Marketing Strategies: Types & How To Build One (2026)

A marketing strategy is a necessary part of running a business, whether you’re a scrappy startup or an established brand. It’s what keeps your team focused and aligned on promoting your business.

There are many things to consider when developing a successful marketing strategy. This guide simplifies the process, with insights from top marketing experts and business owners to help you create your own.

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy is your overall action plan for reaching potential customers and turning them into loyal buyers. 

A marketing strategy includes:

• Your goals and marketing objectives
• Your unique value proposition
• Market research findings
• Competitive analysis
• Target market details
• Key messaging
• Top marketing channels
• Metrics and KPIs you’ll track 

Marketing strategies can also be grouped by channel or type, like the four P’s: product, price, place, and promotion. However, there’s no universal count of how many marketing strategies there are; it differs by business model.

Marketing strategy vs. plan vs. tactic vs. channel

The terms marketing strategy, marketing plan, marketing tactic, and marketing channel are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are not the same. 

Here’s how they differ:

7 P’s of marketing

The 7 P’s framework helps you create a comprehensive marketing strategy that covers what you’ll sell, to whom, and how you’ll implement your plan. Your strategy should address the following:

Product

Your products are the foundation of your marketing strategy. For each item you sell, answer these questions:

• What problem does it solve?
• Who is your solution for?
• What makes your solution unique?
• How would a customer use your solution?
• What key points do customers need to know about your solution?

Lindsay McCormick, for example, founded Bite by iterating on a traditional product: toothpaste. “When I started looking into toothpaste and the way it comes in a plastic tube—and there’s a bunch of harsh chemicals, artificial flavors, ingredients that come in it. I thought, I could make something that’s better for the planet and better for our body,” Lindsay says in a Shopify Masters interview.

Price

How will you price your products? Choose a pricing strategy that fits your market position:

• Competitive pricing: Use competitor prices as benchmarks.
• Premium pricing: Price higher than competitors to signal quality and exclusivity.
• Value-based pricing: Price based on perceived value.
• Penetration pricing: Set lower prices to enter new markets.
• Cost-plus pricing: Add a markup to production costs.

Footwear brand Golden West opted for value-based pricing because of their boots’ positioning as being an investment piece. “A $100 boot is a transactional item. It will not last because of the way it’s made, the way it’s manufactured, the leathers you use, whatever it might be,” says Co-founder and Designer Michael Petri. “A $300 boot is more of an investment.”

Promotion

Promotion covers how you’ll reach and persuade your target customers to buy. This strategy includes all your marketing channels, such as social media, email campaigns, and ads.

Outline your promotional strategy with a thorough marketing plan. This will cover:

• Market research, defining your audience and competitors
• Measurable goals (i.e., “Drive 1,000 sales per month over the next six months”)
• Marketing budget and breakdown of how you’ll spend your funds
• Messaging strategy, defining key brand messages that all your campaigns will communicate

Place

Place describes where customers can make a purchase. It includes the marketing channels you’ll outline within the strategy, such as:

• An ecommerce website
• Social selling platforms like TikTok Shop
• Online marketplaces
• Mobile apps like Shop
• Retail locations
• Events and pop-up shops

Although you might sell in multiple places, ecommerce platforms like Shopify let you sell from the same inventory. The Bike and Outdoor Company uses these features to manage a 15,000-strong product catalog across 49 retail stores and two online stores. They’ve since reduced monthly costs by 60%.

People

People help you run your business—and they directly or indirectly influence the customer experience. This group can include staff members (like a marketing team member or customer service representative) as well as external partners (like a supplier).

For example, refrigerator brand Rocco’s marketing strategy extends to the people who deliver its Super Smart Fridges. “We have humans going into your home. That is an incredible moment of trust,” Co-founder Sam Naparstek says.

Instead of working with a typical appliance delivery company staffed by subcontractors, Rocco chose to partner with a delivery service staffed entirely by full-time employees. The people who deliver Rocco fridges are knowledgeable about the product and prioritize customer education. As a result, “You’re going to have a really strong interaction with our people,” Sam says.

