How to Make a Marketing Strategy Step by Step
How do you make a marketing strategy step by step?
Write down who you want as customers, where they already spend time, what problem you solve for them, the one or two channels you will use, the offer and message, a 90 day action list, and the numbers you will check monthly. Keep it to one page and review it every quarter.
Most freelancers and solo founders do not have a marketing problem. They have a "where do I start" problem. You open a blank doc, type "Marketing Strategy 2026", and half an hour later you have a heading and a bad feeling.
Strategy sounds like something a consultant charges four thousand dollars for. It is not. It is a short set of decisions that stops you posting randomly and hoping. Below is the version that works when you have no budget, no team and about two hours.
Step 1: Pick who you actually want more of
Not "small businesses". Not "anyone who needs a designer". Pick the specific customer you would clone if you could: the one who paid on time, understood the value, and told a friend.
Write four lines about them: what they do, what they were struggling with when they found you, what they nearly bought instead, and what finally convinced them.
Common mistake: describing your whole addressable market. A strategy aimed at everyone gives you no clue what to write on Tuesday morning.
Step 2: Find where those people already are
This is the step people skip, and it is the one that decides whether anything else works. Your buyers are already somewhere: an industry Slack group, a monthly meetup, a specific newsletter, a subreddit, a co-working space, three podcasts.
List ten real places. Not "LinkedIn" - a named group, event, publication or community.
Common mistake: choosing a channel because you like it rather than because your buyers live there. If your customers are trades businesses, your beautiful Instagram grid is a hobby.
Backkr's customer discovery features exist for exactly this step, because guessing at it is where most solo marketing plans quietly die.
Step 3: Write the problem in their words
Open your last five client emails. Copy the sentences where they described their problem before you fixed it. That language is your messaging. It beats anything you would have invented.
If a customer says "I'm sick of chasing invoices", your headline is not "streamlined financial operations".
Step 4: Choose one or two channels. Two, maximum
You cannot do SEO, a newsletter, LinkedIn, Instagram, events, partnerships and paid ads. Nobody can, least of all one person with clients to serve.
Pick based on step 2:
- Buyers search for a solution → search and AI visibility. Start with SEO and AI search.
- Buyers ask their network → referrals and partnerships.
- Buyers gather in person → events and communities.
- Buyers read long-form → a newsletter or blog, planned with a content planner.
Common mistake: starting five channels in week one, doing all of them badly, and concluding that marketing does not work.
Step 5: Decide your offer and your proof
An offer is not your price list. It is the specific outcome, for the specific person, with a reason to act now. "Brand and website for service businesses, live in three weeks, fixed price" beats "design services".
Proof is whatever makes it believable: a result, a named client, a before and after, a screenshot of a genuine message.
Step 6: Turn it into a 90 day action list
Strategy that stays abstract never happens. Convert it into weekly actions with dates.
A realistic first month for a freelancer:
- Week 1: rewrite the homepage in customer language.
- Week 2: publish one article answering the question buyers ask before hiring.
- Week 3: join two communities from your list and be useful, not salesy.
- Week 4: email your last twenty clients with one specific offer.
Four things. Done beats clever.
Step 7: Pick the numbers you will actually look at
Three is enough: enquiries, conversations, and closed work. Traffic is context, not a goal. If you want the longer version, read how to measure marketing performance and set up simple reporting that you will genuinely open.
Common mistake: measuring impressions. No freelancer has ever paid rent with impressions.
A real example
A Wellington bookkeeper had been posting tips on Instagram for a year with almost nothing to show. Her strategy took ninety minutes:
- Customer: tradies doing between $300k and $1.5m turnover who hate admin.
- Where they are: three regional trade Facebook groups, a supplier expo, and two industry podcasts.
- Problem in their words: "I do the books at 10pm on a Sunday."
- Channels: local search plus one partnership channel.
- Offer: monthly bookkeeping with a Friday summary, fixed price.
- 90 days: fix the website, publish four articles targeting local search, attend the expo, partner with two accountants.
She dropped Instagram entirely. Enquiries came from search and from the accountants. The strategy did not need to be clever. It needed to be decided.
What to do when the page stays blank
If you are stuck at step 1 or 2, that is normal, and it is the part software can actually help with. Backkr builds a snapshot of your business, describes the customer personas behind your real traffic, and shows you the events, communities and content those people are already part of, then turns it into a plan you can follow.
You are not starting from nothing. You are starting from your own data.
See how Backkr builds your strategy, or read next: how to build a marketing plan on a small budget and small business marketing strategies that actually work.