Marketing strategy – the choices that steer, not the list of everything you could do

Growing companies are rarely short of marketing ideas – what they lack is prioritisation. The budget is limited, but many strategy documents look as if it were not: ten channels, eight target audiences, nothing ruled out. This article is about the business layer of marketing – what a marketing strategy is – and how to recognise a strategy that actually steers decisions. If you are only looking for a template to fill in, there are plenty of those – but the point of a strategy is precisely the choices no template can make for you.

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy is a coherent set of choices: which customers you are going to win, with which offering, at what price and in which channels – and, just as importantly, which customers, offerings and channels you stay away from. Michael Porter formulated the core in "What Is Strategy?" in Harvard Business Review in 1996: "the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do".

The question of synonyms is simpler than it looks. Some textbooks distinguish between market strategy (the broader choice of markets and positions) and marketing strategy (the strategy for the marketing work itself), but in practice it is the same document, the same decisions and the same people round the table. In this article we treat the terms as interchangeable.

Marketing strategy vs marketing plan vs business strategy – where are the lines?

Three terms, three levels. Anyone researching marketing strategy will see all three used interchangeably, so here is where the lines are drawn:

• Business strategy – how the whole company creates and defends value: markets, business model, competitive advantage. The marketing strategy inherits its framework from here.
• Marketing strategy – what you are going to do in the market: position, target segments, offering, pricing logic and channel priorities. Decisions that hold for years, not weeks.
• Marketing plan – how and when: activities, campaigns, budget allocation, calendar and responsibilities. The plan puts the strategy into action – it can never replace it.

A simple rule of thumb: if the document changes every month, it is a plan. If you cannot point to anything you have actively ruled out, it is not a strategy.

Why are most "marketing strategies" really just lists?

The most common mistake is the everything-at-once document: a little SEO, a little social media, a few trade fairs, a little email – all with the same priority. A document like that feels safe to write, because nothing is ruled out and no one has to be disappointed. But it steers nothing. When everything is a priority, nothing is, and every new idea can be added without anything old having to go.

The budget situation does not make things easier. According to The CMO Survey (Duke University Fuqua/Deloitte/AMA, 35th edition, 2026), US companies spent on average 9.6 per cent of their total budget on marketing at the start of 2026 – down from 11.4 per cent the year before. The figures are from the US and should not be assumed to hold for Sweden, but the direction is telling: when budgets shrink, no one can afford a strategy document in which everything is equally important. Prioritisation is no longer a matter of style – it is a matter of budget.

A useful test: a real strategy costs something internally. It says no to a segment the sales team likes, a channel that management is used to or a discount that would have made the next deal easier. If your strategy could just as well apply to any company in the industry, it is not your strategy – it is the industry average.

Which building blocks belong in a marketing strategy?

Four decisions make up the core. The rest is supporting material and appendices.

• Positioning – which position you are going to own in the buyer's mind, against which alternatives and with what proof. The position is what the trade-offs are there to defend: every "yes" that does not support it erodes it.
• Offering – what you actually sell, how it is packaged and where it ends. A sharp offering also defines what you do not deliver.
• Pricing – the pricing logic that fits the position. A premium position combined with habitual discounting is two strategies working against each other.
• Channel priorities – where you should be visible and in what order to build out the channels. The evidence often already exists: keyword research shows where the demand is, and sales conversations show where the deals actually come from. If you sell to businesses, the mechanics look different – long buying journeys, several decision-makers – which we cover in the guide to B2B marketing.

All four rest on knowing who you are selling to – we explain how target audience, customer group and personas differ in a separate guide. Note also what is not on the list: individual tactics. Content marketing, advertising and search engine optimisation are tools chosen because they support the position and the channel priorities – they are not building blocks in themselves.

How does the marketing strategy connect with the digital strategy?

The marketing strategy is the business layer: what you are going to win, where and with which offering. The digital strategy is the plan layer for digital: which channels and platforms will carry those decisions, and how your digital presence is built, measured and developed over time. The order matters. Without the business layer, the digital strategy becomes a channel discussion with no direction – and without the digital layer, the marketing strategy remains a paper exercise. We cover how to build the plan layer, from channel choice to measurement, in the guide to digital strategy.

What are the signs that the strategy is not holding up?

Six warning signs you can check today:

• Everything is a priority. The document lists channels and activities but does not rank them.
• Channels are justified by habit, not data. "We have always exhibited at that trade fair."
• Pricing is set deal by deal. The discount has become the actual strategy.
• The positioning cannot be repeated. Ask three colleagues why a customer should choose you – three different answers mean the position does not exist.
• Your agencies get poor briefs. A brief is the strategy in concentrated form; if it cannot be written, there is no strategy to concentrate.
• All measurement happens at activity level. Published posts are counted, business impact is not.

The penultimate point has actually been measured in Sweden. In the report "MarknadsAvdelningen'23" from the Swedish consultancy Kapero and Brand Marketing Sweden (winter 2022/23, 207 respondents – marketing directors, CEOs and sales directors at companies with over SEK 500 million in turnover, plus project managers at advertising and media agencies), just over one in four of the agencies surveyed felt that the marketing team's strategy does not hold up – and just over eight in ten felt that the marketing department's briefs are not good enough. An important caveat about the sample: these are large companies, not small and medium-sized ones. But the mechanism is the same whatever the size – a weak strategy shows up first in the brief. And if many large companies fall short on marketing strategy, imagine how many small companies have a weak one or none at all. A reasonable conclusion: putting a sensible marketing strategy in place becomes a real competitive advantage.

How often should a marketing strategy be updated?

Review it annually, revise it when conditions change fundamentally – and let the layers move at different speeds. Positioning and pricing logic should be able to hold for two to three years; if you change position every quarter, you never had one. Channel priorities can be adjusted more often, ideally guided by data-driven marketing: ongoing data on what each channel actually delivers drives adjustments within the strategy's framework, not a rewrite of the strategy. The triggers for a real revision are major shifts – a new market, a new offering, a competitor that has moved or buying behaviour that has changed. A strategy that has not been touched for five years is no longer a strategy – it is a history book.

Want help setting or stress-testing your marketing strategy – or turning it into digital channels and measurable priorities? Get in touch and we will look at it together.