November 3, 2026 · Kathrin Siemokat-Jackson · 8 min read

Developing a Marketing Strategy: Why Your Marketing Needs a System

Every channel delivers good numbers, and yet the company misses its goal. Here's how to develop a marketing strategy that actually supports your business goals.

What Is a Marketing Strategy?

A marketing strategy defines what marketing contributes to the company's goals and how the individual activities work together to achieve them. It answers which customers you want to win, which products or services to focus on, what role each channel plays, and how you measure success.

So a marketing strategy doesn't start with the question of which tactics a company uses. It starts with the question of what marketing should achieve for the business.

What's the Most Common Mistake CEOs Make With Their Marketing Strategy?

In my experience, many CEOs look at marketing from the perspective of individual tactics and too little from the perspective of their business goals.

They invest in Google Ads, SEO, social media, or a new website. Often, different employees or service providers manage these areas, and each one optimizes their own: Google Ads is supposed to bring in more inquiries, SEO more visibility, the website more leads.

The crucial question often goes unanswered:

What does our marketing have to deliver for us to reach our business goals?

A company doesn't automatically need more website visitors or more inquiries. It needs the right customers, profitable projects, and demand that is as predictable as possible. If these goals aren't clear, individual activities can look successful without the company benefiting from them.

Why Good Metrics Can Point You in the Wrong Direction

A company can achieve good results in every single channel and still miss its overall goal.

Here's an example: Google Ads delivers low-cost inquiries. But the sales team finds that most of these inquiries come from customers who aren't profitable. SEO, on the other hand, brings in fewer inquiries but supports much larger deals.

If you only compare cost per inquiry, you may end up cutting back the very channel that is worth more to your business.

Isolated marketing metrics lead to wrong decisions. That's why I always look at marketing as one connected system.

How Can You Tell Whether Your Company Has a Real Marketing Strategy?

In a first conversation, I listen closely to how a CEO talks about their marketing. If they mainly talk about which channels the company uses, how much budget goes into Google Ads, or which rankings the website achieves, I know what the company does. But I don't yet know why.

That's why I ask different questions. You can ask yourself these, too:

Which business goals should marketing support?
Which customers do you want to win, and which ones explicitly not?
Which products or services are especially profitable?
What role do the individual channels play in winning customers?
How do you know which activities actually contribute to revenue and profit?

The last question is especially revealing. Many companies have extensive marketing reports with cost per click, rankings, visitor numbers, and cost per inquiry. But they don't know which inquiries turned into customers or how much those customers are worth.

That doesn't mean there's no strategy. But an important basis for steering is missing. I recognize a real marketing strategy when a company can clearly explain its goals, target customers, priorities, and the role of each activity.

What Does This Look Like in Practice?

A typical example from my work: a company was already investing in several marketing channels. Each area was looked at separately and measured against its own metrics.

The problem wasn't that the activities performed poorly. The results simply said too little about whether marketing was reaching the right customers.

So we changed perspective. Instead of looking only at reach, clicks, and inquiries, we examined which target groups were financially attractive for the company. We looked at the quality of inquiries, the likelihood of closing, the potential deal size, and the requirements of the desired customers.

On that basis, we aligned messaging and activities with the relevant target groups. The goal was not to generate as many inquiries as possible. The company was supposed to receive more inquiries from customers who are a real fit for its offering.

You can see the results this approach delivers for our clients in the kaylis case studies (in German).

What Role Does the CEO Play in the Marketing Strategy?

As a CEO, you don't need to know how to optimize Google Ads campaigns, implement technical SEO, or build a landing page. That's what specialists are for. But you do need to know what your company wants to achieve and what marketing should contribute to it.

In my view, four decisions are the responsibility of top management:

The business goals: Should the company grow, enter new markets, become more profitable, or strengthen its competitive position?
The desired customers: Which customers and projects are especially attractive, and which no longer fit the strategic direction?
The financial framework: What budget is available, what does it make sense to spend on acquiring a new customer, and which growth targets are realistic?
The strategic priorities: Which business areas should grow, and where do you want to strengthen your market position?

