How to create a marketing strategy in 7 steps

A marketing strategy defines how your business will attract, engage, acquire, and retain customers. But creating one in 2026 is a bit different than it was a few years ago. 

And a good strategy needs to consider that buyers now discover and compare brands across AI tools, review sites, social platforms, and online communities — often before they reach your website.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to create a marketing strategy that reflects how buyers make decisions today.

How your marketing strategy needs to evolve

Most marketing strategies used to focus heavily on owned and paid channels, but earned channels now carry more weight because buyers often look to outside sources before deciding whether a brand is credible.

These sources can include reviews, media mentions, comparison listicles, and community discussions.

AI search makes this shift toward earned channels’ importance easier to see.

According to a Semrush survey on how AI tools influence buying decisions, 43% of shoppers have discovered a new brand through an AI tool. And 41% of consumers have made a purchase after using AI for research, while 22% have completed a purchase directly inside an AI tool.

So, your 2026 marketing strategy needs to account for what people and platforms say about your brand outside the channels you directly control. Because these sources now play a bigger role in which brands buyers discover, trust, and choose.

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy is the overall approach your business takes to promote your products or services to the right people and turn them into buyers.

A marketing strategy is different from a marketing plan. Your strategy sets the overall direction, while your marketing plan outlines the specific marketing tactics used to execute it, such as publishing content, running ads, sending emails, and hosting webinars.

Types of marketing strategies

Marketing strategies are often grouped into digital and traditional categories based on the channels a brand uses to reach potential buyers.

• Digital marketing strategies use online channels, such as website, email, social media, paid ads, and creator partnerships. Distributing via these channels also influences how your brand appears in search results, review sites, and AI answers.
• Traditional marketing strategies use offline channels, such as direct mail, billboards, events, TV, and radio. They work well for local businesses, anyone trying to grow brand awareness, and brands that have a broad audience, though traditional marketing can be harder to track than digital marketing.

Most businesses use a mix of digital and traditional marketing strategies. The right mix depends on factors like where your buyers spend time and how much budget you have.

Why creating an effective marketing strategy matters

Creating an effective marketing strategy matters because it provides focus that translates to better outcomes.

A good marketing strategy can help you:

• Reach the right audience
• Choose the best marketing channels
• Spend your budget effectively
• Track progress toward clear goals

How to create a marketing strategy

Create a marketing strategy by following these steps:

1. Set clear goals

Clear marketing goals give your strategy a specific outcome you can measure against.

Think about what you’re trying to achieve. This could be related to getting more qualified leads, increasing sales, improving retention, etc.

Use the specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) framework to ensure that your goal is clear enough. 

For example, an inventory management software company called Incredible Inventory Innovations might set a goal to increase demo requests from mid-market ecommerce companies by 20% within six months.

2. Research the market

Researching the market gives you data about your target audience and competitors, so you can build a more informed marketing strategy.

Here are four ways to research the market:

Interview customers

Interviewing customers gives you first-hand insight into what your current buyers care about.

Start with recent customers who match the audience you want to reach. Use your customer relationship management (CRM) system to find them or ask for suggestions from your sales team.

Aim for five to 10 interviews at the beginning. Keep each call around 20 to 30 minutes and focus on specifics by asking questions like:

• What made you start looking for a solution?
• What alternatives did you consider?
• Where did you research your options before buying? (e.g., Google, review sites, or AI tools)
• What, if anything, almost stopped you from buying?
• What helped you feel confident enough to choose us?
• How would you describe our product/service to someone else?

Look for trends in the responses you receive.

Run a survey

Running a survey helps you gather insights from a larger group of people in your target audience.

Aim for five to eight questions that help you understand common needs, preferences, and buying concerns.

You can distribute your survey through:

• Your email list
• A feedback widget on key webpages
• A community where your target buyers are active, such as a Slack group, LinkedIn group, or private forum (just make sure you’re not violating any community rules before doing this)

You can use Google Forms to create a simple survey. Platforms like SurveyMonkey Audience and Pollfish let you reach participants who match your target market.

Analyze competitors

Analyzing competitors helps you uncover gaps, determine messaging opportunities, and decide how to best position yourself.

To find competitors that compete with you in organic search, open Semrush’s Organic Rankings tool, enter your domain, and go to the “Competitors” tab to find domains that rank for keywords similar to the ones you rank for.

Shortlist about five competitors that sell similar products/services and target a similar audience.

Then, study those competitors against yourself with Traffic Analytics. Review the “Traffic Channel Distribution” section to see which channels send traffic to your competitors. You’ll see whether competitors rely more on search, paid campaigns, social media, referral traffic, or AI traffic.

Then check the Top Pages report to see which competitor pages attract the most visits — switch between competitors by using the drop-down at the top of the report. This reveals the topics, product pages, comparisons, or resources getting the most attention.

