What Is A Sales And Marketing Strategist? (Plus Duties)

Updated 19 March 2023

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Most businesses have a sales and marketing department that includes people with unique responsibilities to increase revenue. A sales and marketing strategist is one employee who uses various tactics to achieve sales goals across channels, markets, buyers and industries. If you are considering a career as a marketing strategist, learning more about this role can help you determine if it is right for you. In this article, we define what a marketing strategist is, review their duties, education, skills and experience and provide tips to help you advance in this career.

What Is A Sales And Marketing Strategist?

A sales and marketing strategist combines all marketing channels to form a plan that improves a company's sales. They typically create campaigns and strategies to increase the value of a brand. A marketing strategist may study data from various campaigns and apply their analytical skills to their findings.

Reviewing data helps marketing strategists understand what campaign a business may want to focus on to generate more leads. They also use research methodologies to evaluate the buyers' perspective and assess new market entry tactics. In addition, they create reports that evaluate the various marketing campaign stages and communicate with business leaders and clients about their progress.

Responsibilities Of A Marketing Strategist

Here are some responsibilities of a marketing strategist:

Planning strategies for the business

Typically, the primary responsibility of a marketing strategist is to create marketing campaigns for the business they represent. Whether working in-house or through an agency, they often begin by learning about the company, since it is easier to create a plan when they have a deep understanding of the business. A marketing strategist typically collects information about the business's objectives, core financial numbers, products and services and key strengths. They also often study the company's customers to identify leads and new markets.

To further understand customers, a marketing strategist may research the journey a customer goes through to purchase a product or service. This effort may include reviewing the sales funnels and the business's value proposition. They can evaluate which content reaches the customer through media, advertisements or other communication outlets. The assessment can also help the strategist understand the current sales campaigns and the future goals the company wants to reach. After a thorough evaluation, they can create a plan to update the production and marketing schedules.

Delivering according to the business goals

A marketing strategist typically creates realistic goals that a project can achieve. They may communicate these goals to the leadership team of the company. Throughout any project or campaign, it is important that the strategist ensures the marketing goals align with the company's overall revenue goals. They typically provide updates to the leaders at every stage of the project. In addition, they can compare past campaigns with the current ones to focus on activities that present better prospects. To do this, they set targets and use metrics to define their current project's objectives.

Business leaders may request a new strategy for increased outreach that is unfamiliar to the marketing team. A marketing strategist's job may involve researching the feasibility of this request and how they could implement it during a future campaign. An example is if a company whose main advertising channel is print decides to switch to social media. The strategist could study the budget, digital brand image and customer buying patterns before planning a social media campaign.

Liaising with the production teams

A strategist typically schedules projects, so the output aligns with the sales and revenue targets of the company. To achieve these targets, the strategist often liaises with the production teams to ensure all the activities are going per schedule. They may coordinate with team leaders to understand if any challenges within production may affect the timelines of the campaign. If there are issues, they may coordinate with the business leaders to assess ways to change the production team's metrics, targets or resources.

Marketing strategists and implementers often work harmoniously to ensure deliverables are always efficient and effective. It is also important to hire people with the required skill set for the project and the mindset to work towards a collective goal. The implementers in the production team are typically highly communicative, so the larger team, including the marketing strategist, is aware of the progress during all the stages of implementation.

Working within the development life cycle

When a marketing strategist designs a project, it is important they plan the production phase according to the development life cycle of the implementation team. For example, if the product development team follows the scrum development cycle, then the role of the strategist may involve collaborating with the scrum master before every meeting. This meeting can mean reviewing the team's resources and assessing whether the team has sufficient capacity to complete the tasks of the upcoming implementation phase, often known as a sprint.

While the scrum master or the project manager typically evaluates the details of the tasks, the marketing strategist assesses whether everyone in the team understands their responsibilities and how to perform them. They may even conduct meetings before and after a development phase to answer sales and marketing questions. They aim to help the development team understand the business's perspective. Marketing strategists also typically create alternate plans for scenarios where the business goals exceed the productivity rate of the implementation team.

Qualifications Of A Marketing Strategist

Here are the typical educational qualifications, skills and professional experience of a marketing strategist:

Educational qualifications and skills

A marketing strategist typically has at least a bachelor's degree in business or communications. Some examples include Bachelor of Commerce, Bachelor of Business Management, Bachelor of Business Administration and Bachelor of Arts in business communication. A master's degree can also improve your chances of progressing in your career as a marketing strategist. An MBA with a specialisation in marketing can provide you with more understanding of practical marketing operations. Along with education, some of the skills that interviewers look for while hiring a marketing strategist are problem-solving, decision-making, communication and analytical skills.

Work experience

Many organisations prefer to hire marketing strategists with at least two years of experience in the field. Some organisations may even look for candidates with over six or seven years of experience. One way to gain that experience is to start your career as a marketing intern or an implementer. A marketing implementer is an employee who works for a specific campaign or channel within a large marketing team. Over time, you can gain experience working with multiple marketing channels and campaigns and develop the skill set to analyse data and generate insights.

Internal Vs External Sales And Marketing Strategists

Companies often hire dedicated, in-house marketing strategists to manage their marketing functions. These strategists typically work in one domain or industry and focus only on the channels through which the business advertises its products or services. An internal strategist can gain limited exposure to marketing methods other industries use. Other companies outsource their marketing campaigns to an external agency. These agencies typically hire candidates with experience with multiple clients, industries and marketing channels. They often bring more insight while designing production plans because of their greater exposure to different marketing tactics.

Internal strategists may often encounter urgent campaign requests from the leadership team that makes it challenging to follow a scheduled development life cycle. External strategists can limit these interruptions as they typically manage only one project at a time. They also usually prioritise projects to help their clients launch campaigns on schedule.

Tips To Become A Sales And Marketing Strategist

Here are a few tips that can help you become a strategist in sales and marketing:

Take up smaller marketing assignments and learn about new marketing tactics.
If you have experience working with a specific industry, such as technology, apply for a marketing position in that industry to help advance your career.
Familiarise yourself with different marketing channels so you can work on any new project.
Explore all aspects of a marketing campaign and strengthen your marketing communication skills for a few years before applying for a strategist position.
As you develop in this career path, continue to learn more about new marketing strategies, technologies and data analytics methodologies.