What does it mean to work with marketing strategy, and which freelancers can help?

By Carsten Bjerregaard, Addcapacity.com

Marketing strategy is about creating direction for a company’s marketing efforts and ensuring alignment between business goals, target audiences, messaging, channels, and investments. The discipline connects commercial objectives with concrete activities across branding, performance marketing, CRM, content, and digital platforms. In practice, specialists often work with prioritization, positioning, channel selection, budgeting, and performance measurement. Typical profiles include marketing managers, CMOs, marketing strategists, growth specialists, and digital consultants. The area is often supported by systems such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Analytics 4, Meta Ads Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, Semrush, and Power BI. A strong marketing strategy is rarely about doing more activities, but about clearer priorities and stronger direction.

1. What is marketing strategy?

Marketing strategy is the discipline that translates a company’s business goals into a coherent plan for markets, target audiences, positioning, messaging, and channel selection. The work is not only about campaigns or visibility, but about creating direction for how the company attracts, converts, and retains customers over time. In many organizations, the marketing strategy functions as a link between sales, management, product teams, and communication. This is particularly relevant in companies with multiple markets, complex customer journeys, or many digital channels. At the same time, the strategy must remain flexible enough to adapt to changes in market conditions, competition, and customer behavior. As a result, analysis, prioritization, and continuous evaluation are central parts of the work.

Key focus areas

• Positioning and market analysis
• Audience segmentation
• Channel and media selection
• Budgeting and prioritization
• Measuring marketing performance

A practical example is a B2B company experiencing high website traffic but few qualified leads. In this case, a marketing strategist may identify that the issue lies in audience targeting and messaging rather than channel budget alone.

2. How does marketing strategy fit into a modern organization, and which KPIs are commonly used?

Today, marketing strategy is closely integrated with commercial objectives, data operations, and customer experience. Modern organizations expect marketing not only to create awareness, but also to document its contribution to pipeline growth, revenue, and customer development. As a result, marketing teams often work closely with sales, business intelligence, CRM teams, and executive management. The strategy has also become more operational than before because digital platforms make it possible to adjust activities quickly based on performance data. KPIs vary depending on company type and maturity, but the focus is often on lead quality, customer acquisition cost (CAC), conversion rates, retention, share of voice, and marketing attributed revenue. In practice, the key issue is rarely the number of KPIs, but whether they support actual business objectives.

Common KPIs

• Lead generation and pipeline
• Customer acquisition cost
• Conversion rate and ROAS
• Brand awareness and reach
• Retention and customer loyalty

A SaaS company may, for example, achieve strong advertising performance while struggling with low retention. In such situations, the marketing strategy often shifts focus from traffic acquisition to onboarding, CRM flows, and the post-sale customer journey.

3. Which tasks can consultants help with within this area?

Freelance specialists in marketing strategy are often brought in when companies lack specialized experience, additional capacity, or an objective perspective on their existing efforts. Tasks range from strategic analysis and go-to-market planning to more operational disciplines such as campaign structure, content planning, and performance optimization. Many companies use external consultants during periods of growth, repositioning, or organizational change. This also applies when implementing new marketing platforms or integrating marketing and sales more closely. An experienced specialist can often accelerate decision-making and create momentum faster than a larger agency setup, especially when the assignment requires close collaboration with internal teams and ongoing prioritization.

Typical consulting tasks

• Go-to-market strategies
• Channel and media planning
• CRM and lead flows
• Campaign and content strategy
• Analysis and performance optimization

A typical scenario is a company launching a new product across the Nordic region. In this situation, an external marketing strategist can support audience analysis, channel prioritization, and coordination between local markets and central teams.

4. Which tools are commonly used by specialists in this field?

Marketing strategists typically work across analytics tools, advertising platforms, CRM systems, and reporting solutions. The choice depends on the company’s size, data maturity, and channel strategy. Many organizations are trying to reduce the number of platforms they use because fragmented data structures often make it difficult to maintain visibility and establish reliable decision-making foundations. At the same time, integrations have become more important than standalone systems. This is especially true between marketing automation, CRM, and business intelligence solutions. In practice, tool selection is often less about functionality alone and more about implementation, governance, and internal adoption.

Common platforms

• HubSpot and Salesforce
• Google Analytics 4
• Meta Ads Manager

One example is companies that invest heavily in marketing automation while still managing segmentation and reporting manually because the data foundation was not structured correctly from the beginning.

5. Who typically leads marketing strategy work, and what is their background?

Responsibility for marketing strategy often sits with a marketing manager, CMO, or Head of Marketing, but in larger organizations the discipline is also part of cross-functional leadership forums involving sales, digital development, and business management. Many professionals in these roles come from backgrounds in digital marketing, communication, business development, or commercial leadership. In recent years, more profiles with strong analytical and technological capabilities have also entered marketing leadership positions. This is partly driven by the growing importance of data, attribution, and automation. As a result, the role increasingly requires both strategic understanding and operational insight into digital channels and performance management.

Typical roles

• CMO and marketing manager
• Head of Growth
• Digital marketing lead

In companies with complex sales processes, marketing strategy is often managed closely together with sales leadership to ensure shared KPIs and clear pipeline accountability.

6. Who is typically involved in daily execution and delivery, and what are their roles?

Daily execution usually involves specialists from several disciplines because modern marketing strategy requires technical, creative, and analytical capabilities. Marketing teams often work across paid media, content, CRM, design, SEO, and marketing automation. In many organizations, collaboration between internal employees and freelancers has become increasingly common, especially when there is a need for specialized expertise in clearly defined projects. In these situations, the freelancer often functions as a specialist or temporary extension of capacity rather than as a traditional external supplier.

Typical profiles

• Content specialist and copywriter
• SEO specialist and designer
• CRM and performance consultant

A practical example is a marketing team using a freelance specialist to implement tracking and attribution while internal employees manage content production and campaign execution.

7. Which specializations exist within marketing strategy?

In practice, marketing strategy covers many different specializations because companies operate across different markets, customer journeys, and business models. Some specialists primarily focus on branding and positioning, while others work more data-driven with performance marketing, automation, or customer lifecycle management. There is also growing demand for professionals who can combine technological understanding with commercial strategy. In particular, AI, first-party data, and privacy regulation are increasingly influencing how marketing strategies are developed and executed. As a result, specialization is often a matter of both channel expertise and broader business understanding.

Common specializations

• Growth and performance marketing
• Branding and positioning
• CRM and marketing automation

One example is companies hiring specialists in customer lifecycle marketing to strengthen retention and upselling rather than focusing exclusively on acquiring new customers.

How to quickly connect with strong candidates for your needs

Freelance specialists within marketing strategy can be a flexible way to strengthen an organization, both strategically and operationally. Many companies choose freelancers to gain fast access to experience, close collaboration, and specialized expertise without lengthy recruitment processes. At the same time, hourly costs are often lower than with traditional agency setups.

Addcapacity.com helps companies clarify their needs, define role and competency requirements, and identify three relevant candidates who match both professionally and collaboratively. The process is non-binding and makes it possible to quickly assess how an external specialist can best become part of the team.