Physical evidence

Physical evidence includes all the tangible aspects a buyer might consider when assessing your brand, such as:

• Site design and product photography. Product images and videos were voted the most important product page element in Salsify’s 2026 consumer research.
• Packaging and unboxing. Product packaging includes the product itself plus any extra containers or wrapping. “Those physical touchpoints are so rare in our increasingly digital world,” says Britt Martin, co-founder of Food Period. “When you think about marketing from a retention perspective or a referral or upsell perspective—the box and the packaging is really an opportunity.”
• Online ratings and reviews. How other consumers assess and talk about your brand serves as a major proof point for potential new shoppers. The average customer searches six different review sites when choosing a business. The most popular are Google, Facebook, and AI tools like ChatGPT.
• Retail or pop-up spaces. Thephysical spaces where customers are able to shop can make a significant impact on the overall impression of the brand.Luggage brand BéisS hosts pop-up shops, which CEO Adeela Hussain Johnson says are “a moment to build the brand and to build the relationship with the consumer.” 

Process

Process is what translates theoretical marketing strategies to concrete, tactical actions. Some—especially creative processes like concepting marketing campaigns—will be human-led. Others can be automated, such as email drip campaigns using Shopify Flow.

“AI is great for your first draft. It’ll save you the first 40 minutes of writing or idea generation,” says direct-to-consumer (DTC) expert Nik Sharma in a Shopify Masters interview. “But the final draft is something that should be massaged by you, the owner and operator, before it goes out.”

Why you need a marketing strategy

Marketing is the top Year 1 challenge, at 37%, according to a 2025 Shopify survey.* A documented marketing strategy helps optimize your time and money on tactics that support your overall goals. Here are a few examples:

• Reach your target audience. A marketing strategy outlines who you’ll reach and how. “You’ll then be able to find ways to reach them about what matters most,” says Darren Litt, co-founder of Hiya Health, adding that it also helps filter out potential customers that will never see the relevance in what you’re offering, and vice versa.” 
• Improve resource allocation. Dan Demsky, founder of Unbound Merino, sets a minimum return on ad spend (ROAS) target and only increases ad spend once a campaign proves it can meet this target. They now spend more than $20,000 on Meta ads every day—a figure that grows by 1.5% every week.
• Build brand consistency. Bombas has always had a clear idea of why it exists—for every item purchased, an item is donated—and it has been able to grow without losing its core identity. “The how and what … will change over time,” Co-founder Randy Goldberg says in a Shopify Masters interview. “The why is constant. Being able to answer that is something that all founders should be thinking about.”
• Make data-driven decisions. Jordyn Casaus, director of digital and integrated marketing at Crown Affair, says: “It’s always based on data—how we are making those decisions to either pour more dollars into or less dollars into [a strategy].”
• Create a competitive advantage. Conduct market research to learn about your competitors. This can reveal what gaps you can fill and how to position your brand. Compartés CEO Jonathan Grahm did this with refined product packaging for his chocolate brand. 

How to create effective marketing strategies

These steps help you understand your audience, clarify your value, and set achievable goals.

1. Conduct market research

Your target market defines the customers you’re hoping to sell to. “If you understand who this group of people is and what set of experiences they have, you can relate to them through shared experiences,” says Ezra Firestone, founder of digital marketing brand Smart Marketer.

To identify your target audience, use both qualitative and quantitative research:

• Analyze competitors. Study their social media platforms, brand voice, and how they talk about their products. Look at which audiences engage with them most. Helmet brand Thousand used this research to double-down on one niche: helmets that bike riders are actually excited to wear.
• Check data analytics. Use tools like Shopify Analytics and Google Analytics to learn about your audience’s demographics and behavior.
• Interview potential customers. Talk to people who follow or buy from your competitors. Ask them about their purchase decisions and what they’d improve about the products.
• Create surveys. Use Shopify Forms to learn about your audience’s interests, hobbies, location, income, and occupation.
• Meet customers in person. Set up at farmers markets or street fairs to have casual conversations with potential customers about what they’re looking for. Myriam Belzile-Maguire, founder of Maguire Shoes, says this had an unexpected effect on sales: “When we were doing pop-ups and in-person events, we realized we were making sales for all the month after because we would meet people in person.”
• Study industry trends. Review reports from Nielsen, Forrester, or Pew Research. Use Google Trends to track product popularity.
• Review sales data. Once you have sales, analyze spending patterns, customer locations, and popular products. Sidekick, the AI assistant built into Shopify, can help here. 

