Writing your Marketing Strategy

Use Marketing Strategy Plan to decide which customers to reach, what to offer them, where they can buy, and how you will judge the results. A useful plan gives your team clear choices for the next planning period, with enough detail to keep campaigns consistent.

This guide uses an illustrative bicycle-repair business. Adapt the examples to your own services, approved prices, capacity, and evidence.

Open the plan and start with the essentials

Open Assistant → Strategy → Plans → Marketing Strategy Plan. Choose Fill it in myself for an empty plan, or Add details, Edit, or Review suggestions on a section. Select Save after editing each section; you can save work in progress.

Your Business Strategy, Customer Profiles, and Brand Guidelines must be ready before this plan can show Ready to use. Use those plans to narrow your focus and keep your messages consistent.

The eight essential decisions are Primary customer action, Priority audience, Products & services to promote, Pricing & offer boundaries, Reusable offers, Purchase & booking paths, Promotional angles & reuse, and Marketing channels & roles. Start with those decisions, then add the detail needed to put them into practice.

For section editing, answer states, and saving suggestions, see Setting up your business strategy in Cedros. Saving this plan records your strategy; it does not launch campaigns, buy ads, or change product prices and checkout terms.

Choose a goal, audience, and product focus

In Goals & Resources, connect marketing to something the business needs:

• Marketing goal for this period: state the outcome and planning period. For example, “Increase weekday repair bookings over the next quarter without overloading the workshop.”
• Primary customer action: choose the main action, such as booking a repair, requesting a quote, or buying a service package. Be specific about what counts as a completed action.
• What is holding marketing back?: record the obstacle and supporting evidence. If you suspect people cannot understand the service options, label that as a hypothesis until you have checked.
• Budget & resources: record the approved budget, available time, people, assets, and delivery capacity. Leave unapproved spending clearly marked for confirmation.

In Audience & Buying Triggers, narrow the audience to the customers this period's activity should serve:

• Priority audience: name the customer group and why it matters now, such as local commuters who rely on their bicycle for work.
• Buyer stage focus: describe how close they are to acting. Someone comparing repair shops needs different information from someone who has not noticed a problem yet.
• Demand we are addressing: explain whether people already want the service, need help recognizing the problem, or are responding to a seasonal need.
• Primary buying trigger: name the event that prompts action, such as a recurring mechanical problem before a busy commuting week.
• Top objections and decision criteria: list what customers need to resolve, such as price clarity, turnaround time, convenient collection, or confidence in the repair.

In Products & Positioning, connect that need to something you can deliver:

• Products & services to promote: name each priority service, who it is for, what it includes, and the customer outcome. Reference the current service definition rather than adding benefits the workshop has not approved.
• Positioning & marketing approach: explain why this audience should choose your service and how the approach supports the goal. For example, make the assessment and booking process easy to understand before expanding promotion.

Define reusable offers and their terms

Use Pricing & Offers to make the deal clear enough that different campaigns can describe it consistently.

In Pricing & offer boundaries, reference current prices and packaging. Record permitted discounts or bonuses, capacity limits, whether offers can be combined, and changes that need approval. Include margin or cost limits only when you know them. Mark missing terms for confirmation.

In Reusable offers, give each offer a stable name and record:

• The product or service, intended audience, customer value, and business purpose.
• What the customer pays and receives, with a reference to the approved price and service details.
• Eligibility, the redemption window, availability limits, exclusions, and whether it can be combined with another offer.
• Whether the offer is a draft or approved, and who must resolve any missing terms.

For example, a draft Commuter care package could combine a named service with an agreed follow-up check. Before promoting it, confirm the price, included work, follow-up window, and booking capacity. The example name alone is not enough to make the offer usable.

Keep the offer separate from how you promote it. A “back to commuting” message can introduce the same package without changing what the customer pays or receives. A giveaway of that package is a separate related offer because the winner pays nothing. A “bring a friend” angle also needs a check: it only fits the existing offer if its terms allow sharing.

If you already recorded offer terms elsewhere in the plan, preserve them when organizing this section. Resolve conflicting terms before using the offer in a campaign.

Make the next step easy to follow

In Where Customers Buy, follow the journey from the message to the completed customer action:

• Purchase & booking paths: for each product or named offer, record the destination, steps to buy or book, redemption instructions, and any availability or delivery limits. Use the actual route your business supports, whether that is a booking page, shop, or conversation with your team.
• Calls to action by buying stage: match the next step to readiness. A new visitor might compare service options; someone ready to act should reach the correct booking destination. Reference the named offer and its approved terms.

For the repair business, check that the package message leads to the right service, that the displayed terms agree with the plan, and that the customer can tell whether they have made a booking or only requested one. Record friction you find and who will address it.