The best way to develop your marketing strategy is together with an experienced strategic partner. You hand off the day-to-day execution to qualified experts. Whether that should be an in-house team or an agency is something I explain in the article Marketing Agency or In-House Marketing Team. Responsibility for the goals and the financial evaluation stays with you.

You don't have to do your marketing yourself. But you do need to know how to measure its success.

How Do You Develop a Marketing Strategy?

I never start with the question of which channels we'll use. Before we talk about SEO, Google Ads, or a new website, we need to know which problem we want to solve with them. My approach has six steps.

1. Business Goals and Financial Starting Point

What does the company want to achieve, where should it grow, and which products or services are especially profitable? Which financial conditions do we need to take into account?

2. Target Groups and Customers

Who does the company want to reach, what problems do these customers have, and how do they make decisions? Industry and company size aren't enough for me. Above all, I want to understand why a customer chooses a particular provider.

3. Market and Competition

How is the company positioned, how do competitors present themselves, and which differences actually matter to potential customers?

4. Existing Marketing and Available Data

Which activities are already running, what demonstrably works, and where are costs incurred without any visible benefit? I don't just look at individual channels. How they work together with the website and sales is just as important.

5. Developing the Marketing System

Only now do we decide which activities make sense. Not every company needs every channel. What matters is that the selected activities work together and contribute to the business goals.

6. Implement, Measure, Improve

A strategy isn't a document you create once and then file away. It's translated into a concrete plan with clear responsibilities, priorities, and measurable goals. Based on the results, we regularly check whether we're on the right track and where we need to adjust.

First understand what the company wants to achieve. Then decide which marketing activities it takes to get there.

What Role Does AI Play in Marketing Strategy?

AI can be very helpful in developing and implementing a marketing strategy. It analyzes large amounts of data, structures information, prepares market insights, recognizes patterns, and runs through scenarios. This speeds up processes and improves the groundwork for strategic decisions.

But I'm also seeing a problematic trend: companies increasingly use AI for tasks where they lack the expertise to evaluate the results. That's risky, because AI delivers answers that sound convincing but can be wrong or unsuitable for the specific company.

I've already seen cases where companies changed their Google Ads accounts based on an AI analysis. Afterward, the results got significantly worse.

The problem isn't AI. It arises when recommendations are adopted without being checked. An AI knows neither a company's financial context nor the quality of its customers, its internal sales processes, or its strategic priorities. Even when this information is available, someone has to be able to judge whether the recommendations make sense professionally and financially.

AI can support a marketing strategy. It replaces neither an understanding of the business nor responsibility for strategic decisions.

What Should You Do First as a CEO?

Ask yourself one simple question:

Can I clearly explain today what financial contribution our marketing makes to the company's success?

If the answer is no, I wouldn't commission any additional activities for now. Instead, take a closer look at your existing activities and results:

Which activities bring in inquiries?
Which of these inquiries turn into customers?
What is the average deal size?
What does it cost to close a deal?

Not every company can answer these questions completely right away. That's an important starting point, because only once it's clear what works can budgets and activities be evaluated properly.

This isn't about attributing every dollar of revenue to exactly one channel. With complex buying decisions, that's often impossible. It's about having a sufficiently reliable basis for decisions.

Don't automatically invest more in marketing before you understand what your existing marketing achieves.

Conclusion

There's one sentence I keep sharing with my clients:

“Marketing doesn't have to do as much as possible. Marketing has to achieve the right things.”

A company doesn't become more successful by using more channels, running more ads, or publishing content more often. What matters is whether the activities are aligned and work together to win the right customers.

That's why at kaylis, we develop a marketing system for every company that fits its goals, its target group, and its financial situation. A system that creates transparency, enables clear decisions, and strengthens the company's market position in the long run.

If you'd like to know what your marketing contributes to your business goals today, let's take a look together. Feel free to schedule a personal conversation. I look forward to hearing from you!

Until then, all the best, Kathrin

P.S. Feel free to check out our other channels, too: our podcast, YouTube, or Instagram. You'll find new content there regularly (in German).