Use this research to create a buyer persona—a detailed profile of your ideal customer that includes their demographics, interests, challenges, and goals. 

2. Define product-market fit

Product-market fit is when your product meets the demand of customers. To test your product-market fit, you can try a small launch first.

This is one method tinned seafood brand Fishwife used to validate its product. “We did this tiny little micro-launch of 100 beta boxes, which sold out in less than an hour,” Co-founder Becca Millstein says on Shopify Masters. “It was just very clear from the get-go that people were excited about the product.”

Continue to make the product-market fit clear long after launching. When customers visit your website, they should understand how your product solves their problems. Ask yourself:

• What’s the “why?” behind your products?
• What problem does your product solve?
• Why should customers choose you over competitors?

Answers to these questions should influence your brand messaging strategy. 

Heyday Canning, for example, leaned into convenience. “There seemed to be an opportunity to take all of the good stuff about canned food—how convenient it is, being shelf stable—and create food for today’s consumer that knows great food and really values its great flavor and premium quality,” says Founder Kat Kavner in a Shopify Masters interview.

3. Set measurable marketing goals

Clear goals keep you focused and help you create campaigns that support your business objectives. Use the SMART goal framework to set goals that are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

For example, instead of “increase sales,” set a SMART goal like “increase sales by 25% over the next six months.” 

“Each business unit has its own respective goals, but collectively we should all be marching toward the same brand company goal,” says Toral Patel, vice president of marketing and ecommerce at beauty brand Kopari, in a Shopify Masters interview. “Understanding what everyone else’s KPIs are and how they’re contributing to those goals is really important.”

4. Choose your marketing channels

Focus your marketing strategy on channels where you can move beyond just broadcasting sales messages to build meaningful connections with your audience. That might be:

• Social media channels like TikTok or Instagram
• Email marketing 
• Digital ads
• Organic search
• Event marketing

“It’s really easy to get shiny nickel syndrome, you know, start chasing new channels or categories, or going international, but all these things can also take your attention away from the core business,” says Eric Girouard, founder and CEO of BRUNT Workwear.

“It’s not the sexiest answer, but it’s basically staying disciplined on the three channels we have and just continuing to scale them up.”

5. Focus on customer retention

As it becomes more expensive to acquire customers, retaining those you’ve already got can be a profitable way to grow your business. Gorgias’ data found repeat customers account for just 21% of the average brand’s customer base yet drive 46% of all orders and 44% of all revenue.

When a new customer makes their first purchase, ask them to opt-in to email communications. If they agree, use Shopify Messaging with Shopify Flow to add them to a post-purchase email list. It’s an opportunity to offer coupon codes for future purchases, request product feedback and reviews, and collect user-generated content.

You could also create a loyalty program to reward customers for making purchases or completing other actions, like referring someone. Apps like Joy and Smile add this functionality to your Shopify store.

6. Plan your marketing budget

Develop a marketing budget to direct spending where it will make the most impact. 

Decide what percentage of your revenue you want to spend on marketing. Then, consider your goals and whether they are feasible with your proposed budget. Gartner’s 2026 research found the average business spends 7.8% of their total company revenue on marketing. “It really depends on what product you’re selling, how much education is required, and how much that product costs,” says DTC expert Nik Sharma. 

7. Measure and adjust

Shopify Analytics has pre-built marketing reports that give you insights on conversions. Using QR codes and shareable links, you can track marketing campaigns across your email, ads, and social media strategy.

This includes metrics like:

• Conversion rates
• Customer acquisition costs
• Payback periods

Dan Gray, CEO of Vendry, advises combining these reports with customer feedback. “The biggest challenge with multichannel marketing, especially at scale, is attribution and identifying which channel is actually driving impact in order to put more budget and energy toward it. 

