cola or Pepsi can afford the mega-influencers, who are usually celebrities in their own right.
To create an effective influencer campaign, you need to:
Set clear outcomes for your influencer relationship
Choose the right influencers based on their account, content, and audience
Develop a creative and collaborative brief between your brand and the influencer
Track results to see if the ROI was worth it
Affiliate Marketing Strategy
Affiliate marketing is a way of encouraging others to do the sale push for you. You come to an agreement whereby another website, influencer, or online user gets a fee for every sale you make that comes through them.
For example, a newspaper website might have affiliate links for a "10 Best Christmas Gifts" article. If someone clicks on one of the gift links and buys the item, then the newspaper gets a small slice of the sale.
Brands often use influencers and other social media profiles in their affiliate marketing, alongside more traditional mediums like magazine sites.
Traditional Marketing Strategies
Finally, it's time to look at traditional marketing strategies that are still used today. These approaches rely on physical presence and direct contact to build brand awareness and drive sales. It's often more time consuming than digital marketing but it's also a very effective marketing strategy when you get it right.
Direct Marketing Strategy
Direct marketing targets specific customers with personalized messages. This goes beyond handing out flyers on the sidewalk. With traditional direct marketing you use mail, phone calls, and door-to-door conversations to interact with your audience.
Direct mail campaigns send promotional materials straight to people's homes. You might mail postcards, brochures, or product samples. It's not something that many brands do these days, so there's now a novelty factor to it that can resonate with people.
Phone marketing is a little harder to perfect and involves calling potential customers to pitch products or services. Cold calling requires a thick skin, but when you do get to speak to someone who is interested in your products then it's worthwhile.
Traditional Media Marketing Strategy
There is still a big appetite for advertising on traditional media platforms like newspapers, TV, radio, and billboards. This type of marketing is often about boosting brand awareness, rather than encouraging people to buy specific products.
Your overall marketing strategy will probably include at least one of these traditional mediums, even if digital advertising is your main focus.
Even something as small as a half-page ad in a local magazine could be enough for a small company to build a new audience.
Guerrilla Marketing Strategy
Guerrilla marketing uses creative, low-cost tactics to grab attention. It's the sort of thing that works really well with viral videos these days – yet you can still do good guerrilla marketing in traditional media.
The aim is to surprise people with memorable campaigns that stand out from typical ads.
We're talking street art, flash mobs, or unusual installations that spark interest in your brand. Street art in particular is huge these days – but brands need to be careful here.
In 2019, a huge mural in Liverpool, England was unveiled for a forthcoming Netflix series, 'Our Planet'. Within two days it had been totally covered over with graffiti. People didn't like Netflix trying to tap into Liverpool's street art scene in that way.
Guerrilla tactics work well for small businesses with limited budgets. They rely on imagination rather than big spending – which was Netflix's downfall in Liverpool. The goal is to create a buzz that people want to share with others.
How to Choose the Best Marketing Strategy for Your Business
There are many different marketing strategies out there and finding the right one for you is the tricky part.
It's probably worth remembering that your overarching strategy will be something like "market penetration" or "product development". From there you can then use digital, traditional, and influencer marketing techniques to really make an impact.
Let's now take a look at how you choose an effective marketing strategy for your brand.
Aligning Strategies with Business Goals
Your strategy must complement your overall business objectives. Do you want to boost sales, increase brand awareness, or perhaps launch a new product? Once you've set your aims, pick strategies that help you achieve them.
For example, you might want to grow your customer base within your existing market. This is about penetration, so you need to figure out how to improve what you're currently doing. This might include SEO to improve your web traffic or social media campaigns to reach a wider audience.
Or, you might feel as though you're being squeezed in your current market and plan to pivot into a new one. It's time to look at diversifying. Your target audience is likely to change, so you'll need to do a lot of research on what a new audience may like before seeing if your products can meet that demand.
Evaluating Resources and Target Audience
Speaking of target audiences, you need to know it inside and out. What are their needs, preferences, and online habits? If your customers are active on social media, platforms like Instagram or LinkedIn might be key channels for you. If they predominantly watch TV and listen to the radio, then traditional marketing might be a smarter option.
Always consider your budget, team skills, and time when choosing marketing strategies. Your resources will often dictate what you can and can't do.
Some tactics, like content marketing, require ongoing effort but can be cost-effective. Others, such as paid advertising, may need a bigger budget but can deliver quick results.
Measuring the Success of Your Chosen Strategies
No matter what strategy you choose, it's important to establish systems to track your marketing efforts from the start. This way, you can see if your strategy is actually working, or whether it's holding your brand back.
Use a tool like CisionOne to oversee all your marketing materials and see where you're making progress. If your strategy is to use digital marketing to promote new products to the same customer base, then you'll need software to monitor how it's going. CisionOne can also give you deep insights into your social media campaigns.
You can also use Google Analytics to monitor website traffic and engagement, if that's what you plan to focus on.
Be ready to adapt. If a strategy isn't delivering the results you want, don't be afraid to adjust or try something new. Use the data gathered from your tool and base your designs on it.
Remember, marketing is an ongoing process of testing, learning, and refining your approach.
Frequently Asked Questions
There is no simple answer to creating a successful marketing plan. It all takes time and effort to get right, and a willingness to refine your approach as you go. There are many types of marketing out there for brands to try – and it's likely that you'll find the right one for you eventually.
Saying that, you may still have some questions left unanswered after reading our brand marketing guide. If that's the case, here are answers to some commonly asked questions.
What constitutes a comprehensive digital marketing strategy in today's landscape?
A strong digital strategy covers a lot of bases. Brands need to have comprehensive coverage on various marketing channels, including social media, news outlets and magazines, their own website, and review sites. Depending on your budget, it's likely you'll want to use SEO, paid ads, email, public relations practices, and social media to push your company's brand across the digital landscape. You need to do simple things well, like ensuring your website is mobile-friendly and includes engaging content. You also need to track your results with analytics tools like CisionOne. Doing this means you can adjust your approach based on what's working best.
How can businesses effectively integrate content marketing into their overall strategy?
Content marketing needs to be central to any business strategy. You need to consider what you want to say in your branding, your written content (such as blogs and guides), your videos, your social media content, and anything else that goes out into the world. Once you know what you want to say and produce, you can integrate it all with a content calendar and use a tool like CisionOne to draw data from each piece of content. This way, your marketing material and its success helps guide your overall business decisions.
What role does social media play in modern marketing strategies, and how can it be optimized?
Social media is instrumental in ensuring you achieve a level of brand awareness and customer engagement. Brands naturally need to choose platforms where their audiences spend the most of their time, and conduct research into the viability of launching on other platforms. From there, you can create content that resonates with your audience and use a tool like CisionOne to collect the data and see what's working. Only with raw data can you understand your audience better and optimize your content so that it performs even better on social media platforms next time.
What are the emerging trends in marketing that companies should pay attention to?
Short-form video is perhaps the most influential form of content right now. Companies who want to improve their marketing efforts need to figure out a way of doing short-form content well, without it looking disingenuous. Other trends include personalized marketing ads and emails, where users get ultra-specific content designed for them. Sustainability messaging is also resonating with many audiences. Companies need to work on how they can be more sustainable and eco-conscious without it appearing like they're just green washing.
