Define your marketing strategy in 6 key phases

Your marketing strategy structures all your sales activities and your business positioning. It's the foundation of every company's and startup's success. But with growth plans, customer targeting, competition, and revenue, where do you begin? Follow the Ellevate 6-step method to save time and increase efficiency!

Step 1: Analyze your market

No: Market analysis is more than just a competitive study. This phase lays the groundwork for all your future marketing and sales efforts. It therefore requires a systematic and in-depth approach.

The goal, of course, is to identify your true growth opportunities . Key points of analysis:

• Sectoral dynamics and emerging trends.
• Strengths and weaknesses of direct and indirect competitors.
• Price positioning and perceived value on the market.
• Dominant and alternative distribution channels.
• Potentially disruptive technological innovations.

The key? Achieving a precise diagnosis of your competitive situation and your priority development areas. Just like the steps in the Lean Startup methodology , the preparatory phase is crucial to the success of your strategy.

Step 2: Define your marketing objectives

Now that you have your data and analysis, you'll need a concrete marketing action plan , while precisely identifying who you want to reach. At Ellevate, we offer our clients the creation of personalized marketing plans based on specific metrics.

For example, an effective strategy involves aligning SMART goals with achievable actions. Specifically, it should:

• Translate into measurable and precise KPIs.
• Integrate a clear time dimension.
• Plan the necessary resources (budget, teams).

An example perhaps? Let's say you're a B2B SaaS platform. In this case, your marketing objectives might be:

1. Increase the conversion rate from freemium to premium from 5% to 8% in 6 months.
2. Reduce customer acquisition costs by 20% on paid search campaigns by the end of 2024.
3. Increase customer retention rate by 10 points in the SME segment in 12 months.

Step 3: Identify your marketing targets with finesse

Who will you sell your products and services to? A seemingly simple question, but one rich in nuance. Especially if you're in a saturated market! 

Let's be clear: a persona alone is no longer enough. You need to deeply understand the behaviors and needs of your potential customers. What are their pain points, their misconceptions, their goals?

Concretely, your CRM customer database will need to be segmented. Customer interviews, behavioral data analysis, and market research will allow you to build a precise picture of your segments. Based on these filters, you can, for example: 

• Assign specific marketing objectives to each segment.
• Track KPIs, or the success of a particular product with a particular audience.
• Carry out A/B Testing type experiments.

Step 4: Define your positioning

To succeed, simply being different is no longer enough: your positioning must be relevant and memorable . Beyond a mere marketing promise, it's about defining your place in the market, directly addressing the needs identified within your target segments. This rests on four pillars:

• A promise backed by concrete evidence.
• Clearly demonstrable competitive advantages.
• A distinctive and consistent brand territory.
• Communication aligned across all touchpoints.

Take the example of an outdoor clothing brand: rather than simply claiming "the best quality," it could position itself as "the partner of urban adventurers, combining contemporary style and outdoor technicality." All marketing decisions, from the choice of materials to the tone of communication, stem from this strategy.

→ Ellevate offers a brand diagnostic service to help you unlock your brand's potential and stop wasting time on ineffective actions. Consult the Ellevate marketing audit offer to learn more.

Step 5: Build your operational action plan

This is the step that transforms your vision into reality. A good marketing action plan orchestrates all your initiatives within a precise timeline , with clearly defined resources.

To be truly effective, your plan must detail:

• Priority actions per quarter, aligned with your activity peaks.
• Selected acquisition channels, with dedicated budget and KPIs.
• The necessary human resources and skills.
• Key milestones and monthly checkpoints.
• The performance measurement system.

The ideal approach? Structure your plan into 90-day sprints, as in the agile methodology. This is also why companies sometimes choose to work with an outsourced marketing director/part-time CMO.

Step 6: Continuously measure and optimize

Agility (yes, it again!) is your greatest asset in marketing. To stay competitive, your strategy must evolve quickly, guided by concrete data and continuous experimentation.

Organize monthly performance reviews to analyze not only the numbers, but also trends and weak signals. Each quarter, challenge your underperforming actions and strengthen those that demonstrate the best ROI. This data-driven approach, combining quantitative data and user feedback, will allow you to gradually refine your strategy for ever-improving results.

Building a marketing strategy isn't a static exercise, as we've seen… but an iterative process. Each step feeds into the next, and so on: the key is to proceed methodically. One of the best ways to succeed? Conduct a marketing audit of your business.