“This is where implementing various Shopify apps that attribute users across their journey, as well as apps for post-purchase surveys, will help you recognize the high leverage channels to scale.” 

Shopify Sidekick helps make sense of the data you collect. Ask the AI assistant to:

• Identify which channel brought in your most profitable customers 
• Segment customers depending on their referral channel 
• Create custom reporting dashboards with your most important marketing metrics 

8 tactics to boost your marketing strategy

Here’s how to best build upon your current marketing strategies, for the biggest impact: 

1. Create conversation on social media

A social media marketing strategy helps you reach and engage with customers where they already spend their time. In a 2025 Shopify survey, 35% of store owners said building a social media presence was a top Year 1 growth strategy.*

Consider both organic and paid tactics to market your products on social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. Sales on these social commerce platforms account for 15.2% of all ecommerce sales in 2026. Sync your product catalog with them to create shoppable content, using your Shopify admin. 

To make real connections with people on social media, consider moving past a broadcast approach. Shopify expert Ben Zettler recommends thinking about “what’s going to create conversation.”

For example, feminine care products brand The Honey Pot creates conversations around menstruation with its Period Diaries content series. The brand shares relatable, “deeply human moments,” and asks other customers to submit their own diaries for a chance to be featured.

2. Build topical authority to compete against more established brands

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher on search engine results pages. 

Los Angeles–based nursery Plant Material credits SEO for its business success. “We appear in search results alongside Home Depot and Lowe’s,” Co-founder Matthew Burrows says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “We’ve been really focused on SEO since day one so that we could pop up and compete without a lot of ad dollars. Now, we’re competing with national chains despite operating with a small team.”

While SEO takes time to cultivate, it doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Use free SEO tools to research which keywords your target audience uses. Then create content that addresses their pain points, featuring those keywords.

The added benefit of optimized content is that AI search tools can cite it when your target shoppers search for a specific category or need. One in six shoppers now start their product search with AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. 

Build on your SEO strategy to target AI searchers with generative engine optimization (GEO):

• Answer FAQs with the Shopify Knowledge Base app
• Use agentic storefronts to make your products discoverable in AI search

3. Give customers a memorable experience

Word-of-mouth marketing turns your current customers into brand advocates. eMarketer found these recommendations have a 48% relative influence, beating reviews and online ads.

Word-of-mouth marketing differs from referral or affiliate programs because there’s no incentive for the customer to recommend your brand. It’s a popular way to grow: In a 2025 Shopify survey, 53% of store owners named word of mouth as their most common Year 1 growth strategy.*

Baby clothing brand Francis Henri grew this channel by genuinely caring about the customer. “I have just always truly believed that if you have a wonderful customer experience and a superior product, people come back,” Founder Katherine Oyer says in a Shopify Masters interview.

4. Publish informational content, starting with video

Content marketing is a type of inbound marketing that builds trust with audiences through useful content, such as blogs, videos, social media posts, podcasts, and infographics. 

Karen Danudjaja, founder of superfood beverage company Blume, built the brand’s content engine around stories. “I think the term ‘superfoods’ gets thrown around a lot, there’s no clear definition and we want to be a trusted place for that. We don’t want to be adding to the confusion, we want to be clearing it up.” Karen says in a Shopify Masters interview. 

“We have two really important pillars when we build community: one is being trusted, saying what we mean, following through, being educated in the things that we say. Two is sharing the real story behind a small business and a founder-led brand, and all of the challenges and the great moments too, that come along with it.”

Video is a great vehicle to communicate your brand message, because some social media algorithms favor video content, which can lead to viral marketing. Wyzowl also found 85% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service after watching a video. 

Viral pickle brand Good Girl Snacks regularly uses videos to provide its audience with serviceable content, like recipe ideas.

Co-founders Leah Marcus and Yasaman Bakhtiar have weekly brainstorming sessions to come up with video ideas. “We just sit for two hours and go through strategy for the month: What’s coming up? What can we make content of?” Yasaman says on Shopify Masters.