Visit those pages. Study the messaging, calls to action, social proof, pricing information, and repeated phrases they use.

Also review competitor visibility in AI-generated answers with Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit.

In the Visibility Overview report, go to the “Topic Opportunities” tab to find prompts where competitors are mentioned but your brand isn’t. Click “View full response” to see how AI answers describe them.

Look for repeated phrasing AI answers use when describing competitors.For example, you may see AI answers describe a competitor as “easy to use,” “affordable,” “best for enterprise teams,” or “fast to set up.” These descriptions reveal what competitors are known for.

Use social listening

Social listening helps you track conversations about your category online.

Monitor communities where your audience already shares opinions, such as Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, review sites, industry forums, Slack communities, and Facebook groups.

Search those sources for your brand, competitor names, your product category, and relevant phrases. An inventory management software company might search for terms like “inventory forecasting” or “[competitor] alternative.” 

To do social listening at scale, use Semrush’s Media Monitoring app. Enter a keyword such as your brand, a competitor, a product, or an industry term. Then, select your language and click “Create Project.”

Review the conversations that mention your keyword.

Go to the “Analysis” tab to review mention trends, sentiment, influential websites that mention the keyword, and more.

Evaluate repeated complaints, common questions, competitor comparisons, and the exact phrases buyers use. 

3. Define your positioning and messaging

Positioning clarifies why buyers should choose your brand, and messaging turns that positioning into the language your team uses in marketing materials.

Decide on your positioning statement

A positioning statement keeps your team aligned on the audience, value you provide, and difference from competitors your strategy should focus on.

To write a positioning statement, use your market research to answer three questions:

• Who does your brand serve?
• What problem does your product or service solve?
• What makes your product or service different from other options?

Then turn those answers into a simple positioning statement:

“[Brand] helps [target audience] [problem solved], so they can [key benefit], without [common drawback of other options].”

For example:

“Incredible Inventory Innovations helps growing ecommerce teams prevent stockouts, so they can keep high-demand products available during peak sales periods, without spending months setting up complex inventory software.”

Determine your messaging

Clear messaging keeps your marketing consistent, specific, and easy for buyers to remember.

Define your messaging around three elements: your main value, your product or service benefits, and your differentiators.

Highlight your main value

Your main value is the primary outcome buyers should associate with your brand that addresses their concerns.

For an inventory management software, the main value could be: “Prevent stockouts without months of setup.”

Convey your benefits

Benefits are the advantages buyers get from your product or service.

Choose two or three benefits buyers actually care about, and that your product or service can clearly support.

For inventory management software, the benefits could be:

• Keep high-demand products available during peak sales periods
• Spend less time updating inventory manually
• Plan ahead for seasonal demand spikes

Clarify differentiators

Differentiators explain why your product or service is a better fit than other options buyers may consider.

Focus on differences that are specific, relevant, and believable. And avoid vague claims like “best-in-class,” “seamless,” “powerful,” or “industry-leading” unless you can support them clearly.

For the inventory management software, the differentiators could be:

• Guided onboarding for growing ecommerce teams
• Demand forecasting built around seasonal sales patterns
• Native integrations with common ecommerce platforms

4. Choose your marketing channels

Here’s how to decide which marketing channels to focus on first:

Know where your audience spends time

Knowing where your audience spends time helps you choose channels that are most likely to reach the right prospective buyers.

Your market research should have already shown where your ideal buyers look for information, ask for advice, and compare options.

You can also go to the Sources & Destinations report to see which sites people visit before and after viewing competitors’ websites.

Look for patterns. If competitor traffic often comes from review sites, industry publications, or social platforms, those sources may be worth prioritizing in your channel mix.

Evaluate your sales cycle

Your sales cycle is the time between a buyer first hearing about your brand and making a purchase, and it plays a key role in determining your channel mix.

A short sales cycle means buyers need less time and information before deciding. Paid ads and retargeting emails can work well here because they reach people who already understand the problem or are close to taking action.

A longer sales cycle usually needs more education and trust-building. Blog posts, comparison pages, webinars, and case studies can help buyers understand your offerings and grow their confidence in selecting you.

One thing to consider is that B2B sales cycles are typically much longer than B2C sales cycles.

For example, someone buying a low-cost monthly tool may only need reviews, pricing details, and a clear product page. A company buying enterprise software may need demos, approval from finance, and proof from similar customers.

Account for AI search

Focusing on AI search helps you reach a growing number of people who use AI tools to discover brands and make purchase decisions.

According to a Semrush survey of 1,030 U.S. shoppers, 55% of respondents say they use AI to research products at least weekly. And 25% use AI for daily product research.

This makes AI search worth considering as a key channel for your marketing strategy — even if it isn’t a major source of traffic or sales right now.

Plus, it’s worth considering how much agentic search is advancing. AI tools are moving toward handling more buying processes autonomously.

Consider your time frame and budget

Considering your time frame and budget ensures you choose channels your business can afford to invest in and maintain over time.

