Joonas Hakkarainen
Your marketing strategy should never be a standalone. It must align seamlessly with your business strategy. At its core, it’s about mastering three key elements: the strategic role and goals of marketing, your target audience, and your message. Achieving top-level performance in all three right away is challenging. However, you can operate successfully with 2 out of 3 in place. For example, having a clear role and expectations from business, along with a defined target audience, can yield strong results. Even if messaging needs improvement. From there, you can enhance the third element as you go. Having only one in place can lead to struggles. Mastering all three can transform your function.
Let’s explore how you, as a marketing leader, can elevate your strategy—and your entire function—and where to focus on each of the three key elements.
1. The Strategic Role of Marketing
What’s marketing’s role in your business? What are the expectations for marketing for success? Is it improving your organization’s competitive advantage in the long run? Building brand equity and pricing power? Helping to gain more market share? Supporting sales by generating leads?
There’s no “right” or “wrong” answer here, but there is one essential step: clarity. Understanding your role is non-negotiable. And let’s make one thing clear, “more leads” is not a good strategic goal.
For some organizations, marketing is a supporting function. While some marketers may see this as limiting, supporting sales to drive revenue is a critical business contribution. If marketing is seen as a strategic driver and you have a seat at the leadership table, congratulations! But getting there takes effort, consistency, and—frankly—a lot of patience.
Whether you’re expected to support sales in different ways, drive brand equity, or own customer insight, recognize your role and excel at it. Actions speak louder than words, and delivering tangible results is the surest way to change perceptions and expand your role in the future.
2. Target Audience
Who is your audience? This might sound like Marketing 101, but in complex B2B industries, defining your target audience is both crucial and challenging. Your sales teams and business functions probably know the sweet spot: the companies and decision-makers most likely to buy. But do you have the same clarity in marketing? Broad targeting often leads to wasted resources and frustrated sales teams.
Here’s how to avoid that trap:
- Collaborate with sales and relevant business stakeholders to identify and refine the segments and target audiences you aim to reach.
- Ideally, to build an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Use ICP to identify the right companies and decision-makers. I recommend creating a list of all target companies if it doesn’t exist yet.
If you know the audience on a segment-level or company-level, that’s good. If there’s no definition at all, then you have a lot to do. And there can be variation within large organizations. In some business areas the focus might be really tight chasing a handful of companies whereas in others it can be broader—for example to a certain industry or segment.
Narrowing your focus can feel risky, but it pays off. With a well-defined audience, your campaigns become sharper, your leads more qualified, and your impact measurable. Precision is the name of the game. If defining your audience at a company level isn’t feasible, starting with a segment-level focus is a great alternative.
3. Message
Your message is your “why”. It’s the story you tell, the value you offer, and why it matters to your audience. Too often, messaging becomes fragmented within the organization. Some focus on features, others on data, and some rely on jargon. The result is inconsistent communication that fails to connect.
When refining your message, reflect on these basic elements:
- Understand your audience’s challenges, desires, and environment.
- Define your company’s strengths, purpose, and competitive edge. Utilize the knowledge within your organization.
- Develop a unified message your team can rally behind.
A compelling message doesn’t just sell a product or solution. It connects with your audience’s beliefs and values. It shows you understand their world and how to make it better. Is it easy to nail this? No. But is it worth it? Absolutely.
How to Get Started
For some, marketing strategy means a one-year roadmap. For some, it’s overly complicated or packed with too many details. That’s fine. But if you want to elevate your marketing function and deliver real business impact, don't overcomplicate it. Reflect on these three key elements and assess where you stand in each of them:
- What business expects from marketing for success?
- Does your target audience align with what business is targeting?
- Is your message clear and aligned with your target audience’s challenges and environment as well as the value your organization can provide to them?
When these elements are clear and you know your strengths and areas for improvement, your team is primed for success. From there, it’s all about execution—bringing the right message to the right audience at the right time and improving the areas that you need to. Mastering these three elements is the difference between good marketing and transformative impact. How ready is your team to unlock its full potential?
Ready to elevate your marketing strategy? Let’s explore how our evaluation process can unlock your team’s full potential.