Writing a destination into the plan does not create it. Review the actual page and purchase or booking flow before sending people there.

Build messages and promotional angles

In Messaging & Campaigns, explain the value in language your audience can use:

• Main message: state the central customer benefit, grounded in the service and offer. Avoid a speed or outcome promise unless your business can support it.
• Supporting messages: choose one to three useful themes, such as what the service includes, how the process works, and what happens after collection. Note the evidence and channels suitable for each.
• Evidence & proof: list real evidence, whether it can be used publicly, and any approval needed. A service description, an approved photograph, and a customer testimonial answer different questions; do not treat them as interchangeable proof.
• Promotional angles & reuse: attach each angle to a named offer. Record the occasion, audience, headline idea, benefit, business purpose, suitable channels, timing or eligibility conditions, and draft or approved status.

For example, Back to commuting might introduce the Commuter care package to people returning to a regular work journey. Keep the package terms intact. If you want to add a discount, a new deadline, or an extra service, get the changed offer approved before presenting it as part of the campaign.

Give channels and campaigns clear jobs

Continue in Messaging & Campaigns to decide where effort will go:

• Marketing channels & roles: give each channel a role: Lead, Support, Test, Nurture, or Skip. Explain its audience, buying stage, offer or angle, call to action, and required assets. These are choices you write into the plan.
• Channel priorities: allocate the available time and budget. A short list of channels your team can maintain is more useful than an unsupported commitment to every channel.
• What channels need: list prerequisites such as a booking destination, approved copy, usable proof, creative assets, and an appropriate audience. Assign responsibility for missing items.
• Active campaigns: choose a manageable set of campaigns. For each, record the offer name, angle, audience, buying stage, message, call to action, destination, channels, assets, proof, dates, budget, owner, success measures, and status.
• How we prioritize campaigns: explain the ranking using customer fit, likely value, available evidence, cost, effort, capacity, and learning. Label estimates rather than presenting them as results.
• Campaign ideas for later: separate the next test from ideas needing assets, ideas saved for later, and ideas rejected with a reason. Keep reusable angles with their offers so they are easy to find again.

A small repair business might use its service page as a lead channel, use email to nurture existing customers where appropriate, and test one local promotion after the booking path is ready. Those are illustrative planning choices, not channels that Cedros activates when you save.

An entry under Active campaigns is your written plan. Schedule or publish the actual campaign through the channel you use, then record its real status and results here.

Decide what success means and when to review

In Measurement & Improvement, make the plan useful after the first campaign goes live:

• Success measures: choose measures tied to the goal and track them by offer, angle, campaign, and channel where possible. For the repair business, completed bookings and available workshop capacity may matter more than clicks alone. Mark each measure as tracking only, target set, needs baseline, or not used. Include the data source and period so comparisons make sense.
• When to repeat, change, or stop: write decision rules based on customer fit, conversion, cost, capacity, repeat business, and what you are learning. If people click but do not finish booking, investigate the path before increasing promotion.
• Review cadence: choose a schedule your team can keep and events that require an earlier review, such as changed prices or reduced capacity. If you use Review suggested starting point, review it, select Accept reviewed answer, then Save.
• Related execution plans: identify which plans need to stay aligned, such as Search, Blog, Social, Video, or Business Development. Note whether each is aligned, needs an update, is missing, or conflicts with this strategy.
• Guidance for Cedros: summarize the approved audience, offers, terms, campaign priorities, and channel roles. Ask Cedros to flag missing evidence or approvals and to distinguish a new message from a change to the deal.

When this plan is included as context for a supported drafting workflow, those decisions can guide the suggestions. Review the resulting content against the current offer terms and evidence before publishing. Optional assistant drafting uses your configured AI service; see Understanding AI usage and costs.

Review the saved plan before putting it to work

Before using the plan for your next campaign:

1. Check that the primary action, audience, promoted services, and purchase paths agree with each other.
2. Review every named offer for price, inclusions, eligibility, timing, limits, and approval. Check each promotional angle against those terms.
3. Confirm the destination, assets, budget, capacity, and owner for each active campaign.
4. Separate actual results from targets and assumptions. Give unresolved questions a next step; use Not known yet where appropriate, or Not applicable with a reason.
5. Save each edited section and check the plan's readiness. Ready to use means the essential decisions and prerequisite plans are addressed; it does not verify claims, approve spending, or confirm that a campaign has launched.

If you see a conflict because someone else updated the shared plan, keep a copy of your unsaved wording before choosing Reload latest plan, then compare the latest decisions before editing again.

Return to the plan when prices, services, capacity, or evidence change. Update the offer first, then check the campaigns and related plans that use it.