Some channels can create results faster, but they usually need ongoing spend. Others take longer to build, but they can continue supporting visibility well beyond the initial investment.

Use this table as a quick reference:

	Benefits	Drawbacks
Paid	Can generate traffic quickly. Useful when you need leads, sales, or campaign visibility within a short time frame.	Usually stops producing results when you stop spending. Costs can be steep in competitive markets.
Unpaid	Can build long-term visibility through SEO, organic social, email, PR, and community efforts	Usually takes longer to show results and requires time and resources
Paid + unpaid	Balances faster reach with long-term visibility. Paid channels can support immediate goals, while unpaid channels build visibility over time.	Requires enough budget and team capacity to manage both

For example, a company that needs demo requests within six months may prioritize paid search and retargeting ads while working on SEO in the background. A company with a longer timeline may focus more on SEO, AI search, and PR.

5. Define your content plan

A content plan helps you decide which pieces to create for each marketing channel and keeps your team focused on content that supports your marketing goal.

Here’s how to build a content plan:

Define the themes your brand should own

Content themes are broad focus areas your brand should be known for across channels.

Focusing your content around core themes keeps your blogs, landing pages, emails, videos, case studies, and other content assets connected.

Use your research, positioning, and messaging to choose three to five themes.

For example, an inventory management software company may know that prospective customers care about preventing stockouts, managing orders across multiple sales channels, and setting up new tools quickly.

Based on those findings, the brand’s final themes might include:

• Stockout prevention
• Faster implementation
• Multi-channel inventory planning
• Better demand forecasting

Map each theme to your selected channels

Mapping each theme to your selected channels helps you choose content ideas that fit each channel.

Start with one theme and review the channels you chose earlier. For each channel, choose a content idea based on three things:

• Intent: What is the buyer trying to achieve?
• Format: What type of content fits that channel?
• Next step: What should the content help the prospect do next?

For an inventory management software company, the “stockout prevention” theme could map to priority channels like this:

Channel	Content idea
SEO/AI search	Guide that clearly answers stockout prevention questions and explains when inventory management software is useful
Paid search	Landing page about getting a demo that shows how to prevent stockouts with easy setup
Email	Nurture campaign on common causes of stockouts and how to avoid them
LinkedIn	Posts about stockout risks before seasonal demand spikes
YouTube	Recorded demo showing how inventory forecasting helps prevent stockouts

Repeat this process for your other themes until you have a list of content ideas for each channel.

Add selected ideas to your content calendar

A content calendar turns content ideas into a publishing schedule your team can follow.

Add only the strongest ideas from your theme-to-channel mapping. 

For each piece, include the theme, channel, format, goal, owner, and target publish date.

You can use our free content calendar template as a starting point and customize it based on your plan.

6. Set your budget

Setting your marketing budget involves deciding how much money you need to execute your strategy and how that money should be allocated.

Your budget may need to cover ad spend, content creation, landing pages, tools, reporting, freelancers, agencies, events, creator partnerships, and internal production time. List each cost and mark whether it’s a one-time or recurring expense.

You can also use industry benchmarks as a reference point. For example, The CMO Survey found that marketing expenses account for 9.6% of company budgets in 2026.

Next, allocate your budget across everything that goes into supporting the channels and content pieces you chose earlier. For example: 

• Paid search may need ad spend, landing page support, and conversion tracking
• SEO may need keyword research, writing, editing, and reporting
• Email may need copy, design, automation, and an email platform

When the budget is limited, prioritize the work most closely tied to your marketing goal and timeline. If your goal is to increase qualified demo requests in the next six months, fund the channels and assets most likely to directly support those demo requests.

A practical budget should also include ways to measure your results. Reserve money for analytics tools, so you know how different channels and campaigns are performing.

7. Activate your plan and track results

Tracking results after your marketing strategy is activated helps you understand whether you’re moving toward your defined goal.

The metrics you track should depend on that goal and the channels you chose. For example, an inventory management software company trying to increase qualified demo requests by 20% in six months may track:

• Organic search: Organic clicks from key queries and qualified demo requests from organic traffic
• Paid search: Qualified demo requests from paid search and cost per lead
• Email: Email click rate and demo requests from email campaigns
• AI search visibility: Brand mentions in AI-generated answers to relevant prompts and citations in AI-generated answers

You can use different tools depending on your specific marketing KPIs. 

For instance, Google Search Console can help track SEO performance, Google Analytics can show website behavior and conversions, native ad and email platforms can show campaign results, and Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit can track AI search visibility.

Build a strategy that reflects modern buyer behavior

Your marketing strategy needs to reflect how buyers discover, compare, and choose brands right now. And it needs to evolve. 

Keep researching your market and updating your channels, content, and messaging as needed.

Use Semrush’s Traffic & Market Toolkit to learn more about your market, competitors, and target audience.