Your marketing strategy can make or break your business success. Before you start to formulate your strategy, make sure that you have outlined your overall plan for building your marketing strategy and that you have collected adequate information about your market or industry, customers, competitors, and partners.

Begin your overall strategy by outlining market size and growth, market share, and market trends. Then formulate your strategies for products, pricing, communications, and the use of channels. Finally, complete your tactical plan and your budget.

In a sense, you never finish formulating your marketing strategy. It's a good idea that your strategy change as conditions and outlooks change so that you can continue to meet your customers' needs and remain a competitor in the marketplace.

The following links take you to the tools and information you need to formulate and write an effective marketing strategy and plan.

• Develop an effective marketing strategy (Article)
  Create and implement an effective marketing strategy that maximizes the return on your effort.
• Communications planning guide (Template)
  Use this Word template to plan how you will reach your target markets.
• Marketing tactical plan (Template)
  Use this Excel template to track the marketing tactics you need to complete as you carry out your marketing strategy.
• Marketing budget plan (Template)
  Use this Excel template to plan your marketing budget.
• Marketing strategy questionnaire (Template)
  Use this questionnaire to capture key information for developing a thorough marketing strategy.