5. Start an influencer marketing program

Almost half of shoppers make at least one purchase a month inspired by influencer content. 

There are various ways to partner with influencers: You can send free products in the hopes they’ll post about them (also known as creator seeding), host influencer events or brand trips, or pay influencers for sponsored posts.

Kopari does a little bit of each, and measures the success of its influencer campaigns with customer surveys. “In post-purchase surveys, we ask specifically, ‘How did you hear about us?’ And very often someone will note a specific influencer,” says Toral.

Shopify Collabs lets you manage this marketing process from end to end. Browse and shortlist creators, invite them to join your program, and issue free products from your Shopify admin. Then track how many sales each influencer drove within Shopify Analytics.

6. Embrace AI

AI marketing is the use of artificial intelligence tools to help automate your marketing strategy and make it more efficient. In the US, about 14% of businesses in the retail trade sector currently use AI, below the 19.8% rate across all US businesses.

A few use cases include:

• Targeted advertising. According to a 2025 Statista survey, 43% of marketers said that the best use for AI was targeting audiences. AI systems can parse through first-party data to help you create even more targeted social media and search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns.
• Personalized recommendations. AI can use customer behavior data to deliver curated product recommendations. In a Contentstack survey of more than 600 shoppers, 70% said that suggestions based on their past behavior made their online shopping experience better.
• Creating content. According to a 2025 Shopify survey, content creation was the most common way store owners used AI, at 69%, with 38% applying it to marketing initiatives.* Shopify Sidekick and Tinker can write content, create images, and produce videos for you. 

Accessories brand Ridge uses generative AI to scale ads. After feeding its best ads into an AI tool, it generates new versions that are personalized to various audience segments.

“You want as many tickets as possible, as many ad variances as possible,” CEO Sean Frank says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “What you see and what you like is going to be totally different from what I see and like.”

7. Add paid advertising when organic is working

Start with organic efforts—as opposed to paid ones—and learn more about what your audience responds to.

“If you start with paid, you’ll spend money to produce non-predictable outcomes,” says Taylor Holiday, CEO of ecommerce growth agency Common Thread Collective. “The good work of your first hundred to a thousand customers has to come from organic efforts. This builds a foundation that will help you effectively use paid media later.”

DTC expert Nik Sharma agrees. “I think that you should try to get the first thousand customers without using paid methods,” he says. “And the reason is because you’re really trying to understand what is the messaging or the positioning or the reasons that somebody’s coming to buy this product.”

Use what you’ve learned from organic marketing strategies to run paid ads on social media, search, and Shop app. Some 31% of store owners doing more than $1 million in revenue named paid advertising their most effective growth strategy in a 2025 Shopify survey.*

For example, Firebelly Tea invests their marketing budget into Shop Campaigns, where they only pay when Shop app customers convert. They’ve doubled their return on ad spend and halved customer acquisition costs with this strategy.

8. Build an email list you own

An email list gives you a direct line of communication with your audience. As a result, you’re not reliant on social media algorithms to show your content in a user’s feed. It’s also an effective strategy: Some 30% of Belstaff’s customers come from this marketing channel. 

Build your email list with the help of pop-up forms on your ecommerce website using Shopify Forms. If you sell in-person, Shopify POS’s email capture feature is another useful option—in fact, it helped Little Words Project increase in-store email capture rates by up to 95% at multiple locations.

Reach out to people on your mailing list using Shopify Messaging to:

• Automate email flows, such as new subscriber welcome and cart recovery emails 
• Educate potential customers through regular emails
• Personalize emails using data from unified customer profiles inside Shopify 
• Track open rates, click-through rates, and attributed sales to adjust your email marketing strategy 

“We are doing eight figures in business and we have a very tight attribution on Klaviyo. And even then, we do about 18% to 20% of our revenue through email,” says Sean Reyes, founder of Shock Surplus. “You can’t ignore it; there’s no replacement for it still, even with everyone’s crowded inboxes.”

*Based on a 2025 survey of 500 Shopify merchants conducted in English across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Respondents were established merchants with two or more years on the platform. Results reflect the experiences of this specific sample and may not be representative of all merchants.